The air is as pure now as that of County Galway’s Kylemore
Abbey when I was last in Connemara. I wanted to write that sentence for a long time.
But not being Irish, only Celtic, never had a reason to,
really. What is it about Ireland besides W.B. Yeats and AE that I wish to be
Irish? P. L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins, told me she had it too
when I interviewed her. Well, for a month I was. Yet still cannot understand
why I’m not.
You may ask how do I know I was exactly at Kylemore at 17:23
06/06/99? Because I purchased a CD in the gift shop tucking that bit of
paper into a sketchbook I haven’t opened since then.
Ah, but it’s a lovely day. Only far above a spume follows a
jet. The news is grim, forebodingly so, but the air is pure in the Hudson River
Valley across from Poughkeepsie. Out early, I just couldn’t go back inside to
my writer’s desk. Yet I still remember that the divorce decades ago unlocked
the artist inside. Now I happen to paint in words mostly, still carrying the
Irish sketchbook and pen in my car basket just in case. This is the case.
I turned right instead of left into the driveway and the
desk for the high bluff, looking down on a pond, circled by the Marlborough
Mountains. Happy to hold the sketchbook, even to write this blog, outside, in
the light wind, delighting in dragonfly loops as I did in Connemara in another life
before the 21st century.
My inspiration for the next Scripta Divina, carefully noted
in my writer’s diary when it came to me one midnight clear, is to ask my
readers a question.
What is the author’s relationship with her readers?
Margaret Atwood once commissioned a remote control pen so
she could do virtual book tours and still keep on writing at home. I don’t have
her problem: K and K and K of readers (K being the thousand mark). Friends read
my books. Not necessarily family. Friends. And I am blessed with so many from
the different geographies, milieux, interests, and stages of life.
Here is one novel, One Hundred Thousand Lights: a love
song to India. I was moved to take part in the scribing, publishing and
launching of the good ship book. It came from one brief period when I went to
India for four months and took notes. The novel is not that story, that’s
private. All the characters are fiction except the historical ones. It’s true I
did rise in love with Mike (especially) and Grace, Sushil, the Patels, Leela,
Saras even the ayurvedic/hatha yogi. But they are fiction. The theme of giving
up irrational nationalistic hatred is fictional but alas true in the world this moment. The
theme that old fear can destroy a new life is fiction, also sadly true albeit. The
dreams and meditations are mine – that is, mine of twenty years ago when I was
a completely different person.
A novel it is. Friends have paid for it. Why can’t we give
books away? They order, they receive and I don’t know if the book works for
them. It takes time out to read a novel.
Somebody said to me, just sell; don’t worry. Another said,
once it’s out, none of your business. Yet it is – because I love my friends and
even future unknown readers. Sharing the experience, as you now share the
Connemara breeze with the Hudson River and me.
I’m thinking a book is like a calling card. It’s an
introduction not an end. A book starts a conversation, over latte or Irish
Breakfast tea. Publishing a book is part of the journey – not the end. Mike and
Gracie are still yammering away, they say you cannot abandon us; we’re not
over. Tell us some more about us. Then,
zing. I see another chapter ahead. I wonder if they would be content being
inserted in the novel I wrote in 2000. It tells me, it is next.
Meanwhile there’s this hand basket, we call Mother Earth,
full of travail to pray whole.
So let’s make a plan to talk soon. I have Skype and email
and a webpage and Facebook but cannot bring myself to add Twitter yet. We can
continue the conversation. Don’t you have questions?
May the gentle wind always be at your back~
