Terri Windling's Blog, page 249

The view out my studio window this morning . . .

...on a chilly, rainy, blustery spring day here in the hills of Devon. I've written about the significance of rainbows to me in a previous post. This one comes at the perfect time.

"If you take myth and folklore, and these things that speak in symbols, they can be interpreted in so many ways that although the actual image is clear enough, the interpretation is infinitely blurred, a sort of enormous rainbow of every possible colour you could imagine."  - Diana Wynne Jones

"The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."  - Dolly Parton

Tunes for a Monday Morning

Above, the Irish folksinger Cara Dillon performs a traditional song, "Craigie Hill," accompanied by the Ulster Orchestra. Below, the great English songwriter Ralph McTell performs his now-classic song "From Clare to Here" (which some of you may know through the beautiful version recorded by Nanci Griffith).

Both songs pertain to the subject of Irish emigration: In the first, a young couple say farewell to their native land as they sail off to America, full of hope for a better life ahead. The second song portrays the reality of that new life as many experienced it: hard, and full of longing for the land and people left behind.

While only a few us share the experience of making one's home in a foreign land, I would imagine that all of us can relate to the subject of homesickness, for surely we've all felt its bittersweet touch at one point of life or another. These days I am often caught out by waves of homesickness for the Arizona desert -- for although I'm happily rooted on Dartmoor now, and have adopted this land as the home of my soul, there's a part of me that will always belong to the Rincon Mountains that lie east of Tucson. Yet for me, the pain of homesickness is mitigated by the fact that my emigration was voluntary. What must it be like to be forced to leave a beloved home -- by war, politics, economics, or circumstance? The ache of that loss must be painful indeed, and I often wonder how people can bear it.

My good friend Ellen Kushner has explored the subjects of Homesickness and Exile on her absolutely brilliant radio series Sound & Spirit. The Homesickness show is embedded below; the Exile show (and many other good shows) can be found in the Past Episodes section of the Sound & Spirit website. If you haven't encountered S&S before...well then I envy you, dear Readers, for you have many happy hours of listening ahead. Don't miss the show on The Kalevala, or on Friendship, or the one I was involved with: Surviving Survival, or, or, or...heck, they're all good.

"Homesickness" on Sound & Spirit, with Ellen Kushner

 

Friday's Recommendations:

* Fiction recommendations:

First, I'm very pleased to announce that one of the stories from the new Bordertown anthology has just been posted at Tor.com, giving readers a sneak preview of the book before its May 24 publication date.  And it's a doozy of a story too: "Shannon's Law" by Cory Doctorow, in which this insanely clever author brings the Internet to Bordertown...in a crazy, Internet-Genuis-on-the-Border-of-Elfland kind of way. You can read the Introduction to Cory's story here; the story itself here; Cory's post about it on BoingBoing here;  and you can listen to an audio version podcast on Escape Pod here. I adore this tale.

Second, Genevieve Valentine is fast becoming one of my favorites in the new generation of speculative fiction writers. Her latest story, "Study, for Solo Piano," can be read online in Fantasy Magazine -- and three other terrific tales (just in case you missed them) can be found as follows: her vampire story for the Teeth anthology is available online on the HarperTeen site; a brilliant fairy tale inspired story  was published on the IAF site; and a second fine fairy tale re-telling can be found in the JoMA archives.

* Art recommendations:

I'm charmed by the three-dimensional paper creations of Canadian artist Ellen MacKay (via Ruthie at A Faerietale of Inspiration); and I love this odd image from Yanoakiko (via Lori Field). For trees, handmade books, mythic symbolism and more, visit Valerianna Claff at RavenWood Forest; and for comic art steeped in Tarot and Renaissance magic, check out the weekly post at John Barleycorn (which will be up mid-day, UK time).

* While searching for something else entirely, I happened to stumble across a 2009 post on faeries and mushroom circles by Seabrooke Leckie, a biologist, naturalist, and writer in Canada. Did you know that the biggest known mushroom ring  is over 600 yards in diameter, and about 700 years old? (Leckie's dog looks remarkably like Tilly, and poses for the camera just as obligingly.)

* Keeping folklore alive in Britian: You'll find an Oxfordshire Bosky Man on the blog of Andy Letcher (writer & musician with the fabulous "darkly crafted folk" band Telling the Bees), and photos of the May Day/Beltane bonfire here in Chagford on my neighbor Tom Hine's Westcountry Folklore blog. (Check out the photo titled "Flames of May," which is simply stunning.)

* Spurred on by the Royal Wedding Hoopla, YA Fiction writer Charles Butler reflects on monarchism and fantasy novels at An Awfully Big Blog Adventure. "When it comes to royalty," he says, "there is a strange porousness about the boundary between fantasy and reality...."

* George Saunders discusses writing with Patrick Dacey over at Bomblog (in the first of a two-part interview); Lori Moore discusses recent memoirs and the art of memoir writing at The New York Review of Books; and Zadie Smith discusses rules for writers at The Guardian's website. (via Gwenda Bond)

* Kate Bernheimer notes that submissions are still open for the Grey Issue of The Fairy Tale Review. (The theme this time is Lost Girls and Boys.)

* I always have a running list of books to track down and read, and this is at the top of my list right now: Phillip Connors' Fire Season, about his life as a fire lookout in the beautiful Gila Wilderness of New Mexico. (I may be a Dartmoor lass these days, but passion for the landscape of the American Southwest is still lodged deep within my soul.) Connors' book began as a diary in The Paris Review -- and, having loved it there, I'm now eager to read the book-length version. Maud Newton has posted an interesting interview with the author on the TPR website (with thanks to Colleen Mondor, of the Chasing Ray book blog, for the link).

* Speaking of the American Southwest, one of the things I miss about my former life in Tucson (along with coyotes, tamales, Spanish radio stations, and the smell of the desert after the rain) is being able to pop down to the readings at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, especially those that showcase the many excellent writers from the region's indigenous nations.  So I'm delighted to discover that some of these readings are being filmed, allowing one to watch them from an ocean away. Go here, for example, to hear a reading by Dine (Navajo) poet Luci Tapahonso, or here for a reading by Tohono O'0dham writer Ofelia Zepeda, or here for Laguna Pueblo writer Leslie Marmon Silko. The Poetry Center also has an extensive library of audio files. A great resource indeed.

* I also recommend a series of videos taken from a talk on "The Ecology and Perception of Language" by David Abram (author of two of my all-time favorite books: The Spell of the Senusous and Becoming Animal): Air, if Sacred; The Rich Otherness; Breath and Poetry; etc.. Then check out the lovely and inspiring website of the organization Abram directs: The Alliance for Wild Ethics -- where you'll find his essay "Storytelling and Wonder: On the Rejuvenation of Oral Culture," and many other treasures.

Have a good weekend.

Thinking about birds...

"A bird does not sing because it has an answer.  It sings because it has a song."  ~Chinese Proverb

Lords and Ladies dancing in the woods...

Tilly and I, in our early morning woodland walks, were surprised when arum maculatum emerged in a spot where we've never seen the plants before -- and we've watched with fascination as they've slowly unfurled among the tree roots.

Folks here in Devon call the them Lords and Ladies; back in America I knew a similar plant as Jack in the Pulpit; other names include Angels and Devils, Bobbins, Wake Robin, and Naked Boys. They are extraordinary little presences, bustling through the leaf mulch with purpose, spirit, and vitality.

The surprise of their emergence, and the grace of their unfolding, has put me in mind of a favorite passage from Gary Snyder's gorgeous book The Practice of the Wild (which, along with Lewis Hyde's The Gift, and David Abram's Spell of the Sensuous, was a deeply influential text for me):

"There is a point beyond which training and practice cannot take you," he writes. "Zeami, the 14th century Noh drama playwright and director who was also a Zen priest, spoke of this moment as 'surprise.' This is the surprise of discovering oneself needing no self, one with the work, moving in disciplined ease and grace. One knows what it is to be a spinning ball of clay, a curl of pure while wood off the edge of a chisel... At this point one can be free, with the work and from the work."

As free as Lords and Ladies dancing in the woodland. That would be a good work day indeed.

Fairies dancing under the leaves, by the Victorian painter Richard Doyle (1824-1883)

Meadow Fairies

The doorway to their dwelling.

The stream in which they bathe.

The tree around which they dance.

Joanna Russ (1937 - 2011)

Sad news today. Joanna Russ, the award-winning author and literary critic, died at age 74 on Friday, in Tucson, Arizona. She'd been in poor health (with chronic fatigue and other problems) for a long while, and had been in hospice care in Tucson since suffering a stroke in February.

Joanna, for those unfamiliar with her brilliant work, was one of the leading pioneers of feminist sf/fantasy  in the 1970s/1980s, and her books (including the groundbreaking novel The Female Man, 1975, and the insightful nonfiction text How to Suppress Women's Writing, 1984) was deeply important to my generation of feminist writers/editors. In an sf/fantasy field where we now take it for granted that women, too, can be influential writers, editors, critics, and publishers, Joanna's sharp, lucid, provocative writing lives on in every feminist's work. We are all her daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters...with a few sons and grandsons in there too. Rest in peace, great lady.

Tune for a Monday Morning

Today's post, in honor of May Day and Beltane, is "Mummer's Dance" by Loreena McKennitt. performed above in Granada, Spain. I wrote a post about McKennitt not long ago, so if you're at all unfamiliar with her music you can find more information here. Her song "Huron: Beltane Fire Dance," an instrumental piece for harp, fiddle, cello, and percussion, is another good one for the season.

Beltane Bunny

Friday's Recommendations:

* The first issue of Demeter's Spicebox is now online, from the fantastic crew behind Cabinet des Fées. This issue focuses on the "Tatterhood" folk tale, with excellent new work by Shveta Thakrar and Mari Ness. Congratulations to all involved.

* Two terrific stories from Subterranean Magazine's Special YA Issue (edited by Gwenda Bond) can be read online: "The Fox" by Melinda Lo and "Younger Women" by Karen Joy Fowler. If you're like me, you'll want to read the whole issue. The Table of Contents looks absolutely stellar.

* Rush-that-Speaks discusses T.H. White's "The Goshawk," and the subject of patience, in a fascinating, beautifully penned review on LJ and Dreamwidth (via Amal El-Mohtar). Dont miss this one.

* Justine Musk posts a "creative badass manifesto" on her Tribal Writer blog...and Theodora Goss responds with her own thoughts on writing.

* Californian events designer Tricia Fontaine brings a new dish to the Moveable Feast about blogging, over on her Conversations with the Muses.

* Dartmoor artist David Wyatt revisits his delightful Old Goat's Home on his Posterous blog.

* Are you familiar with Chris Sheridan's paintings? He does some very interesting things with mythic archetypes, magic, and tricksters...and has a new exhibition up later this spring if you're anywhere near the D.C. area.

* If you're in the NYC area, don't miss Alchemically Yours at the Observatory in Brooklyn (beginning May 7th): a group exhibition curated with Phantasmaphile's Pam Grossman. It looks magical indeed.

* Also for alchemy fans: a new Friday post has just gone up over at JB, with more fabulous Tarot-based imagery.

* For two visions of Easter in the English countryside: Karen, in Wiltshire, visited a wildlife rescue centre over on Moonlight and Hares; and Danielle Barlow, here in Devon, rolled Easter Eggs on Notes from the Rookery. The photographs on both blogs are charming.

It was a quiet Easter weekend here at Bumblehill, just gardening and cooking and hanging with the pooch. This is the busier week for us, with artist friends visiting from France, and other close friends moving house, and Howard's band playing two gigs, and the Royal Wedding circus to staunchly ignore. Convalescence means that the number of social events I find myself missing is still running quite a bit higher than the number of things I actually make it to, but... Patience. Patience. In art. In life. All things come in their own good time...as my wise husband and pup remind me daily. And that's the two of them, of couse, in the studio picture above, making beautiful music together.

Have a good weekend.

Into the bluebell woods...

"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."  - Frank Lloyd Wright

(Click any of the pictures for larger versions.)