Conjure the book you most want to read

"I began doing what came most naturally to me – that is, following the memory of the things I had loved best since boyhood. Instead of making myself write the book I ought to write, the novel that was expected of me, I conjured up the book I myself would have liked to read, the sort by an unknown writer, from another age and another country, discovered in an attic."
    The voice is that of Italo Calvino, describing how he found the mode of experimental, "fabulist" writing for which he is famed. He was talking about the choice he made after the disappointing reception of three novels he had written in realist style. The result was an extraordinary short novel titled The Cloven Viscount (Il visconte dimezzato). He wrote it in 30 days over the summer and early fall of 1951 and it was published the following year.His unlikely protagonist: a 17th century viscount whose body is cut in two by a cannonball.
    I recommend Calvino's example to any writer who wants to bring something brave and new into the world: conjure the book you would most like to read.

Source: The quote is from Italo Calvino's introduction to Our Ancestors translated by A. Colquhoun (London: Vintage, 1998) vii.

Chicken tarot

My sketch for the 3 of Disks, inspired by the contribution that chickens in the yard made to our lunch breaks during my Tarot for Dreamers workshop at The Dragon's Egg, Mystic last weekend. I have always thought of the 3 of Disks or Pentacles as a positive card, but suggesting that there is a price for manifesting good things on a physical level. No windfall here. Rather, the need for honest labor, and to take your time to do a job well.
    Now "Hatching" seems a suitable name for it.

Speaking Land

Everything is speaking to you.
The tarot Fool is out of the deck
and walking up the drive
with the patterns of the world in his sack
to remind you (if you’ll listen)
that to be wise you may need to be crazy
in the eyes of others - and not confuse this
with behaving like a bloody fool.

The chickens in the yard can teach you
multiplication and what you need
to hatch that dragon's egg you have inside.
Hawk will come over, more interested in you
than a chicken dinner. Are you ready
to soar on his wings, and claim his vision
and see your life roads from his sky?

Everything is conspiring to show you
what heaven and earth want to happen.
When you think your way is lost,
when there are mountains of glass
and concrete between you and your dreams,
the ones who move beyond the curtain
of our consensual hallucinations
and speak as the wind in the trees
as the call of a bird, as the bark of a fox,
will open ways where you least expect them.
All you need are new ears and fresh eyes.

-          - March 25, 2013

Art: "Dream Path II" by Dorothy Englander

A lost and found twenty

In the category of I Couldn't Lose It If I Tried: 

Standing in line at the bank, I take out my cell phone, which I keep in the same pocket as some loose $20 bills, a couple of which come out, jammed under the lid of the phone. I cash a check with my favorite teller who says, "Whoops, I nearly gave you an extra twenty." 

     There's a stir in the line behind me. They've found something.
     "Something good?" I ask, turning to the people behind me.
     "A twenty dollar bill!" 

     "It's probably mine," I say to the old boy who's got it. This is probably true, given what happened when I pulled out my phone. "But it's found money, so you keep it."
     "Oh no, I'll hand it in to the teller." Honest fellow.
     "Really? I think you deserve the good luck."
     "Someone may claim it." He gives the $20 bill to the teller.
     "I guess that would be you," the man behind him says to me.

     "Maybe you should keep it," I say to the teller.
      "Oh no, we're not allowed to take money." She hands the $20 bill to me. 

      It's all but certain I am the one who lost the $20. Nice to think it touched so many people before it came back to me.

The 20th trump

I must add that before this incident, I was reflecting on one of the most powerful and original images in the Wildwood tarot. It is the depiction of the 20th trump as the Great Bear. In older decks, this is called Judgment and sometimes shows the dead rising from their graves. Aleister Crowley didn't care for the Christian eschatological reference and renamed it the Aion in his Thoth deck. My personal name for Trump XX is "Showtime!"
     I love the Wildwood image. It makes me think of something being called up from the dark places of wisdom, and of the bear rising from winter hibernation. Between two ancient yew trees, we see the mouth of a passage tomb. A fierce white bear stands guard, holding the space for the one who will rise through death and rebirth. The constellation of Ursa Major, the Great Bear, shines in the sky, suggesting that the cave initiation can carry you to the stars. There is no judgment here, in the old moralistic or theological sense - rather, the promise of rising into an expanded, superabundant life. Showtime!

Stoat on the path

I am getting to know the Wildwood tarot, whose beautiful images are painted by Will Worthington. I love the animals that take the place of the usual face (or "court") cards.
    The Stoat, tagged here as the Page of Bows (=Wands in other decks) has come up a couple of times in recent readings. Better known as the ermine or short-tailed weasel in North America, the Stoat is described in the book (written by Mark Ryan and John Matthews) as a fierce hunter who lives underground, adept at changing colors with "mystical links to the sovereignty of the land."  As a person in your life, the appearance of this card may flag "a charming and adventurous individual who may act as an ambassador."
   I note, researching the natural habits of stoats, that they don't dig their own burrows; they take over the homes of rodents they kill. They have that great ability to change with the seasons, by putting on and later taking off those thick winter coats. In folklore, they are iffy as omen beasts. In Ireland, the old ones said it's not likely to be a good day if a stat crosses your path - unless you greet it as friend and neighbor. In history and society, the ermine has often denoted rank or royalty, and not only as a fur collar. There is a portrait of Elizabeth of England with a white stoat (ermine) on her arm.
   When the Stoat comes up in the place of the Page of Bows, or the Eel as the Knight of Vessels, I am less inclined to think about the procession of the court cards familiar from other decks and simply to go with the qualities of the animals that show themselves - whether as aspects of the querent, or of someone entering his or her life, or as denoting an inner or outer event.

When the clock is the writer's friend

Timed writing. 30 minutes max. So you can make room for it in almost any schedule, and make yourself do it when you don't want to.
    You stop when the time is up, like on Top Chef. Drop the pen, close the Word document. You're not finished? Great, that means when you return to the draft, you know exactly where to pick up. Oh yes, and since you are not on Top Chef with the clocks running in front of the cameras, you can always cheat and steal a few minutes more.
    We do this in my writing playshops. We do it every day during my writing retreat "Writing as a State of Conscious Dreaming." Sometimes we raise the bar. For example, you have 30 minutes, in your own space, to produce a page you can read to the group. Or: you have just 5 minutes, in the space of the whole group, to write a quick sketch that you can share.
    Yes, writers can make the clock their friend. If you have only 30 minutes or less, perfection is not on the agenda. There is simply no time to entertain the inner critic, or indulge the procrastinator. They'll come after you later, but not right now.
    In my writer's life, the clock can be a friend in larger ways. I love fierce delivery dates, like 5:00 p.m. this afternoon, or tomorrow, or the first of next month. Possibly because I used to be a journalist, accustomed to rushing copy together for almost instantaneous publication, I'm not impressed by deadlines that are too far into the future. On a certain level, I have learned that you can't really start a book (as opposed to an article) the night before a due date and expect to hand it in on time. But part of me still wants to approach any writing project, even of book length, that way. I would have thrived on the serial model of publication of both fiction and nonfiction that prevailed in the heyday of Balzac, Dickens and H.G. Wells.
   Blogging is a consolation, and a gentle workout for the writing muscles, but not the same thing.
   I don't put blog writing on a timer, just the big stuff. When I next turn the dial on my timekeeper - you can see he is a very fierce enforcer - it will be in the cause of bringing through some more pages of a new book.

The mirror of living and dying

Die while you're alive
and be absolutely dead.
Then do what ever you want:
it's all good.

- Bunan (1603-1676)

Come alive when you're dead
and be absolutely alive.
Then do whatever you want:
it's all good. 

-Nanub (1676-1603)

Photo by Lindy Booth