Terri Windling's Blog, page 227

Why we write

"Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy." - Stephen King

"All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world."   - E.B. White

Animal spirits looking for a good home

A quick reminder that the Con or Bust auction is ending on Sunday, and that these mythic critters of mine are seeking a good home. The Con or Bust Project (under the umbrella of the Carl Brandon Society) raises money to help readers and aspiring writers of color attend conventions in the speculative fiction field, which is a very worthy endeavor indeed.

Here's a link to the auction's home page.

And here's a link to my donation to the auction.

A quiet moment in the woods

"Perhaps one central reason for loving dogs is that they take us away from this obsession with ourselves. When our thoughts start to go in circles, and we seem unable to break away, wondering what horrible event the future holds for us, the dog opens a window into the delight of the moment."  - Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Tunes for a Monday Morning

Today, two tunes from Show of Hands, an acoustic roots band from here in the West Country. The core members of the band are singer/songwriter Peter Knightley and multi-instrumentalist Phil Beer, joined in recent years by Miranda Sykes on double-bass and other musicians. I love these guys, who are terrific live performers -- and Knightley is one heck of a songwriter.

Above: "Roots,"  from the Witness CD.

Below: "Country Life," from the Country Life CD. 

And on the subject of the threat to country life, have a look at these sad but beautiful photographs: "Last Days at TrueLove Farm." They were taken by Dartmoor photographer Chris Chapman, who lives up the road in the village of Throwleigh. (The link takes you to his home page, where you'll find a link to the TrueLove project in the menu on the left, along with other good things -- including the mythic Three Hares Project, if you haven't stumbed across this already.)

The night sea journey

"The creative act is a letting down of the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended, and the attempt to bring out of it ideas. It is the night sea journey, the lone fisherman on a tropical sea with his nets, and you let these nets down - sometimes, something tears through them that leaves them in shreds and you just row for shore, and put your head under your bed and pray.

"At other times what slips through are the minutiae, the minnows of this ichthyological metaphor of idea chasing. But, sometimes, you can actually bring home something that is food, food for the human community that we can sustain ourselves on and go forward."  - Terence McKenna

The things on which our lives depend

"Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play… I tell you, that it is on things like these that our lives depend."  - Oscar Wilde (via Jonathan Carroll)

So very true.

Drenched in words

Why writers good writers are, foremost, good readers:

"One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper patterns at the right moment."  - Hart Crane

Amen to that.

Gentle Readers,We're entering a particularly difficul...

Gentle Readers,

We're entering a particularly difficult stretch of the Life Stuff that is affecting me and my family, so my on-line time is going to be quite limited in the weeks ahead. This blog will keep going, for--in a quiet moment--I prepared a number of posts in advance (like the one posted earlier today)...and I'll still pop in to read the comments in response, but I may not have time to respond to comments while we're in the midst of the storm. Be assured that I appreciate them all the same.

I look forward to the day when the storms are behind us, and I can return to this blog (and writing! and art!) properly again...

Fawn's Foster-Mother

Although I've written a few (a very few) poems over the years, I am not a natural poet...and I remain in awe of people who are. The ability to evoke deep emotion, reveal a new facet of the world, or condense an entire story into the limited space and form of a poem (or likewise, of a good song lyric, or the text for a children's picture book) seems like pure magic to me. Below is one of my favorite poems, by Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962). If I could write a novel with even half the depth and impact of these 22 exquisitely-crafted lines, I'd be happy indeed. And that's something to aspire to.

Fawn's Foster-Mother

The old woman sits on a bench before the door and quarrels
With her meagre pale demoralized daughter.
Once when I passed I found her alone, laughing in the sun
And saying that when she was first married
She lived in the old farmhouse up Garapatas Canyon.
(It is empty now, the roof has fallen
But the log walls hang on the stone foundation; the redwoods
Have all been cut down, the oaks are standing;
The place is now more solitary than ever before.)
"When I was nursing my second baby
My husband found a day-old fawn hid in a fern-brake
And brought it; I put its mouth to the breast
Rather than let it starve, I had milk enough for three babies.
Hey how it sucked, the little nuzzler,
Digging its little hoofs like quills into my stomach.
I had more joy from that than from the others."
Her face is deformed with age, furrowed like a bad road
With market-wagons, mean cares and decay.
She is thrown up to the surface of things, a cell of dry skin
Soon to be shed from the earth's old eye-brows,
I see that once in her spring she lived in the streaming arteries,
The stir of the world, the music of the mountain.

- Robinson Jeffers (from The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers)

Jeffers at Tor House, his home in Carmel, California, in 1958.

There's a lovely little video of a tiny newborn fawn taking it's first steps here.

Valentine

"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed."  - Carl Jung

To my valentines, both of them.