Hollyworld: Tangents

Monday, December 12, 2022

Tangents

I follow Alexis Nikole on Instagram. She's a forager whose enthusiasm is contagious. (One of the Minions adores her videos. He laughs every time she ends a video by saying, "Don't die.") She mentioned a book, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer in one of her videos. I picked it up and loved the lyrical sense of wonder about the beauty of science in nature. Today's chapter reminded me of summers in the woods when I was growing up. Eating wild strawberries, hiking the creek, hiding with a book in a small clearing I dubbed Lothlorien (I was/am a Tolkien nerd). Kimmerer's stories of Skywoman spoke to me. "On one side of the world were people whose relationship with the living world was shaped by Skywoman, who created a garden for the well-being of all. On the other side was another woman with a garden and a tree. But for tasting its fruit, she was banished from the garden and the gates clanged shut behind her. That mother of men was made to wander in the wilderness and earn her bread by the sweat of her brow, not by filling her mouth with the sweet juicy fruits that bend the brands low. In order to eat, she was instructed to subdue the wilderness into which she was cast."

As I read, I remembered another book that I hadn't picked up in years. Women Who Run With the Wolves—Clarissa Pinkola Estes. So I picked it up, thinking I'd read about Skywoman there. It wasn't there (or I didn't find it skimming) but I did re-find Baba Yaga's tale again and Estes' assessment, "Baba Yaga, the Wild Mother...instructs the ordering of the house of the soul. She imbues an alternate order to the ego, one where magic can happen, joy can be done, appetite is intact, things are accomplished with gusto."

There. Magic.

A tangent led me to what I didn't even know I was looking for.

Magic has been in my mind. I caught that picture at the cottage one evening recently. Perhaps it's a fairy? It's easy to believe in fairies out there.

We spent a cold snowy night at the cottage. I got up a bit later than normal, but still was out in the woods just after sunrise, and breathed in the silence in the trees. In the snowy morning woods, it's easy to believe in magic and in the power to create it.

As a writer, I believe in magic because my stories start as a glimmer of an idea and a blank page and grow into something that's alive in its own right. When I read the opening of Hold Her Heart, I tear up EVERY time. It's a sequel to Carry Her Heart and I knew from the beginning how it ends. I know that even when I run my characters through the wringer, they get a happily ever after, and yet, I tear up. Because my character doesn't know it yet. And he's so very real to me. That's magic.

I started walking miles every day, not in a gym, but outside. I've found it makes me more in tune with the world around me. The rhythm of the day. The rhythm of the year. As I walk I notice grass that's almost painfully green in the spring, that fades to a duller green in the summer and finally is covered with brilliantly white snow in the winter. It's magic. The circular essence of nature echoes the circular journey of being a woman. Skywoman who fell to earth and became an element of creation and dies giving birth (creating), Baba Yaga, who is ambiguous...sometimes portrayed as good, sometimes not so much. That duality seems truthful to me. She inspires magic.

We start out as a child who believes in magic, reach the busy years of career and family responsibilities—time when we forget magic exists—then reach a place where the world slows a bit and we can see the magic of a fairy in the woods, or the magic of watching a child we gave birth to grow into an amazing adult. We have time to notice the magic that surrounds us again. That's a gift.

And there you go. That's how my circular sense of tangents works. I start reading one book, remember something in another and pretty soon I'm surrounded by new and old books, reflecting that life is a series of tangents and if we're smart, we'll take a second to enjoy the magic in those moments!

I think I hear a Minion asking if their favorite forager has a new video! That's magic, too!

Holly

Looking for something to read? Check out:

Surprises in All Sizes anthology.