This page will contain responses to prompts at The Taverna:
HOW CAN I SELECT ONLY FIVE BOOKS?
Only by closing my eyes in front of each section of shelves stacked with books, more or less arranged in genres, and reaching out blindly. Thus, I came up with these five. In an hour, or a day, there would be a different five.
- Die To Live – Questions and answers about meditation, existence, life, reincarnation, etc., with humor and wisdom.
- The Source - one of the first books taking one place on earth (a tell in Israel) and relating a fictionalized history of that place and surrounding area since the very beginning. Going through the history of pagans, Jews, Christians, Muslims, the book relates the beginnings of the centuries-old problems still affecting that area, and the world.
- Writing From Life: Telling your Soul’s Story – great prompts and writing information to assist you to dig deep into your life and its motivations.
- Soul Collage – Great information and examples on how to do collage to enhance the processing about who you really are and why.
- The Doomsday Book – science fiction where by historians in 2055 go to the 14th century to observe, unfortunately arriving in the midst of an influenza outbreak which complicates their project.
(see also http://tavernadimuse.wordpress.com/2008/04/20/how-can-i-select-only-five/#comments
My Write Environment
The place where I like to write is where I am right now. A comfortable computer chair with head and lumbar support combined with a card table situated by a window looking out over my backyard. From this spot I can meditate, read, or write at the table with my purple gel-pen. Frequently I lean back, gaze out the window, watch the birds, butterflies, bugs and bunnies, while clouds of all configurations coast by. I delight in the deciduous and evergreen trees of all hues of green, and revel in whatever flowers are blooming, from the huge wild rose bush with cascading white-flowered canes to the erect purple iris – I observe it all, and mull.
Mulling is the process whereby I throw various ideas and thoughts in, allowing them all to slowly simmer at their own pace as they recombine into new permutations and possibilities. It is my brain’s slow-cooking process whereby ingredients swirl around in the stew pot, colliding, passing by, softening and recombining, each adding flavor to the other, to concoct a great stew or soup. And sometimes an unexpected ingredient I forgot I even added enhances the end result.
I sit, surrounded by bookcases of books, art supplies, pictures of my loved ones, even a reproduction of a clay Sumerian tablet from about 2500 BC I purchased on one of many visits to the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia. I often wonder what people might think if they rummage through the collapsed remains of my house in Arkansas years from now and unearthed what would appear to be a Sumerian artifact. One of the unexpected ingredients surrounding me.
The place where I like to write is also the place where I like to meditate, read, mull, watch nature without the exposure to ticks and chiggers, plan gardens, listen to music; in other words, the place where I relax in ways necessary for my life. I realize, though, that I might sometimes need to inject a little more fire and play into my mulling to prevent the tendency to drift off with the clouds.
