Welcome to The Mystical Underground

Noah, leaping for a ball!

++

We’ve written about our dog park before, usually in relation to U.S. politics. Well, this entry is entirely different. Just books and authors and, of course, dogs.

When Nika was younger, we used to take her and Noah into a part of the park intended for smaller dogs. Here, they played Frisbee and catch the ball with Lily, a funny, very focused pug (that’s her to the left of Noah), and Willow, a border collie, whose partial body and tail are visible in the photo.  One afternoon, we dog people stood around and talked about stocks with Ralph, who was once a broker on Wall Street, and Cassie, who owns Willow and tends someone’s  horses.

Cassie is one of those women whose presence tells you she considers her dog, Willow, and maybe all dogs and animals, as a lot of notches above humans. She’s originally from New Jersey, and is a skilled horse person who has made horses her profession. Here where we live, she tends four horses that belong to a wealthy person, that’s’ all we know about her.

This area was built with equestrians in mind. They compete, they play polo, they are pro jumpers and Olympian trainers.  Tommy Lee Jones owns a home here – and his own polo team. Bruce Springsteen lives here part-time because his daughter is an equestrian jumper. For a while, Madonna rented a place and so did Bill Gates. I don’t know if either of them are equestrians, but it was rumored that the chopper we saw flying in over the Aero Club every afternoon belonged to Gates, who had rented a house here for the winter.   But until this particular afternoon, I didn’t know that a famous writer also lives here.

“We’re staying here this summer because my boss has another book to write,” Cassie said.

My antenna twitched.  “Your boss is a writer? Of what?”

Cassie looked embarrassed. “Hell if I know. I’ve never read any of her books.”

“What genre?” I asked. “Does she write romance, science fiction, suspense, paranormal, women’s fiction, or what?”

Cassie frowned. “Mystery and suspense, I guess.”

“What’s her name?”

“Tami Hoag.”

I nearly swallowed my tongue. Tami Hoag, like Stephen King, shines in her field. Her writing is tight, her plots are complex, her characters are people we like. “I would love to get a blurb for her for my next book, Ghost Key.” I blurt this and am, frankly, shocked and embarrassed. Never, in thirty years of writing, have I ever been so forward, blunt, and grossly obvious.  And Cassie, gem that she is, tells me to drop her an email and she’ll forward it to Tami.

So I do. And I tell my friend, writer Ed Gorman,  about it and he jokingly says that he would have held Cassie hostage until Tami had to ride to her rescue and give your book a blurb. Ed isn’t kidding and that speaks volumes about the value of a blurb from someone like Tami Hoag.

Stephen King gave The Hunger Games a glowing blurb, and that book went on to become a NYT bestseller and an enormously profitable film. Of course, it helps that the trilogy deserves accolades.

What’s interesting about Hoag is that she’s also an Olympic competitor. That’s part of the reason she employs Cassie. And being a competitor at that level obviously means  you’re serious about what you do. I emailed my request, then later gave Cassie a galley of the book. A few days  later, she came over to me at the dog park and says, “Okay, I gave Tami the galley you gave me and if she doesn’t blurb it I’ll kill her.”

Not long after, she reported that Tami looked at the galley then gestured at the pile of books next to her desk. “You see this? These are all the books my publisher asked me to blurb. I can’t read one more book. I’ve go to finish the book I’m writing.”

What I took away from this whole thing is pretty simple: writers  who are now in the upper one or two percent were once in the lower one or two percent. They are under tremendous pressure to produce something new because these writers are the ones who probably sustain the publishing industry and pay the salaries of the editors who give manuscripts a thumbs up or thumbs down.

I heard a story,  maybe a writers’ urban legend, that when Stephen King visited the office of NAL (Signet, Penguin, lots of imprints) he moved up and down the hall, pointing at this editor, that editor. “I pay your salary and yours and yours…” And this image of King, a master story teller, made me laugh so hard my ribs actually hurt. It’s not even funny. But I can envision King doing that.

The other detail I took away from this experience is that Cassie, Tami Hoag’s horse whisperer, is a really cool woman who understands horses and dogs in ways the rest of us don’t.  When we see her in the afternoons at the dog park, she and Willow, are playing with the blue ball that is the center of his existence right then, in the NOW, and I am reminded that my life isn’t just about writing and publishing. Writers write, artists paint, musicians create, singers sing,  actors act, we all have some creative compulsion that drives us.  But it’s never the sum total of who they are.

… a most amazing parrot!

We don’t see many programs on UFOs in the mainstream media. But since Anderson Cooper’s ‘360’ featured a half-hour segment in late April,  it’s worth analyzing what he presented. The segment was called “Do you Believe in Space Aliens?”

I guess the term ‘space aliens’ was used to distinguish the subject from border-crossing aliens. That’s understandable, but the term also limits the possibility of where UFOs and their alien crew are coming from. Sure, (outer) space is a possibility. But maybe they are inter-dimensional, maybe they are us coming the future. Who knows, maybe they’re from the past, a destroyed high tech culture, ie. Atlantis, that developed time travel. Maybe there is no one answer about who they are or where they are from.

Anderson Cooper’s story on April 24 focused on UFO sightings from 2008 that were witnessed outside of Philadelphia in Bucks County. Anderson invited an eyewitness who explained how she was awakened by her growling dog to discover glowing lights above her house. It was shortly followed by a sprinkling of metallic-like glitter on her tree, making her think “it was snowing in July.” Apparently, she feared being ridiculed later on so she only used her first name, Denise. Actually, the ridicule would begin within minutes while she was on national television.

But first  Cooper introduced Pennsylvania state Mutual UFO Network director John Ventre to talk about what happened to the tree.

Ventre said MUFON sent leaves from the affected tree to two different labs, both of which reported “high levels of magnesium and boron,” two to three times higher than controlled samples detected on neighboring trees. Furthermore, the leaves had produced anthocyanin, which Ventre accurately described as a plant’s natural defense from heat and radiation. But were those levels of anthocyanin excessive or unnatural? And what gives with the elevated magnesium and boron?

As one Internet critic noted: “This is the part where you bring in one of the lab analysts, right? Or a botanist, maybe?” Time to dig deeper into the physical evidence, right? Nope.

Instead, Cooper brings in a couple of abductees, who have nothing to do with the Pennsylvania story, then debunker John Nickell, who dismisses Denise as a misguided person who saw Jupiter shining in her bedroom window.

“So Jupiter dumped stuff on my tree,” Denise wondered, “is that what you’re saying?”

No, Nickell countered, “I expect the stuff on your tree was, probably, you saw some sand or something in the light.”

Right. But there were still a few minutes left, time to find out more about the hard evidence, the boron or the magnesium or the anthocyanin.  But, no, AC brings on a psychic to talk about star families.

Oh, well. Nice try. But the bottom line was–as usual with this subject in the mainstream media–keep it light and entertaining. Don’t get too serious.

All that said, I want to introduce readers to a blogger from the mainstream media, logging on the site of a daily newspaper, about UFOs. It was that log, called De Void, where I first learned about Anderson Cooper’s UFO report. De Void is a web log from the Herald Tribune of Sarasota, Florida, and is written by Billy Cox. I love the sub-title of De Void:  The Mainstream Media’s Lonely UFO Web Log.

Good going, Billy.

There are three videos here and the second  has some of the clearest images, in daylight.  But all three of them really beg the question: what are these things?

Here’s a report of a mother and son both dying in car-related accidents within hours of each other. After reading the article, it seemed to me there was also another synchro of sorts within the story. Notice how many people were allegedly intoxicated. Is that part synchronicity or just part of the everyday world?

+++

WEST ALLIS, Wis. — A Wisconsin woman and her adult son were killed in separate traffic crashes just hours apart in a Milwaukee suburb, police said Monday.

Mary J. Moore, 45, died after she was struck by a vehicle on a street in West Allis. A friend was speeding her son, Thomas M. Olson, 22, to the hospital to see her when he struck three parked cars and overturned, West Allis Deputy Chief Charles Padgett said. Olson was killed in the crash about 5:30 a.m. Sunday.

Padgett said Olson knew his mother had been hit, but he wasn’t sure if Olson knew she had died.

“It’s emotional. We want to get there fast and sometimes disregard our safety,” Padgett said. “I use it to remind people that regardless of the circumstances, be aware of the speed.”

The driver of the car Olson was riding in was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. He and two other passengers suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

Moore was hit as she lay prone in the street. A motorist following the car that struck her told police it looked as though the vehicle hit a speed bump, according to the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s report. The witness did not realize that it was a person until getting closer, the report said.

Padgett said Moore had been drinking before she was hit, but it’s not clear how much. An autopsy on her body was expected to be done Monday.

The driver that hit Moore drove off, but officers later found and arrested the person they believe is responsible. That driver may also have been drinking, authorities said.

“In my 24 years (of law enforcement), I’ve seen a lot of strange things, but don’t specifically remember a case like this,” Padgett said.

When we first saw the movie trailer for The Raven, the film went on our radar as one to see at an actual theater. John Cusack, one of the most interesting and diversely talented actors around, plays Edgar Allan Poe, a writer with whom Rob shares a certain, shall we say, camaraderie.

Here’s the back story on Rob and Poe. At some point in the late 1990s, Rob became sort of obsessed with Poe. He read the short stories, found some strange synchronicities, started taking notes. The notes eventually grew into Romancing the Raven, a wonderful time travel adventure involving Poe, a young New York woman from the late twentieth century, and a romance that spans centuries.

When Rob handed me the manuscript, I think I read it in a couple of days. It pulled at me, the way good stories always do. One of his characters – Uncle Fids – was actually a friend of ours, an eccentric and lovable psychic whom Rob met because of The Rainbow Oracle,  a divination book that he co-authored with Tony Grosso.

In the book, there’s a terrific scene at a tribute in Central Park for John Lennon,  a spot Fids took us to the last time we saw him. “This man wasn’t just a visionary,” Fids said. “He was a prophet.” The three of us sat in the sunlight on one of the benches, staring at the emblem: Imagine. Rob uses that spot a bit differently in the book, but Uncle Fids is there, just as he was in real life.

So on the afternoon of mother’s day -a hallmark holidays, right? -we buy our popcorn and settle in for the movie. Here’s the IMDB synopsis: When a madman begins committing horrific murders inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s works, a young Baltimore detective joins forces with Poe to stop him from making his stories a reality.

But that summary isn’t quite accurate. The murders are practically duplicates of stuff that Poe has written and at this moment in his life, he’s broke, drinks too much, and is madly in love with Emily, whose wealthy father despises him. But when Emily is abducted at a costume ball by this serial killer, the story breaks wide open.

Cusack is terrific in whatever role he plays. He was great in the surreal Being John Malcovich, in the romantic comedy Must Love Dogs, the oddball High Fidelity,  and now, as the misfit Poe.  (And, oh by the way, I love this man’s politics.)

Poe died under mysterious circumstances  on October 7, 1849, at the age of 40. Four days earlier, he had been found on a park bench in a Baltimore, Maryland in great physical distress. The film leads you up to those final hours of his life and is a masterfully executed whodoneit.

The screenwriter obviously did his homework about Poe. I  mean, you would think this would be a given, but too many movies based on real people tend to bend those facts for fictional purposes. The last word that Poe uttered, in real life, was Reynolds. And it’s on that word that the film ultimately pivots.  It’s where speculative fiction must enter in because, in real life, to this day, no one knows who or what Reynolds was to Poe.

Yes, there’s graphic violence in this film. But that certainly fits with Poe’s stories and adds to the general eerie world Poe inhabited, in his own head.  Cusack brings that madness to life on the screen.There are some wonderful twists and turns and surprises in the plot. Rob and I kept whispering to each other, He’s the killer, no that guy is the killer…. And we were wrong.

Rob’s only criticism of the movie was that Poe was depicted as being more athletic than he probably was in real life. In one scene, he races through a foggy woods on horseback; Rob leans toward me and whispers, “No way.”

I had read some reviews of the movie. The Palm Beach Post reviewer thought it was too slow and gave it a B. I guess if you compare it with X-Men or to the trailer we saw for the next G.I Joe movie,  then yes, it’s slow. One review I read said the film was okay, but “creatively bankrupt.” Huh?

We are all critics. What moves me may not move you. What speaks to me, may not speak to you. But to say that the move is creatively bankrupt tells me that whoever wrote this has never created anything. Every writer, artist, actor, entrepreneur,  filmmaker- every person engaged in a creative endeavor – creates from his or her own experience and imagination. Cusack’s interpretation of Poe as a man, a writer, a guy whose lover has been kidnapped by a serial killer duplicating what he writes about in his stories, is pitch perfect.

But if you’re looking for car chases, lasers,  shoot outs, and terrorists with nukes, don’t bother with this movie. The Raven is a film that engages you intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually,  but deep within that dark archetypal night of the soul when your worst nightmares whisper, What if, what if…

Cusack did for Poe in film what Rob does for him in Romancing the Raven. Am I prejudiced? You bet. But don’t take my word for it. See the film. Read the book.  You decide.

Archaeologists have made a fascinating discovery in a mostly unexplored city of Xultun in Guatemala. It’s a small building whose walls display murals of a brightly adorned Mayan king, and also the Mayan long count calendar.

The article in the Washington Post, unfortunately, was written as if it were revealing substantial new information about the calendar, which it isn’t. The article in a somewhat breathless manner, informs us that the new find destroys any notion that the Mayans predicted the end of the world in 2012.

Actually, the Mayans never predicted the end of the world on Dec. 21, 2012, but the end of this phase of the long-count calendar, and the beginning of a new calendar, which initiates a new world.  Of course, in dumbed-down popular culture terms, the end of the world means the end of the world…or no tomorrow.

But all along students of the Mayan long count calendar have said the end of the calendar is a symbolic ending of the Third World and beginning of the Fourth World. The Hopis have a slightly different account of the number of worlds in their mythology, but have also said we are reaching the end of the Fourth World and the beginning of the Fifth World.

There are plenty of signs that we are in a time of great transition, moving from the old ways of stagnant state religions to a more personal spirituality in which we all active participants rather than looking to a spiritual hierarchy and depending on the word of religious texts that have been altered over the centuries to serve the religious power structures.

The crashing of the economies around the world in recent years along with the degradation of the environment have pushed us to the brink. Many are seeing a new future beyond the oil economy, beyond the forever wars, and that precarious future has led to an ardent defense of the powers that be, of the old ways of doing things.

It’s why some people talk about the U.S. Constitution in the same manner they relate to the bible. They twist the Constitution to their own liking just as they manipulate the bible, while referring to both as if they were written in stone. It’s all about fear the fear that if they give an inch, everything they believe is no longer relevant. It’s a last ditch stand and might continue on for awhile. But eventually the blinders will fall away.

There are lots of predictions of catastrophes coming, both natural and man-made that might alter the make up of the planet, in terms of geography, economics,  political entities, and demographics. Such events indeed might be coming. Yet, it’s highly doubtful that there will be one big bang on Dec. 21 of this year. It’s a continual process taking place day by day, month by month, year by year, and yet one day it will appear that the shift to the new world came dramatically and swiftly.

See you there!