Crying Happy Tears...

After a few hours rest in a motel, Lori and I hit the Interstate for the road trip home. Lori was driving, her spirit lit up with the joy we'd experienced during the concert. I kept bursting out in tears, but Happy Tears as I was also overwhelmed with feelings that like our book, Hazel Moon, transcended the moment to bring all our past and the present live concert experiences together in an overwhelming flood of emotion.

The Hazel Moon gods played another trick on me, as a way to take me back to the '80s, the setting for the story--my phone died, not just the battery, but for some reason it just wouldn't work anymore. I was back in a time when I was no longer instantly connected to the rest of the world through a smart cell phone. I tried to use a pay phone, but it didn't work. Many times I've taken pictures and others have tried to take pics of me, they often turn out fuzzy, as if to say, You Can't Preserve the Present Moment...

In between the "happy tears" I'd been reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, and as I read the last few pages, I began feeling like Siddhartha. He lost his connection to the world when he walked away from his position of wealth and privilege as a successful businessman...I was experiencing that same feeling of isolation without my phone. Without a phone, I was forced to Live in the Moment, and to be Present in that moment. 

I have all of Hermann Hesse's books and like the lyrics in my story, Hazel Moon, they provide a lifelong lifeline to so much wisdom and truth. My sister and I didn't set out to tell a similar story as Siddhartha but I'm sure the themes and principles in Siddhartha have influenced my writing. For example, in the Chapter Govinda:


"When someone is seeking, said Siddhartha, "it happens quite easily that they only see the thing that they are seeking; that they are unable to find anything else, unable to absorb anything else, because they are only thinking of the thing they are seeking."

He goes on to describe the "better way" to be open to Finding instead of Seeking.

When reading this I realized how natural it is for me to try and live in the present moment and not color any experience with any particular expectation. I had the same reaction to the Bunnymen concert. Though we were all set up to meet the band members, after waiting nearly an hour, it just didn't happen. Our story character, November, isn't there yet, she still gets terribly disappointed when her expectations aren't met, but she's growing in that direction!!

In the Om Chapter...

"Yes, I am going into the woods: I am going into the unity of all things," said Vasudeva, radiant."

When Lori and I sent our character, Lyudmila, "into the woods" in Hazel Moon, it was the only place where she felt free, felt one with the natural world...and in Hawthorn Moon, the sequel, we have November hugging a tree!! Our Lady Luna character is well established as preferring old things and wanting to sleep outdoors. (See excerpt below)

A page earlier in Siddhartha...the story speaks metaphorically of the many voices of the river...

"And all of them taken together become the music of life. When Siddhartha listened to all the voices he did not listen only to the sorrow." Hmmm...the Music of Life...
 

And so, Hermann Hesse used The River as a metaphor for life...and now I can see that we used The Concert in the same way...a source of inspiration and enlightenment as we experience life's trials, triumphs, and tribulations...

Regardless of how a story is told...the Truth is the Truth and the Universe has a way of inspiring writers to package important principles inside different kinds of tales!

From Chapter 11 in Hazel Moon

STILL WARM, YET WITH a hint of an autumn chill, Lyudmila sprinted as her heart raced—was she there yet?

More fairy than flesh and blood, the world she preferred was the land of the hedgerow, the toadstool, the tall oak, the squirrel and acorn—not that of cold brick and mortar.

Her whole body tingling, she'd reached the edge of the woodlands and was welcomed with an embrace by a ten-foot sunflower. Her true friends lived there...the robin, the rabbit, the gopher and toad. The hazy night had a dreamlike quality, the kind that only came in summer.

"Hello there, old warty tree," Lyudmila said, greeting her favorite bur oak, boasting an almost animated trunk girthed like a hoop skirt.

"And...how do you do, my little pass-arounds," she greeted, as they replied by sending back twinkles and sparkles of reflected moonlight.

Lyudmila was admiring all the shoots and suckers, the flitting and flirting, all the procreating going on everywhere. At night it was a dark world except for the fireflies and moonbeams revealing the woodland's magical primary color—sepia, the deep reds and browns mixing with pungent earthy smells, ripe and gamey.

In the woods, all of God's creatures lived in harmony as the all-knowing moon watched and waited. Turning her head, Lyudmila saw an arrogant owl wink at her as a nearby handsome hare chewed down stalks of tall grass one after the other. Suddenly the hare leapt away and the owl flew off as their sacred space was being invaded by a trio of marauders.

Galloping through the brambles, the dogs, Great Danes, the favorites of Sister Archibald who'd trained them. They'd howl or grovel at her whim, and loyally fall asleep at her feet each evening. But at midnight the tricksters would use their teeth to open a series of doors until they, too, escaped the stifling confines of the dreary orphanage.

They were all from the same litter, but chose their own magic colors to show off to the world—one the shade of rich, organic mud, the next the hue of a thick cup of Turkish coffee, and the striking third was a black-and-white mix.

Lyudmila was delighted to see them.

"Finally...my entourage has arrived...my Moon Dogs, welcome henchmen...to another night of freedom!"

In celebration, while once again Lyudmila's hair morphed into tight curls, together they let loose an awe-inspiring extended howl, entertaining the other forest creatures with harmonies worthy of a canine barbershop quartet.

The yowls of delight instead of pain, over for the moment, it was time to play.

As they frolicked, jumped, and scampered, the quartet fell into an unruly row of hazel trees with low-hanging branches and began feasting on the nuts and chewing the canary-green leaves as if they were succulent watercress. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, Lyudmila became sullen.

"Oh...my Moon Dogs...though you will always be my first loves, sometimes I long for a boy like me, but someone like you stout, handsome, trustworthy fellows...oh...will such a rhapsody of romance ever find me?"

Despondent, Lyudmila tore herself away from the Great Danes and began running full force through the acres of hazel hedges. She made sure to push her face into the rough branches, to feel how real they were, to connect to Mother Earth, wanting the very spirit of the planet to invade her lonely soul.

Now down on the ground, Lyudmila was slithering like a snake in the grass, her eyes alert and bright with starlight, yet cloaked in the darkness of disappointment and regret. Darting upright, she snapped off two identical hazel twigs.

Grasping the twigs with her right hand, she searched her night frock for the treasure she'd stolen, lifted in stealth like a Covent Garden pickpocket from Sister Cox's green gingham hatbox.

LYUDMILA HELD A SILK taffeta ribbon which glistened in the moonlight—a robust hue of Pompeii Red. The magical color seemed to echo with sympathy for an unusual and painful infection near the base of her little finger.

The girls were worked hard at the orphanage, Lyudmila toiling in the laundry, her hands rough and sore from the hot iron. A scab had formed over the wound as round as a cherry. She took the twigs, crossing them dead center, then, looped the ribbon around creating a cross.

Holding the talisman up to absorb the energy of the Hazel Moon, she began to repeat a chant softly in her mind.

The night raven blue black

The night the Rhineland

The wind beckons

The world is there for the taking

Is all possible no more?

"Oh Hazel Moon...my wise friend, did you forget about me...help me...please."

WAITING PATIENTLY FOR an answer to her request, Lyudmila soon began seeing visions of a chamber door and grimaced at the painful pitch of the creaky riser, then, she began hearing words of warning coming from the grotesque doorknocker...Only trust the outdoors, not brick and mortar.

Springing up like an alley cat about to pounce on a mouse, she fell backwards, holding firmly to the talisman. Raising it up once again, "Oh, Hazel Yellow Moon, please, I beg you, do not let me down this time!"

As a sign that her petition was received, her wound had completely healed.