One Hot And Humid Sunday

I shot a wedding at Meadow Brook Hall Sunday, one of my favorite locations for a wedding or a portrait session or anything else. I love that old 80 thousand square foot Tudor-Revival monster mansion.

Acceptance

The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.


If you've never read "Frankenstein", you are missing one of the great classics. Forget everything you've ever heard or seen in popular culture about this story. The original is very different.

It was written in 1818 by a very young Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, daughter of famous political writer William Godwin and early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and just coming off her elopement to poet/philosopher Percy Shelley. What was originally intended to be a short story written at the suggestion of her friend Lord Byron turned eventually into one of the great yarns in history.

It's not a story about monsters or bloodshed or big green men with neck-bolts. As in all great stories that enter the public lexicon, Frankenstein has been twisted and aped, distorted and changed in a thousand different ways by movies, Halloween costumes, and books.

The "real" Frankenstein is a brilliantly conceived and executed moral tale about our need for acceptance and what it means to be human. A brilliant young philosopher (that's what physical scientists were called in those days) from Geneva travels to Ingolstadt to be educated in chemistry and eventually learns "the secret" of bestowing life on nonliving tissue. The abomination that Dr. Frankenstein creates is abhorred by all, and try as he might to fit in (and he tries very hard), he is shunned and hated everywhere he goes. In popular culture the monster is often called "Frankenstein", but that name belongs to the creator, the creation is never granted the dignity of a name.

It's a heartbreaking book, especially the unfolding story of the abomination told in his own words, as he tries to prepare to introduce himself to a poor family. We watch this knowing all the time that what he does is ultimately futile: we humans are judgmental to the core and no amount of polish will make a monster into a man.

It will take you about two pages to adjust to the writing style, and the fact that the average vocabulary in the early 1800's contained about three times the number of words that ours does today. But it's well worth the effort. You will never think about this monster, or any other, the same way again.

Bumping In The Night

Zach got a new book called "Mythical Monsters" which details many of history's various dreaded beasts. I don't really like the tone of the book, it sort of leaves the door open to the proposal that these creatures could actually exist, which of course, they do not.

Mummies. Hydras. The Minotaur. The Loch Ness Monster. Bigfoot. It's ridiculous.

And please don't say "It's possible, they might just not have been discovered yet". Because neither has the giant blue sentient pancake orbiting the Earth. are you going to believe in that just because it might exist?

Of course you're not. Fact is, if these creatures did exist, the odds all overwhelmingly say they would have been discovered by now.

So, in response to the ruminations of Leonard Nemoy and the rest of the "In Search Of" crowd, I quote the late Carl Sagan:

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"

And blurry black & white photographs of non-distinct shapes don't count as evidence.

But despite my interjections of reason, some dark corner of Zach's R-Complex has half-convinced him that a Chupacabra occasionally wanders around his bedroom at night.

Noises he can't explain, slight movements in the fabric of his bed. It's not hard to convince yourself if you are so inclined.

I told him the dogs would certainly notice any kind of animal in his room. Note, I said "animal", because there is just about a zero probability that a goat-sucking monster is roaming around Troy.

It helped...a little. He's still learning about logic and statistics, so I will keep trying.

That is, until I find Jake's emaciated body under the bed, riddled with cruel neck wounds, shriveled, and sucked dry.

Then, it's time to worry.

Alarming Nights

Zach has not been sleeping well lately. He wakes up and calls for me through the monitor, usually around midnight. I think the monsters under his bed have returned, darn them. Well, ok, he actually whispers but the monitor unhelpfully amplifies this to near concert-level volume (Amplified whispers are pretty creepy. Don't try at home).

So, the drill is: I come downstairs and lay with him for a little while until he falls asleep. But what usually happens is that I fall asleep and wake up hours later, freezing and with a stiff neck, and try to negotiate the Lego and HeroScape-scattered terrain of his floor quietly in the dark to sneak back upstairs where my warm toasty bed and warm toasty wife await. This doesn't usually work, Z wakes up and begs me to come back.

This went on throughout most of the night last night and I woke up very late to get Zach to school on time. We walked into school embarrassingly late for him. When I indicated that the reason we were late was that I slept in his bed with no alarm clock, he immediately solved my problem for me by telling me to "next time bring your alarm clock down WITH you".

Silly me, what was I thinking, leaving my alarm clock upstairs? :)