But let’s start with the first one –

“In the Now” was written as a tribute to the late Jack Gilbert. As mentioned in my “In Praise of Friends” post, he was a good friend from my Premise fellowship and pretty much led the screenwriting group that came out of it, the Writers Forum. Jack had a quality of immediacy. You always sensed that there was nothing else on his mind at that moment. It showed in how he related to children and pets.

He will be greatly missed

“The Forsaken” was written many years ago as a Good Friday poem. I posted it on LiveJournal in 2009, just as text. I’d been looking for a suitable background that I liked for the poem and didn’t find one until last week.

As for the poem itself, I probably would not choose rhyming couplets now, but I seem to recall that I was experimenting with them.

The last of the most recent additions is “Moonlit”. This sonnet is even older than “The Forsaken.” I’d seen friends give up on writing dreams, and it made me think about aspirations. I didn’t want to become someone who gave up on possibilities.

The photograph for the background was taken by my friend Stanley Anderson, who graciously allowed me to use it thus. Even though the text of the poem mentions “silvery” color, and the photo has gold tones, I didn’t mind. The image is well worth the slight incongruity between words and image.

This last week, it all came back to me, as I waited, along with many friends, through the sudden last illness of someone dear to us. Why had I not gotten back to this before, I wondered. And why does it take another death to motivate me? All the things I should have said to Jack when he was alive are now said when he is gone.

Jack Gilbert is one of the friends I made through Premise, and he was one of the original members of that fellowship, so that means I’ve known him over twenty years. How time slides by us!

He had one of those quiet, calm demeanors that convey stability and patience and wisdom. And he had all those qualities in abundance. What you did not expect when you first met him was the impish sense of humor that lurked underneath that presentation of reliability.

Unless you met him at a Christmas part, your first sign of that playfulness would be when you parted from him in a parking lot, at the side of his modest, somewhat older car. Jack had personalized license plates, and they read “YODA 1″. That always made me smile when I saw it. At the early (to me) Premise Christmas parties, Jack would arrive with a bow tie adorned with battery powered lights on it, often an elf hat (which somehow he managed to wear with dignity) and an animal puppet that peeked at other guests from the crook of his arm. For all his quiet reserve, Jack enjoyed being around people and engaging with them.

I eventually became part of a regular screenwriters group that grew out of the Premise fellowship. The Writers Forum had been going a few years before I joined it, and I was impressed by its durability. Jack helped make it so: we usually met at his apartment and we relied on his gentle leadership to moderate our discussions. On those occasions when we met without him, when we sat down for the day’s business, our opening question frequently was “Who will be Jack today?”

He was a committed greeter of domestic animals. He greeted cats and dogs as if he were a born member of their community and not a human intruder. And they responded to him as such.

He was a mentor to many, and a teacher. He was insightful about storytelling. My biggest regret is that I did not nudge him more about his own writing. He felt that he was not adequate, and so did not often put his own work before others. The reality is that although he was encouraging to other writers of all levels of skill, he was a perfectionist about his own work. A harsh one at that, and needlessly, I felt. He was a good storyteller and I should not have let him off the hook.

He loved movies and fly fishing.

He was a shining light of gentleness, courtesy and godliness. A deeply committed follower of Christ, who had no need to proclaim it on the corner, because it infused his every action. He gave his love freely and it was returned to him magnified many times. He was a dear man — valued, precious and rare.

I will be taking pictures. Should be interesting.

My mother and my cousin Janet

Perhaps it was the connection of the family history to the island, but I really enjoyed the visit. We were there five days. Unlike many other places, Grenada (at that time, and I don’t think it has changed much) was not so high on tourist destinations. It is certainly not a wealthy island. But it has its charms.

I’ve been thinking lately of places I would like to go – if time and money were not considerations. And Grenada is one of those places. It’s a low key place, that I could enjoy at leisure. Sitting on a patio, writing. Maybe explore the island more than we had a chance to do during that short visit.

To get to Grenada, we changed planes in Puerto Rico. The approach to the one commercial airport on the island is over the ocean water. The plane comes in low over the waves, because the runway is so short, the plane has to start braking as soon as all wheels are down. This landing strip was one of the issues contributing to the US invasion of the island - the Cubans had been invited to construct the new landing strip, and Reagan believed it was intended for military purposes. After the invasion, the Americans finished the strip: the island did need it. But it’s a sort of breath-taking landing all the same.

We stayed at a hotel at the south end of the sweep of the beautiful Grand Anse Beach. This is on the Caribbean side of the island, where the waters are calmer and enticing. The Atlantic side has more aggressive waves – but I didn’t have much chance to see a lot of that part of the island. Another reason to go back.

As you can see, it’s like stepping into a postcard.

According to a 2005 estimate, the island’s population is about 110,000. That’s not a lot of people for a Nation. I’ve attended the San Diego Comic Con for about 10 years now, and last year’s attendence was 125,000 people. It’s a sobering perspective: this tiny island nation has fewer people to make its life happen (farming, marketing, educating, running businesses) than show up in the city of San Diego for five days each summer, crammed into an expansive convention center.

It’s tiny. The capital of St. George’s crowds around the narrow harbor, on steep slopes.

 In driving into the town, we went past a couple of schools with well groomed playing fields. Cricket playing fields. Soccer (excuse me, “football”) fields I expected. But the people of Greneda love cricket.

I expect that things have changed to a certain degree since our visit. The island has certainly courted more tourism. In 2007, Grenada was a joint-host with other islands of the World Cricket Match – in a stadium financed by the People’s Republic of China. That’s a little bit of information that doesn’t surprise me. When we drove up to the north end of the island during our visit, we passed a number of construction projects – small things by American standards, but infrastructure building, none the less – that had signs indicating that the projects were financed by … yes, the People’s Republic of China. I looked at the signs and shook my head at the blindness of American foreign policy.

But let’s not get into that topic. I’m waxing nostalgic here, about a place that left its fingerprints on my heart. I don’t know why that is so. It’s such a small place, I wonder how they manage to thrive. Growing spices is their primary industry (although courting tourism has grown, I understand). And because there are so many spices – nutmeg leading the way – cooking is also a big thing. That’s another thing I’d like to get to know better. The food was wonderful.

We drove up to the north end of the island to visit the school named after my grandfather. There’s something really inspiring in seeing the results of an action one of your near forefathers took. Those students were bright and eager to pursue the opportunities their education might make for them. Again, I was struck by the vastly different perspective from what I knew in America. These children considered themselves very fortunate to be able to continue schooling beyond an elementary level. For some of them there was likely to be the opportunity to go off to college somewhere, and perhaps even find a life elsewhere.

When we were driving back down the east side of the island after visiting the school, we stopped in the town of Grenville for dinner. This was on a week day, and we ended up being the only customers for dinner. The seafood was fresh and wonderfully cooked. And because we were the only customers, we got into conversation with our waiter.

It turns out, he was the cousin of the owner (and cook) of the restaurant and was helping his relative out. He was actually college educated, having gone to university in Toronto. He’d gotten a law degree, but returned to the island. He told us that most of the young people who manage to leave the island for school never come back. Given how poor the island is, I could understand that, but the fact that he had chosen to return impressed me. He did have a law practice, and had served in the island Parliament (although I don’t think he was a member at that time). There was a certain strangeness to that idea: a well educated, well-spoken man with a law degree and service in his nation’s Parliament was helping out his cousin by waiting tables in a seafood restaurant. He lost no dignity or face in waiting tables. To me, he seemed even more remarkable for doing so. He spoke so elequently about his concern for the brain-drain of all those young Grenadians leaving and what that was doing to the future of his home.

Perhaps it is that intimacy of the island that captured my affection. It is so small that everything counts. There is no great distance between the person who brings you your dinner in a restaurant and someone involved in the governance of the country.  That smallness of space has nurtured a friendliness that was refreshing to this visitor. And it’s a slower pace of life. You can’t rush on the island, it’s just not possible. It’s very mountainous, so you can’t drive fast. Even though the island is only 26 miles long, it took us over two hours to drive from St. George’s on the south end up to Sauteurs at the north end. Narrow, twisty roads going up and down mountainsides just do not make for fast travel.

So, yeah. I would like to go back some day. I’d make myself a “writer’s retreat” and enjoy the more quiet pace of the island life. I’d sit on one of the benches at the Fort, overlooking the harbor and watch the tourist cruise ships come in, watch the tourists make their quick excursions into the local shops, and then watch the ships sail out again. After which, I’d go to some small restaurant and enjoy a spice-laden dinner of island cooking, while listening to a small local calypso band.

And always, in the back of my mind, there will be the memory of my mother enjoying our visit.

I seem to have gotten the Creature addicted to coffee! He thinks that demitasse cup is just the right size for him.

He seems to feel he has to have coffee with me, when I make myself some. I’m wondering what it’s doing to his system.

I’ve yet to figure out how to make prominent links to that from here. I don’t really want to be fiddling with the Navigation Bar any more (mainly because I don’t want to have to go back and correct all the site’s pages). So I may put it in a sidebar.

I’m contemplating switching this blog over to a three-column form, so I can have some links on the left hand side. But I haven’t decided about that yet.

In the meantime, the Arveniem blog will have posts not just about the current work-in-progress (The Ring of Adonel)  but also anything about creating Arveniem in specific as well as the general art of creating any fantasy world.

At present, I am in the process of posting entries copied from my Live Journal, as part of what I’m calling “Project Backup”.  But soon, I hope I’ll also be adding other material. I’m working to finish the novel so I can move on to other stories. But at least I have the “new home” for the fantasy material up and running.

Once the presentation about the Posebook app was done, we reset for doing sketches. I took one quick snap of John Tucker as he struck his first pose, and after that set the camera aside.

From that pose I whipped out a very bare lines  sketch.

The first section of the sketch period, John struck poses for about one minute each. That meant you really had to be quick about your sketching.

John was very good at holding a wide variety of poses.

Sometimes I felt the time was way too short to do more than just key parts of the pose. But that was okay too.

After the really quick poses, John then struck one for five minutes, which gave more time to focus on details.

Then Stephen gave us a real challenge. John would strike a pose facing one part of the group. You had three minutes to look at John — but you could not draw while you were studying him.  Once your three minutes were up, you could start drawing (while John turned to face another section and struck the same pose again for them).

I wanted more to get the tilt of his head, with as much of the expression as possible. So, his  right hand which actually held a prop pistol got short shrift from me.

Yeah, I’m not so good at drawing a skull from memory (that’s what he was holding). But again I was going for his expression, and the way he was holding his left hand.

The last pose of the evening, he struck so we could sketch with a sense of weight and the accomodation of an object with the balance of the body.

(These aren’t all the sketches I did during the evening, just the ones I found most interesting — and yeah, better than the ones I didn’t post.)

All in all, it was a stimulating evening. I felt rather out of practice, but ended up pleased with what I did do.

The first part of the evening was Stephen’s presentation. He’d brought his primary model, John Tucker, along with him, because the latter part of the evening would be a session with John posing for us to do sketches.

From right to left above: programmer Johnny Byrnes, model John Tucker (in pirate garb), artist Stephen Silver.

Stephen demonstrated the apps he had designed, and showed many of the poses John had made for him. John is very expressive, not just in the poses he strikes, but also with his use of his hands, and of course his expressions.

Stephens demonstrations of aspects of the app were impressive.  In addition to all the still poses, the app includes instructive short videos pointing out elements of the pose, everything for the lines and twists of anatomy to the way drapery hangs on a body. It was fascinating stuff, and made me sorry I didn’t have a smart phone or table yet. This was great stuff. There’s an app of male poses and one of female poses – both reasonably priced, it seemed to me. They certainly cost less than most pose books, and there are a lot more pictures – because Stephen made a point of getting a variety of turn-arounds for nearly every pose.

After the presentation, he raffled off 6 free downloads of the Male app. My friend Jim MacQuarrie, who likes to complain that he never wins anything, won one of the apps.

After that, we reshuffled the chairs into a big circle, and John set up shop to start posing for us.

After that, it was an evening of sketching away. But I’ll make a second post of all that.

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Celebration dining consisted of a delicious roast beef sandwich and some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Hadn’t indulged in that in quite a while, so it makes up for no birthday cake. Heh.

And then the Creature had to get into the act. I set the pint down on my desk for a moment to check something – I hadn’t even taken a bite yet! And he jumped down, and tried to make a grab for at least a spoonful.

I tried to tell him what a mess it would be for him. It took some persuading.