Transition Girl

Why transition girl?... Best answered by a quote from the Iliad....."The soul was not made to dwell in a thing; and when forced to it, there is no part of that soul but suffers violence."

Saturday, March 31, 2012

coming together

It has been a strange few weeks. The day job has been ethically challenging, riddled with disappointment as others have asked me to act in a way I regard as morally wrong. Unfortunately, I cannot share any details though I managed to push back and refused to cross the dodgy line put in front of me. Still had to contend with the disappointment of being asked at all, for the requesting source (not of my team) was someone I believed to be beyond reproach. It seems integrity is a slippery concept even in those who espouse its virtues.

The stress of such things always feeds into my creativity. Not really sure if that is a good thing of not. As the week's work pressure wears me down, I dream about Pachelbel's Canon, the music playing as a blind severed head sits in a pool of blood on the floor. It is alert enough to listen to a sermon (on interest rates of all things). The talking bodyless head speaks of the smell of perfume wafting through the room as strangers circle around it, myself among them. The intense nightmare has all the hallmarks of a bad omen to me.

Anxious, disappointed, sad and angry, I begin to write like a demon. Two whole days, an entire weekend past, I do not come up for air. The feelings slipped onto the pages, so many of them, and I meditated to purge them completely. By mid week, a few days later, I am imagining the smell of the Earth that moment when summer shower raindrops mingle and dance with the dust. I am home, in Jervis Bay, in my mind's eye. The smell of the sea in the air and the sense of Zen washes through me, cleans the dirt away. I am content again.

A normality is coming together finally, at least by my standards. Let's face it, my mind is a world of tangents, intricate and strange. Perfect for this speculative fiction writer. Quirky bordering on eccentric to a casual outside observer. It is no wonder HP Lovecraft is a writer among my favourite authors.

Wagner plays in my mind as my writing reaches crescendos in the evolving plot. About to finish chapter eight of twelve in book number four, the Fall, and I am composing a score that sounds far too much like Flight of the Valkyries. Years of opera over-exposure as a child have come back to haunt me. Battle scene to write, I am really excited. It is going to be epic (much like the opera).

Friday, March 09, 2012

sunshine

"Sunshine, on my window, makes me happy, like I should be..."

The above quote is the opening line of a song called Buy Me a Pony by an Australian band Spiderbait, popular from the mid-1990s. The catchy little pop tune was a hit that transcended the alternative set.

I am thinking about the song today, the fifth grey sky morning in a row, because I keep on having dreams about the sun. The dreams are not about the sun that warms this particular planet, for the suns in my my dreams are suns that a spaceship can land upon and suns that share the sky in pairs or trios. The suns in my dreams have each other for company.

I am in another solar system, I am in a different part of the universe. I am escaping to places so far away, I have clearly left my body for the speed needed to travel to and be there. Once there, I am on a search and rescue mission, for me, for others.

The dominance of the suns permeating my dreams is usually a tall tale sign that my sub-conscious is beating me over the head with a big stick trying to tell me something I should know. It would be far easier if the symbols were literal statements instead, then I would not have to sit here attempting to decipher the near impenetrable code that is my dreamscape mind.

I could use a little sunshine in my life right now. Had another bad dating experience a couple of weeks ago that reminded me why I crawled into my hermit cave eighteen months ago in the first place. Finally mustered a sliver of courage to venture out in January and was beaten over the head with a big stick (aside: not for real, just a bruised psyche after being made to feel like shit by a jerk). Crawled back into the cave to nurse my wounds and doubt I will be out again any time soon.

Given this blog is supposed to be about my writing journey, all of the above begs the question, what did the experience/dreams mean for that? Easy. I channelled my disappointment into the creative writing. Wrote four scenes in three days and they were good, better than good. I sat back after I was done and thought wow where did that come from? It was inside of me in the dark recesses of my mind and now it is on a page.

Why do I write well when I am in a less than charitable mood? Better I suppose that I pour those raw emotions onto a page than towards some unsuspecting passerby. There is always a plus side to every bad experience - mine seems to be the quality of my writing elevates to a whole new level!

The bad experience and associated dreams also sparked my ideas bank. Woke up yesterday morning after the third sun dream in a row with the detailed structure on how to end the book I am writing at the moment (even though I still have five chapters to write). The outline for its ending was written a long time ago (you always have to know roughly where you are heading when writing any novel), but this was a blow by blow description racing through my head.

My pen almost ran out of ink writing things down in my bedside notebook such was the frenzy of frantic scribbling to record the words. Gotta write fast before that early morning half-awake state takes you back to slumberland, or you instead try and remember the details of your vivid though rapiding fading dream. By the time you are alert, all of it can be gone, replaced by a greyness that matches the sky outside your window.

Long weekend ahead of me. I'll see a movie, see a play, read some, and write to my heart's content. The sunshine somehow finds a way to penetrate the cave walls and warm me.