When Ears Inspire
Colorful Costume
Ever since our friends Rowan Derrick and Melissa Jackson invited us to a theme Halloween party, Jim and I mused over what we should do for costumes. The party’s theme was “post-Apocalypse,” riffing off Rowan’s long-time fondness for the “Fallout” series of computer games, as well as that she had some great decorating ideas.
Now, post-Apocalypse has never been one of my favorite settings. Who knows? Maybe I imbibed anxiety about nuclear war with my mother’s milk. (I was born about a month before the Cuban missile crisis.) I grew to adulthood under the shadow of the Cold War. To this day, I remember college discussions in which many of my contemporaries stated that we’d see a nuclear missile attack before we graduated. Certainly an awareness that for most of my life I lived in a “ground zero” location hasn’t helped. (Yep. I still do.)
However, there’s one book set in a post-Apocalyptic setting I really love: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. It is not hopelessly grim, but lacks Mad Max romanticizing of how much fun it would be to all wear fur and ride motorcycles. Maybe why this novel resonates with me is that it offers hope for a devastated future seeded by a medium I really understand and believe in: Books.
So, for a while Jim and I thought we might go as “bookleggers,” but a lack of affordable monks’ robes proved a stumbling block. If we didn’t have robes, then we’d need to keep explaining what we were. After all, like bootleggers, bookleggers tend to dress much like everyone else, because that’s the best way to avoid detection.
Eventually, we settled on going as mutants. In the third section of A Canticle for Leibowitz these “Children of the Fallout” have a very interesting role.
When we went to look for costume items, my creative conception took a swerve when I found myself irresistibly attracted to a set of brightly-colored cheetah ears with matching tail. While Jim got a set of very nice wolf’s ears and tail, then accessorized so that he was transformed into a very swashbuckling mutant wolf-warrior, I wandered over to the bright side. If you’ve read A Canticle for Leibowitz this isn’t completely out of line, although I admit, my interpretation was a bit unique…
I wish the photo showed my hair better, since it steaked in five very bright shades!
(In case you wonder, I already had the yukata and obi.)
Writers are always asked: “Where do you get your ideas?” Well, in the course of this particular creative journey, I found myself musing over an idea for a short story. If I write it, I guess my answer will need to be “A Canticle for Leibowitz and a set of cheetah ears in all the colors of the rainbow.”
