I was 14, and like a sunspot that appeared on the hardwood floor of my childhood bedroom, there suddenly appeared in our house The Golden Key, a book by George MacDonald and illustrated by Maurice Sendak. I didn’t know where it came from, but there it was. We had few books, but what we had we perused. I’d seen Where the Wild Things Are in the local library, and I knew where the wild things lived and roared and rumpused: in Max’s imagination and, hence, Sendak’s—but this offered me something deeper. It drew me in and took me to a place I’d not realized, yet comfortably felt within, because it was so palpable, and helped define my own vision. I felt as if until that time I’d been peering through the dark glass, and now could step beyond it. I had a golden key. I wandered with Mossy and Tangle through shadow and light, fear and faith, and ultimately, freeness. I couldn’t separate the story from the art; indeed, they aren’t meant to be separate: that is the work of a true illustrator. Sendak had pulled from MacDonald’s literary reverie something equally brilliant. My eyes and my desires were illuminated by this little book, and I set it as a standard to be grasped for with my art and my writing. It helped me glimpse the potential and range of the imagination. Thank you, Mr. Sendak (and Mr. MacDonald).

How many Winnie-the-Poohs does it take to change a lightbulb?
We can’t change it, bother, because Christopher Robin says, “Never mind that, let’s go exploring.” So we do.

How many Jimi Hendrixes does it take to change a light bulb?
A thousand: one to finger the socket, nine hundred ninety-nine to trip the light fantastic.

How many Dr. Seusses does it take to change a lightbulb?
There’s one who is perched on the middle-most spot on the back of the sniveling snitch, who sits with his head slumped over the bed, that fills the bright-as-night niche. So that’s one, only one—now wasn’t that fun?

How many Yoko Onos does it take to change a lightbulb?
Five: one to publicize the performance, one to paint the bulb black, one to climb the ladder to install it, one to sit and scream, and one to capture it all on video.

How many James Joyces does it take to change a lightbulb?
Several, and it takes them 24 hours, rambling and wondering as they do the whole time yes they do yes yes yes.

How many Edgar Allan Poes does it take to change a light bulb?
None—he prefers the dark.

How many Mark Twains does it take to change a lightbulb?
A lightbulb is one of those useful inventions that requires little maintenance, a lot of appreciation, and one individual to replace when necessary. I am that individual, when it comes to the appreciation.

How many Charles Dickenses does it take to change a lightbulb?
It was time to remove the old bulb, it was time to install the new. It was the age of the incandescent phase-out, it was the age of the CFL. There was one Dickens who protested, there was one Dickens who approved. It was the latter who changed the bulb, the latter who looked to the light, the latter who was going direct to Heaven. The former was going direct the other way.

How many Pablo Picassos does it take to change a lightbulb?
One. Or is it two? It’s hard to tell by the face… But however many there are, the bulb is crooked.

How many William Shakespeares does it take to change a lightbulb?
Three—let us count them: one to set the stage, one to proclaim the plight, the same to tell its history, and one to restore the light.

How many Michaelangelos does it take to change a lightbulb?
A crew of them to construct the scaffolding, one to change the bulb, and one to paint the origin of light across the ceiling.

{ more to come, as long as the lightbulb burns }

© 2012 Troy Howell

Acrylic on archival board for Ladybug magazine, April 2005. Boy posed for me, frog didn’t. Click on image for detail.

“Kat’s Theme” was composed and performed by my namesake nephew,
Troy Swanson, after reading my debut novel, The Dragon of Cripple Creek.
It’s a perfect melody for the book, capturing both Kat’s predicament
and the dragon’s presence. Click here to listen: Kat's Theme

writing a novel. it’s like putting a 5000-piece puzzle together. you assemble areas; they begin to take shape, looking good, making sense. but there are pieces you cannot find. that particular piece. no matter how much you look you can’t find it, and until you do, you keep building, fitting them together.

then, at last, there it is: the one you’ve been looking for.

art by troy howell / graphite on gessoed page from old scribner’s magazine

“Out of the whiteness she came …”

“If you packed it right, if you smoked it right, you could make a pipe last.”

Filmmaker Timothy Ryan Poe is filming my short story, December’s Dream, which is now in rough cut stage. The film premieres in March.

To read the full story, go here. To see other images taken on site as Ryan worked, go here, and scroll down.

-Click on images to enlarge.

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“An unexpected chill sulked through the woods. April’s kite shuddered.”

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“May Be. That was as good as To Be, or I Am, I exist. Or was it rather a question?
I may exist? One thing was sure: May was, and is not.”

Call it a lost art, though I know there are people in the world who refuse to abandon all to technology, who still have a hand for elegant penmanship.

Perhaps not lost but anemic is the art of courtship with a personal, passionate, aesthetic touch. A dove, in the upper left corner, carries this letter from one man who was heart-over-head in love. Notice the date, 1919. DeAlva Allman would have been 19 years old, born in 1900. She was my maternal grandmother, he, my grandfather, Duncan Robert (D.R.) Jackson. He played the violin, painted desert scenes, and worked in the Texas oil fields, and later, after moving to California, the oil fields in Long Beach. He died there at the young age of 61.

We now send light-fast notes, stripped of all but prefab emoticons, disposable. Give me a sad face, somebody.

image is actual size / click to enlarge

once upon a time, children made their own entertainment

our refrigerator runs way too loud

seagulls get messy

clothes do not make the man—a male infant plus a number of years do (in most cases)

due to past axial precession, the pole star was once Thuban, not Polaris

rain comes in three assortments: wet, wetter, wettest

most works of fiction contain nonfiction

ridges running along the skin of an avocado indicate strings inside

sometimes, if you’re lucky, bread will land butter side up

you are never as old as you’ll get

it was Luke Howard who named the clouds

hang pictures at eye level or lower (the tendency is to hang them too high)

yell only in an emergency

if an orange smells sweet at the stem, it will taste sweet

press the fleshy part between your thumb and forefinger to help relieve a sinus headache

rabbits can be litterbox trained and make delightful house pets

most works of nonfiction contain fiction

I’ve been asked many times what my earliest influence was, and I can trace it to a moment that shimmers from my childhood. When I was eight, I sat enraptured for 34 minutes as I watched the magic realism of a film called The Red Balloon. This singular work sparked something in me I had no definition for but welcomed with my whole being. The film drifted into my vision like the red balloon itself, captivating, enchanting me, revealing that there are elements beyond self that are as natural and needful as breath.

The story is an allegory of life, played out on Paris streets* by a six-year-old boy (Pascal, the filmmaker Albert Lamorisse’s son) who frees a  red balloon that’s caught on a lamppost, and together boy and balloon share the joys of companionship, the challenges of separation, rejection, escape, and finally, death.

This simple urban fairy tale—one of the earliest of its genre—captures the basic desires of humanity.  As we each seek acceptance, purpose, gladness, we each must hide at times, stumble, dash or press through constricting passages by twists and turns, run up steps, run down, while hoping to soar, ultimately, into a lasting place of peace.

Yet there is that portion of humanity, a portion too vast and common, that disdains all things pure and beautiful, which seeks in ways both psychological and solid to destroy what it can neither understand nor possess. In the film they are the masses, adults and children alike, who, at the least, display annoyance and indifference, and at the worst, mindless insensibility, harm. The result must ever be: death of the innocent, death by stoning. Time stands still in silent horror at the withering of Pascal’s spirit friend.

There is, however, a jubilant end to the tale, as a teeming cluster of balloons from all over Paris provides a resurrection. This is what we wish for.

That is what magic realism can do: reveal matters of the soul perhaps vague for the child to fully comprehend, yet yearningly receives.

As I have matured as a writer, I’ve found that almost everything I write touches back to the brilliance of The Red Balloon.

* Nearly all of the homes and quarters, cafes and bakeries, steep steps and cobbled lanes among which the story was filmed, no longer exist. Only the church remains.