to be an ass...a golden ass

The only test of a work of literature is that it shall please other ages than its own.
- Gerald Brenan

Ah, reading, that thing that writers often forget to do (much like poets who seldom read poetry). It would be like asking a chef to learn how to cook without ever eating or telling someone to learn how to be a great pilot without ever stepping foot into a plane. It's weird and a little awkward. Like getting onstage to play guitar when you've never picked up a guitar. Or even - enough analogies?

Point is, you should read. When I was younger, like really little, I read all the time. I entered every reading competition there was and shook my fist at the person who capped the reading entry per day at 2 books for the library's summer reading competition (still a little bitter). It should've been survival of the fittest, those who could read 3, 4, even 6 books a day would triumph! Not only those stinkers who read 2 measly chapter books a day and religiously made it to the library every afternoon (even though I did, abiding by the rules, and won several times - so there).

But as the years progressed, and school became more tedious, my love of reading went as well, as it became more laborious and time-consuming. During a long reading break, the only thing I read, but gladly, was Lord of the Flies, still one of my favorite books.

Fortunately, I've since snapped out of the reading fog. College helped somewhat, and graduate school has continued what was started during my years as an English major.

For the past few months, as you know, I have been reading Don Quixote, seemingly the biggest book ever with the littlest words. And for the past three weeks, I have been immersed in Lucius Apuleius' novel, The Golden Ass. Written in the 2nd century AD and influential to a countless number of writers, genres, works, and studies, both as a piece of literature as well as a look at Greek and Roman history, it has proven to be as fantastic as my father has been telling me it is since forever.

Basically, the story goes like this: Lucius, the main character (which just so happens to be the author's name as well), travels to Thessaly in Greece, notoriously known as a haven of black magic. While he's there, he engages in an affair with a slave girl, Fotis, and desires to learn the ways of her lady's black art. One thing leads to another, and the next thing he knows he's smothering himself in a potion that he thinks will turn him into an owl, an animal associated with wisdom. As it turns out, when he starts trying to flap his "wings" only to find out he's grown hooves, Fotis realizes that instead of giving him the turning-into-owl potion, she gave him the turning-into-donkey potion.

www.jnanam.net/golden-ass/apuleius.html

And who hasn't had that happen to them before!

Thus begins the adventures of Lucius, the ass, as he embarks on a dangerous, painful, and unwilling journey from cruel masters to even crueler masters. Full of fantasy, enchantment, intrigue, irony, humour, wit, and interpolated stories, the novel delves into the world of the lower classes, with Lucius, a former young member of the aristocracy turned into a beast of burden, as the eyes and ears of the reader. In the end, he is redeemed by the goddess Isis, who helps him find the healing potion he has been waiting all season for - roses.

You have to read it. You'll love it, I know it. The only thing is, you might find it, as I did, slightly more than disturbing just how everything that happens in the novel and the people you meet are so similar to things that happen and people we all know today. Anger, jealousy, sadness, cruelty, nervousness, dishonesty, gossip, hubris, greed, class differences - not much has changed. Two thousand years ago or yesterday, it's all so very similar. And while no one should be too surprised, it just brings the point even closer home when you read it all in a novel written in Roman times.

Fortunately, for the reader anyway, Lucius Apuleius presents it all with humor, grace, and honesty. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you might even fall out of your seat - but most important, you'll never look at a donkey the same way again.

ill-equipped cartographers

You can take for granted that people know more or less what a street, a shop, a beach, a sky, an oak tree look like. Tell them what makes this one different.
- Neil Gaiman

It's Friday night again. Weren't we just here?

It's been a relatively quiet week, mostly waiting for stuff to happen that's out of my control.

For instance, I'm waiting for another round of VM website mock-ups. I was hoping to get something before the weekend, considering the speed at which we've been moving from our end, but the quickness with which we move is clearly not the rate at which other people do. It's frustrating because everyone is asking, "When is the magazine launching?" and all I can say is, "Still waiting..."

Then there's my final headshot images... still waiting to get those.

I've been waiting for packages that I've sent to get delivered in the mail, been waiting to receive packages in the mail, been waiting for e-mails from people who must've forgotten how to use e-mail, been waiting for people to read certain things that I've written, been waiting for some inspiration before revising Chapter 2.

I strongly dislike waiting. I'd much rather be doing, but, avoid it as much as I may, there are certain things in life that require the assistance of others, and that being the case, sometimes you just have to wait, while nudging and reminding and urging.

This week I also got to thinking about my map of life, and I came to the conclusion that I might have charted things a little askew. What got me to thinking about it was a conversation I overhead (while paying close attention) someone having about his daughter's best friend who published a book, after which he remarked, "I mean, how many people can say they've published a book before they were 20?"

I involuntarily cringed upon hearing the question. That was supposed to be me. According to my map, that should be checked off, along with a number of other "firsts."

But, going back to the conversation, I was suspicious. So, sitting at my computer, as I was, I quickly took the two small bits of information I had about the author in question, based on the overheard conversation, did some of my Google trickery, and voila, just as I had suspected - the girl published her book with iUniverse.

Let me preface what I'll say next by saying that there's nothing wrong with going the route of self-publishing, but in the world of publish street cred, that doesn't count. Not really. Sure, these days it's much easier and more fulfilling in the end to self-publish and promote a book yourself, thanks to the internet and companies like iUniverse, than it might have been years ago, but the way I see it, it's not the same as pitching your book to an agent and/or an editor and never having to pay a penny to see your words printed, bound, and sold.

I don't want to publish a book so that I can have a book and say, "Look, here's my book. Tell me how much you love my book." I want to publish books so that one day other people, many other people, say like those affiliated with The New York Times and the Newbery Medal awards, will come up to me and say, "Look, here's your book. We love your book."

Now, believe me, I know there are two camps to this debate, and I know one side is made up mostly of those who have gone the self-publishing route, who will defend it like family, but I still say it's not the same.

So what actually came of me finding out what I did via Google? Really, just momentary, childish relief. I don't know who this girl is or have any plans on reading her book, and ultimately it's neither here nor there with anything that I'm doing. What it did do was give me the opportunity to vent to Alex (as I do) via IM about how if I wanted to I could go self-publish a book tomorrow, but how I won't.

And he listened. And he agreed with me. And he reassured me. And he reminded me of the following: "The maps of life are grossly inaccurate, due to them being charted by unqualified cartographers such as you and I."

How true, I thought, and it calmed me down at the time.

But while you won't be seeing on my website anytime soon - Melissa Celeste Navia: Writer, Actor, Cartographer - I don't think it's completely out of the question to admit that you've taken a few unexpected detours and excursions along the way, leaving you behind schedule and somewhat off the pre-determined course.

I mean, what does a 10-year-old watching Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, on adventures with Indiana Jones, obsessed with books, and dreaming of saving the world really know about life anyway? Clearly, not much about maps.