by Kathleen Bartholomew
(Pismo Beach, CA)
I remember the delight of reading adult books when I was a child - forging my way through a fascinating, confusing, enlightening maze of new ideas, trying to make sense of things. I felt like a dolphin leaping from crest to crest of waves, spyhopping to try and see my way.
Everything was new, every idea was a revelation, and every concept finally grasped led to half a hundred more. I learned to do research chasing down references to yet more glorious STUFF I'd never heard of before.
The experience was both revelatory and addictive. Thirty years ago, I found the perfect hobby: historical recreation. Not the kind where you wear tennis shoes with half a Civil War costume, and sit around all day on your ice chest arguing over old battles. No, the kind where you try to live the way someone did in any other time at all, as long it's not this one. Making history real; making thought tangible.
How do you make the stuff you read about in books? What does it really take to make a pot, spin a thread, dress a deer, knap a blade? What does your back feel like after a day actually working in a corset? What the hell is a merkin, or a firkin, and what do you do with either one of them? And how much can you make up along the way before you end up doing it the real way because there's just no other method to make it work?
That's the kind of anthropological puzzle I love. Wave is that puzzle caught alive and still gestating, on its way to figuring out what it will be when it's born. I like that. I want the experience. What will this be when it's born? What does it take to make it real? What old things are hiding or metamorphosing in there, and how much will we have to remake, fake or take in stride?
It might be a new world in there! Lemme in.
