Magic In The Woods

I absolutely love this time of year...it speaks to my soul.  Over the years I have been accused in jest of being a witch.  This is the bewitching season.

Today the woods are ripe with dripping magic.  There is a yellow green glow as the leaves continue to ooze away their summer life blood.  Those that have broken free from their summer branches are adrift on the breeze or coating the deck, the stairs, the roof, the ground.

This is rutting season afterall.  It is a powerful time of year.  Animals are driven to mate so their pregnant mates can quietly gestate through the dark winter months.

Despite the shorter days and the creeping darkness.  The chill at midnight.  This is a time of life in transition.  The mystery of death looms but it is not a permanent death.  Even the Christian tradition is interwoven with this deep pagan sense of time.

Sex itself has been called the little death so it follows this time of the rut leads to the deep death sleep of winter...itself a time of gestation.  At the peak of darkness on the winter solstice, we lift up our voices to implore the return of light.  And into the darkness a baby is born.  The symbol of the coming Light.

This IS a magical time.  I listen to appropriate music, cast my spells and pray for the continuation of the endless timeless cycle.

Peace.

My Latest Obsession

I just got off the phone with a friend after having a lovely conversation about motivation for creating art, the art itself, the need for an audience vs. creating for one's own sake and need.  It has my mind reeling.

The individual at left is the French writer George Sand, her pen name.  George often dressed as a man and wrote both novels and memoirs.  My introduction to her was via her portrayal by Judy Davis in the movie Impromptu which tells a version of how George Sand met and wooed Frederick Chopin.  It is a wonderful film with a great cast that includes Emma Thompson, Mandy Patinkin, Julian Sands, Hugh Grant, and Bernadette Peters.

A former lover of George Sand, in the movie, is critical of her writing and declares that she enters into relationships for the sole purpose of being able to regurgitate them onto paper in the form of her novels etc.  Sure enough, one of her novels, Lucrezia Floriani is a thinly veiled account of her relationship with Chopin.  It was considered scandalous by our standards and so was only translated and published in English about 35 years ago.  Trust me, by today's standards there is nothing remotely scandalous in the story.

I was also able to find a nice Folio Society edition of her primary memoir on AbeBooks.com.

It is an interesting consideration - is fiction valid if it is strongly based on one's personal relationships?  Guessing to what extent various works of fiction reflected autobiographical bits is nothing new.  My friend has been encouraging me to write.  As a result of his inspiration, I have drafted the first few paragraphs of a possible short story as well as a "treatment' for a three act play.  I looked back on a story idea I had toyed with about a year ago.  In most of these cases I believe I would draw heavily on my personal experience in creating these "fictions."

Tonight I confessed to him that I have been writing primarily to please him.  I am not certain that I feel up to writing for a public, an audience.  George Sand was notorious for writing fictions based on episodes from her life and her work was eagerly sought after by the public in the way that we grab the National Enquirer today to read about celebrities.

I'm not sure I want that kind of scrutiny.

Peace.

Hello, In There...

Well, now that I have the bugs worked out of Blogger, apparently I had to clear my cookies and cash...just like life...oh, my bad, cache...  So the post I started is lost to oblivion and I must try to begin again from memory. (sigh)

So I'm at it again...due to the inspiration of a particular friend. Thanks, darlin.

I usually start with a rough idea and a title and then seek an image and voila!  Today I wanted to start with Hello, In There and while Blogger was acting all wonky, I went in search of an appropriate image for that phrase.  Google Image search can be inspirational.  However, imagine my surprise when a significant number of images turned up folks smiling at very pregnant bellies!?!  I readily admit that there is a certain appropriate je ne sais quoi about a large girth and the image of being pregnant with brilliant ideas about to spring forth.  I still thought better of it.

I came across the other image which seemed much more appropriate - a perfect combination of canine humor and self-deprecation...essentially the fear that there is really nothing brilliant inside.

As some of you may recall, I walked away from my congregation in Marquette.

Hold on...wait a minute...Blogger is still acting strange and not saving my entry.  Grrrrr.  I am having to manually copy and paste just in case.

Perhaps the world is trying to prevent me from unleashing my terrible wit on the world once again.  As you may recall, I had left my congregation in Marquette and then subsequently blogged my opinion on church issues rather publicly here.  As a result I angered a number of people.  I do not regret anything I published and do not wish to delete those previous posts.  However, I also do not want anything from the past to stir the pot all over again, hence the invite only format.  Should you know someone who would like to peak in simply share there name and email and I will add them to the list.

Enough for now as I am not sure this will even publish.  Peace.