T. J. Woods .

ResophNotes 1.5.3 - 5 notes, now with a new considerably longer title

2012-12-02T01:29:00.001-06:00

The meeting of a customer and a clerk across the service counter in a store is as significant as two leaders of nations meeting over a conference table in search of peace. If peace and understanding is possible, it must occur in the moment that is present. -- Booker Jones

Voyage To Bojador

2012-01-15T22:41:00.000-06:00

Gil Eannes stood under the arch of the harbor master’s house, looking out at the silent sea and the ship that would carry him again into the unknown.

He had departed these shores twelve times before, intent on rounding Cape Bojador and crossing into what lay beyond the end of the world. Each time he had returned in failure, with no explanation for failure to offer Prince Henry. His failure was a mystery even to himself, locked away like a secret dream.
Of course, along with failure and mystery he brought back knowledge. With each voyage he learned more about the scented winds off the east coast of Africa, and the strange currents, and how both winds and currents aligned with the singing stars at night. He learned how the bow of his ship cut through foreign waters, and how at times they did not cut cleanly. He was visited by whispering voices while dolphins leapt to starboard, telling geometric tales of ships that could cut thorough faster, and more truly, pushing forward cleanly, wood hewn to more penetrating angles, more uplifting planes and curves.

He had seen how members of the crew might be overcome by a sudden wave of fear, and how they may be inspired with hope, and how some more than others could embrace a wave of fear and find hidden anchorage deep within it to hold steady against capricious currents inside their hearts and beneath their feet.

All of this he put into his reports to the Prince and his scholars at the School of Navigators - the mathematicians and astrologers and map makers, the naval engineers, the old priest who had charge of men’s souls, the old craftsmen who could forge better instruments for sighting stars and landscapes, better and stranger devices for discovering where one sailed on the silent sea under darkening skies.

The Prince and his Scholars believed that this knowledge was valuable, fuel for new ship designs, naval charts, and manuals for navigation.

But Gil Eannes believed that the knowledge that mattered was hidden inside a dream, locked away from his own understanding.

The same dream held the mystery of each failed voyage. Each time, he could remember approaching the seas off Cape Bojador, the surface like heaving, molten silver, the water itself thicker, heavier than in northern seas. He saw great schools of silver fish within the heaving sea, swaying now this way, now that, rising and falling with a sound like the breathing of a single giant, or a god. And he beheld a woman rising up from the waters, walking towards him across the surface of this sea. Her arms were stretched out towards him, bidding him to turn back or to come forward he could not tell. But he went to her outstretched arms, carried on the backs of silver fish. Her hair like spun gold, her raiment like invisible silk, her breath like cloves and cinnamon, she folded him into her arms and pressed his tired head against her breast and breathed songs stranger than any human should ever hear.

And then he is awake, alert at the helm of the ship in his charge, steering a sure course back into the harbor from which he had departed. How he got there, how many weeks or months had passed, he did not know. Of the return voyage, he remembered nothing. But he felt no surprise. Each time, the Captain simply guided the ship expertly home, the crew carrying out their duties as usual, casting lines and securing the vessel after its long voyage.

No one on board spoke of the return. Perhaps, Gil thought, every man had dreamed like this. Perhaps every man on board had dreamed the same dream. But it was not a shared dream.

The ship’s captain and his crew were silent on each return, silently going about the well-known familiar tasks of bringing the ship into port with downcast eyes. At times, Gil thought he saw his men casting suspicious, sidelong glances at him and at each other, as if wondering what was known, as if each man held close some guilty knowledge that could not be spoken aloud, a guilty, secret memory, hidden deep in each solitary heart.

A single dream, but not a shared dream. Gil did not have the understanding necessary to unpack the meaning of such a thing.

The quickening breeze over water brought Gil back to the task at hand, and he turned to see the harbor master waiting patiently. The master handed him the ship’s log, stamped according the decree of the King, Prince Henry’s father.

Without fanfare, Gil stepped from Portuguese soil onto the ship. With a few terse orders, the crew set the sails, and the sails filled with the light wind. As if drawn by distant hands, the ship moved out into the bay, gathering speed, cutting through the sea swell like a thrown spear to a target beyond the end of the world.

* * *

Jamie’s Note:

Prince Henry the Navigator, of Portugal, sent twelve ships off to sail past Cape Bojador on the east coast of Africa, crossing an imaginary line that marked either the end of the world, or a sea route to India. They all failed. Then in 1434 the thirteenth attempt was a success. Gil Eannes was the captain of that ship. This is a story about the voyages that came before lucky number thirteen.

* * *

purple socks

2011-12-22T23:53:00.000-06:00

Enter a post title

2011-12-01T00:01:00.000-06:00

This is what goes here.

A post with tables

2011-05-01T18:38:00.002-05:00

This is a post with an image on the left, and text on the right, using a table to align things. There is not telling how this will work out in the end.

But it is something that is worth trying, perhaps.

And when it is all done, perhaps a checklist would be useful.
· Something here, and something there
· With other things to remember
· And a reminder to do the post-mortem

Emily's Private Language

2011-04-10T14:54:00.001-05:00

Emily Dickinson's gem-like poems are filled with the private language of a reclusive heart, and the imagination at work in that heart is all the more striking because it is so private. But even her letters show the kind of sparks and imaginative leaps that hint at a private vision of the world we live in -- or perhaps, a vision of the world we share, but can not see without imagination.

Here's something from a letter she wrote on the occassion of her mother's death:

There was no earthly parting. She slipped from our fingers like a flake gathered by the wind, and is now part of the drift called "the infinite."

We don't know where she is, though so many tell us.

I believe we shall in some manner be cherished by our Maker—that the One who gave us this remarkable earth has the power to surprise that which He has caused. Beyond that all is silence...

Mother was very beautiful when she had died. Seraphs are solemn artists. The illumination that comes but once paused upon her features, and it seemed like hiding a picture to lay her in the grave; but the grass that received my father will suffice his guest, the one he asked at the altar to visit him all his life.

I cannot tell how Eternity seems. It sweeps around me like a sea...Thank you for remembering me. Remembrance—mighty word ...

Lovingly, Emily

(By the way, April is "Poetry Month", and Knopf is sending out a poem each day to celebrate that. Emily's letter was part of today's edition.)

An Impetuous Retroactive New Years Resolution

2011-01-08T08:40:00.001-06:00

I'm not really a goal-oriented person, preferring to base decisions on the fleeting moment's search for peace and inner harmony. And I don't go in much for New Year's resolutions. But I have decided that this year I am going to be writing fiction. And there is a saying, what gets measured gets done.

So, I read with interest the writing challenge going on at Write One, Sub One. Inspired by Ray Bradbury, the challenge is to write and submit a story every week for 2011. I've signed up.

The thing is, I've never submitted anything for publication before. Being a contract ghost writer, I don't "submit", I don't even put pen to paper until the contract and stated price is in my cold, greedy hands. And of course, there is the fact that my experience is not in writing stories per se.

So, it will probably take a while to ramp up and figure this thing out, particularly the submitting part. So for now, my commitment is to write a story per week, and put it somewhere out there in public, which may just mean posting it on this blog. It may be flash, or just a short short story. We shall see.

If and when I figure out the markets for stories and the whole submitting process, I may venture forth more boldly. Stay tuned!

Story-Shaped Holes in the Heart

2011-01-01T02:31:00.002-06:00

Image by JeremyHall via Flickr

They are hard to see, and if you do catch a glimpse of them they disappear quick as a wink. Most often, you do not see them at all, but just feel this tiny little ache of something, something missing or something that is not what it wants to be, and what it wants to be is a thing made out of words in your heart.

It is the story we want to write, but can't write, because we don't know what it is. The only way to find out is try to fill it with some clumsy first words, pat them in gently, and see if they fit. Usually the words don't fit at all, but we may end up with something pretty and amusing and worth having been done anyway. If we are lucky.

If we are not writing, we might find something another writer has made out of words that fits.

A while back, Maja Djikic at OnFiction.ca asked:

"Do you ever stand before your bookcase, wanting something, but not quite knowing what? Like having an unnamed food craving and ferreting through the fridge, through the cabinets, hoping that even though you don’t know what you are searching for, you might find it anyway. That is how it feels to me, scanning through the spines, pulling out a book here, only to put it back there, dissatisfied. What is this nameless hunger only a right book will sate?"

When you crave a certain food, it might be your body telling you it needs something, some kind of vitamin or nutrient you have been neglecting.

Perhaps it works the same way when you crave some book unknown, some story untold.

Perhaps it is your life telling you -- this, this thing that is nothing but absence, this is the one true thing you can say. And if we ever manage to say it, to fill it with just the right words in the right shape, we will be finally done with writing.

Related articles