Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Sunday gratefuls: Minnesota. China. South Korea. North Korea. Mark, near Iran. Mary, down under with Kangaroos. Shadow.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

 

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Korean Fried Chicken

Week Kavannah:   Yetziratiut. Creativity.   Revising Superior Wolf, learning from my writing coach. Focus.

 

Tarot: King of Vessels, Heron

Herons greet the dawn. Stand at the gateway to the Celtic Otherworld and to my Holy Well.

One brief shining: Blessed. Manuscripts ready. Superior Wolf. Missing. Even the Gods Must Die. Ancientrails. Rich, my collaborator. My coach, patient and kind, yet critical. Exciting.

A latter-day immersion in the mikveh of creation. Becoming a Jew–the first immersion. Becoming a new man–taking Israel, god-wrestler, as my Hebrew name. Today. Under again–reborn as a writer.

At 79. With the Heron. The gateway to the Otherworld near. Vegetables and Honey. Novels. With Kate. Without her. I did not see. Not a slough, a fallow time. The Heron landed.

Now. The Otherworld in sight. My Holy Well has sprung to life again. A submerged yearning bobbed up–for this ordinary craft. One word after another. Even infants can do it. Build worlds.

Can I use words to uncreate? Tear down. Demolish.  Get the hammer. Something not ordinary. Not common. New.

An old man of the Mountain. Shadow Mountain. No longer waiting.

Picasso. “Inspiration exists. But it has to find you working.”

Over twenty years. Each morning. First. Ancientrails. Five hundred words. On what? I never know until my fingers hit the keyboard. I breathe in. Inspired. Breathe out. Done.

Here’s an odd thing. When I wrote my novels. A candle beside me, lit. When the day’s writing finished. Blown out. The candle honored my creative spirit. Fire in the mind. Yet. I never lit a candle while I wrote Ancientrails. Huh?

Workaday? Not fiction? Too quick to execute? Though it takes me two hours, sometimes three with revising, polishing.

Not anymore.

The candle burns beside me. Flickering. Yellow. A domesticated cousin of wildfire in the mind. Burning down forests of convention. Blackened soil.

Learning. Commitment. Devotion. A path forged on Yaowarat–a sewer grate hidden in the night. My right foot stuck while my body moved forward. A ruptured Achilles.

Surgery. Laid up for two months. Needed a distraction. Cybermage Bill Schmidt. A blog. Begun with my leg in a cast as ligaments knitted back together. February, 2005. Twenty-one years ago this month.

My fiction writing. A long fallow period. Ancientrails. Never. This and that. Noteworthy and mundane. Its content so varied. Not routine. Yet constant. Word after word. So many. Three million, maybe more. Ancientrails always found me working. Not practice. The work.

By the Heron.

Drinking from the Holy Well.