I nurture the love I have for others now, for it's precious and rarer than painite.

“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Seven Miles of Steel Thistles: DANSE MACABRE, a ghost story

Seven Miles of Steel Thistles: DANSE MACABRE, a ghost story: “I’m bored,” Philip whined. “Can't we go now?”             “Hush!” said Mum. He hadn’t been that loud. It was just that in this cold...

Exploring and writing truth with fantastical elements is how I work in both my art and writing.

 

Painting by Florence Susan Harrison.

"Fantasy is not antirational, but pararational; not realistic but surrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud's terminology, it employs primary not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes which, as Jung warned us, are dangerous things. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.” 

                       —   Ursula K Le Guin

This beautiful image and quote are from Terri Windling's gorgeous web page on the Symbol, Allegory, and Dream: The Art of Florence Susan Harrison, a thoughtful essay that also is a defense of writing the fantastical in good fiction.  Is this painting not gorgeous and all about surrender and passion and love. The link: https://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2014/03/symbol-allegory-and-dream.html

Windling, whom I have followed her entire career, wrote this piece back in 2014, and when I saw it, I really latched onto the idea that I could write a story about evolution and science in the form of a fairy tale. I had already written a draft or two of my novel previously. But I was never happy with it, and it wasn't because it was a rough draft or idea. It was its form and structure, it's arrangement of characterizations. I was reading Angela Carter at the same time, and I came across a story called The Erl-king, about the same moment I saw Windling's post and something clicked in my brain. I really could write a story about evolution as a fairy and folk tale. I would be able to do this with symbols and metaphors and even with a touch of allegory as Nathaniel Hawthorne used. It would be pure Romanticism, a sort of coming of age story and the narrator would be this rather ordinary human being who is faced with extraordinary circumstances, and it would be akin to my established patterns in my painting and other work, such as poems, etc. I would be exploring my thoughts on evolution and my absolute love of science and ideas and truth in a surreal fashion. But how? Laughing.

The devil is always in the details.

And as it goes in all art, I made mistakes, some that I could fix and some I could not fix with this project. At times, the work was impossible. I was limited. So limited.

I had to put this project away (many times), though I never lost sight of it. But it was not the first novel I had written and it was not even my "dream project." I have saved that for Second Book Syndrome, because I know exactly how that happens to writers. I now call my current work, The Ambitious Fairy Project. (It's hopeful because I have a #2 planned.) In the beginning, it was too damn ambitious and I did not even have the skill set needed to do it justice. And as the years passed, I began to believe I would never write and finish it. And there would be no second book because the first had never been completed. This is an awful reality for any creative. And I write this very sincerely. And even now, I have fears that I won't finish. I will never write another novel. I hold those feelings today as I write this post. But I am on the path. I am committed.  I even took a Cognitive Behavior Therapy program to help me get to this place where I could type the words,  I. HOLD. A. BELLIGERENT. COMMITMENT. TO. THE. WORK. And I have had to come at this project very differently than I worked previously though I had to keep my keen eye for objectivity, something that has been both a blessing and curse. I had to make order out of chaos, not only in my art but in my life.  Covid and illness plagued me. Yes, plagued me. The question of Prozac loomed large. Understanding the critical mind pressed me to the floor on occasion. And none of these things have changed. 

But I have changed. In bits and pieces. Fragile changes.

As the Le Guin quote alludes to, when we really work hard, we have to be vulnerable at the same time. We enter a dangerous territory where there is no safety and we have to find our way through more chaos and somehow organize it as we go. We cannot create order in the old, negative ways. We kind of have to surrender to it. As someone who works with intention and intellect, this has been very difficult to achieve. I am not someone who likes to be so intuitive in the drafting. I want more control. I want to understand it all. See the big picture. 

Yes, I can see the big picture. Laughing. But it's how I understand and deal with my critical mind THAT is completely different. How I am willing to let process overwhelm me and surrender.

It's funny and odd, but I kind of like surrendering right now. It's very passionate. How I fall.....

Smiling.

Heartsease would be a lovely name for a poem, a song, or a novel and it's also a lovely name for this painting.

John Brett
Heartsease 1862
Watercolor and bodycolor on card
'Heartsease' or pansies and fern-shoots; close-up study of yellow, blue and black pansies, delphinia, moss and fern-shoots. In the language of flowers pansies are associated with thought and the fragile beauty of young women. Brett was a British artist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement, mainly notable for his highly detailed landscapes.
— British Museum

Van Gogh is one of my favorite painters. Always.

Oleander by Vincent Van Gogh.

Is this what faith is?

“If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they'd immediately go 

 out.”

                   ― William Blake

I try not to define myself at all for I know who I am.

“When I suddenly see myself in the depths of the mirror, I take fright. I can scarcely believe that I have limits, that I am outlined and defined. I feel myself to be dispersed in the atmosphere, thinking inside other creatures, living inside things beyond myself.”

— Clarice Lispector

I am reflecting on my mother, Pauline Church.

This is my mother, Pauline Church, on the right, and her older sister, Virginia, on the left. There is something absolutely breathtaking looking at this photo of them sitting there with the little umbrellas, wearing dresses trimmed at the bodice and sleeves, and wearing socks and shoes. I've had to reflect on my mother this last month, our relationship, and just the general overall dynamics between a mother and her child. We were incredibly close all her life, yet often at odds, I suppose because we were both very independent and not afraid to say exactly what we thought. Today I had to face the reality of how much we were alike but how different our lives were when compared. She dwelt with a lot of indifference in her younger life. She idolized a father who died young and doted on a withdrawn mother who never got over being widowed too young. There were 5 other siblings, all younger. Life was work. Her world was limited and censored and lacked the culture she craved. So she never censored me a day. I was reading by age four. We had books and lived in the library. She read all the time. She was an incredible reader and her memory was unbelievable. She could sew, keep house, and was a great cook. She loved gardening. And traveled all the time. Queen of the Day Trips. But her life was hard. Very hard. And she could not spare me certain traumas. And as a mother she wanted to, though I never quite understood those particulars until now. Both these girls loved their children. Loved their family. All their lives. I think now, I was extremely lucky in the mother I had, and Aunt Virginia was one of the best aunts. All the gifts I possess as a person are due to my mother and father, but they were shaped by my mother and the things she wanted for me, a Catholic education, a childhood uncensored, culture, art, books, conversation, ideas, ideas, ideas. Every day trip was an adventure. I had asthma, she put in the tub and made me breathe like one would be swimming. I learned to swim in my grandmother's bathtub. I had depth perception problems. She told me I could see everything as well as anyone else. I did. She said I was smart, I believed her and I was. Of course, I learned that the world was chaos from her, too. I miss her. If she had lived, she would be a 102 this month. I can't even process that yet. In CBT, I came to the realization that I have no triggers, and try as I might I could not write a single one down in the last month. And believe me, I've had enough trauma to fill a notebook. I think I owe that to my mother, too. Laughing. No matter what happened to her, and a lot happened to her, she just went on until the day her body stopped and even that was in resistance. What a woman! Both of them. (I look like my mother and I have turned out to be as strong as her, too. Who knew?)

Witches and trees fascinate me.

Edward Gurden Dalziel

Description

Forest scene during the night, with two old witches sitting under one of the leafless trees at centre, a young witch standing at left, holding up a torch, and a horseman with flowing cape approaching in background at right; four monkeys in foreground, two pelicans and flying parrot behind; an owl and another bird flying above the witches; proof illustration for the magazine 'Judy', Vol 22 p 187, 13 February 1878.
Wood-engraving on thin paper, touched with white body color

Witches and Trees. There has always been a relationship between witches and trees. And so this was one of the first images that I put in my notebook for my WIP. Because I wanted to think about witches and trees for a long time. I wanted those thoughts to marinate so to speak. And I have collected quite a few images of witches and trees. Of lovers and trees, too. Those from mythology. Trees, normally, are deeply rooted. That alone, made me very interested in the concept of people and trees. How we like trees. I know I do. And I love trees with lots of roots that run along the surface of the ground. I distinctly remember such trees from my early childhood. I would walk the roots round and round and round. I also drew lots of trees when I was very young, the same way children will draw little square houses and then post stick people out front of it as their family or themselves. I drew more trees than houses and sometimes the roots took over the entire page. These drawings bothered my mother at times. But they turned out to be harmless. I drew them like I would later draw heavy vines wrapping themselves around one another. I was very attached to the movement of the lines on the paper. But I am deeply rooted. It's the one thing I have known for a long time, even when I suppressed it. I am rooted to a place.

It's October 1.

Two things.

It's time to decorate for autumn outside.

And I am drafting again until December 1st.