Kathleen, Kage and the Company

Kage Baker was seldom certain of the exact date. Nor did she care. Not at all.

She was a busy person; and if she really needed to know when she was, well – she assumed I would tell her. Or she’d write herself a note, and imbed it in the text of whatever story she was working on; she had a sufficiently good grasp of her daily output that she was able to score very close to pertinent dates with self-addressed warnings that said Stop! It’s Anne’s Birthday In A Week!

For a triple check, she had her everlasting calendar on the wall. It was the Yellow Submarine one from 1967. It wasn’t designed as a perpetual calendar. But, as Kage pointed out, the placement and number of months and days didn’t change – the year was irrelevant, especially if all she needed to know was how many days it was to Ian Anderson’s birthday. (It’s currently 9, BTW …) If she needed to know the actual day of the week, she checked the TV Guide.

Kage floated rather loosely through time anyway. She said all its measurements were arbitrary, except on huge scales which humans rarely tracked. And in this, she was essentially correct. It undoubtedly influenced her peculiar view of Time and its assorted arrows, with which she played such odd tricks in her Company novels. Her basic vision of Time as a rotating, striated Moebius curve arose partly from this. And, I think, from some Italian Murano glass beads she found in an old jewelry box when she was small …

It was further Kage’s assertion that, culturally, she came from people who had regarded measuring anything much less than a month as small potatoes. Further, most dates were fine at 3 or 6 month intervals; and the larger the chronographic device, the better. She cited Stonehenge as justification for her inability to interact with the alarm clock.

Kage worked best when turned just slightly west of the plane of everyday existence. She called it fuzzing out. She claimed the cloud of probabilities that whiz round all of us like expectant electrons could be used, like a beaded curtain, to usefully obscure the distractions of mundanity. She said it was an obvious corollary of Schroedinger’s damned cat.

I said she was cobbling together random tropes of her chosen genre to put up a shield of bullshit. And Kage would just smile and be opaque …

I, on the other hand, am usually at least lightly obsessed with what time it is. For years this was due to the necessity of getting to classes, performances and jobs on time – and usually with siblings, minions or both in tow. I find that since I became self-employed I can often manage a day just fine by the softer-edged measurements of the light outside my porch door. And when I am really tired or busy, that can be rounded up to whether or not there is any light. Discerning the difference between day and night can really make one feel in control during especially harried times.

But I do try to keep track of major holidays and such. Which is why losing – and then mislabeling – an entire month in yestreday’s post was so embarrassing. It was July 31st, not August. Today is Lammas; not a month from now. Thank you, Steve and Eric, for catching my temporal error and kindly re-anchoring me in the aggregate normality. I don’t have Kage’s knack for discorporating and ghosting through what passes for reality.

And to all you Dear Readers – Happy Lammas!

Shown above: Murano beads. Or an assortment of Universes, in different time scales. Your choice.

Kage Baker always celebrated this evening.

Lammas Eve at night – July 31st, which this is – is the historical birthday of Juliette Capulet. Her nurse fondly remembers it in the beginning of the play. It was also the birthday of Katherine Baker, and Kage never let the anniversary pass without a toast to Mamma.

It’s a harvest festival in its older, more religious, less classical incarnation: Lammas is (probably) one of those words blurred from the long centuries of familiar use: Loaf Mas, the celebration of the ripe grain, of bread and beer and having enough seed laid by for another year. Occurring as it does in weather still pretty warm even in England, it’s also a grand time to light bonfires.

Heck, any celebration is good for bonfires. But Kage liked this one especially, because it was a nice time to sit up in the back yard and watch the flames dance. We’d watch for falling stars and mysterious air craft, and listen to the waves and flames both breathing on the night air.

For reasons as mysterious as ever, I’ve spent the day mostly asleep – them old narcolepsies creeping up on me again. Who knows why? But I hope to stay up a little while tonight and watch some Olympic events. All those young athletes, racing the sun and winning; forcing time itself to stand still for a while and let them be immortal.

Now, that’s seed for the future.

Kge Baker was fond of that iconic saying of the immortal John Carter of Mars (which is, strange to say, never used in the recent movie).

It’s appropriate whether you are thanking God or giving the finger to the malicious universe. It nicely handles situations ranging from being surprised you’re waking up at all, to deciding on the order in which you  must slay today’s monsters. And it’s also, as the very practical Kage observed, a reminder that other embattled heroes often had it worse than you do – you might be rising to face cold water and a deadline, but John Carter usually woke up and belted on his sword over sheer stalwart nakedness. And thought himself lucky to have the sword.

Anyway, I too still live. I have signed my name 1,500 times in the last three days, and they are on their way back to the publisher. And my name may never look like human language to me again. I dreamed about the penmanship paper the nuns made us use in grammar school –  wide and triply-lined in turquoise, with the middle line in dots so you knew how tall the half-sized risers had to be.  Put a proper pi-shaped angle in your small r, make sure the t is shorter than the upper stroke of the h, don’t give three humps to the n or 4 to the m and w. The good ladies of God who taught me cursive told me finally to learn to type, as my handwriting was appalling – and Kage’s, left-handed scrawl that it was, was anathema.

And yet, in this modern age where public schools are about to stop teaching cursive at all, my eccentric signature has been garnering admiring praise for the last 20 years. Just because I do remember (and try to use) a few of those rules the nuns gave us; because I can still see in my mind that blue-lined beginner’s paper and recall what the lines were intended to do.

Kage realized before the turn of the century that cursive was a passing fad. She simultaneously mourned its grace, and triumphantly excused her own handwriting. Of course, when your printing looks like a machined label and you can doodle in Celtic Uncials, sloppy handwriting is much easier to excuse. But she really did think it was on the way out, and she wrote it so in her future history – and she was right.

People will always want something like autographs, though, even if authors use a stamp, a chop, or an electronic hash tag. I already know quite literate authors who nonetheless sign books in printing: because cursive takes too long. But most still happily whip out the pen and demonstrate the increasingly-exotic skill of hand-writing, inspiring cries of admiration from their readers. (We all hope …)

I certainly will continue to sign. My 1,500  signature pages will be bound into the deluxe hard-cover versions of Nell Gwynne’s: On Land and At Sea. With the helpful suggestions from you, Dear Readers, I was able to sign half of them in sepia, and half in a delicious burgundy. But no sooner had I gotten confirmation from UPS that my finished efforts were on their way, than a new box arrived for me. And in that …

Three Advance Uncorrected Copies of the new book! Paperback, but with the back blurb, and the beautiful cover and internal illustrations by J.K. Potter, and even the comic sub-title neatly in place on the title page. Just as Kage wanted it. And on the front and on the spine – her name. And mine.

We still live.

Kage Baker, several hundred more signing sheets finished, periodic distraction from the Olympics, plums, hunting for mint at the grocery store and being told it’s “seasonal produce” (in what dimension?), back and forthing with the agent over a new anthology that wants a Kage Baker story, back and forthing with the critic who has just gotten the first known Uncorrected Proof Copy of Nell Gwynne II …

No writing. But those are my excuses, Dear Readers. So no one thinks I fell in a ditch!

Kage Baker:  grinning in my memory today, busy as I was with a bag of plums, two fancy pens and 9,000 signature sheets still to complete.

A morning spent signing things, and singing to English, Scots and Irish folk music with my family: everybody was home, everybody knew the words, and it was just plain fun.  I followed the news just enough to be aghast at Mr. Romney’s arsey-versy diplomacy, and to be amazed when the VP in charge of PR for Chick Filet dropped dead of a heart attack. Let loose the dogs of irony!

Then a break in the afternoon to go case roses and herbs and buy lavender bushes. Oh, and sing along in the car with the famous “Ode To Joy” from famous Beethoven’s famous 9th symphony, broadcast from the Albert Hall in London for the Olympics! In our family tradition, (since only Kage and Kimberly ever the words in German) we sang the words to the lovely old American ballad Clementine. Kage discovered years ago that Clementine could be sung to the “Ode To Joy” – and vice versa. Throw in lots of choral “bum bum bums!” and arm waving, and you can conclude the 9th symphony in a perfect paroxysm of joy. Not to mention frightening the people in the next car.

Consequently, I have not written much today. Nor will I.  I should have time for another 300 signatures before the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics begin on American telly. There will be Philly Cheese Steak Pizza for dinner. Harry can stay up late and sneer at the  funny mascots, while we cheer all the bright flags and goofy uniforms and insanely, heroically hopeful athletes.

I can hardly wait for the cage fight between Lord Voldemort and Mary Poppins!

Kage Baker habitually just shut down all outside activities when she was faced with signature sheets.

Signature sheets are nicely printed pages with a space for the author’s name. They are signed in an unbound condition, and then bound into special editions of the author’s books. They are a grace note, a bonus, an automatic signing intact and permanent in the volume.

They usually arrive at the writer’s home in a large, heavily reinforced box. Since they are ordinarily about 4 reams of paper – good end-paper quality paper, too, mind you – they have the density of a neutron star. The arrival of these boxes of signing sheets inevitably means the delivery of boxes of heavy completed books in a few more months: so the author is pleased, but the UPS man is not  … Delivery men hate writers – especially writers who live on the second story.

Luckily, I now dwell in a ground floor house; nonetheless, my family has learned to apologize to the UPS man when he comes staggering up with whatever I am getting this time. He’s being remarkably cool about it, considering that the Corgi and the parrot have joined forces as in-house security, and are whistling and baying at him at the same time.

(This gentleman is much, much calmer about it than the guy who delivered for us 20 years ago in the Hollywood Hills, that summer a friend kept sending us boxes full of armour pieces. After he finally asked what was in one – and was informed it was a dozen gorgets – we never saw him again. Sorry, Simon, your gorgets apparently drove this man to a career change. But, as Kage said, he should have known he wasn’t going to be delivering boxes of feathers every day.)

Anyway, once the signature sheets arrived, Kage would mope around for a couple of days, lamenting her fate. She hated signing them – she had things to write, she had a new game, her hand hurt, she didn’t have the right pen … I don’t really know why she disliked it so much, since she loved the way the finished pages eventually  looked in the book. But it was an ordeal for her: during it, she would not answer the phone or the door, nor tolerate much noise in the house. (I always made too much noise knitting at times like this.) But Kage always did her duty, and was always quite pleased with herself by the time she was done.

So, the signature pages for Nell Gwynne II arrived yestreday. They feature a lovely seascape in sepia and phantasmal pink; hence, my late queries last evening as to where one might find pens with sepia ink. Several of you, Dear Readers, gave me quite specific brands of drafting pens to seek; as well as a lovely burgundy Pilot suggested as a back-up. So today I went hunting, and I found them all! I now have perfectly gorgeous fine-point pens in both sepia and burgundy, and I am signing half the pages in each colour.

They look wonderful with the pastel seascape. Distinctly coloured, but not garish, you know? Refined, like.

And so that is what I mostly spent the day doing – hunting pens, scrubbing down a wooden tray table for a work space, establishing the perimeter beyond which the cats could not venture. I don’t need paw-smudged ink or nose prints on these pages. Especially since, while my initial impression was that I had 500 sheets to sign, I actually have 1,500.

I got through 300 this afternoon – tomorrow I will get through twice that, at least, since I don’t have to hunt for pens. I’m not shutting down as completely as Kage always did, but I discovered today that a certain amount of isolation is, indeed, required … one’s mind wanders. By the time I was halfway through today’s pages, my name had begun to look like a glyph in an unknown language. I found myself wondering why on earth I had those awkward shapes in the letters of my name; I started to forget how to shape the dipthong th in a cursive script.

Kage had no dipthongs in her name. I have two, and a name twice as long as hers, as well.

I think I’ll put on the soundtrack to the Robert Downey Sherlock Holmes movie tomorrow. It’s full of wailing violins and weird percussion. And then when my own name starts looking like a Mayan grocery list, I’ll have some nice atmospheric music to soothe me.

Kage Baker did, occasionally, get bored.

How, I never could figure out. Most of the time she had a dozen projects going on at once, and was loudly pressed for time. She always claimed there were not enough hours in the day, resented the time needed for sleep – and she wasn’t like me, she had to sleep. After a while, all internal systems just shut down and she’d fall asleep no matter where she was.

But somehow, when not racing the clock and shouting outrage at the time, she managed to get bored. Especially in the summer, on long warm comfortable afternoons. Although those afternoons it’s almost nice to be bored; to loll about with a cold drink and something retro on the CD player, lazily discussing Whammo Toys and defunct flavours of Otter Pops. Whenever she got really into the indolence, though, something would happen – a story would insist on being born, a manuscript would come back from the editor all marked up. And Kage would lay aside her plantation past-times, and leap back into the multi-tasking fray happily.

Sometimes what happened were signing sheets. Smaller houses often include a special run in their publication of a book – 1,500 volumes already signed by the author, on special pages sumptuously decorated and numbered. Subterranean Press – which just generally produces exquisite books anyway – habitually does this. And whenever the box of signing sheets arrived, there was 3 or 4 days of careful business right there: because the book juju, Kage maintained, would not be satisfied with a stamp.

They all had to be signed.

Well, I now have my own very first batch. Looks like, oh, 500 of them – really lovely, too, with a beach study in warm mauve-pink-copper tones centered on each page. Looks like a warm grey day heading for twilight, just perfect for The Women of Nell Gwynne’s II. 

It’s terribly exciting – one of the last pre-publication steps, and it means the book is real! It makes my head swim, being the first with my name on it – and even Kage never stopped being thrilled when things like this arrived. She’d do her dance of Authorial Glee at having made it to the fun bits of writing.

It’s certainly not boring.

In the meantime, today I have been working on similar finishing touches for the front lawn. Mostly, I drive – Kimberly and Michael won’t let me do anything even faintly strenuous. But I did get to pick out the fence panels now beginning to go in: we went with iron, sturdy iron with classic iron pointy bits: only waist-high, but an incontrovertible symbol of Private Property. Right now, they’re black – but we’re painting them green to match the trim on the house. I expect Mount Neighbor to blow his lava plug at that …

However, beginning tomorrow, the signing must be begun. I have to wash my hands really well (because mulch … clings), and set up a nice tidy cat-proof place to sign pages. Which task itself beggars imagination.  I’ll need a pot of coffee and a pitcher of ice water, with as little of them as possible within arm’s reach: for fear of dreadful spillage. I shall have to give some thought to the best ink with which to sign these, too … does anyone make 6-packs of pens in sepia?

Final touches are the most important.

Kage Baker loved gardens. And gardening – she was a maker as well as a consumer, and brought talent and dedication to the art of cultivating a garden.

Growing up where she did helped. Mamma’s house was balanced on the peak of a ridge in the Hollywood Hills; the front and back gardens ran downhill in terraces, all of which were planted in various ways and species. The front yard was narrow strips of cool grass, beds of irises and ceanothus and nasturtiums and lilies and roses, roses, roses. Fruit trees and grape vines. The back was mostly dirt and kids’ toys, but even there apricot trees grew. The whole yard, front and back, was edged with huge eucalyptus and cypress trees. Kage took that childhood image as a goal everywhere she went as an adult.

Whether it was a row of pots or a half acre of fruit and vegetables and flowers, Kage built gardens. She didn’t have anything as limited or prosaic as a green thumb: she was an entire entwife. The life dreaming in the earth woke under her hands, and everywhere she lived it blossomed forth. Tulips, gladiolas, sweet peas, poppies, plums, apples, irises, herbs, corn, melons … about the only things she couldn’t coax to riotous fertility were petunias and zinnias. And that was mostly because the birds ate them.

Mendoza was not a botanist by accident. Write what you know, all young writers are advised, and Kage had learned gardening before even she learned how to read.

Of all Mendoza’s character traits, her passion for gardening and the green life of the earth were the most directly translated from Kage’s own heart. It’s Mendoza’s only joyous passion, in fact, and that joy came from her creatrix. Because when Kage first pondered immortality for her characters, she spent some time thinking: What would I be willing to do forever?

Gardening was high on the list. And so Mendoza became a botanist.

Me, now – I’m grunt labour. I carried pots and dug holes and tilled and hoed and built raised beds. I raked and mowed and wrestled clippings into garbage cans. I pushed wheelbarrows and handed seedlings to Kage. Every time her long hands tucked a baby plant into the fine dark earth, I knew it would thrive. She always looked like a mother drawing the fuzzy blanket around her infant’s shoulders: tender, preoccupied, already considering what training would be needed once the baby learned to stand up …

My sister Kimberly also loves gardening. I’m past much sweat equity work these days, but I am a great facilitator – I can buy things, including some specialty labour to get them going. So tomorrow we get a new front lawn. The parts that are not to be covered in drought-resistant dwarf fescue (which gives me images of teeny little axes around ankle level …) will be planted in creeping thyme: I ordered 60 seedling plants, once I found out the City of Los Angeles  encourages homeowners to plant the stuff!

I’m getting new roses. I’m installing a picket fence. Kimberly and I can go out, as Kage and I used to, and water the garden in the cool evening, taking in the sweet breath of a rejuvenated garden.

It all makes me feel as though an important part of me has woken up and rejoined the living. So, Dear Readers, I will leave you with one of Kage’s favourite poems, about gardens. It’s a very true one.

 A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Ferned grot–
The veriest school
Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not–
Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have a sign;
‘Tis very sure God walks in mine.    

                          Thomas Edward Brown

Kage Baker lived on Santa Rosa plums during their brief, 1 or 2 week season every year. They are simply the best plums ever. And I am doing my level best to subsist on them now.

They have fallen out of favour, commercially – in the 1960’s, they still made up 30% of the plum market; today, it is less than 1%. Mr. Luther Burbank (who originally bred them) would be shocked and disappointed. Those of us who still love them certainly are. Santa Rosas are not as big as most modern breeds, and they don’t travel as well; which means they actually get ripe instead of staying hard as stone for three weeks. Many modern city-dwellers never taste an actual ripe piece of fruit …

Anyway, they have the best, most divine plum flavour in the world. These days I only find Santa Rosas at farmers’ markets; they seem to be grown in small amounts, in private groves. By the fae, doubtless. The rest of the summer I have to content myself with the many splendid new hybrids that now exist, the pluots and plumcots and aprilums and such. Which is not exactly a hardship, I must admit.

But right now, right now, it’s Santa Rosa time, and in Kage’s honour I am eating them. I’ve eaten half a dozen today, and have 3 pounds more in the kitchen. I also have local artisan ewe’s milk cheese, and freshly baked French bread. Gonna be a good snacking day, Dear Readers.

All this makes up for the crazy neighbor problems. So does all your advice, which has been taken quite to heart. We’ve started a paper trail with the police, and are being very careful. But, you know, crazy neighbors sometimes just happen. A certain amount of care and caution and all will be well.

And in the meantime, I dwell happily in the heart of plumdom. As Kage would say, “The Queen of plums all!”