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.

Writing Saga # 33 / A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE; A Rain of Booklight / Where Next?

Where Next?

    I am in the midst of writing A Rain of Booklight: a large sequence of poems, which forms two sections of a book titled: A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE: a Book about Books…and I am trying to sort myself out and figure out what on earth I am doing and where I’m going!

   Endlessly writing for years, never making any attempt to seek the publication of the books I write, I find I have finally moved out of a particular groove I've been stuck in for ages, and the field has opened out wide to explore the next, whatever the next is!

   Part of this ‘sorting-myself-out’ phase has been to begin a blog site, Amethyst Poetry, in which to catalogue my writings, (book titles are listed down the right hand edge, which on ‘clicking’ provides a brief synopsis of each one,) and present myself with a daily platform, the daily necessity for further inspiration and work. This opportunity afforded me every day to write ‘something’ is quite amazing; without it, I feel now that I would flounder about lose the path and waste my time with ‘red herrings.’ Having to write chronologically, day by day, one step after another in some kind of logical sequence in a public place provides me with a kind of responsibility, even if only to myself. A responsibility for the gift that is in me.

    Where next? I don’t know. But on 10^th November, 2014, it suddenly dawned on me that . . . writers need readers.  Whereas I had been quite happy that no one ever read anything I wrote, I now realized, that I might write better if I had a reader! And so I began to consider how to promote this blog site…it was a way of access to my books for readers to find…and read. Scary! Yes! …Very! But it doesn’t matter.

    ‘Writers need readers.’ I thought deeply on this, and came to the conclusion that if I wrote anything I needed to change my perspective and write things people would like to read. Much of my writing till then had been of the things which no one could bear: the things which went against the self: where I found my light, my glory, and joy unspeakable. I had found a way to the end that we all seek; but a bridge needed to be built, to step across the divide to reach it; or I would keep on being misunderstood and rejected forever. I saw this clearly now.

    But where next? I knew I needed to promote my blog site; but how? What would people like? …What would I like? That was easy; I like to give. Readers (of paper books) need paper markers. In a flash I saw in my mind’s eye colourful, tasseled bookmarks. I would write poems about BOOKS. The shortest poems I would design into slim paintings for bookmarks, to give away; which had my BlogSpot address on the reverse side so that people could find me. [I have already written quite a bit about this idea, in earlier posts . . . ‘Writing Sagas # 30, # 31, # 32.’] 

    Then I saw that this avalanche of poems that kept coming to me on the subject of BOOKS would form a book of its own; to promote books and reading, as a whole; and not for my own ends. …It was the beginning of the bridge.

   Yesterday evening, all at once, it fell into place. I was given an inner vision suddenly seeing my writing path in picture form.

    Through a barren field I had walked for thousands of years. The field had been divided up into successively narrow furrowed plots, through which I had been walking blindfold in order to reach its end. My hand had always been held through this field, no matter how fearful it became; and the owner of the hand had successively been named, less and less; just as I could only reach the end, by being more and more blindfolded. Many times I had thought I had reached the end of this field; but I hadn't, not really. Still walking through one narrow furrow, one particular groove, stuck: my blindfold slipped, only a little; but even a little was too much. Then suddenly the field must have ended, because I could see nothing.  I could see nothing of it; almost as if it had never been; but of course it had, I had just been taken, further…further into a promised liberty…a glorious freedom from every furrow and barrier of mankind’s building.

    Now I was on the other side of the bridge, across the dividing river in a land of no fences. Here I ‘saw,’ or was reminded of, STORYCHASER, a book in embryo. Now I knew who he was this chaser of stories and that I could write this book I had had to abandon because I wasn't free enough.  And I ‘saw,’ just a little more the purpose of this book and how to write it; though only just barely enough to attempt more pieces of it in the days to come. For even here in a new land the method of any forward progress was the same. The same guiding principle governed this new land: walking blindfold: an act of simple childlike faith working through, love. Writing without knowing what I was going to write next or whether I was right or wrong. 

    Where next?  Wherever I would go, not-knowing. 

A Rain of Booklight

Where next? What follows night?

Through a mist I wander onward

Through a maze of lowering cloud

Not knowing if I’m right or wrong

Or where I am going

Trusting blind to the inner vision

Alive to the lonely dream alone

Where next? What could I write?

That any hear what I want to say

A rain of booklight is in me

A pouring of oil but against the grain

Let me tip it out, find my way not knowing

A torrent through any subject flows

Bending light in day it fits through all

From, A Book is like a Sacred Isle:

“A Book about Books”

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight

© Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

A Book is like a Looking-Glass

A book is like a looking-glass . . . 

   for me a mirror lake of tears un-shed  

A viewing thing of inward silver:

By its light I see the inside story

   of myself . . .

I look for peace, 

But see my heart’s own insecurities

   reflected back at me instead . . .

But, safe, joyous in another’s fantasy

   in storied freedom, all is without fear!

And yet, fear, what has it to offer peace

   if not experience of its own wealth:

      its own wisdom fathomed;

So, why flee, my soul, the spot you see?

Fear returns me great riches, 

   far beyond any peace could ever give! 

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight
Part 1  # 30

© Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

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