Story Diary.) Words of Hope . . .

      I've recently been thinking about continuing my book: A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE: A Rain of Booklight; a Book about Books; I realized that I had only written and posted them here on this Blog site and that I needed to collect them into a manuscript; so that is what I've doing for the last two days.

     But as I was working away I wondered why I had bothered writing all this ‘Book about Books’ stuff anyway:  nobody would ever read it!  (My irrational fear of approaching publishers has been growing lately, rather than shrinking!)

      Then yesterday evening a dear friend of mine, Ray, texted me that he had just finished reading all the poems for this proposed book, which I had sent him over two months ago, and what he shared encouraged and comforted me . . . for I know that Ray only writes circumspectly, truthfully, and is careful with his praise of anything I've written:  so that when he does write a kindly critique I can be assured of its veracity!

     ‘. . . I really loved the ‘A BOOK IS LIKE...’ poems . . . quite amazing wee things!’  

     I’d been seriously thinking that I must have been crazy to write over 40 poems on the same theme!! ...When I asked him if people would get sick of so many poems with the same opening line . . . ‘A book is like...’ ...he said:

    ‘I thought they were all quite different and unique so that makes them good.

    Then after Ray texted the above he reminded me of 'The Bookmark Project' idea....I had almost forgotten it!  I must give it some more thought. He wrote:

   And if they are printed on bookmarks then it’s a good thing that there are so many, like ‘collectors’ things!’

    Just a few words of hope . . .  and a little bit of encouragement go a long way!   J

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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.   
 
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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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