"Little Red Cap" by Carol Anne Duffy

This is a good poem. Just to take away the pleasure of finding that out on your own. 

It is good in a literary sense, in that uses the language in a self-referring and somewhat hypnotic, rhythmic, rhymeful way. It also uses a well-known fairytale to tell an allegoric and archetypical story of the young naive girl meeting the "world" ("what little girl doesn't dearly love a wolfe") through one of its more rugged representatives. In this case a wolf, disguised as a man. Or the other way around. Thus you could also call it a deeply human poem.

One of the sentences that stands out for me in this poem: "You might ask why. Here's why. Poetry."

Why enter the unknown, that which seems dark and wild, when not knowing where it will lead you? The reason be -- poetry. Because we are here to learn, and thus, put ourselves out for risk.

What I would most like to say is: read this poem!

Little Red Cap

At childhood’s end, the houses petered out
into playing fields, the factory, allotments
kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men,
the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan,
till you came at last to the edge of the woods.
It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf. 

He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud
in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw,
red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears
he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth!
In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me,
sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink, 

my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry.
The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods,
away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place
lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake,
my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer
snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes

but got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night,
breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem.
I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for
what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf?
Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws
and went in search of a living bird – white dove –

which flew, straight, from my hands to his hope mouth.
One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said,
licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back
of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books.
Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head,
warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.

But then I was young – and it took ten years
in the woods to tell that a mushroom
stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds
are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf
howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out,
season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe

to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon
to see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf
as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw
the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones.
I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up.
Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone. 

~ Carol Ann Duffy, 1999, from The World's Wife

Wallace Stevens: Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

Is this a complicated poem? I'm not sure. The words in themselves can seem complicated; at least when English is not your first language.

Is this a good poem? Yes. It keeps deepening to me, and I suspect it will for a while.

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

Wallace Stevens

***

In this poem the form strikes me more than in most poems. Triplets, two times three. In a poem with a content which could be described by the word 'holy' this does not seem like a coincidence; the power/magic of three being a recurrent theme of many religions and mystic traditions.

However, this is more about the meaning of the words written than the mere set-up. Although, as we know, those things are connected — especially in poetry.

I love the title. So .... unpoetic. It's a mouthful. And yet it is inviting, in a mind-tickling way.

Some images highlight what seems to be an underlying theme: "Out of this same light, out of the central mind" (from closing triplet); We say God and the imagination are one... / How high that highest candle lights the dark". Not to mention the opening line, so inviting and soothing: "Light the first light of evening". Light, from the central mind, a central place that shines forth. This awakens warmness and softheartedness in me; as well as a clearheadedness. This clear head seems to have light as its origin. Heart and head springing from the common ground of light -- ah, the lightness it brings!

In the same vein, this poem brings a translucence to me, the reader. The sentences and words seem to light up from within, or from an underlying source — like LED wired up deep down underneath the letters on the screen, on the paper or in your mind.

Also the mention of "the ultimate good" has a light and warm feeling to it. As well as clear, sharp and airy; domains often connected to the mind. There is an intellectual vein running through the whole of this poem, like so much of Wallace Stevens's poetry.

And underlying all of this again is the nonduality of light—dark, inside—outside and indeed every other string of words and concepts struck by Stevens' words in this moment of space. How do you  mention one without sounding the strings of the other concept, the counterconcept, so to speak?

Stepping forward is also the twosome "It is in that thought that we collect ourselves, / Out of all the indifferences, into one thing". See, there's like an underlying (again) source for everything that he is tapping these words from. This poem in many ways seems like an emanation of a certain point of light that he seems to have been in contact with.

Again with the wholeness, oneness:

We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

This is so heart-, mind- and being-tickling! I love those words and the place they come from. "An order, a whole, a knowledge". Oneness, in a few of its facets.

So to repeat the opening question: Is this a complicated poem? No. See through to the point it springs from, and complicated isn't a word that arises with this poem. Translucent, maybe. Or light. Or even simple.

Or what do you think?

Fluttering thoughts

A short installation here as I am waiting to have a proper post ready. Which means working, really. Not waiting.

Leave your front door and your back door open.
Allow your thoughts to come and go.
Just don’t serve them tea.

---Shunryu Suzuki

David Whyte: Ten years later

David Whyte has visited this blog earlier, in his poem The Well of Grief, as well as his poem called Faith.

This poem, called Ten Years Later, shares an underlying depth and silence with the other two. This is what most draws me to his writing.

It is in the latter half of this poem that I feel the almost magical depth and quiet when waking at the edge of the unknown is floating up through his words. The first half more serves as preparation and analogy to the latter. Which of course means that it is completely necessary to and part of the depth of the ending, laying the ground for our mind, heart and being to take in the whole.

Let's see the poem first:

TEN YEARS LATER

When the mind is clear
and the surface of the now still,
now swaying water

slaps against
the rolling kayak,

I find myself near darkness,
paddling again to Yellow Island.

Every spring wildflowers
cover the grey rocks.

Every year the sea breeze
ruffles the cold and lovely pearls
hidden in the center of the flowers

as if remembering them
by touch alone.

A calm and lonely, trembling beauty
that frightened me in youth.

Now their loneliness
feels familiar, one small thing
I've learned these years,

how to be alone,
and at the edge of aloneness
how to be found by the world.

Innocence is what we allow
to be gifted back to us
once we've given ourselves away.

There is one world only,
the one to which we gave ourselves
utterly, and to which one day

we are blessed to return.

***

This is a rather long poem if haiku and the like model the way you prefer poetic expression -- understatement and synthesis of language, image and understanding being key terms. Still, if you hold it in your mind, it feels like a haiku. It speaks from the same place throughout, beginning with more earthy expressions and then honing it in to the bone of the (dark) matter.

The aloneness in the centre of the flowers is a trembling, goosebumply beautiful image that almost makes me cry -- certainly shivering. I can understand so well what he means when he says this used to frighten him in youth. Cold yet lovely pearls in the centre of a flowering beauty limited to a short summer, hinting of a great aloneness and a terrific and terrifying beauty. Beauty and innocence can be hard to bear.

And then how the 'I' after a break of all the years until present knows this loneliness from inside. With it a certain nobleness comes, I feel; the nobility of being human, the nobility that lies in humanness. Big, puffy words, perhaps, but this I feel to be true. Being human -- or 'the human condition', if you like, includes the sheerest simplicity, the purest innocence, the deepest aloneness. And in this state of humanness we can sink into the quiet and depth of knowing ourselves from within, which usually is accompanied by the aloneness Whyte refers to.

'How to be alone'. How simple and beautiful these words are, and almost blurred by the surrounding sentences in this poem. "One small thing / I've learned these years, / how to be alone, / and at the edge of aloneness / how to be found by the world." This ending, this rounding up and padding of the central statement 'how to be alone' is so ...simple, clear, gentle. Three words which I find to be connected with 'humanness'. Aloneness is important and necessary in order to know oneself and function from a substantial and personal place, but so also is 'being found by the world' -- particularly important, I think, when you have lowered yourself into that quiet and spacious place of personal knowing and recognition.

The interplay between aloneness and being found by the world. That is paramount in these lives of ours.

The choice of reclusion. Adrienne Rich - and me - on Emily Dickinson

"I am travelling at the speed of time, along the Massachusetts Turnpike. For months, for years, for most of my life, I have been hovering like an insect against the screens of an existence which inhabited Amherst, Massachusetts, between 1831 and 1884." 

Thus starts the essay on Emily Dickinson written by Adrienne Rich. She, as I have done myself, sees Dickinson as someone who chose living withdrawn from the rest of the world. In order to write, or simply to have a freedom most women of her time did not have.

In a way, Jane Austen did something of the same, refusing a proposal (by a man she couldn't really stand, though), and Søren Kierkegaard (happy 200 years!) who broke his engagement to his fiancée called Regine, causing quite the scandal in 19th century Copenhagen. In order to work and write, he saw this as necessary, although painful. In our day we want it all.

(I am of course acquainted with Lyndall Gordon's theory in the book Lives like loaded guns where an argument is made for how Emily Dickinson retreated into her house due to epilepsy. Which is also a likely possibility. But thinking that she chose this fate in order to be free and able to write is quite plausible, and also a bit more poetic.)

I remember thinking almost exactly what Rich expresses here: "I have a notion that genius knows itself; that Dickinson chose her seclusion, knowing she was exceptional and knowing what she needed. It was, moreover, no hermetic retreat, but a seclusion which included a wide range of people, of reading and correspondence." Emily knew she was special. And how could she be able to write in a traditional family life back in the 1800s? She saw the possibility of staying in her house filled with books, flowers and baking and filled her life with writing -- poetry, letters and everyday notes to family members, including sister-in-law Sue. This was obviously an important way for her to keep in contact with people. Through the written word she was letting people know who she was, how she was thinking and expressing herself, and also of course keeping up human relationships of sorts. My friends are my estate" she wrote in a letter, "forgive me then the avarice to hoard them". Rhythm and elegance of expression seem to run through her every wording.

The community was close, and Emily Dickinson was an active part of it in her way. That she was seen as different is no secret, but she was valued in her differentness. There were even some (rather daft, in my opinion) girls who tried to mimick her reclusiveness. Like her specialness lay in her staying indoors. She was known as a writer in her own day, though she didn't publish more than seven poems during her lifetime, not always in her own name, and always edited away from her strongly individual style. Possibly the fact that she was a woman clouded the minds of her early editors (i.e. Mabel L. Todd) and compelled them to "beautify" Dickinson's poetry, in order to please the eyes of the readers of her time. Or it was simply Emily Dickinson's stark talent and expression and her difference from any other thinker-writer that initially made them force her writing into a mould they could accept as poetry.

I'll conclude with Adrienne Rich's words: "Given her vocation, she was neither eccentric nor quaint; she was determined to survive, to use her powers, to practice necessary economies."

A bold choice. Gaining us, her readers.

Beautiful ink painting by Wang Yu 王云 (1968~)

In waiting for a new post here on the blog, I wish to share this beautiful image by Wang Yu.







 If anyone is wondering why there has been so little activity for the last year, my nine and a half month old daughter is the answer.

See you!

T. S. Eliot's dark night: East Coker, III

T. S. Eliot. Four Quartets. You might have seen me going on about it before.

Today, on this pentecostal national holiday, I got to thinking about this excerpt from "East Coker", the second of four Quartets. There is something incredibly restful and silent and vast about this section of the poem. The darkness Eliot evokes digs itself into me, creating space where it goes.

Emptiness and darkness - we all carry it within. And I don't mean in a negative way. From emptiness comes everything, as we know from the Big Bang.

III

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, 

The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant, 

The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters, 

The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers, 

Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees, 

Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark, 

And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha 

And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors, 

And cold the sense and lost the motive of action. 

And we all go with them, into the silent funeral, 

Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury. 

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you 

Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre, 

The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed 

With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness, 

And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama 

And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away— 

Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations 

And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence 

And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen 

Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about; 

Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing— 

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope 

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, 

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith 

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. 

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: 

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. 

Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning. 

The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry, 

The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy 

Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony 

Of death and birth. 

You say I am repeating 

Something I have said before. I shall say it again. 

Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there, 

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not, 

You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. 

In order to arrive at what you do not know 

You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance. 

In order to possess what you do not possess 

You must go by the way of dispossession. 

In order to arrive at what you are not 

You must go through the way in which you are not. 

And what you do not know is the only thing you know 

And what you own is what you do not own 

And where you are is where you are not.  

***

"Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury"

"I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you / Which shall be the darkness of God"

"Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought / So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing"

These are paradoxical sentences, but they are opening a well of wisdom in us, I find. We understand them, as we are humans, not machines working on algorithms and binary codes.
 
I am sinking into this text heart, hue and hide. "The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant" - this always hurls me into a great vastness and makes my chest light up like a starry night's sky. The darkness, emptiness, space and light all at once.

"Oh dark dark dark. They all go into the dark" - yes, we do. And how I cherish it, how restful it is. I particularily like how Eliot doesn't use commas between the three darks, and how he stops there before starting a new sentence. It gives the theme of this section, I think. Quiet yet deep.

The whole of the last bit is only paradox. Perhaps it tells you something anyway?

I am particularly drawn to "In order to arrive at what you are not / You must go through the way in which you are not". It gives me the sense that I am already here, already in place, already arrived at what I believe I am searching for. It gives me glimpses of timelessness and a vastness completely unrelated to space; something outside of it all. And this something is in us all along, and we are in it. 

If you want a musical companion to this dark, silent and deep piece, try Bach's Chaconne. (Not while you're reading, perhaps, but after. Don't want to spoil the rhythm of Eliot's words! - Or the simplicity and complexity of this everunfolding piece of music.)

It surely opens up something in me.

Jorge Luis Borges: "Everness"

Everness

One thing does not exist: Oblivion.
God saves the metal and he saves the dross,
And his prophetic memory guards from loss
The moons to come, and those of evenings gone.
Everything is: the shadows in the glass
Which, in between the day’s two twilights, you
Have scattered by the thousands, or shall strew
Henceforward in the mirrors that you pass.
And everything is part of that diverse
Crystalline memory, the universe;
Whoever through its endless mazes wanders
Hears door on door click shut behind his stride,
And only from the sunset’s farther side
Shall view at last the Archetypes and the Splendors.

Translated from Spanish by Richard Wilbur

This poem was given me by Jacques Felix, in his comment to my previous post on Borges' The Immortal. It bears the mark of Borges, all right. The first line unlocks the door into the Borgesian universe. 

Oblivion does not exist, because the universe is a memory, a consciousness. We are parts of the universe, meaning we are the universe itself, and are expressions of that memory, that consciousness. "Everything is".

The blankness of oblivion is mirrored by the sparkly, shiny image of the stars and moon, by mirrors themselves, and by crystal - "[a]nd everything is part of that diverse / Crystalline memory, the universe".

And the last line brings back the everness: the Archetypes and the Splendors.

This poem is so simple yet so intricate and deep. Time is nowhere - the universe is a memory, a consciousness.

Jorge Luis Borges: "The Immortal"

By Gisela Giardino

Reading Borges' ficciones is always rewarding in one way or other. I picked up his Collected Fictions one night, guided by I don't know what. Following my own hunch, I turned to the collection of ficciones called The Aleph. In this book one piece was called "The Immortal". This seemed to me the place to dive down that night.

One paragraph I read two times, slowly. In many ways this felt like the summary of the story, the  source of it, in a tone that to me feels like Borges is speaking directly to us, almost without the literary filter. It gives a sense of him stepping out of the role of narrator on the page, and into that of conveyor of depth.

I felt so tempted to type the whole paragraph here that I am actually going to do it, for those of you with patience for more than a poem. I will still put it out for everyone to see. Gems should be shared.

Here goes:

"There is nothing very remarkable about being immortal; with the exception of mankind, all creatures are immortal, for they know nothing of death. What is divine, terrible and incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal. I have noticed that in spite of religion, the conviction as to one's own immortality is extraordinarily rare. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all profess belief in immortality, but the veneration paid to the first century of life is proof that they truly believe only in those hundred years, for they destine all the rest, throughout eternity, to rewarding or punishing what one did when alive. In my view, the Wheel conceived by certain religions in Hindustan is much more plausible; on that Wheel, which has neither end nor beginning, each life is the effect of the previous life and engenderer of the next, yet no one life determines the whole... Taught by centuries of living, the republic of immortal men had achieved a perfection of tolerance, almost of disdain. They knew that over an infinitely long span of time, all things happen to all men. As reward for his past and future virtues, every man merited every kindness -- yet also every betrayal, as reward for his past and future iniquities. Much as the way in games of chance, heads and tails tend to even out, so cleverness and dullness cancel and correct each other. Perhaps the rude poem of El Cid is the counterweight demanded by a single epithet of the Eclogues or a maxim from Heraclitus. The most fleeting thought obeys an invisible plan, and may crown, or inaugurate, a secret design. I know of men who have done evil in order that good may come of it in future centuries, or may already have come of it in centuries past... Viewed in that way, all our acts are just, though also unimportant. There are no spiritual or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; given infinite time, with infinite circumstances and changes, it is impossible that the Odyssey should not be composed at least once. No one is someone; a single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, hero, philosopher, demon, and world -- which is a long-winded way of saying that I am not."

***

The narrator in this story is starting out as a Roman soldier. He travels through centuries and almost mistakenly attains immortality. Along the road he meets a man he first takes to be a simpleton, without language or the means of symbolic representation. After a while it turns out this man is Homer. This gives the text at the same time a heavy literary frame as well as a timeless one. Homer is more a mythical figure than that of a real man; no one knows whether he ever existed, or if his name is the expression of a conglomerate of storytellers and writers; you could even say Homer is a personification of human imagination or inventiveness. In a way Homer is something of an archetype, making out a solid brick in our (at least Western) cultural edifice. The ideas conveyed in "The Immortal" have that same quality of timelessness (hooha) and durability or imperishability as its Homeric counterpart, seeming to spring from common human ground.


Borges strays into rich waters here. He is for example touching into the midst of buddhism: The expression "I am not" points directly to the emptiness of phenomena, or doctrine of emptiness (shunyata), which is central especially in the Mahayana direction within Buddhism. I am not suggesting that Borges is hinting at Buddhism as such, but that he seems to be tapping into the same well of truth. And exactly this, that he is looking deeply into himself, and at our history and literature and bringing these theses out with him, which are shared with old and thoroughly worked-through schools of thought and insight gives me the impression of a man with great insight into humanity and the fabric of reality. Perhaps more important still: This passage rings true with me.


The piece gives me a sense of a great balance. In the long run, things even out: "over an infinitely long span of time, all things happen to all men [...] all our acts are just, though also unimportant. There are no spiritual or intellectual merits". A balance is conveyed, between important–unimportant, worthy–unworthy, meaning–emptiness without it leaving me as a reader with the feeling of insignificance. This seems to me to be the truth of things. And, paradoxically, at the same time all we do is immensely important. We are expressions of something deep, we all carry significance in one way or other, just by living and adding to the great web of life in which we are all interconnected. The question lying underneath it all: "what is life?" This will continue to be a mystery to me and no doubt the following generations of humans. A cycle of life, certainly (like the Hindu wheel Borges is referring to), but how does it start, or does it start or end? In a way these questions aren't that important. That we live, and give our lives the meaning we feel is most fulfilling for ourselves and the rest of life around us is certainly a good beginning. 


Rarely have I read a short text that gives me a such a broad scope of existence, also beyond human life.(How can you separate human life from life itself?)


In a way the opening and closing sentences sum up the content of this text. "There is nothing very remarkable about being immortal; with the exception of mankind, all creatures are immortal, for they know nothing of death." And the closing sentences: "No one is someone; a single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, hero, philosopher, demon, and world -- which is a long-winded way of saying that I am not." Immortality as an idea has at all times been very attractive to humans. But how thoroughly thought through is this wish, I wonder. Reading Borges' The Immortal might alter or purge the urge for it.

Being human is irrevocably linked to mortality. That has its meaning.

By Sturt Krygsman, The Australian

Atonement: The writer's point of view

In the novel Atonement by Ian McEwan the main character is Briony, who at age 13 is a budding author. She already thinks like a writer most of the time, seeing plots for novels and stories in the family life and nature surrounding her. The world to her is a place of inspiration for something she can later put down in writing. In a way her life is lived more on the page than in her direct contact with the surrounding world.

The whole book is circling around the theme of writing, the word as expression, or even the word as a more real reality than reality. I think this is something many bookworms can recognise, readers and writers alike - the world of fiction and literature is the preferred place to hang out. More safe and controlled perhaps, but also a place where there is room for high ideals and strong, fatelike friendships, fantastic actions and heart-wrenching sacrifices in the name of love, humanity, truth etc. Of course literature is mirroring to some extent the world the authors live in, but still - a different place to reality.

A favourite moment of mine in this novel is Briony's literary culmination when she has had an awakening and is being hurled out of childhood, all through seeing a scene in the park surrounding her house, involving her sister Cecilia and the family friend Robbie. This scene is the structural hub of the novel. Briony is too young and misinterprets what she sees - a feud between two near adults who have known each other their whole lives and who are beginning to understand that they love each other. Briony sees them argue over a broken vase in front of the fountain on the lawn, and interprets the whole situation wrongly. She sees Robbie threatening Cecilia (he is actually trying to stop her from stepping on the broken bits of the vase) and is convinced she has to protect her sister from this man. Her suspicion is later galvanised when Robbie uses Briony as a messenger in bringing Cecilia a letter. The letter was supposed to be an apology for his behaviour around Cecilia lately, with him hinting at his new feelings towards her. But of course McEwan has him putting the wrong note into the envelope, one including a word Briony has never heard before but immediately understands as belonging to the just-discovered world of grown-up dealings; and of course he has Briony, the writer who needs to know everything about the world around her, reading it. ("The smooth-hollowed, partly enclosed forms of its first three letters were as clear as a set of anatomical drawings.") The scene and the word is spiralling her into a different existence.

Anyway, a passage I've always loved in this novel, culminating in a single sentence, is where Briony is writing down her opening line of a story after seeing the fountain scene and understanding that she must enter a new level of writing and existing; enter the grown-up world and write about more serious layers of reality than fairytale princesses and storylines always ending in good marriages.

She sits in front of the white paper, pen in hand, and after considering everything she has seen and started to understand that day, writes "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly".

This one sentence, seemingly a leap from the context she is consumed in, to me says a lot about what writing is. From one kind of material springs a whole new material or world, somehow related to its origins, but often very different in form and content (if 'origins' is a word possible to use around the writing process). Creativity doesn't move in orderly autobahn-lines, it makes the most surprising leaps, leading us to completely new places with strange and fresh connections to the world we know and the evergrowing literary geography.

Not magic, only the endless possibilities of human imagination.