It's been becoming more and more obvious to me that writing, and especially writing science fiction and fantasy, is the best way to open young minds to new ideas, the meaning of life, and to convey the importance of protecting the planet we live on and creating a livable future for all. Speculative fiction, as it's called in the 'biz, gives all people but especially young people, a chance to imagine 'what if' and to explore beyond the boundaries of the known. It is through such exploration that we dream and invent and make something more inspiring of ourselves, and escape beyond the confines of current expression and conventions to realize our own potential. I was thinking about this when I found the following letter, drafted circa 2006. A bit childish, simple, but my sentiments have not changed and neither has the overwhelming message that fiction is what feeds my passion. I have a habit of writing to authors as I finish a book, my mind afire. Maybe only the last sentence is worthwhile, but for context, here is the letter I wrote:

To: Diana Wynne Jones, on the subject of The Merlin Conspiracy, a thoroughly excellent book.
This was fabulous. I must say the cover art had me quite skeptical at first. But I opened the book and immediately was plunged into an intricately, vividly entertaining story, that was both amusing and profound. With each page, a new layer was added, the whole piece weaving itself together into a delicate, delicious and exotic tapestry, like the people in the canyon world.
I enjoyed most of all Nick, Romanov, and Maxwell Hyde, the latter two for having real power and enticing complexity, and the former for not having either quality. Nick seemed so genuinely a teenage kid, with absolutely no clue what was going on, but who wanted to do something important. To have a grand adventure sprung upon such a character rings true for me. I feel sometimes that school, homework and worrying about college and test scores are just fillers, things to take up time until one day I'll just take a step sideways and find myself plunging into my real life, which will of course be full of adventure and excitement. There's got to be more to life than existing and consuming, even soaking in knowledge has begun to seem pointless and anticlimactic.
I enjoyed the very British flavor of your story. British lore can't help but have something of chivalry and King Arthur, of Stonehenge. There is a connectedness with the land, history, something archaic, something greater, that you just don't get in America. Your whole country is steeped in history and myth and magic; everyone just breathes it in I think, and the resulting works are refreshing to those surrounded by raw commercialism daily.
Thank you. I'm sure you get fanmail, but I wonder how much genuine appreciation and admiration actually gets through to fantastic authors. Definitely not enough. Thank you for a moment, a point in time, one page, when the world was still, and time held its breath, and the universe fit inside a book, and a book was a wealth of universes.

From the Farthest Shore

Ursula K. LeGuin's third novel in the classic Earthsea trilogy holds these pearls, which I gather to me now.
"It is time to be done with power. To drop the old toys and go on. It is time that I went home. I crave to walk on the mountain, the mountains of Gont, in the forests, in the autumn when the leaves are bright. There is no kingdom like the forests. It is time I went there, went in silence, went alone. And maybe there I would learn at last what no act or art or power can teach me, what I have never learned."

"A kind of weariness of dread, of waiting for the worst, grew in Arren all day long. Impatience and a dull anger rose in him. He said, after hours of silence, "This land is as dead as the land of death itself!"
"Do not say that," the mage said sharply. He strode on a while and then went on, in a changed voice, "Look at this land; look about you. This is your kingdom, the kingdom of life. This is your immortality. Look at the hills, the mortal hills. They do not endure forever. The hills with the living grass on them, and the streams of water running... In all the world, in all the worlds, in all the immensity of time, there is no other like each of those streams, rising cold out of the earth where no eye sees it, running through the sunlight and the darkness to the sea. Deep are the springs of being, deeper than life, than death..."
He stopped, but in his eyes as he looked at Arren and at the sunlit hills there was a great, wordless, grieving love. And Arren saw that, and seeing it saw him, saw him for the first time whole, as he was.
"I cannot say what I mean," Ged said unhappily.
But Arren thought of that first hour in the Fountain Court, of the man who had knelt by the running water of the fountain; and joy, as clear as that remembered water, welled up in him. He looked at his companion and said, "I have given my love to what is worthy of love. Is that not the kingdom and the unperishing spring?"
"Aye, lad," said Ged, gently and with pain.
They went on together in silence. But Arren saw the world now with his companion's eyes and saw the living splendor that was revealed about them in the silent, desolate land, as if by a power of enchantment surpassing any other, in every blade of the wind-bowed grass, every shadow, every stone. So when one stands in a cherished place for the last time before a voyage without return, he sees it all whole, and real, and dear, as he has never seen it before and never will see it again."

Offering Healing Sessions & Tarot Readings

Hi folks,

Most of you know how concerned I am with the fate of the environment and with the large social rifts that keep our society separated from nature. I have been developing tools that I think can be applied to help heal the environment, to heal individuals and to heal wounds in our communal psychology. In addition to finishing my formal schooling for conservation and ecology, I have had the privilege and the good fortune to be in the exact right place and time to receive instruction in Plant Spirit Healing from an excellent teacher, Pam Montgomery, and in permaculture design from Starhawk through Earth Activist Training.

The courses I have been taking have been amazing, and I'm eager to share and explain and geek out to anyone even half-interested. AND: I have mostly paid for the tuition for these classes, and I could use a little help making ends meet.

Here's where your support can help me:

I offer to share my services in these new skills I am learning, and you can support me in two ways: by asking for my help, you will give me a much-needed opportunity to practice, and in exchange for my services I am requesting donations to go towards paying the balance of my tuition.

I am offering consultation sessions in PLANT SPIRIT MEDICINE. This alternative healing modality gently and powerfully works on an energetic level to heal the spiritual and energetic causes of illnesses. I am just learning these techniques, and I would be delighted to work with people who understand that I need practical experience and who are open to healing in whatever form it may take, even simply an honest dialogue. I will of course remain completely confidential.

I am ALSO offering TAROT READINGS for those interested. Tarot is a divination tool that reveals how to bring into balance the symbolic archetypes that are influencing your life. More than simply reading your future, tarot maps the forces converging on your soul's path, and can shed light on how to navigate those forces.

Typicaly a professional healer charges $60 per hour, or they may have a sliding pay scale, and a professional tarot reader charges $40 for a full reading. Because I am in training and I view this as a learning opportunity for myself and a charitable act on your part, I suggest donating whatever portion of the fee that you feel is feasible, but I would really appreciate $20. And keep in mind that donations will be used specifically to pay for the healing courses I have described.

You can contact me by email: daniellemarielaberge@gmail.com, to arrange a meeting, or to arrange a time for a phone conversation. Please do not feel shy about asking me, and thank you for your support.

Keep shining!

Love and Thanks,

Danielle

I love the Literary Book of Answers, compiled advice from great works of literature. I always consult it when I visit a certain friend.

Question: What do I do now?
Answer: Thou must gather thine own sunshine.
Question: How do I find my own way?
Answer: Be still.
Question: How will I communicate what I find to other people?
Answer: You shall not fail.-- Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

I forgot to cite the first two answers.

Positive heart impulses

Tonight I forgive myself for holding on too long to what no longer serves me.
I forgive myself for fearing to grow bigger than my censoring ego can criticize, to shine so bright that I cannot be stopped by doubts.
I forgive myself for wishing to keep myself small and invisible rather than to walk with my radiance revealed.
I forgive myself for believing anyone else's opinions over my own judgment.
I forgive myself for placing the happiness of others before my own, and choosing what does not serve me in an attempt to make others feel special.
I forgive myself for seeking approval from others, because I did not approve of myself.
I forgive myself for a deep-seated belief that 'I must be doing something wrong,'or that 'I'm not good enough.'
I forgive myself for acting out of desperate fear and hurting others.
I forgive myself for staying disconnected rather than listening to the hard truths of friendship.
I forgive myself for filling my mind with worry and doutbt instead of peaceful solitude.
I forgive myself for remaining tense and alert when there are no longer stressful stimuli.
I forgive myself for undoing knots with my left hand even as I tie them with my right.
I forgive myself for tying knots with my right hand even as I undo them with my left.

The time is now and if I do not write, what good are all the hours of my life? Too long I lingered in the shadows, pale imitations of a dream, whiling away my time with fancies and with fantasy, but NOW those shadows I shall cast, that stand out bold and clear, distinct from every meager spectre of the dying day. What good the empty page? Yes, just so. The page. Who ever heard such pouring forth, extemporaneously, there is not time enough to send my thoughts to shake the fount and center of the earth. But here is this, I cannot form but wish a form to life, exhale my breath as prayer and come an empty vessel to that humbling page. And all those spectral auditors, the shadows spectating even as I who came a member of that formless audience beyond the form of Life, a story, Truth; a witness in the dark to the illumined forms of Love spelled out upon the stage, and those spellbound amazed listeners will heave and sigh, breathe, gasp in my breath as I, exhaling, now send forth words. Not my words but words unto themselves, that struggle out their meaning, flare and die, even as their light illumines and inspires. How shall we fare when entertainment's cheap, the word a silver seed stolen, ransomed, bargained, begged, thrown away out in the gutter? I cannot see the fruits of what will be but toil upon the circle's edge, a leading spiral spinning, spinning, yet never to reach the center nor see the whole complete. Here's to the rim, the narrow path, the ledger lines of profession, duty, fate, or is it will? To bind myself to words, is this my choice?

the four letter words

Dear ____,
I just had a dream which is about to slip away. But I want to remember the sense: we do what we do, save the world or author it, shape it, become its architects, because of the strenght we get from being with other significant people. The architects of the world, the true Poets, its saviors, create spontaneously, without apparent effort, but always because they must, because some need, some impulsion drives them to great urgency. At this time their great precision, their carefully schooled behaviors and skills, allow them to flawlessly tap that which is the power of the universe, and use it in the service of Change (which should be a four letter word but isn't). Despite Fear, our strength.. no, BECAUSE of Fear, our strength lies in unity, not separation, unity centered on the perfect and abiding quality of LOVE. We are small in the measure we separate and close our hearts, and we are great in the measure we dare to let LOVE dream through us and imagine the blossoming of the future of the world. This is why the world needs LOVE above all else, and why the greatest force for altering current situations may still exist, dormant, among the masses. A friend told me evolution has not been survival of the fittest, all these years. In Darwin's later writings he theorized that LIFE was kinder than that. What would a world look like if we turned to the understanding, like he eventually did, that we evolve best through (or rather, in the direction of, towards) our experiences of Beauty, Truth, and LOVE, and through our integrity to those concepts and a deepening of the experience of humanity?
What might the world look like with calm LOVE at the wheel, instead of raw Fear pushing from behind, propelling us? Is that not a worthy goal?
If we stop to calculate everything in our Fear and our isolation, then what we miss is LIFE! And the vibrant, insane, jerry-rigged inventions of the dream will never come into being. But our science, our art is far greater than mean calculation, and as we talk to the universe, we shall become its next shapers, for ill, or indeed, for better.
***
All such power is metaphoric, and if I told you the contents of my dream, the horrors, the struggles in their particulars, it would mean nothing to you, less than nothing. Yet what I have read from such images may, I hope, be writ large upon mankind.

a heads-up

I'm digging out journals from four years ago, and I will be cringing as I (mostly) faithfully copy them out. I really did compare my soul to a teabag. I was in some distress at the time. Share with me the humor of some of my early works when viewed in hindsight, and critics, please realize that the writer was an extremely shy sixteen- or seventeen-year-old with a great deal more books than experience, who would probably take comments very personally, and internalizing them, would write more bad poetry on her yearning for a turtle's shell! Thankfully I am a bit more sturdy now.

Rainforest, waiting

I should say I'm a fire hazard
Sugared petals, flames licking
Spontaneous whirlwind of
combustible crackling
lightning-eye silhouette
tinder-dry litter piling high
tense potential energy
pounding too fast
gasoline, along my veins
rich and incendiary
I have built this world from scratch
from half-formed, orphaned emotion
new hopes and joys,
utterly flammable, butterflies
still dusted
with creation. All my nutrients
bound up in the biomass
of the canopy. I am a
rainforest, waiting, for
the one I call enemy. Will you
light the torch and free me
to rage beond the borders of
your mind
fling open your doors and
stand terrified
as if you had no idea what
a fire could destroy, of yours,
in its unutterable self-destruction.
Don't strike a match, or
do you think you can stand that
close, feel the blaze of my hate
the glow, on your face, and still
retreat unravaged to the cool of the forest.

Emanate

flight

How dull to be pinned like a bug to this earth, confined only to motorcars and reliant upon roads and contraptions. Oh, to move freely, to soar! To soar. To swoop low over fields, to see the hills come close, as if in embrace, and then to shoot up over it, to rise above it and be not encircled by the hills, not enclosed by the geography, able to see beyond it and to rush to the horizon with a puissant speed and solemnity, but in the intent, the forwardness, the hurtling, soaring flight, a joy, a delight, a rightness with the world, a glorying and a reveling in the air, the speed, the sky, oh god, the SKY, and control, a being-in-oneself, a being in one's element.

Come, listen to a story...

I've been thinking about fairytales, because of this guy. I've been thinking about being the wide-eyed child, the tumbling fool who wears his heart on his sleeve and carries his sentimentality as proudly as his old violin. The story is his, a pure expression of his adventurous spirit and good humor.

I was thinking about being the enchantress, the crone sometimes, sometimes the woman in the red dress, every ripple of movement around her soaked in mystery and seduction. She sees potential, and sets it on fire, drives the hesitant into becoming a hero, sets the challenges and makes the requirements, and with relish she plays the villain. My tale belongs to her, my stage manager, who gets things moving backstage, turns on the lights and whispers all the well-memorized cues to herself. She is in love with only the story, the characters as they will come to be.

I've been dwelling on being the reader, whose secret sorrow is the wonderful book she holds in her hands, the barrier between the worlds. She feels the bookcover in her hand, not heavy but significant, she counts the pages between her and the moment when they run dry, her currency the tears shed over beautiful things all too brief. It is for her, this story, and she can love it more deeply than anyone else could guess. She knows that the price of reading is to arrive at the endpages and be cut off from countless worlds as she shuts the cover, as she must. And still she must read, risk that loss, seek out her own suffering in exchange for the golden ball, a pair of shoes, the talking fish and a night at the ball. These things are tiny rivulets that run down into deeper, wilder undercurrents of myth. In the mutable void of story, she is cradled, she is home, for a while. Come deeper into the forest, child. Come, listen to a story...

I am considering playing a part, playing every part, but only if I let myself forget that I am the author. And that is the best game of all.