The Off Season

by The Off Season (epub)

  Bev realized that works without faith are nothing, and faith without works is even less.

  And she realized that faith, itself, is shabby stuff. It is not even as strong as doubt. Perhaps we will understand that faith and doubt are only doorways to the kind of work and reverence that will open us to knowledge.

  But meanwhile we will sit. The tides will come and go. Samuel and Bev will talk of vacation. They will touch hands and plan, but where will they visit? The land wears away slowly, perhaps an inch or two a year. We sit in The Fisherman’s Café and think of time. There is no place to go. There is only here. And then, of course, there is Seattle. And that is all there is. And things have gotten to such a point that maybe that is all there ever will be, ever again. World without end.

  Supplementary

  Materials

  On Writing the Ghost Story

  Approach the Cathedral from the south and walk around it three times. On the third time, stop before the second gargoyle from the southwest corner. Spin around seven times very slowly while repeating ‘aroint ye, aroint ye, aroint ye,’ and your warts will disappear.

  I

  And, wouldn’t you know, that ancient man followed instructions and his warts dried up. The happy results might have caused him to figure that time and expense going into cathedral construction was money well spent. He probably said as much to his neighbors. Word probably got back to the local priest, and the priest had to deal with it; just as we do, today.

  The priest would have said, “Miracle,” or at least, “Blessing.” He would be quick to point out that it was Faith, or the presence of the cathedral that caused disappearing warts. It was not the gargoyle. Or, maybe he would have said something else. After all, it was a long time ago.

  Today, we might say “coincidence,” or “the placebo effect.” We might say, “Quaint story, and isn’t it wonderful how even the ancients could spread a certain amount of bull.”

  Having said that, we could dismiss the story and turn away. We could, in fact, make the same mistake that many have made since the rise of science and rationality in the 18th century. The mistake is best termed “denial of evidence.” In its way, it is quite as serious as previous mistakes that denied all rationality and/or science. The universe, I fear, is rather more complicated than we might wish.

  For that reason (complication) and because unseen matters sometimes compel me, I wish to spend a few moments giving a definition, and making distinctions. There are reasons to write what I call The Fantastic, and they have nothing to do with notoriety, fame, or money.

  Definition: The Fantastic deals in those elements of human experience unexplainable by logic or reason. Such elements may exist within the human mind, or they may exist beyond it.

  As we approach distinctions, let us first acknowledge that just because we name something doesn’t mean we understand it. We generally understand bull, but not always, because it’s an easy excuse for not thinking. We feel that we almost understand coincidence, but coincidence sometimes gets stretched to the breaking point. It gets just too blamed coincidental. If miracles occur, we understand either “faith” or “gee-whiz,” and that’s about it.

  We haven’t the foggiest notion about the placebo effect. Physicians know it exists, and physicians use it as standard medical doctrine, but they can’t explain it. Nor can they define or explain death, although they can generally tell when it happens. They cannot define life, though science struggles mightily to create it; and, when successful, still won’t be able to explain it: only how they made it come to pass. We give names to things, partly, it seems, so we can live comfortably beside matters beyond understanding.

  At the same time, it would be the height of stupidity to deny the values of science and rationality. Science helps our understanding. Rationality helps. Logic helps. I stand amazed, sometimes, at the complexities that science reveals about the natural world, and about genetics, physics, astronomy. The trick is to understand that science and rationality are not geared to deal with every problem.

  There’s a problem of matters that exist “beyond all understanding,” a religious phrase describing religious peace. If the phrase didn’t go beyond religion, we could categorize it and feel comfortable. To our discomfort, though, “matters beyond all understanding” do not reduce to a single category. Some people have proclaimed this for a long time.

  For example, back in the 19th century a social philosopher named Herbert Spencer claimed that we live with The Known, The Unknown, and the Unknowable. Spencer was often a pain-in-the-intellect. He was conceited beyond belief 1 but at least he acknowledged something that the 20th century, and now the 21st, seem to deny. Some things are unknowable, and we live with a little less comfort when we accept that notion.

  On the other hand, I here aver that too much comfort is dangerous, anyway, and that is one reason why I explore and write The Fantastic. My other reason has to do with history, a subject to turn to later.

  I first propose my discomfort. I do not know why a secondary power station in San Jose holds, for me, a sense of evil and dread. It’s not the invisible strength that comes from the transfer of electricity, because no other power station causes such sensations. I do not know why I feel surrounded by peace and enormous power when entering a Tlingit cemetery in Sitka. I do not know why the late night roads through mountains or beside rivers offer sights more slippery than hallucinations; because hallucinations are positive things. I don’t know why the voice of a father or brother suddenly sounds from the inner part of my mind, and saves me from being hit by a drunken driver. And, intuition remains a mystery, though I use it successfully in writing and in other forms of living.

  I do know that intuition can be trained. In other days when I drove truck long distance, my intuition rose to the task as thousands and thousands of miles piled up. There came a time when, while pulling up the back side of a hill, I knew that trouble lay ahead: a wreck, a cop car, a washed bridge, a tree in the road . . . and I didn’t “think” it or “feel” it. I knew it. This, despite the absence of clues. There were no lights in the sky, no sounds, and nothing unusual about the road.

  I also know of an invisible world that some folks try to explain. The explainers speak of parallel universes, or past lives, or spirits. Perhaps one or more of their notions is correct. Perhaps all three are a crock, because plenty of flummery surrounds these notions. Phony mystics sell cheap tricks to the gullible: séances, mysterious rappings on tables, or flying saucer rings in hayfields. There’s no end to the clap-trap.

  And yet . . . there is evidence, centuries of it. Things Unknowable go on in the universe, but they also go on in the human mind. When rationality is applied to that Something, rationality generally ends up sounding silly.

  For example, some who have had a near-death experience report seeing a tunnel of light. The rational explanation for this is offered as: “Your endorphins were kicking in. No wonder you felt wonderful.”

  It’s a questionable analysis, and probably silly. When a person is dying, there’s no evolutionary survival-reason for endorphins. That is especially true if one is dying without pain. As explanation, the use of endorphins seems an assertion of faith about biological fact. It is no better than tripe purveyed by the average faith healer.

  There are at least four fields of evidence that rise among humans: religious, observational, luck, and creativity. Perhaps one or more are connected, perhaps not.

  The first body of evidence concerns the religious and miraculous: the appearance of apparitions, or guidance by an unseen hand. The centuries are filled with reports of healings (Lourdes a modern example), visions, Joan of Arc, Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddy; and among contemporaries, the reported appearance of the Virgin Mary at Medjugorje. Such appearances are generally accompanied by revelations.

  Guidance by an unseen hand has been reported so often in the history of America that it is practically a rib in our body politic. Many, perhaps most, substantial reports come from Puritans and Quakers in th
e 17th century. We have records of ships blown so far off course that death from starvation was inevitable; yet a sign in the heavens, and a correcting wind saved them.

  One must approach such evidence with skepticism, but also with an open mind. After all, we have records of such evidence (in the western world) for over two thousand years. The odds on all of it being meaningless are impossibly long. There’s just too much of it. We can’t explain it. Perhaps we can’t understand it, but it is the height of folly to deny that it exists.

  Further, it is just plain impotent to say that if evidence cannot be duplicated, and thus subject to scientific method, it does not constitute evidence. There’s no scientific way to explain sources of religious revelation. Yet, religious revelation happens over and over in history.

  The second body of evidence is generally dismissed as illusory, or coincidental, or fabrications by unsettled minds. It includes ghostly sightings, flying saucers, possession by the Devil (or something equally nasty) and communications from the dead.

  The standard responses to such evidence is generally, “It’s a damnable lie,” or, “Oh, lordy, I believe.” Very few responses say, “I wonder?” or, “Let’s examine the evidence.”

  If we do, we find that it is almost always intensely personal. While the first body of evidence is sometimes communal, this second sort is singular. Groups of people hardly ever see ghosts. Flying saucers, or lights in the sky, may be seen by large groups; but encounters with flying saucers are almost exclusively reported by individuals or couples. Possession by evil is generally one-on-one (although when we arrive at a discussion of creativity we’ll see it happen to groups), and messages from the dead are exclusively reported by individuals. (Group séances may well be unrepresentative because of a long record of charlatanism.)

  This second body of evidence can be subject to both psychological and physical examination. Some people are amazingly neurotic. Some are insane. Some are physically unbalanced. And for some, there seems no help. It is as if some genetic flaw, some “bad seed” compels them. Physicians can measure brain waves and chemical imbalances. Psychiatrists can exert their skills. Between medicine and psychiatry many are helped and some are healed.

  If we set aside all evidence given by those who are emotionally or physically injured, we are still confronted by countless reports from people who are as sensible as salt. They are not famous liars. Some of them are beyond reproof or reproach. They are not lying, and have no record of hallucinations. For them, at least, something happened. They can’t prove it. Yet, because of who they are, and because of their great numbers through the ages, their testimony constitutes valid evidence. I would, for example, no more argue with the mystical knowledge of some American Indians, than I would argue with the sun.

  Good luck constitutes a third body of evidence. It sometimes happens beyond all statistical probability. It is with luck of gamblers that we see evidence of something “going on” that cannot be rationally explained. It is probably statistically impossible to make seventeen or eighteen successful passes with dice, yet it occasionally happens. I have seen three royal flushes in a night of poker. The winning hands were held by different people. No one in the game had sufficient skill to cheat, and the cards were not marked. And, we were playing for pennies, thus with no great motive to cheat. Three such hands in one night (with no wild cards) are statistically impossible. Gamblers speak of “lucky streaks,” and “hot dice.” One branch of psychology speaks of “extra sensory perception.”2

  Bad luck is practically impossible to demonstrate, but scarcely anyone over age twenty-five has not experienced a year in which a series of major bad things happened. I’m sure we’ve all heard someone speak to the effect, “I wouldn’t live 1988 (or some other year) over again for all the money in the world.”

  A fourth body of evidence is creativity, and of all mysterious evidence, creativity is the kind most studied by thinkers and psychologists. The creative process has been examined and documented. It is so commonly demonstrated that it appears in college freshman textbooks. It is described almost perfectly, and not a soul who describes the process understands it.

  Nor do artists, writers, theoreticians, physicists, architects, musicians, dancers, or actors. In general, the solitary artist; i.e. the writer or painter or sculptor, will report that “There are times when it’s all coming together, like somebody or something runs the show.” The writer will say, “Thus, I’m not writing, I’m typing. Later, I clean up the language, but when the story is coming, it comes from somewhere else.” Painters tell us that their hand knows what to do, even when they don’t. Sculptors the same. I doubt if there is a single worker in the solitary arts who will not make such a report.

  Group creativity is something else. The creativity of groups has received small interest from thinkers and psychologists. They speak of “mob psychology,” but rarely go beyond the mob. And yet, the idea has been around for a hundred and fifty years.

  Back in the 19th century the French social thinker, August Compte, postulated the notion of The Group Mind. He tried to apply it to small groups and to nations. His ideas did not fly. He could not get his fellow thinkers, including Herbert Spencer, to buy into the idea. It would be wonderful if Compte were alive today, because his thought might now be valued.

  I doubt if there is a theater group, a dance troupe, or a jazz band anywhere in this country that will not attest that at some point in a play or a performance, the group takes over. There isn’t a symphonic musician anywhere who will not tell you that at some point the entire symphony pulls into a single mind and expresses the statement of the composer, and the symphony.

  With the positive creation of art and music, I have little to think about. It operates so commonly in my life, and in the lives of my friends, that it gets taken for granted. It is negative creation by groups that I find worth examination.

  I first stumbled on this when reading depositions of the Salem Witch Trials. I did not come unprepared to the reading. The 17th century was so fascinating that I’d studied somewhat of its writing, society, and culture. I was not an able historian, but was an able student.

  Revelations abounded. It became evident that through circumstances (some beyond its control) Salem had gotten itself tied in a Gordian knot it could not slice. It was surrounded by other religionists (mostly Quakers) who held ideas that Salem considered evil. It had Indian problems. It had a tax rate as high as any in American history. It was isolated by weather for at least five months a year. Social control was held by the preacher. The educational level was nowhere near as high as in Boston. The town was filled with bickerings, some petty, some substantial. Any deviation from the accepted way of “doing things” constituted a terrible threat. As I have written elsewhere, Salem, when it self-destructed, did not explode. It imploded.

  In consequence, Salem created hell, and the Devil walked the streets of Salem. One preacher couldn’t have done it, although through history plenty of preachers have tried. One politician couldn’t have done it, nor could one farmer; or one of anybody else. It took the mind of the entire town to create hell, because in the creation, dissent was at first silent. It was not mob psychology in any sense that we understand. It was genuine creation.

  Once the proposition of group creation is accepted, it’s easy to find all through history. The Nazis, for example, could not have gone so far, and so fast, had not Hitler been of the maniac quality that would build the group mind. An American historical example can be drawn from the witch hunts of Senator Joe McCarthy during the 1950s. A mob mentality did develop. Beyond that mentality, though, was a creative quality that produced a spirit of evil. We, who are old enough to have experienced it, will attest that something awful overran the mind of the nation. National insanity only faltered after McCarthy became so extreme that he became ridiculous.

  The four bodies of evidence are simply that: evidence. They are not proof. Such evidence causes discomfort, and a certain amount of discomfort makes some people want to
think things through. A lot of those people are writers.

  Having accepted the fact of an invisible world, the writer may rightly ask: Is it my cup of tea? What can I do with it? Is it worth my time? How do I get a handle on it? Isn’t reality difficult enough, without messing around in surreality? Is there something constructive about fantastical writing? Is it a valid part of the human experience, or is it only amusement?

  Writers always find individual answers, because the task is individual. Some answer questions by saying: “It’s amusement, and easy to sell.” Others answer, “There’s something going on and I need to examine it, because it needs come to the reader’s attention.” Such writers are usually worrywarts, or at least have some kind of mental warts. Writers who deal with the Unknowable, and with the power of the Unknowable—be it in the universe or in the human mind—tend to swing between practicality and downright mysticism. It takes immense courage, or immense stupidity, to mess with metaphoric gargoyles.

  Writers choose fantasy, or magic realism, or science fiction. Others deal in horror, or allegory (as for example, Watership Down with its lovely thinking rabbits). For my own part, I am more than a little fond of ghosts.

  II

  One of the finest ghost stories I have read in many years is Peter Beagle’s Tamsin. It contains everything that lies within the realm of a ghost story: character, situation, suspense, evil vs. good, innocence, heroism, and history.

  The beauty of a ghost story is that it’s almost impossible to write one without resorting to history. After all, if you’ve got a ghost, that ghost has ordinarily come from time past. (There are ghosts of the future, as in A Christmas Carol.)

  As a fiction writer I think of myself as a historian. My history is not the pulling-together of a massive number of details, and the objective reporting and analysis of facts. I don’t have that kind of ability, though capable historians are among the people whom I most admire.