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Author: mdavidhornbuckle
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Researching My Tattoo
my tattoo Several years ago, I got a tattoo on my forearm, and a lot of people ask me about it. It shows an iconic castle, a fish, and the letters “HR.” The fish represents Jesus Christ, and the letters stand for “Holy Rood,” the medieval term for the cross. The castle represents the Grail Castle, the resting place of the mythical Holy Grail.
I initially came across the image when I was doing research for my novel Zen, Mississippi, begun around 1992 and finished just recently (still unpublished, unfortunately).
The metaphor of the grail quest, borrowed from the legends of King Arthur, plays a major role in that story. The book where I found the image (The Holy Grail by Norma Lorre Goodrich” only said that it was a “medieval water-mark on paper” and that it represented the Grail Castle.
For years, that was basically all I knew about the image. I got it tattooed on my arm for all kinds of reasons, none of them particularly religious in nature. The image struck a chord with me mainly because of my identification and fascination with the knights-errant who search for the grail. It just so happens that the symbolism of Arthurian legend is intricately tied in with the symbolism of Christianity. Also, I liked having a tattoo that tied in with the novel I’d then been working on for several years (and would continue to work on for several years after that), and I just liked the way it looked—castles are cool; most people I think would agree.
Just this week, I happened upon some more information. It turns out that the image originated with one of the most infamous heresies of the Middle Ages, the Cathars who lived in the South of France in the 12th and 13th centuries. The Cathars were a Gnostic sect who believed the Catholic church had corrupted the original message of Christianity. They were also vegetarians and possibly sodomites. Many of them were massacred by the Church in the early 13th century.
Enthusiasts of the DaVinci Code and its “nonfiction” predecessor Holy Grail, Holy Blood may be familiar with the Cathars as the Gnostic sect that evolves into the Priory of Sion, the group at the heart of the grail conspiracy, according to those books.
Conspiracy or not, the Cathars did use a lot of Arthurian imagery in their symbols, and they put these symbols in all kinds of places—tapestries, pottery, etc—trying to spread the word about their beliefs. Many of the Cathars were also some of the earliest manufacturers of paper, and that’s why Cathari symbols were often used as watermarks during that time. The Cathar watermarks were also precursors to the images associated with the Tarot.
In full disclosure, I have not read the DaVinci Code (or seen the film), and I don’t particularly care to. And I’m not a believer in that particular conspiracy. I also can’t say I share many of the Cathars’ specific beliefs—or even understand them. But I do like the fact that I can now identify my tattoo with an interesting and esoteric historical event, and like the search for the grail, my search for information about this image continues.
More will be revealed.
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New Work: The Boy Who Cried Wolves
The new issue of Fogged Clarity just came out, and it features a short story of mine called “The Boy Who Cried Wolves.”
This issue also features an interview with author Benjamin Percy, fiction by Harvey Havel, and a bunch of other multimedia coolness. This is one of the nicest looking literary/arts magaizines on the web, IMO, so please check it out.
Also, check out the highly pretentious “Statement of Intent” that I submitted to them along with the story (one of their requirements for submission).
One of the things I’ve been interested in exploring with my fiction is the way that a new story can be affected by a an old one that is already deeply imbedded in our consciousness. In this case, only the title is a play on words from a traditional fable, and the rest of the idea flowed from the slight change in the wording. But because of that small wordplay, the reader’s experience is colored through the association with the traditional story even though the two actual stories are actually quite different.
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New Work: The Boy Who Cried Wolves
The new issue of Fogged Clarity just came out, and it features a short story of mine called “The Boy Who Cried Wolves.”
This issue also features an interview with author Benjamin Percy, fiction by Harvey Havel, and a bunch of other multimedia coolness. This is one of the nicest looking literary/arts magaizines on the web, IMO, so please check it out.
Also, check out the highly pretentious “Statement of Intent” that I submitted to them along with the story (one of their requirements for submission).
One of the things I’ve been interested in exploring with my fiction is the way that a new story can be affected by a an old one that is already deeply imbedded in our consciousness. In this case, only the title is a play on words from a traditional fable, and the rest of the idea flowed from the slight change in the wording. But because of that small wordplay, the reader’s experience is colored through the association with the traditional story even though the two actual stories are actually quite different.
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I Am a Literary Upstart
[repost from There Will Be Blog]
As a semifinalist in the L Magazine’s “Literary Upstart” contest, I was asked to read last night at the Slipper Room. There was a sizeable and enthusiastic audience and three other semifinalists reading. At the end, the four of us were critiqued by a panel of judges, American Idol style, and one reader moved on to the finals. That one reader was not me.
I wish I could tell you the names of the other readers or of the judges, but I don’t have that information easily accessible at the moment. Maybe I’ll update later to include that. In any case, the judges’ comments were mostly superficial, and they clearly had not understood one of the major points about my story–so I really couldn’t take the whole thing very seriously. So here for your enjoyment, is my performance from last night, which one of the judges said reminded him of a”city council meeting.”
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Reading Next Thursday at the Slipper Room
Apparently I am a semi-finalist in the L Magazine’s “Upstart Writers” contest, as to pave the way to the finals, I’ll be participating in a reading next Thursday (April 16) at Luna Lounge.
The event starts at 7 pm.
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The Last Dead Man
I was digging through some papers, looking for a particular piece of sheet music I thought I had. I couldn’t find it, but I found this poem that I wrote in 1994 after I saw a man get hit by a bus. The Latin quotation is from Ovid’s version of the Orpheus story, although I don’t know how I knew that in 1994. I wish I could find more of the poetry I wrote during that period, but I think this might be the only surviving relic, other than some things that eventually became song lyrics. I tended to not type them up or save them on my computer because I wasn’t submitting them anywhere, so they were just written by hand on loose leaf and then stuffed into random crevices and mostly lost.
The Last Dead Man
The last dead man I saw
Sang the strangest dirgeBetween his moans:
“Umbra subit terras.”No wind to fight the heat,
I only wanted to knowIf he was alright.
“Umbra subit terras.”It was in the paper the next week,
And I could see it again:The wobbly, white bicycle
On the wrong side of the roadHis wife left town afterward
With her sixteen catsI grew interested in her
Tarot cards and her povertyHe’d had to make a phone call
About a job and scraped up changeHe was eager
He was afraidAnd when the sirens faded,
I had to tell the police and lawyersWhat I had seen:
“Umbra subit terras.”And the bus drove away
With his blood on the fenderAnd the concrete too recorded
What I had seenIn bland reflection, a moaned melody:
I am suddenly an earthly ghost,Slightly interested,
Slightly ashamed.—M. David Hornbuckle
9/1/1994, revised 4/18/2008 -
What It Is to Be a Human Being
That’s what David Foster Wallace once said he wanted his writing to convey, and hey struggled to meet that impossible ambition throughout his all-too-brief career. I suspect that writers have struggled with it for as long as there have been writers, and Wallace probably came closer than anyone to acheiving just the right alchemical equation. I just finished reading the article about Wallace’s struggle in the latest issue of The New Yorker, and it made me once again sad, impassioned, jealous. I wondered if I had such a clear goal with my writing, or if Wallace just hit upon the words–as usual–that I wished I’d thought of.
Aside from that , what do I hope my own writing achieves? Is there a single, quotable element that ties it all together? I don’t know if I can answer that right now. I’m still reeling a bit from that article. What I think about a lot is escapism. Some people try to use literature as a form of escapism, but I prefer a literature that challenges you to stare into the gaping maw of each living moment because to me that IS what it is to be a human being. Perhaps that’s because I myself have an irrational fear of any given present moment, and I’m constantly fighting the urge to escape into the past or future. Facing and fighting that fear is what I do always, whether I’m being “a writer” or just getting through the day. I don’t know how much my writing does that or conveys that or has anything to do with that, but I look at Wallace’s example, and I see possibility.
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New Web Site for Cantarabooks
My publisher has redesigned her web site. The new look is sleeker and definitely more inviting. I was never too thrilled with the previous design. This is much easier on the eyes.
You can view my author page and leave comments here. Please do. That would be fun.
Still no word on that mysterious lawsuit though. Hopefully we will know something more about that soon.
M. David Hornbuckle 