Terri Windling's Blog, page 170

In the lull between storms

What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone,
in the forest, cherished by this
wonderful, unintelligible,
perfectly innocent speech,
the most comforting speech in the world,
the talk the rain makes by itself over the ridges
and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows.

Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it.
It will talk as long as it wants, this rain.
As long as it talks, I am going to listen.

- Thomas Merton

Tunes for a Monday Morning

This week, as I settle back into family life here in Devon, some songs that explore the concept of "home"....

Above, a classic: "Hame, Hame, Hame," by the great Scottish band Silly Wizard. It comes from their 1981 album, Wild and Beautiful.

Below, "Home Again" by Michael Kiwanuka, a British musician (of Ugandan heritage) from Muswell Hill in west London (2011).

Above, "Home" by the alt folk band Mumford & Sons, also from west London (2012). It's a song that never fails to bring tears to my eyes, perhaps because I first heard it during a traumatic time when I was separated from my loved ones.

Below, singer-songwriter Gabrielle Aplin, who comes from a small village in Wiltshire, UK, sings her poignant song "Home" for BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge (2013). I love this young woman's voice, particularly in stripped-down performances like this one. (The very last part of it is particularly beautiful.) Fingers crossed that music producers don't turn Alpin into just another generic pop diva.

And to end on a lighter note:

Above, "Our House" from the North American folk rock group Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, performed live in 1974. Lordy, this one takes me back.

Below, "Home," a joyful little tune by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, who hail from Los Angeles. It comes from their 2009 album, Up From Below.

If you want a little more this morning, I recommend "N17" by Ireland's The Saw Doctors (1991), and  the "Homesickness" and "Exile" programs on Ellen Kushner's brilliant old radion show, Sound & Spirit.

Mythic beauty

Some recommended reading....

First: "The Camoflaged Woman: Celebrating Irreverent Beauty & Natural Expression" by Aleah Sato (Jane Crow Journal).  From make-up to muses, adornment to archetypes, it's a must-read for women interested in myth and mythic arts. Myth-minded men may find it of interest too.

Second: "The Long View," a short post by Karen Phelps about nature, loss, and taking the long view. (Dark Mountain, via Suzi Crockford)

Third: "What Great Artists Need: Solitude," a lovely and insightful essay by the Danish author Dorthe Nors. (The Atlantic, via Ellen Kushner)

Fourth: The extraordinary Jane Hirshfield is interviewed in "Why Write Poetry?" (Psychology Today)

Fifth: If you've been missing the "On Your Desk" series on this blog, have a look at "Day of the Desk" by artist Jackie Morris.

And last: Mark Slouka's "Nobody's Son," about the death of his father, is a beautiful thing. (The New Yorker)

Art above: A detail from "Merlin and Nimue The Beguiling of Merlin" by Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898).

The Muse of Bumblehill has taken up her customary post ...

The Muse of Bumblehill has taken up her customary post on the studio couch again, and all is right with the world.

"When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete."    - Steven Pressfield (The War of Art)

Painting: Joel Stewart's illustration for "The Tinder Box" by Hans Christian Andersen. Photograph: the Muse at work.

My brother the star, my mother the earth, my father the...

My brother the star, my mother the earth, my father the sun, my sister the moon:
to my life give beauty, to my body give strength, to my work give goodness, to my house give peace.

- Nancy Wood (Many Winters: Prose and Poetry of the Pueblos)

I'm still recovering from recent travels and labors, so my posts will be short and simple this week. I''ll return to Myth & Moor properly on Monday. Thank you, everyone, for all your kind words and encouragement in the weeks just past.

The art above is by Marc Simont (via Midori Snyder).

Still recovering from recent travels and labors. I'll p...

Still recovering from recent travels and labors. I'll post a few simple pictures here this week, and return to Myth & Moor properly next week.

The charming art above is by Marc Simont, the distinguished American cjildren's book illustrator, who died last year at the age of 97.  (You can read about him here.) This particular piece is from The Rainbow Book of American Folk Tales and Legends (via Midori Snyder).

Springador mathmatics

My return + new bone = joy.

Tune for a Monday Morning

I'll be travelling home from mid-day Sunday to Monday evening (Arizona to Georgia to London to rural Devon...it's a bit of a journey), so I'm writing this piece in advance and setting it up for automated posting on Monday morning (UK time). The music today is from Charles de Lint and MaryAnn Harris, who filmed this video for Charles' song "Cherokee Girl" here in Tucson and at Endicott West. It seems like a fitting farewell to the desert. I'll be back of course, and will continue to re-visit this landscape in fiction, art, and dreams, but this next chapter of my life is firmly rooted in Devon and family. One door closes, another opens.

This weekend, we were blessed with rain in the desert. I know that sounds odd to friends back in Devon, where we've had so much rain this winter that we're all in danger of turning into fish and floating away. But in this dry, dry land water is precious, sacred, and deeply magical. It deepens the colors of cacti and stone, and smells....oh, the scent of the desert after the rain is indescribable, but it's one of the best scents in the world.

“A Sonoran Desert village may receive five inches of rain one year and fifteen the next," writes Gary Paul Nabhan (in The Desert Smells Like Rain). "A single storm may dump an inch and a half in the matter of an hour on one field and entirely skip another a few hours away. Dry spells lasting for months may be broken by a single torrential cloudburst, then resume again for several more months. Unseasonable storms, and droughts during the customary rainy seasons, are frequent enough to reduce patterns to chaos. The Papago have become so finely tuned to this unpredictability that it shapes the way they speak of rain. It has also ingrained itself deeply in the structure of their language. Linguist William Pilcher has observed that the Papago discuss events in terms of their probability of occurrence, avoiding any assumption that an event will happen for sure..."

"Since few Papago are willing to confirm that something will happen until it does, an element of surprise becomes part of almost everything. Nothing is ever really cut and dried. When rains do come, they're a gift, a windfall, a lucky break.”

I feel lucky indeed to have lived in the Sonoran Desert. Thank you, beloved and beautiful land. For everything you have taught me over all these years, and for this rain. I'll miss you. And I won't forget.

Notes from the desert, Sunday:

The photography above is "24 Brand New Hours" by Stu Jenks. It's a picture of the hook by the Bunk House door where I used to hang my house & truck keys, the words written where I'd read them anew whenever I left the place.

Below is a picture of the pencil-wielding Angel of Endicott West, hanging on the wall in the kitchen of the Main House.  (I snapped this one myself, which is why the image is so comparatively blurry.) She's a guardian angel for writers and artists, and we're leaving her here to watch over the new folks moving in.

The quote, hand-written in gold ink: "In the author's mind there bubbles up now and then the material for a story...This nags at him all day long and gets in the way of his work and his sleep and his meals. It's like being in love."

And so it is.

Meanwhile, back in Devon...

...my faithful furry companion is counting the days 'til my return. It's not long now. There's a weekend of final work here, and then I'm catching a plane back to moss-green hills and winter rain. I'll return to this blog when I'm home and recovered.

Thank you, everyone, for your kind words and good wishes during these last weeks.