Sweet Blessings From Favorite Books

I literally started this post one month ago today - on the eve of my surgery. It was an important topic, one that I felt very strongly about writing, and I thought it would be a good distraction. Well, by now we all know how completely naive I was - and am - by the recovery process. I managed to completely forget that I had even started it! So I dusted it off this afternoon, and got back to work. I have no idea what it would have been like had I been able to finish it in a timely matter...but that can't be helped now. It is what it is, and I hope you enjoy it!

Saturday night I allowed myself to stay up very late so that I could finish a wonderful book - Widdershins by Charles De Lint. Truthfully, I don't know that I would have been able to put the book down to go to bed on time if I had tried. Those last couple of hours flew by soooo quickly, and they were soooooo very satisfying.


You might remember that last year I decided to reread all of Mr. De Lint's books, starting with his Newford books, read in order from start to finish as a complete collection. Widdershins is the happily ever after for certain beloved characters, but I read it as a love story from the author to his audience. That book makes me want to dance.

All told, there are 24 Newford books - 18 of which I've read in recent months. (Some are limited edition chapbooks which I haven't yet gotten ahold of, and I chose to skip a couple which were not urban fantasy.) I thought it might be fun to share with you some of the things that came from my heart during this process.

• I know exactly where my heart home in the dreamworld is....and I visit it often.
• The concept of a shadow - the parts of a person cast off from ourselves when we are children, forming a new person - plays very strongly in the books. I wonder what my shadow is like....and I have a feeling this could be a very long journal entry someday soon.
• The most beautiful passage in literature to me is in Spirits In the Wires. And I quote, "Whatever I am is floating through a meadow, dotted with trees, that sits on the edge of a dark forest, but it's a confusing place because everything is made of words. The grass and wildflowers are narrow phrases, swaying in the wind, punctuated with blossoms whose wordy petals radiate from clusters of vowels. The trees are thick paragraphs, dense with description, that lighten into shorter sentences and finally simply words as they follow the natural progression of trunk to branch to twig to leaf. Small verbs and nouns scamper along the branches or in amongst the roots of the trees. Others sit in topmost branches, trilling sweet wordsongs, or soar by on wings of poetry." Mr. DeLint, that passage is pure magic.
• Geordie's explanation of music as job in Widdershins explains exactly my own feelings about my crafts. I won't quote the passage here, but rather will say that I agree completely. I love the creativity in knitting...but as soon as it becomes a paid job all of the life, energy and magic seem to drain away from it for me.
• There is a quote in Widdershins which I believe I need to make a priority in my life - don't let your decisions be made by fear. And as it's now been more than a month since I started the entry, I can't quickly find the passage. I know I've said it before - but I don't know that any of you truly understand the depths of the fears which have guided my life. It's time to break free.
• It occurred to me very early on in the process that half of the reason I've always been so attracted to De Lint's regular cast of characters is that most of them are artists who are making their way in the world through their passion. I don't know that I would have recognized that if I hadn't taken that personality test last summer that identified me as an artist. I think I've always subconsciously longed for a world that was closed off to me at a young age by the importance placed on academics. And look where that got me.

And that was as far as I got. I'm smart enough to know that now is not the time to try to recreate everything else I wanted to say. We'll save that for another day!