Month: January 2017

People of the Mist 8

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7:35 AM

… the sound of dry cactus trickling through a rain stick imitating rain  as it falls from the clouds to strike the forest leaves … rain … steady and  heavy … from purple clouds … water fills the scorpion’s underground nest … Alacrán emerges and  knocks at the dreamer’s door … go away, says the dreamer … tail in air Alacrán minces down the balcony and onto the staircase … now his carcase dries on a stone in the sun … when the rain ends, black ants emerge to pick at Alacrán’s drowned body … they carry him in bite size chunks … up the thin crack in the apartment wall … back to their nests … life goes on … many are called … many are chosen to be victims or assassins … who knows who will be chosen … and for which role …

“Heal yourself,” cried the sánate bird, drawing his knife blade over the sun-warmed stone outside Tim’s window. The trees in the courtyard filled up with sparks of colour as their leaves lapped at his balcony. A butterfly, yellow and black, shook delicate wings, and dangled, at the end of his floral string. Soon the bird of paradise would close its eyes and go back to sleep. High in the sky, strung out like a line of washing in the early morning air, the temples of Monte Albán basked beneath the sun as they dreamed of their former glory. Cloud shadows walked across Tim’s wall. Tourists on an endless train from there to here to nowhere in particular, white clouds stared at Tim from a pastel sky.

Tim loved the sparrows. If he left the apartment door open, they would cease their squabbling and fly down to his balcony from the red-tiled roof of his neighbour’s house. Fearless, they would step through the opening to see if he would throw them some crumbs from his table. Sometimes, they would fly right in, perch next to him on the table, and pierce him with their inscrutable gaze.

… Ah, would some power the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as these sparrows see us, Tim used to think, for sparrows dwell among the blessed and it is written that not a single one shall fall …

The sánate kept winding up the day with the whistle of his call and dogs barked on the azoteas and in the streets. A warm wind walked through the open door, ruffled Tim’s hair, and climbed out through the kitchen window with a last wave of the palm leaves. This was now his life: to sit here before an open book while black ants crawled their predatory letters across the page and tulips and carnations performed a slow dance in time with the sun’s rotation. Tropical fruit sulked in a basket on the table. The great wheel of the sun had risen over the rooftops and sparrows hopped, dogs barked, and the sánate dragged once more the long thin knife of his tinker’s cry across the sharpener’s grindstone as a rooster crowed his thick rich morning cocoa rico.

… the breakfast orange lies racked on the plate …  juices flow like blood … a blood orange … rising like the sun from night’s mist … and now the orange … lifeless … a pale yellow robe spent and exhausted … fading in the sunlight … the wasted disc of a worn-out decadent moon … a lantern with its wasted light cast across a tabloid sky … a still life this orange … its life blood a sacrifice … thick rich golden liquid … as fierce and sweet as sunshine on a branch … 

Tim blinked, went into the kitchen, and looked for the mescal, but it had all gone. The absence of the yellow worm’s slithering crunch beneath his teeth was the ultimate sacrifice. He stood in the doorway, shivered in the sunshine, and mourned one more among his many losses.

 

People of the Mist 7

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7:30 AM

Tim opened the gate and walked into the courtyard of his apartment building. A bird of paradise fluttered before him, its crested head suspended in mid-air. Earth-bound, it nested in a basket in the grapefruit tree. Mario, the handyman, and Marisa, the widow who did the laundry and cleaned the rooms, gestured as they argued.

Marisa had just caught an enormous chapulín. She grasped the grasshopper by its hind legs and held down its freckled, leaf-colored wings so it couldn’t fly.

“It poured with rain last night,” Marisa said. “I saw him here, in the courtyard. I caught him before he dry his wings and fly,” Marisa held out her captive for Tim to see. The chapulín had long grey-green antennae and the serious anthropomorphic face of a junior priest or a staid young scholar who would one day hold sway over a classroom filled with little children. Its wings vibrated as they changed colour adapting to light and shade.

“I’m going to call him Charlie Chapulín,” Marisa smiled at her own joke.

“Give him to me. I want to hold him,” Mario lifted the grasshopper from Marisa’s hand and trapped it in a cage made from his fingers. “I have kidnapped your Charlie Chapulín,” he said in a threatening tone. “But you can ransom him for a kiss,” Mario closed his eyes, puckered up his lips, and Marisa slapped him in playful fashion across the face.

“Thief,” she said. “It’s my chapulín.” She put her hand on the grasshopper that Mario now held and Tim wondered if he was going to witness the Judgement of Solomon.

“It will be our chapulín,” Tim declared, “un chapulín de equipo, a Team Tim grasshopper, first captured by Marisa, then recaptured by Mario, then accepted into the team by me: a veritable dream team chapulín.”

“El Brujo would tell you to set it free, Mario,”Marisa smiled.

“Don’t say things like that, Marisa,” Mario frowned, drawing his thick, black eyebrows in together to form a crow’s wing.

“El Brujo?” Tim snapped to attention. “What do you know of him? Tell me, please.”

“Say nothing, Marisa,” Mario urged her. “You know we don’t speak of that man, not in the presence of strangers.”

“But I’m not a stranger,” Tim protested.

“Maybe not a total stranger, no,” Mario conceded. “But you are a foreigner, and it is dangerous to speak to foreigners about our holy men.”

“Dangerous? Holy? In what way? Tell me.”

“We have already said too much,” Mario beckoned to Marisa. “Come, Marisa, we have work to do.”

“At least let the chapulín go,” Tim said. “It was born free. Give it back its freedom.”

“Born free, like those captive kings who now dance in stone prisons on Monte Albán,” said Mario, unwilling to relinquish his prize.

“Yes, Mario; born free, just like them,” Marisa smiled. “And one day their prison walls will be broken and they too will be free, as will we all.”

“Enough,” Mario opened the prison bars of his fingers and the chapulín flew.

“Ah well,” Tim said. “It’s time for my breakfast.”

“Your breakfast has just flown,” Mario flashed his white teeth and the gold filling sparkled.

“Mario, you are a brute,” said Marisa as Tim walked to the bottom of the stairs and climbed up to his apartment. “He wasn’t going to eat him.”

“I don’t trust foreigners,” Mario glared at Tim’s back and made a rude gesture with small and index finger. “He would have fried him in olive oil and eaten him with garlic.”

“Mario: stop that,” Marisa gave him a push. “Remember: it’s a pig day. You mustn’t be rude to foreigners on a pig day, especially those who live in the compound.”

Mario shrugged.

 

People of the Mist 6

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7:15 AM

Tim turned the corner away from the church and on the next street a bitter sweet smell assaulted his nostrils. An old man stood vomiting into the gutter. Behind him, holding handkerchiefs to their faces with one hand and their white night-sticks with the other, two policemen prodded the wretch, pushing him onwards, out towards the city’s edge. A small crowd buzzed around him like a cloud of flies. He lurched forward and the policemen prodded him on again. He lurched forward, a stubborn donkey provoked by a stick. The people in the street parted like a bow wave from the ship-shock of his passing.

Stunned and vomiting, sick to the core, half-blind, stinking of the worst kind of cheap mescal, he lugged himself along his personal Via Crucis, step by painful step. When he fell, the policewomen closed in, kicking and tugging him back to his feet.

… quivering nostrils … the throat blazing with its desire for lemon and lime … the jag of the salt …  the chili’s burning flame … the healing kiss of the mescal …the harsh dried husk of the twisting worm … like grit between the teeth …

The old man stood there, nailed to the cross of the sidewalk, his arms hung out on the wind to dry. A scarecrow’s clothing would be cleaner than his clothes. A Guy Fawkes figure, rags and tatters leaked out from his flimsy frame.

… the sun hangs its tail-less kite in the sky … the moon dreams her way through the heavens … an old man washes his own brain … cleanses it of myth and memory … tries to drown himself in a dark river of tears … a sad hand rises from the waves to wave farewell … in the depths of the mescal a yellow worm glides like a shark to the bottom of the bottle …

The old man seemed to walk through shallow water with the millstone of the morning after tied round his neck, a personal millstone, made to measure and grinding exceeding small. If the wearer were to wander into deep water, then it would weigh him down and he would drown.

The street people taunted him, threatened to stand him in the stocks, to strip him down to his basic elements, the heart that beats, the lungs that breathe, the white flat rib-bones that can be scarred, like paper, with the wonder of words. They threatened to stretch him on an ancient altar. They shouted that his torso’s closed flesh was ripe for the sacrificial blade, his body bent backwards, his mind dreaming of the knife’s vertical descent and horizontal slash. People cheered as the policeman’s stick with a thunderous thump flashed white lightning and pierced the mist that lay thick on the vagrant’s mind.

… one quick swallow … then another … twin promises of summer’s sun and of hope’s renewal … each thimbleful of this mouth-burning treasure, drawing warmth into the gut forcing a tear drop from the eye … bringing oblivion …  

The old man soiled the newborn day by vomiting again and drenching the street in a paper bag reality of soiled clothes and running liquid. The street people closed in, creating a moving jail and the old man shivered with laughter and spread out his arms. His round wide eyes were those of an owl about to fly into the cockcrow sun face. Then the crowd drew too close and something snapped: he roared at the stabbing fingers and pissed at the people through the bars of his cage. A beam of sunlight picked him out and, for a moment, his eyes met Tim’s. They gazed into each other’s souls and a voice rang like a bell within Tim’s head: there too, but for the gift of the gods, go you.

The policemen again stepped towards the old man but a strong, dark figure appeared between the police and their victim.

“Basta, enough,” El Brujo raised his hand and the officers backed away. “I will look after him.”

El Brujo turned to the old man, wrapped his arms around him, and hugged him tight.

“You must forgive them, brother,” he spoke in a loud voice so the crowd might hear him. “They know not what they do.”

“Come, come home with me,” El Brujo waved the crowd to one side and put his arm around the old man’s shoulder. “I will help you find what you seek.”

The crowd sighed and started to break up. El Brujo and the old man walked arm in arm down the street. The police officers followed them for a step or two but the crowd gathered in behind the pair and ahead of the police, blocking their way. With a shrug of their shoulders, the uniformed officers turned back. A voice in the crowd cried out:

“¡Viva El Brujo! Make way for our saint.”

… the medallion  awoke … it ticked back into life … warm around the neck of the wearer … it moved … a pendulum swaying … side to side … white lightning … a hammer blow falling … somewhere … falling … and the ground swelling up to shake itself out … an old man … an old dog with fleas … shaking …

Well aware of the warmth he carried against his chest Tim turned away from the street scene and walked towards the apartment he now called home.

Reyes

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Reyes

On the night of January 5 – 6, The Three Wise Men, Los Reyes Magos in Spanish, visit all the children in the world as they travel to Bethlehem. They bear gifts to these children and January 6 is a time of visitors and gifts.

First: the visitors. Three deer walked out of the woods this morning. They paraded in front of the garage, luckily we had the door open, and equally luckily, I was able to get these photos of them.

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This is the lead deer. At this stage, the road was empty and I hadn’t been seen.

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The camera’s click sounded the alarm. The deer froze … and so did I. We gazed at each other for several seconds. I was afraid to move.

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I took another photo. The feet picked up as the camera clicked and away the deer went.

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Baby came last, but didn’t stay long.

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Up went the tail and away baby sped. Wapiti, White-tailed deer, tail in the air.

After the visitors, came the gifts.

Below is a link to my first Poetry book of 2008: Iberian Interludes. It arrived just in time for Reyes … the little boy that still dwells within this old man’s heart is delighted with his gift: the majority of my best poems about Spain gathered together beneath two new covers. Click below and open the box!

https://www.amazon.com/Iberian-Interludes-Bulls-Blood-Bottled/dp/1539911411/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

May you all have a great visit from the Three Wise Men (los Tres Reyes Magos), and may you all have a prosperous and joyous New Year, full of excellent writing.

 

 

People of the Mist 5

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7:00 AM

Mass over, Tim stood, made a copycat sign of the cross, and walked out of the church. The boy with the cactus and the girl with her basket of flowers had left the courtyard. The witchdoctor, however, remained. He squatted on the ground, in a trance-like state. Before him, his fire burned low. The strong scent of copal rose from the coals, hung heavy on the air, then dissipated in curves and waves of thin smoke. Tim stopped for a second to look at El Brujo and, as he gazed, the witch doctor, without opening his eyes, spoke.

“It’s a wise man knows his own father.”

“What? What do you mean?” Tim’s knees shook and his voice became squeaky. It seemed to rise an octave as he mouthed dry words.

“I spoke to your mother yesterday.”

“That’s nonsense. My mother’s dead.”

“What ails you, my friend?”

Tim didn’t know what to say.

“If you won’t speak, I’ll speak for you,” El Brujo opened his eyes and stared at Tim. “One night, many years ago, Jaguar crept between your ribs and took your heart into his mouth. When he closed his jaws, your heart was as heavy as stone and Jaguar broke his tooth upon it. He cursed you and your heart remained a rock within your chest. At night, when you sleep, you dream of dust and ashes.”

“You speak in nursery rhymes and riddles,” Tim forced himself to remain calm yet the words fanned a sorrow within him that he had thought long dead.

“Perhaps, but do they speak true?”

Images flash through Tim’s mind.

… curses … stone … dust … ashes … broken heart … rock … heart in mouth … a marigold path … zopilote … high in the morning air … an old stone bridge … a river below it with the snow floating down to be carried away by the current … three crones dancing on the steps of an old stone building … three beautiful ladies dancing on the temple step at Monte Albán … an old man … dead … then alive and walking in his burial clothes … hummingbirds dancing round the sun … red slashes of blood … tulips against a white-washed wall … an old man vanishing into a tomb … the face of death simmering in the moon’s dwindling pool …

Tim shook his head from side to side.

“So, I see you have some knowledge,” El Brujo raised one eyebrow. “But do you trust that knowledge?”

“Tell me what’s happening, please.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I want to know everything.”

El Brujo turned down the corners of his mouth in a frown.

“Everything? Listen with care and remember. The rich man in Yanhuitlán bought a husband and wife from a nearby village for nine pieces of gold. Next day, he cut their throats at the foot of a large stone idol; then he sprinkled the dead man’s grave with their blood. When he did so, the rains returned, the crops grew again, and the sun continued on his daily journey.”

“That’s it?”

El Brujo nodded in assent.

“What has that got to do with me?” Tim’s voice quavered as he asked the question.

“You too must make a sacrifice, my friend, for in blood we were born, and in blood we will finish our days.”

“What kind of sacrifice? A blood sacrifice, like that boy?”

“No, not like that,” El Brujo shook his head. “You must sacrifice your beliefs and allow me to bless you.”

“I have no beliefs.”

“Even that is a belief.”

“Then I am sacrificing nothing.”

“If that is what you believe, it is so. Here: take this. It’s yours by right,” El Brujo held out his hand. A medallion on a braided leather thong lay in the palm.

Tim looked at the medallion and saw that it had been broken in two and that one half was missing. What remained showed a cross with a half bunch of roses where the crucified Christ would normally have appeared.

“This is your mother’s gift to you.”

“You’re crazy. You know that? I told you: my mother’s dead yet you still say my mother left me this.”

“I do and she did.”

“Did you know her?”

“I did.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You may believe what you want. But tell me, do you not feel for the medallion? Does it not cry out to you?”

“I can’t say it cries out to me, but I like it, yes. How much do you want for it?” Tim put his hand in his pocket and drew out his change purse.

“You do not have enough money to purchase it,” El Brujo wrinkled his nose in distaste.  “And if you did, you wouldn’t be the man I think you are and then I wouldn’t sell it to you. But it comes from your mother and it belongs to you. Here, take it and put your money away. Please, don’t insult me. Here, lower your head. I promised your mother I’d put this on you myself.”

Tim hesitated, but El Brujo’s eyes held a power that disconcerted him. He bent his knees and lowered his head and the copal that burned on the witch doctor’s fire made Tim’s eyes fill with water and blurred his vision. His lungs filled with its heady heaviness and El Brujo pushed him down towards the source of the incense. Tim inhaled and broke out in a sweat.

“You must wear this always. It will protect you,” El Brujo placed the medallion around Tim’s neck.

“But it’s broken.”

“Not broken, but divided. You must search until you find the missing half.”

“Did my mother tell you that?”

“Your mother is dead.”

El Brujo lapsed into silence and stared Tim down. After a moment, he broke into a weird, wailing chant, using a language that Tim had never heard before. As he sang, he brushed Tim’s eyes with an eagle feather that he drew from his shirt pocket.

“Now, you will be able to see.”

… an old woman dressed in black pushes a young man in the chest … woollen threads hang out their colors from her sewing basket … they flap like flags in a single ray of sunshine that breaks into a million tiny sparks of fire … hummingbirds, wing their dance around a sun that bears a dead man’s  face … a pair of scissors snips at the string that ties the balloon to the earth and it floats away up into the air high above the cathedral tower … fire catches its wings and it flares like zopilote … the cathedral spire is a notched measuring stick conducting the clouds as they dance and weave their patterns … within the prison of the sky … trenchant shadows … twisted dancers … old warrior kings bend themselves into pipe wire shapes as they struggle to escape … an old man  wrings his hands then vanishes …  a soap bubble floats away on the wind … a young girl stands on a bridge in winter … snow swirls drawing a curtain around her falling body … an old crone wrapped in rags carries a bundle of clothes to a set of steps and leaves it there …

“The medallion vibrates, it’s heavy and warm.”

“It knows you.”

“What do you mean, ‘it knows me’?”

“Did you feel nothing? Did you see nothing?”

“I saw nothing,” Tim coughed and cleared his throat. “I saw nothing at all.”

“If you say so,” El Brujo stared at Tim long and hard. He opened his mouth to speak, then shrugged his shoulders.

“Come, you have accepted the medallion your mother left you. Now accept my blessing.”

Why?”

Because I ask you to. Are you such a coward that you cannot accept a blessing from a man old enough to be your father? Here, kneel beside me,” El Brujo tapped the ground at his side and Tim, wondering all the while what on earth he thought he was doing, knelt beside the witch doctor.

El Brujo leaned forward and blew on the fire. He added a handful of twigs and selected with great care three pieces of copal from one of his pockets.  He thought for a moment then added two more pieces of incense. The fire caught and smoldering incense filled the air with its heady scent.

“This is a magic land,” El Brujo said as he sketched his spell onto the smoke rising from the fire and laid hands on Tim’s head, all the while muttering an incantation as he squeezed Tim’s neck between his thumb and forefinger. Tim didn’t struggle as El Brujo moved his head to where the incense was thickest. Tim coughed at first, then inhaled the incense and relaxed as his lungs filled with its aroma.

… the young man’s spirit drifts out of his body … it floats in the air above him … the witch doctor draws grief and sorrow from the young man’s heart … they circle for a moment … a sharp wind blows them away …  a child’s balloon rises in the air … it soars upwards to where zopilote floats in the sky … the witch doctor chants and his words have the brightness of forgotten gods long-buried in splendour … still burning with life … he hangs a silver sun round the young man’s neck … it rests against his heart and mirrors the gold disc hanging from the sky … silver mingles with gold as the warm metals bond with flesh and blood …

Tim continued to inhale the incense and exuded thick beads of sweat as he struggled to remain conscious. El Brujo filled his heart and soul with honey and hibiscus. The witch doctor blessed him and again brushed his eyes with the eagle feather. Then he sat back, closed his own eyes, and waited for Tim to regain his senses. Tim’s eyelids fluttered; like a landed fish, he took in great gulps of air, then struggled to his feet, swaying for a moment and shaking his head. El Brujo remained motionless. Tim opened his mouth to speak, but could find no words. He shuffled away in silence.

…  dry leaves gather in quiet corners where the morning breeze weaves them in endless figures of eight … a whirlwind of dead dust scuttles in mysterious circles … rats disturb old bones that lie drying on the floor of an age old attic in an abandoned house … a light brown hand rises for a moment … waves … then dips beneath icy waters …

Tim turned as he reached the edge of the square and looked back. The fire sputtered and one last spurt of smoke formed into a figure that crouched low beside the witch doctor and whispered in his ear.

Writer’s Block: Wednesday Workshop

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Writer’s Block

Every day, well, almost every day, I meet people who tell me that they cannot write anymore. They have abandoned their current project. They sit in their work space and stare at blank screens or empty walls. They have come face to face with the dreaded Writer’s Block.

While some consider Writer’s Block to be an actual illness, others flaunt it like a flag or a badge of honor:

“Don’t touch me — I’ve got Writer’s Block: I wouldn’t want you to catch it.”

“I’m having a bad week: I’ve got Writer’s Block.”

“Sorry, I can’t make the writer’s meeting, I’ve got Writer’s Block.”

According to Wikipedia, “Writer’s block is a condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work or experiences a creative slowdown. The condition ranges in difficulty from coming up with original ideas to being unable to produce a work for years. Throughout history, writer’s block has been a documented problem.”

We have probably all experienced the sensation of being unable to write, unable to think, unable to continue. As an academic, I found that something similar happens frequently in examinations with young students whose minds suddenly go blank when faced by a white page and an awkward question. This form of Writer’s Block comes at the most unfortunate times. Students need to be switched on just when their minds switch off. And something similar happens to writers.

Examination Block can be overcome. In many cases careful preparation for an exam will reduce or eliminate examination block. These preparations may well include correct note-taking and relevant revision procedures. There should be no last minute all-night study the night before the exam and a good night’s sleep, proper food, and water are essentials. Appropriate physical exercises before the exam starts are also useful as these make the heart beat and the blood flow. All these things prepare both body and mind and free the student for that most important task: the struggle with the blank page and the awkward question.

Will a similar set of preparations work for those who suffer from Writer’s Block?

In order to answer this question, I would rather take a different approach. Instead of seeing Writer’s Block as a physical / mental presence that stops us writing, why not look at it as an absence that can be overcome? What can we call that absence? Personally, I look upon it as an absence of creativity. If the creativity isn’t there, then writing creatively won’t happen. So what do we do?

Let us define creativity. For me, creativity is the expression of the creative principle that dwells within all of us. It is there, within us. We may suppress it or we may let it be suppressed. We may ignore it or we may deny it: but it is still there. It is always there. Sometimes it is beaten out of us; or we think it is. But it is still there, beneath the surface, waiting to be called on. The Roman poets spoke of it as Deus est in nobis … the god that dwells within us.

Creativity, for me, is like a river that vanishes underground and then reappears: it will be back.

The most important thing in my opinion is what you do when you’re not writing, what you do when you’re faced with that wall of blackness, what you do when you stare at that blank screen and nothing makes your fingers dance on the key board.

Here’s what I do. I make up my mind not to force myself to be creative. Forget about writing. Do something else. Ignore all idea of Writer’s Block, or the End of the World, or the Imminent Disaster of not being able to write. It may take a mental effort, but forget about it.

Now do something else, something positive. Different people respond to different stimuli. Here’s what I do.

(1) I read books
I read other people in their creative moments. I love reading people who write in other languages that I speak and read, because my own mind tries to recreate their images, their stories. This re-creation is a form of creation in itself. New words, new ideas, new combinations, rise to the surface of the mind, like bubbles on a river.

(2) I color and draw
As any who have seen my drawings know, I cannot draw. However, I can take a line for a walk. And that’s what I do. Then I color the spaces I create. My friends thought I was wasting my time and I believed them until I read one of Matisse’s sayings: “My ambition: to liberate color, to make it serve both as form and content.” Voilà: I have my raison d’être. Nature abhors a vacuum. When you create a space, color and meaning rush in.

(3) I take photos
The capturing of a moment: a sunset, a new bird at the feeder, deer wandering through the garden, a black bear visiting, rain on a spider web, sunlight through a prism, a cat made out of cherry stones … the re-creation of the moment is the creation of the memory. More bubbles flow on the surface of the stream.

(4) I go for a walk, look at nature and the world around me, people too
It is incredibly important to do this. A visit to the local coffee shop, a walk around the super-market or corner store, a seat in the park on a sunny day … just be yourself, believe in your existence, watch things as they happen, relax, look and listen, empty yourself, let the world flow back in … look at the ducks on the lake or the goldfish in the tank … more bubbles on the water, more ideas floating down the stream …

(5) I listen to music
De gustibus non disputandum … we can’t argue about taste. Where music goes, each person must make their own choices. The music I like fills my mind, relaxes me, flows out when it ends, takes my mind for a walk and leaves … a vacuum … into which dreams and colors, words and ideas, build like clouds …

(6) I cook
Cooking has always relaxed me. Sometimes the repeating of an old recipe helps clear my mind. Sometimes I have a need to invent something new. Hands and mind occupied, the secret, sacred underground river of creativity flows on …

(7) I sew
Last summer, an unexpected event led me to join a quilting group … oh what fun … a man quilting among a dozen women … I learned so many things … so many different ways of looking at the world … so many concepts that I would never have dreamed of on my own … Sewing runs in the family: I still have my grandfather’s sewing kit … darning and sewing needles that served him for two years before the mast … that darned his socks as he survived in the trenches of the First World War … it bears his name and I use it with pride … and what memories arise in my mind as I choose the needle … his needle … the one that will lead me into the next adventure, be it quilt, button or patch …

(8) I keep a journal
… and come hell or high water, I write in it every day and have done so since 1985. That’s 31 years during which I have scarcely missed a day. The writing maybe banal, it may be nothing but a note on the weather or a comment on a sporting event … but it’s there … a vital challenge to the idea that Writer’s Block can take me over and stop me writing. This journal is 95% drivel … maybe more … but bobbing along the stream of words are ideas, verses, rhyme schemes, choruses, stories, flashes of inspiration, jokes, memories, magic moments, falling stars, … the secret is to catch these falling stars, to recognize these rough diamonds and to return to them and polish when the moment is ripe … and it will be, sooner or later … for bubbles are buoyant and will lift you to the stars.

(9) Free Writing and the Creation of Metaphors
I also use the journal for free writing and automatic writing. These techniques, drawn from the Surrealists, allow the mind to wander at random. While wandering, the mind creates an interior monologue or a stream of consciousness that in fact turns up a series of delightful metaphors that can be polished and re-used at will. When I use this style of writing, I am reminded of Dalí’s saying (again and as always, from memory): “I don’t know what it means, but I know it means something.” My own theory of metaphor is that the metaphor is defined by two (sometimes more) points and rather than settling on one or the other (as in a simile), the mind moves and flickers sub-consciously between the two extremes so that meaning is sensed, but rarely can be grasped or stated in definitive terms. Thus, the marvelous line from André Breton, quoted by Mr. Cake,  “The wolves are clothed in mirrors of snow” has, according to my theory of metaphor, four defining points, namely, wolves … clothed … mirrors … snow. All four of these defining points creates an image, a very personal image, in the reader’s mind. The mind moves quickly between each defining point and meaning is lost in the rapid shift from image to image. Quite simply, “the hand cannot grasp it, nor the mind exceed it.” This means we have to return, as readers, to the unconscious level where the metaphors were first created. Then: “when we no longer seek it, it is with us.” This same analytical exercise can be performed for each line of Breton’s poem. When we indulge in free writing, much of what we write can be abandoned. The secret is to recognize and rescue the little gems we so often find.

(10) I believe
Through all this runs a thread of belief … belief that the black cloud of despair will not win. The Writer’s Block will go. Creativity will never be lost. It is there, beneath the surface, always ready to be contacted, waiting to rise and take you over again. And all too soon and quite unexpectedly, one form of creativity slips into another and the creative writing (it never really went away because of the journal) comes back.

Writer’s Block: it does exist. It’s how we deal with it that’s important. Creativity rules: forget Writer’s Block and let creativity and the multiple ways back to creativity grow and flow. Sooner or later the clouds will lift, the sun will return, the block will unblock and the words will flow again.

Remember the words on the Roman sundial: Horas non numero nisi serenas … I count only the happy hours. And remember: the clouds will lift, the sun will return.

Trust me.
And believe.

Comment:
I first posted this entry on 17 August 2016. Since then it has received a number of hits and comments. Today, I have revised it and tightened it slightly, but the main ideas remain the same. I will try and continue with my Wednesday Workshops on a regular basis throughout 2017. Wish me luck.

People of the Mist 4

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People of the Mist
6:30 AM

The wooden yoke of the solitary bell hanging in the tower of the church of St. James had broken long ago. The bell neither swung nor tolled when the priest pulled the rope. Every day, before morning mass, one of the altar boys climbed the tower steps, knelt beside the bell and beat it with a hammer. The bell rang out with sharp sounds that echoed the cry of a struck anvil in a hot forge where the farrier tends the horse’s hoofs. Twenty-four times the hammer struck the bell as the acolyte called the parishioners and encouraged them to come to early morning mass.

Tim visited the church from time to time, more out of curiosity than anything else. This morning, however, a sudden urge to visit washed over him. He knew that if he hurried he would get there on time, so he dressed and lumbered down to the courtyard.

“Buenos días, señor,” Mario, the handyman, brush in hand, greeted him with the sunshine of a gold tooth winking among white teeth.

“Buenos días, Mario.”

“Señor, you’re up early. You must be going to mass. Please don’t forget it’s a pig day today.”

“I won’t forget,” Tim returned Mario’s smile and slipped out of the front gates and into the street.

Tim walked with care towards the church of St. James.  He looked down at the ground and tried to avoid the tree roots that pushed up between the paving stones on the sidewalk. The stones all lay at awkward angles and the roots crept upwards through the cracks, twisting towards the sun.

… thin clasping fingers … trying to trip the unwary … to pull them to the ground … to tug them into the darkness as they fall between the cracks in the paving stones … 

Outside the church door, two young people squatted on the ground in front of the local witchdoctor, El Brujo. The young man, eyes closed, threaded a cactus thorn through his lower lip. Dark blood oozed and, as it fell, El Brujo caught it in a little earthenware bowl. Beside him the young girl carried a flower-filled basket on her head. The aroma of the incense El Brujo burned on his fire tickled Tim’s nostrils.

… light are the flowers … heavy cruel stones lie beneath them and weigh the basket down … twelve girls in floral dresses stand outside the church of the Soledad… they pick up their baskets … place them on their heads … hand on hip one arm swinging free they wait for the high priest to bless them … then they start their pilgrimage … twelve girls … twelve churches … each will leave a floral tribute in a church … they will continue to the cathedral where each petitioner will frame a question as she waits for the blessing … and her lips will whisper the desired prayer  …  and perhaps it will be answered … but only if the young man sheds enough blood, if the young girl carries a heavy enough weight for long enough …

El Brujo looked at Tim and snapped his fingers. Tim shook his head as he broke away from the images that danced in his head. El Brujo closed his eyes and hummed a rhythmic chant. He was about to enter a trance. Tim shrugged his shoulders, walked past the group, and stopped at the church door, hesitant. Then he took a deep breath and tugged at the oaken door.

Darkness ruled inside the church and would do so until the sun’s first rays awoke the altar’s sleeping colors. Tim had missed the start of the service. He bowed his head, looked towards the altar, genuflected, made the sign of the cross, and knelt at the back of the church. He looked at the people in front of him as they concentrated on the gestures of the priest. He also searched for the man who resembled his father, but there was no sign of him.

The early morning dream world encouraged meditation. Tim watched and dreamed as the shadows crept across the walls. A single beam of sunshine descended and the sharp blade of its heliocentric sword shattered the chapel’s onyx altar into a thousand tiny chips of stained light. A young widow knelt at the altar rail. As the piercing light struck the altar, she turned and her face was a pallid lily truncated by the sun’s pearly light. The sun’s rays placed a halo upon her head. She stood up with her hand before her face as if she were blind then lurched towards the statue of St. James, the patron Saint of this church, of the Conquistadores, and of Spain. The morning service continued as she prayed before his statue.

… St. James the Moor-Slayer … he stands on the severed heads of the Moors he has killed … behind him hands tied behind their backs dusky skinned warriors march away into slavery … the widowed supplicant kneels … her eyes are level with those of the severed heads … she stares eyeball to eyeball at a decapitated Moor … visions of the Gate of Glory in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain … pilgrim after  pilgrim lays hands upon the Tree of Jesse and forces grasping fingers into the stone … generations of pilgrim palms burrowing their way into the granite …  the supplicant’s flesh clutches the statue’s stone hand … human veins clasp cold marble in search of comfort and an oh-so-elusive warmth …

 


 

People of the Mist 3

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People of the Mist
6:15 AM

            The bitter taste of bile and vomit brought Tim face to face with to the realities of the day. He removed his soiled, sweat-soaked tee shirt and, still wearing shorts that served him as pajamas, he wandered into the kitchen and lit the gas stove. He opened the fridge. Inside, a plastic bottle of cold water, purchased from the little man in the corner shop, stared back at him. Tim poured some bottled water into an open saucepan and set it to boil.  He added two large splinters of cinnamon. When the water started to bubble, he sprinkled coffee grains on the seething liquid and waited for the grounds to settle. He brought the water back to the boil and did this two more times. When the liquid changed to the dark color he craved, he strained it through a filter into his cup. He scooped a spoonful of honey into the brew and walked across to the table where his copy of a new post-Columbian códice lay open, gazed for a moment at the colored figures in their multitude of poses, and started to read.

“Two breasts: one green, one yellow, symbolic of the hill where the church stands; the church itself bi-coloured, strong stone walls, a spire. A large red heart symbolic of the love we bear for you, our masters. Two feet walking the path of enlightenment you opened before us are accompanied by two hands pointing the way. The feet below the heart; the hands above the heart, like wings; and the heart becomes the body of the new place you have built for us. And in the heart is our sacred symbol: the Earthquake, a sign of leadership and power used only by those of Royal Stature and the Noblest Blood. Attached to the heart is the Numeral One which means Lord of the Earthquake; for you are Number One in our Hearts. Attached to the heart is a speech scroll showing felicitous words of praise; below it is the sacred earthworm, and beneath that the serpent head of wisdom and the flint knife promising strength through sacrifice.

But be wary: for our symbols are double-edged! The colors of the hill are divided, as the hill is divided, showing strife and division. The church is on top of the hill, for the symbol has conquered the people, and the people are starving, subject, and destroyed. The feet are pointing in opposite directions, for the people are stalled. They have no forward movement, nor will of their own, for they are conquered by the sword and not by love. And the hands are pointing in opposite directions; for the right hand knows not what the left hand is doing. And the hands are reversed showing anguish and distress. The sign of the heart is the sign of the disembodied heart, torn from the heaving chest of the vanquished and thrown to the dogs. The sign of the earthquake is also the sign of movement. And that movement is a bowel movement. And one movement in the middle of the sacrificed heart is the victor excreting on the vanquished and treating them with scorn and contempt. The scroll protrudes from the nether part and says that the victors are speaking words of excrement, that verbal diarrhoea issues from their lips. And the serpent has no feathers; it cannot fly. It is as a snake treacherous and bitter, crawling on the ground. The head of the serpent is two tongued and tells of treachery and of deceit. The flint is attached to a heart; it speaks of the heart that is as hard as flint, knowing no mercy. And at the end that heart will receive no mercy in its turn.”

Tim stopped reading. He put his head in his hands and wild thoughts tumbled through his brain, crazy thoughts, hallucinations fueled by the mescal of the previous night.

… the rabbit in the moon wears his father’s face … it perches like a scarecrow on the dead stick of a spent rocket … and the rabbit puts out the sun and causes the moon to be formed, moon-raker, moon-maker, jack rabbit, rabbit pie in the sky … and the second sun stares down now a blinded eye, unblinking … death’s face simmers in the stew pot moon and everyone seems doomed as the white rabbit scuttles down his narrow escape tube and back into his burrow … high flames flicker on zopilote’s wings and bring an end to darkness … Zopilote the Trickster, the bringer of the sun’s early morning fire … Lucifer, the morning star, the bearer of light, a new star rising among star-crossed generations … red scars of tulips, casting shadows on the white-washed wall, twisting shadows, shadows dancing as they struggle to take shape … three women, dancing in the limelight, and an old man, standing there, wringing his hands, then vanishing, a soap bubble, borne away on the wind … floating to where the returning warriors play their hummingbird games around the sun, … they return from their death like all the dead, here in Oaxaca … and the people placing food and drink on altars in their homes for their dearest beloveds to return once a year … down the moonlight’s marigold path, to feast and be fêted by their families … all the dead … returned …

“All the dead …?” Tim repeated the words out loud and sat upright, wide awake. He took his pen and wrote in his journal:

Things to do today:

Shopping: Bread / Newspaper / Mescal

 He stopped writing and took a sip of his coffee. He again put pen to paper.

 But this is all nonsense: I can’t believe that I saw my father last night. It couldn’t have been him. I buried him a long time ago and a long way away. What did I see then, a living man, a man who looked like him? But he was wearing the shirt and tie in which I buried my dad, so it had to be him. And who was following El Brujo and Alonso this morning? I just don’t understand. I know they told me the mescal would get to me and give me hallucinations and strange dreams, but surely not so soon. Dreams , visions, or hallucinations: there are so many things I want to know.

People of the Mist 2

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People of the Mist
6:00 AM

… dream worlds circle outside the window in a starry sky where two moons float …  inside the bedroom, grey scalpels shaved from black obsidian inscribe red gashes on white-washed walls … the slashes turn into tulips that scrape sharp fingernails across the paint and send blood scuttling down to the floor … against a background of granite and trenchant shadows, twisted dancers, themselves old warrior kings bend themselves into pipe wire shapes as they struggle to escape their carved imprisonment … around and above them, the temples of Monte Albán tower and threaten … high priests in long black robes gape at the sky from their sanctuary in the observatory as three young women walk at an angle up the pagan temple steps … when they reach the top, a moonbeam holds them in its spotlight and they wax with the full moon’s beauty …  the doorway to an unclosed grave opens its crocodile jaws and three women descend the temple steps, ageing as they walk … they enter the tomb’s dark mouth … an old man in a faded suit follows them in … the grave swallows them and buries them in the hidden depths beneath the mound …

Down below, in the courtyard of Tim’s residence, the handy man tumble-dried a TV ad in the washing machine of his song sparrow throat. He gargled with gravel and churned stony lyrics skywards until they grated at Tim’s bedroom window and tried to drag him from his dreams.

… dream shadows back themselves into a cul-de-sac, a wilderness of harsh black scars … Tezcatlipoca catches Tochtli the Rabbit by his ears and throws him against the second sun that sizzles in the sky … his sharp teeth burrow, burying themselves deep in the fire’s red light … the second sun loses its fire and turns into the cold stone of the moon …  Tochtli’s face, the rabbit  face of death, simmers in the moon’s dwindling pool … a white rabbit, pursued by death’s hounds, scampers down a narrow escape tube through the deep dark tunnel of an earthen throat that allows him to escape from the hunter’s teeth …

… with a clicking of claws, knitting needles come together to lift the dreamer outwards and upwards towards death’s golden guillotine floating in the sky … the moon sharpens its knife edge on the keening wind and sets the dreamer’s blood tingling from toes to head … the dreamer desires to be free, free from those nightmares, those nocturnal visions that rise up from the past and stalk him as he lies in bed … he longs for the alarm clock to shuffle its pack of sleepless hours and to waken him with its piercing shriek as it tears him from these winding sheets, these grave clothes in which he lies … he  waits for the sun to shine into his window … he wants it to waken the bright jungle parrot that sleeps in the yard so that querulous caged voice will scatter night’s drawn curtains of clouds and drifting dream ….

The first waves of sunlight broke over the houses and Tim’s dreams began to fade. As the new day dawned the black bat of night flew back to its distant cave. Light fell, in the yard below, on the parrot’s cage where the bird clung to the bars, and “¡Loro, loro! I’m a parrot!” the caged bird shrieked at the sky.

New visions crawled out from the vellum codex left open last night on the table and red and green gods with black and white masks crawled through Tim’s drowsing mind. He linked them together with lines and arrows and made a silent vow that his life would never again be scarred by their furrowed frowns and secretive smiles.

The day’s first rocket climbed its ladder of sky to fizzle and smash at the gods’ front door. A second rocket extracted him like a tooth from the socket and drew him fully into daylight. The third explosion sounded much closer and a fourth rocket soon surged skywards. The fifth and sixth rockets were two fiery giants with arms reaching up to claw with their fingers at the sky.

Tim thought about getting up to see if the rocket delivery mailman was one of his neighbors, but last night’s mescal still swaddled him in lullabies and he couldn’t get out of bed.

… whoever the man is, the half-dozen rockets he has purchased have been expended now and he’ll soon be home ... maybe I can roll over and go back to sleep …

As Tim thought this, he heard the swoosh of the seventh rocket.

“Seven,” he said out loud, sitting up in bed.  “That means five more. Nobody buys a dozen rockets, unless it’s something very special.”

Tim pulled back the sheets and swung his legs out over the side of the bed. He looked out of the window. Down below him, in the street, his friend Alonso, the archaeologist, walked side by side with El Brujo, the witch doctor. Alonso held a bunch of rockets in one hand while El Brujo opened and closed a box of traditional Oaxacan wax matches. Alonso readied a rocket in his right hand and El Brujo scratched match against sandpaper and applied flame to the rocket’s blue paper. With a flash and a whoosh, the rocket soared into the air.

Alonso and El Brujo stopped, looked up towards Tim’s window, and waved.

“Come down and join us, Tim,” El Brujo called. “We’ve got a surprise for you. There’s something we want to tell you.”

Tim saw three women and a man in a suit turning the corner at the end of the street. The shadows they cast in the rocket’s red glare were those of sinuous worms slithering along the cobbles. Tim shook his head in disbelief and moved away from the window. A sudden nausea gripped him. He went to the bathroom, gagged, knelt before the toilet bowl, put two fingers down his throat, and threw up. Six wrinkled worms swam round and round leaving a thin, yellow smoke trail in the flush’s whirlpool.

Tim got to his feet and hurried back to the window but the street was empty. Before he could turn away, rockets number eight and nine climbed out of unseen hands and soared upwards to knock in mockery on the doors of the celestial gods.