Better Than Dead

Lately I’ve only been taking half-hour lunches at work because I need to get on the road home earlier than I used to. A half hour doesn’t seem sufficient to get any writing done once I’ve gone down to buy lunch and come back upstairs. But I’ve managed to squeeze in some “research reading,” which makes me feel as if I’m keeping my hand in as a writer. Between caregiving, a full time job, and exhaustion there is no other time slot for actual writing. I realize my research-reading-as-extension-of-writing is something of an illusion, but it’s been quite a creative illusion for all that.

Currently, I’m reading a fascinating book called Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar by Robert W. Lebling. It’s sparked all kinds of ideas. Curiously, most of them have been for existing stories rather than new ones, fleshing them out, solving plot issues, broadening character. None of these stories are about djinn, but the book brings up many wonderful cross-cultural themes. Anytime I read mythology of any sort it sparks loads of ideas for me, and the fact is, most Western mythology has roots in the Middle East. We share a profound cultural connection, an archetypal basis, with that part of the world, whether we care to acknowledge it or not.

This week the book sparked a ton of ideas for the Annia Sabina book I mentioned the other day. Last week it pumped out goodies for a novel I’ve been playing with for several years. Before that, I was reading The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture by Walter L. Williams specifically to do research/get ideas for my historical fantasy, The Numberless Stars. That book did its job well and I got plenty of ideas. Before that, it was yet another something that had my mind clicking away at yet another novel.

Which is all well and very good, but it does mean I’m bouncing around a lot. That’s not an unfamiliar pattern for me when I’m between projects. I tend to bounce until something takes a firm hold and I commit a substantial amount of writing to the page. Then momentum takes over and I work through the idea, generally, until it’s finished.

But, as I said, I’ve got maybe a half-hour a day to dedicate to anything me-related, to my writing, and research reading, and cozening the muse. Unless I’m stealing time from something else I should be doing to do…this. Or something like it.

I’m itching to write. I have moments when I speak with such confidence about what the next project will be! But in truth, I’m bouncing. I may bounce until I splatter myself unless I can figure a way to steal or carve out what I need and still meet my honorable commitments.

Writing requires sacrifice. Art requires it. We’re always stealing from something else in order to do that thing which makes us feel whole. Generally from time with family and friends, from our social lives, etc. There is no easy way to do this and do it well. Even if you manage to achieve full-time artist/writer status, there will always be something you have to give up in order to do that which makes you feel whole. The question of what and how much is an individual thing. No one can make that decision for you, and sometimes the circumstances are very hard indeed.

For me, I can’t go forever with my creative channels choked off. Something has to give, but it’s impossible for me to say what at this point. In the meantime, I’ll continue to bounce and steal and hope that something anchors me before I splatter. Sometimes it’s as simple as saying, “Just do it, for God’s sake!”

Just do it. Sometimes it’s as simple and as hard as that.

Random quote of the day:

 

“The image is more than an idea.  It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.”

—Ezra Pound, “Affirmations—As for Imagisme”

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.”

—Eugène Delacroix, diary, May 15, 1824

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Any one thesis or conception may in itself be unsatisfactory and yet it does not lose all its value even when it is given up for another.  Something sticks to the critics; those who come after are usually a bit richer.  We may think of history as an argument without end.”

—Pieter Geyl, Napoleon for and against, tr. by Herbert H. Rowen

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

I was reading Carl Jung’s sort-of autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections yesterday. I like it because it isn’t a typical autobiography—Jung abhorred the very idea of writing one.  It is exactly what the title states: a collection of memories, dreams, and reflections that went to the formation of the person Jung became.  He wanted to peal back the layers of himself to see where his Self came from.  There are many strange and memorable passages.

In yesterday’s memorable passage, he was discussing his teenage years and an elaborate fantasy he used to entertain himself with on walks to and from school, a kind of alternate reality where all of the Alsace was one giant lake:

There would be a hill of rock rising out of the lake, connected by a narrow isthmus to the mainland, cut through by a broad canal with a wooden bridge over it, leading to a gate flanked by towers and opening into a little medieval city built on the surrounding slopes.  On the rock stood a well-fortified castle with a tall keep, a watchtower.  This was my house.

He goes on to describe a rather neat and spare little tower, with small but comfortable rooms, weaponry, canons, men-at-arms, and a great library “where you could find everything worth knowing.”

The nerve center and raison d’être of this whole arrangement, he goes on to say, was the secret of the keep, which I alone knew….Inside the tower, extending from the battlements to the vaulted cellar, was a copper column of heavy wire cable as thick as a man’s arm, which ramified at the top into the finest branches, like the crown of a tree or—better still—like a taproot with all its tiny rootlets turned upside down and reaching into the air.  From the air they drew a certain inconceivable something which was conducted down the copper column into the cellar.  Here I had an equally inconceivable apparatus, a kind of laboratory in which I made gold out of the mysterious substance which the copper roots drew from the air….One was not supposed to look into it too closely, nor ask what kind of substance was extracted from the air….What the roots absorbed and transmitted to the copper trunk was a kind of spiritual essence which became visible down in the cellar as finished gold coins.  This was certainly no mere conjuring trick, but a venerable and vitally important secret of nature which had come to me I know not how and which I had to conceal not only from the council of elders but, in a sense, also from myself.

This reminds me of Yggdrasil, the Norse Tree of Life, which Jung possibly had rattling around in his Germanic subconscious, but I like his actualization of the concept. I couldn’t help thinking what a terrific idea this was, that perhaps I should “steal” it (with full and proper attribution, of course) and adapt it.  I’m not much of a high-fantasist, alas, and I’ve become somewhat disenchanted with steampunk, so I don’t really know what I am these days, except perhaps the crock at the end of the rainbow, sans the gold.

Jung goes on to say, This highly enjoyable occupation lasted for several months before I got sick of it.  Then I found the fantasy silly and ridiculous.

Ah, I thought.  Mid-novel ennui.  I know that well enough.  If any of you would like to “adapt” this idea yourselves, please remember to pay homage to Carl Jung’s imagination.

There are many images of Yggdrasil, but I like the one below best, done by one of the students at Emerson Waldorf School, Chapel Hill, NC.