Harvest Moon Muse

The moon has to be every artist's Muse. Especially writers. Especially poets.

Who hasn't been taken with the moon at some stage in their lives? From the fanfare of the moon landing or the wide-eyed glory of a full moon, the romance of moonlight or the link to lunacy, its emotional significance in astrology, the moon plays a part in all our lives. 

But to artists, it's inspiration. When there's a full moon in the sky, it's like a crystal ball of inspiration gleaming, and our pens are ready for plucking, as Yeats remarked, 'the silver apples of the moon.' Maybe its because our intuition is at a peak and so we're more able to attune to insight. Whatever, the moon plays the role of creativity's advocate. 

So, before September is over, I thought I'd write a bit on the harvest moon. (I know it's already passed and I've missed it - damn - but anyway...) For those of you who don't follow moon lore, the harvest moon is the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox, which means it usually occurs before or after September 21st. You can't miss a harvest moon - a huge golden full moon, low in the sky, so close it seems to be sitting on the horizon.

The harvest moon is my favourite moon. One worth waiting and watching for.  I'm especially taken with the whole lore of it. I've always thought there was something special to the harvest moon: the time of reaping and sowing, September's scythe moving us on through the fields of life, letting the old stuff fall away, while embracing the new, the simultaneous contradictory acceptance of regret and rebirth, and all its connotations with seasons and the cyclical nature of life. To me, the harvest moon represents change, the pale gold light of it a new currency, a horizon harbinger, the quiet shimmering significance of autumn transition. 

I'll never forget the first time I saw a harvest moon in the sky - it was absolutely HUGE! Like a magnified moon.  Hanging just above the hills, yellow-gold in colour and so close. I remember holding a palm up to the car window and having it dwarved in comparison. And I was so full of regret at the time, I felt it all related somehow to this huge moon in the sky. We were right in the transition period, mid-September, when life begins again, when moving on is a natural occurence, and I couldn't move on from one particular thing, and this moon suddenly put it all in luminous perspective.

So anyway, I wrote a poem about it. About the whole reap and sow, sow and reap aspects of it.  I couldn't but, it was so damn strange and extraordinary and hung in my mind for months later until I did. (Well actually I wrote a few poems, a repetitive villainelle proving a handy form for the subject matter.) One of which I've included (ta-dah) here:

Harvest Moon Dirge

Last time I was supposed to see you and didn't - 
there was a looming harvest moon in the sky, scythe 
bent low to sweep the barren fields of my soul, 
what I didn't reap, what I didn't sow. 

Blinding, bright, like an optic nerve of sky, searing 
nucleus of Fate and mirrorball of revelation,
mirage of maybes and white-washed whimsy,
illuminating all that was dark before.

So promising - a luminous wafer, haloed horizon,
orb of pale gold possibility, pearl of potential,
lucky penny wish found and framed in sky, 
harvest, of what a heart could have at full loom. 

And ominous. Gaping question, glowering accusation, 
peering pupil dilated, the shock of a faceless 
dice; Time's white skull with a toothless grin,
do or die dagger night-sky ultimatum. 

Or so obvious. Your lit-up face, that wounded wide-eyed stare;
full moon a magnifying glass on my half-heart haunted 
from moments missed and memories shadowed
by the looming lunar ghost of what might have been. 

And seems it wasn't only me it affected; I'm sure you've all heard the classic Neil Young song 'Harvest Moon' which I think so gracefully captures that to-and-fro type of swaying between past and futures, looking back and moving on. (It's included at the bottom incase you haven't!) And so many poems written about it, two which I'm particulary fond of posted here too. 

The experience of that harvest moon was exactly like as Carl Sandburg explains in his poem 'Under the Harvest Moon': "Love, with little hands/comes and touches you/with a thousand memories/and asks you/beautiful, unanswerable questions." And maybe that's what every full moon or noticed moon does to us: asks us beautiful unanswerable questions. It could explain the hold the moon has on us not just as artists, but as human beings.
 

The moon - such a guiding and inspirational force for writers, definitely more to follow on this topic. With more moon poems, by the tonne. Watch this space. Suggestions welcome!

moon musing,


~ Siobhán.

'Harvest Moon' - Neil Young

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'Under the Harvest Moon' -  Carl Sandburg
 

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions. 

 
'Moon In Virgo' -  James Lee Jobe
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You are not beaten. The simple music rises up,  
children's voices in the air, sound floating out
across the land and on to the river beyond,
over the valley's floor. No, you cannot go back
for those things you lost, the parts of yourself
that were taken, often by force. Like an animal
in the forest you must weep it all away at once,
violently, and then simply live on. The music here
is Bach, Vivaldi; a chorale of children, a piano,
a violin. Together, they have a certain spirit
that is light, that lets in light, joyful, ecstatic.
"Forgive," said The Christ, and why not? Every day
that you still breathe has all the joy

and murderous possibilities of your bravest dream.
Forgive. Breathe. Live. The moon has entered Virgo,
the wind shifts, blows up from the Delta, cools this valley,
and you are not beaten; the children sing, it is Bach,
and you are brave, alive, and human.

Why I Write - Writers (and Me) on Writing

This blog has been a long time coming. Why? Because it's important.  And here it is: Why do I write? Why do you write? Why do writers write exactly?

Is it to make a living - albeit a very random and penniless one? To provide a public podium for our frolicking imaginations? Because we're wordy and want somewhere to indulge our verbal acrobatics? To dictate to the masses? On a notion, a whim, a wish? To make ourselves heard? To have the last word?

Writing is not just a pastime, a hobby, or indeed a career. It's a passion. A pursuit against all odds of ordinary. Not the shallow stereotype of  scribbling and doodling and making up stories to entertain, it's more about engaging with the world, responding to it and creating. It's not trivial, it's powerful. 

 

It's hard to explain - exactly. There's a lot to it. I've tried to explain it to people and I can never seem to get across how important, essential it is. Most writers, serious writers, would say that they feel they have to write, that it's an inner essential need, as necessary as breathing. 

Granted, there are 'writers' who engage in the art of the pen for entertainment sake only. Those who engage in writing from time-to-time, a hobby. And on an echoing note, there seems to be a stereotypical consensus out there that writing is something you take up  only when older, as retirement recreation, like knitting. (I say this as it seems every writing group I've ever attended has been populated mainly with older members.) But why? Some of the greatest writers have been and are young writers. Those who have been passionate about the craft since they first put pen to paper in single digits. Today young writers are clearing the score-board - Zadie Smith for example and this year's mid-twenties Orange prize winner, Tea Obreht (and Cecelia Ahern, dare I say it, one of the wealthiest and youngest writers around, regardless of her chick-lit status). Wilfred Owen was only in  his early twenties when he wrote what is today considered some of the greatest war poetry ever.  Keats left a legacy behind him after his death at twenty-five. Seamus Heaney was peddling verses at school, as were the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen when she was just a young woman on the threshold of adulthood... Need I go on?

Anyway, back to topic - Why do I write? Not as a hobby. I have enough other hobbies. Reading is a hobby. But writing is not. Writing is more important than a hobby, more demanding, more purposeful. Writing is the career I'm chasing, but more than that too, it's also a fulfillment of a kind, of every kind. A fire that I've lit and tended to and if I let go out, I'll turn to ashes and embers in its wake. It's a need, a devotion, above all else.

And why do writers write? Margaret Atwood, one of my favourite writers is someone who has managed to express this 'need' for writing. She has been writing since her youth, as most great writers have been. In her book on writing  'Negotiating With the Dead', she examines the whole business of writing, the whys and whats and hows on a psychological level, and one memorable passage where she pieces together all the reasons for writing she has ever heard from writers of all shapes and sizes goes as follows:
 
'To record the world as it is. To set  down the past before it is all forgotten. To excavate the past because it has been forgotten. To satisfy my desire for revenge. Because I knew I had to keep writing or else I would die. Because to write is to take risks, and it is only by taking risks that we know we are alive. To produce order out of chaos. To delight and instruct (not often found after the twentieth century, or not in that form.) To please myself. To express myself. To express myself beautifully. To create a perfect work of art. To reward the virtuous and punish the guilty; or - the Marquis de Sade defense, used by ironists - vice versa. To hold a mirror up to Nature. To hold a mirror up to the reader. To paint a portrait of society and its ills. To express the unexpressed life of the masses. To name the hitherto unnamed. To defend the human spirit, and human integrity and honor. To thumb my nose at Death. To make money so my children could have shoes. To make money so I could sneer at those who formerly sneered at me. To show the bastards. Because to create is human. Because to create is Godlike. Because I hated the idea of having a job. To say a new word. To make a new thing. To create a national consciousness, or a national conscience. To justify my failures in school. To justify my own view of myself and my life, because I couldn't be a 'writer' unless I actually did some writing. To make myself appear more interesting than I actually was. To attract the love of a beautiful woman. To attract the love of any woman at all. To attract the love of a beautiful man. To rectify the imperfections of my miserable childhood. To thwart my parents. To spin a fascinating tale. To amuse and please the reader. To amuse and please myself. To pass the time, even though it would have passed anyway. Graphomania. Compulsive logorrhea. Because I was driven to it by some force outside of my control.  Because I was possessed. Because an angel dictated to me. Because I fell into the embrace of the muse. Because I got pregnant by the Muse and needed to give birth to a book (an interesting piece of cross-dressing, indulged in by male writers of the seventeenth century). To serve Art. To serve the Collective Unconscious. To serve History. To justify the ways of God towards man. To act out antisocial behaviour for which I would have been punished in real life. To master a craft so I could generate texts (a recent entry). To subvert the Establishment. To demonstrate that whatever is, is right. To experiment with new forms of perception. To create a recreational boudoir so the reader could go into it and have fun (translated from a Czech newspaper). Because the story took hold of me and wouldn't let me go (the Ancient Mariner defense). To search for understanding of the reader and myself. To cope with my depression. For my children. To make a name that would survive death. To defend a minority group or oppressed class. To speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. To epose appalling wrongs or atrocities. To record the times through which I have lived. To bear witness to horrifying events I have survived. To speak for the dead. To celebrate life in all its complexity. To praise the universe. To allow for the possibility of hope and redemption. To give back something of what has been given to me. '


Phew! That's a mighty long list, but no doubt an accurate one, of both lowly and lofty reasons. Margaret Atwood herself, leans to the idea of writing as a way of lighting up the 'darkness.' She also notes the example of Samuel Beckett, who famously said that writing was all he was good for. And Flaubert, who said that you will always write the greatest for yourself, and not any audience.

Hmmm. So many different reasons, seemingly correlating to the literature status sought,  those with lowly ideals and those with lofty ones. Me? I write on an impulse, and electrifying urge.  Like Lord Byron, to clear all the clutter out of my head and onto the page where it becomes legible (lest I go mad in its cerebral  crowding and in-squabbling).  To define things: the world, states of emotion, truths, myself. 'To give to airy nothing a local habitation.'  Because I'm head-over-heels in love with language. Because I'd like to spend every spare moment  I have tinkering at the treasure of words and nothing else. Because it's a fire that needs to be fed. Because writing makes things matter.

Why do we write? As Rilke put so beautifully, in every serious wannabe-writer's handbook - 'Letters to a Young Poet - 'This above all - ask yourself in the stillest hour of the night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple 'I must', then build your life according to this necessity...'

And the answer is a resounding YES - for those of us who are serious about writing.  The lofty ones, the committed ones, the do-or-die ones. The ones who may have it tougher, struggle to make a writerly living, whose futures consist of garrets and solitary scribbling, who go to writer-groups for literary criticism not tea and chit-chat, who  painstakingly ponder on the meaning and magic of manuscripts, rather then churning out lite, bright, by the bundle bestsellers.  Oh well, we have the deep soul solace of words, where they merely skim the surface.

(Maybe I've left out some quotable writers on this million-dollar question, have I? Anyone out there able to quote some more?) Or better yet, add some new reasons to this treatise I've set out??  And you fellow lofty writers out there - share your aspirations! Now that I've laid down my gramophone, I'm all ears as always...


wondering and pondering and writing on,


~ Siobhán.

                              

Hurricane High-Kicks

I'm writing this post in the middle of a ferociously stormy day, wind battering the windowpane behind me,  whishing and whipping up a frenzy in what seems to be the high-tail end of a hurricane passing by!

Yay! I love stormy days. Routine bites the dust and everyone is swept away by a gusto of awed annoyance. Normal conversation is out; comments on the weather in - the refrain 'it would blow you away out there!' not a weather-monger's exaggeration anymore, but a shuddering real possibility! How exciting!

Is there anything like a stormy day to blow the cobwebs away?? Clear the head, big-time. "There'll be no sleepwalking around today" a woman commented to me earlier. Hell no! Not when there's a hurricane in town and the only thing on your mind is walking successfully through it! Storms put us back in touch with this great  physical planet of ours and away from the whirlwind in our heads we may be caught up in. Nature when loud, makes herself heard above all other common cacophonies. Hence, the mighty cobweb-blasting.

While storms offer up all kinds of metaphors and allegories to a writer, this one  just occured to me today while wind-walking (ah, i.e. almost para-gliding): that walking against the wind must be what it's like to go against Fate, or against the current of convention. The physical equivalent. Damn hard thing to do with a wailing wall of steel in front of you, pushing you back, screaming you down, gales bashing and lashing up a fearful stupor of inferiority, rendering you helpless and hapless.

(Whoa, there it goes again, the wind getting up. Not whistling, but roaring!) No wonder it's personified all the time, as compared to the other elements. Some writers have even referred to wind as having a 'spiritual energy.' Didn't the Holy Spirit after all, manifest in the Bible as great gusts of wind? Maybe it's the sheer invisible power of it that embues it with such significance.

Then there's the emotional element, with storms being an allegory for emotional states and emotional crises (explored in the poem below by Adrienne Rich). Talk of weathering the storm, battening down the hatches, preparing for stormy days, knowing the storm-clouds will pass has become almost clichéd in our emotional language de jour. Lots of writers have explored this facet. Weather is perhaps the most ubiquitious metaphor to a writer, who can use it for figuratively moulding and describing our changeable emotional psyches.

And there's the Dorothy phenomenon also. As in Wizard of Oz Dorothy whose house was lifted and transported to Oz by a tornado/twister. The magical-realist-fantastical element to a storm. You can't help but think of that on a stormy day! Take a falling slate on the head, fall, blank out - and hey presto - you're on a yellow-brick road to enlightenment! Or maybe it's another way of saying that in with a storm blows realisation, of some kind or other (not necessarily including a wizard.)

What I like about storms too is the primitive mode they put us in. Batten down the hatches, ride it out, with supplies and survival tactics at the ready. The snuggled-up-and-stay-indoors policy. They're the only encounter with real natural 'danger' most of us will experience. And they set the adrenalin on high alert, reminding us that we're alive and there's a big bad wailing world out there, trying to huff and puff our neat self-made securities down.

They also carry an essential ego-check for us: we're pretty much helpless in the face of the elements' power. 'Man has need of nature, but nature has no need of man' is something we should not forget. Nature in all her malevolent glory is majestic and menacing. Even metaphysical. As writer Joan Didion has noted, 'the wind shows us how close to the edge we are.' It reminds us of our mortality and of each moment blowing through time, adding a sweep of meaning to the otherwise calm (and sometimes claustrophobic) mundane. 

On that note, I'll sign off and get back to storm-enjoying, 

Have a safe day!

~ Siobhán.

'Storm Warnings'- Adrienne Rich

The glass has been falling all the afternoon,
And knowing better than the instrument
What winds are walking overhead, what zone
Of grey unrest is moving across the land,
I leave the book upon a pillowed chair
And walk from window to closed window, watching
Boughs strain against the sky

And think again, as often when the air
Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting,
How with a single purpose time has traveled
By secret currents of the undiscerned
Into this polar realm. Weather abroad
And weather in the heart alike come on
Regardless of prediction. 

Between foreseeing and averting change
Lies all the mastery of elements
Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter.
Time in the hand is not control of time,
Nor shattered fragments of an instrument
A proof against the wind; the wind will rise,
We can only close the shutters. 

I draw the curtains as the sky goes black
And set a match to candles sheathed in glass
Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine
Of weather through the unsealed aperture.
This is our sole defense against the season;
These are the things we have learned to do
Who live in troubled regions.

Judging a Book by its Cover - Vintage 21st Delights

September again! The month of practicalities and new studies and beginning the factual filo-faxing of the year ahead.  New semester. New season. New me. But best of all - new books!

For all readers (or maybe just me) - September is a time for all kinds of book-buying. Stemming from the textbook new smell and feel-good freshness of new stationary of the whole back-to-school September schtik, embedded in the inner calendars of our mind, (well for me anyway!), reading comes back to the fore in September's newly darkened evenings.

Vintage books must surely have this in mind with the recent re-issuing of some of their classics to celebrate their 21st anniversary in publishing: luxurious vellum-velvet-to-the-touch covers in retro rainbow colours. I stumbled upon these treasure finds in a bookshop recently. Quelle surprise! of sapphire-blue dip-dyed pages and cover of Louis de Berniere's  'Captain Corelli's Mandolin', exotic magenta of AS Byatt's 'Possession', orange-red of Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale', blushed-pink of 'The Time-Traveller's Wife', lipstick red of 'Memoirs of a Geisha' and more, all the chosen colours somehow echoing some sense of the theme or style of the books themselves. 

Which reminds me of one of my surprising finds book-browsing in my university's library for a literature assignment once. There I stumbled upon what looked like a 1st edition of Shakespeare's sonnets - scarlet-red-hardback, bound together by fraying threads, and pages as yellow and browning as old newspapers with real vellum pages! I remember placing it in the photocopier like some precious manuscript from a museum, an authentic artifact of tradition uncovered in the jungle of dusty books that was the literature aisle.

Vintage's re-styling is another reminder to us that books - the  actual paper physical manifestations - are still way more coveted and appreciated than the cold metal screens of the iPad, Kindles and whatever other new-fangled digital doo-dahs there are. (I don't think you can source first editions  or the like on a screen...?)

There's nothing better than the bulky feel of a book in your hand, its bent spine a sign of significant page-turning, dog-ears a sign of fondness and word-wallowing, yellowed pages a mark of its classic status, the slightly musty smell like wisdom, and the discovering of all the secret pleasures of solitude uncovering its secrets and significance.  

How can a steel cold square of an iPad or Reader beat that? Books have personality and character, these devices don't. And my favourite part of reading - underlining and scribbling passages of interest, passages read over and over, that rise like gold from the text and settle into the muddy waters of daily mundane routine, to glint and gleam and remind us of the real treasures in life - how can this be made tangible by a Reader? 

I was a slow reader when I was young, speed-wise. When my friends and I used to have multiple read-offs (started by my one of my friend's discovery of the unputdownable then en-vogue teenage novels 'Point Horrors' from the States), to test each other's reading powers by seeing who would be finished first to be rewarded by the  first-pick of the next book swap, I would always be last. It was pointed out to me when I was caught pondering over the same page for around 10 minutes before moving on - the words were so precise, the sentences so neatly clicked into place to create an aha moment of revelation - how could I move on? I was transfixed by the typeface, the printed proof. I wanted to memorize it and let it melt into my mind. 

With a book, you can do that. You can linger and loiter as long as you like, flick back and forth through pages at your ease, savouring the soft paper feel, whereas the blank glare of a iPad pushes you on, demands you keep going, with no old-skool way of marking the meaningful stuff, putting your own little stamp of presence on the book.

Maybe these new editions constitutes an attempt by Vintage to fly the flag for the physical book, the look and feel and smell and touch of it, to up the style stakes, snazz it up, jazz it up for the aesthetic battle between books and technology!

See details of the re-issued titles here

Happy reading!


~Siobhán.

Creativity, Cynicism & the Comets Inside

"Every child is an artist, the problem is how to remain an artist when one grows up."  
 -Picasso

To remain an artist when grown up - well,  that requires courage, determination and  an almost constant child-like state of viewing the world; one of enthusiasm, awe,  an insatiable curiousity and an indestructible belief in magic.  

Most creatives are of the opinion that our inner artist self is an inner child. 'The Artist's Way' by Julia Cameron, the hugely popular and seminal text on creativity, strongly advances this theory. We must treat our artist self as a child, a child who looks at things anew and not with cynicism, who wants nothing more than to be let loose to experiment and express their love for the world and to have fun in the process.  (Read more here)

Also, to be an artist is to challenge reality. To challenge its artifice trappings and iron-bar rules and routines and imprisoning of imagination. To rebel aginst them, refuse them and reach beyond. To believe that everything isn't simple black and white 2D; that there is something more; that beneath the surface of things there beats many multi-coloured heartbeats, a kaleidoscope of imaginings unfurling and swirling colours of every hue, shapes of every reckoning, possibilities and viewpoints and meanings and layers upon layers of love and beauty that make up this 3D thing called life. 

To be an artist is to have access to this world within our world, to be blessed with the ability to transcribe it somehow, in paint, pen, music or many varied ways. To put the pulse in our 'living', to rupture routine with revelations and set fire to banalities with the truth of existence - that life is to be enjoyed not endured, a wonderland not a worryland.

Now I don't mean to sound all hippy-chick psychedelic far-out babbling, but creativity is far out. Far out from the rigmarole of routine and  reality, but not from each one of us. Not from our grasp. It's just been forgotton and laid aside by most of us in favour of more 'grown-up' things like materialism, status and security. 
 
And I'm writing this as a sort of affirmation for unfortunately I am in the shadows of disillusion  right now. I am just about sick of the attitude I encounter that creative pursuits are a waste of time, a la-de-dah hobby affair and not a full-hearted soul commitment. And I am getting tired of battling cynicism in my everyday environment. Cynicism and disillusion on all fronts and a great big blank ennui cast over the place like a dark toxic mushroom cloud suffocating any sign of life beneath it. It throws me in the doldrums at times, it really does.  

But I battle on against it, like all we creatives do. Tooth and nail and brick-by-brick goddammit. Battle against the slate-grey attitudes of people who believe in practicality first and foremost, the debunking of dreams, and the erasing of wonder, the stalemate that afflicts most of humankind, at some stage or other, but especially at present, especially where I am.

And just when it all seems hopeless, a handful of stars blow my way, proof of the great creative constellation I map my way by. I just happened to stumble upon this extract last night, from a young adult novel 'Boy's Life' by American author Robert Mc Cammon, which featured as a voiceover on one of my favourite TV shows 'One Tree Hill.' It's a coming-of-age story but from all accounts (I've been excessively googling), beautifully written and underpinned with a sense of creative 'magic'. The narrator, a young boy, who writes stories to get to grips with the world, and the whole book seems to focus on creativity and how it enchants, to those of us who embrace it, our view of the world. The adults are as always the bad guys, the cynics who belittle and cast aside the power of creativity in favour of the rigours and structure of routine.  This extract is truly wonderful. It zings and sparks and sends stars shooting up my spine everytime I read it. Goosebumps. Those wonderful tremors of truth. Look, read and believe:

"You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didn’t realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present and into the future. You probably did too; you just don’t recall it. 

See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they’d allowed to wither in themselves.

After you go so far away from it, though, you can’t really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it’s because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they’re left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm.  –'Boy’s Life' – Robert Mc Cammon

There you have it, a little piece of magic, a handful of stars, discovered by serendipity. The opening of a portal to a part of ourselves I'd almost lost sight of. A ta-da poof of proof when I needed it most  A remembrance and a reaffirmation, and a rebuke - to all those sceptics and naysayers and their black clouds.  

The lines have since embroidered themselves in gold in my heart, especially: "We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand." We are.  Our creativity is the consequence of this magic. It's our way back to that 'magic realm.' We are all entitled to honour it. 

No more disillusion and cynicism. Just a little flare of this magic would flame everything back into potential and possibility again, I'm sure of it. 

So that's what I'm going to focus on now. And see if I can spark the flint of everyday life  into the flames of art again, to sustain and nourish and warm the cold cynics out there (including the one hiding in some dark corner of my mind, planted there by reality...) And to convince myself again that this is worth it, that there is a magic in all of this that's worth fighting for. And as the anti-dote to my current doldrum drear - that I do believe it all, I do, I do, I do.

Keep creating,

~ Siobhán.

*This blog was soundtracked by: 

'Show Me What I'm Looking For'- Carolina Liar  (the search for something more...)
'Back When You Were Good' - The Hours  (reclaiming a better self...)
'Bring on the Comets' - VHS or Beta  (enthusiasm and high-thrills of possibilities...)
'Wake Up'- Arcade Fire (spine-tingling accompaniment to the trailer for 'Where the Wild Things Are', the movie of the book about growing up but never losing your childhood wonder and imagination...)

Check them out!

pics from www.weheartit.com as always, :-)

Saturday Short

Saturday morning. Sunshine. The last of the August hay-bale-yellow kind maybe. And what it brings: many possibilities on the horizon, like a host of amber-lit lanterns being set off into sky. (The Chinese lanterns pictured; stumbled across these surprisingly in a shop yesterday and was so tempted to buy them. The ritual of lighting and setting off, all in the name of new beginnings, is one I find hard to resist. It'd be like a small-scale meteor shower, the Perseids part two, the ones we never did get to see here...)
 

So just a short entry today. Just a few words before the day begins. Before an afternoon of coffee and newspaper-browsing, punctuated by some sun-lounging and day-dreaming in between, and an evening of laissez-faire luxury. Because Saturday is the one day where we seem able to throw off the shackles off the week. It comes like a breath of fresh air at the end of the week, fresh cotton, a green-grass rest.
 

The sun is shining today, like a long-awaited encore. And what better way to start a sunny day than with Mary Oliver, the American spiritual-nature poet, whose poems are truly uplifting in their awe-filled and joyful look at the world. (If a poem was ever a vitamin for the soul, it's hers.) This poem captures the sentiments of a sunny day, how everything seems beautiful again and full of possibility and renewal. Which could also be said to be the predominant feelings in any of Oliver's poems.

Enjoy.

~ Siobhán.


'Morning Poem' -Mary Oliver 

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange
 

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again
 

and fasten themselves to the high branches —
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands
 

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails
 

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead —
if it’s all you can do
to keep on trudging —
 

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted —
 

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,
 

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

Up, Up and Away: 99 Balloons, 1,000 Views!

Yay!!! I have just reached that pinnacle point of 1,000 page views and am so excited about it - YIPPPEEEEEEE !!!!! THANK YOU to all my readers, regular and random!

I feel like I need to mark the occasion in some way, hence this spontaneous celebratory post! I don't know - maybe this isn't such a big thing in blog world - but it is to me. I'm glad to see any traffic on my blog,  but 1,000, I never thought I'd reach it! So it's kind of like a birthday of sorts. Or the awarding of a gold star. A milestone passed. And motivation for more to do. (Instead of candles and a cake, my blog stats posted on the left...!)

And I can tell you it was with much glee that I picked out this picture of balloons! Just like  a 5-year old, and oh so fun  to my inner artist self, (who is roughly about the same age...) Balloons have always seemed a symbol of buoyant hope to me  After much dejection and disillusionment on the writing (and blog) front,  I now feel buoyant. Inflated. 

And it's at times like these when the sky seems to be the limit. When I feel myself swept up, up, and away, into the helium-high realms of possibility.

I've chronicled some of the downs of a writer's life, now here comes the jubilation of one of the ups: readership. It's so great to have frequent readers - a heartfelt balloon-buoyant 'thank you' to all! And I hope you'll stick with me for a thousand more... (well here's hoping!)

awed, giddy and extremely grateful, 

~ Siobhán

image from www.weheartit.com

Sea Musings and Mind-Scapes

'I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;' - John Wasefield 'Sea Fever' 

No sooner had I published my post about rain than we have two solid days of sunshine.  Typical! Talk about schizophrenic weather! (But now it's raining again in blustery skifts, in what seems to be some sort of summer storm...) So before 'summer' is over I think I'll write a little bit on the quintessential muse of the season: the sea.

I live beside the sea and indulge in the odd beach walk or two now and again.  The sea offers up a plethora of metaphors to the imagination. It's maybe the ultimate muse for a writer and that's why I'm always cautious writing about it, for fear I step on that dreaded danger all writers recoil from: cliché. 

I especially like summer evening walks. When there's still light in the sky; when the sun is dipping on the horizon like a huge mirrorball; the warm soft feel of sand beneath my feet and the slight sting of the salted air:  'The soft lap of sea on land, a gentle kiss. Blue sky and water like a landing strip of silver light. Dotted with gulls swooping in sharp arcs. Curly debris sand from spontaneous stick etchings and the bric-a-brac of daytime revellers. Water like polished glass, glistening aluminium grey. Drumlin grass dunes decorated with daisies and purple spiky heather like small microphones trying to catch the breeze.  But all quiet with the lullaby of evening. Stilled. Soothed. Volume of the day turned down, so significance can whisper in. And the sun hanging over the scene like a luminous guest, offering some kind of promise. To-and-fro thoughts swimming in my head, high-tide, low-tide washing ashore flotsam and jetsam revelatons.'

Why does the sea hold such a fascination for us? Writers have explored it at  great lengths throughout the ages. One of my favourite sea-faring books has to be the American classic, 'Moby Dick' by Herman Melville.  In chapter one, the narrator Ishmael muses on this:  "Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all."  

In the novel also, life at sea seems to be a metaphor for a way of life that is not sequestered by routine and settling down. It is the very opposite: random and wild and dangerous and forever drifting, for flighty free-spirits and lost souls like Ishmael, who goes off on the whale expedition in the first place to 'find his bearings', stating that the sea is the only place to do this: "Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul.... then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can." It's like the sea can fix him, or at least, stave off the boredom and stifling security that land offers. I myself would rather be swept out at sea than stuck on land (metaphorically speaking) i.e. drifting rather than being docked to something that I don't want. (And there's a summing up of my whole philosophy right there! Call me Ishmael!)

The sea is also used as a metaphor for fluidity and movement. As Shakespeare famously wrote: "There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures." Hmm...are these the thoughts that we're thinking of while watching the to-and-froing of waves? Or maybe it's more along the lines of Shakespeare's sonnet: "like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore/so do our minutes hasten to their end." Gloomy a tad. But maybe the sea does put us more in touch with our mortality. And brings into focus our solitude. How big and vast and majestic it is can certainly help put things into perspective now and again.

Let's not forget that water is also the element of the emotions. Water signs in astrology have the main trait of being emotional, Pisces the most notable for depth of feeling.  Also, to dream about water is to signify a state of emotional flux. Drowning means that you can't cope with some emotion. Dreaming of a tsunami means a total overwhelming. All my life I've been dreaming about tsunamis, before I even knew their technical name, before they swept into popular consciousness with a dire legacy.  Freud would probably see it at as an emotional fear of some kind...me, more as the malevolent power of the ocean, coupled with my slight fear of water. Whether this is due to the fact that I'm a Fire sign, or more to do with the memory of being made hop waves at the beach when I was a teeny-tottering child who hated bath-time, never mind sea-time, it's stuck with me ever since.

Just imagining the unfathomable depths of the ocean makes me shudder. Is it because the ocean is so mysterious that we're so drawn to it? That we know so  little about it? 20,000 leagues under the sea, there lies..... what exactly? Stories of sea-monsters kept sea exploration to a minimum before the days of Columbus. And then mermaids and sirens. Now rogue waves and tsunamis and ship-sinking squalls.  That it's so dangerous and powerful could explain why it's so compelling to us.

Or maybe it's more to do with this: 'The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea' - Isak Dinesin. Because we are composed of mostly water, maybe we need the sea to keep us in harmony, to calm our  inner seas of turmoil. Its syllables soothe our souls. Maybe it allows us to see horizons we don't see on land. Reminds us of who we are, how everything is in a state of constant movement, constant flux, nothing is static, nothing is permanent.  

Hmm, from a simple beach-walk to all this ocean musing. Maybe the ocean is just a great big metaphysical metaphor for our minds, a physical manifestation of the unfathomable depths of our subconsciousness. Whatever it is, there's no doubting that it certainly is one of the greatest muses for writers and all kind of artists.

ahoy shipmates,

~ Siobhán.

(Apologies for the blooper I made earlier of prematurely posting this blog while  only on the first paragraph - email recipients- I hope you ignored it, sorry!)

And some poems. The first by Pablo Neruda, which talks about the poet's relationship with the sea, and the sea as a metaphor for poetry. When I think of Pablo Neruda, I think of turquoise waters, he has written so many poems about the sea and with  such beautiful imagery and sound, it seems as if the sea itself is echoing in the lines. Infact his collection 'On the Blue Shore of Silence' is a collection of all his sea poems, a veritable love-letter to the sea.  The second, is by EE Cummings, once again. The last two lines say it all, but I also love 'as small as a world and as large as alone.' Simply complex, as always. Enjoy.

'Poet's Obligation' - Pablo Neruda 

To whoever is not listening to the sea
this Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up
in house or office, factory or woman
or street or mine or harsh prison cell;
to him I come, and, without speaking or looking,
I arrive and open the door of his prison,
and a vibration starts up, vague and insistent,
a great fragment of thunder sets in motion
the rumble of the planet and the foam,
the raucous rivers of the ocean flood,
the star vibrates swiftly in its corona,
and the sea is beating, dying and continuing.

So, drawn on by my destiny,
I ceaselessly must listen to and keep
the sea's lamenting in my awareness,
I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
so that, wherever those in prison may be,
wherever they suffer the autumn's castigation,
I may be there with an errant wave,
I may move, passing through windows,
and hearing me, eyes will glance upward
saying 'How can I reach the sea?'
And I shall broadcast, saying nothing,
the starry echoes of the wave,
a breaking up of foam and quicksand,
a rustling of salt withdrawing,
the grey cry of the sea-birds on the coast.

So, through me, freedom and the sea
will make their answer to the shuttered heart.

'maggie and milly and molly and may' - ee cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may 
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang 
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing 
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone 
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) 
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

Pitter Patter: Thoughts for a Rainy Day

Two blogs in two days...? My cup of inspiration runneth over...? Not exactly. Just an reaction to the relentless rain that's been raining on our parade of summer here in Ireland. Need I utter the refrain? - Rain, rain and more rain, never rains but it pours!, and especially in this country in summer.

Met Eireann have just announced that it's the worst summer on record for about 20 years. I could have informed them of that a month ago when the whole country was up to its eyes in puddles and I had to endure the recurring personal tragedy of soaked flip-flops turning to soggy cardboard. 

We're all gonna be suffering from SAD by the end of August, I know it. I already am. Help! Drowning in monsoon misery! Right now Travis' song 'Why Does it Always Rain on Me?' seems to be playing in my head on repeat, most suitably morose for these incessant downpours. It just ain't natural to look out at winter weather in summer. Drip drip drip: bring on the melancholy.

And funny that in films and books, rain is always some kind of dramatic prop. Be it revelation, some sign of redemption ('Shawshank', to be specific), or realisation. And even romantic. Look at 'Breakfast at Tiffany's.' And a few hundred more that I just can't name right off, but if you want proof, check out this well-assembled montage. And of course, the ultimate film featuring rain - 'Singing in the Rain.' Who the hell dances their way through puddles in reality I ask you? More like stomp. And music makes big of it too. Rain as romantic and regretful: 'Kiss the Rain' by Billie Myers and 'November Rain' by Guns 'n' Roses; rain as revelatory: 'January Rain' - David Gray; and rain as redemption-in-waiting: 'Prayers for Rain' by The Cure, are just a few that spring to mind right now. 

But I did get another blog out of it I suppose. Been having a dry patch for so long, and now....need I say it, the rain ah, who would have thought it would be inspiration?

And now for the impetus behind this blog. Here's the only anti-dote (rainbow?) I can think of to this season of rain: two brilliant poems on the subject. Only Seamus Heaney, a poet I am most in awe of,  could make something magical out of it. Just listen to the sound in his poem 'The Rain Stick', which is so glorious and graceful, full of 'glitter-drizzle' and 'diminuendo'. I feel better already. And another great modern poet,  Don Paterson, a Scottish bard, who I recently had the good fortune to see read, (on a sunny day too) gives his rhythmic metaphorical take on it. Enjoy.

not singing, but trying not to whinge about it as much -  

~ Siobhán.

'The Rain Stick' - Seamas Heaney  

Up-end the stick and what happens next

is a music that you never would have known

to listen for. In a cactus stalk

downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash

come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe

being played by water, you shake it again lightly

and diminuendo runs through all its scales

like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes

a sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;

the glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.

up-end the stick again. What happens next

is undiminished for having happened once,

twice, ten, and thousand times before.

Who cares if all the music that transpires

is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?

You are like a rich man entering heaven

through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.  

'Rain' - Don Paterson

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one long thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from the play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a rain-dark gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign,
and I’d read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood—
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.

Check out more Don Paterson here and Seamas Heaney here

 'January Rain'(Instrumental) - by David Gray