Some images we recall from our childhood experience that are more than memory. They seem imprinted on us, so that they do not change over time, the way many other memories will. It is these fixed images that have shaped us most of all, have reached us in some deep place and when we call them to mind, what we experience is certain recognition of who we are.

It is a good practice to do this when we are beset by any of the trials and tribulations we encounter in everyday life. We can get distracted, and worry about events, choices, and even what path we are on.

Yet in that deep place, we are the same. We know that person, our inner self, by those images, and in that place is utter calm.

The Appalachians are among the oldest of mountains–they were part of Pangaea 300 million years ago. In fact, they lay at its center. Pangaea means the whole land, the Mother Earth. And I learned just recently that a small park I went to as a child in Malden, MA has the cone of a volcano that was active in that time–part of the Appalachians back then, now a trace element, kept intact across time by a mile-high glacier that covered the area during the many Ice Ages. So as I played on the grounds and climbed the rocks, I moved over primeval land and whether I knew it or not, felt the tremors of ancient fire and the cold of ancient ice.

The hour of twilight. An indigo sky, the moon not yet risen, a summer night that carries with it a thousand summer nights of childhood. Everything right with the world.

I.
O YOUNG Mariner,
You from the haven
Under the sea-cliff,
You that are watching
The gray Magician
With eyes of wonder,
I am Merlin,
And I am dying,
I am Merlin
Who follow The Gleam.

II.
Mighty the Wizard
Who found me at sunrise
Sleeping, and woke me
And learn’d me Magic!
Great the Master,
And sweet the Magic,
When over the valley,
In early summers,
Over the mountain,
On human faces,
And all around me,
Moving to melody,
Floated The Gleam.

(more…)

“A fool, a fool! I met a fool i’ the forest (in motley)!”

Act 2, Scene VII

The story of Peter’s betrayal is one of the most telling, an imprint on the soul. Many parts of the Bible stay with me, from the New Testament and the Psalms to some of Paul’s writings, and the Book of Revelation. They are all mysterious, and evocative, and reach the heart. This is the one that seems the most enigmatic, and yet the most vital.

(from the King James Version)
[36] Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards.
[37] Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake.
[38] Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied me thrice.

…………………………………..

[58] And when they had kindled a fire in the midst of the hall, and were set down together, Peter sat down among them.

[56] But a certain maid beheld him as he sat by the fire, and earnestly looked upon him, and said, This man was also with him.
[57] And he denied him, saying, Woman, I know him not.

[58] And after a little while another saw him, and said, Thou art also of them. And Peter said, Man, I am not.
[59] And about the space of one hour after another confidently affirmed, saying, Of a truth this fellow also was with him: for he is a Galilaean.
[60] And Peter said, Man, I know not what thou sayest. And immediately, while he yet spake, the cock crew.
[61] And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.
[62] And Peter went out, and wept bitterly.

It is Judas we remember, but it is Peter’s betrayal we should remember more, for he was closest to Jesus, and when strangers suspected him of allegiance to the Messiah, he chose to protect himself, to deny a bond that had been forged in absolute truth. Jesus had done nothing to warrant Peter’s betrayal. He had given Peter the role of the rock on which the new testament of love was to change the world. So what was Peter doing, throwing that away?

Hearing the third denial, “the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter.” What was in that look Jesus gave to the man he had trusted most, a man who had just sold his soul as easily as Judas had done, and for what? Not thirty pieces of silver, but to keep himself safe. It was a coward’s choice, and Peter knew it, and he “wept bitterly.” But again, I wonder, what was the look that Jesus gave to him? Was it one of sadness, or was it, even so, the affirmation of love?

white magnolias in an indigo dusk
the first thin line of dawn
a child’s laugh in the rain
the sound of trees in a high wind
a Brandenburg concerto
dragonflies
“Merlin and the Gleam” by Tennyson
new snow in moonlight
Gregorian chant
a story by Chekhov
the words “once upon a time”
silence

This image is from my book Voices from the Old Earth.

A city appears in many of my books and stories. I remember the first time I saw it in my mind, arriving unbidden. I was living in Belle Harbor, New York, and writing a film script set in a mental hospital in the desert. Fifteen years later that would become the novel Force Field, but back then it was just the script. I had described a mountain range bordering the desert when in the distance appeared a city, not unlike the one shown in the slider image on the home page and in this book. It showed up eventually, too, in a short story called “Rose-Colored Glass,” set on a planet that was a prison outpost…and in other stories here and there. It stays, as if there is some intent to be solved about its presence. When (or if) I manage that, I imagine it will no longer appear at all.

I recently watched an old interview with Stephen King–it occurred somewhere around the time he was writing Christine–and he was in his own living room in Maine. The reporter asked him why he didn’t write about other subjects instead of horror stories, and King’s answer to him was “You say that as if you think I have a choice.” What we write comes to us–out of what inner impulse, who knows, though it is most likely at the subatomic level, some deep, inner self–but its energy is its own, and the voice and subject are what they have to be.