The Unwinding follows a series of images, with curious imaginings and stories that are sometimes more questions than answers. There is space in the book where a reader needs to step, quietly if they wish, and the space offers respect for the imagination of the reader. Not everything is spelled out, clear in ink. Some things drift, elusive, into dream.
This small book begins with a woman. She is the Keeper of Lost Dreams.
Does she have a name, this woman?
If she does it is known only to a handful of people.
The bear knows. He is the only creature of the earth who she would call her friend.
Between them there is trust, love.
Her world is between the dusk light and dawn, the time of moth, owl and bat.
And the bear knows the scent of dreams as they flow like small streams through the air,
and these streams are what they hunt, follow to their source, gather, bind.
Not a sweet scent.
Nightmares do not interest her. She seeks only beauty,
though sadness charms her, for
often the deepest beauty can be found residing in sadness.
Wild dreaming is what they desire most.
Dreams that hold the scent of deep green moss,
lichen,
the place where the roots of a tree enter the earth,
old stone,
the dust of a moth's wings.
All of these things and more tell them of where they should go, dreams they should follow.
Does she close her eyes and breathe in the stream of a dream?
Is this how she catches them?
Only the great bear knows.
But if you wake to the light to find beside your bed a book,
small, bound in beautiful covers,
then you will know that in the night they travelled past,
that you were dreaming,
even if the waking has swept the memory of your dream far from you.
You will know they followed the scent,
stopped for a moment to gather your dreams to
weave, wind and scribe, colour your thread
into their Library of Lost Dreams and Half Imagined Things.
And you will know that before they travelled on she left you a gift.
I wish this could be how Unbound could deliver the books, once they are fully realised, and all dreams scented out and scribed and bound. If those who have pledged could wake to find the book beside their beds, wrapped in bright paper, tooled with gold patterns. How curious, magical would that be.
This, then is the beginning of The Unwinding. I've written in pen, on typewriter and it's passed through about 5 edits so far, but more will follow, so it may change, in structure and flow. I'm not writing poetry, but using the lines to pace the reading, if I can, slow readers down, give space to the text and this too will change when I begin to work with Alison who will be designing The Unwinding. In a way the words are meant to be whispered into the air, read to the cat, the dog, the garden of twilight moths, a lover, a child, spoken to the darkness.
They are like fragments of dreams these passages of words, a labyrinth of stories connected by images.
Space. It's where respect for the reader lies waiting.