The Ocean Helps Me Remember

Another short piece of my writing has just been published on Writers in the Mist, this time springing from the prompt: The ocean helps me remember.

In this instance two things came to mind: 

Firstly, what Jay Griffiths wrote in Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time (1999), a book I highly recommend, about the ocean being linked with time:

The sea, clock of ages, is full of time. In the tide’s ebb and flow the sense of the moment is critical, but it is the coasts which are affected by tides, not the ocean depths, so while the sea, at its shoreline, represents the now of events, yet the paradox of the ocean is that in its depths it is the symbol of eternity … The everlasting consolation of the sea is not all will be well, but all will endure. To Western scientists, the sea is the source of life. In Taoist thought, similarly, the ocean is equated with the Tao, the primordial and inexhaustible source, ‘informing at creation without being exhausted’. Jainist thought of the sixth century BCE describes an ‘ocean of years’ being one hundred million times one hundred million palyas. Each palya is a period of countless years. Otis Redding picked the right place, ‘sittin’ at the dock of the bay, wastin’ ti-ai-ai-ime’, for the sea is creator of endless hours of time. And this is why polluted dead seas are so shocking, for it suggests the poisoning of both the actual sea and the conceptual source of time itself. (p. 9)

And if the ocean is the source of time, I then imagined it as the source of memory too.

Secondly, I thought of a short interview with mythologist Dr Martin Shaw I had recently watched, called 'Trailing the Gods Back Home', in which he spoke of the idea of ‘bone memory’. You can find the video here.

Please do head over to Writers in the Mist to read my short piece by clicking here.

Source: unsplash.com

Unfamiliar Subjects

One of the prompts we tried out at my writers’ group earlier this year was to write about an unfamiliar subject, to consider something outside of our comfort zones. I found this very difficult. If I’d had more time to think about it I may have done things differently; but the objective with prompts is to work with whatever ideas come up in the moment. Therefore, my way of exploring the unfamiliar was to write about a point of view that I passionately disagree with—the idea that we, as humans, are meant (even destined) to control nature. This is, lamentably, the dominant worldview, and the cause of many of our problems, both ecological and social. 

I am not overly happy with what I wrote—it is roughly formed, and probably wildly inaccurate, not to mention too simplistic—but it has just been published on Writers in the Mist. Please head over and have a read (it is very short).

And speaking of control:

What if the point of life has nothing to do with the creation of an ever-expanding region of control? What if the point is not to keep at bay all those people, beings, objects, and emotions that we so needlessly fear? What if the point instead is to let go of that control? 

This quote is from A Language Older Than Words (2000, p. 150), a brilliant book about interspecies communication by environmental activist, philosopher, and one of my heroes, Derrick Jensen. The quotes in the photos are from another of his books, Dreams (2011, pp. 329 and 251 respectively).

A Writer in the Mist

After the sharing of The Pear Tree last week, I will now be taking a short break from blogging, to catch up on reading that I have fallen behind with, and to dedicate some extra time to the pursuit of other literary and artistic ideas, in this time of almost-spring. 

In the meantime, for those of you who have not yet heard, a feature about why I am blogging was recently published on Writers in the Mist. You can find it here.

A member of my writers’ group, Jane Lingard, has also written a post about why she is blogging, which you can find here. On her blog, Musings from the Mountains, she writes short posts twice-weekly about writing as well as life in the Blue Mountains; and like me, she is using blogging as a way to fuel her creativity. It certainly does! Do take a look at her work.

For now though I will wander off into the mist in search of spring stories and blossom magic, and begin gathering up fresh green ideas with which to fashion my next post.

Ghost Stories

A rough little ‘story sketch’ of mine called Bird has just been published on the Blue Mountains Library’s writers’ blog, Writers in the Mist, showcasing some of the work by members of my writers’ group.

The stories were all written from the same prompt, which I provided at our meeting in April, which was to:

Write a story about a ghost 
In order to avoid writing something clichéd or overly traditional, there are two rules: 
1. You must not use the following words: pale, white, sheet, spirit, or fluttering
2. You must use at least five of the following ten words: button, farm, clouds, ears, footprint, satchel, corner, ducks, flag, bilberries (I took these words more or less at random from the novel Thursbitch by Alan Garner)

This is an interesting example of our working methods, and reveals how different our outcomes (and styles) can be, even when presented with the same prompt (and some limitations, with those ten words to keep in mind).

So please do go and visit Writers in the Mist by clicking here, and have a read of our ghost stories.