the rain fills and fills the land. a young red maple offer their leaves to a rare flash of sun. crimson stars spiralling on pools on the pathway. the robin laments and celebrates the passing. the heron unperturbed continues the vigil at the end of the garden. this winter’s initiation has been clear, let your ideas and plans fall out into the galaxy of the unconscious and dream awhile. like the trees.
these last weeks i have been sinking deep into stories. written and personal. i thought I would share a few quotes, a poem and a book or two that has been sinking me into mythic internal and external landscapes. filled with the soft velvet tang of silence. winter’s rest.
“But stories are fragile. Like people's lives. It only takes a word out of place to change them forever. If you hear a lovely tune, and then you change it, the new tune might be lovely too, but you've lost the first one." "But if I stick to the first tune, then I've lost the second." "But someone else might discover it. It's still there to be born." "And the first tune isn't?" "No," Tallis insisted, although she was confused now. "It has already come into your mind. It's lost forever." "Nothing is lost forever," Mr. Williams said quietly. "Everything I've known I still know, only sometimes I don't know that I know it." All things are known, but most things are forgotten. It takes a special magic to remember them. "My grandfather said something like that to me," Tallis whispered.
this is a quote from the dazzling story Lavondyss by Robert Holdock. it explores the nature of the mythopoetic landscapes of the mind and how it can open portals in time and story, all wrapped up in a mystical tale that holds fathomless depths. if you read it, you might that portal inside yourself, a doorway to the unconscious and ancestral memory of the isles of Britain. this is a rare gem of a novel and a big inspiration to my own writing.
“She was in no hurry to explain Menewood; she wanted its secrets to unfurl slowly.”
these last weeks has brought the release of a long anticipated novel, Menewood by Nicola Griffith. the second instalment of the Hild sequence. a historical epic, telling the story of who became st hilda of whitby, an Anglisc noble woman. both stories are written with language that is so incredible it makes you gasp. at the end of each book i wept the ending of this immersive sinking into 6c Britain and the descriptions of landscape and the detail of life there. here is a little taste:
“She knew them by their thick woven cloaks, their hanging hair and beards, and their Anglisc voices: words drumming like apples spilt over wooden boards, round, rich, stirring. Like her father’s words, and her mother’s, and her sister’s. Utterly unlike Onnen’s otter-swift British or the dark liquid gleam of Irish. Hild spoke each to each. Apples to apples, otter to otter, gleam to gleam, though only when her mother wasn’t there.”
the books are overflowing with this young woman, Hild, her story, her character, so richly imagined in every way.
perhaps you read a few weeks ago about our book club for paid subscribers? beginning in early 2024, these books are just a taste of what is to come. the events themselves, part guided journey, part sharing and reading, part discussion. you are welcome to join the slowly growing group. more to come later. perhaps you have some recommendations for books seeped in landscape? I’d love to hear from you
and to close our time spent in books and stories, love, loss, myth and nature. a poem.
Love Poem: Hafez Timothy Lui link to poem at poetry foundation Way in the back of that used bookstore, I found a paperback whose covers had come loose from its spine— the glue cracked underneath— held together by a green rubber band that crumbled to dust when I tried to open it—
at the bottom of the well, there are so many voices. winter’s rain each one a word.
until next week
Jai Michelle
So much magic ✨💫✨
I particularly like the last poem by Hafaz Timothy Lui and all the other stories very magical💗💗