Ephemera

A thousand soft yellow flies died in the crevices of my window last night.

I don’t know what kind they were or where they came from, but they formed a great ball of noise and movement that filtered over the front lawn-

-and ended, futilely, in the space between the screen and the pane of glass.

I didn’t see them the next day.

Like the soft, sweet blossoms on the bank above the creek-

Like the migratory birds that drink from the pond-

They carry a single, driven moment of intensity and vanish once it has passed.

They are obvious ephemera-

Violently here, then gone.

All moments pass this way, though.

All seconds and minutes and hours.

It pays to watch the progress of the sun in the sky.

The slow, sleepy waking of a butterfly warming from the cold of the night.

These are the moments before the beat of a butterfly’s wings

I am a greedy seizer of passing moments, in stories and in life.

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For more moments of intensity, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

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Everyday Magic- Taking the Leap

When I nearly broke my neck, I started to dream of flying.

Being pushed from a height gave me some mangled body parts, a very specific form of acrophobia, and a wealth of dreams about falling.

It took me time to put together the jumbled images in my head, but the power and beauty of their message pulled me into a place I had never imagined.

For a long time, I thought my head was punishing me with images of falling, of reliving my nightmare in a thousand ways and places.

Then one day, I refused to fall.

I pointed myself upwards as I left the dream-cliff.

And I flew.

I cannot tell you how I felt the moment I realized what I could do, where I could go when I was able to confront my head and transform those nightmares into fantastic adventures.

All I can speak of is fear… and courage.

I have spoken of the magic of fear, but there is also a magic in courage.

Because, in the end, they cannot be separated from one another.

Courage is not the absence of fear.

Courage is translating that fear, into lightning, into a magic all its own.

Courage is the moment you stare down the cliff face-

And leap, laughing, into the unknown.

The edge is only the beginning

This week is dedicated to everyday magic. I will be sharing some of the real-life inspiration for the strange things that appear in the pages of my stories.

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If you would like more adventures in falling, I have also written a fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor. It is available here.

 

Everyday Magic- Mountains

When I first set foot on the flatlands, I felt naked.

My childhood was spent clambering over, around, and through a variety of hills, slopes, and mountains.

The time I spent living in flatter areas I used to seek out ravines to pretend that they were hillsides.

I think that sometimes people see mountains as barriers or obstructions.

I have always seen them as pathways.

When I was smaller I used to climb until my legs burned, standing on the top of the highest places I could find and staring out around me.

It wasn’t to conquer or to rise above the world below me.

It was because at the top, you could see the new mountains, the further ridges.

The magic of mountains is that you are always searching for the lands just beyond them.

Every stroke of my pen, I reach towards the summit.

Looking beyond for the new, strange lands before me.

Always another world to explore

This week is dedicated to everyday magic. I will be sharing some of the real-life inspiration for the strange things that appear in the pages of my stories.

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If you would like to see more worlds beyond the mountains, I have also written a fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor. It is available here.

Everyday Magic- Seasons

There are stories that stick in a child’s head in strange and unusual ways.

For me, this was the story of a little boy with the magic to bring his paintings to life. As long as he did not complete his paintings, they remained beautiful, but non-living, works of art. When completed, they would remove themselves from the page and come out into the world. There is more to the story, both joy and tragedy, involving a greedy emperor and some subtle meditations on the meaning of art versus life.

All I understood was that with the right paintbrush, the world around me could be created.

This was especially obvious to me as the seasons changed.

In spring, a faint touch would pull along the brown branches, delicately spackling buds that would emerge with a firmer hand and harder line of green.

In summer, the heat would take on a life of its own, faint lines of blurred colour resting oppressively above all of the outside.

In fall, the specks of red, stars of yellow, would start at the outer edge, forced by gravity to spill downwards, swathing the forest in colour.

In winter, the delicate borders of frost would hint at the watercolourist’s nightmare, a world of white.

When I think of seasons, I think of a soft hand and a large paintbrush.

I think of a small child laughing, trailing magic behind him.

A soft hand and a child’s heart

This week is dedicated to everyday magic. I will be sharing some of the real-life inspiration for the strange things that appear in the pages of my stories.

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If you would like to see how I deal with artistic magic as an adult, I have also written a fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor. It is available here.

 

 

Everyday Magic- Reflections

I cannot tell you how many times as a child I tried to climb into the mirror world.

When people talk about Lewis Carroll, they generally speak of Alice in Wonderland.

For me, the story that captured my head was always Through the Looking Glass.

I hoped that if I was very quick and very quiet I would catch that odd movement in the mirror, that glimpse around the corner of the reflection to where the mirror world began.

Unfortunately, glass is a firm barrier in both reality and imagination.

I gave up on climbing into mirrors, but I never lost that quick glance at reflections.

Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I like to think I see a glimpse of that strange backwards world beyond the edge of vision.

Then I write.

There is always wonder at the reflection’s corners

This week is dedicated to everyday magic. I will be sharing some of the real-life inspiration for the strange things that appear in the pages of my stories.

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If you would like to see my other writings from the reflected world, I have also written a fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor. It is available here.

Everyday Magic- The Beginning

When I was very small, the world was too loud for me.

The world never got quieter, but I learned to pull inside myself and see the things inside my head when the outside was too much for me to handle.

Behind our house, behind the orchard, was the forest.

It did not take many steps to enter an entirely different world.

Grass turned to moss.

Garish sunlight turned to rich, filtered beams.

Five minutes for a small girl and one for an adult brought me to the marketplace.

There was a stump, you see.

I knew that one day, if I lay very quiet on the moss, I would catch the small people entering into one of that stump’s many cracks on their way to the magical market.

I never found that entrance.

The joy of writing is that I have been able to create my own.

I can close my eyes and see the things inside my head.

The small people turning to me and beckoning me on into the market of rotting wood and fading moss.

Magic in its truest form.

There are so many entrances that we can all find our way inside

This week is dedicated to everyday magic. I will be sharing some of the real-life inspiration for the strange things that appear in the pages of my stories.

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If you would like to see some less-metaphorical magic, I have also written a fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor. It is available here.