Story: 18. ) The Book that was an Island . . .

(from new manuscript of short stories about books:
A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE: A Rain of Booklight)


The Book that was an Island

  Idly I picked up a stone from beside me where I was sitting. A small, black pebble. I toyed with it in my hands awhile, deep in thought. The pebble was cool and smooth; mindlessly handling it was somehow comforting. A kingfisher flashed by. It shot from one side of the inlet to the other. It disappeared; leaving behind it a trailing image of blue and green. 

  After awhile something made me turn my head again, and I looked down at the place from where I had picked up the pebble. I replaced it. Beyond, about a metre or so away I saw a larger stone, roughly square-shaped, with a faint split down its centre, almost dividing it in half. It was a very unusual shape for a sea stone; and it reminded me of something. So I stood up, and went over to it. I lifted it from the ground to look at it more closely. The split was actually a line of white quartz.

  Help is never very far away. Suddenly a string of instantaneous images flashed a path through my midst like a kingfisher’s dive opening and lighting a hidden story to tell; the truth that was in me suddenly given shape and form; a body and a substance in which to express it. I was amazed. I smoothed the book stone, and gave thanks in my heart. Gently I returned it to its place and walked on down the shallow inlet towards the beach. Walking along the sandy shore I noticed the few sea-tossed stones scattered there, and the strange sequence of images I had fleetingly seen; of people being like ‘pages’ and books being like ‘islands.’ After awhile the images fell into an order, and made sense: infused with love. When I got home I wrote the story. (It was from this that the idea came for the poem or ‘ragged writing:’ A Book is like a Sacred Isle.)

  It was in the beginning. And in the beginning was a vast sea. Up from the midst of the sea I saw an island appear. The island was one great stone made of many pages which had a lived history written within them, and so they lived. The pages had been gathered into one place. Sewn together they had become the book which was the island, which lived.

  Time passed. The island grew. For another whole set of pages was found. These were gathered and sewn together as the first were, and they were added to the first which then became one single book. And the book was as a mighty rock, a sacred island, and became a stone of stumbling in the world, and a rock of offence.

   In time an explosion of light shook the world. In the fiery light the island was split, and divided, and multiplied; and became as millions of tiny islets which went into all the world. Each of the tiny isles were as parts of the book that was an island; and they were people.

  The islets began to understand their pages; and they were very pleased with their understanding. The more they thought they knew and understood of the history of the world written on the pages, the more they were separate and the sea increased around them and they were further away. They did not know that they could never really comprehend it.

  The more they studied it the more they gathered themselves together and became separate from the world; for the islets unconsciously measured everything by their knowledge. Wherever their measure was their own knowledge, there was not love. So the world filled with millions of tiny islets that held tightly to their own knowledge, and wouldn’t let go.

  Time passed. The sea grew. The world grew. Some of the islets had learned in the explosion of light the true way to know their book – by letting it go:  so that it could ‘go!’ Their pages were full of the energy of love: and light. They had learned this ‘back-to-front’ way to understand their book, and they were no longer separate: bridges went from them across the sea into the world.

  Now there were two forms of islets in the sea. Those which clung to their knowledge, their light was dim. But those which released their knowledge, and let it go for love; their light was bright and shone as a lamp all around about them.

  People and the ancient history Book, which are understood by the mind alone are only half seen, and limited; but those understood with the inner spirit of love are seen more, and are limitless; but, it takes a miracle for it to happen.

  It could be that miracles happen if one probes and questions the boundaries of one’s world: believing that what lies beyond its horizons is really there and waiting. The doorway is real because we know it is there. The haunting is real, too; for there is ‘an unsatisfied desire’ in us, ‘more desirable than any other satisfaction.’  (C S Lewis)

                                               *

Wondering . . .

Faltering Steps

Faltering the steps I take in festive forays

Through the Lantern Brights in books . . .  

To find in light the strength to pass through dark

To loose the oil I find there, beyond the spine

Amidst the unseen streets I walk through gold

Find there my sight that turns my heart to see

My goings helped, and known and sheltered

And entered there: simplicity, and new happiness!

The Lonely Poet . . . in a World of Books . . .

                                         The Lonely Poet

The breeze that lifts my autumn leaf

That bends this silent flower stem

Tears from my midst the finished page

That cannot see what it shall be

But joined with life’s own rifling wind

Will write within the heart it rends

                        

                          *

In a World Books

From a lighted centre a beam goes forth:

A line in amethyst shooting depths of sight;   

Through a world of books it travels,

Finding stories in the river of life --- 

Thought open: the light beyond fills it

And a flow of angel’s tears are in me, pearled --- 

Falling softly in streams of insight burning bright

            

             

Where Next...?

A Rain of Booklight

Where next? What then follows on?

Through an inner mist I wander onward

Through a maze of speckled cloud

Not knowing if I’m right or wrong

Or where I’m going –

Trusting blind to the inner gifted vision:

Alive to the lonely dream alone

What next? Where then shall I write?

That any hear what I was given to say

A rain of booklight is in me - 

A pouring of oil but against the grain

In my centre, my way I find: not-knowing

A torrent through any subject flows:

Alive in light and life, I fit through all

                

                      *

An extract from the Introduction: part 4 / from: A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE . . .

   And What of Higher Forms of Writing?

  In thinking more deeply on the secret of books and the best way to go forward with revealing it, living and writing within the world of poetry came to me as almost the only way I could do it. As I fell in love with this whole subject of ‘books’ I began to see parallels, metaphors and analogies, which would only be free to rise and be freely expressed in me, in poetry: our inner language: spiritual language being needed to express spiritual ideas.
  Poetry seemed to bring life to any subject, and to lift it higher and higher. And here, poetry not for its own sake, but as being a better means in which to express higher ideas about books. So this not ‘a poetry book,’ per se, but simply a book about books that just happens to use poetry to tell its tale and bring out its light!

   In keeping with this idea, the poems for this book were purposely written in a light traditional lilt, and kept as short as possible, being intended for a general readership; and for those who recognize a poem as ‘a poem’ by its touch of musicality, and by its containing a truth that can be turned over in the mind and recited to oneself. Whether we care to admit it or not, carried over from our intuitive sensibilities usually left behind in childhood, there is within us a positive response to any hint or any recognition of rhythm.

   When the avalanche of poems that kept coming to me on this one theme of books, slowed down and finished, I suddenly found I was free to see that this was only half of what I could say, as regards the love of good books and reading; and I turned to prose, and wrote short essays, articles and anecdotes to my heart’s content …Seeking to inspire a furthering delight in the thought of ‘a book,’ and the world of books, to enthuse within us a renewed recognition of their power. 
  I tried hard to confine myself to prose, and so only a few of these pieces slipped through the noose and merged into poetry. (Or ragged writings, as I call them; I had once been so hurt, that I had stopped calling them ‘poems,’ and used the term ragged writings instead.) *

   *  (As explained in the foreword of The Ragged Writings of Everland; an Illustrated Collection of Poetry.).  

  Why a Book about Books?

  Why not? Why not go crazy about a favourite subject? I've been loving them all my life! I never thought, though, that I would write so many poems and articles about them! But in me I longed to promote books and reading, as a whole, and not for my own ends but for the benefit of all.

   The idea is of a beautiful book about books to CELEBRATE BOOKS; to encourage us all to fall in love with them again, but in a deeper way; a way which would bring us greater joy; and joy’s own ‘child:’ insight!   
  I saw this beautiful book would live out its life, openly, on a pleasant low table perhaps, inspiring us to pick up a book there, any book, and spend the evening reading, instead of watching! …To engage our mind actively, rather than forever passively; for our spirit learns and searches, hand in hand, with our working mind; becoming more alive as we wrestle with words and delve into the written world! 

  When is Nothing greater than Something? 

 One day when I had nearly finished writing the material for this book I suddenly remembered it’s starting off point, and I saw the incident a second time . . .  the quest alight! 

  I saw the book lying on the ground beneath the beautiful camphor tree in the old Stone Store park in Kerikeri; and was feeling again the sensation of my being ‘frozen’ in time. Now in remembering, and in thinking through that moment of a few months ago, I was illumined within and became aware of my unconscious knowing inside me not to pick it up; and of my ‘frozenness’ that I couldn’t even had I wanted to. Suddenly, I understood it! 

  I realized that had I picked it up and taken it, I would have missed out! I would have had it, but only in the natural, the physical; and I would have been satisfied there, and would not have had the extensive vision and insight which led to the creating of this book. 

   I had been prevented from one small natural action, in order to be open to a deeper one, and a larger understanding of books. Stopped from doing something initiated by myself, to receiving something, not of myself but from beyond me. 

   Not having something in the physical realm seems to make room for having something in the invisible realm . . . where everything is much larger.

  When is ‘nothing’ greater than something? When it replaces the old and multiplies the new and we have more than we began with. Like as air is as nothing to us, and yet it is greater than anything; for it is everywhere - and essential for all life!

The Lighted Quest . . . where was its Source? 

  Every bit of development in our inner lives seems to happen only little by little, like our bodies’ growth; one part of us slowly growing more alive and younger as the other gets older! Little bursts of intuitive light that cause this growth can happen any time. But it is astonishing how easy it is to miss these serendipities, these ‘little dips of stars,’ and happy coincidences, which once recognized contribute to our inside growth tremendously. I wonder how many have gone unrecognized in my life; but I am learning; learning to be more aware and to hear every whisper of life in my heart, and to see the world around about me. 

  So, I began to understand even more of the incident under the tree; and why, perhaps, I had been so ‘taken’ there. Something kicked in recently and jogged my memory, and again I remembered it; but this time, what had happened before that strange afternoon in the park several months ago. 

  A week before that particular trip south into Kerikeri, I had gone for a walk along the creek, up into the beautiful bush clad hills behind our house. All the water for the house comes, gravity fed from a spring at the source of the stream up there; and sometimes we have to check for breaks along the two kilometers of water pipe. I very rarely go up there; it’s quite a hike, and I’m not that fit. It is my husband who fixes the pipeline; but this day I went. And not to mend our natural water supply, but my inner one! 

  It took me quite awhile to walk to where I was headed in the bush, because there was no path and the undergrowth was fairly thick with moss covered boulders beneath huge pururi trees laden with epiphytes in the crooks of their thick branches and festooned with long hanging ropes of black supple jack. With the pururi trees, were tall nikau palms, and manuka, and punga tree ferns, and many other native shrubs and trees, making this a quiet, soft green world here unique to the Far North. How very different is the New Zealand bush from the Welsh woods I knew and walked in as a teenager in Wales. 

  A fantail darted past. It went dipping and dancing before me up the narrow valley. My soul entranced, reached out to the little bird; and love enveloping it, it stood out for me and seemed to take me along with it. When it chirped and sang it suddenly appeared to my mind, like, ‘a book’ . . . leading me. 

  By the time I reached my destination I was physically exhausted. I sat down and rested; my head on my knees, my eyes closed in deep peace. The quiet was in me, as well as in the bush all around me. I was in a place of beginnings; at the source of the Lighted Quest; at the source of Life, as well as of our water. 

  I opened my eyes and gazed absentmindedly at the spring: the small pool before me, and the narrow stream which ran from it in which were several black pipes. As I looked I think my imagination took over – it seems to work by itself sometimes, without conscious effort, even without my noticing it – and the pool began to get larger. The stones beneath the water grew larger, also. All at once I knew that in another realm they were actually ‘speaking.’ The stones were books! The little bird was, too! And I was given to ‘read’ them. Then I saw the whole world was a book, and everything in it had a story that could be read! 

  A leaf fluttered down, and landed in the centre of the pool sending tiny ripples running across its surface. A stray ray of sunlight piercing through the green branches overhead glittered on the spring; and up from the pool rose sparks of light, like drops of water spreading out like a fan. In a flash of insight, I saw books were like rivers, and swords, and pourings of oil! A rain of booklight was through a host of different things! I stood. I felt on the threshold of a new thing. Of possibilities, only an eye-blink away! I sensed a new, deeper, more satisfying way of thinking and living. And it was, oh, so close. An unspeakable sense of intense longing was there, caught up in the light streaming down to the pool and up again. 

  I was at a watershed; both literally and spiritually; and wondering what was next. In that magical moment, I somehow knew, deep inside me, that something would happen, through a book which I would one day find, that would change the course of my life and heal my hurt. 

  This knowing had been so fleeting it had escaped my grasp; but under that camphor tree in the park, the following week, I believe a hidden part of me, must have vaguely, half-remembered it. I was set upon a course of thought; sent sailing through the writing of this book; that I didn’t know I had been meant to write, until I was nearly at the end of it! There were a few more stories that I needed to tell. And I was so excited as I caught a glimpse of what they might be! We never know what will happen next; but whatever does, there will be a joy in it just waiting to come to the surface!


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Contact author if you would like to read this unpublished book as a pdf.
Email:   judithdeverell@hotmail.com