… that’s me, a dreamer. Dreams re-appear, like a déjà vu. A trick of light will superimpose an image on a scene gleaned in passing. Or a sound, a name, a number, a movement, colour or scent may link up to a dream’s mood. Similarly, memories of seemingly unrelated events from years ago can pop up while doing mundane tasks. This reminiscing improves for me as I grow wiser (older,) a subtle re-organising of events.
One morning after the recent dark moon, and the solstice, while staring vacantly into the sky, a dream image returned from the blue – an empty studio space with interlocking rooms – the sun streams in, dappled light dances across pale shades of colour peeling from the walls, a space for friends to meet, play – bursting with intense creativity. There was a hint of nostalgia (I initiated like spaces in the past) and grief over not having access to such a creative hub. Grief aside, a sense of potential remained.
Consequently, I finally opened my ‘Shaper’ MS again and got stuck into editing, this after many months of having lost faith that what pours from my mind in terms of stories will be appreciated by anyone.
With little chance of publication, giving this sequel once more editing time seems irrational; then again, I’m the weirdest person I know. The irrational has always impelled me forward from deep states of being, in search of wholeness. Like some writers, I juggle for rhythm and balance with a multitude inside, until a character, a theme, or a poem persists and generates engagement.
In this way Ana, Cara and Mesa came to be – three stories that comprise the odyssey of three soul sisters across time.
Even when it comes to my posts here, I don’t plot, nor aim to be topical. Every day brings new thoughts and connections, while something incubates in want of wings. The process of information weaving continues during sleep, and dreams bring home glimpses of this process.
‘Shapers’ was already complete when I published Course of Mirrors. Both my beta readers/editors love this sequel, even after several rounds of reading, which is encouraging.
Yesterday I came upon a note from one of my readers with a plea – make Ana real, please.
I scratched my head, giggling about the irony, since Anna’s quest is in search of the real. How to explain what is mysterious? The paragraph my reader, Susan, referred to does need adjusting, to avoid confusion. Myth or not, Ana’s story is Cara’s deeply meaningful and internal truth.
Maybe this is the time to add, my felt sense of reality was confirmed by the innovating ideas of modern physics, quantum potential being one such case. A friend, Rob, reminded me of this yesterday when he forwarded a wonderful video about David Bohm. Please watch the film. It sheds light on my fascination with time, and also poignantly illustrates how innovators of new ideas were /are blocked by the establishment.
In Shapers time moves back and forward and often becomes simultaneous. Both Ana and Mesa meet up with Cara, the suspended story teller.
Like me, Cara feels most at home on bridges. Anyway, why am I writing this post? To give thanks to a dream that drew me back into editing ‘Shapers,’ irrespective of outcome.
By bending towards light all life unfolds and is shaped by obstructions – and the dark, compressed sphere behind the crack that allows growth to emerge.
Here my latest Haiku:
a tall fox appears
even hunt their kind
How to reconcile moments of pure beauty and light our restless world offers, with the heavy darkness of human ignorance? How is it the guiding spirit that is shining through everything so often escapes the unseeing eye? Is it our wounded hearts, or our anxious busy thoughts that prevent spontaneous being? Many of us like twilight, the dawn, the dusk, mist, where darkness and light do not negate but enhance each other. They mingle. As friends do, or lovers. Twilight is poetry in motion.
like tiny cherubs
When there is no other near to share such paradoxical quickening with, I may call on those who enriched my life but are no longer present. I adore the moon, the ancient chunk of earth, reflecting and making tolerable the blinding beams of the sun, granting us poetry and symbolic language.
We must see things fresh, not through tired ideas our establishments bank on, that destroy nature’s homeostasis and spill imbalances into cultures too poor to afford resistance. I say – let our children and young people decide what’s worth living for?
Sun, finally, bliss. I sit in the garden, reading, among Robin friends flitting through the apple blossoms. After two hours in the heat my body needs shade. I resolve to clear some cobwebbed drawers in the shed.
some two pfennig coins had acquired high iconic value. Up to 1968 German pennies were of copper, from there on steel was added, which made the coins magnetic.
With hundreds of pennies, the odds seemed promising, at least compared to the lottery ticket I buy once a week.
How do I cope? I don’t watch TV, haven’t done so for years. I prefer to read coherent articles and watch movies on BFI. And I’m lucky to have a garden, with nature to touch and absorb. The lilac tree waves, the laurel hedge sparkles; Robins build their nests, tulips nod in the breeze. Oh, and to end my ramblings, I just picked some delicate violets and forget-me-nots from my garden. They both have five leaves.
Once upon a time Khidr, the Teacher of Moses, called upon mankind with a warning. At a certain date, he said, all the water in the world which had not been specially hoarded would disappear. It would then be renewed, with different water, which would drive men mad.
When he saw, from his security, the waterfalls again beginning to flow, this man descended among the other sons of men. He found that they were thinking and talking in an entirely different way from before; yet they had no memory of what had happened, nor of having been warned. When he tried to talk to them, he realized that they thought that he was mad, and they showed hostility or compassion, not understanding.
And then consider Carl Sagan’s tender reflections on the pale blue dot, the Mote of Dust, as in a sunbeam, the home we all have in common, a selfie, seen from afar. “Where everyone’s love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.”
The thought brought on a Haiku last week …
singing a phrase for an hour, or longer, with short intervals when the organ’s tune breaks into musical improvisations, only to return to the melody and phrase. In the end the sound slows and fades, leaving the echo of your voice as an indispensable part of all voices.
To remain grounded and prevent the fate of Icarus, I tolerate the company of my little devils.
A few days ago, waking at dawn, I had retained a dream vision:
Maybe the dimension of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall could suffice, but only a Turner price gets you there. In case you don’t know, the Turbine Hall is the place that allowed visitors to touch the sun, like my son did during an Olafur Eliasson’s weather project exhibition a few years ago.
Normally, a writer’s work is condensed and hidden between the neat covers of a book, or captured on e-book screens, one click by one click. The concept of spreading the pages out in real space fascinates me, and ideas keep tumbling in. Like making the text respond to the concentration of the reader, or the lack, in which case sentences would ripple, as if floating on water.
Course of Mirrors 