Last Halloween, we featured a post about a visit to a reportedly haunted athenaeum, frequented by literary greats in its history. This year, we are featuring a work of fantastical short fiction by a new contributor which echoes the sentiment in these famed words from FDR's 1933 inaugural address: "[T]he only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Happy Halloween, everyone!
The Return of the Flutews
by C. B. Heinemann
The first time I saw one of those little creatures up close I nearly jumped out of my own skin. I’d heard about them, and had even seen one here and there from afar, but one evening as I sat hunched over the kitchen table going over my stack of unpaid bills I looked up and there it was, crawling up the wall next to the refrigerator. After jerking out of my chair I took a few deep breaths, removed my glasses, then replaced them over my nose, convinced I was either hallucinating or my home was being invaded by space aliens. "How’d you get into my house?!”
Covered in what looked like blue and green fur, it seemed to be a cross between a large bug and a gecko. The way it moved in slow motion was strange for either an insect or a lizard, but what really got my attention was the sound it made. At first I thought I heard a conversation out in my yard, but realized that the sound came from the thing itself—like a tiny person making talking noises without saying any real words. The tone was distinctly human-like, and I hoped I was merely having a very weird dream.
“Holy crap!” I said, trying to catch my breath. “Where did you come from?”
The thing twisted what I assumed was its head to one side before skittering down behind my stove.
I backed away, knocking over a trash can. “Hey, you can’t go there! I don’t want some weird frigging giant bug-thing living behind my stove. What are you?”
The thing didn’t reappear, and I felt no urge to go after it. I didn’t quite know what to do about it and felt a headache coming on. “I’m not hanging around here. I think I’ll have dinner out tonight.”
Closing the kitchen door behind me, I pulled out my phone to call a friend. My hands were trembling.
“Hey Paul, feel like going out for a bite to eat?”
“Thanks, but I’ve got to work tonight. Plus I just ate.”
I took a breath. “Um, I was wondering...I think I found something in my kitchen...like a big insect only with fur and no wings.”
I heard a chuckle. “Oh yeah, I found one of those on my porch. Cute little thing. Never seen one before.”
“You think it’s cute?”
“Well, yeah. Darned thing almost talks.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t find that cute at all. What is it, exactly?”
“No idea, but I’m not an expert. I’m going to ask Sandy. She’s a vet so maybe she’ll know. Did you catch it?”
“No, but it’s hiding behind my stove.”
“I caught mine and put it in a jar so I could look at it, but it made so much noise and buzzed around so that I let it go. That thing is pretty powerful for a bug or whatever it is.”
“Are you going to the pub later?”
“I’ll be there about nine-thirty. I’ll see if I can get Sandy to come with me.”
I rode my bike into town and stopped at the Lotus Garden Restaurant. Over my plate of shredded pork and Lo Mein, I stared idly at an antique Chinese painting of a man riding a donkey on a mountain path up in the clouds. I nearly flew out of my chair when I noticed a sinister figure on a tree. “Oh my God, it’s one of those...things!”
The couple at the table next to me looked up. “Excuse me,” said the man. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know.” I peered closer. “My God, it looks just like it.”
I paid my bill and biked to the local pub, The Old Draft House, ordered an IPA, and sat trying to think. After a beer and a half I felt better, but when Paul sauntered in with his girlfriend Sandy, I felt stabs of anxiety. I could barely get through the how-are-you bits before I blurted it out. “Anybody know what those weird blue and green bug things are? Sandy, you must know. I just found one in my house, and it’s even weirder than I heard.”
“Calm down, man,” said Paul with a smile. He was a big, gentle guy with graying hair tied back into a ponytail and a pink face free of guile. “That thing has really gotten under your skin, hasn’t it?”
Sandy, an attractive woman with long honey-blond hair and big green eyes, sat next to me and began digging through her purse. “I know what you’re talking about,” she said in her Louisiana accent.
“They’re turning up everywhere, but I’ll be darned if I know what they are.”
“I’ve got one in my kitchen and I’m afraid to go home.”
A young guy sitting on a nearby stool turned to us. “You talking about those salamanders or whatever? Everybody I know has seen them.”
“I’ve seen two of them in my yard,” said another guy. “I don’t know if it’s a bug or a lizard or what.”
“That’s what we were talking about,” said Sandy with laugh. “I’m a veterinarian and even I don’t know.”
The bartender brought our round and chimed in. “I’ve got one living in my basement. I tried to put it in a terrarium, but it went berserk.”
“I did the same thing,” added Paul. “I had to let it go.”
“The craziest thing is, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed the same,” the bartender said looking up and down the bar and leaning closer, “and I’m not sure if it’s my imagination or what, but mine's not only getting bigger, it looks different. It’s down to four legs from six, with little feet.”
“Like a salamander?”
“Yeah, and that’s not all. It started off like a big grasshopper or cicada. Now it’s got a head. And that voice...”
“Yeah!” I cut in. “Like a baby trying to talk.”
Sandy grabbed my arm. “Speak of the devil.”
I followed her gaze to the television above the cash register. News 8 was showing some guy holding something that looked like what I had in my kitchen. “Turn it up, quick! This is it.”
“They’re appearing everywhere,” said the man.“They were thought to be extinct, but as we all are finding out, they’re making a comeback. In case you haven’t yet heard, they’re called flutews, and they originated in China.” The word flutew flashed on the screen.
“Flutews,” I said. “Why do they have to give it such a stupid name? How did he pronounce that again?”
“I didn’t catch it.”
“Flute-ews?”
“From China? How did they end up here? I just was eating in the Lotus Garden, and I swear to God I saw one of those things in an old painting. I nearly tossed my noodles.”
“They’re completely harmless. They don’t bite or sting, but they will try to get into your food, so keep everything in the fridge or in Tupperware.”
“I can’t believe this,” I muttered. “It’s like the Twilight Zone.”
“Hold on, I’m trying to hear this.”
“According to Chinese legend, these flutews started off being considered good luck, but that changed.” The camera pulled up close to the man’s face. “It seems that the flutews were almost completely wiped out centuries ago, killed off by the citizens of the areas they inhabited. Some survived, kept as pets, and were brought over here by immigrants. Remember, these are only legends, and we still know very little about these creatures. We here at News Eight will keep you updated on our new brightly-hued invaders.”
The station switched to news of a fire in an apartment building. “No other information?” I looked around incredulously. “We’ve just got to learn to live with these things crawling around everywhere?”
“I guess you haven’t seen many yet, but now that you’ve got one living with you, you’re sitting up and taking notice,” said Paul. “They’re like little pets. They do have a silly name, though.”
I ordered another beer. “It reminds me of that Star Trek episode about the furry things that multiplied everywhere.”
“Hey, what about the seventeen-year cicadas? Every seventeen years they pop out of the ground, zillions of them over the trees, the bushes, the streets, the gutters...”
“In your hair, clinging to your clothes,” Sandy added.
“Buzzing all day and all night long. Yeah, maybe it’s like that. Maybe they’ve been dormant for decades. Or centuries.”
“Lucky us they decided to wake up now.”
“I wonder if you can eat them?” The bartender grinned. “I don’t think I could do it myself. I’ll talk to the chef. Might be the next big thing.”
I shook my head. “Maybe it’s just psychological, but their size and that talking sound has me worried. If they were, like, half their size, they would be more interesting and less creepy.”
“I know what you mean,” said Sandy. “They’re a little intimidating. It’s hard to pin them down. I wouldn’t mind doing some research on these things. Think of it—it’s essentially a new species! It’s totally unheard of, except in Chinese legends.”
The headache returned. “I wish I could share your enthusiasm, Sandy, but this gives me a bad feeling.”
During the next few days I noticed more of them—on a tree, one crawling on top of a car. I even spotted one dangling from a woman’s purse as she walked down the street, oblivious to her hitchhiker. Occasionally I caught a glimpse of the flutew in my kitchen, and I could have sworn it was getting larger. Like the bartender said, it developed four legs with tiny feet and a distinct head. I wanted to get a better look, but I couldn’t bring myself to get close to it. I didn’t care what the so-called expert on the news said—I didn’t trust it.
People at work talked about their encounters with the flutews and everyone had a story. One woman’s dog chased an extraordinarily fast one through the neighborhood. I overheard a man telling someone on the phone that his four-year-old son caught one and tied a tiny toy harness on it, but it managed to escape. One of my buddies stopped at my desk. “I hear you have one living in your kitchen.”
“Yeah. Now I keep the kitchen door closed.”
“So you’re already giving up your place to him?” He laughed. “He’s probably eating cockroaches. I read somewhere on the Internet they do that. Slugs, cockroaches, things like that. Just be careful and don’t let him see you too much.”
“Why not?”
“Some scientist was on last night talking about how they’ve got some kind of survival thing where they try to look like whatever other animal is living nearby.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a camouflage thing, you know, like some fish do. They try to look like whatever they’re living near.”
The headache returned. “So you’re saying that if it lives with me long enough, it’ll look like me?”
“If your flutew starts losing his hair, I’d say he’s halfway there.” He laughed again. “And keep him away from the beer.”
“Very funny.”
I decided that it was time to catch the thing and release it somewhere because I didn’t like mysterious creatures lurking around trying to impersonate me. “Enough of this,” I muttered on my way home. “This is getting out of hand. I don’t want to have anything to do with these stupid flutews.”
Spikes of alarm jabbed my nervous system. As I drove, my eyes were on the verges and woods. After a moment of adjustment I realized that there were dozens of flutews clinging to the brush, and even on some of the other cars. “Harmless? Are they sure about that?”
My jittering fingers reached for the radio and I tuned it to another news station. "It seems the flutews are everywhere, and are getting larger and altering their appearance." Another voice came on. “In a riding stable near Potomac, several flutews were found with horse-like heads.” The first guy returned. “Researchers are calling this the most puzzling phenomenon they’ve ever seen.”
Yet another voice came on. “The flutew is neither insect, lizard, nor mammal, but a kind of blend of the three. It has an incredible ability to take on the characteristics of whatever dominant animal lives nearby in an attempt to protect itself. And one of the strangest aspects is its ability to mimic the voices of other animals, including humans. In fact, reports are trickling in that some may have learned actual words, in the same way parrots and some other birds do.”
I turned off the radio and glanced at a cluster of trees. Three flutews, green and blue, dangled from a branch. I felt afraid, though I wasn’t sure exactly what I was afraid of. After all, the things were harmless. But that fear ran to the core of my being. It was a feeling unlike anything I’d ever known, and I had to fight against it. “Come on, man,” I told myself. “Don’t let this get to you. Think of it as...interesting.” The fear didn’t budge. “They’re not hurting anyone. This is just silly, irrational fear—fear of the unknown.”
When I got home my heart was pounding and I panted for breath. Without planning or thinking, I rushed into the house, pulled back the stove, and there it was, clinging to the wall next to the gas line. I didn’t want to look at it, but I could see that it was the size of a Barbie doll and had developed a large, round head. While horror tore through my system, I reached for the dustpan and a newspaper, scooped the thing into the dustpan, and covered it with newspaper. I could hear it chattering and felt the vibration of its body. I could have sworn I heard a little human voice saying, “Wha er ou, wha er ou.”
“Oh my God.” Praying I wouldn’t pass out, I staggered on legs of rubber to the front door, ripped it open, ran across the street and into a small park, where I tossed the dustpan, paper, and flutew into the bushes before turning and racing back to my house.
After slamming the door shut, I stood for a moment. My vision flickered and I felt lightheaded. Sweat gushed down my face and onto my shirt. “This thing is messing with my head. This is crazy—it’s harmless.”
I searched through the house, from the basement to the attic, to see if I could find any more flutews. I even listened for that baby-voice, but it seemed that flutew had been my only roommate. Collapsing onto the sofa, I turned on the television. “Maybe I should have named it,” I said, trying to make myself laugh. “At least now I’m finally flutew-free. I never want to see or hear any of those things again. I’m not going to look for them or even talk about them. They’re out of my life forever, I hope. Poor little bastard. He can’t help it, but...I just don’t like them.”
On Friday evening I decided that I had to watch a special report that had been advertised. Not thinking about something can be far more difficult than thinking about it, and I began to feel that I couldn’t live my life until the flutews either disappeared or I learned to accept them.
When I turned on the television, however, what I saw was so horrible that I wished I hadn’t. Heaps of dead, mangled, flutews lay by the side of the road—like strange toys, beaten to death and tossed into piles.
“Unfortunately, this has become part two of the flutew invasion. Although they are harmless and even friendly to humans, people who are disturbed by the flutews are going out and killing them in great numbers. There even seems to be an organization coordinating this on the Internet. Disturbed people have been going out and killing as many of the flutews as they can—in the woods and fields, going into yards, everywhere they can find them, and usually at night.”
“That’s right,” said a woman as the camera showed more crushed flutew bodies. “In fact, police in some areas describe it as a ‘killing mania.’ Some lawmakers are rushing to pass bills protecting the flutews before they’re wiped out.”
I thought of my flutew and realized he might end up beaten to death if he wasn’t dead already. As uneasy as I felt about them, I wished them no harm, and the violent reaction others had to them revolted me. That poor flutew never did anything but purr at me and eat the bugs behind my refrigerator.
Before realizing I had already taken action I was out the door and halfway across the street with a flashlight and dustpan. Carefully, I stepped into the park and called out the only thing I could think of—“Wha er ou! Wha er ou!”
The sun had just eased below the horizon, so the light was dim. A bunch of guys in hoodies tramped up the street in my direction, and I saw bats and sticks in their hands. “Come on—here, flutew!” I urged. “Come on! Wha er ou! Wha er ou!”
A chirp erupted from the tree beside me, and I turned and saw my flutew. He had a round head and plump belly—I knew damned well he was trying to look like me. It wasn’t flattering, but for the very first time I felt a wave of empathy for him. I poked the dustpan under him. “Come on, flutew. I’m sorry I kicked you out. I had no idea. I still don’t, but come on anyway. I’m not letting anybody hurt you. You’re my flutew, after all, so come on!”
To my amazement, he hopped into the dustpan. I covered him with the newspaper in my other hand and made my way back to my house, trying to walk casually to avoid suspicion. The guys in hoodies laughed and hooted, thrashing their sticks through the bushes. My heart started slamming again, but they didn’t challenge me. When I reached my front gate, I turned to them. “What are you doing, anyway?”
“Looking for flutews,” one said with a hesitant laugh. “What’s it to you?”
“What did they ever do to you?”
The guy turned away, ignoring my question.
Once inside, I ran down into the basement with the flutew and crouched beside my storage refrigerator. “Okay, flutew, you can live down here. I know you like fridges, and there are plenty of cave crickets and stuff you can eat. I guess I’m going to have to get used to you.” I watched him crawl on four legs to the back of the refrigerator. He turned and blinked at me.
“I guess you’re not so scary after all,” I said. “I just didn’t know what you were and it freaked me out. But you’re okay. You can live here and I’ll take care of you.” I looked at him for a moment. “I’d better give you a name. Maybe you’re a girl flutew—how can I tell? Judging from your appearance, I ought to call you Frank. Strange as it is to both of us, though I thought I needed protection from you, it’s now my job to protect you. Hell, for all I know, you guys could be the best friends we humans ever had.” A strange, deep sorrow flooded my heart. “We were just too frightened and ignorant to give you a chance.”
Bio: C. B. Heinemann has been performing, recording and touring with rock and Irish music groups for more than 30 years. The Washington Post said his songs are “. . . among the best coming from either side of the Atlantic,” and Dirty Linen called him a “virtuoso.” His short stories have appeared in Florida English, Berkeley Fiction Review, Cigale, Rathalla Review, Howl, Ascent, Lowestoft Chronicles, Outside In Literary Journal, Storyteller, One Million Stories, Whistling Fire, Danse Macabre, Battered Suitcase, Fate, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Cool Traveler, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Car & Travel. His stories have been featured in anthologies published by Florida English, One Million Stories, and Whereabouts.
Saturday, October 28, 2017
Thursday, August 3, 2017
Falling Awake: Interview with Claire M. Perkins
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| Illustration from Chapter 4 of Fallen, "Catch a Fallen Dream" by Claire M. Perkins |
As the author writes in the
Acknowledgments "for those who dreamed the first dream and we who dream it
forward," it is intended as a story for the dream-makers and
dream-realizers.
Take the plunge with us as
we explore the beauty of falling awake and rising to our dreams. (*Note that due to challenges with blogger.com, the spacing is not uniform. This does not, however, take from the wealth of content generated by our wonderful interview subject. For more info on the author and links, check below the interview.)
Interview with Claire M. Perkins by Nicole M. Bouchard
1) The genesis of Fallen consisted of words in a dream. The concept of "a deep
water leaf" was further nurtured by interpretations of your personal
experience with grief over the loss of a child chronicled in your non-fiction
title, The Deep Water Leaf Society:
Harnessing the Transformative Power of Grief. Fallen's next stage of gestation stemmed from a workshop with
Robert Moss—Writing as a State of Active Dreaming—where your protagonist, began
to communicate with you and a brief, lively three act performance brought to
life your initial chapters. One of Fallen's
final stages, was a weekend Tom Bird Method retreat where the focus would seem
to be part connecting with the “Divine Author” and part healing the writer as
an individual.
Talk
to us about the importance of consulting our dreams for inspiration,
integrating the emotional truths of our experiences, acting out our work to see
it come to life in another medium, and going within to heal our outer lives so
we can clear our creative channels.
CP: Inspiration. The word has roots related to
both the breath and spirit. To be inspired is to be animated by divine spirit,
to breathe spirit in and through oneself. The Middle English meaning of the
word inspiration was "divine guidance." I love thinking of the word
in that way, that inspired writing is a channeling of spirit or divine guidance
as much as it is one's own creativity. It is a divine partnership, a
co-creative activity.
I have always felt that dreams are portals to the higher
dimensions in which we exist, beyond the three dimensional world of our conscious,
waking lives. Dreams connect us to our own higher selves. They create an
opening through which inspiration, or divine guidance, may flow.
From Albert Einstein to Paul McCartney, I could cite
endless stories of scientists, inventors, artists and other world-changers
whose works were significantly influenced by dreams.
It is no surprise that dreams have been an integral part
of my own writing process, because they have been a rich and integral part of
my life experience. For me, dreams have always been a powerful source of
healing, guidance and inspiration. I believe this can be true for everyone, yet
it seems to be almost a lost art to engage with dreams and dreaming as a
relevant and powerfully life-shaping resource.
Robert Moss, one of my most influential dream mentors,
teaches that the re-creation of a dreaming culture, the sharing of dreams on a
regular basis, the re-integration of dreaming into the fabric of everyday life
in a reverent and honoring way, may hold the key to healing what ails human
culture.
Dreaming, in a paradoxical way, may be the key to
awakening.
This is one of the major themes within the story of Fallen. The characters are living within
a dream and yet they are also the dreamers of the dream. When we understand and
own our power to shape the collective dream in which we are living, we can
quite literally change the world.
While writing is partly divine inspiration, it cannot
help but be influenced by our own human experience and our meaning-making
around what we experience. We write what we know, even if we don't set out to
do so. And, sometimes, it is only as we write that we discover what we know.
Our plots and characters reflect back to us, as much as to our readers, the
stories of our own lives.
The phrase "deep water leaf" was given to me in
a dream that would prove crucial to my healing journey after the death of my
son, even though the dream came to me many years prior to his passing. I
rediscovered the dream as I read through years of old journals in an attempt to
make sense of his life and his death and the challenging relationship we'd had.
The dream offered the phrase "deep water leaf" as the key to healing
grief.
As I wrote my first book, The Deep Water Leaf Society, which chronicles the two years
following my son's death, I felt the phrase "deep water leaf"
represented the deep dive into an ocean of heartrending emotions. The miracle of
becoming a deep water leaf was that, rather than being drowned in those
emotions, [see also question 5] I found myself emerging into an altered state of
being that I may not have reached in any other way.
Just as dreams can be a portal to spiritual connection,
so can the most difficult and challenging of our life experiences. These
experiences literally alter our reality. They cause us to ask the deep questions,
to re-evaluate what's important and what we hold dear, to question and create
meaning, and to anchor ourselves within new truths.
The new truths that emerge from our experiences inform
our writing and other creative endeavors, imbuing them with our own unique
perspectives and authentic voice.
Writing The Deep
Water Leaf Society helped me to shed the last of my grief and to
externalize the details of my experience, holding them at arm's length and
seeing them from the witness perspective. Paradoxically, this helped me to
better internalize and integrate my experience. Although the writing was
cathartic, I was still left wondering just exactly what a "deep water
leaf" really is. That question stayed with me for a number of years, and
became the muse for Fallen.
At Robert Moss's Writing as a State of Active Dreaming
retreat, we were encouraged to write daily, to incubate dreams to support our
writing, and to invite our characters to speak to us. At the end of the retreat
week, each of us was expected to present a final project, sharing either some
portion of what we had written or some aspect of our experience during the
workshop. We could do this through any medium we liked.
I elected to use Dream Theater for my final project, a
method Robert often uses in his dreaming workshops, in which the dreamer
chooses other workshop participants to act out various roles and scenes from
their dream.
During the course of the week, I had compiled an ongoing
dialogue with a leaf that falls from a tree onto the surface of a lake. She
spoke to me from her place of origin, in the tree. She spoke to me as the
falling leaf, and she spoke to me after her landing. The dialogues were quite
dramatic, ethereal, and poetic. My little deep water leaf had quite a personality
and I think she found me to be rather dull or dim-witted.
I chose a narrator to read the dialogues and others to
play the roles of tree, leaves, wind, water, birds, and trampling moose. As the
narrator read, I directed the three acts of the play, giving general cues while
allowing the actors to put their own spin on things. At the end of the play, I
interviewed the actors about their own feelings and responses to the roles they
had played.
Just as writing my first book put me into witness state
for my grief, watching the tale of my deep water leaf play out on the stage of
Dream Theater brought the story to life for me. Suddenly I could see it and feel it in a way that had been escaping me. Instead of struggling
to create it, I could see that it had a life of its own and a story it wanted
to tell me. That shifted my approach to writing Fallen from struggling to answer a question (What is a deep water leaf?), to allowing the story and its
characters to show me the answer.
Over time, through dreams and journaling and random
thinking, the general outline of the story arc took shape in my mind. Still, I
struggled with writer's block and made many abortive attempts at getting the
story down on paper. Until I found Tom Bird.
Tom Bird's writing method emphasizes super fast,
full-steam-ahead writing without thinking. Encouraging a writing speed of
around 2000 words per hour, this writing method bypasses both the inner
perfectionist and the inner critic and opens a channel for the “Divine Author Within”
and the book itself to pour through. It helped me to get out of my “own way”
and let the story tell itself.
An unbreakable rule in Tom's method is not to reread or
edit anything until the entire book feels finished. Not polished, but finished.
The result is a complete, if bare bones, story that can then be edited by
rearranging the flow, filling in missing gaps, adding supportive research,
fleshing out characters and polishing language.
Because this editing process opens the door back up to
the perfectionist and critic that live inside, the second phase of Tom's
process involves exercises geared toward self-healing, self-acceptance and
visualizing success as an author.
It's one thing to get the words down on paper and quite
another to launch them out into the world. I think we all have inner stories
that block our creative channels and make us feel we have nothing to say that
anyone would want to read. Doing the deep dive inner work is required not only
to clear our creative channels but to empower us to share what emerges with the
world.
2) Another interesting phase that led to
the birth of the book entailed the evolution of your artistic abilities. This
was another journey in and of itself which you shared on social media. Learning
various techniques, you were able to communicate your vision through images as
well as words, expressing different aspects of story, soul, and self.
Share
what it was like on a personal level to begin to align your imaginings with
your actual renderings, and how you discovered what style, method, tools, etc.
worked/felt best to you as an artist in general and as guardian of what this
story in particular would portray.
CP: Oh my goodness! I had no idea what I was
committing to when I decided to illustrate this story myself. I am so glad that
I did, but had I known at the outset how much time it would take to complete
the illustration project, I would probably never have begun.
Thankfully, I was already taking classes
with an amazing teacher at the Mesa Arts Center, Helen Rowles. I had grown
particularly fond of colored pencil drawings. Prior to Helen's classes, I had
dabbled in acrylic painting, mixed media, collage and digital compositing. I
felt more comfortable with collage and compositing because I could rely on
existing images to create art, which was much less intimidating that creating
something from scratch. When I painted, the painting always fell short of the
vision in my mind. It was frustrating.
Under Helen's guidance, I learned the
skills of drawing well enough to capture my inner visions. The downside is that
drawing and blending the many layers of colored pencil in a piece of any size
can take a very long time to complete. Some of the 11"x14" and
16"x20" pieces I'd done in class had taken up to 35 hours each.
When I first envisioned the illustrations
for the book, I thought there would be a scattering of them throughout—perhaps
as many as three per chapter. There was no way I could spend that much time on
them. It felt overwhelming.
Ultimately, I decided to use one illustration
per chapter to highlight the primary action or feeling of that chapter. Even
so, working in an 11"x14" format, full-blown colored pencil drawings
would have been out of the question. I compromised by creating watercolor
pencil backgrounds and using colored pencil only for the primary figures in
each drawing.
It still took me a full year to complete
the illustrations. Each of the drawings took about 10 hours to complete, and I
really only worked on them during class, where I could count on Helen's guidance.
The writing and editing were completed long before the drawings were!
I struggled with trying to decide how to
illustrate some of the chapters. The ones that were the most fun were the
chapters with the animal guides in them. My method was to find images online of
the animals and settings I wanted to portray and to use those as general
inspiration for drawing.
Because the theme of love runs strongly
through the story, I incorporated heart shapes into each of the animals. And,
of course, Alora herself and the other fallen leaves are all heart-shaped as
well.
The most challenging aspects were trying to keep Alora's facial features consistent from drawing to drawing, and capturing her emotions. Skill-wise, a professional illustrator may have been able to do a better job in a much shorter time, but the illustrating experience deepened my connection to the story and its characters. I didn't really want to trust the handling of them to someone else. They felt too much like family to me. Drawing also provided a much needed respite from the work of editing and revision. I hope the reader will find that the drawings add character and charm to the story.
3) Using the elements, Fallen conveys what it can feel like to be at the "mercy of
life's circumstances." In an interview last year, we discussed how in
nature, seemingly destructive or chaotic forces like lightning, fire, and lava
can be catalysts for growth and vital change, just as certain kinds of adversity
can trigger similar results for people. There is a chapter of the book, Chapter
6, where the central characters learn to "harness the power of the
wind," as a means of escape and survival, where once the wind had been a
natural adversary or threat. In Chapter 9, Alora, the fallen deep water leaf,
reflects on how the "wind itself hadn’t changed. But now she could steer
by it."
A
sub-theme of the WPWT empowerment
issue revolves around how we begin to change our experience of the external by
changing internally. On the Home page of the magazine, we feature a quote by
George Bernard Shaw that reads: "Those who cannot change their minds
cannot change anything." The page from the editorial staff states that in
"a time when many around the world, coming from different viewpoints, feel
little is in their control, it is an opportune season to look within at what we
can control." Toward the top, we say how this issue of WPWT "is an
issue that aspires to conscript change as an amiable accomplice in life's adventure."
That is what Alora and her companion, Blaze, do when they learn to employ the
strength of the wind to deliver them from harm and further their travels.
Just
as it took great practice and effort for Alora and Blaze to be able to channel
the dynamic power of the wind, how would you personally say one can start
viewing outer chaotic forces as vital inner change catalysts, and go about
practicing ways of steering/controlling/channeling the extent of their impact?
CP: Ah, chaos. The cyclone that is the precursor
to change, to creation, to evolution. It is the breakdown of the old that must
take place before the breakthrough of the new. It is a beautiful thing, and it
totally sucks when you're in the midst of it.
According to Barbara Marx Hubbard, futurist and conscious evolution advocate, if we study the 13.7 billion year history of the Universe, we will see that major crises preceded every quantum leap in the evolution of life. Crises stimulate innovation and transformation. They “are evolutionary drivers.”
It's true on the collective level and for each of us as individuals. But just like the deteriorating caterpillar, when we are in the midst of the chaos that precedes transformation, it's pretty difficult to imagine the wings we are about to grow.
How can we become more resilient in the
face of chaos? Like a tree in a strong wind, we can learn to dance with it.
One powerful aspect of my training in expressive arts was learning to dance with Gabrielle Roth's 5Rhythms®. Roth’s
rhythms, which mirror the rhythms of life itself, are “Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness.”
One begins the ecstatic dance in graceful flowing movement, moves into the choppier energizing beat of staccato, and from there tumbles into the auditory and physical cacophony of full-blown chaos. In the rhythm of chaos, the body lets go of controlled, orchestrated motion. Feet stomp, limbs flail, hair flies as heads swing. Beauty and order begin to re-emerge as the dancer slows into the joyful lilt of lyrical and then, finally, rests in stillness, filled with the energy of all the rhythms that came before.
What I discovered in my explorations of dancing the 5Rhythms is that once you have rested in stillness, you can carry some of it with you through the next cycle of chaos.
The dance has something to teach us about how we can face unexpected challenges, tragedies and external chaos.
First, when we are in the thick of it, we must surrender to it. When I lost my son, I had to enter into the chaos of all the feelings that loss awakened in me. I had to allow myself to grieve. I had to live in the uncertainty, not knowing if I would ever feel whole again. I didn't have to let go of control—it had been stripped from me. I could only surrender.
We must feel what we're feeling and not stuff it down. No stiff upper lip. If a tree remains stiff in the onslaught of wind, it will snap. Expressive arts and journaling provide safe space to explore, express and eventually release emotions. There is no way past but through.
Second, if we take time to create a place of stillness within us prior to the inevitable arrival of chaos in our lives, we can tap into that stillness even in the midst of chaos. We can develop stillness through meditation, prayer, spiritual practice, yoga, dance, deep breathing, energy clearing and centering practices.
Developing a daily practice that includes stillness is essential. Find what works for you and make it a priority. Once a practice has been established, it can provide respite during times of chaos and challenge.
Third, engage proactively in whatever the chaos is. When I lost my son, I was six months into a year-long training in expressive arts. It was a godsend. I used those tools to harness the transformative power of my grief. I knew my experience was going to change me. I could either be steamrolled by grief and left broken by it, or I could use its energy to steer the course of my transformation.
Now, I'm not going to lie. It wasn't easy. And there were days—many of them—when I was steamrolled by the loss. I did a lot of numbing with alcohol and mindless TV watching. But I kept coming back to the tools of expressive arts in order to actively engage with what I was feeling, to explore not only the wounds of this loss, but the wounds of my own childhood and the wounds of the world. I explored the deep questions about life and death, about meaning, about why we are here on this planet at all.
So, look at what your current chaos is trying to tell you. Search for the questions it wants you to explore. Engage with it on your own terms. Don't let it steamroll you, harness it.
Like the characters in Fallen, you'll have to experiment to find the best way to position yourself in relation to the wind of chaos. Blaze got knocked into the mud a few times before he figured it out, but he didn't give up. It takes practice to build enough strength and balance to remain upright and steer your own course. So, keep trying and don't give up.
4) Also in Chapter 9, Alora meets Lizard
who explains to her how he shed his tail when it no longer served him, and grew
a new one. This is easily parlayed into the deeper wisdom of shedding one's
"tale" when it no longer serves them, and reframing self-story to
gain insight, confidence, or empowerment. After listening to what Alora tells
him, Lizard recounts her story from a different perspective, finishing by
saying, "That’s a sight more pleasant and powerful story than what you
started out with, wouldn’t you say?”
After
grasping the necessity for her new tale, she then asks what the following step
is. Lizard responds with advice involving a mix of taking stock of what works
and envisioning what is desired: "Why, write your next chapter, that’s
what! Dream your way forward. Change your focus from what isn’t working to what
is. Fix one eye on everythin’ good and let the other scout ahead into the
possibilities of what could be."
The
same way that one event can be witnessed by five people and there can be five
different versions of what happened, we have the capability to hold within us
multiple versions of our life events, personal qualities, actions, and traits.
We're often better, kinder reframers for others than we are for ourselves. What
do you feel are some of the most effective ways of awakening to our more
empowering truths and shedding the outmoded, restrictive tales we've either
grown or been given?
CP: Synchronistically, I am currently writing a
blog series called "Twenty Ways to Change Your Story." As for most
things, it begins with awareness. What stories are we holding about ourselves, our lives, and the world?
The way you answer these questions becomes your story.
We grow deaf to our own stories. They go
underground, into the subconscious, where they quietly but powerfully go about
the work of proving themselves to be true. Our stories shape us. Yet we have
the power to reshape our stories to better serve us and those around us.
We can start by tuning into and really
hearing what we say and think. We can catch ourselves in the act of self-sabotage.
At a linguistic level, we can eliminate words like "but" and
"should" in favor of words like "and" and "choose."
We can replace "I can't" with "Anything is possible, so how can
I?" We can become more selective and deliberate with the words we put after
"I am." We can sleuth our way into discovering the limiting stories
we've been fed by our parents, teachers, and culture at large, and begin to
question them. We can ask, Is this true?
Who says so? What would it be like if it wasn't true?
Ultimately, it is not as important whether a story is true as it is how that story serves us. Bill Harris, founder of Centerpointe Research Institute and inventor of Holosync technology, teaches that we can choose our beliefs. He says, “Evaluating beliefs based on whether they’re ‘true’ or ‘false’ isn’t helpful . . . conscious, happy people evaluate beliefs based on whether or not they’re resourceful.”
The first thing to grasp about this is that we can choose what to believe. And the second is, that we can choose the beliefs that work for us, regardless of whether they are "true." Because, once we have chosen new stories and begun to act on them, our minds (and the Universe, if you choose to believe in the Law of Attraction) will work to make them true.
A major theme in Fallen is the idea that we are more than earthly beings—that we remain connected to the spiritual source that dreamed us into being. We are one with that source and empowered by it to move the dream forward as we choose. Adopting this belief, whether it is "true" or not, can be empowering in at least a couple of ways.
One, it would mean that anything that happens here is simply experience, as opposed to being good or bad. Even death is not the end, because in death we return to that higher state of being. This belief can make us brave in the face of frightening experiences.
Two, it would mean that we have a higher power to call upon in times of trouble. We don't have to feel alone or helpless. We have a powerful ally in our court at all times. We have never truly been separated from this aspect of ourselves. It has imbued itself so completely into our life, our dream, that we can find it wherever we look, as Alora does when she finds her wise animal guides.
This belief can override any of the other stories we've been telling ourselves. It awakens us to our larger selves. We can awaken within the dream and reclaim our power to shape it. Nothing is impossible. We can become "lucid dreamers" in the dream of life, shapeshifters and world-changers.
One basic choice we can make is whether to believe we are victims, at the mercy of the elements, or the heroes of our own story, empowered to choose how we will respond to the elements and interact with them. Even when we feel as though the wind has taken us off course, we may find it has actually taken us to where we most need to be. Alora discovers this when she drifts off course and encounters Lizard, the first of her wise guides, in Chapter 9.
The very elements that have been tossing us about may well be leading us home. Yes, we can learn to harness them. Yes, we can choose our course. And, we can learn to see how the elements may have been serving us all along, even when we were feeling tossed and tumbled by them [as explored in the previous question]. What if everything in our life experience was here to serve us? To help us grow? To help us awaken and remember?
Albert Einstein said, “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.” How we answer that question is the biggest story, the most important tale, we'll ever choose.
Will we approach life from a place of fear or embrace it as an adventure? For me, the hero's journey begins by choosing to see the world, with all of its drama, uncertainties, and challenges, as friend rather than foe.
5) In Chapters 12 and 13, Alora undergoes
some of her most transformative growth as she encounters Turtle and Dragonfly,
and enters the Deep—needing to find a way to adapt and shift to survive the watery
depths. In different ways, each of her guides has need for the surface and the
Deep. Turtle navigates both. Dragonfly explains how dragonflies spend more than
half their lives growing beneath the water before developing wings that allow
them to soar. To me, the deep has always represented emotional depths, the subconscious,
dreams, the mysterious and pregnant potential of the unknown. The story
emphasizes the need to navigate both the Deep and the surface.
The
question is this: how do we swim gracefully in the "Deep" without
getting drowned solely in the dreaming stage (vs. surfacing to action), without
getting weighed down by the heavier, deepest emotions (subjective vs.
objective), or without forgetting to breathe and flailing in the face of the unknown?
CP: I love your perception and description of the Deep. It is all that you describe and more that I cannot completely put into words. The Deep is where we connect to the truth of our being, to our larger selves, to our source, to our oneness with all that is. It is the portal to our awakening.
From the surface, the Deep appears
frightening. It is often our losses, our struggles, our fears that draw us down
into the Deep where grace can then transform us. The key to swimming gracefully
is to let go of the fear of drowning and allow grace to move us.
We have to brave up in order to claim our own light, our own power. We have to risk the drowning and trust in the unfolding of that "mysterious and pregnant potential of the unknown."
The paradox is that once we dive into the Deep, rather than becoming stuck there and drowning, our own light will naturally draw us back up to the surface to breathe, to take action, to shine. Where once we merely skimmed the surface, drifting along untethered and at the mercy of the elements, we return to the surface transformed by our journey through the Deep.
We bring our rediscovered light and power with us, which completely changes our perception of and interaction with the surface world. We deepen our surface experience. We see through the dark places into the light we now know shines, not only beyond them, but within them.
6) There is a point when Alora returns to
the rest of the fallen. Able to shapeshift, she knows she must come in their
form, her original form, for them to relate to her, despite the fact that she
carries other facets within. I believe this symbolizes shared humanity and the
passage conveys the universal fears and love we all feel. Having learned about
fear and love chapters earlier from Deer, Alora sees the principles in action
as a number of the fallen overcome personal fear to lovingly help one another
under her guidance.
In
the current WPWT empowerment issue
interview, Zen teacher, author, and professional consultant, Marc Lesser,
discusses how "there is really only one career—it is the work of seeing
more clearly and helping others." He goes on to say that "[h]elping
others means being in 'relationship' in a way that helps others live with more
safety, more ease, and more meaning." He also advocates the aspiration
"to live a life of consciousness and love, instead of a life of habit and
protection." The leaves in Fallen,
have limited their lives out of fear, sticking to habit, and stay on the
defensive for protection, yet as Deer points out earlier, they are
inadvertently helping to bring their fears to pass by doing such. It is love
and conscious awareness that liberates those who would be liberated.
Of
the many "Aha!" moments in Fallen,
I found this one where Alora fully realizes her purpose, to be the most
rewarding. It was her intention to help others from the beginning, but her
journey of self-discovery makes it truly possible. When writing this empowering
segment, how did you feel about the character who first spoke to you at Writing
as a State of Active Dreaming? What had she taught you about life, about
yourself by that point, and do you feel that there might be more to tell of her
story in the future?
CP: It may be interesting to point out that in
my first pass at this portion of the story I had Alora return to the fallen in
her shapeshifted form. It was my editor who gently suggested that this didn't
work. I resisted changing it at first. I couldn't see how Alora could help the
fallen otherwise. I couldn't see what the point of her transformation in the
Deep might be if she didn't use her shapeshifting powers to rescue the fallen.
Perhaps this is why the character who spoke
to me at that long ago writing workshop found me so dull and dim-witted! I am
grateful that she didn't give up on me, though.
For of course, this was my own weakness and
fear showing up in the writing, not Alora's. We can only help others by being
fully who we are. Shapeshifting is an inside job, not the donning of a superhero
costume or a facade of borrowed strength and presence. I think we often feel
like we aren't enough, that we're too small, that we don't have what it takes
to make a difference. Why would anyone listen to little ol’ me?
We are afraid of our own light.
Alora, too, feels this before recognizing
that she must go to the fallen as one
of them. She must meet them as herself, carrying all of her history,
discoveries and transformation inside of her and trusting that it will shine
through.
The fallen don't need to be rescued. They
don't need a savior. They simply need to be shown that new possibilities await
them. They need to be shown the power they already have inside of them—the
power of love for each other and the power to choose their own paths. Alora
could only show them these things as one who had experienced them herself and
as one in whom they could see themselves.
Like Alora, I have experienced fear and
grief, the dive into the Deep, and the transformation that comes with that
journey. By writing Alora's story, I better understand my own. And perhaps by
sharing my story, in The Deep Water Leaf
Society, and Alora's story, in Fallen,
I am stepping up, as she did, to help others find their own way.
Writing Fallen
has helped to answer the question I began with: What exactly is a deep water leaf? She is one who has braved the
Deep. She is one who has awakened within this dream we call life. She is one
who has become fully aware of who she really is. She is one who returns from
the Deep to spark the awakening of those still asleep on the surface.
Until the whole world awakens, there will
always be more to this story.
Further Links:
Special offer from the author: "For a short time only, you can purchase the Kindle version of Fallen at the special price of just 99 cents! Offer expires 8/9 at midnight PDT."
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