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: 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
  
                                                         *

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! 

 

                                                                  *

Story: 2. ) Tortoise & Hare Reading / from A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE: A Rain of Booklight; A book about books...

Tortoise & Hare Reading

 I find I read very slowly. So I have not read many books in my life. Unconsciously, perhaps, I am studying every sentence. Being a writer, I cannot seem to read anything written, without putting it through a microscope and examining its every facet. It annoys my family, somewhat . . . “Are you still reading that book?” “You’re not still on the same page are you?!” “How can you imagine you’re not mentally deficient?!!” J But wherever there’s writing I have to stare-read it; cereal packets at the breakfast table have had to be replaced by plastic containers.
  I fall in love with the book I am reading. In the long period of its closeness to me, its depths are mined, its writer found perceptive, and the content of its message distilled to its intrinsic essence in my delicious love affair with words. But it is all because I am such a slow reader. 
  Books change me. If one hasn't then I must have read it too quickly. So I read it again. What’s the point of a book, if it doesn’t make me a better person? And how can it do that, unless I have been inwardly challenged? Having had to struggle through bits I at first wanted to reject?

  And, to a lesser extent, as a writer, reading teaches me how to write. So what is the point of a book, if it hasn't increased my vocabulary, stunned me with the beauty of its word-patterns, and filled me with a fresh appreciation of the English language.

  Words are powerful things to me; living things. Let them get into my core and I am extended to deal with them: elasticated; made more flexible to take in more challenges to my own, potentially unlimited personhood. Books are chisels. They chip away at the old bits of me, making me new. Books stretch my horizons. Spin me into new orbits. Lead me into ever expanding spheres of living.

  And as to the question of velocity . . . If ‘a good read’ can be judged by the speed at which one devours it, then I am a tortoise; but wasn't it the tortoise, which beat the hare and won the race?

  At the end of the day it is not how many books I have read that makes me new, but the content I digested that made me less narrow and more fully 'me,' or who I am when light entered.

                                                   

                                                                   *

 - extract from, A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE; A Rain of Booklight;  Judith Evans Deverell.

The Placemark Poems / Where Am I?

  

Where have I reached in that inner place

Through reading this book, thus far;

Have I found its treasure yet, and applied it?

In even its most distant, misted concepts

Have I seen the writer’s intended message 

Learned the precepts its many-sided light reveals?

Poem from a Sequence:

A Rain of Booklight; 

Part 2;

The Placemark Poems, # 5

© Judith Evans Deverell, 2014

The Bookmark Project

Writing Saga # 31 / The Bookmark Project / 1st Progress Report!

   I never thought for a moment that I would write so many poems about BOOKS! …And I have only just begun!

   There’ll be 30 poems which begin with the phrase: ‘A book is like . . .’ and I have posted 18 of them to date…making a total of 12 more to come!! I am looking forward to designing them into bookmarks to give away; scattering them in public places, such as secondhand bookshops and libraries.

   Eventually these poems will form part of a new book: ‘A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE.’ The other 20 poems included will also revolve around this theme of ‘books;’ and there will be a number of essays and prose pieces on the subject, also. 
   In my mind's eye, I see it fully illustrated with beautiful pictures, drawings and paintings and photographs...an appreciation of literature...with its aim the celebrating, promoting and encouraging of the love of books and reading. 
   To live as a ‘coffee table’ book, perhaps; to inspire the household to pick up a book…and spend the evening reading, instead of watching!