A bigger solstice

Christmas wishful thinking...

The writing place seems inaccessible to me during the social days. In me, lots of stuff is piling up because the process never stops. I might be addicted to letting it out, to going to that deeper place and allowing it to flow through.

Once the tap is wide open, I no longer mind what is going on around me. A shield arises. This sphere in which everything works with. I live in a different light that incorporates every little detail of wherever I am. What surrounds me, participates in me.

The 'normal' mode, the should be way to be in the world, is the other way around. We are expected to participate in what is out there, to pay attention, know the news, see the people, to follow. We are seen as soil that needs cultivating. We must become well adjusted. Suppliers of the demanded.

I see these two ways as having opposite directions. One consists of the impressions, the incoming stream of incentives, of food, seeds, weather, tasks, encounters, experiences. The other is the outpouring of the inner well. Shallow or deep. All the stuff you contribute, add, express, things you say, the dreams dreamt, energy you radiate, all the moving you do and the shit you contribute. Yes, the literal and the metaphorical. The sweet and the smelly. The well behaved field of gold and the cheeky wild weedy patch.

You could also call these two actions reading and writing. Reading being the incoming, writing the outgoing. Giving both words a new shine. Suddenly you can't help but write. Bowels don't give a crap about reasoning. It just comes out at some point. Every breath you exhale writes the world. Even the unspoken thought is busy shaping the sentence. Writing is not a choice of yes or no. Only how. You express yourself either way.

Reading becomes this entirely different skillset. Not at all from the top of the page, left to right, first page to last, but reading the world is a wide sweep of alertness that needs trust more than suspicion. Openness rather than restriction. It is much more about how you read than what. Everything is readable. The word library gets a different ring. Illiteracy a totally different deal.

I have tended to alternate the two ways. Separating the two activities. Being a reader or a writer. Doing the one or the other. I thought I preferred the writing, the being in, to the being out. I have thought of my world building as escaping reality, as a safety hatch to an inner shelter.

It's not true. It's not how this works.

I feel best when they are live and loud at the same time. When both are present and awake. While, of course, you cannot literally read and write at the same time. One has to take the lead. But the other must not leave the room. The reader feeds the writer. The writer leads the reader. The two forces are reciprocal.

The ability to hold two, more than one, is connected to our vertical symmetry. This may sound like a big jump. But reader and writer are in your left and right hand. You better not hold the world, the precious whole, in just one hand. You definitely should go for a both hands approach. Yes, should.

Because the winter solstice has a bigger sibling. The extreme hemispheric lean of our globe causing wintertime seems to be echoed in our tendencies. In a bigger season. We seem to be in the darkest bit. In a one way leaning over to dictation. A mode in which both reading and writing are perverted. The twins are separated. The soil has been ploughed too often. And no calendar can tell us when we reach the turning point. Yes, the reading you do, and are allowed to, is getting less and less free. And the writing is done for you. Taken from you bit by bit. For too many the inner well has been replaced by city water. By the external source of artificially purified fluids.

You have been taught how to read and write and the inner well is officially declared illegal. The natural source that allows the reader and writer in you to fully cooperate has been bottled and labelled. Sold back to you at a ridiculous price.

So the descending into the caves, the exploration to find the source, the entering of the underworld to find the cisterne is a winters job. And winter is here. Fiction is not escapism. It is the genuine skill of dowsing.

The most important thing to do for us in the midst of the coldest season is celebrate. Telling stories about the birth of the light. Reminding each other the warmth will return.

So, here's my Christmas wish for you.

May you read and write in the freedom of your body and soul, fed by the inner well. May you be Guardening the Spheres for a shining new year of connecting to the other.

In the darkest bit the light returns

Voices humming with the differences

invite you to join

the choir

Going back, a short story

This Friday December the 29th is a special day. Almost fifty writers will publish at the same moment. We have anonymously exchanged a prompt about a personal transformative experience and turned those into almost fifty short stories.

I immensely enjoyed the unusual process of trying to honour the very real source material of this fellow writer and making it my own. I am proud of the result and I hope you will enjoy it too. This Friday the story will land in your mailbox along with links to all the other amazing writers for you to discover. I will be reading all week because I sure want to know what became of my prompt….

My thirteen year old son and me have collaged the ‘book-cover’.