7:30 BELLS: Chisels of Light

On the Winter Solstice, the sun filtered through my curtains, sculpting the light. Usually, when fall darkness descends, I start counting the days until December 21. I long for the Return of Light.

My bipolar brain chemistry makes me exquisitely sensitive to seasonal shifts in light and dark. I was born for summer. I come alive. Bloom. Creativity dances from my fingertips. How the bells ring! In the winter, I use a dawn simulator to cajole my bio-rhythms. Winter has always been something to be endured.

But this winter has been different. Somehow I’ve embraced it. Somehow I’ve learned that the bells ring in many different ways. The quiet ringing of a snowfall. The considered ringing of a sodden, cloud-shot sky. The elegant ringing of tree-bones against twilight.

In these dark days, I am tuned to anything that sculpts the light. Like poems. Stories. Art. Music. Kindness. Maybe, winter itself is nothing but a great sculptor of the light. Maybe that’s why at last I’m able to embrace it, take up the chisel of light, and ring.

Closing with this stanza from Tennyson:

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

LORE OF THE BELL

Take up the chisel of light and ring.

DOUBLY DAZZLED!

I am doubly dazzled today. First, by acclaimed author Frances O'Roark Dowell's praise for After the River the Sun, my forthcoming companion novel to Eva of the Farm. O'Roark Dowell, the author of Chicken Boy and The Second Life of Abigail Walker, wrote:

In After the River the Sun, Dia Calhoun has written a quietly powerful story of a boy who steps out of a fantasy world of knights and monsters into a real-life quest for family and home. Calhoun deals with loss, healing and friendship in language that is both direct and lyrical, making every page of this marvelous book a pleasure to read.
       --Frances O’Roark Dowell

Second, I am dazzled by the cover for After the River the Sun, illustrated by Kate Slater, designed by Sonia Chaghatzbanian, and shepherded by the ever-patient, ever-watchful Ariel Colletti.

Thanks to everyone for making this book so beautiful. I can't wait until it finds its way into the world this July.

A Room With No View: Poetry Friday

A Room With No View

If you see only rooftops—

christen each shingle.

If you see only crows—

tickle their feathers.

If you see only wires—

join their crackling gossip.

If you see only clouds—

ask where they’ve been.

If you see only cages—

slide down the light on the bars,

and you will be free.

Dia Calhoun     12/12

Go, Live, Write a Word Mess: One Writer's Grand Adventure

If you want to have a Grand Adventure, travel alone and leave your camera behind.

In May and June, I took a three week trip to Italy—fifteen days of it spent traveling alone. When first planning the trip, I had planned to travel most of the time with an acquaintance. She bagged out ten days before the trip—yes, ten days, you read that right. Fortunately, I had sensed the way the wind was blowing, and had made extensive backup plans to travel alone.

Certainly, I was nervous about traveling alone in a foreign country. But all my life I had dreamed of traveling to Italy and was not going to let fear stop me. As it turned out, traveling alone was the best thing that could have happened to me.

I came alive. I woke up.

In Florence, the museum that hosts Michelangelo’s great David doesn’t allow photography, preferring you to buy their inferior photos in the gift shop. I have to thank them, because putting away the camera started something amazing. Because I needed some way to express my powerful feelings on seeing this masterpiece, I stayed at the David for two hours writing streams of poetry. After that, I continued writing poetry for the rest of the trip.

I have tried to keep a journal many times—aren’t writers supposed to do that? But I always, always failed. I was intimidated by the perfect journals friends keep—pasted with pictures, quotes, and neat, neat, neat. Friends urged me to keep a journal on my Italy trip. I tried--I really did--but was too overwhelmed, busy, and exhausted to write in any coherent fashion about what was happening. Then I met the David and discovered that journaling in poetry—in images and bursts and metaphors—worked wonderfully for me.

This was different from recording, it was living. I would start a bit of a poem, switch to something else, go back to an old poem, write three lines, start something else—you get it. I freed myself from being neat and pretty and perfect and renamed my journal WORD MESS. Like a mess hall where lots of food is offered, and you plunk what you want on your plate, go back for seconds, and don’t worry too much about the napkins. And us a battered little spiral bound notebook instead of a leatherbound, gilt edge writer's journal.

I returned from Italy with fifteen rough poems to develop, two new ideas for books, and ideas for revising a book in progress. Italy cracked me open like an egg. I don’t think this would have happened if I had been travelling with someone.

So here are three truths I learned about traveling:
1. A journey is not measured by the number of miles traveled or by the number of masterpieces seen, but by its impact on your heart.
2. The intended destination is only the point of departure for the real journey.
3. No Grand Adventure ever ends in the heart.

Go. Live. Write.

Creative Drift Raises Continents

Raised in the high discipline world of ballet, I grew up believing that results were achieved by hard, grinding, relentless work. Work at the barre, work at center floor--always driving, pushing, straining. Some of this was useful training for a writer, or for anyone who must work daily to accomplish a goal (writing a novel) that may take years.

Some of it was not.

It took me years to understand that such an attitude toward work, beneficial as it may be for muscle training, can be counter-productive to an art form that demands a high level of creativity—such as fiction writing. Gradually, I’ve redefined my definition of hard work. Here is what I’ve learned.

Swinging in a hammock under a maple tree while turning over some story problem in my mind is far more likely to result in a creative solution than beating my head against the computer. So is taking a walk or gardening, or any other activity where I consciously allow my mind to drift and hover over my story.

Consciously is the critical word here. I’m not talking about the popular notion of “refilling your well” though that’s important, too. I mean holding an idea about plot or character or concept loosely in my mind and playing with it in order to generate new ideas. This is like a child holding a marble in her hand and turning it randomly to see the different ways the light catches the colored depths. Sometimes my thoughts do stray from the story, and that’s fine--drifting is part of the process. As soon as I realize I’ve strayed too far, I gently bring my thoughts back to the story problem.

Because this process is conscious, because it produces results, such time certainly counts as work. It COUNTS. Almost always, after fifteen minutes in the hammock, I find a new solution. My BEST work is now done in this manner.

Our culture has conditioned us to believe in the “ballet” method of working because it can easily be seen and monitored by others. A person in a job at a company typing away at a screen “appears” to be working. Put her in a hammock under a tree—there you can’t measure or monitor her the activity of her  mind and subconscious. People watching believe she is just being lazy. But I believe new continents rise from such creative drift.

Imagine a company where people do creative work. Imagine that each employee has not only a desk but a hammock. And each person has been taught to consciously drift to solve problems and generate new ideas. Now stretch your imagination to the limit and imagine the company actually valuing this method of working. How dazzling forward the world would leap.

Poetry Friday: VENICE

VENICE

You faded courtesan,
bewitching me
with a few candlit piazzas
cleverly placed
in your stuccoed skirts—
directing my eye
away from your crumbling face,
away from the vacant darkness
stalking the Grand Canal.

You hope
I will be decieved
long enough—
    by earrings of Murano glass,
    by flounces of Burano lace,
     by waltzes on San Marcos Square,
to pay the steep price
you demand.

And I will be.



Dia Calhoun
6/28/12