Wednesday, December 15, 2010

One Ringy Dingy . . .

My spider plant is blooming and having a baby. I've never had a successful spider plant, so it's fun to watch it each day. I didn't know they got flowers on them. It's the spider plant the company librarian gave me when I moved out of the corporate building two years ago to the building where I am now. It was a baby off the giant spider plant she had up there, which was the baby from a big plant in the executive offices. It was only about 6" long and had 4 or 5 leaves and was wrapped in a paper towel when she gave it to me. It sat on my desk in a coffee cup with a bit of water in the bottom for a couple weeks until I brought in a pot for it.



Donna died a couple months later. She was writing a book based loosely on her family history about bootleggers during the 20's.

Em and I recently watched a movie we stumbled across while perusing Netflix. "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." Neither of us had heard of it, but the blurb said it had won some awards so we decided to give it a try. It was very good, even if it was in Swedish and we had to read subtitles. In the previews we saw it was part of a trilogy, so after we finished watching, we had to go online and read more and see what other movies were available. #2 is on our counter now (it arrived yesterday) and #3 is out in theaters (but probably on limited release since it's in Swedish). I mentioned the movies to a friend of mine, and she said "Oh yeah, the Steig Larson books were best sellers. He died before they were published so there's a big battle over his estate."

I was in a workshop one time where the teacher kept referring to fiction/plots/characters as coming from a "great Jungian subconscious pool", a never-ending stream any one of us could dip into. At the time, I took this to mean there are stories drifting around out there, waiting to be told, much the same as there are souls in heaven waiting to be born. It is only a matter of choosing where they will go. When a story chooses us, we only need to follow it and be truthful in the telling of it, faithful in the translation. It seemed to me as if it might be a little like being possessed. Relax and don't fight it, then write down whatever comes to mind and if you don't try to control it, if you are 'faithful' and 'truthful', you will have a good story when you are done. Maybe a bit like the Nurture philosophy - there is no such thing as a bad story, only a bad writer who doesn't give an honest translation.

In the past, this idea has made it possible for me to freewrite. To trust the Muse. To put no limitations on what I write - except for the parts that don't seem acceptable. Those I gloss over. But that's another discussion.

Now this idea of the great Jungian subconscious has come back to me, in light of the deaths of these writers - Donna, Steig, and of course Patty. Where does fiction go when the author dies? Does it go back into the pool and get doled out to another writer? Is the Muse more of a facilitator than a storyteller? Does she only decide who gets what stories? Like a cosmic telephone operator? Is my number unlisted?

Now my muse looks more like Lily Tomlin than the grim reaper.

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