Every Day Moments

On By SuzanneIn Australia, coronavirus, Haibun, Haiku20 Comments

So its December Aussie style. Already this coastal town is filling up with city people. The traffic drones/roars. As on most days here in 2021 the late afternoon sky is overcast. Grey and flat. The wind off the sea is cool to cold. Many people are stressed. Tired. Over the Omicron Comic Con thing before it even really starts.

Everyday moments
and life is what you make it
– is that lemonade?

prompt: https://godoggocafe.com/2021/12/01/haibun-wednesday-december-1-2021/ Write a haibun poem that captures an ordinary moment from your day. Incorporate the color, scents, activity you witness. 

Dreams

On By SuzanneIn fiction9 Comments

I am a fan of Audrey Driscoll’s blog. She often posts interesting articles about the process of writing fiction. Today she asks: ‘Have you ever used a dream in fiction?’ https://audreydriscoll.com/2021/11/28/dreams-in-fiction/

There’s a dream in my upcoming novel. It’s in a section of the story I hadn’t re-read for ages. Audrey’s thoughts on including dreams in fiction made me go back and take a look at what I’d written. Here it is:-

 “… he slipped back into a dreaming sleep where he stood in an empty wasteland.  His mother was beside him.

‘There’s the bird I named you after Raven,’ she said pointing at a large black raven sitting on a dead tree.  It regarded the two of them with one bright eye.  As Raven watched it took flight. ‘Go after it,’ his mother said and he ran out across the barren plain.  His mother disappeared and it was just Raven and the bird moving across a rock strewn desert. The raven cawed and the sound wailed out across the emptiness.  It fell away to silence then Raven heard the sound of drumming.  Powerful rhythmic drumming.  People appeared and danced round him.   The drumming grew louder and Raven began to dance with them.  A man leapt in front of him cloaked in a robe of coloured feathers.  Snakes piled high on his head writhed in time to the drumming and he stared deep into Raven’s eyes, linking the two of them somehow.  The dream faded and Raven was left with an after image of coal black eyes.”

I had been intending to publish the novel on Amazon before Christmas. Editing the segment I have posted here I realise that the book will stronger if I take more time. I’m working on the manuscript every day and pushing it along to completion. Exhaustion is my middle name.

The Christmas deadline was an arbitrary one I imposed on myself. I see now I need longer between completing the current editing/rewriting process and the final read through/line edit. I will take a break when I finish the rewrite and come back to the project with fresh energy in the new year. Publishing will now happen sometime in the first quarter of next year.

Praise

On By SuzanneIn earthweal, poetry, spirituality16 Comments

Praise for the light in a new born baby’s eyes.
Praise for the song of a blackbird at dawn.
Praise for the thrum of Tibetan throat singing.
(Buddhist monks in their maroon robes, prayer flags fluttering in the wind)

Twenty years ago they came to a beach near here
scattering the sand from their mandala into the sea.
At their feet a little blue eyed boy,
living in the moment,
gathered the sand into his bucket.

The Rinpoche laughed
a deep full bellied rolling sound
and the sea washed around both the boy
and the monk.

Praise for the moment
the memory
Praise for the song of the blackbird at dawn.
Praise for the light.

prompt: https://earthweal.com/2021/11/22/earthweal-weekly-challenge-praising-is-what-matters/

A novel update and a new venture

On By SuzanneIn fiction18 Comments

Taking a break from editing, editing, editing before I edit myself into non-existence or an over caffinated frenzy –

My eco novel is coming along and nearing completion. I hope to indie publish it before Christmas. I’m currently on track to achieve that goal.

When the left brain thinking of editing gets too much I make jewellery. I’m thinking I might sell the stuff I make at markets over our Aussie summer – if it stops raining long enough and if the Covid restrictions ease up a bit more. I’m also thinking I’ll set up an online shop but that will be after I get the novel finished and published.

Here’s some the necklaces I’ve made to date. I like working with gemstones. The stones I’ve used here include agate, jade, aquamarine, quartz and turquoise howlite.

The Great Remembering

On By SuzanneIn Climate Change, earthweal, fiction, Planetary renewal33 Comments

Trapped, caged.
Left for dead.
Relegated to the forgotten realms
the human wild self
withers.

Eons past the human mind came
into awareness of itself
out in the natural world
where wild animals roam free.

The indigenous people remember.
They know the ways to live
in tune and harmony
with the wild Earth songs

Encultured now
the modern human lives behind walls
– physical, mental and emotional.
Cut off and oblivious,
removed from the plight
of others beyond the walls,
taking whatever they want,
never stopping to count the cost,
ignoring the warning signs,
the wild is endangered everywhere,
within and without.

From deep in the human being
the call comes,
Remember now,
before it is too late.
Embrace the wild self,
turn to the forgetting to remembrance –
the Earth is our home.
Humans are part of nature

FROM MY UPCOMING ECO NOVEL:

A woman wearing a headdress of coloured feathers took to the podium. ‘We, the indigenous people of the Earth have not forgotten,’ she said in a voice that rose to the rafters and echoed round the room, strong and proud. ‘We know that when we humans lay waste the Earth we despoil our home. When we cut down the trees we kill our elders. When we hurt the animals we harm our brothers and sisters.’

She spoke then of her island home sunk now beneath the sea. Her voice grew soft as she talked of the grief of her people as they crowded onto boats and fled their ancestral land. They had no idea where they were going or if they’d ever set foot on solid ground again. All they had were the few belongings they clung to. The birds, plants and animals they loved as friends were left behind. All perished now. All gone.

Her voice dropped to a whisper then ceased altogether. A silence settled over the room like a prayer, a requiem for those kindred spirits that had departed the Earth forever.

https://earthweal.com/2021/11/08/earthweal-weekly-challenge-the-great-forgetting/
For your challenge: Today we will remember the lost ones, and the ones who will soon break our hearts by leaving. Choose a creature that has gone extinct, or one you love that is endangered. Tell us about it. Get inside its head as it lived, or is living its slow dying. Or, to take another tack, show us your creature in its glory days, when its demise would have seemed unimaginable. Let’s remember the wild ones, so they won’t fade into the Great Forgetting. – Sherry

Samhain or Beltane?

On By SuzanneIn Australia, Climate Change, earthweal, poetry26 Comments

I have nearly finished the work I’m doing away from this blog so I decided to take a break from that and respond to an Earthweal challenge –https://earthweal.com/2021/11/01/earthweal-weekly-challenge-all-souls/

Deep in my DNA
in my white folk celtic roots
All Hallows Eve lives.
The ghosts of the past walk.

Shadow land Australia –
Black folk on TV
tell the true history.
Remember, they say,
you stole our land,
you took our children,
you killed our warriors.

November dawning.
Southern summer skies,
light, bright and clear.
Magpies warble –
black and white on the breeze.

Is it Samhain
or is it Beltane?
Maybe it’s both.
Or none.

Here in this ancient land
the rainbow serpent writhes,
Bunjil the eagle screeches
while Mother Mary weeps.

Global warming, climate change,
it’s one world now.
The old Gods stir.
The Goddesses awake.

Kali, Pele, Eris and Freya,
the Seven Sisters in the heavens,
all speak with one voice.
Work to heal the Earth –
the deep, dark wounds,
psychic and physical –
or cower now in fear.
This is the time the ancients foretold.
Karmic retribution begins.

Video by Soothing Soundscapes found on Youtube

– The Rainbow Serpent is the aboriginal creator being in central Australia. Bunjil the Eagle is the creator being for the part of Australia I live in. He sometimes takes the form of an eagle. The Seven Sisters Aboriginal Dreaming Story is connected to the Pleiades star cluster https://indigenu.com.au/the-seven-sisters-story/

Active Hope

On By SuzanneIn Climate Change, Planetary renewal6 Comments

Thinking back to what motivated me to write the post on fear earlier this week I see it as hitting a personal rock bottom – the nadir of my being. I’ve been actively seeking to climb out of that pit since. On a practical level I’ve set the ball rolling on some difficult issues that have been keeping me stuck – including getting that plumber to come and sort out the blocked drains behind the house. He came yesterday and cleared the blockage quickly and easily.

Clearing the mental blocks is harder. It’s so easy to give up hope these days when the news is unrelentingly unpleasant and people are so polarized. The news on climate change is frightening and I have absolutely no faith in the Glasgow Climate Summit achieving very much at all.

To find my own way forward in these difficult times I am looking beyond mainstream ideas and solutions. Here’s an interesting video about Active Hope by the Deep Ecologist, Joanna Macy.

Fear

On By SuzanneIn Australia, Climate Change, coronavirus, Haibun, Haiku32 Comments

Fear. It’s like a drug so many of us are mainlining now. Fear of Covid. Fear of Vaccinations. Fear of Climate Change. I don’t know anyone that doesn’t have some degree of fear about one or all of these things.

Then there’s the personal fear. Will the plumber come to unblock the drains behind my house today or will I have wait another day? That’s the problem with living in a rental. You can’t control stuff like that.

Blocked. Now there’s another subject I could write on. Blocked drains. Blocked options – are there no rentals anywhere in Victoria, Australia in my price bracket that are anything other than brown brick units set in a sea of concrete? Seems not. Rents went up with Covid. The fear is they’ll just keep doing that and I’ll have no option but to stay on in a rental with blocked drains. Then of course, there’s writer’s block and the fear I’ll never finish the book I started writing. The story has gone stale on me and I’m fearful it will never come alive again. But hey – then again – do I really even care? I fear no one will ever read it anyway.

The underlying fear of course is that I may have turned invisible. All these lockdowns – iso our State Premier calls it as if it’s some kind of game – the thing is – I fear I’ve disappeared from view so long it become habitual.

Fear of being seen,
fear of never being seen
– spinning on a dime

prompt:https://dversepoets.com/2021/10/25/haibun-monday-10-25-21-fear/