Waking Up to the Unreal

[Image: promotional still from The Troll Hunter, a 2010 “mockumentary” from
Norway about — well, perhaps you can guess.]

From whiskey river:

Fairy tales were maps formed of blood and hair and bones; they were the knots of the sub-conscious unwound. Every word in every tale was real and as true as apples and stones. They all led to the story inside the story.

(Alice Hoffman [source])

…and:

Sky Burial

This is the way they dispose of the dead
in Tibet. Letting nothing go to waste.
The loose bodies, with their blood still,
are lifted to high roofs, offered to the sky.
In this way everything becomes a temple
and bells ring to catch the carrion birds
in flight. Glorious bells! Unsettling circlers!
They alight like balding mathematicians,
like ancient men huddled over maps.

Their steepled wings flap now and again
like a preacher searching a hymnal;
their beaks could be penning red sermons
as the umbral body is unsewn, consumed—
concealed through all avenues of heaven,
borne again aloft in a scream of grace
echoing down the mausoleum of dark.

(Michael Titus [source])

Not from whiskey river:

A red map isn’t easy to follow. Any document made of blood and bones is tricky. Wrong turns are easily made, and there are often piles of stones in the road. A person has to disregard time and sorrow and all the damage done. If you follow, if you dare, the thread always leads to whomever or whatever you’ve forgotten: the little girl lost in the woods, the hedgehog; the strand of pearls, the ferryboat, your own father.

(Alice Hoffman [source])

…and:

Verence peered in again at the elf. It was lying curled up in the center of the floor.

“That’s an elf? But it’s… just a long, thin human with a foxy face. More or less. I thought they were supposed to be beautiful?”

“Oh, they are when they’re conscious,” said [the witch] Granny, waving a hand vaguely. “They project this… this… when people look at them, they see beauty, they see something they want to please. They can look just like you want them to look. ‘S’called glamour. You can tell when elves are around. People act funny. They stop thinking clear. Don’t you know anything?”

“I thought… elves were just stories… like the Tooth Fairy…”

“Nothing funny about the Tooth Fairy,” said Granny. “Very hard-working woman. I’ll never know how she manages with the ladder and everything. No. Elves are real.”

(Terry Pratchett [source])

…and:

Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.

(Eugene O’Neill, via a recent “Bon mot for the week” post at Froogville [source])

In 1998, the computer-gaming company LucasArts introduced an adventure game for the PC called Grim Fandango. Wikipedia:

Grim Fandango‘s world combines elements of the Aztec belief of afterlife with style aspects of film noir, including The Maltese Falcon, On the Waterfront and Casablanca, to create the Land of the Dead, through which recently departed souls, represented in the game as calaca-like figures, must travel before they reach their final destination, the Ninth Underworld. The story follows travel agent Manuel “Manny” Calavera as he attempts to save Mercedes “Meche” Colomar, a newly arrived but virtuous soul, during her long journey.

Although by today’s standards the graphics were weak, back then the game’s world felt richly rendered. And the dialogue, derived largely from the style of wise-cracking detective films, was a joy — sharp and clever, each character’s “voice” (as well as actual voice) unique. Here’s a fragment: Manny is talking with Lupe, a coat-check girl in the Calavera Café (which he owns and runs on the side from his travel-agent job).

Manny: Hows’s the flow tonight?
Lupe: We’re dead tonight, Manny. Everybody’s back home for the Day of the Dead, I guess… except for the casino. The casino’s hopping. Why is it that all the people who don’t go home are the same people who just love the gamble?
Manny: Well, I guess when you’ve got nothing to go home to, you’ve got nothing to lose.
Lupe: Hey, we should put that over the door!

I’ve still got an old PC from that era, gathering dust in the corner of my office at home. Every now and then I think of firing it up just to play Grim Fandango again.

In the meantime, here’s a trailer for the game. (It looks pretty professional, but I don’t know if it was “official” or not.)