TSS: Synchronicity in writing

As you know, Gentle Reader, I have just started writing stories again.  I am working on one now, that features a ghost that haunts a china cabinet.  My heroine, the owner of the antique store where the cabinet is currently on sale, has just found a packet of letters stuck at the back of the bottom of the lowest drawer.  The letters date from the 1800's, and she is just starting to look for any family members.

On Friday, while on the bus on the way to work in the morning, I saw someone reading one of Ottawa's free newspapers, Metro News, and saw over their shoulder  this article: "Wallet Found Sixty Years Later Helps to Reunite family".  The wallet was found in an antique black cabinet in an antique store.  I've linked you to the original article.

  I've cut out the article to remind myself that
1) stories are all around us, and
2)  coincidences abound in our lives.  Jung called them synchronicity, when something happens that is similar in some way to something else we had done, but from a completely different source.    Like a confirmation from our  soul, Higher Spirit, the universe, however you want to name it, I think of it as the frisson of energy you get when  something occurs and it answers us in some way about something we had started to do - a yes to a decision made.  Here are various links to synchronicity: Jung's description, (and I like the example given here of the dream a patient had, and then the very rare beetle showing up the next day); a dictionary definition, which comes from Jung, who coined the term; and wikipedia, from which I love this partial explanation: "Jung believed that many experiences that are coincidences due to chance in terms of causality suggested the manifestation of parallel events or circumstances in terms of meaning, reflecting this governing dynamic."  This is because I've met people who have argued that synchronicity doesn't exist, or it's invented because we are looking for it, hence we find it.  I wasn't looking on Friday, I was just seeing what the bus rider's newspaper had, and there it was. I had started writing my story on Tuesday.

I think it's amazing.

Have you ever experienced synchronicity, Gentle Reader? 

I know, some of you might be saying, "but Susan, this happens all the time!  People are always finding letters not delivered from 70 years ago, etc. " That's not the point - yes, it does happen.  It's the connection, the proximity of one event to the other, that matters. The link I instantly felt.  It's like the universe is saying yes, I'm writing what I am supposed to be writing, right now.

and it links to something else I have been doing:
It helps very much that I am enjoying writing it, and having fun bringing in my love of history and research, especially Canadian history!  I am learning about Ottawa's history now, which is not something I've paid much attention to - I know bits and pieces, how Ottawa was once named Bytown because of Colonel By, who built the Rideau Canal from 1827-1832, which is the waterway which links Ottawa to Kingston.  I didn't know it was built to transport goods and soldiers along a defensible line because of the War of 1812 with the US. Here is a link to the wikipedia article on the Rideau Canal, with some lovely old artwork as well as what it looks like today in Ottawa.

 I found the sweetest, dearest old house right beside the National Gallery of Art, where I have spent one evening a week over the last month getting to know early (earliest) Canadian art.

                                      
This picture is by Cornelius Krieghoff, who painted from 1830 to the time of his death in 1872.  He painted mostly rural Quebec scenes, featuring Les Habitants, as the French were called right up until the 20th century.  The house I found on St Patrick St looks very similar to this one in the painting.( I happen to love this painting also. )  It turns out this house, Rochon House, is the oldest house in Ottawa (but not the oldest building, which is from 1827), and a heritage site.  It was built about 1830, so when I look at it, I think of my ancestors who arrived in London Ontario in 1832, and wonder if the house they built in the wilderness, a log cabin, was smaller than this one.  The best link I  can find so far for the house is from the Ottawa Historical Society, here. I can't find a photograph yet.

 I think it's a wonderful, exciting feeling when so many different things I am doing, are all fitting together like this.

What do you think, Gentle Reader? Have you had times like this in your life?

 I've added to my collection of various books I'm currently reading, Capital Walks:Walking Tours of Ottawa, by Katharine Fletcher.  I have to find her Historical Walks, so for now this is giving me a way to learn more about my city, both for myself and for my main character.

So what are you finding interesting today, Gentle Reader?  Have you had any coincidences in your life lately, any synchronicity that has thrilled or awed you?

Fire Watch - Connie Willis

"Fire Watch" by Connie Willis is her short story that features her time-travelling continuum that Willis uses in-depth in Doomsday Book , To Say Nothing of the Dog, Blackout and All Clear. I've linked you to my two reviews.  I haven't read All Clear yet, that's on my immediate TBR pile.

"Fire Watch" is the story of Bartholomew, who is supposed to travel with St Paul, but because of a spelling error, is shipped instead to St Paul's - in the Blitz, in London, 1940.  Bartholomew doesn't have time to switch his history learning from the time of St Paul to the Blitz, and he only knows he is sent there to prevent St Paul's from burning down.  He joins the Fire Watch brigade at St Paul's for three months, which is the length of his time travel visit there.  And the story is him trying to do just that, save St Paul's at night when the incendiaries and bombs fall,  while he learns about the Blitz, while he tries to recall through memory aids what he needs to know about that time.  The memory aids  were implanted the fast way and so don't work until the moment he needs them.  So he bumbles about, learning everything as it happens, and then understanding what happens, almost instantaneously as the memory aids kick in. History happens and he is supposed to observe, as a historian, but like all the characters in Willis's time-travelling books, they end up doing, participating in history, and being changed by it.  There is no such thing as observing history, and part of the thrill and charm of this story and all her time-travelling stories, is that we get to experience that moment of history along with the characters.  By the way, I love the cover of the edition above - I don't own it, though I am going to try a copy now.  It's lovely, isn't it?

I had read "Fire Watch: before, several years ago.  So when I came across it in The Winds of Marble Arch, her massive collection of short stories (and still sadly no paperback editions have ever been issued, despite what Subterranean Press says, or if they did, they were so few that there weren't enough for the stores to carry), which I am currently reading from the library (because Subterranean Press refuses to publish any more in hardcover, which I would run out and buy RIGHT. NOW. if they did), I reread it again.  Since the time I read it the first time, I have been to St Paul's - if you look on my sidebar, you will see a picture I took when we were in London last in 2009, that we also have framed in our house.  I love that picture, it seems to capture the past rising up in the present, that everywhere you go in London, in England (and Europe), history is everywhere.  This sense of history is much harder to find in North America. We don't hang on to our history very well here, except in museums and in the US, the Civil War is remembered in many locations. I love that going about your every day life in London, you can see this beautiful awe-inspiring majestic church, that Christopher Wren rebuilt when it was destroyed in the 1666 Fire of London.  So much was lost in London during the Blitz, too, and this sense of loss, of history being lost, and trying to not forget it, infuses all of Willis' time travel books.  Why else do we study history, but to experience it and learn from it?

"Fire Watch" is stunningly moving. I forgot how good it is.  Here it is, online. I'm so glad it's available.   I cried as much at the ending as I did the first time I read it so many years ago.  There is something about Willis's writing that moves me, and this is why - along with her wonderful fun, zany, humorous, gentle, witty, smart writing, that I love so much. She never forgets that it's people that count.  No matter how prepared I am for her work to touch me, even in reading her short stories, I find she has the ability to pierce through to the important place where truth is kept.

Bonus review! another short story by Connie Willis:

"Letter from the Clearys" seems like such a quiet story (again, from The Winds of Marble Arch), and yet it lingers, this image of the world after it has exploded and left the survivors grimly hanging on.  It makes me realize how much in the 1980s we had to live through the threat of nuclear war - remember that Doomsday Clock, forever pointing at 1 or 2 minutes to midnight and death?  It is the story of a young girl, who goes to the corner store to fetch supplies - mostly seeds - and looks among the mail. She is looking for a letter from their summertime neighbors, who didn't come as usual the summer before last, when the end of the world started.  She is trying to hang on, and unwittingly reopens all the scars her family carries about the time - the day - the world changed. The Letter from the Clearys is also about us, as a human race, about how nuclear war might start with a bomb, and it is the small things that drive home the loss, the details, the way people don't always talk about what needs to be talked about, because it hurts too much.  The heroine, Lynn, aged 14,  reminds me of me as a child.  I was bumbling and awkward and forever saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.  I still don't have the greatest sense of timing.  Lynn wants to share the letter from the Clearys, because it's from before the bomb, and she doesn't realize the pain it will cause everyone to remember the way things were before. This is exactly what it would feel like to live in America after the bomb fell.  And you still have to live with people, and try to stay alive.  It's scary, and it's bittersweet, and it's supposed to be.  Brilliant, really. 

One thing Willis's writing is reminding me of, that I am discovering as I read science fiction this year, is how much science fiction is trying to find a way through the certainty of some global disaster or nuclear war or ending of the world - trying to find some way through the future, so that we have a future ahead of us. How do we survive?  what's the best way?  Do we have to leave the planet, is that our only hope?  It would be depressing fiction, if it weren't for this sense of hope infusing it, that we can find a way.  Science fiction is one way of pointing us to possible futures and outcomes. Connie Willis' writing (the time travelling series anyway) comes from a future where we do still exist,but things have changed, and they are trying to come back to see what they can save, or to see what happened.  It's beautiful and I love her writing, and this story, "Fire Watch", for showing that in the midst of war (the Blitz), there is time to care.

 "Fire Watch" won the Hugo and Nebula award for best novelette in 1983.
"Letter from the Clearys" won the Nebula Award for best short story in 1983.

The Sunday Salon: a little The Morville Hours for Easter

 
Did the Easter Bunny visit your house today?  Did he hop his way through, leaving eggs and treats behind?  He (or she?) did ours.  I have to admit that it is fun watching the kids race around filling their baskets with treats.  One of the earliest pictures of me is of me and my sister at Easter, with our faces covered in chocolate.  I still have the same delight in Easter.   Even though I can no longer eat as much chocolate as I'd like, I certainly enjoy it the same way! 

But Easter is about much more than that, however. If you are Christian, then this is one of the most holiest of times, the story of how Jesus rose from the dead.  It is a powerful myth, so strong that even in our society when consumerism is beginning to dictate 24 hour shopping, the stores are still closed on Good Friday and today.  There is something taboo about shopping on the day Jesus was crucified, and the day he rises again.  Although I am no longer Christian, I am thankful for the time spent at home, watching spring arrive.

For me, Easter is about renewal.  There are other older myths about this time of year, and whether it is about the Goddess or other stories such as the rebirth of Christ, this time of year is about that: rebirth, renewal, coming back to life after the long winter darkness. Here in Canada, buds are beginning to grow on branches, the tips of Irises are breaking through the soil in gardens, and daffodils and crocuses are blooming.  Spring birds such as robins have appeared.  The day lasts longer, so that leaving work, I am in light still at 5:30 pm.  I am so filled with joy at seeing daylight and the sun at the end of the day!  The air occasionally has the scent of the earth on it - it's still below freezing at night, and we haven't had very much rain to release the smell of the earth coming to life, this year.  In fact, we are so low on rain and have had so little rain or snow this winter, that we broke the all-time record for least amount of snowfall in a winter.  Already our water conservation authority is worried about water levels in the Ottawa River. So while I am enjoying our glorious sunshine and feeling my spirits lift with the increasing light, I am aware that we need rain.  This is part of life, and I'm curious to see if we will have a long hot dry summer, or if moisture will find its way to us this year. 

The Morville Hours at Easter

I was thinking of Easter and the seasons partly because of The Morville Hours, which I have been reading with Cath over at Read-Warbler.   I just finished the chapter "Terce", which is about April and May, in Morville, the garden, and the land around Morville in Shropshire, UK.  I didn't know where the colour purple comes from and why it's used on vestment robes for Easter for the priests and ministers. I was raised a Catholic, and Katherine Swift is rediscovering her Catholic roots at Morville, because of the nearby Benedictine Abbey.  She has based The Morville Hours on The Book of Hours, as it  was the book by which so many lay people  marked the hours of the day, in medieval times. Here is an image from Les Tres Riches Heures de duc du Berry, which Swift also discusses in her book.
 
 They are based on the old books the monks illustrated and used as part of their devotions in regular church life in the monasteries and abbeys.  Through these,  Western Civilization was saved through the Dark Ages.  The Book of Kells, the Lindisfarne Gospels, etc are some examples. Swift has taken the 24 hours that makes up a day in a monastery, and used it to write about her garden through the year, based on the agricultural year. This was because in The Book of Hours, the year was also divided and marked by images for each month, based on the agricultural season. 

Monasteries and abbeys had their roots in their gardens and the agricultural life around them.  The Book of Hours copied and made for the wealthy in the UK and Europe, were wealthy because of land and the richness of the land.  Before industrialization, everyone marked the agricultural year.

So, in the Book of Hours and in The Morville Hours,  Easter is marks the arrival of spring.  What I didn't know was that Easter moves every year because it's based on the moon.  The new moon in the calendar marks where Easter is going to be.  For me, this takes me right back to my desire to honour the cycles of the seasons and nature. I watched the full moon rise this weekend, and it was beautiful and spread so much light through Friday evening (when it was full) and last night.

The Morville Hours is about the seasons, and the roots of all the seasonal activities we do, from a UK perspective.  We don't have Lady Day here, March 25, but I love what she writes: "There was disagreement too about the date that the new year began.  Lady Day, March 25, was when the church year began - the Feast of the Annunciation, the date on which Christ was nominally conceived - placed where it is in the calendar because it is nine months before Christmas, the ritual date of Christ's birth..........And Lady Day  is still one of the Quarter Days, the date from which many leases and agricultural tenancies run, so beginning the Agricultural as well as the Church year.  A better time for new year's resolutions, I think, when seed is sown and life begins, than January, in the depths of midwinter."   We do have the Feast of the Annunciation, at least for those who attend church.

I like this tying together of the religious pattern of life with the agricultural way of life.  Even if I no longer follow the Catholic faith, I understand the rhythms and meaning behind it, and I really like seeing how it is based on the seasons.  It's the pattern of the year, and finding the right pattern that makes how we live make sense, is important to me. I want to live more in the seasons, acknowledging the ebb and flow of life around me, especially here in the city where I have to look a little harder to see it.  I really like what she says about resolutions growing better now, as we plant seeds and see life blossom all around us.  It makes more sense.  I have to wait until the long weekend in May before I can plant any new seeds, roots or bulbs  in my garden - we can have frost as late as that, here.  Until then, however, I will be watching my lilac tree blossom, my irises and garden come to life. 

So, this Easter, I wish all of you a day of light and dreams for the future, and knowing what seeds you want to plant in your lives as well as your gardens.  Happy Easter everyone, and I hope the Easter bunny did get you a book or a treat, too!

TSS - Mystery madness book reviews and Irish short story week continued...

It's been a long while since I posted for The Sunday Salon.   It is one of those gloriously bright and sunny Sundays that makes all the concerns disappear.  Today is a day for pleasure.  So, in this spirit, I wanted to review some books I've read lately, and another short story for Mel's Irish Short Story week challenge.

The first two are for March Mystery Madness, hosted by Christina at  Reading Thru the Night.  They also qualify for Wendy's Merely Mystery Reading Challenge 2012

 at Musings of a Literary Feline, to which I am finally adding some books to.

Collusion - Stuart Neville.  The sequel to The Ghosts of Belfast, this continues the story of Gerry Fagan, the ex-soldier who was haunted by the 12 people he killed in his former life working for the IRA. (See my previous post this week for the link to my review of The Ghosts of Belfast). He is a killer, but it turns out he has a conscience. He also falls in love with Marie McKenna, and makes a connection with her little girl Ellen.  To save them from the wrath of the survivors of the bloodbath that ends The Ghosts of Belfast, Marie and Ellen flee to England, and he flees to the US, where Collusion picks up.  Unfortunately for him, he left alive Bull O'Kane, the mobster from The Ghosts of Belfast.  Bull is now afraid of Gerry, and hires another hit man named the Traveller to kill Gerry.  The action starts almost from the very beginning, and we get the point of view of Gerry as he is threatened in New York, and then The Traveller as he starts to pick off the remnants of the survivors of the bloodbath, because O'Kane is cleaning up anyone who could possibly know the truth of why a politician was killed by Fagan.  The third point of view is Detective John Lennon, father of Ellen, who has never been permitted to know his daughter.  In Ireland, to join the police when you are Catholic, is to risk censure, and then he falls in love with a Protestant - Marie - and loses her.  Collusion is about him coming to terms with his own past, and realizing that since Marie has disappeared with Ellen, and people who were connected to the original killings are now dying, that Marie is at risk now. He is no saint, though he is a good detective, and he finally comes to understand himself enough to know that he needs to help save Marie and Ellen.  This is a fabulous mystery novel, one that is difficult to put down, and even though the characters are conflicted, they are real and this makes this a gripping read.  Will Marie and Ellen survive, once O'Kane uses them as bait to lure Gerry back to Ireland? Will anyone survive?  Is anyone who they appear to be?  Not in this book, not in this world.  It comes from having such a deadly conflict that asked people to betray their family, to hate a neighbor because of their faith, or background. This is the new Ireland, still coming to terms with the fallout of the past 100 years.  It's dark and violent, very noir and despite all that, love softens the edges, makes this the best kind of noir mystery, make this one of the best mystery series to come out of Ireland.    5/5
Hard-boiled Noir mystery for Merely Mystery Reading Challenge, and March Mystery Madness.

Ashes to Dust - Yrsa Sigurdardottir
This is the third in the Thora Gudmunsdottir mystery series set in Iceland.  I have enjoyed this series very much so far. The last book, My Soul To Take, I reviewed here. One and a half years ago!  I can't believe it's been that long since I read this series. Thora Gudmunsdottir is a lawyer who can't seem to help ending up investigating unsolved crimes and mysteries.  These are often through clients calling up her small law firm, and for her, one thing leads to another. Thora is a mother, and now a grandmother, and it's good to see that she has to juggle raising her children with her work, as well as being a divorced parent. In Ashes to Dust, Thora is hired by Markus Magnusson when he tries to block archaeologists from going into the basement of his childhood home.  It was buried under volcanic ash in an eruption in 1973, and most of that area was still uninhabitable. So Thora is there when 4 bodies, one of them headless, and a head in a box, are discovered in the cellar. How did Markus know something was there?  He claims he was getting the box for a friend, Alda, a neighbor of his before the eruption. Before Alda can confirm his whereabouts on the night of the explosion, and if she knew the contents of the box, she dies and shortly after her death it is discovered through the autopsy report that she was murdered. So now Thora has to go back to the other neighbors who were there at the time, and evacuated with Markus, to confirm if they saw him or not.  She also has to clear her client of suspicion of murder of the three men in the basement, because he knew something was down there. so she digs into Alda's life as well, to see if there is a missing link. She also has to find out who the men were, because for all this time,no one has reported four missing Icelandic men.  At the time of the explosion, Iceland was at war with England, which I did not know - I had forgotten about. When it turns out the men are English, they have to discover who killed them, to avoid any political pressure.  Mostly this is in the background of the mystery - the centerpiece is the volcanic eruption, and what it was like to live through, as Thora asks the villagers who knew the family and were part of the rescue mission, what happened that night in 1973. It's a very good mystery, with a shocking twist at the end that I didn't see coming.  4.7/5
Read for  The Professional category of Wendy's Merely Mystery Challenge , and March Mystery Madness.

The Atrocity Files - Charles Stross
This was my introduction to Charles Stross, who I had never heard of until Bride of the Book God reviewed one of his books a few years ago.  I finally picked up The Atrocity Files, and I have to say, it is good. It is a blend of science fiction and Lovecraft monsters, set in a bureaucracy and office setting that had me in stitches.  Bob Howard is the main character, a guy who has an on/off girlfriend, found himself working for The Laundry, a hidden spy office that deals with the supernatural monsters from other realms.  He accidentally brought himself to their attention when he solved a physics equation on the computer. This is the first novel in the series, and it is very enjoyable. It has monsters, a damsel in distress, soldiers, cool spy stuff, alternate portals to scary worlds, and an office boss from hell - really, Bridget and Harriet are evil paper pushers with forms in triplicate for everything, especially expenses. I enjoyed this, but compared to Moving Mars, it didn't have the emotional resonance that I wanted.  Then again, it is a satire, so probably should be read when I am feeling sarcastic!  It really is fun, and I will be continuing with this series.  I really like how Stross blends real-life history with how the Laundry came to be in the shadows.  Oh, and Hitler plays part, too, in the evil faced in The Atrocity Files. So it is a clever science fiction Lovecraft novel.  4.5/5

Mel's Irish Short Story Week - now continued until March 31/12
"The Sisters" - James Joyce
So, when Mel announced that he was continuing his Irish short story challenge until the end of March to give readers time to read some more, I was delighted.  In my last post I read an Irish ghost story which was very good and moving.  It is still resonating in my mind several days later. So I took the opportunity last night to pick up some James Joyce and try a short story from Dubliners.  It must be me. I read "The Sisters", and when it finished, I kept looking to see if the story continued on.  Not because it was good, but because I was confused - that was the story?  What was the story?  Even now, I'm hard pressed to say what exactly the story was. And yet I know I've enjoyed other things by Joyce.  So I'm thinking it was the story. I'll try a few more, and see. For now, The Sisters is a short story about a reverend who has died, and the reactions of  the main character and the reverend's sisters to the passing. The main character is a young man who studied informally under Reverend James Flynn, and has not been ordained yet.  He has a mix of hope and bewilderment that Flynn is dead, though it is difficult to say why exactly, which even he doesn't understand, except that he feels freedom at Flynn's death.  My interpretation is that the young man doesn't want to go into the priesthood, but doesn't know himself enough to know that yet.  It's a story that I like despite not being clear about it, except that the ending is bothersome.  It's like a moment in time, the full import which means rereading it (and I just did before writing this to be sure of how I think about it!) to try and get a feeling for what happened.  It's like having an entry into a family conversation where you are the stranger - that's what this short story feels like.  What I like best are the conversations, it feels like we are there in the room with the sisters, with the uncle, with all the different conversations that make up this story - it feels like we are in their sitting rooms, in Dublin, at the turn of the century.  I will be reading more of these stories for the rest of Mel's challenge.

Happy Sunday reading, everyone!