Writing Spaces

 

image:  Matt Riches, Unsplash

Writing Spaces - Dragons in Our Rearview Mirror

 

“How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.”

—Rainer Maria Rilke

Books of Hours, books of waning years . . .

 

 

images:

 

. Liber Floridus (“Book of Flowers”), a medieval encyclopedia compiled between 1090 and 1120 by Lambert, Canon of Saint-Omer

. Book of Hours and Prayer Book, Southern Netherlands, c. 1490-1500 (Picryl, Public Domain Image Search)

. Liber Floridus

 

 

Color Diary: Turquoise Sequin

 

TURQUOISE SEQUIN

 

Tricky to catch, one of those fugitive colors

which won’t stay fixed.  Equivocal, elusive,

inconclusive, evanescent, multifaceted, 

needing an uncertainly certain angle 

of sunlight just so, on its six—seven—

gently slanted planes, 

the shallow saucer of its surface,

the glimmer and glint of it, miniature 

disk, discus, some ancient votive offering

to Zeus, or tiny sacred pool.

Set off by crystals and gemstones

and the soft-textured tile,

the sequin found on the carpet

next to the table leg while 

taking the Christmas tree down,

like the evasive slipper Cinderella lost

fleeing the ball, returning 

to reality from brightness,

to the humdrum after the drumroll.

Writing Spaces

 

image:  Morris B.J. Kelmscott

Color Diary: Lichen Green

LICHEN GREEN 

lichens

on bark, stone, henge—

whether before the pastures 

on the path to the ocean

or in the realm of 

the ancient Alpine storm gods,

inhabiting 

a place of crossing, 

a passage or boundary or wall,

the sanctum

of the hoary apple tree goddess

just past the laundry, kitchens, 

where soup and earthy bread

are shared with all comers

images:  Maelmin Henge, Northumbria

 

Writing Spaces

 

Slowness, Speed (again)

 

I feel immensely honored to have had my story “Slowness, Speed” included in Pinyon’s impressive 30th Anniversary Commemorative Edition (Fall 2024), just out.  The story was originally published in Pinyon in June, 2022 (Edition 31).  This is a lovely publication, and the cover is of handsomely textured paper, with an elegantly high-spirited font.  The inside is full of great full-color art and written content.  The editor’s introduction to this celebration of continuing creation ends “What we’ve gained, or lost, in this world hasn’t changed who we are, and for that I believe we all should be not only grateful, but joyous.”  And so I am.

 

This should inspire me to get back to work on the novel I’ve conceived which includes this story and its sequel—a story which has morphed three times and now again, last time I checked still called “Ojos de Dios,” though I think that too has changed to something like “The Weight of Butterflies.”  It might well be a grateful, joyous, worthwhile thing, if I give it the attention and care it needs.

 

Thank you, Pinyon.

Hymn to Pan

 

Appropriate, perhaps, to have this story published now—dealing as it does with a seemingly dreadful man, a famous breakcore musician, a torturously disruptive neighbor, who the heroine must write up for the upscale music review she works for.

 

Carly has been ordered to make her article positive (“Capital P”), and can’t imagine how she’ll manage that, the way she feels about the man and his excruciating entourage next door.

 

“Maybe Antonio Zugasti thought himself some kind of warlock or vodouisant.  He wore his warpaint often, hung around his scraggly neck some kind of charm pendant with snakes worn on a length of nylon climbing rope.  He kept those witchy Cayuga ducks, shimmery emerald green, on a black-hearted water pond beside his neo-Soviet Brutalist house.  My daughter was intrigued by the green waterfowl, but I couldn't let her go anywhere near.”

 

One idea she explores is classical—

“Maybe metaphor, or myth?  I pulled my laptop toward me, balancing it on my knees, following a desperate train of thought.  I found the words to the Homeric hymn to Pan my classicist mother once read to me: 

         "Muse, tell me about Pan, the dear son of Hermes, with his goat's feet 

            and two horns—a lover of merry noise. Through wooded glades he 

            wanders with dancing nymphs who foot it on some sheer cliff's edge, 

            calling upon Pan, the shepherd-god, long-haired, unkempt." 

Could I expand on that?  Pan, the god of music, was Antonio Zugasti's sort.  Maybe somehow I could worm out lots of jocund Pan-like details without having to actually interview the man.  I liked that, smiled.  Humor or my sense of the absurd might after all save me.”

 

Her journey to a workable answer, acceptable to everyone, can be read in the “Second Look” themed issue of Constellations, Vol. 14, Fall 2024 (print only).  And of course the half-goat Pan has his own constellation—Capricorn.

 

 

image:  Pan, mythologysource.com