Writing – The Craft of

A Quiet World

/ Lisa / 9 Comments

I’m in that fallow period between writing projects. Waiting for Otherkin to move through the publication process and waiting for a new story to come to me. It’s like the winter season, quiet and dormant, cozy and gestating.

In the meantime I’ve made a few discoveries relating to hearing.

Several years ago I lost hearing in one ear. Three little bones that should vibrate, calcified. Surgery replaced them with an implant that didn’t work. More recently, my ‘good’ ear has been getting worse. So I gave in, got a referral, and found out just how bad my hearing actually was.

I didn’t realize how much hearing was related to context. When face to face with someone, in a conversation, able to watch faces, you can anticipate what the words are going to be. But when you’re in a little room alone with headphones on and a specialist speaking random words with no context, it’s a completely different matter. I couldn’t figure out any of the words. After a series of interesting tests, I left with a graph that showed where normal hearing was, and where mine was, way, way, way down at the bottom. I also left with an appointment to come back and be fitted with hearing aids. When my husband saw the graph, his response was ‘Sh**, you can’t hear f**k all’. Succinct and true.

This past week has been the trial, and I’m not adjusting well. The hearing aids are extremely painful, there’s a loud echo to everything, an odd high-pitched regular beeping like a miniature car alarm in my head, and, of course, noise. Most of this will be adjusted at the next appointment.

In the meantime, I’m startled by noise. Birds! So many birds. The squeak of the floorboards. The sound of traffic. It took me way too long driving home to realize the odd breathing sound I heard was cars passing going the other direction. Conversations and clanking and voices of strangers. It all sounds so exaggerated.

It’s made me realize how quiet my world has been. How muffled. I can no longer hear my own heartbeat. I’m no longer cocooned. Which has made me realize I’m not sure I want to be in a noisy world.

Hearing aids are going to be fantastic at work and out in public where acoustics make it impossible to pick out individual voices. I can see other benefits, too, such as the fact that music will play directly into my hearing aids and no one will know.

I find myself using the pain though, as an excuse to take them out. To return to that quiet place with just my heartbeat. I might choose to only wear them at work.

There’s something to be said for quiet, for the ability to remove hearing and step away from the noise. I suppose that’s why people use ear plugs, putting something in, to find quiet, rather than taking something out to prevent sound.

Though I think my husband just said something. He hasn’t realized I took the hearing aids out. This might actually end up being fun. Either way, it will be an interesting learning curve.

Otherkin: Merging Reality with Mythical Beliefs

/ Lisa / 6 Comments

Otherkin is an interesting subculture. It represents people, or a person, who identify as nonhuman. In particular, people who believe they are wholly or partially an animal or mythical being.

I’m not talking about people who dress up in costumes or people who feel they relate more to their dogs than to their family. Just as you know you are a human being, these people know they are not. They believe they are animals, mythical creatures like dragons or elves, or even aliens.

Whether you think of this as a psychological disorder or truly possible is open to interpretation and your own belief systems.

However, there is a lesser known interpretation. This aligns closer to earth-based religions, to paganism, etc., where they believe all things have life (or soul) and that the otherworld is all around you whether you can see it or not. These are people who believe in the kindred spirits of animals and nature.

That’s the interpretation I’m using for a story. Otherkin will be released soon. It’s taken me a long, long time to write, and it’s a sequel to This Deep Panic. How does the world look after mythical creatures have returned? How do we move on from a catastrophic earthquake and begin rebuilding lives? How do we do that when most creatures want to kill us, but some are…otherkin?

I am just starting the revising work and then it will go to the editor, then come back to me for more revisions. But I will have the first three chapters available soon for everyone to read. And in the meantime, here is the cover. Let me know what you think. I’m very happy with how the artist has rendered this.

Harmony’s Friend

/ Lisa / 2 Comments

My last post was about the loss of my sister’s partner, Harmony. Now I’d like to tell you about his close friend, a man I only met once, at Harmony’s gathering. I’m not going to use his name here for obvious privacy reasons. But I’d love to tell you about him.

I’m not sure of his age but he’s slowing down, his memory is fading, and he is rarely able to get out of bed or leave his home. But friends made sure he was able to be at the gathering.

There were a lot of people there I didn’t know and he gave me a safe oasis to be in the crowd. I sat with him in the sunshine and listened to his stories and he gave me a reason to be there. Since he couldn’t get around much, I could offer him food, or get him something to drink, or just be company for him. Although that was an excuse because he didn’t need my company. Every single person there gravitated to him.

In his younger days, he was a naturopath, an acupuncturist, an herbalist, and one of the founding group, along with Harmony, of the famous Barter Faire in the Pacific Northwest. He helped start a well-known Antakarana Circle.

He built his own house, a round home, on six hundred acres, where he and Harmony and their friends lived. When it was lost to fire, he built another round house and told me he built it out of pallets and cardboard for less than a thousand dollars. Thinking about cardboard, I asked him if he worried about mice. He replied ‘I have a cat’. A round house, because spirit gets stuck in angles. It makes me think of all the round houses in so many cultures down through time.

He told me he’d had to put shoes on to come to the gathering, and how he rarely wore them. He said we should go barefoot on the land, soaking up the earth’s energies and neurons. It wasn’t long before his shoes were off and his feet were in the sun-warmed grass. This is something I’ve heard before and I’m going to follow his advice.

Once it stops raining.

So many people were happy to see him, to reminisce, tell stories, and re-introduce themselves to him, resurrecting a long, shared past. One person from the old days, who shall also remain nameless for obvious reasons, told him it wasn’t surprising he didn’t remember many of them because back then they hadn’t had clothes on.

I absolutely loved being in his company. Not only because it gave me something to focus on and a way to feel useful and needed, but because he is an amazing person. You know how it is when someone crosses paths with you for a brief moment in time and you know you’ll probably never see them again? And yet you have this deep recognition that this is a person who should have always been in your life? He and Harmony both should always have been in my life.

There are so many stories there, in that man, and I will never know them. But I am so grateful for the tiny window he opened for me.

And guess what? At the end of the day I was told by someone how much he had enjoyed me sitting with him…and that he knew I needed tasks to do and a place to be.