Still here

Are you still here? 

After all that's happened? 

After all we've been through? 

Wow. I guess we made it. 

This year, I hit a wall. After five years of watching the world catch fire, and watching my own life experience upheaval after heartbreak after trauma after grief, I found I couldn't write anymore. The words just weren't there. That's why this blog has been silent for a few months, and even my Tumblr blog went quiet for eight weeks.

This absence of creativity was scary, but there was nothing I could do about it, and although the frightening thought occurred that I might never write again, my gut knew that this would not be the case. I stopped trying to write, and stopped worrying about not writing. 

For the past five years I had been telling myself, "It's just a Winter; it will pass soon". But the Winter dragged on, and on, and every time I managed to write a passage or a scene I thought, "At last! My Winter is ending!" ... and it didn't. Those moments were but temporary thaws. 

At the end of every year since 2016, I have thought, "Surely, next year will be better."  

And somehow, each year has managed to be at least as bad as the one before.

At last, halfway through this year, I started to conclude that this burning world could very well be the new normal. I decided that I needed to stop hoping that the world would improve enough for us all to get on with our lives, and instead would have to find a way to write, and live, regardless of the anguish, the tragedies, the trauma. 

I didn't manage it. All my energy was going into trying to heal: I had none left with which to create. 

So I have not published a book this year. I have no new story for you. I'm sorry. 

But I survived. You survived. We're still here. Maybe battered, maybe traumatised, maybe grieving. But still breathing. 

Due to certain political changes that occurred in November this year, we have some evidence that 2021 really will be a little better; — not just wishful hope, this time, but some factual evidence. I am tentatively expectant that things will improve. 

But I am not holding my breath. I need that to keep flowing, in and out of my lungs, so that I stay alive for long enough to finish another book, somehow, whether the world is on fire or not.

I don't have anything helpful to say. I don't have any words to make anything better. But I congratulate you on surviving. 

Maybe you don't feel like you have survived. I certainly think that parts of me have not survived. I feel like bits of me have fallen off into the fire. 

But most of me — and most of you — is still here. Let's rest for a while, shall we? If the world gets better next year, great; if it doesn't, we'll need all our energy.

Peace to you. 

On Susan Pevensie

I have been seeing a lot of Tumblr posts about the character Susan Pevensie, from C.S. Lewis' book series The Chronicles Of Narnia, that state, or imply, that Susan was wronged by the stories, in that she — who had helped to save the realm of Narnia and then ruled it as a queen — was not allowed back into Narnia once she grew up.
I feel that the writers of these posts cannot have read all of the books. It is made very clear, in The Last Battle, the final book in the series, that it was not adulthood or femininity that barred Susan from Narnia. Adult Susan was not allowed back into Narnia because she stopped believing that Narnia existed. She chose to believe that all her and her siblings' adventures in Narnia were imaginary games.

"Sir," said Tirian, when he had greeted all these. "If I have read the chronicle aright, there should be another. Has not your Majesty two sisters? Where is Queen Susan?"
"My sister Susan," answered Peter shortly and gravely, "is no longer a friend of Narnia." "Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says, 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'"
"Oh Susan!" said Jill. "She's interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up."
"Grown-up, indeed," said the Lady Polly. "I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can."

(From The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis, 1956, pp. 127–128.)

Narnia did not wrong Susan. Susan wronged Narnia. She helped to save Narnia, became a hero there, grew up there, made friends there, became "Queen Susan the Fair" — and then, when she became an adult in our world, she chose to forget that Narnia had ever been real.
Reading the above-quoted passage in The Last Battle is shocking and horrifying. How could Susan forget something so important — something from her own past?! She was a good, kind, compassionate person — when did she become so awful?! How could she do this to herself, to her siblings, and to Narnia itself?
It is meant to be shocking. It is meant to sting. The author, C.S. Lewis, did not turn on Susan and decide to punish her for growing up, for becoming feminine, for a lack of faith or loyalty, for anything; rather, Susan's devastating betrayal is meant to make a point about how the people we love and trust in childhood can change beyond recognition, and forsake their bonds with us; — bonds that we thought would last forever.
I think that many readers do not understand how Susan could change so suddenly, nor why she would, and thus assume that the author is at fault: that he decided to defame her character — as though the reader understands the character better than her creator does. Their reasoning seems to be, "Susan would never do that: it must be C.S. Lewis's fault. He has told his story incorrectly. He has wronged a character that he created."
But we are not meant to understand why Susan left. That is the entire point. Susan's betrayal is supposed to be incomprehensible.
Why?
Because that's how it feels when someone betrays you like that.
I have had a "Susan" in my life.
I was shocked and hurt when I read The Last Battle for the first time and found that Susan had betrayed her siblings, her past, her queendom, her friends. Every time I have re-read The Chronicles Of Narnia, that passage has made my soul writhe at the wrongness of Susan's behaviour. And now, having had my own "Susan" behave almost identically to Susan Pevensie, I understand why Lewis did what he did.
He knew exactly what he was doing.
(My story 'The Leaving Of Princess Laellinon' (published in Three Short Fairytales) was inspired by the behaviour of my "Susan", and the grief and confusion of those left behind.)
Susan Pevensie is not a victim of C.S. Lewis's writing, nor of Narnia's "unfair" rules, or anything like that. If Susan is a victim, it could be argued that she is a victim of our society, not Narnia's: our society that condemns childlike belief in goodness and wonder, nobility and honour, faith and the greater good; our society that encourages superficiality, conformity, materialism, gender stereotypes, and a shallow sense of what it means to be a grown-up. Our society, which tells young people that they must outgrow fairytales and "face facts", resigning themselves to a cynical existence in which doing good and striving for a noble, joyful, virtuous life are considered, at best, childish and immature or self-righteous and moralising.
But primarily Susan is a victim of her own lack of inner strength and faith. She could have chosen to keep believing: all of her siblings did, despite being under the same societal pressures as Susan was. She did not have to turn her back on Narnia. She chose to do so.
Just as my "Susan" did.
If you find that Susan's betrayal shatters your understanding of her character, then congratulations: you understand the pain of the remaining Pevensie siblings.
May you never have a "Susan" in your life. May you never be betrayed thus. But don't blame C.S. Lewis for defaming Susan's character: Susan did that by herself. All Lewis did was use Susan to make a point about something that real people do — just as he did with every other character in The Chronicles Of Narnia.

Poem: The Unicorn Danced

The Unicorn Danced

26 January, 2006.

A wolf howled for a playmate, 

A wild boar snuffled alone.

A poet sought for a meaning —

And a Unicorn danced in the stars. 

Three lions roared at the prairie,

An eagle watched from his rock.

A piper's tune sang of heartbreak —

And a Unicorn danced in the stars.

"We are alone!" cried the eagle.

"I too am alone," cried the wolf.

"It is our fate," said the wild boar —

And the Unicorn danced in the stars.

The prairie lay unsleeping,

The poet and piper ceased work.

The stars rained down their lightshafts —

And the Unicorn danced in the stars.

"All will be well!" sang the glories;

"I am still alone," said the wolf.

"But all will be well," said the glories —

And the Unicorn danced in the stars.

Pure and wild danced the Unicorn;

"The world is not ended," said he.

"Hope yet for the lonely," the stars said;

And the Unicorn danced in the stars.

A pandemic gives me a taste of normality

I am a neurotic person. I am fastidious, meticulous, extremely sensitive, and easily stressed by chaos, disorder, and dirt. I wash my hands frequently and am constantly wiping down surfaces, even ones that appear clean. One of my dictionaries says that "neurotic" in non-technical use means "abnormally sensitive, obsessive, or anxious", and that describes me well. I have improved over the years, but I still occasionally get called "paranoid", "neurotic", "angsty", and an "over-thinker".
 
I am an extreme introvert, and rather misanthropic. Interacting with, hearing, or even being in the same room as, humans, drains my emotional energy reserves. My bubble of personal space is large: I do not like people to stand close to me unless I feel emotionally close to them, and the number of humans who meet that criterion is very small indeed. When strangers come too close to me I want to scream, and humans who touch me without asking my permission first make my skin crawl.

At the end of March, my country of residence entered a state known as Alert Level 4: a government-mandated lockdown in order to prevent the spread of the disease called COVID-19, which was (and still is, as I write this) causing a global pandemic. For one month, from late March to late April, all non-essential services were shut down, all gatherings were cancelled, and people were instructed to stay home, except for essential journeys to get food, medication, et cetera, and for local outdoor exercise. At all times, people were required to maintain a two-metre distance between themselves and anyone who was not living with them. Lengthy and frequent hand-washing was encouraged, and when visiting the supermarket every customer was required to use the supplied hand sanitiser and disinfecting wipes, and was instructed to wash their groceries after transporting them home.

Under Alert Level 4, for the first time in my life, I was legally required to live the hermitic existence my friendless child-self had always imagined I would.

It was bliss.

I didn't have to go anywhere. I didn't have to do anything. No one was going to knock on my door and expect me to answer. I didn't have to be available to anyone, speak to anyone, or achieve anything according to others' agenda. A slew of responsibilities and difficulties ceased, and tasks I was dreading simply became impossible to do, so I could stop worrying about them. I felt almost zero need for human interaction, with fleeting moments of exception when I missed my two most beloved humans. But they were only an e-mail or phone call away, after all.
I felt relieved and liberated as I have seldom felt before.
I was happier than I had been in a long time.

Many people in my life asked if I was all right and had everything I needed, which was kind of them, and I appreciated their concern. But when they asked if I was coping with the isolation, I had to bite my tongue and simply say that I was fine, in order to refrain from blurting, "Are you kidding? I'm having the time of my life! This is fantastic! I don't want it to end!".

I felt somewhat guilty for enjoying the lockdown. It wasn't that I was enjoying the pandemic itself; people were dying, incomes being lost, and elsewhere in the world, in countries with governments that were handling the pandemic badly, death tolls were horrific, healthcare systems overwhelmed, people in constant danger, and livelihoods being ruined. The pandemic was inflicting trauma across the globe, and the world would never be as it had been before COVID-19.
How could something so horrifying bring me peace, liberation, and relief?
What right did I have to feel like I was on holiday, when people everywhere were suffering or dying?
This article on the psychology website psychcentral.com assured me that I am not the only one who actually felt happier during the pandemic. But many other articles reported that even my fellow introverts were struggling with being quarantined — either because they were confined with others, often including extroverts and young children, or because they were realising that they still desired human company, perhaps more than they had thought.

As the country's time in Alert Level 4 drew to a close, I found myself wondering wistfully how I could continue to live as though under Level 4 restrictions. How could I make sure that all strangers stayed two metres away from me forever? How could I continue to preserve my solitude?

Once Alert Level 4 lifted and we returned to the lesser restrictions of Alert Level 3, I felt genuine sadness, and, within a few days, I was nostalgic for Level 4.
Why?
I realised that it was because, for the first time in my life, I had felt normal.

For once, everyone was living my life. Everyone was neurotic. Everyone was stressed and nervous and self-conscious. Everyone was washing their hands a lot and sanitising and wiping things down and refraining from touching surfaces. Everyone was avoiding physical contact, having conversations with two metres of space between interlocutors, giving others a wide berth, even crossing the street to avoid people. Everyone was anxious, even terrified, but still trying to be kind and courteous in the midst of their stress.
I have always been a freak. For a host of reasons, I have always felt that I do not belong with humans, that I am strange and unacceptable to them. I am, more or less, at peace with this, and believe that normality and conventionality are overrated anyway.
But for four weeks, I was normal. For four weeks, I glimpsed what it must feel like to be a normal person: not an outcast, not a freak, nor a weirdo ... normal.

And now the restrictions have lifted. And I will, most likely, never feel normal again.

It is unlikely that there will be a second pandemic in my lifetime. That month of Alert Level 4 may well have been the only taste I will ever have of what it feels like to be "normal" — typical, conventional, ordinary, readily understood by the masses.
No wonder I feel nostalgic for it. 

How unsuited am I to ordinary life if it takes a global pandemic for me to feel normal? 

We have now moved to Alert Level 2. Things are returning to normal ... other people's version of normal.
Playgrounds are in use again. Shops are opening. Streets are once again full of cars and pedestrians. People speak cheerfully of how "things will soon be normal again."
And I feel a queasy sense of dread suffuse my being. I have never felt so misanthropic. I crave peace and silence and solitude as never before. I think longingly of caves in forests where hermits may live undisturbed, and sealed towers where princesses dwell alone, and inaccessible mountaintops.
I wonder what is wrong with me.
And I know, with guilt and unease, that no one to whom I might try to explain this feeling would understand it. Not even my two most beloved humans.

All my life, I wanted close friends. As a child, I had no real human friends. Nowadays I have a handful of wonderful friends, and I enjoy their company; I spend more time socialising than ever before. But it would seem that I had not realised how much this socialising was draining me. 

Clearly I am every bit the hermit that I've always believed I was, and clearly although I love my friends and rejoice in their company, I also love solitude. I need to find ways of having more of it. I need to be pickier — extremely picky — finicky, even — about whom I allow to have access to my company, and for how long.

I found this article helpful, and very validating: 7 Ways To Enjoy More Solitude In A Society That Demands You Be Social.
I have started scheduling "days off" for myself: days on which I go nowhere, see no one, only answer electronic communications if I feel like it, and do only what I am inclined to do. I am preparing myself for saying "no" to more people more often, and I practice phrases such as, "Let me get back to you about that", and, "I'll have to check my diary and let you know", both of which are stalling tactics to give me time to concoct a polite way of declining. I have started answering most text messages in a batch in the late afternoon, rather than as soon as I have a free moment.
I cannot replicate Alert Level 4 conditions for weeks at a time. But I can start taking my solitude more seriously.
I cannot make myself feel normal in a society that thinks I am a freak. But I can start treating my own "normal" with greater intention and enthusiasm, and giving less weight to the idea that I must say "yes" to others' "normal" at the expense of my own.

In which I consider my early writing

I am working on a story that requires me to draw on some old memories. Thus, I have been looking back over notes and poems that I wrote when I was much younger; near the beginning of my writing endeavours. Some people find their early work cringe-inducing; and I admit that there are rare moments when I am almost shocked, unpleasantly, by the naïvety of much of my earliest work.
But then I remember that we all begin incompetent. No one starts as a master of their art. And I note that the substance, the meaning or idea of the work, is solid and real and worthy: it is the execution that is naïve. The turn of phrase, the use of vocabulary, the structure — these may be clumsy, in the same way that a puppy's first attempts at running and jumping and generally being athletic are unwittingly clumsy and bumbling and often hilariously inept.
We don't expect puppies to be good at anything. We don't ask a sapling why it is not a tree. Likewise, let us not criticise our early efforts, but look upon them with kindness; and note that it is not our content nor our intent that is flawed: merely our execution. We are unpractised: that is all.
It brings me a sense of sadness and grief to read some of these early poems. I am drawing upon them for my fictional story, but they are already a part of my life's story. I read my recounting of, and commentary upon, some early parts of my life and I am struck by both the unwitting cruelty of the people around me and how sad I was. A poor sad child, having to deal with idiocy and misunderstanding from adults and children alike, be they relatives, acquaintances, or strangers.
There is a reason why so many of my characters are freaks or outcasts of one sort or another.
Trauma and pain are often senseless. I will not say that everything happens for a reason; I am not convinced that is does, unless the reason be that the world is a horrible, wicked, unjust place full of cruel, selfish people. Sometimes the "reason" in "everything happens for a reason" is that the world is a sick and rotten place. But I will say that trauma and pain can teach us useful things; and I will say that if nothing else, we may be able to get a story out of it; a story that may ease the pain of someone else, if only for a moment.
And maybe the story will help its creator to heal, if only a little.
I like the mental image of taking the pain that was inflicted upon you and using it to fuel your own fire, rather than turning it upon anyone else or using it to punish yourself. Pain and trauma are like arrows shot into you. You can push them deeper into yourself. You can yank them out and shoot them back at your attacker. You can yank them out and shoot them at a third party. You can yank them out and leave them, bloodied, in a pile on the ground. You can throw them on a fire to warm yourself. You can use the arrowheads to scratch a message into a wall. You can strip the iron heads off, burn the shafts, and use the heat of the fire to forge the arrowheads into a work of art, or into a weapon.
Either way, you are bleeding and wounded and in pain. But now you have arrows, too. You never asked for them; you never wanted them; that they were shot at you is not your fault; and how well armoured you were, and the quality of the healing you may or may not receive, are separate questions.
You can do anything, or nothing, with those arrows. But they are yours now. And maybe they cost you too much for you to do nothing with them.

G. Wulfing's pre-writing ritual

Part of the difficulty in writing is getting my mind to think about writing instead of all the mundane things it thinks it should be thinking about, and the frivolous things it would like to think about. If I have set aside an hour for writing, on some days it can take an hour to get my mind into the zone for writing, so that as I finally begin to write, I have to stop. Or it may take half an hour, in which case just as I start to get some real writing momentum going, I have to stop. Having a pre-writing ritual, as detailed below, helps enormously.

• Make a hot drink – masala chai latte, hot chocolate, or mochaccino
• Wake computer from sleep
• Light candle on desk beside computer (the soft, pure, soothing, romantic light somehow magically helps me to focus)
• Sip drink slowly
• Listen to a song, which may or may not be relevant to the manuscript I am currently working on, but either way gives my brain a few minutes in which to drift before I ask it to focus 
• Choose which manuscript to work on and open it
• Turn on rain noises
• Then – only then – start writing.

This routine helps my brain to leave behind the mundane thoughts of food and other duties, and to shift into writing-only mode. 
The rain sounds give my fidgeting brain a constant noise that cues it to focus but at the same time gives it something to get distracted to: like a tether, the rain sounds keep my brain from wandering too far into other thoughts. If I write in silence, my brain tends to wander off toward every frivolous little thought that slides past it. When in the past I have written to music, my brain tended to get distracted by the music: after all, listening to music is so much easier than writing! Thus, the rain soundtrack keeps my brain distracted enough from the silence that it can focus, but not so distracted that it abandons writing altogether.
Having said that, I did manage recently to drop the entire box of matches into my mochaccino as I was trying to light the candle, so this ritual is not without its hazards. (No matches were harmed, and the box is merely slightly coffee-tinted.)

Incidentally, because the world is currently even more awful than usual, Raymond's Nemesis and Raymond's Secret are currently free in Smashwords' 'Authors Give Back' sale, so you can read and/or download all three Raymond books for nothing. Link here.
Keep calm and stay home. And read all those books you've always wanted to read. We don't get to choose how horrendous the world is, but we do get to choose how we respond to it.

Poem: The Evil Queen's Lament

The Evil Queen’s Lament

June, 2015. Inspired by the film ‘Snow White And The Huntsman’.

The day that we met I will always remember:
The sunshine it glittered like jet in your hair.
The day that we met I will always remember:
You weren’t my reflection, yet you were so fair.

The starlight had set all its beams in your eyes;
Your spirit it sparkled like gold in the sun.
And your face was their gossip, just as mine had been;
I felt my heart quiver, and knew I was done.

Cruel is the morning that wakes us to aging!
Bitter indeed is the taste of our years.
Unyielding, intemperate, siphoning beauty,
Stripping our youth from us, tripling our tears.

What is the point when I’m so far below you?
Your beauty — it so far surpasses my own.
I was the fairest, I was the brightest,
Most glorious sun the world had ever known.

What riches I wielded! What power was mine!
My beauty was legend! My spirit was fire!
I sacrificed — struggled — persisted — achievèd;
I fought for my greatness, and gained my desire.

But you, little miss, were born to your station.
Sweet nothing did you to attain your estate.
Bless’d with all goodness, all sweetness, all beauty,
You waltzed through your life as though worshipped by fate!

And oh, how they sang of your burgeoning beauty!
— Where once those were my praises crossing their lips.
Death was deservèd — I sought hard to kill you —
But poison and knife-edge fell from all grips.

What goodness preserves you? What angels are yours?
Were you born only to shatter my crown?
Impossible beauty — foul perfection — I curse thee —
And curs’d be all waters that did not thee drown!

The world has no need of two suns, two sunrises;
Dawn is redundant when twice it arrives.
Power is nothing when shared; greatness cannot
Unfurl to its fullest in two separate lives.

So I’ll drift far away in my silver-shelled coracle;
The world has no need of me now that you’re grown.
Crowns are all fleeting, hearts are for breaking,
Sorrow returns and we all die alone.

And my only emollient, as I drift, weeping,
Is the knowledge that you too will die in your turn.
Savour your moment, pitiful blossom;
All beauty fades; ice, too, can burn.