Life can take unexpected turns at times. The past few days have been difficult, and have required me to be away from home at a time when I wished to be walking the landscape and clinging like a limpet to my studio space. Instead I am in England, learning different lessons, but also walking, and finding the space to write. Writing the Unwinding in the kind of circumstances the book is written for. Difficult times.
Today's posting has begun in pen, and moved to my dad's other typewriter. This typewriter is amazing. It writes in cursive script.
I love the patters of its keys.
The words are to go with the painting below, called The Guardians. It is a first draft. The idea of this book is to share the images and for the words to be, not a description o fthe images. Each of the paintings carry in their souls as many stories as there are people to see them. And it is for the reader to read image as they read words. Rather the words should become a catalyst for dreaming. It's rare for a writer to share first drafts, but I feel that the experience of Unbound is one of the most collaborative experiences I have had in publishing. And to expect someone to commit to the purchase of a book that is as yet unwritten demands a respect from author towards audience. So, here, second draft, as the first is on my dad's typewriter. It will change, usually to hone back, get rid of repetition, add other thoughts. And the question asked is a serious one.
How do you dream? ( answers can be left in the comments box)
And she asked him, "What is the shape of your dreams?"
"What dio you mean?" he answered.
"Many things in one question." Her voice was soft as falling snow.
"What is the language of your dreams,
and when you dream, do you dream in images, words?
And are your dreams in colour, or black and white,
or colours known only to dreamers and dreams?
Are they visions, or something else?"
He asked, "something else?"
"Are they chemical,
scent,
touch,
What shape do your dreams take?"
He closed his eyes, became lost in thought, time passed.
Later, as the full moon tangled in winter trees she asked,
"Can you guide your dreaming?
Can you move in your dreams to follow pathways of desire?
Do you shape-shift in the places between dreaming?
And, when you wake, do you remember those pathways
along which your dreaming mind has wandered?
Or do your dreams dissolve in the light
of each new day?"
She could not tell now if he was asleep or awake, if her words had become a lullaby. And still she had more questions.
"Do you dream when you are awake?
Do you imagine,
in words,
in pictures?
Do you wander the pathways of what might have been,
what might yet be,
all that you might become?
What is the shape of your imagination?"
"So many questions," the bear said. "
"Here, now, close your eyes."
Resting on the back of the great bear she opened her heart, her mind, into the dreams of another.