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C. S. Lewis talks about Joy as a glimpse, an unsatisfied desire, as if a door had opened briefly onto another world. He calls this feeling "sadness mixed with longing--yet a sense of exaltation." This was my first feeling as a conscious being; it has never left me. It is so profound that I have felt compelled to try to transmit it. Also, like C. S. Lewis, I have found that the art or nature that inspired this feeling were merely pointers to a state of being in which one is free to know this feeling. For me, although nature inspires this feeling, joy also rises in me through participation in the arts. I think that the arts are a way of helping people to states of mind and feelings. My goal in my art is to create a series of scenes which might lead one to Joy. The art that engages me is art in series: a group of pictures, a group of novels set in a created world, a group of gardens: my vision is not static enough for me to show it in one scene.
There is no easy way to do what I want to do. I only know it when I see it: thus I have hammered myself into my Craft with tenacity and passion. |
When people praise my talent or my work, it is startling, disconnecting. Why are people looking at ME when I'm trying to shout, "No! Look that way! Over there! Can't you see where I'm pointing?" For some, I think that the True pursuit of Craft is a way to Joy. Craft does not have to be about "look at me," or "how many copies will this sell," but about creating the self. Discipline is its own reward. Striving for excellence is it's own reward. Honoring beauty is its own reward. I have found that I, myself, am unable to tell where the craft ends and the pursuit of a path to joy for others to follow begins. Perhaps it is all one. The reason I make books is for Joy, for the feeling that Lewis gave me, that Tolkien, Nichols, Dinesen, St. Exupery, Allende, and so many others have given to me. For the art that let me see into another world: Rackham, Wyeth, Dumas, Kormark and so many more. The reason I make gardens is to bring this world to life. Walk here with me. The world is not all about pain, but also of our quest for Joy. |
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"Life is a dream that must be interpreted." - Rumi
Deafened by the Breath of God
by the terror of life.
Each terrible moment
is possessed by me so utterly,
that it is transformed
into strange beauty.
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"Merman" - pencil & chalk on gray paper, 11x18, A.R. Stone 2007 |
There comes a moment when we realize that we have walked our own footsteps. No matter what the circumstances, we come to where we are by choice: choices against, choices for, one choice outweighing another; footsteps that we can only see after they are made. There is no book until after the book is laid down. Yet, on the way, there are thousands of stories. Some scorn looking at the patterns that they make in time. One of the first writers I was passionate about was Anaïs Nin. The work I have enjoyed the most has been autobiographical, so, I have written much about my own life. It is not so much created work as it is turning memories inside out and shaking them for something marvelous. The events are there, yet color them in and they light up with feelings, as if clear glass then colored in shades subtle or vivid. In my world, even the stones rise up and talk, taking on shape and color in a vast world of singing words. I was born on the spine of the Americas, my heart is tundra, snow and stars where the wind is God. I grew up in the trees and next to the ocean; the ocean is also my heart; its many songs are my songs; its voice rises and falls in my poetry. My prose is mountain born, rocky and challenging, but my poetry is the sea.
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Blood-red showed the lustrous leaf luscious bloom, light-gowned then blowed Fiery-wood, the quickened life, flushed rife, must end, blazed in blood - "Rowan in Autumn" from Tales of the Quicken King
I longed to reconcile my own feelings of the expanse of the wilderness into which I was born with the men of the Space Age that I loved and admired. I wanted to sing songs of starlight, and alos of the wilds of Earth, songs of breezes spiced with pine and birch, trees dappling the light of the seasons 'round, songs with roots reaching far, far back into the lands of my ancestors who settled on the rim of the Western Sea. Out of these roots came the songs of the world, Anieth. In most Fantasy, the light shines out from the past through the dance of the barbarian hordes. The story is that there was a fall, an Evil, something that came in the night and took the stars and left fear. This story has been done too many times. I wanted to write about the Man Magnificient, the Man who put down the base in himself and stood upon it to see the Infinite. The best effort we can make is to resist the slavering creature within us and say, "I am noble." Even in the last broken moment, ridden by the shame of a life failed, ridden by pain, ridden by grief and loss and hopelessness, to rise up and say, "despite all this, my heart still burns!" is all and everything. These Tales are for my ancestors. Beaten down again and again, their songs still burn brightly enough to light the way for me, their daughter, their child, who still can look up at the stars and know their names. These Tales are about the Namers, the Makers, the Observers and the Protectors, those who walked as giants and still walk among us, helping us to stand up straight and cry out to the Evil: "never and still never!" I feel my responsibility to draw the songs again so that others would see them before the waves washed them away. We are ultimately nothing, but our songs are a the Breath, the Roaring, and the Beauty. |
Anieth is about seekers, not wizards. These tales are about people who struggle to wake up
from the dreams of their own making into the greater light of consciousness. While their
Part of why we love and write Fantasy books (and SF) is to explore a richness of "other world" that some people call escape. However, it is much more than that. Fiction is a great way to explore ideas and situations while wrapped in language and the wealth of "otherness" that writers and artists can create. I have spent 25 years making Anieth, studying stars with my astronomers, growing herbs with my wisewomen, reciting poetry with my eolas, and surveying roads with my kings. I have created magic that is real, real studies, not just words in broken Latin whispered at a dark door. My magical creatures are interesting beings within whose minds you can explore the "Call to Leaf" or the "hunllef." How spirits differ! We resonate to different images of mind and soul. People have had their
prejudices: Victor Hugo compared the enlightened mind of the man of the mountains to the
entangled mind of the man of the woods. Some have seen god in skyscrapers and cities; others
have seen god in the vast reaches of the sea. My own spirit resonates to the complicated
interweaving of the Gaelic mind, illustrated so well by their poetry and the fugue. The structure
of my Tales is this spun glamour, this diving in and out of consciousness. In my books, symbols
peer out in flashes of wood, sketches of sky are overlayered on dream images. I find it impossible
So what is me and what is Anieth? For me, it is all one; in the many whispers, there is only one weaving around the frame of the door of light. To me, what is tangled and pathless is also an expanse of wonder and the breath of air. I heard the Voice in Treebeard saying, "and the smell of the air! I could spend a week just breathing," and I knew that he was speaking with my voice. But I had to reach down deep into the years of European history to find Anieth. The place before the forest died, the place where the trees and the mountains met on the shores of the Western Sea. This is for you, who feel in your blood the fire of those people whom empires tried to eat, for those of you who are still free, for you of you who are still awake. |
Imagine an ancient world. Not a world of barbarians with swords, of witches both
beautiful and evil, or even a Classical world of temples and legions; but an older world,
a wilder world, yet a world closer to the best within us. A world where astonomers scanned the
skies and mapped the stars; a world where each plant was sacred and each river holy.
Imagine this world protected, a wilderness that rose up against the greed of humans
and demanded of them a price: they should grow into better beings, or die.
world is threatened by the growing greed of empire, they fall down and stagger to their
feet, trying to see the path to Joy. Each book is a spiritual journey, a path through the
tangles of roles, shapes, and fantasies that each of us has about ourselves. In each Tale,
characters strive to keep hold of the light that they see, not realizing that the only way
to see the light is to look up, not down at the candle, but up at the rising dawn.
to sing with one voice: my mind is a susurrous interplay of wave and wind, of pine and snow, of
starlight and moonlight, glitter and shade. I listen to one voice and another, often torn between
several.The Way of Craft: Walking the Maker's Path
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I am convinced that the spiritual way requires practice of a discipline. Some suggest meditation as the best route; others suggest a martial art or other physical activity such as a sport or dance. I have chosen the discipline of making. I have chosen this way as a discipline, not for the usual reasons people make things. I do not wish to profit by the things I make, although I would like to make enough to keep making. This discipline is difficult: it requires me to never reach a "good enough" threshold, but to kept trying to get better. The arts are extremely difficult to evaluate. Most evaluation is along the lines of popularity. Many people think that something must be good if enough people say it is. I think that the arts can be evalutated in many ways. What does the practice of the art do for the maker? Is the art interesting? Does the art say something useful or vital to the people to which it is shown? Does it communicate effectively? Does the art ring a spiritual chord in those who see it or those who make it? Is the art fun or entertaining? Does the art help those who are stressed or needy to heal in mind and spirit? Does the art teach something of humanity or the world? Is the art beautiful? Is the art well made? Did doing this art require the artist to learn a craft? --You see, the list is very long. People often judge all art by only one or two criteria. This is just wrong. The art might be interesting and a vital criticism of humanity, teaching people about a situation; and, instead, be judged by its popularity, or by how much money it made, or by it's beauty, or how much craft went into its making. Some art is catharsis art for the maker and is nothing to the viewer. Each artist is moved by different forces. I am moved by craft, by beauty, and by a spiritual resonance. I do enjoy things just because they are funny or interesting, but I make things for another reason. So, even in the artist, there may be different evaluations of different art. |
Teachers usually teach craft. Most teachers teach craft so that their students can earn a living. A teacher may also try to encourage students to pay attention to trends in the arts and follow those. This can fail because fads change and even books that were extremely popular at the time of printing may not be popular thirty years later. Often, only entertainment factors will determine whether a book, movie, or recording will sell. This kind of evaluation and teaching drives the arts into a ghetto where the best is determined by the dollar. So, often, teachers fall back on basics. There are rules that try to keep English stable enough to be read one hundred years after a publication; there are rules that guide aesthetic pricincles in the visual arts that seem to appeal to humans such as balance and human paradigms. People are sensitive to color clashes and sensitive to exaggerated human features. Then there are the fundamentals of using the materials or instruments: playing the clarinet, learning to use a pencil or pen, mixing paints, or learning how chemicals change under heat. My "mission," so to speak, is to excel at the basics. I want my people to look like people and not be distorted; I want my colors not to clash; I want my words to be as clear as possible but to have song in my writing. I also try to teach something beyond basics; I teach high end plot contruction, world building, symbolism in Fantasy, as well as paradygmatic drawing, anatomy and classical technique such as macchia and crowquill pen. However, on a deeper level, I do art for a reason and it must mean something. I struggle with the meanings of my words and pictures and will continue to do so, maybe for the rest of my life. So it's an ongoing process that I hope will make me a better person. |
GARDENING FOR SURVIVIAL, TAKING CARE OF THE EARTH
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When my son was little, I went back to an old hobby in order that he could be outside. Like most novice gardeners, I planted a few peas, some lettuce, some tomatoes in a small space. Unlike most gardeners, I'm a bit crazy, so I ended up putting in fifteen gardens in as many years in zone 3 to zone 10, but never in a "normal" climate. My son grew up eating out of the garden, and one of his favorite foods is raw broccoli. I have always had health problems, some of them serious. However, it was not until I was in my thirties that I began to learn that all of my health problems were food related. After many years of suffering from growing problems, I eliminated about 100 foods (no exaggeration) from my diet which either mildly irritated my health or caused me serious problems. I attribute most of these problems with food to my babyhood, but one cannot go back and start all over! So I have to go with where I am. After many years of hard work, I am healthier now than I have been my entire life. But it is a battle. A daily battle. Most of what I can eat is not at the grocery store and I am always tempted by bread and potatoes and cheese. Moving around and living in difficult climates made me aware that almost all garden books are geared toward hobbyists who live in nice areas. This doesn't mean that they don't have problems, but there are problems and there are Problems. I longed for books that would tell me how to garden in soil so dry it was more like adobe than the pictures in the books, or sand so hot that you couldn't plant in it without scorching the seedlings or burning up the seeds. Hail would take out early summer gardens and the monsoon made summer gardening impossible in other climates. But I was stubborn and every garden I ever planted made its money back. |
I have my garden and eating opinions! I'm a lazy gardener and a lazy eater. I don't like having to work in the yard or prepare food. So I've written a series of articles for people who want to have a garden that is productive, useful, eco-friendly, beautiful and fun. I also wanted to write gardening articles for people interested in growing food, not just a few vegetables. I also wanted to write about how to grow a yard that is more than permaculture, for I eat everything raw. Most permaculture books are designed around food that has to be cooked. I also wanted to write about food I actually eat, and how to store it. I think it's a mistake to
rely on freezers or canned goods. I don't eat anything frozen or canned. I also can't eat what
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most raw food people eat; the amounts of fruit drive my blood sugar up and I'm allergic to
coconut and many other raw foods. But no other diet works for me. So read on and enjoy
all these articles about gardening, nutrition, raw foods and more!