Echoes in a Hollow Space

When I was thirteen or so I invited my friend Margaret over and we spent the whole day together, had dinner with my parents, then sat around the "campfire" in the backyard. This was an old metal barbecue that my father set up on the large concrete slab at the back of our house where we could burn wood and enjoy the balmy summer night air. Margaret was a tall, gangly, unstylish girl (I was also not particularly stylish) who wore her light brown hair in a bowl cut all through junior high and high school. I don't know if that was a decision of her parents or not (they were quite strict). She had very straight hair, which would have been totally the style in the 60s and 70s if she had just let it grow out. She got made fun of. My recollection is that her family was large and rather poor. We weren't rich, either, but we were hospitable. I was never invited to Margaret's house. The very idea of inviting me seemed to make her nervous. Something odd there. I never figured out what and didn't inquire. She craved love and friendship, a refuge from the teasing and disdain of the cruel teenage years. She was often downcast and depressed but lit up whenever anyone paid her attention.

She was one of my strays. I always brought kids home who were outcasts (like me), who the cool kids shunned. Or I invited them to spend school lunches with me and my outcast friends. (Lunching rituals were extremely important in junior high and high school.) Recently, I was talking about this to another friend I've known since I was twelve and she said, "You were always sort of the den mother of our little group," and I guess I was. A very old pattern going back to at least elementary school. Which is odd, since I'm an introvert who treasures my alone time.

So, Margaret and I sitting by the fire. I don't remember if she stayed the night, but we were staring at the flames and talking well into the night. Eventually, we lapsed into a pleasant silence, each in our own reverie. And from one moment to the next, I was there in the backyard and also inside the flames. I had a vivid, absolutely realer-than-real vision of myself tied to a stake while flames rose around me. In the vision, I was screaming and looking out at the faces of the people watching me burn—a nighttime sky, their faces made pasty by the light of the flames, yelling, "Burn, witch!" Their expressions were pure hate mixed with glee at the spectacle of my punishment. Just their faces. No details of clothing except I think it was dark. I even smelled flesh burning and knew it was mine. (It smelled of burned hot dogs and, no, we didn't roast dogs that night.) The name "Sylvia Thackby" popped into my head, and I had the complete conviction that was my name and who I was.

Then it was done. So vivid, so intense, so real. I turned to Margaret feeling the panic bubbling inside me.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

So I told her, all of it. I could see it bothered her a great deal, and why wouldn't it? That was some crazy ass talk. (In retrospect I have to wonder if that's why we stopped hanging around so much. She didn't need a crazy person for a friend.) But I was full of manic enthusiasm. I wanted to research Sylvia Thackby. This was long before the internet, though, and I didn't have the resources to travel to the kinds of libraries where I might get more information. I was just a kid. I had to let it go at the time. I have periodically fallen down the internet rabbit hole since and learned a few things.

First, accused witches in England and America were hung, not burned. The burning happened in Scotland and the Continent. So, if Sylvia existed she was probably in one of those places. My instincts even at the time of the vision told me it was the British Isles. The last legal execution of accused witches in Britain happened in the 17th century, and those accused were hung. (That doesn't mean illegal burnings didn't happen. They most assuredly did. In fact, a woman named Bridget Cleary was burned in Ireland in the late 19th century by her loving family who thought she was a changeling.)

Second, the name Thackby exists, but it's not common. Most of the scraps of information I've found seem to settle in the Yorkshire area. Yorkshire was a hotbed of witch belief in the 17th century (probably earlier and later as well), but most legal executions there were hangings, I believe. I did find a list of servants from an estate in Warwickshire called Finham Park (from the Stoneleigh Parish Census of 1861). A young cowman named Christopher Kirby employed there  listed his birthplace in 1844 as Thackby in Oxfordshire. (An infamous unsolved murder of a supposed "wizard" occurred in Warwickshire in 1945, so it was not without its own witch hysteria.) A Google search of "Thackby Oxfordshire" brings up information on a town called Beckley, but no mention is made of Thackby in the Wikipedia article, so I don't know what that's all about. I do know that on July 26, 1640, Thomae Thackby baptized his daughter Maria in the Yorkshire parish of Kirk Ella, which until 1878 covered a seven mile area including part of what is now the Newington Parish of Hull and surrounds. The records of Kirk Ella stretch back to 1558. Witchcraft was made a capital offense in Britain in 1563. Also, I learned that a soldier named Levi Berry was K. I. A. in World War I in 1916. He enlisted in 1915 and his papers list his birthplace as “Thackley – Bradford - Yorkshire” where he was born on July 28, 1890. I even found one entry for a current resident of Hull with the last name of Thackby (first initial only), but I would never bother him or her with anything so foolish. This is my airy fairy obsession, after all, and nothing to do with that poor soul.

Third, the name Sylvia was not common in the British Isles until maybe the 18th century and that was mostly amongst the nobility and the rich. Sybil would have been a more likely name for a commoner and I got the distinct impression my girl was a commoner.

So I know a lot more than I did on that long ago campfire night but still not much. It has led to a lifetime fascination with witch accusations and persecutions. (The Devil in Massachusetts by Marion L. Starkey was the first nonfiction book I read cover to cover.) And I have always had a morbid fear of fire. Still, it could all be an elaborate hypnagogic vision that my neurodivergent brain turned into an obsession. I want to say that I don’t think so, that it has always from that night on carried the heavy internal weight of conviction, but who can say? That vision or dream or memory is as vivid today as it was that night.

I still need to check alternate spellings of Thackby (there are a number) and the genealogical sites but this is a casual obsession nowadays. I don't really expect to find Sylvia Thackby no matter the spelling. If she existed, she was probably an outcast, some poor, odd or odd-looking woman who lived on the margins. Such people don't leave historical records. Although the Scots and English kept good records of who they persecuted, many records were lost and it's very possible Sylvia's execution was vigilantism rather than de jure. But I'll probably keep searching in my haphazard way. For one thing, it's always fascinating to look.

And what about Margaret? We hung out a lot in junior high, but when we transferred to the larger student population of Venice High we kind of lost touch. We'd see each other now and then but had different friend groups. It happens. After graduating high school I only saw her one more time. About a year and a half later she called me out of the blue and asked if she could come over and introduce me to her…baby.

I was gobsmacked, to say the least, but I said sure. She arrived with a chubby baby in tow—about 9 or 10 months I'd say—but I can't remember if it was a boy or a girl. (I'm going to call him a him since I don't want to say "it.") She'd finally let her hair grow and looked much more in the mode of the day, but still hardly stylish. She said she'd gotten pregnant by some guy who declined to marry her. Maybe it was still under negotiation, maybe a done deal. I wish I remembered. I felt sorry that she had the responsibility of raising a child on her own at such a young age. That feeling was counterbalanced by her excitement over the baby and the incandescent love on her face when she looked at him. Finally, here was someone she could love with all her heart who loved her back and needed her as much as she'd always wanted. She left, we promised to call, we never did, and I never saw her again. The usual casual carelessness of youth.

Margaret is lost to my personal historical record. I could probably find a trace of her if I wanted to join Facebook (I do not) or one of those alumni associations (again, no). I don't imagine that incandescence lasted. It rarely does in life. But I can hope it did, can't I? I can hope that the flames of life never reached her, the burning joy remained. I feel somewhat guilty that I don't know. Then again, maybe it's best I don't. Some searches are best left abandoned.

All Weird Things Index

On the nature of nature spirits, where the idea might have come from of tiny invisible beings responsible for the growth of plants, et al.

W. Y. Evans Wentz, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries:

In the positive doctrines of mediaeval alchemists and mystics, e.g. Paracelsus and the Rosicrucians, as well as their modern followers, the ancient metaphysical ideas of Egypt, Greece, and Rome find a new expression; and these doctrines raise the final problem—if there are any scientific grounds for believing in such pygmy nature-spirits as these remarkable thinkers of the Middle Ages claim to have studied as being actually existing in nature….

These mediaeval metaphysicians, inheritors of pre-Platonic, Platonic, and neo-Platonic teachings, purposely obscured their doctrines under a covering of alchemical terms, so as to safeguard themselves against persecution, open discussion of occultism not being safe during the Middle Ages, as it was among the ancients and happily is now again in our own generation….

All these Elementals, who procreate after the manner of men, are said to have bodies of an elastic half-material essence, which is sufficiently ethereal not to be visible to the physical sight, and probably comparable to matter in the form of invisible gases. Mr. W. B. Yeats has given this explanation:—’Many poets, and all mystic and occult writers, in all ages and countries, have declared that behind the visible are chains on chains of conscious beings, who are not of heaven but of earth, who have no inherent form, but change according to their whim, or the mind that sees them. You cannot lift your hand without influencing and being influenced by hordes. The visible world is merely their skin….’ [From Yeats' Irish Fairy Tales and Folk-Tales]

Wentz again three paragraphs on:

And independently of the Celtic peoples there is available very much testimony of the most reliable character from modern disciples of the mediaeval occultists, e.g. the Rosicrucians, and the Theosophists, that there exist in nature invisible spiritual beings of pygmy stature and of various forms and characters, comparable in all respects to the little people of Celtic folk-lore.

Yeats’s words do somewhat remind me of the famous opening of the Reverend Robert Kirk’s Secret Commonwealth, wherein he says these beings

are said to be of a midle Nature betuixt Man and Angel, as were Dæmons thought to be of old; of intelligent fluidious Spirits, and light changable Bodies, (lyke those called Astral,) somewhat of the Nature of a condensed Cloud, and best seen in Twilight. Thes Bodies be so plyable thorough the Subtilty of the Spirits that agitate them, that they can make them appear or disappear att Pleasure. Some have Bodies or Vehicles so spungious, thin, and delecat, that they are fed by only sucking into some fine spirituous Liquors, that peirce lyke pure Air and Oyl…

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“Research is formalized curiosity.  It is poking and prying with a purpose.  It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein.”

—Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks On the Road

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

1. Under the heading of “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished” I was asked to do a favor for someone I don’t work for. I agreed and set about the proofreading, formatting, etc., of a long document. I spent five hours at this task and sent it back to the author only to discover that I had been given the wrong version. I was unhappy, but not so unhappy as the author who had to do a compare/contrast of my changes/his changes over the weekend. Then I got it back to finish cleaning up.

2. I got a robo-call last week to remind me that I had an appointment at UCLA Med for Monday, October 31. I knew I did—it was my semi-annual thyroid check up. Yet somehow, between now and then, I dropped off the computer. They had no record of my appointment and the doctor was booked solid with other people. I’m glad I took a half vacation day to go to this appointment and that I made special arrangements for a friend to take my mom to dialysis so I didn’t have to reschedule and wait and additional 2-3 months for a new appointment. I’ll be seeing the doctor in mid-December. At least I got to go home for a couple of hours and put my sore knee up with a heating pad (crone!) before picking Mom up at dialysis.

3. Since we usually get home from dialysis between 7-7:30 p.m. (sometimes later), I knew that I would miss most of the cute little trick or treaters that I love giving out candy to. Plus, after a dialysis day, we’re usually trashed and I was so not in the mood this year. So I left the porch light out when I drove to pick up Mom. They had a Haunted House at Westchester Park, about a block from our house, right where Georgetown deadends. As I made the turn from Manchester to Georgetown, I saw hordes and hordes and hordes of older thugs pouring out of the Haunted House, and more parents driving onto our street and disgorging their vans and cars of screaming invaders. I knew we were in trouble. So Mom and I sneaked like felons into our house to avoid the hordes. Even so, as we were letting ourselves into our darkened front door some particularly ambitious candy extortionists followed us up the driveway. “We don’t have any candy here!” I yelled. “Sorry!” and quickly slammed the door. Later, as I was making dinner I was forced to turn on the kitchen light (though the porch light was still out) and as soon as I did kids streamed to our front door yelling, “Trick or treat!” I quickly turned the light out, ignored them, and they departed. Thankfully, it was a school night and everyone had pretty much departed the neighborhood by 10 p.m. Or so I think. I fell asleep in my chair by 8:30. When I woke at 9 they were still traipsing about, and when I awoke again around 10 things had quieted considerably. So I went to bed.

4. This morning while I was showering I noticed the water lapping around my ankles. Sure enough, it was refusing to go down the drain. Simultaneous to this, my mother’s toilet refused to flush and threatened to o’er top its containment vessel. I thought fleetingly, “This must be the trick for refusing to give the treats.” Eventually they both drained, but it took close to a half hour and there was much gurgling and scary sewer sounds. You may remember that we had the entire sewer pipe replaced about a year ago? The plumber who came out today (a different plumber) said that pipe was just fine…but there was this other pipe underneath the house…He’s coming tomorrow morning to replace it. The good news is, we must be getting close to having all new plumbing for this old place. It’s gotten so absurd at this point I just have to laugh. What the hell else am I going to do?

5. Mom seems to be doing better and we have no new doctor’s appointments until Thursday the 10th. I’m hoping we continue in this undramatic fashion for awhile.

6. One more than five! I continue to poke at research for The Numberless Stars, and even did some creative thinking about the plot. There still remains little to no time for actual writing, but you can’t have everything. Some day, however, I may write the Great Crone Epic. I’m wondering if anyone in this youth-obsessed market will even want to read about kick-ass crones?

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

1. There has not been much to report except the same old same old so I haven’t reported.

2. I continue to poke at The Numberless Stars, my Old California fantasy. Not really writing. I’m poking online research, specifically about the El Camino Real and the Los Angeles River and stuff. I’m obsessed with learning as much as I can. Considering that the bulk of the novel has nothing to do with these things, it seems a bit excessive, BUT I maintain that knowing that stuff, whether I use it or not, enriches the story.

3. I’m the girl who once read three books and countless partials on Robert Clive’s India for what wound up being one paragraph in my novel, Blood Geek. BUT, I do think all that informed the character of Jeremy Jones, the hero, so it wasn’t a waste.

4. I did a trip count Monday on the miles I drive on Monday and Wednesday when I come to work, go home at lunch, pick up Mom, take her to dialysis, come back to work, finish my shift, go home to feed the cat, go to pick Mom up at dialysis and thence back home. 52.4 miles on these days. I knew it had to be significant because I really notice the difference in my gas tank. Thank the gods it’s only twice a week.

5. I really must stop waking up at 4 a.m. and not being able to get back to sleep. I’m usually a champion sleeper, but things have been screwy this week.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Now that I’m halfway through the read-through of Venus in Transit I’m beginning to get that thrill of anticipation at the thought of finally being able to work on something new. There are some stories I want to get to for rewrites and for first writes, but the big subterranean beasts that have been swimming in the deeps for ages now have also made their break for the surface. Two novels seem to be vying for the attention of my forebrain, feeding me bits and pieces of themselves at odd times of day or night. My research reading seems to swing back and forth between the two subject matters, too.

One is a story involving an 18th century cunning man and the 21st century fallout from his old magic. That one even has most of a chapter one done, plus the 17k novella on which it’s based. For this I’ve been reading some fascinating stuff on JSTOR and also a book called, Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History by Owen Davies. I have about three more books on cunning folk lined up on my shelves, too.

The other is a very fractured and weird sort of fairy story in which Faerie hardly appears at all, and whatever fairies show themselves are neither flittery little beings of light, nor dark and sinister monsters. Or, as recently portrayed, sex mad stud muffins. Although, because I’m writing it, I imagine there will be sex. Is there not air?

These fairies are more like I imagine fairies would be if fairies do be: neither fundamentally good nor bad, just profoundly uninterested in the well-being of humanity, unless some poor hapless fool intrudes upon their space by accident or intent. Then it’s watch out mortal, you’ll pay for your trespass.

I have scads of books on fairies and fairylore. My current reading includes Meeting the Other Crowd: The Fairy Stories of Hidden Ireland by Eddie Lenihan and Carolyn Eve Green which informed a lot of my current thinking on the subject. I’ve also been playing with The Heart of Faerie Oracle by Wendy and Brian Froud, which is an absolutely gorgeous work of art. I can stare and stare at each one of those cards. There is so much rich detail in them—and gorgeous, as I say.

I ask myself if the world needs another novel of Faerie and I’m inclined to think not, there’s such a glut. But I also know that when the leviathans make a break for open waters, I’d better follow whichever is the strongest swimmer, hitch my darling coracle to their flukes and hang on for dear life, or get left adrift far out to sea. The leviathans choose me, not the other way around.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:


“It is more honest to confess at once how little I am touched by the desire of accuracy. This is no furniture for the scholar’s library, but a book for the winter evening school-room when tasks are over and the hour for bed draws near . . ."

—Robert Louis Stevenson, from the dedication for Kidnapped









( Illustrated version. )


Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

So now I have to research gunsmithing? I knew it would come to this eventually in this story, but I didn't think it would happen so soon. Woe is me. Every time I turn around in Charged with Folly I've got to become an instant mini-expert on something new--or make it up completely. That's the great thing about being a writer.

My physicist friend was quizzing me on the cherubimticon, my airship, the other day. I knew if anyone could pick that impossible dream apart, it would be him. Finally, I just said, "It's magic, okay??" I will have to fix up some of the tech next time around, though.

Oh, and thanks to thursdayhaiku I was steered towards a helpful Nova on PBS the other night. "Wings of Madness," all about the early attempts at flight, including dirigibles, and focusing on a brilliant early pioneer who is largely forgotten these days, Alberto Santos-Dumont. Very interesting and very synchronistically broadcast.

Quote of the day:

"In the court of birds, the bug never wins his case."

—African proverb


And speaking of social injustice of the day: I spent the weekend getting deeply acquainted with Pink's song, "Dear Mr. President." God, I love that song. She lays it all bare with quiet passion.

ETA: Thanks to kmkibble75 for the Pink video.

In other news:

While I was over at iTunes, I also downloaded a few tunes from Sergio Mendes's new album, Timeless, in which he collaborates with Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas (and others). Who knew hip hop and bosanova could sound so good together? Check out "Mas Que Nada."

Other than that, I did a little cooking and some research reading this weekend. I made a marinated London broil with olive oil and soy sauce n' stuff, and my pasta vinaigrette and dang that was good, if I do say so.

And we discovered about a week ago that an adolescent possum (quite a bit smaller than the full grown variety) had taken up residence in the rafters of the garage. (Yeah, I know it's opossum, but for generations my peeps have been saying possum and I'd feel strange calling it otherwise.) (And I ain't going to use no hyphen in front, neither.)

Anyway, this little girl comes out at night and eats the Princess Underfoot rejected cat food we leave out for strays and slips into the garage early in the morning to sleep the day away. She gets in through a smallish hole. We decided we're okay with her sleeping in the rafters, especially since we discovered this weekend that she's got babies. Since we discovered that, we've been leaving fruit near her escape hole to supplement the cat food.

How do we know she's got babies? Possum babies, once they come out of the pouch, ride around on their mother's back until they can fend for themselves. They're so little and cute! The babies peak down from the rafters and their little heads are no bigger than a large walnut shell--and those big, dark eyes. Adorable.

Yeah, adorable. People get freaky about possums, but they're really shy and retiring creatures. They'd rather run away than fight. "But they're so ugly!" people say when we tell them we like possums. Right, so only pretty critters are allowed to live unmolested, I guess. Our vet likes possums, too. In fact, several years ago when a mother possum got killed in the neighborhood, the roommate and I gathered the babies up and took them to the vet. She hand-raised them until they were old enough to go to a nature center.

Adorableness:

http://community.webshots.com/photo/42346258/1528865956025665264YjhDcN

http://www.uky.edu/Ag/Forestry/TBarnes/Web%20pages/MAMMALS/pages/baby%20possum.htm

http://www.kanachart.com/images/eatstuff/animals/babypossum.jpg

Over the weekend I was thinking that perhaps my next project should be to turn one of my novellas into a novel (and neither has vampires!). One is "Sealed with A Curse" which is really a long novelette, coming in at just over 15k; the other is "Hortensia's Man," just shy of 31k. I'm thinking it would take less time to produce finished novels from either of these than starting from scratch with another. I'm trying to play the percentages here, to have more "product" in the pipeline, but it's hard to tell where the true percentages lie. I want to write Charged with Folly, but my perception at this stage is that it will take much longer.

"Curse" has some problems with research I'm not ready to tackle at this point in time, but the 15k that's set in the 18th century would be just a small part of the novel, anyway. Mostly, it's a contemporary fantasy harkening back to events in 1727. "Hortensia" takes place entirely in the Nineteenth Century and I'm sure that anyone who knows early California history would find plenty wrong with it--but the good thing about that story is that very little of it takes place in Known History. The bulk of the story, part one (the 30k novella) and part two, as yet unwritten, take place in a made up valley away from most of the centers of European population and history. California was sparsely populated with the European-descended in the early 19th century. That's the history I'm mostly going to be dealing with in that story. But even there, the particular tribe I'm writing about is also a made up tribe: based on the mores of California Indian tribes I've read about, but still made up.

Since there's more of "Hortensia" and since she's been lobbying for a novel of her own ever since she first popped into my brain; since I've done tons of intricate worldbuilding on the Dos Lunas valley already, maybe that's the way to go. Do I have 50k more words in me to make this a novel? Initially I want to say, "Hell, yeah." But I wonder. Is the conflict strong enough? I can't quite tell until I get in there and start playing around.

And I haven't finished Night Warrior yet. And I think everyone's sick of it, so that isn't helping my motivation any. "You are a self-motivator, Pam," I remind myself. Yeah, I am, but sometimes I live reflected in the eyes of others. So sue me.