Inside Outside Interweave we go...

I love conversations and watching how threads weave in and out. If we listen closely enough there are things connecting us all the time. I was just at the Hobby Shop on the corner (6 houses down from my house). I have spent the holidays working on building yet another dolls house for my children. Well actually, it's not for dolls, but for tiny rabbit families (the Sylvian Collection) which my children are enchanted with. The Best Beloved built the actual house. Finn (my big boy of 13 years old) built his own one alongside his dad. I took over the decorating and detail work (and I know that the job will never be finished because you can never have enough hand-stitched quilts and soft furnishings for you tiny houses can you...?).

Anyway, back to the idea of common threads: So I walked down to the hobby shop because I needed balsa wood to make the tiny window flower boxes. Got to chatting to the friendly proprietors and he asked the question "are any of your dolls houses ever actually finished?" So I laughed and said "no", because now that the tiny rabbit houses have been built, the children are "borrowing" the quilts and soft furnishings from their original dolls house and I will have to make more. To this he said "speaking of borrowing..." and proceeded to tell me that he is working on the latest "The Borrowers" movie set. I was amazed and so we chatted and found out that he is doing ALL the remote controlled work for the film. It is an English production, but they are using the Cape Town studios for this kind of work.

I LOVE SOUTH AFRICA!! We have so much talent and energy and there are exciting things happening all around us.

So there it is: I went from talking about "borrowing" the hand-stitched quilts to chatting someone who is working on the movie set of "The Borrowers", and I got a shot in the arm of pride and renewed confidence in this fantastic country and the people in it.

15 July - mid winter made glorious summer!

Today I read with great excitement that South Africa has launched its very own digital book publishing wing. After the journey with ABNA this last year and getting to know fellow authors who are looking at the digital publishing . This is such an exciting community and I have complete faith in this format. The possibilities are endless.  So have a look at our proudly South African option as Random House Struik goes digital .

2 June: There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven

As the seasons roll around, there is an unsettling in me - it always happens at this time of the year. In Cape Town I am conscious of the mild shift between seasons in a way that never happened in Kwa Zulu Natal. There we lived one continuous humid, lush season with spells of more or less rain. Here, we experience the dry heat of summer, into light-diffused autumn, then contemplative introspectively soaked winter, and finally the magnificence of our crisp, clear, colourful spring.

So now it is sometime towards late autumn - or perhaps it's already early winter - and that all too familiar disquiet is upon me like a shroud. I've come to accept it almost as an old friend who comes to visit each year.

                    "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven" [Ecc 3:1]

Such a profound - and yet simple - philosophy.

Now through the looking glass we go...

The proof has been proofed and as of today "Edward Beaton and the Star in the Glass" by Caroline A.Raine is available in hard copy off amazon.com.

Looong sigh.... the journey is complete and the writing, submissions, printing and editing is over. It exists in the world and NOW stepping through the looking glass - from me looking in on a mysterious world of authoring - I walk in the beautiful garden of being an author in print. This is the beginning.

Join me in the garden...

3 May 2011: Don't you love it when the world around you narrates poetry?

Ezra Pound
Now as the winter rains begin in earnest in Cape Town, every morning on my drive to school I watch the wet trees and the last of the autumn leaves and I wish that there was a sister poem to Ezra Pounds "In a Station of the Metro" just for autumn.


In a Station of the Metro


The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
petals on a wet, black bough. 


Ezra Pound


The rich auburns of the maple and Plains Trees stand out against the black, wet bark of the trees.  Too beautiful. And then in 4 months I will be saluting the fine pink and lilac petals, poised so delicately against the wet bark. It is a beautiful, fragile world we live in, and we all need to be a little kinder to it, to each other, and to ourselves.


So be kind, to the world around you.
Be kind to others.
Be kind to yourself.

30 April: Roots the True Foundation

A lovely lady I knew a long time ago, gave me a copy of her lino-cut called "Roots the True Foundation". It was a pictorial depiction of where she was at, at the stage in her life. It is a collage of the things that were her defined Roots. These had nothing to do with childhood, birth rights, heritage or ancestry. They were the roots which she claimed for herself ... that which she felt had defined her and which illustrated the beginning of a new life in herself at about the age of 35. This fascinates me - the opportunities for re-birth and starting again. We can all do it, at any stage of our lives. There are fantastic possibilities that exist in being able to drop off the baggage and the pastness of Being.

So now - ABNA is over and "Edward Beaton" up on Amazon. It's a good quiet place to be.

I am thinking though of Roots again. There is a wonderfully powerful poem by Ted Hughes, which I discovered (strangely enough) at one of those milestones in my life when I was trying to define Self and my take on Roots and belonging. Ted Hughes is my favourite poet - such a dark and brooding and  indulgently brilliant poet. It is called "Wodwo", and it is about these figurative Roots. Beautiful writing. It became something of a prayer / chant for me:

Wodwo

What am I? Nosing here, turning leaves over
Following a faint stain on the air to the river's edge
I enter water. Who am I to split
The glassy grain of water looking upward I see the bed
Of the river above me upside down very clear
What am I doing here in mid-air? Why do I find
this frog so interesting as I inspect its most secret
interior and make it my own? Do these weeds
know me and name me to each other have they
seen me before, do I fit in their world? I seem
separate from the ground and not rooted but dropped
out of nothing casually I've no threads
fastening me to anything I can go anywhere
I seem to have been given the freedom
of this place what am I then? And picking
bits of bark off this rotten stump gives me
no pleasure and it's no use so why do I do it
me and doing that have coincided very queerly
But what shall I be called am I the first
have I an owner what shape am I what
shape am I am I huge if I go
to the end on this way past these trees and past these trees
till I get tired that's touching one wall of me
for the moment if I sit still how everything
stops to watch me I suppose I am the exact centre
but there's all this what is it roots
roots roots roots and here's the water
again very queer but I'll go on looking.


Ted Hughes

Thursday 28 April: Lindor chocolate heals many things

The power of chocolate is a wonderful thing! Have not been back to the ABNA site in 48 hours, and have decided that my review was quite good. Will tweek and perhaps approach an agent or two in the next few weeks, but in South Africa we have precious few who will take on Children's Fantasy - already found that out last year. As far as approaching overseas agents and publishers... hmmm not sure that they would welcome a foreign writer and all that the great divide represents for any kind of working relationship. My book is on amazon.com and once I've checked the Proof Review box it will also by up for sale in hard copy.

But have downed many jugs of tea today and had more than a sensible portion of Lindor Lindt chocolate to heal the disappointment of the ABNA cut.

After a day of moving furniture around the house (always one step ahead of the building contractors) and coping with the anxiety of Cupboard Cat who does not handle disruption even on the smallest scale, and a wonderful supper and a glass of good red wine with new friends I am able to start seeing things in perspective again:

In a few days I will have a new roof; the chocolate stash from Easter will be finished; I will be putting my writing skills to good and productive use by immersing myself in the Internal Evaluation Report I have to do for school which is now nearing deadline date AND working on a recipe book for a friend's Kitchen Tea (YAY I love projects).