Kindreds

Today at lunch today I sat in the break room with my co-workers. Generally, I eat at my desk so I can optimize my internet time. But today I decided to be social.

That was an interesting experience because today has been one of those days where I feel I am observing my life more than living it, and I noticed how little I usually add to conversations in such settings. So this might not be a good mindset to carry around all the time, but they happen whenever they want to happen. I use days like today to harvest experiences or conversations to use in my writing.

When I am with a group of writers I feel on common ground. When with Robert, he and I are so much alike it’s sometimes unbelievable. With family, at least there is a lifetime of shared experiences to talk about. But in the public I feel like an outsider most of the time.

Do you feel like you fit into your workaday society?

Defining ‘Home’ – part 2: Home has to do with wilderness

This might make more sense if you’ve read Part 1 of Defining ‘Home’.

Since I was a young girl, I’ve always wanted to be closer to the wilds. There’s no logical explanation for this, it’s just something I was possibly born with and feel the need to indulge.

Home must be in, near, or around wilderness, preferably immersed.

I think this has to do with an innate sense of connection to the cosmos. I feel a part of it, but not more special than any other part. Being near wilderness allows the balance of nature to remain at the fore, and I like the front-row seat.

It feeds my creativity and nurtures my soul.

This segues neatly into the ‘developing my spirituality’ aspect of Home. If my place of residence is sapping my enthusiasm for life because it denies me the basic interaction with nature and wilderness I crave, it might not cripple my spiritual development. I might actually be growing in ways I otherwise wouldn’t, but my spirit itself feels enslaved and I don’t like it.

Right now, at this point, life is mostly about keeping my head above the financial waters. This fight for survival leaves very little room for anything else and it’s slowly but surely killing me. Either I must give up the dream… which I can’t even conceive doing at this point, or I must give up the consumer life. This is much more tolerable to consider.

From a spiritual point of view, this is called ‘Intentional Simplicity’ and I think I am about to embrace it wholly.
I won’t go into it without a plan, because I still have a child to feed and clothe and grandchildren to mentor, and now (thankfully) another party to my madness to consider… who might like a less-than-abrupt ascent.

In the near future, though, a plan is going to be formulated that will allow escape from the rat-race world I’ve been sucked into. Over the last several years I’ve found out how little I can get by on in terms of creature comfort. The only two conveniences I’d really like to maintain if at all possible are my internet connection and washing machine. After that, it’s all icing. Or pudding. Or desert… however you like to think of the excesses of life we think we need.

It might take several years to reach the point I’d like to reach and I’ll work doing whatever I have to in the meantime, probably right here where I am now. But I am willing to do without the things my day job might ordinarily afford. I’m not trying to have my cake and eat it too. I’m going to forgo the cake entirely. And we’ll eat garden produce instead.

Handling dynamite

There’s a crumbling box of dynamite on one of the ledges near our house. Someone must have used it many years ago, possibly many decades ago, to blast rocks from the hillside.

Not knowing what exactly to do about it, we’ve just ignored it over the years. It’s done nothing, we’ve done nothing.

Doing *nothing* only works out for so long. Last summer, Zack carried a stick home with him, sat it on the kitchen table. It had rolled out of the box, which I presume had degraded even further to allow the escape of one of its hostages to the ground below the ledge.

So there it sat on the table and we all stood around, trying to decide what to do.

*Nothing* became the modus operandi for that evening too. Once I got into bed that night, though, I found I couldn’t get to sleep with a stick of crusty dynamite on the table in the room below me.

I made him put it outside in a safe place.

The degrading box of dynamite hovers in the background of my mind. I know eventually I’ll have to do something about it. But it’s resided there for many years without causing trouble, so who knows? It could sit there many more years, or possibly even indefinitely without causing trouble.

But it’s an *unknown*. At least to me. Someone else might know more about such things and have a good idea of how dangerous or innocuous it is really.

If I were a character in a book, the dynamite represents an unresolved issue with a potential to create tension. This is a good thing, I believe, for a fictional character. Even if she never confronts the issue, it will crop up from time to time, often enough to propel the story forward. It’s a good mechanism to utilize.

Maybe at the end of the story, she’ll deal with that box of dynamite. Or maybe she’ll find out that it’s harmless. Either way, resolution of conflict can be subtle like that and this is the nature of conflict in my stories.

Does it always have to be action-packed to be interesting and entertaining? Can much of the conflict be quiet, in the thoughts and changing paradigms of the main character? I’m making sure to add action and excitement, at least I think I am, but there’s a lot going on beneath the surface, too.

Hmmmm.

Focus

Eye contact is a strange phenomenon.

Being part of my grand-daughter’s entrance to the world really brought home some of the things I’d been thinking about over the previous weeks.

My daughter gave birth to a child and that process was arduous. Because she wanted a natural childbirth experience, meaning no epidural, it required the skill to focus.

When her contractions became strong,my job began. My role was to help her remain focused. She chose a focal point. Lucky Kylan – it was his eyes she wanted to use. Eye contact, not just to look at his eyelids or eyeballs.

The difference there is crucial. To make eye contact with someone requires concentration, effort. Even a passing glance that results in eye contact sparks some sort of reaction. There is some sort of transmission that takes place.

I’m not sure what that’s about, but it seems meaningful. I’m convinced that what I witnessed during that event was something very special, sacred, even.

Have you ever held sustained eye contact with anyone? I’m talking 10 hours (well, that’s an exaggeration. It was only about 4 hours), with breaks every 2 to 3 minutes. When for whatever reason at any particular time, if I noticed her focus slipping, or Kylan’s, I called her to focus on my eyes instead.

To do this required vigilant watch to monitor the eye contact she had with Kylan because it’s very difficult to come back to focus once it is too far gone. There’s a *zone*, and the goal is to stay in it.

Something transpired during those moments, something that defies my attempt at explanation.

Childbirth in itself is a miraculous, sacred event. But the other part, the wordless eye contact… there is nothing I can say to describe it.

I have other comparisons to make, parallels of childbirthing experience to the writing life, and even to life in general. But I’ll save those for another day.

Specifically, I want to write about the focus, which is closely related to the things I was thinking of before the baby came. Visualization, goal achievement, dream statements, affirmations… they all require focus.

Seeing eye to eye

This morning on my way to work, something I saw made me think. It’s funny, because I’ve seen this same sight over and over again throughout the past several years that I’ve lived here where pastures and cows are ubiquitous.

Today, though, something connected. Something shifted. My paradigm tilted just a smidgen and another of the veils of obscurance were lifted. This happened so plainly, it was as if the optometrist had flipped back a lens that had been blurring my vision.

Two bulls were head to head in the field.

That’s what I saw, and that’s what prompted a whole lot of thinking. Strange, I know, for something so insignificant to be so thought-provoking. I’ve seen them do this before, all the time, in fact. Yet this time, I was *there*, present in the moment and the moment was all that existed. Surreal, but it didn’t turn any wheels yet. Then a little farther down the road, I saw the same scene, except this time the bulls weren’t equally matched. It was then that I received insight.

I guess it could be dangerous to experience surreal moments like these while driving, but so far, so good…

Anyway, none of this is earth-shattering revelation. Haha. It just meant something to me and is likely meaningless to the rest of the population. However, I’m sure at some point down the road, the experience of it, if not the insight, will turn up in a story somehow.

So here’s what came to mind when I saw the bulls. In the first set of bulls, they were equally matched – same size, same color, same breed and apparently of equal strength. Neither were able to budge the other. They just stood there forehead to forehead – eye to eye. See, it was the ‘eye-to-eye’ part that got me. I’ve heard the expression all of my life, but I never *understood*. Now, after seeing it in practice, I understand.

The other bulls were not matched, and one was pushing back on the other and the other was giving ground. They did not see eye to eye. In fact, I knew, from that brief glimpse as I passed them, that the one giving ground was soon going to be seeing things the way the more dominant one saw it. The weaker one would agree to step down.

To see eye to eye doesn’t mean to agree. It means to agree that the other has an equally valid point. I’d always thought it meant to agree. Period. And that’s how the dictionaries define it. But now I see differently.

My fifteen authors

I’ve been tagged by Josie to list fifteen authors who have influenced me. Oh my. That’s quite a lot and I’m ashamed I can’t even think of fifteen right off the top of my head!

Here’s the ones that come to mind:

1. Roger Zelazney
2. Marion Zimmer Bradley
3. Terry Pratchett
4. Stephen King
5. Thoreau
6. Peter Straub
7. Carlos Castenada

Not too many of the old ones, except for Thoreau and maybe Zelazney could be considered an ‘old’ one. Of these, the ones that have influenced me and my own writing most, I’d say, are King and Zelazney. I loved the way the Zelazney’s Chronicles of Amber  novels were short, engrossing reads (and first person, the way I like to write) with fantastic sci-fi/fantasy settings. What I love most about King is his ability to draw me in, even to places I don’t want to go. His writing causes me to entirely suspend my disbelief. And although I don’t like horror, I do like that quality.

Who are the authors that have most influenced your writing? If you’re not a writer, who have you enjoyed reading most over the years and why?

Paradigms

It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.
Carl Jung

Each of us brings a different set of criteria to the life we’re leading. We’re all on the same path, heading toward the same destination, but every one of us are reading a different map to get there.

Re-write

Today puts me back to the business of writing. Over the weekend, I took an intentional break, since I never really did get one after finishing the first draft of Symbiosis.

What I want to do this week, to have it ready for Thursday night’s crit meeting, is to rewrite the first chapter of The Calling in 1rst person POV.

I’d tried writing in 3rd (you can see that attempt here), but apparently it’s much harder for me to communicate what I’m seeing/hearing/thinking in that one because the connections weren’t made at last crit meet.

Already, as I’m thinking about it, I can tell it will be better. Perhaps POV becomes like a comfy pair of shoes to a writer, and putting on different pairs feels stiff and not so comfortable.

I’m just not sure I want to be so dependent on a single POV. I want to be able to write from any, it’s just that I’m better at the one, but if I let the story choose which one it wants to be told in I have to look into how it feels and sounds from both. (Can you hear the ambivalence in that run-on sentence?)

Should I practice from 3rd until I get it right, or should I revert to 1rst if it works? Is this a brick wall that needs to be beaten, or am I just making the craft harder for no good reason?

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Note: I’ll be out of touch for a good portion of tomorrow’s #teasertuesday, but when I get in that afternoon, I hope to see a bunch of snippets posted.

A Question about Sequels (#MentionMonday)

Last night I started a new story. At the time, it was intended to be a totally new story, not a continuation of Symbiosis, which I have duly placed away from my sight (and supposedly out of mind).

To make it even more different and provide even more of a break from the previous wip, I am even telling it from a different POV. Symbiosis is first person, this new one is third.

So it’s going along great, I have a vision and am writing it down. All of a sudden it dawns on me. The creature this new MC, Abbie, is talking to, just so happens to be a creature straight from the pages of Symbiosis. What to do?

Well, I let it go and kept writing what was coming. Who am I to stop the flow of words just because they’ve surprised me?

My question is this. Can the sequel be told from a different POV or does it have to be told in the same way as the first? The first book is told all from Kali’s perspective, in her voice. This one is different. The cast of characters for this story is different (except for the few who span between the stories), but they will join up with the original cast later on in this story.

I didn’t intend for this to be a sequel, it was planned to be a completely different story, but it appears the characters have different plans.

I know in Romance novels, to a certain extent a specific format must be followed. Are there any hard and fast rules I must adhere within the Fantasy genre and sub-genres?

#amwriting Getting back to the anthropomorphism/anthropocentrism theme

I am interested in learning from the Universe itself. About our place in the huge, boundless organism that is She, from all that is. Not just from each other, our church communities, or our social selves.

Observation in general is a great teacher and it doesn’t matter what we are observing.

Some things are harder to observe than others. Rocks, for instance. There is information to be gleaned from observing them, but it takes a lot of patience.

Interaction is also a great teacher, especially if there is observation during, reflection after and even before. To observe at all points would be revealing.

Again, some things, like rocks, are harder to interact with. But I believe it can be done.

Which brings me to the topic of consciousness. To be fully present in the moment, observing and interacting with whatever stimuli we are being presented is educational.

Does being present mean we must react or pro-act, or can we simply observe without interaction? Does being detached make us more, or less alive?

Detachment is useful in removing our own projections from the subject of observation.

When we step aside from our selves, we do a better job of observing and learning. We can then return to our selves with a greater understanding of all that is.

Key is coming full circle. It does little good to go out and observe if what we learn isn’t brought home and employed.  

Anthropomorphisation happens in the translation. Anthropocentrism would be impossible after such studies.

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(I don’t think this is going to help you much with your whale research, Douglas.)