Alien Invaders!

I had many ways of misspending my teenage years, and one of them was reading and re-reading hundreds and hundreds of fantasy and science-fiction novels. Some of the best were Roger Zelazny's Amber novels. He was a Columbia M.A. in English, and they were actually well-written, with a particular penchant for stream of consciousness techniques blended with a hard-boiled, existentially alienated and Chandlereque narrator who occasionally does good deeds in spite of his better instincts. The central conceit was a kind of literalized Platonism: there really is a realm of Ideals, a universe that is elemental and primal, and all other universes are a pale imitation of that world. That real world is called Amber, and everything else is called Shadow.

Our hero wanders through these realms of Shadow, and stumbles on one plagued by a menacing dark circle inhabited by demons and worse. Here is how it is described:

"One day there was the dark circle, and no one really knows why… it began as a tiny ring of toadstools, far to the west. A child was found dead in its center, and the man who found her—her father—died of convulsions several days later. The spot was immediately said to be accursed. It grew quickly in the days that followed, until it was half a league across. The grasses darkened and shone like metal within it, but did not die… In the twilight, strange shapes could be seen moving…"

We have one of these in our backyard. No, seriously, we do—it's called a fairy ring, and they are completely real, and Zelazny's description is quite accurate. Without, uh, the demons and strange twilight shapes and dead people, of course. They begin as a small ring of toadstools, and then form an expanding ring of dark grass—grass that does indeed have a strangely metallic sheen to it. In the morning the ring appears dark on the light grass, and in the evening, lighter in the darker light. And they grow, maintaining their circular shape, or occasionally changing into spirals, arcs, double circles, and so on. Occasionally, fairy rings kill all the grass on the inside, but more often they just grow until they hit a border.  Frequent mowing helps, which explains why ours just appeared after the month long mowing hiatus occasioned by my broken toes (I can mow again, and I wore a closed-toe show this morning for the first time).  I didn't take any good pictures of the ring, unfortunately, before mowing, but you can see still the lines and the dark grass. 

Because the rings appear guided by some exterior intelligence (how does a fungus know how to draw a circle, for crying out loud?!), fairy rings are the source of numerous legends and stories. Ones that Zelazny was acquainted with, obviously. This is a nice example, actually, of how a completely natural phenomenon, one that is completely stupid (it's hard to imagine anything more stupid than a fungal spore), can appear uncanny precisely because it appears to "know" something human. I have more to say about this in another post, or perhaps on another blog, but suffice it for now to just note that it's part of our larger impulse to ascribe meaning and uncanny power to the natural world when it manifests patterns.

But the fairy ring was not our only alien invader. Within two days of "finishing" the kitchen, a new mouse moved in. We lived mouse-free in this house for several years, but now we seem to have an official position for the mouse, an endowed chair for rodent-in-residence. We get rid of one and go a month or two before a new one shows up (and by the way, I'm removing these mice to a spot a couple of miles distant—it ain't the same guy coming back).  Anyway, I removed the mouse this morning to a distant site and got a speeding ticket for my troubles. The officer was, as always, extremely polite, but he was also clearly fulfilling a quota—he said:

"SirIdon'tknowifyouknowwhyIpulledyouover? Iradarclockedyougoing45ina35zone. Licenseandregistration. Signhereandsigningisnotanadmissionofguilt. AnyquestionsIhaven'tanswered? Okaydriveslowlyandcarefully."

I have never received a ticket so quickly or efficiently, and the officer then zoomed back to his hidden position to get the next speeder. But really? 45 in a 35 zone?