Tag: mythology

How to Tell a Messy Story: Divina Trace by Robert Antoni

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“This is magical realism with an avant-garde twist, as if Garcia Márquez and Joyce had themselves engaged in unholy cohabitation,” says Gustavo Pérez Firmat, referring to Robert Antoni’s Divina Trace. This is indeed an apt portrayal. Divina Trace is the story of Magdalena Divina, the patron saint of Corpus Christi, an imagined island in the Caribbean. We are introduced to the story by Dr. Johnny Domingo, Jr., who gives us the story from the points of view of his grandparents, a former slave, his father, the abbess of the local convent, the saint herself, and Hanuman, the monkey messenger from The Ramayana. The story itself is a wild ride, a mix of religions, histories, and sciences that come together to paint the ungraspable picture of miracles and mysteries. The elusiveness of this story is both created and made more manageable for the reader through the use of structure, language, form, and repetition.

Though the story itself is messy, with the blurred edges that come with the intense humidity of island life, the structure is nearly mathematical, precisely formed. In each chapter, Johnny Domingo introduces us to a narrator who tells him what they know of the story of Magdalena Divina. These narrators make a perfect palindrome, with chapters being told in kind by Granny Myrna, Papee Vince, Evalina, Dr. Domingo (Sr.), Mother Superior Maurina, Magdalena, Hanuman, Magdalena, Mother Superior Maurina, Dr. Domingo (Sr.), Evalina, Papee Vance, and Granny Myrna. In this way, the chapters mirror themselves, front to back, During Hanuman’s retelling, in nearly the exact middle of the book, lies a mirror. Almost exactly one-quarter and three-quarters of the way through the book, during the chapters of Dr. Domingo Sr., there is the same page from a medical journal. This structure gives the reader something to hold on to as the story and the language falls apart.

The language of this book plays a particularly big role. There are very few sections which are written in standard English. Even Johnny Domingo, who was educated in America, slips into Caribbean dialect as he writes. This is even more evident in the voices of the storytellers. Each person has their own language and way of speaking. Mother Superior, for example, uses Spanish and cusses like a sailor. Evalina talks in a thick Caribbean accent. Magdalena’s chapters are written like epic poetry or revelations from god. There are line breaks and it is the retelling of Indian epic The Ramayana. The most striking chapter is that in which Hanuman speaks. In this chapter, the language is meant to be English, but in the voice of a monkey. Hanuman invites us to look at the monkey in the mirror, “Dat sapian night, desperate, you dropasleep deaddrunk, again dreaming you writereading, you simian Bible of baboons e-eeing. Ayes close you now you simian fossil potto, you simian primate missinglink:” and then comes the page of the book that is a mirror. But this is far from the uneducated jabbering of a mindless chimp. This chapter references Helene Cixous and Julia Kristeva, which forces the reader to think about the ways in which intelligence and standard English work together or don’t. This chapter is certainly disorienting, but by this time the reader is prepared for it because the language has been slowly becoming more and more slippery and nuanced as the different voices take the stage.

Antoni uses a variety of forms to tell this story as well. In addition to the mirror and the pages and pictures from medical journals, he also uses epic poetry, personal letters, knot tying diagrams, musical notation, recipes, and newspaper articles. The myriad sources underlines one of the main themes of the book: Who has the authority to tell stories and decide which versions are told? In each chapter, the story of Magdalena Divina is told again, sometimes negating previous chapters, sometimes adding new information, sometimes raising new questions. This is done in such an artful way that the reader is compelled to keep going, even through the sometimes confusing, difficult-to-read varieties of language.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing, subtle techniques that Antoni uses is repetition. Each chapter is a repetition of the story. We see the same scenes from different points of view and in different languages, which make them different scenes all together. The characters also begin repeating themselves and each other. There are echoes of phrases from previous storytellers, making it difficult for the reader to tell where the story is coming from and whose words are whose. This shines an interesting light on the way that myths and histories and collective stories are told, and retold, what gets picked up and what doesn’t. Highly recommend Divina Trace.

*This post is part of a series on the craft of writing called Reading for Writers.  This series examines a variety of authors to ascertain the choices they’ve made in their writing and the effects of those choices so that we as writers can make better decisions in our own writing.

Form and Format in Fiction: Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig

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Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig is an otherworldly story of an apocalyptic war between men and women. Wittig writes in French, from a feminist perspective. In an attempt to subvert traditional ‘patriarchal’ forms of literature, Wittig uses a variety of interesting techniques to tell a different kind of story.

Structurally, it is difficult to call this work of fiction a novel in the traditional sense. There is no one character that the book follows. It could be argued that the book tells the story of “they” (humankind? womankind?) but there is not one personal main character. Occasionally, specific people are mentioned, but each is only mentioned for a few sentences before the writing reverts back to the more generalized story. Additionally, the book does not set up a linear narrative. Instead, Wittig writes Les Guérillères in a series of vignettes. These vignettes serve to give glimpses into the everyday life and the war of this possibly futuristic society. Some of the vignettes tell stories of specific people living in the society, some of them tell of the goddesses that the society worship, some tell of the collective history (which seems to point to a time much like present day) and some tell of specific points in the war between the sexes. It is not abundantly clear that the vignettes are even in a relatively chronological order, which raises some interesting questions. For example, is the seemingly utopian (all-female?) society at the beginning of the book the result of the war, or is it what creates the battle?

In terms of format, Wittig makes sure that this book looks different than other books from the get-go. The first thing the reader is confronted with in this book is a poem in all capital letters. As the book progresses, the vignettes are dispersed between lists of names which are also in all capital letters. The effect of these lists is like that of a war memorial, name after name of those lost in the fight. Less frequently, but perhaps more strikingly, the vignettes hold giant circles between them, whole pages on which the only thing that is written is a circle. There are quite a few vignettes that tell the significance of the circle, which is the symbol of the vulva. This importance of the symbolism of the female anatomy then comes up again and again in retellings of our society’s stories which are reworked to make the circle symbolism paramount.

The strength of this book, for me, is in this formatting. The ways in which Wittig subverts the reader’s expectations asks important questions. We know what the language and the literature of tradition looks like. But what does the language and the literature of the oppressed look like? Are there heroes or heroines? Does it undermine the traditional chronological order? Are symbols important enough to include? How do you tell the story of a group of people? Are there stories that are better told in non-traditional formats? What happens when these formats become traditional?

I can’t help but feel that something is lost in the translation of this book. There seems to be something very important happening in the pronouns being used and those pronouns leave the reader with a plethora of questions. Who are “they?” Who is included in this “they” and who is not? Are we as readers supposed to identify with what “they” say? Are we supposed to be critical of what “they” say? The answers to these questions make for very different readings of the book. If “they” are an inclusive group which tells the truth and speaks for all people, then we might take what they say at face value. However, if we question what “they” say (as we might when we say “some people say…”) then the society in this book might be read as a feminist dystopia, a matriarchal society that is ridden with the same problems as present society only with the roles reversed.

I think where this book falls short is in the heavy-handedness of the story itself. Perhaps I am idealistic, but I like to believe that it will not take an apocalyptic war to create an equal and free society. The combination of this war of mythic proportions and the unusual format come together in a way that feels pedantic. Though the book makes the reader think and ask questions, it also feels like it is leading the reader to specific thoughts and questions instead of allowing the reader to come to her own conclusions. Les Guerilleres feels like a hybrid between theory and literature, a theoretical discussion made material on the page.

*This post is part of a series on the craft of writing called Reading for Writers.  This series examines a variety of authors to ascertain the choices they’ve made in their writing and the effects of those choices so that we as writers can make better decisions in our own writing. May contain affiliate links.

 

 

Books for Writers: Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig Fiction Writing Tips from Monique Wittig’s Les Guérillères How to Write Experimental Forms: Lessons from Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig Check out the Lightning Droplets Blog for writing inspiration from Monique Wittig’s novel, Les Guérillères. This is a book every writer should read. Learn how to write a novel with experimental forms and formatting. In this book, we can find useful advice for writers about writing fiction with nontraditional structures. These writing techniques can be used in all kinds of creative writing: poetry, novel writing, fiction writing, and memoir writing. #fiction #inspiration #mustread #writing #novel
Books for Writers: Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig Fiction Writing Tips from Monique Wittig’s Les Guérillères How to Write Experimental Forms: Lessons from Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig Check out the Lightning Droplets Blog for writing inspiration from Monique Wittig’s novel, Les Guérillères. This is a book every writer should read. Learn how to write a novel with experimental forms and formatting. In this book, we can find useful advice for writers about writing fiction with nontraditional structures. These writing techniques can be used in all kinds of creative writing: poetry, novel writing, fiction writing, and memoir writing. #fiction #inspiration #mustread #writing #novel
Books for Writers: Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig Fiction Writing Tips from Monique Wittig’s Les Guérillères How to Write Experimental Forms: Lessons from Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig Check out the Lightning Droplets Blog for writing inspiration from Monique Wittig’s novel, Les Guérillères. This is a book every writer should read. Learn how to write a novel with experimental forms and formatting. In this book, we can find useful advice for writers about writing fiction with nontraditional structures. These writing techniques can be used in all kinds of creative writing: poetry, novel writing, fiction writing, and memoir writing. #fiction #inspiration #mustread #writing #novel

Using Fiction in Memoir: Maxine Hong Kinston’s The Woman Warrior

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Maxine Hong Kingston uses fiction to heighten the poignancy and power of her memoir, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts.  Throughout the book, Kingston uses not only her own memories, but also the stories she’s been told to form for the reader a picture of her formative years and the tension she feels as she creates an identity for herself.  She uses fictional elements to speculate, draw meaning, and show her reader the effects that stories (whether they be true or not) come to bear on one’s identity.

Kingston opens her book with “No Name Woman,” a story about her aunt.  But this isn’t just any family story.  It’s one that is shrouded in mystery and silence.  Because of this secrecy, Kingston must resort to speculating to fill in the details of this story.  It’s important that she understand the details because this story is one that her mother uses as a cautionary tale.  In ruminating about the details of this story, Kingston comes up with several possible variations even ones that she admits are improbable and don’t fit.  She wrestles with understanding the details of the story so that she can find “ancestral help” (8).  However, this speculation has come to bear on Kingston’s understanding of herself as a Chinese-American woman.  Kingston shows us through these variations of the story how this family narrative has shaped her understanding of many things.  It shaped the way she understood her relationship with her parents, and with her extended family.  It shaped the way Kingston understands what it means to be Chinese and what it means to be a woman.  It shaped her relationships with men and her ideas about differing standards of beauty.  Ultimately, it shaped how Kingston came to understand her own identity.  In sharing these different versions of the story, Kingston shares with her readers her process for dealing with the story and shows the reader the impact that both the story and the silence surrounding the story have had on her.

In “Shaman” Kingston takes her storytelling even further from anything that could be seen as the “objective reality” that we normally associate with the genre of nonfiction.  The chapter starts with a ghost story from the point of view of Kingston’s mother as a schoolgirl.  In it, her mother actually wrestles with a ghost before exorcising it from the school.  In a genre bent on “honesty” and “truth,” stories like this one can be difficult for a reader to swallow.  But Kingston uses the story to show how she came to see herself living in a world full of ghosts. She says that “America has been so full of machines and ghosts — Taxi Ghosts, Bus Ghosts, Police Ghosts, Fire Ghosts, Meter Reader Ghosts, Tree Trimming Ghosts, Five-and-Dime Ghosts. Once upon a time the world was so thick with ghosts, I could hardly breathe; I could hardly walk, limping my way around the White Ghosts and their cars” (96-97). This discussion of ghosts shows the importance of Kingston’s childhood understanding of being “other” in America and allows the reader to feel the otherworldliness of that experience.  Describing that feeling and the day-to-day happenings in her life alone would not have given the same emotional impact to the reader.  By using these fictional elements, Kingston lets her reader feel along with her the supernatural, the fear, the separateness that comes with understanding herself in relation to her surroundings that way.

Kingston’s fictional storytelling reaches its apex in “White Tigers,” in which she spends nearly twenty pages telling the story of Fa Mu Lan.  However, she does not tell the story in a detached, here’s-a-story-from-my-childhood sort of way.  Nor does she tell it in a let-me-tell-you-a-historical-story-of-my heritage way.  Instead, she tells the story in first person, as she experienced it herself when she “couldn’t tell where the stories left off and dreams began” (19).  In telling this story in first person, the reader can begin to understand the impact of this story on a young Kingston and can feel the expectations and potential that Kingston would have felt as a child.  It also brings home her point when she says, “My American life has been such a disappointment” (45).  Because the reader has seen the story of Fa Mu Lan from the eyes of Kingston herself, the reader can understand on a deeper level the sense of disappointment that the author must have felt.  Finally, Kingston shows how important this story and stories in general have been in her life when she compares herself to Fa Mu Lan, “What we have in common are the words at our backs” (53).  Here she suggests that while they do not have the shared experience of going to war in ancient China, the stories that they have in common unite them.  Because of this, Kingston can use Fa Mu Lan’s story to come to a deeper understanding of herself, her experiences, and her expectations.

Throughout the book, Kingston tells her reader about listening to the talk-story of her family and the ways in which these talk-stories came to bear on her understanding of herself. She writes, “When we Chinese girls listened to the adults talk-story, we learned that we failed if we grew up to be but wives or slaves” (19). More than just telling her reader the importance of these stories on her life and memories, she shows us by telling us the stories, too. They have more weight than we usually give fictional stories because we can see how Kingston was influenced by these stories. Because we are told the stories as well, we as readers can also be influenced by them and therefore relate to Kingston and her experiences.

Though it may seem that including these non-factual stories in Woman Warrior undermines the validity of the truth of Kingston’s memories, it actually has the effect of giving a fuller picture of her dreams, expectations, disappointments, and fears.  Without these stories, it would be more difficult for readers to understand the complexities of Kingston’s experience growing up between cultures.  These stories allow the reader to feel the dissonance between Kingston’s Chinese upbringing and her American existence.  In the same way, when writing nonfiction, we can use fictional elements and stories to give the reader a fuller picture of our experiences.  Fictional stories often hold weight in the factual world, coming to bear on the ways that people understand themselves, the places around them, and their relationships with society at large.  Using these fictional stories to give a fuller picture is especially useful in memoirs.  If we are trying to understand and to help our readers understand our experiences, the stories we tell ourselves can give more insight into how we’ve developed and come to understand ourselves.

 

*This post is part of a series on the craft of writing called Reading for Writers.  This series examines a variety of authors to ascertain the choices they’ve made in their writing and the effects of those choices so that we as writers can make better decisions in our own writing. May contain affiliate links.

 

 

Books for Writers: The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston Memoir Writing Tips from Maxine Hong Kinston's The Woman Warrior How to Write Speculative Nonfiction: Lessons from The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston Check out the Lightning Droplets Blog for writing inspiration from Maxine Hong Kinston's memoir The Woman Warrior. This is a book every writer should read. Learn how to write speculative nonfiction. In this book, we can find useful advice for writers about writing a memoir with fictional elements. These writing techniques can be used in all kinds of creative writing: poetry, novel writing, fiction writing, and memoir writing. #inspiration #mustread #writing #memoir #nonfiction #speculative
Books for Writers: The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston Memoir Writing Tips from Maxine Hong Kinston's The Woman Warrior How to Write Speculative Nonfiction: Lessons from The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston Check out the Lightning Droplets Blog for writing inspiration from Maxine Hong Kinston's memoir The Woman Warrior. This is a book every writer should read. Learn how to write speculative nonfiction. In this book, we can find useful advice for writers about writing a memoir with fictional elements. These writing techniques can be used in all kinds of creative writing: poetry, novel writing, fiction writing, and memoir writing. #inspiration #mustread #writing #memoir #nonfiction #speculative

Prompts to Start the New Year

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I always feel like there’s an excitement in the air this time of year, a freshness that’s just waiting to be plucked.  The new year is pregnant with possibility and is just waiting for us to snatch it up.  In celebration of that, here are some revisited prompts to get your creativity and inspiration going.  Enjoy!

The Encyclopedia Game

Myths in New Places

Anagrams

Reimagining History: Rasputin

When the Goddesses Come Out

Write Fast

 

Creative Commons love to http://www.flickr.com/photos/bartmaguire/ for the photo! Thanks!

Racking up More than Just Rejections

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Inspired by a list of 100 Best Ways to Becoming a Better Writer on thecopybot.com, I decided in July that I was going to follow Number 66: Rack up Rejections.  I set off on a crazy adventure in which I submitted work to 30 literary magazines in 30 days.  At the time, I was really just expecting to get some practice in the litmag scene and also start steeling myself to the idea that if I wanted to write, I’d have to come to terms with being rejected.

It turns out, I learned more than I could have ever expected.  It was such a powerful learning experience that I am doing it again this month.

I have been racking up the rejections.  They are trickling in slowly due to slow response times.  This is kind of nice so that I don’t have to hear 30 No!s all at one time.  But I haven’t been getting only negative responses, either.

Flash Frontier, a purveyor of fine flash fiction, accepted a piece I wrote long ago about Alaska for their August 2013 Issue: Snow.

And that’s not the only positive response I’ve gotten.  More news on that front as the publications come out!

Cassiopeia

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She floated on her back in the water, looking up at the stars.  Her arms and legs flowed in waves that kept her afloat.  All around her, the phosphorescence of a summer’s night twinkled in the sea.  They left stars on her knees, her breasts, her hips and her toes.  A tiny star rested on the crown of her head.  With the sky as her full range of vision and weightless in the water, there was no up or down, no north or south and she spun.

She reminisced about how she got here, splayed amongst the ocean of stars.

She had been tied to the sea for as long as she could remember.  In her early years she sat on the beach, watching the waves hesitantly tickle the shore and run away laughing.  As a teenager, she wore fire coral in her hair and the skeletons of sea urchins on her fingers so that the ocean never left her sight.  Each time she waved her hand, each time she swung her head, the waves crashed around her.  As queen, she nestled herself on the rocks asking starfish and octopuses for guidance.  They never failed to disappoint.

You can imagine, then, how she felt when the sea turned against her.  And it all started with a tiny misunderstanding.

It was nearly sunset, that honeyed hour when everything glowed with leftover sunlight.  She was perched on the edge of a tide pool with her toes in the water.  Anemones and hermit crabs had come out to watch the twilight settle in.  She crawled to the watch the still, glassy water meet the shore below.  It was a mirror, as if the whole ocean held its breath in her presence.  “You are the most beautiful thing in the world,” she said to the sea.

From the peaceful crepuscular blue, the waters began to churn and boil.  The waves tossed angry white caps into the air and the nereids bubbled up from the depths of their silvery cave.  All fifty of them poked heads out of the water, glaring at her.  They were radiant, as if the sunlight soaked up by the ocean poured from them.

“Using our home as a looking glass?” Clio asked her.

“The most beautiful thing in the world, are you?” Halie mimicked, her eyes narrowing.

She was taken aback, unable to speak in their presence.

And just as suddenly, they were gone.

It was a mere three hours later when the tsunami struck.  The ocean pulled itself up to rival the mountains and came crashing down.  All of Poseidon’s power slapped her kingdom, leaving it whirling, in tears.

As the waters receded, she went back to the sea, her husband in tow, looking for answers.  She asked sharks and lobsters, kissing fish and dolphins, shrimp and sea turtles.  They all stayed silent.  Only the man-o-war responded.

“It will happen again and again,” his voice undulated.

“What can we do?”

“You must show you are sorry, humbled.  You must give something precious.”

“Gold? Jewels? Anything,” her husband’s voice strained.

“More precious.”

She felt her stomach drop. She knew even before it was spoken.

The jelly fish’s tentacles crept toward her ankles.

“You are the offender,” he directed his speech towards her.  “What’s most precious to you?”

At home, in their palace, the couple fought.  She had a daughter to protect, and he a kingdom.  Word of the man-o-war’s prophecy seeped through the city, out into the fields, and back to the sea.  Citizens came to protest, to demand the safety and protection of their king.

The waters receded once more, threatening the province, exposing a vulnerable beach and stranding  minnows and whale sharks on the shore.  You are minnows, it taunted the citizens.  Are you more powerful than whale sharks?

And what is a mother to do?  How many lives is a daughter’s life worth?  The king decided there was no choice to be made.

The parade of king, princess, queen, and citizens followed the retreating sea.  It seemed they walked for days, through seaweed and over sand dollars.  Crabs joined the procession and the people gathered starfish for luck on their pilgrimage.  Seagulls and pelicans pointed the way, leading the flock.  When dolphins were found stranded, women made stretchers from skirts and scarves and carried them to the sea.

All the while, all eyes were on her daughter.  They adorned her to make her the best offering the sea had ever seen.  They dressed her in seaweed and put fire coral in her hair.  They hung sea urchins from her ears and put shells on her fingers.  She was covered with the ocean, until she looked as if she were drowning in a Sargasso Sea.  Her mother could only look away.

When they reached the water’s edge the found a large rock, tied her to it, and left.

Back in the kingdom, the ocean returned, placid and inviting.  It gave up fish and lobster to feast on.  It sparkled an ecstatic aquamarine.  The offering had worked.

And because this is a fairy tale, her daughter returned, on the arm of a hero, saved from the briny wrath.

The kingdom rejoiced.  The king threw feast upon feast: for the generous ocean, for the princess returned, for the dashing new hero.  Even a wedding ensued.

But very little changed for her.  She had still lost a daughter.  When she looked in her daughter’s eyes, she did not see the bond they once shared, their tender secrets, the maternal adoration, the unconditional affection.  Nor did she see hatred or blame, resentment or hostility.  What she saw was much worse – pity.

Pity for a mother who would bring such a fate upon a daughter.  Pity for a woman who could not protect her child from a too-pragmatic father.  Pity for someone who could not speak up.

It was probably expected and predictable when she threw herself off the cliff into the sea.  The ocean received her with open arms, welcoming her home the moment she hit the salty sheets.  Wrapped in the waves, she laid on a rock, looking through the surf up at the stars and surrounded by phosphorescence.  The sea held her suspended, her arms and legs splayed so that she was a W.  The light landed on her head, her shoulders, waist, knee, and breast.  She flowed there, light and water, looking to the North Pole and never right-side-up, as she waited for her daughter, the hero, and her husband to join her.  All returning to the ocean of stars from whence they’d come.

Creative Commons love and a big thank you to TravelinginEurope and tristanf, respectively for the amazing photos.

Arachne

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I don’t remember a time before I wove. I grew up in the fields, alongside my father and sheep.  There was never a mother around to birth me, nor was there any explanation given. My father had only the wool of his sheep to keep his bed warm at night.  He was known far and wide as the man with the purple flock, but this was a myth.  The truth was much stranger. 

Our sheep were the same muddied grey as the neighbors’.  The difference in the wool came from my father.  Alone at night, he would sit over the wool, refining and spinning it.  With his hands on the spinning wheel, tears would begin to fall, as if summoned by the whirring of the wheel.  As his feet pressed down, my father cried amethysts: tiny, shimmering mulberry tears which landed perfectly every time onto the rough yarn, turning it the color of violets and royalty, of pomegranates and jewels.  It was a color nature couldn’t keep and man wanted to grasp.

It was in this house that I learned to weave.  It seems I must have learned and yet… My father does not touch the loom.  He avoids it with a deathly fear.  I sometimes wonder if in playing with it as a toddler, I intuited how to use it.  Maybe it’s a skill deep in my blood that I inherited from my absent mother. Perhaps it’s older than that.

My days were always the same growing up, and yet they were never boring.  In the mornings, I would wake my father and we would tend to our dingy-cloud sheep, me, frolicking with the animals and him napping under trees.  He would cook us dinner and put me to bed and then begin his nightly ritual.  He would sob purple until piles and piles of luxuriant yarn lay in our kitchen.

It’s no wonder that he raised a daughter with amaranthine hair and orchid eyes.  It’s as if I were woven from the amethyst yarn.  And I always thought of myself that way, not born of a mortal, but as if I wove myself from magical tear-stained wool of my father.  Related to him, but not his.

It wasn’t long before I was using his salty, brilliant strands to weave intricate textiles. Each tapestry was a story I’d never heard, the detailed faces of goddesses and men looking out from it, caught in action.  More than just patterns or fractals, my weaving created whole worlds.  And being the daughter of a shepherd whose wool was already the talk of the town, it did not go unnoticed.  Merchants came to marvel. Princes came to purchase. Even nymphs took notice.  I will admit, with my father’s tinted tears and my nimble fingers, I felt that I was a god.

So I was not surprised when She showed up.  She came with a motherly demeanor and a proposal of competition.  I was stunned by Her, taken with Her owl eyes and glowing hair.  Though I knew it could not be true, I felt drawn to Her, as if She were the mother I’d been missing.  I saw myself in the creases of Her fingers and protrusion of Her chin.

“You’ve grown haughty, my child,” and I knew it was true.  But I wanted to show Her what I could do.  I wanted to make Her swell with pride at the fabric I spun.

She had brought Her own loom, and it sat immaculate in our sooty shepherd’s shack.  It seemed to shine and quiver, like everything She touched.  I yearned to tremble and sparkle in that way.  She sat and plucked at the strings, as if playing an instrument. She nodded at me to take my place behind my own loom and follow in suit. I started on my tapestry.  I could hear the strands under Her fingers sing as She strummed them wildly.   I dared not look up.  My eight fingers crawled over the loom, savagely spinning stories.  I worked faster and harder than ever before, until sweat dripped from my face, tiny black diamonds falling from my forehead into the pupils of characters I did not know, bringing them to life.  I could hear Her beside me, making Her loom cry out in a frenzied chant.  The narratives I wove became more detailed, more real, worlds within themselves.  Each thread held the vibrations of a universe and I could feel them all beneath my fingers, until I could no longer take the sensations: the sounds, the sights, the reverberations.  As I pushed the last strand into place, everything stopped.

I awoke to Her anger.  She stood over me, not with the concern of a mother, but with the fury of a god.

“The insolence…” She began, and my gaze followed Her golden finger to the two tapestries hanging side by side on the wall.  One, gleaming and golden, showed the glory of the pantheon.  Zeus threw thunder.  Poseidon’s trident created the very oceans.  Athena Herself inspired civilizations.  Mortals came from far and wide to leave gifts for the gods.  The other tapestry was beautifully dark with the gems of my sweat.  Zeus was a horny swan.   Dionysus could barely stand up.  And Athena aged a lonely virgin.  Along the edges, mortals glowed with eyes that were alive, that held the promise of death and passionate urgency of life.  They looked stunning and ephemeral and heavenly next to the gods.

I could feel Her boiling next to me and She flew at my tapestry, ripping it to shreds.  It was gone in an instant, tatters flying around the room as if it snowed tiny snippets of the stories I had spun.  Just as quickly, I felt a slap across my face and She was gone.  I was too shocked to cry.

I might have sat there for days, staring at Her weaving and at the tiny scraps of mine.  My father never came back.  I did not feel remorse, or hurt, or sadness.  I felt nothing, and that is why I did what I did.

It was She who found me, swinging from my father’s purple yarn, neck snapped and breathless.  Had She come back for Her masterpiece?  Had She felt remorse? Was She looking for me?  She took me down and cradled me in Her arms, holding me to Her chest, as if I were a babe sleeping.  I suspect She may have even cried.

She laid my limp body on the floor and held Her hands over me. “You’ll spin forever,” She chanted, again and again.  My chest raised up and my body became full and round. My eight spinning fingers grew long, longer than my body, longer than legs.  She kept chanting.  My eyes bulged, doubled and doubled, into iridescent black diamonds.

Now I am the mother I never had.  I call my children to me, black widows and wolves, funnel-webs and jumpers.  They gather round me and keep me company and I teach them to weave.

“You’ll spin forever.”  It was all I’d ever done, what I was born to do.

This post is the first in a series I am working on.

Creative Commons love to shelley1968 from flickr for the awesome photo.

Writing Challenge: When the Goddesses Come Out

Jaclyn12 Comments

 

 

Nymphs, goddesses, apsaras, maenads!  It’s May.  There’s a fresh exhilaration in the air.  Mother’s Day is coming up.  I have been incredibly inspired by all those bloggers who did the A-Z blogging challenge in April.  These things all fit together nicely in a little challenge that I am setting for myself.  This month, I am endeavoring to write about 26 strong, creative women from mythology.  So, the goal is to write 26 short stories, one based on a female mythological figure for each letter of the alphabet.  Feel free to join me, or to set your own goal for this month.  New growth and new beginnings are in the air!

 

A special Creative-Commons “Thanks!” to itjournalist from flickr for the photo!

Full Pink Moon

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It’s the golden hour, and all the plants are glowing as I make my way up the hill.  The sky is shocking, pink and blue and purple, as if suddenly bruising from its collision with the earth.  I want to reach up and comfort its throbbing beauty.  The turning leaves soak up the last bits of sun and radiate as if they were autumnal lanterns.  They light my way as the air turns dark.

The turning of the season and my northern-hemisphere body are at odds.  It’s nearly Beltane.  My blood wants to dance around fires throwing the cozy scarves and mittens of hibernation wantonly to the wind.  My skin is expectant with the warmth of new beginnings, and yet the gusts here are becoming harsher.  I push on.  It’s not fall for me.

As the final rays of the day tuck themselves in behind clouds and hills, I reach the well.  The very sight of the clearing tugs at something inside me.  I finger the stones, making them melt and turn to sand, as if they were an old lover who’d been waiting for my touch.

In response, I remove my shoes and socks.  My toes dig into the dirt and rocks dig back into my soles.  The breeze lifts my shirt and grazes my belly.  It’s all the impetus I need.  The wind keeps nibbling at me, encouraging me, and so I tie my clothes to the hawthorn tree.

It’s cloudy tonight and I know it’s no accident.  The moon is hiding in the shadow of the earth, tucked in the darkness of her cave as if in hibernation.  She’s just waiting for her moment.  It’s an up-side-down celebration here.  The leaves are beginning to saunter away from their branches.   The night is still pregnant with the potential of sprouts and seedlings, even as Antarctic winds raise mountain ranges of goose bumps on my skin.

I start a fire and I know you will be here soon.  I wonder how many logs and how much kindling we will need to last through the night.  The moon is flush and full.  Beneath my feet, the phlox creep further and further from the well.  The pink moss stretches its feelers toward unknown lands, testing whether those grounds hold lives that it can live.  The dainty flowers look up to the moon and howl, reflecting her full, surprised face back in their flushed cheeks.  They beam on a night like tonight.  They gather in such numbers and their blushing blazes so brightly that even the moon blushes back.

You come with logs for the fire and no words.  Before long we have our own sun flickering before us. “Ne’er cast a cloot ‘til Mey’s oot,” they warned us.  It’s not quite May, but it is time to cast our clothes.  The cold of the April wind nibbles at our skin and makes it blush, in brazen mimicry of the pink moon.  The light is deafening, and I am exposed, as are you.  The heat of the fire makes my frontside glow.  The cold of the April wind turns my backside pink.  I am round and glowing, a perfect salmon moon.

We dance in circles, falling into orbit around the fire.  I am drunk on the pollen wafting through the air, and red, yellow, and brown leaves swirl around me.  I can no longer tell whether I am surrounded by flames or trees or both.  Stars leap from the fire, embers fall from the sky.  I collapse into the embrace of the infinite.

Lost in space like this, there is no north and south, no spring or fall, only the endless expanse of new fires being lit.

 

 

Creative Commons love to phil dokas from flickr for the stunning photo!

Making Love to Clouds

Jaclyn17 Comments

I did not flinch when I saw her, though I knew she expected it.  My face did not mirror hers, eyes pulled wide, lips forced apart by the sharp intake of breath she could not control,  brow clenched upwards by a mind which could not believe.

A small breath of air made its way from my lungs, but my lips could not form her name.

Her eyes moved away from mine to the ground.  She did not want me to see her this way, I knew, and she would rather have never seen me at all than to meet me like this.

Her hair, which I had never seen down in all our years together, even through sleep and childbirth, fell in front of her face, intentionally hiding it.  In the darkness, it was hard to tell the two apart, now that the night of her straight hair had spread down the length of her body.  It was the blackness of her face from which I could not take my eyes.  Not the decay of her skin, crawling into strange formations as it fell from her flesh, nor the worms escaping from within her and being more eager to return to her to feast, but the pure tar of her face.  It had been one of her more powerful features, lighting the sky with its whiteness, its power making men run for cover.

“Do not look on me,” her words were loud, quick.  I wondered if she knew I had been chasing the young nymph which had just passed her, giggling melodically, curls and young breasts bouncing teasingly around the corner.  I wondered if it had been long enough since her death, or if it ever would be.

“I miss looking on you,” I offered.

She scoffed under her breath.  I could hear the tightening of her hard face through the darkness.  It was a sound I had not forgotten.

She crossed her arms, jagged elbows sending small bolts of lightning at the ground.  In the light, I could see a cockroach on the ground, near her dirty, bare feet.  It was the first time I understood her shame in being seen in the underworld.  Her usually tidy, glowing dress looked like what a peasant mortal would wear.  Instead of her usual shining shoes, her small, sharp feet, were caked in dirt, and being eaten.  I wondered if it was difficult for her to walk with the same poise that she had always carried.

“Please,” I said, knowing she would notice that my voice was not that of a god, but of a mole.  It did not happen often, but I knew she always noticed when I lost my composure.   “We will never see each other again.  We are lucky for just this moment.  Please, just look at me.”

“I-”  It was not often that she stuttered.  Her uneasiness grew to fill the small confines of the underground cave in which we stood.

Maybe she also feels as if it were my fault.

Perhaps she did not recall her last days, after the birth of the fire.  The way she screamed as the flames came forth from her womb burned my insides also.  The tears that sparked her electric face for days afterwards as she whimpered in pain each stung me as well. And I could no longer live forever when her immortality was taken away.

“I am not the same,” she said, her voice beginning to crack.  I knew she would not cry.  I struggled in the darkness to see better the prickly lines of her long body and face, the points of her nose, chin, and hips.

“I know,” I said.  I still missed looking on her.

   He did not know. 

            I could see his misty face, churning with emotions — for me!  If he knew, he would not be taking the time to steal a few moments with me before his return home.

            He moved towards me and I was within his arm’s reach.  I moved away.

            “I know,” he repeated, taking a small, determined step forward. 

            That was the moment when the memories flew past me and I was forced to turn and look at the decaying wall.  This gave my unruly mind free reign in recalling my memories, but at least I did not look at his face. 

            The tree came back to me first, but I knew that did not mean I loved him more.  The nights I had stolen away with the tree in a forced, hushed passion were just easiest to remember — there had been so few.  Always after dark.  Embracing without kissing.  A dainty removal of his own splinters.  All so the clouds could detect no signs when I returned home.  The splinters were my favorite part, even then.

            But there were more nights — since the beginning of time, in fact — with the clouds.  After all, what is lightning without clouds, or clouds without lightning?  The best nights were always the ones spent over tropical islands — hurricanes and our children, the thunder, the rain, and the tornado, were all conceived from the swirls of our passion on nights like those.

            So, when I first realized that I was having the fire child, I stopped seeing the tree.  I had no doubts about who fathered it.  But, then again, neither did the clouds.  Perhaps that was the most painful part of the ordeal:  the clouds trusted me so much that he was sure the child was his.

            “I am sorry,” he tried.  I knew he was fumbling for words, and it made me want him to hold me.

            “I am as well.”  But I stayed cold.  Who would want to hold a sack of maggots?

            “If I had known what would happen –“

            “You should not apologize.”

            “It was my fault,” he said.

            “It was not your fault,” I insisted, my voice rising with tension.

            “I should not have–” he stopped.

            I could hear him turn, his arm brushing chunks of dirt off the crumbling wall, and return the way he had come.

 

 

 

 

 

Creative Commons Love to Liamfm on flickr.  Thank you!