Story: 13. ) Biographies

from A BOOK IS  LIKE A SACRED ISLE

     

          Can they see my centre---

          Feel my edges---feel my bumps?

          How will they know…

          If I do not---show and tell---them?

          My book is real---needs no writer

          Harder---than, the marker of Life

          There---before the face of every heart

          That sees---upside down...

         Biographies

         If I ever read, which I didn’t much, until a few months ago when I became conscious of reading, I had always read novels and those that had come my way mostly secondhand, due to being poor; and of those, the majority were children’s classics: I homeschooled my children. But a new world has opened up to me recently, reading-wise; and I've found that old adage to be true: ‘truth is stranger than fiction.’ The dramas of real people, who had really lived, or were still living made extraordinary stories with twists too insightful to be found in fiction. Characters explained by biography necessarily issued a deeper form of thinking, which, legitimately, carry us along new pathways of fascinating introspection. Our identifying with a real person, feels right and more valuable somehow, more comfortable, or noble than identifying with a fictitious character. Not that fiction isn't awesome, too; it is! It, also, is a teacher. But through the labyrinth of biography, inside paths of a real life reveal and draw out vital elements from the insides our own life; and encourage us in our own struggles motivating us toward greater bravery.

   The deeper the inward gaze of a live person the more succor there is for us in a book, and the more meat there is to chew on. We have to look in, before we are strong enough to look out and see. Exploring of the pathways of the brain and psyche is the quest of the twenty-first century, and its territory. We know this instinctively. We know there is something ahead just out of reach. But still, the way to the fore is clouded: we reject it; we do not wish to fully understand that it is only through suffering.

   I read my first serious, human biography only a couple months ago. Previously, I had read only Natural History biographies; (animals and plants were easier to understand than people!) The book was Gavin Maxwell. A Life; Douglas Botting; and I was, fascinated. I lived in this book for weeks. I learned a great deal more about an extraordinary person and about people in general, and to always deeply appreciate their idiosyncrasies, gifted or otherwise. Strangely, the more there were, the more I found the person precious; and this, I believe, is the work and purpose of biography. I also learned more about otters and wild animals, and about myself. As I have mentioned earlier, this book worked needed compassion in me.

   I am now beginning to read a new biography of the reclusive nineteenth century American poet Emily Dickinson; Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds (Lyndall Gordon) and I am thrilled. Once again, things dwelling below the surface are being confirmed. Now I know why I always wanted to put far more pauses between words and phrases in poetry. I would put them in then take them out: I had not fully understood why I had wanted them there and so lacked the courage to do so. But now I do. And I am free! But what if I had not read this book and found the answer to…the riddle of spaces…it was meant to be! This book is fast becoming a treasure to me; and Dickinson a much admired ‘alive’ person; and needed helper and mentor. I have never had one before, in any shape or form; I have always walked in ‘the dark’…the unknown; and, literary-wise, entirely alone.    

   I wonder. If biography is enlightening, perhaps autobiography could be more so, for there is no intermediary between the protagonist and the reader. Who better to tell their story than the one to whom it belongs? I think I’ll find a few autobiographies to read, after I've read the two interesting looking biographies that await me on the coffee table; C.S. Lewis, and Robert Louis Stevenson; a few of who’s works I've read, definitely not enough, but I would like to know more about their authors.

  This might sound strange for an adult, but I feel as if I am growing up at last; or graduating; or coming of age---or at the end of some long process of being released from a prison. Perhaps this is why I have become conscious of reading; and this in turn, why I am finding so much to see in it.

   I missed out on the world’s normal quantity of book reading in my life: I did read only one, and for many years, and that overall, for a sad reason. But everything in our lives works together for good; and even if we can’t see it yet a rewarding destiny awaits every brave explorer of love and truth.                                             BIOGRAPHIES---the true story of other lives---makes our own lives more meaningful---opening doors into our own---through which we can find---a richer life---and new friends in other realms.          BIOGRAPHIES---can rock our boat---just a little---making our ‘see’ faring voyage---just that little bit more exciting---for sailing through the stories of ‘lives like loaded guns’---can make us shorten sail, and ease our ride---or put up flying spinnakers to speed us up! 

               

                                                                         *

Story: 12. ) Prophetic Books

from . . .  A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE . . .

   

          Beginning---from a cache of---oyster light

          Dark hid---amongst the annoying seed

          Buried deep---but acquiring praise---inside

          Foremost---the unknown layers---covering love

          The outer shell is full of…ridges…hollows

          Bends…all from…swaying…to the harsh world

          Which it meets…with tangent candour

          Yet...shallow knowing…there…not faced with self

          Oyster holding---offending wisdom---inside out

          For of two---is---its portion; only one---finalizing

          This, the pages could whisper---only from their origin

          The pearl book tells its light---from whence it came 



           Prophetic Books

    There are books which speak to the outsides of us, and they are delightful; but some nebulous unknown part within us remains unsatisfied. Then there are other books, which speak to our insides, and they are a little disturbing for they seem to be reaching more hidden extremities; but ultimately they satisfy more for we sense we are met at our touchstone, the very place where we assay any incoming gold or silver from a prophetic voice.

   Books have breath. Although it is not always the best thing, one can rely on perceiving something of a book by its movie. While it is usually advisable to read the book, the movie can meet us at the touchstone and ignite any spark of life it engenders in us there . . . There must have been breath in its fabric; in its intrinsic message something dynamic, sensory and sensuous, for it to have been made into a movie; and that will come through, regardless of any cosmetic interpretations and work its especial aim in us for it has been written, twice. 

   I found gold and silver: glory and redemption: reward and grace, in one such film. For it confirmed, and set a seal upon all I already knew and had written; and it established within me a firmer conviction upon which to work. The experience of watching this film was, for me, like a child opening a gift and finding it was what she had always wanted.  

   Even so, I feel bad to be writing a sketch here about a book I haven’t read yet!  But there was that in it, which was, true; and therefore I needed only its essential essence, and its entheasm; which like a pin to a magnet was captured, in instant impact, via the film.

   Through avidly watching the movie of this book I gleaned all that I was needing, at the time, to give me the confidence and strength to continue writing my next ‘book;’ which, being even deeper than the former was perhaps more controversial and so its writer was needing, some sort of comfort! 

   The book I watched is titled The Celestine Prophecy, by James Redfield; (Grand Central Publishing; Hachette Book Group; New York, 1993.) I have bought it, now. It should arrive next week from America. And although I don’t quite agree with certain fundamental assumptions within its foundation it doesn't matter I am sure I will delight in it and find its lighted truths shining on little plants within me waiting to flower; releasing, too, partly hidden pearls ‘turned-around-sufferings’ into their predestined form in new writings.

   Not presuming to be anything, I am nothing, in no way am I aspiring to be instrumental; I write because I can do nothing else. If I didn’t, I think I’d die! I love books, and I believe in their power. Like I love owls, and believe they fly in the night. Coming through the dark winged things see and carry light in them: they are not afraid; they are rebels broken through love.                                         ‘Old’ books and ‘new’ books need each other; just as writers and readers need one another; one cannot exist without the other. We are not isolated islands, even if we think we are. Through the prophetic influence of our lives expressed in our words, books, and actions we are always helping one another, onward and forward, in one way or another, on mankind’s ceaseless journey through time and eternity. Wisdom and knowledge is built ‘line upon line, precept upon precept.’ And from one generation to the next light is growing, and expanding:  truth…ever living.

                           *

          Today’s fly…speaking

          Flies by tomorrow’s…saying

          ‘Who do you think you are?’

          Tomorrow’s…invisible

          Whispers not of acceptability

          It has none…yet

          But its voice…silent...had been

          Heard…

          Going under...

          Lifting spots…left…by today’s 

Story: 11. ) Gift of a Book

 from . . . A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE . . . 

The rose opens…powered by light

Infused…and energized…the gift of pages

Releases a fragrant life...

Taken out of heart…to give from itself…its love

           Gift of a Book

    What better gift than a book? It can change a life for good. What better personal outlay or stretch of the wallet, than that for a book for the stretching of something greater, personal insides. It is a wise investment for a more expansive future. Untold wealth lies in the power of a book. Conveying ideas that can spark a chain of thought linking synchronizing incidents in our lives, a book can launch one upon a new journey, a new venture into previously unexplored territory.

   I didn’t know the dynamic reality of this until a lovely French girl, who had stayed with us for a few weekends gave my son a parting gift. She was on a working holiday and wanting to continue her ‘overseas experience,’ in other lands; but she had wanted to give something of herself to him before she left; and it was in a book.

   The novel she gave him had obviously profoundly moved her; there was a long handwritten message on the flyleaf. My son enjoyed the book, and lent it to me to read when he was finished with it. He could see I was strangely attracted to it; and no less so than by her message. She said it was ‘her favourite book,’ and ‘like her Bible.’ I was intrigued. When I picked it up it fell open where there was a folded piece of paper, a printed form---a “Renewal of Motor Vehicle Licence” form---and in the section (appropriately) titled “Change of Address” there was a quote from the book filling the lines written in my son’s beautiful handwriting. ‘This natural world is only an image and a copy of paradise. The existence of this world is simply a guarantee that there exists a world that is perfect. God created the world so that through its visible objects, men could understand his spiritual teachings and marvels of his wisdom.’

   This book The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, was a worldwide bestseller in the late 80’s and through the 90’s. This particular edition, hardcover, published by HarperCollins Publishers Inc., New York, 1998, is still on bookshop shelves or still in print in 2015.

   It was a gentle fable; reminiscent of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s meaningful tale of The Little Prince; and it was this likeness that made me very much attracted to it.

   I read it avidly, and was impressed. But, overall, my greatest impression was that the wisdom and insight it taught was that which had been outgrown: namely, the wellbeing of the soul focusing on its material gain. It was “an entrepreneurial tale of universal wisdom we can apply to the business of our own lives;” (Spencer Johnson, M.D.)…and, as such, it was brilliant. Yet this wise and beautiful book went ‘so far,’ but no further. And I knew there was more; much ‘more.’   

  Very ‘quickly’ The Alchemist worked its magic within and awakened something; it spurred me onward, to go through with what was already waiting and bursting for expression. It was a timely and most significant gift. The book became for me a springboard, the needed impetus to rise above one ‘good,’ for another ‘good;’ to move from one level of understanding, on to the next: from soul, to what was beyond. I was fired to write a book of my own, and filled with enthusiasm to impart through a simple story another way of seeing and living.

  Throughout our lives we regularly have to think about buying, or making loved ones and others gifts. There are anniversaries of all kinds to celebrate, and the acknowledgements of our regards, the marking of various events; and the landmarks in people’s lives, to help make more significant and understood. There are endless reasons for giving. Maybe the giving of a book, over and against an inanimate object could convey more, or be a more thoughtful, living thing. Books have life.

  Not always is a reason needed for the giving of a gift. Spontaneous ‘brainwaves’ in our desire to reach people could make us think along new lines, and from out of the things we ourselves read in a much enjoyed book inspire us to share what we have found with our friends as we pass the book on, or buy them their own copy.

   Perhaps we don’t fully realize how much we can enthuse or influence, or add to others lives with the gift of a book; we do not know how far reaching our loving actions are, but that they are effectual is certain; for love and truth have a life of their own. And, more than anything else, the joy is all the more ours, and made our gift, knowing that we have extended ourselves; thought a bit further, and given a part of ourselves from out of our innermost being, where life is. Creative ideas are ready to flow unstinted when we have the good and wellbeing of another in our hearts and minds.  …Books change lives. So they are, truly, a gift! 

                                                      

                                                                      *

Story: 10. ) The Secondhand Book Sale . . . from A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE: A Rain of Booklight

The Secondhand Book Sale

    ‘A bird in the hand,’ a book can travel from here to there bringing with its flutter of wings the delight of a song. For sometimes a book will leave its shelf to fly to a new owner there to bring new life that its writer, or first owner could hardly have foreseen. So it happened to me near the beginning of the year, 2014.
  I chanced to notice a hand painted sign on the side of the road advertising a large secondhand book sale and amazingly I remembered the date and went. It was inside a large gym – a huge roller hockey skating rink. I was overawed. The place was filled with at least fifty long trestle tables laden with banana boxes full to overflowing with books…books of all kinds …books of all shapes and sizes…and the price, one and the same for all of them: two NZ dollars. Which you paid for at the door you came in by.
   I wandered about as if in a dream: from the inside of me I was looking out on a scene I had never seen before and so my imagination went wild.
  It was the outer court of a temple. But there was only buying going on and not selling; so, though the people were completely absorbed and totally blind to one another, they were not blind to their own inner court, for they saw here treasures and bought them to take them further in.
   It was a bustling fresh produce market. But one without any hawkers, only buyers consuming the produce at a phenomenal rate. They had each been given plastic bags at the door and were busy stuffing them full with the bright fruit and vegetables of the market: the ephemeral eatables and colourful consumerables from the farms of thousands of publishing houses. And their authors’ books sold once, now being sold again, a second time. The books twice as good as before having double value now; though the second time the gain from them was love; the two dollar purchase price for each book went in its entirety to a local charity.   I continued to weave my way through the mêlée, going round and round the long tables getting dizzier and fainter as I went; trying to take in too much instead of ‘blotting out’ as the people all around me did. I saw hands and arms from all directions reaching in toward the treasures with something akin to absolute avarice. I had no idea that paper made books still held such a total fascination for so many people; and they were of all ages and sizes; no group or type of people was unrepresented.
  Eventually, slowly, I lost my fascinated for the scene as a whole and applied my bemused brain to the task of joining in and choosing books. I had my plastic bag. But it was weightless. I carried on.  I found myself amongst acres of fiction. The content and ages of the books discernible by their cover type; instinctively one ignored certain cover designs the brain systematically tracking what the unconscious was looking for. I wondered why I was here. The books in the banana-boxes all around me looked so similar. And I was beginning to make up my mind to leave this particular acreage. There were no ‘more’ books here. Or so I thought.  It wasn't that I recognized anything, specific; but my hand, of its own volition suddenly stretched out and snatched up a book; and in no less a greedy way than anyone else in that overcrowded marketplace. I had hardly glanced at its cover; from whatever I saw I knew that it was indeed, a treasure. Now there was weight in my shopping bag, and in more ways than one.
  I had begun. And once beginning, I let my hand shoot out three more times. My bag was heavier, but it weighed no more than it had done before. Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to get out of the crowd. I felt I didn’t belong here, nor did my treasure. I paid my eight dollars at the door and drove home.
  That it had resisted every other hand and had been waiting for me, I was sure. It was a children’s book. It said it was a winner of the Smarties prize bronze medal, and that it had been shortlisted for the Whitbread children’s book of the year. Yet I had found it amongst the grazing paddocks for adults. I was thrilled, because I have always loved books for child persons, far more than those for adult persons. And it was more wonderful than any of the other books I had consciously picked from nearby it; (which I still haven’t read.) I looked at the front cover. I saw on its lower edge a narrow scene of knights in shining armour jousting on horseback. The book was called Arthur – The Seeing Stone; the first in a trilogy by Kevin Crossley-Holland.
  I read it avidly; but slowly, to make it last. The writer was obviously a poet; so I was entranced at once. My own poet’s heart thrilled to the short chapters. Some as short as half a page. The very format of the book stimulated the waiting spaces in me; the unknown halves of buried couplets awaiting their matching parts from the outside.
 King Arthur! My heart melted! But overall something leapt in me at every mention of Merlin; the good wizard of the mystical courts of Avalon, and Arthur: the boy who could pull a sword from a stone. The book sparked a passion in me for a near-distant Merlin; which led me on a trail of research, for weeks. This culminated in the writing of a story – a fantasy – a forty page epic poem on the sixth century, Welsh, Myrddin Wyllt; forerunner of the famous Merlin of the Middle Ages.
  I received a great deal of pleasure in the writing of this landmark poem; and I knew once again to live always by instinct. Convinced that ‘any bird that hath a wing’ – any book that could leave the extension of itself inside me, and ‘marry’ something there – was a ‘more’ book, and so it would find me. Certain, also, and in delight, that these kinds of books could often be found in their second ‘flight,’ in any secondhand book sale!
  Just as they throw out books from the local library, so people do, from time to time from their own shelves at home. I used to think this was sad, but I have now changed my mind! We never know what treasures we may find from other people’s cast-offs, which, if we have eyes to see, can take us further in to see further out to fulfill our destiny in the world.  

                                                          *

Story: 9. ) Treasure Books / from A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE; A Rain of Booklight

Treasure Books

   ‘The differense from a person and an angel is easy. Most of an angel is on the inside and most of a person is on the outside.’ - Anna *

    Maybe only two or three times in a lifetime one comes across a book that is completely unforgettable and it becomes for you your own particular treasure. You can pin significant turns in your life to it; it sparks a definite chain of incidents that you will always know stemmed from that book. It speaks to you: knowing you. In a strange way it knows the real you; and you know ‘it.’ Though you can hardly call it, an ‘it;’ for to you it has life of its own. Somewhere deep inside it resonates with every fibre of your being; and almost without realizing it, your core-being is stamped with a deep affirmation of its identity and confirmation of its hitherto unwoken dreams.
   One such book in my own life is Mister God, this is Anna; by Fynn; (illustrated by Papas;) a close second are its two sequels Anna’s Book, and Anna and the Black Knight. The first book was a bestseller in the 1970’s, and was still around in the 80’s, and even into the 90’s, (but by then it was demoted or downgraded into Collins Religious Division.) It once blossomed all over the world and touched many lives. But now Anna and Fynn have faded from the scene completely; her beloved ‘Mister God’ an embarrassment to today’s anti-God society. The books are no longer in the local library; they have even been thrown out of ‘churches:’ innocence has largely departed from the populous as a whole, and the institutional church couldn’t cope with Anna’s liberty. For her opinion of church was that you only needed to go once, because ‘once you’d got the message you didn’t need to go back; if you did, well, you hadn't got it, had you?’ and Anna ‘had it,’ so never needed to go back.
   Anna’s whole life, filled to the brim with love and joy was a jubilant going forward into the unknown with her delicious but sometimes scary, 'Mister God;' and the only place where she knew he lived was ‘…in yer middle!’
   Anna was a five-year-old Cockney waif, found in the 1940’s dockside streets of London, by Fynn, a caring and intelligent young man who took her home to live with Mum and him, and their motley collection of the lost and bedraggled. And, until her tragic death less than three years later, she never made it to eight, she taught them all where God was.
   Anna found good and God where others didn’t. Her best friends were the prostitutes from the house down the street; and they adored her: she found them all angels: ‘cos they don’t know they’re beautiful.’ ‘But they are, ain't they, Fynn?’ This stunning, mind-boggling book, relevant to every generation, is a true story, it all really happened and it deserves a place on every bookshelf; it could still change the world; its impact needed now, more than ever.
  It came into my life not long after I had found out, I was found out on the inside, which wonder of wonders made me very happy. Mister God, this is Anna was given me, surreptitiously, in a brown paper bag, by a beautiful elderly churchman who could see me on the inside, too. But it was not until many years later that I understood why he had given it to me.
   It wasn't until after I had escaped the net and traps of the institutions and swam and flew freely, at liberty from all fishbowls and birdcages that I truly comprehended the book. (I have since reread it again, twice.) Its simple but glorious message struck me anew at once, and wonderfully confirmed and affirmed my new liberty. And, like he hoped, I never went back.
   From then on I wrote continuously, and wrote my way out of the next level of the trap; out of every vestige of its invisible and crippling, internal effects – the trap ‘in my middle.’ And I followed in unspeakable joy further and further this adorable, red-headed, little six-year-old, to places within me both boundless and wide. You only need one book, one TREASURE BOOK, to hear a message that seems to have been written just for you.

                                       

                                                          *

* The opening sentence of the book, Mister God, this is Anna; by Fynn, illus. Papas; William Collins & Sons Ltd., 1974, (ninth reprint 1976,) London. (This British edition of the book has a wonderful, illuminating Introduction by Vernon Sproxton.) Anna’s Book; Henry Holt and Company, 1987, New York. Anna and the Black Knight; William Collins & Sons Ltd., 1990, London.

Story: 8. ) The Poplar & the Creek / from A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE; A Rain of Booklight; A Book about Books

       The Poplar and the Creek

  We look for that which we know not. The intrinsic quest is always there it never leaves us. It is why we read books. But it is strange how we feel nearer to those unknown riches in the wilderness, in the outdoors, in the garden; or anywhere outside. And perhaps we haven’t fully realized the extent to which having an outdoor arbour in which to read can add to one’s life. I have found it quite amazing how the place where we read a book can add to the stretching our self-set limits and widen our lives.
   Down by the tidal creek at the bottom of the steep grassy hill that our house is built on is a huge poplar. It looks about a hundred feet high. It towers above the house. This grand denizen the valley below used to dominate the view from the back windows, but in recent years an oak has shot up and blocked our view of it. Sad, because I used to delight in the sight of its shivery leaves flittering and sparkling catching the sunshine in the breeze.     The poplar’s great roots line the bank on the opposite side of the creek and travel underneath its bed for quite a long way. At the base of its wide trunk is a large cavern-like hollow; and up in a crevice of it safe above the flood line is a square red tin. The delights of a dreamer are in this ‘treasure chest.’
   This lone, tall poplar is a favourite thinking-and-writing place for me; just as our book-hammock is a favourite resting place in the hottest part of the year. With many manuka trees on either side of it, the creek below at its feet and a grazing paddock behind, it makes a lovely hideaway spot for an hour.
   I lean against a convenient chair-shaped curve in the trunk. My legs stretched out near the edge of the bank just above the sparkling water. I let go the inevitable pressures of the day to accomplish ‘this that and the other,’ and listen to the singing of the creek as it flows close by me. From far side from upstream it comes running in tiny rapids, then swirling and curving it pours into the little pool below the steep bank where I sit. Slowly it is eating away at the bank. Flooding from heavy rains has taken some of the earth away and the great strong roots of the poplar are more exposed now.   I have taken the tin from its hiding place. It is beside me, open. It is a lot rustier now and the red is fading. But it is still sufficient for its work in providing sustenance; in words now rather than in confectionary; though sometimes there is something physically edible in it, like a bar of chocolate, etc.! But the main nourishment it offers is its books. Among them a notebook for river-writing. For this place is a catalyst for creativity, as well as a place for afternoon reading.
   The sound of running water combines with the sunshine and the warmth of the ground and up through the midst of me, like this great tree, living waters rise from my roots till they reach my mind, there to pour out a kind of liquid light, lambent and pellucid, that opens into life and thrills. These living waters teach me. They show me pictures of myself that are so true they change me and I see through the mists long formed by the obscuring thoughts of this world’s habitual thinking. A welcoming of truth, sharp and clear, takes the lead and I see through the veil something in the living world around me mirroring the living world within me and my life is enriched.   Two books are in the tin, as well as the notebook-diary and biro. They are on my lap. I keep a choice of two or three non-fiction books here because I never know what this one hour’s respite will dredge up in my waiting midst. I don’t always feel like writing. Often I read a bit of one book, and then lay it down to read the other. Occasionally, and quite like magic, I find a deeper catalytic sparking between the content of the two books. They ‘marry,’ in some curiously coincidental way, and I am amazed.
   I stop and look up. I gaze vacantly. And continuing in ‘the force that through the green fuse drives the flower’ (Dylan Thomas) I am strangely warmed. Lines of thought, like ethereal strands of gifted gold filter through in an inner sunshine and there’s a rising of joy in sudden insight and I grab my notebook and scribble a moment. Although what I write, usually has little to do with the subject matter of the two books I am reading, but it is like the trajectory of an inner object of light, on its sudden flight within another subject altogether, flying inside an ever increasing seeing-space within expressing a parallel in another sphere and in another dimension.
  These are the ‘thought-comets’ which ‘quicken’ life; that burst upon our mind and energize our spirit in our otherwise plain existence. They are our treasures, for a while. They feel amazing when we capture them. But afterwards they seem to lose their initial sparkle as they are no longer new: we have assimilated them into the body of our consciousness and they are now a functioning part of our wisdom and knowledge. But their coming was vitally important nothing else could have accomplished that particular ‘leap’ and renewal adding to our understanding. It was a unique moment in time and a spontaneous linking of one thing with another: the flash of truth bringing life.                                           What delight there is in taking time out to sit by a stream, to listen and think; a book in one's lap; a book which lives here, in a tree. And what delight there is, too, in throwing open the shutters of our windows and looking out and reading between the lines of the book of life.   
 
                               *

Story: 7. ) Tree Reading / from A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE: A Rain of Booklight

Tree Reading

   I watch my daughter disappear with a book and climb up into our huge liquid amber tree; it is a time of difficulty for her in her life and she chooses this way to deal with it. It works well. I go into the house immediately to give her privacy and space; and to make her, a favourite meal and a chocolate cake.

   While I am in the kitchen cooking I remember my own childhood, and I am taken back in time to when I dreamed that I could do the same thing with my worries and just climb a big oak tree and sit in its comfortable fork and read away my cares. Unfortunately, we did not have any big trees in our suburban garden so I had to make one up.

   My childhood was almost entirely composed of daydreams and the writing of stories in my head. But if I could have remembered one of my stories of reading in a tree it would have gone rather like this:

THEY WOULD NOT KNOW I WAS HERE, either the little people or the humans who tended me. I was safe. No one could possibly know where flight had taken me, or where I was, or that I could be in a tree.
   I am caught up from the earth. I am high up in an emerald world. This is my fortress. From my window all things look balanced and I wonder that I did not come here sooner.   The realm below is pieced in segments like an orange. They do not know it. They do not have eyes to SEE. They are not even peeled. How do they expect to know anything? Crawling through the segments they are like grubs. Like caterpillars. They do not hear their wings deep inside them waiting to be born. They do not have ears to HEAR.
   All my pain comes out. It is running in streams down the tree. I am crying but no one sees. They have not known how to look above themselves, or how to find the way to touch this far. Their windows are pallid. They are covered. I cry for them.   I am my book. My book is me. I have learned to read myself. That is why I hear and see; the peel is gone.
   I sing and the sun reaches down from above. I stretch my wings and they are resplendent with light. This green world fills me with many books inside my head. This tree is a book. It slumbers through the day but it is full of stories. Where will I fly to next?

  

   My daughter is eating chocolate cake now. She half smiles at me. We are comrades in arms, her and me. Together we can take on the world. Perhaps one day they will open their eyes and SEE; for in hearing their wings will come out and take them to where we've been.  

   It is our childhood that is the time for unlimited possibilities; sad if we have lost it.  

   ‘A little child shall lead them.’

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Story: 6. ) The Book-Hammock / from A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE: A Rain of Booklight; A book about books

 The Book-Hammock

  When the cicadas start singing I know summer has come at last. Heralds of a new season of warmer weather, these large winged insects up in the trees carol the joy of balmy days in the sub-tropics of northern New Zealand. At times they sing so loudly –probably because there are so many of them – that they are almost, deafening. But it’s early days yet. They have not long begun their serenades of summer. And by the time they reach their highest decibels our ears have adjusted and we no longer notice the sound. Though, from their first day of breaking out in song, I begin to remember an annual, accompanying delight – the book-hammock in our wilderness garden! For half the year it is put away; and it is the cicadas which remind us to put it up again.
  In our little plum and pear orchard on the south side of our Edwardian house, built by the pioneer European settlers here, there are two trees a perfect distance apart. Here our wide, white hammock is tied up; and when there is ‘nothing to do;’ more frequent in the summer Christmas holidays than at any other time, one can recline and read for an hour or two in the languid, dappled light of our singing orchard.
  There is a curious appendage to 'the book-hammock,' which has given rise to its name. A small, white wicker basket is attached by a very short white rope about half way along on one side; it sits in the hammock till I throw it out and then it hangs in just the right position to reach into with ease. Inside the basket are several items wrapped in a waterproof bag – books and biscuits – they seem to go together! Through the summer the basket is replenished from time to time to keep everything fresh and always delightful.  

  I believe hammock-reading is a glorious idyll engrafted in every daydreaming romantic soul. The writers and painters of the Victorian age romanticized nature’s whimsy in dreamy portraits in word and paint which have entered our hearts. Ever since I saw the painting “Sunlight and Shadow,” by the famous American painter Winslow Homer I have found hammock-reading wholly enchanting. Amongst a profusion of delicate leaves, which are dressed in various shades of viridian green in the dappled light, a young woman in a beautiful long white dress lies in her hammock reading a book. The painting has made hammock-reading iconic.
  But instead of cicadas, one hears the bees buzzing in Britain, and the occasional fly, and the constant chatter of sparrows and the song of blackbird and thrush. Rustlings of summer zephyrs through the leaves above and all around, bathe one in varying degrees of warmth and comfort; while the delicious fragrance of all the flora blend together, to make one feel fairly drunk on airy wine; and for those who need it, it lulls one to nap; even to sleep. Peace, sweet garden peace.
  The book, too, works its magic and while we rest we escape; we leave our cares behind awhile and disappear; we enter another world. But the ‘book-hammock’ is more a symbol of altruism than of hedonism; the joy and liberty one finds there, works more for the benefit of others than for one’s self: a rested person is of more good use than a frazzled one! I feel I am doing my family a favour by reading in my book-hammock! If a book is like a tonic, then hammock-reading is good medicine.  J
  
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Story: 5. ) Shipboard Reading / from A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE: A Rain of Booklight; A book about books

 Shipboard Reading    

   Shipboard reading was sparsely spread between shipboard chores; there was always so much to be done and there were few spaces left in the day for ‘doing nothing;’ (which is what reading was considered to be during our days at anchor in the little coves and bays of the islands of the seas.) Of course, one occasionally read the pilot books – seamen’s instruction books concerning the waters one sailed in – if one didn’t want to be shipwrecked, that is! But when there was time in the evening and kerosene to spare I could fill the cabin’s gimbaled lamps and read and escape.  With no engine, no battery, no electronics, on board our tiny ocean going sailing yacht, there was no power, of course for books in dimensions other than paper and cardboard. And we were none the worse for it; except when we were shipwrecked off the Sahara Desert – (we hadn't read the pilot book for that area!) – for we couldn’t contact anyone to come and rescue us!
   But in easy going days when we were at sea I could sometimes tie up the tiller, get her self-steering by the set of her sails, and bring out a book and read to my heart’s content in daylight hours – with one eye open, for a look out at the ocean ahead, of course. You never knew what might be there: a basking shark, a whale, a ship, or another yacht; (or the Sahara Desert!)  Lying in the sun listening to the song of the sea creaming past us, the reflecting water, glinting its own story of the sky, the skimming fulmars and shearwaters the near-land cry of the wheeling seagulls, I could read and dream and not get seasick. Wonderful books were read this way! Their excellent worth made evident; for they quickly bore a much-loved look; caught by the sea spray when we crashed into a wave they flew off the cockpit seat into the scuppers and got wet. But, unlike electronic books, (except those in watertight cases, I suppose?) they survived the ordeal and lived to see another day at sea decorating our shipboard bookshelf, which told a tale in itself, of who we were and how we lived, and what we liked.
   Shipboard reading was great! An escape upon escape! 

 

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Story: 4. ) A String of Red Beads / added to A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE; A Rain of Booklight; A book about books

A String of Red Beads                                                                                                      

   A row of ancient books I saw upon a shelf. Of course, I had seen them there many times before, but this time I ‘saw’ them: drawn to them. So I took a few and stood them up on the bedside table, where the lamp was, and turned off the main light. The lamp’s golden glow lit up the books and seemed to give them life, shining on their gold leaf writing pressed hard into their poor spines; broken, or about to break. I loved them. Not because I was interested in their stories; I did not know what they were. They were too hard for me to understand; I had never read them. I just wanted to absorb their flavour, and write like they did, but without reading them. I think I had stepped outside all the boundaries that imprison the child and make of it an adult; and escaped, I could do as I pleased. So, very small, I slipped inside the books themselves; and with their pages all round me, their pretty ways of stringing words together became an oil, which poured itself into one of my many corners, and quickened me. Suddenly that which was impossible I could do, for I was a child. And from then on I wrote whatever popped into my head; and I was pleased. But it was not always easy.

   One day with inkpot and loosed feather I found it writing what seemed to me like a string of ripe-plucked cherries. The hard things I knew were their red hearts, and the oil, fleshing out their inward part in dreams and in visions the succulent part beneath their skins. Once ‘eaten’ there strung on a black ink thread of words was a string of ‘red beads.’ A living story-bracelet left of life preserved by death!                                                 

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An extract from the book THE LIGHT TREE JOURNAL, Portrait of a Lost Star. 

This book is listed in the right hand column of this blog site . . .

Story: 3. ) Winnie the Pooh at Sea / from A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE: A Rain of Booklight; A book about books...

Winnie the Pooh Sails the Atlantic Ocean

  When I was 20 I ran away to sea; but before I left I grabbed a few things which I couldn’t bear to leave behind and never see again. I had only a small, school size backpack and so not much would fit in. I took just the least amount of clothing so that I could stuff in my treasured possessions – a green jewellery box inherited from my mother, and a set of pale blue books won as a prize by her when she was a little girl: the original Winnie the Pooh books by AA Milne. (Perhaps my selection was subconsciously decided by the fact that she had just committed suicide, three weeks previously; my reason I suppose, for running away from home.)

  And so, anyway, after an abrupt departure from his bookshelf Winnie the Pooh went to sea – ‘in a beautiful pea-green boat;’ though for considerably longer, than ‘a year and a day.’ He set sail with me for five long years; and with a strange man, very much older than us, in a little engineless 28ft gaff-rigged sloop, heading out for far distant horizons; and adventures, many, glorious, and terrifying!

  Winnie the Pooh, UNDOUBTEDLY THE MOST FAMOUS OF ALL BOOK CHARACTERS, sailed from West Wales to England and from England to Ireland and from Ireland to Gibraltar and on to West Africa. Surviving shipwreck off the Sahara Desert coast, and living to tell the tale of his hair-raising subsequent voyage across the Atlantic in a brand new boat his owner built on a beach in Dakar beneath seven coconut trees.

  Crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 17 days, and at an average speed of 7 ½ knots, Winnie the Pooh finally reached the Americas, South and North; ending his days on the canals in Florida. For there, very sadly, he was inadvertently left behind when his owner ‘jumped ship’ and flew home to Wales.

  One can only hope that he and his friends remain safely on board, on the vessel’s bookshelf, and continue to enjoy their seafaring voyages and life on the ocean wave till the end of their days.

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