Writing Saga # 35 / Diary Extract for Thursday, 11th December, 2014

Much has been happening lately, so I’m reassessing where I am at with my new writing projects …I find reducing my ‘writing-work-thoughts’ down to a list helps me to sort myself out! J Here’s my list:

1)      PROJECT ONE:  I’m currently working on the "book about books,” A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE; A Rain of Booklight. I have nearly finished the poetry section of this book: Parts 1 & 2, and I am just beginning Part 3; the prose section: anecdotes of personal thoughts on the vast subject of "books." So far I have written four anecdotes:  (1.) Compassion; (2.) Tortoise & Hare Reading (3.) Winnie the Pooh at Sea! And (4.) A String of Red Beads (which is an extract from my book, THE LIGHT TREE JOURNAL.)  Today I have made a tentative list of twenty-five titles of proposed anecdotes for this section of the book. I look forward to writing these; and at the rate of one per day, hopefully; interspersed with other writing projects, perhaps. I enjoy the brief bursts of creativity in short piece writing work; and the sense of accomplishing a thing complete in itself is rewarding, too. 

2)      PROJECT TWO:  I am also currently working on the next “cameo” of the novel STORYCHASER; Sketchbook of Solitude; I have written it, but not posted it here yet; I feel I have more editing work to do on it first. This is a work being written entirely by faith; i.e. not really knowing what I am going to write before I write it. It is a very exciting form of writing; and one I am used to. I find I can truly flow in it. But it does require great self discipline: I have to overcome ‘the initial niggle’ that I can’t do it; but that, soon disappears as I set my fingers over the keys and just write what comes without thinking too hard. I actually spent most of 2012 and 2013 writing this way; and completed a kind of spiritual memoir titled: THE LIGHT TREE JOURNAL; a Twelve Month Story-Journal; Portrait of a Lost Star.

3)      PROJECT THREE:  I have recently had someone inquiring about my sailing adventures…my five year stint afloat…having no home other than a succession of three small yachts…suggesting that I should write more on this; and very kindly encouraging me to do so.  I have only written briefly on this period of my life, mainly in THE SHIPWRECK STORY; a single chapter extract from DAWNING… my autobiography. So I spent a little time the other day, making notes…starting a list of all the things I can remember of this highly adventurous but often traumatic time, with a view to writing it up in a form suitable for serializing in a magazine. At the moment I don’t really want to think of turning it into a full length book…too many other projects!! J

Story. ) "Star" / from STORYCHASER: Sketchbook of Solitude / A Novel

Storychaser . . . Listening Art . . . A Sketchbook of Solitude . . . A Novel . . .


            Star

                

JUST AS A PEBBLE, when thrown into a pool, creates a series of ever expanding concentric ripples, so was it the way of things in the life of Raef Aylingson. Inwardly, as a stone thrown into this world, perhaps there were circles of influence, he thought, spanning from the initial vortex of one’s fall, spreading unto the outer limits of all thought and experience. Geographically, he could see this same picture in yet another sphere. And from his perspective, at the very edge of it. Perhaps from the furtherest out he could see the furtherest in.

  In the innermost centre of this picture was a city, and on the edge of the city, a suburb, and on the edge of that a village, and on the outskirts, a few scattered farmhouses. Furtherest away was a single cottage; simple, painted white and well kept. Beyond this was a bit rough rolling pastureland soon rising to woods and high hills, and beyond these were the wild moors.

  Raef had lived in this cottage for most of his life. He had been born in the city; but he had grown up here, far away from it. Here he had educated himself; and become a writer; and ostensibly a shepherd of a small flock of sheep. In this cottage he had been living alone for the past six years, ever since he was seventeen; because then his family had moved back to the city, and he had chosen to stay behind; to look after the cottage, he said, and to tend their smallholding. But, more truly it was to maintain the solitude which for him had been all the university he felt he had needed – the school of the soul – of which he would always be a student. His heart seemed to have been set in him from birth toward the Quest of Life; to seek and to learn from the world all around him convinced that he would find. And, through all that had happened to him, during the last few years – through the star and the finding of a wayward sheep – he had become at heart a chaser of the inner story; a searcher of living truth.

  On the evening of 4. March, each year, Raef could be found sitting outside the front door of his cottage, leaning against the wall on a wooden bench there, and in a more somber mood than usual; for this was a day to be remembered; the anniversary of the day of the first finding.

  He sat now as he always did in the evening before he went in to read awhile, his grey cat on his lap, gazing out before him at the familiar countryside; but, on this day of days, the night seemed always to be bathed in Mystery’s keep; speaking of ancient secrets about to be revealed in the wavering moonlight. The wooded hills beyond the pastureland, and the distant dark moors where he had found the little image, they always looked nearer on this night; but his hopes of ever recapturing even one of his former extraordinary experiences there seemed to him even more far off; and his heart sank within him.

  Yet only for a moment; he looked up. The shapeless cloud cover had drifted away and the stars shone down. Suddenly he remembered the opened window, and the wind tossed pages on the floor in his room. No wonder he had unconsciously drawn that pattern of stars, only a few nights ago – one group of stars in their curious constellation; his sub-conscience had been searching the deep he realized; even teaching him, leading him to remember a strange, little object, and how he had found it so long ago, on this night.

  Then it occurred to him that he had been ‘sitting still,’ waiting for ‘it’ to happen, for too long. It was exactly three years now. Perhaps he should have gone back to the site of the falling and the burnt circle of grass; he had often intended to. Maybe that would be the place of ‘the finding;’ the physical place returned to literally, rather than relying on his continual internalizing of it, waiting for ‘something’ to happen, within him; which could go on forever. Why had he not he returned there, he wondered? If the thing had happened to him in the first place, because he went, then perhaps, if he went again, something would happen again, he reasoned. Or perhaps it had just been a dream, and it never really happened at all.

  Inadvertently he made a small movement. Stella must have felt it, for she leapt off his lap; and with her tail held high she shot off into the dark, rapidly vanishing into the shadows of the little garden. He saw her for a brief moment; her silhouette on top of the jagged, upright narrow rocks of the old stone boundary wall, just before she disappeared altogether, on the other side.   

  For a long time Raef sat and wondered. Then as he would always do on this evening, in memorial, he reached inside the breast pocket of his plaid shirt, underneath his old sheepskin jacket, and took out the small treasured object, wrapped in a scrap of red and green material torn from an old shirt. He unfolded the cloth carefully and laid it on his lap. He stared at what it contained for a moment, before picking it up and holding it in the palm of his hand. It was a sacred thing he felt; something to be handled with love and respect, for this truly was a wonderful thing.

  At that moment the moon shined especially bright and the little silver object in his hand seemed to reflect its light; or, was it shining of its own accord in its own light again? He could not decide. Then the tail of a cloud passed over the moon and still the thing shone brightly. He chided himself for his unbelief; of course the star shone out of its own self; just as it had from the beginning. It was not a thing of this world. He had known this. But the cares of this life had dulled him, and his faith in the unbelievable had dimmed. 

  The little silvery star in his hand was now truly glinting; from it were darting tiny beams as of fire. Of course, STORYCHASER lived; this beautiful metallic star had found its twin: it was full of a living light! 

  And once more he was as he had been a chaser of falling stars; and on the frosty night, of another 4. March, three years ago this night.

                                                                  *

            Back link to previous cameo:
            Writing Saga # 28 / Cameo 1; "Destiny" / STORYCHASER; Sketchbook of Solitude: a Novel
          

            Forward link to next cameo:
            Cameo 3;     / STORYCHASER; Sketchbook of Solitude: a Novel 

        

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