Thursday, April 18, 2013

Chapter Eighteen, SISTER MYSTERIES converges with SWITCH!!: "Out the Door...I am Free!"

By Claudia Ricci

It has finally happened. The three novels that I have been writing on-line are all starting to converge.

In this novel, SWITCH!!, the story has a narrator named Gina Morrison, who is in the company of her friend Xandra, and the two women have just arrived in a kind of spooky redwood forest in northern California. They are just about to meet a healer in one of those redwood tree fairy rings -- where redwood tree sprouts grow in circles. It is a lovely setting and when I last left it, in Chapter Sixteen, I promised I would get back to it!

Well, so, now we are back to it. Or should I say, I am back to
sitting here, writing three books at least

one at a

TIME EXPLODED ALTOGETHER IN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I don't know whether I can WRITE THREE BOOKS ALL AT

1) SWITCH!!
2) SISTER MYSTERIES
3) CASTENATA

ALL AT ONE

thing is the three share characters RENATA ANTONIE BEING TWO PRINCIPALS IN EACH

are you beginning

HAVE I BEGUN to confuse you yet

you will keep reading?


It doesn't matter whether or not I've got readers. I know it is and always has been my job to free you, RENATA, because who else will but me but how? Now I know of course by now I KNOW THAT I HAVE GOT TO FREE THE NUN AND SOON BECAUSE THEY WILL HANG HER JUST AS SOON AS SHE SHOWS UP AT THE JAIL (to find out why she is headed back to jail just read you must you need to read the last few chapters or at least this one Chapter 66 with links to others.)

My job is to free her, and also free me, but I cannot see it how can I possibly write it, the next scene, unless until I have some image fixed between my eyes in my third eye IS IT MY THIRD EYE or just my mind, my imagination what exactly is that part of the mind that spills out fiction anyway?

the scene I'm trying to write is between Renata and some authority figure or figures I am just not sure how it happens

I think the courtroom is sunny, I can see the shadow that the large pained paned? window makes on the floor, and somehow Renata is flooded in light, she might be sitting at a table in the courtroom, but how did she get there, the LAWYER DELURIA PETITIONED THE COURT FOR A HEARING BASED ON NEW EVIDENCE

As much as Renata didn't want to bring in the lawyer, Teresa was write write write the scene between Deluria and the three of them

in the last chapter, the three of them, 1) Renata was riding in the wagon between 2) Teresa, her wonderful friend, and 3) Arthur, ART HER? (He was the man who found her in a wretched state after she fled the jail.) NOW SHE IS HEADED BACK TO THE DREADFUL JAIL, she is turning herself in, toward an almost certain death, OH GOD, OH MARY, help HER HELP ME HELP US BOTH

she's going back to give the authorities the missing journal pages, the pages that show very clearly that she did not kill Antonie, he basically killed himself with a little help from

READ THAT CHAPTER, READ THE MISSING JOURNAL PAGES WRITE NOW WRITE THE CHAPTER

It happens this way. It is mid-day, beastly hot, Arthur is pushing the horse at a fairly slow pace, which is not making Renata any less nervous. At one point she reaches over and takes Teresa's hand. That's when Teresa raises  her right hand in which she is clutching rosary beads.

If Renata had known that Teresa was saying the rosary, she would have asked to join, the two of them would have said the rosary aloud. Teresa bows her head, and squeezes Renata's hand.

OK, I can't write the next? the last scene? the next to the last scene? in this novel, I WOULD LOVE TO FINISH IT ALREADY and have something else in my head besides Renata FACING THE GALLOWS but

be patient, it's not there yet, not yet but I can write a letter to my dear friend Suzanne, she is wise beyond her years beyond belief she is one of the most amazing poets I have always loved her work, ever since we met in 1996 at a writer's colony called Montalvo, in those days I felt like a real writer, I had my first novel Dreaming Maples finished, more or less, I still hadn't changed the ending (in which I save the baby, Grace, which may be relevant to what I'm going through in therapy with Mary.) But back in those days I was writing a new book I called CASTENATA or SISTER MYSTERIES it seemed so easy to write it, I was writing about characters two sisters HEATHER RICOCHET A rock singer who performed in lewd ways on stage but who at age thirteen had wanted to be a nun or a saint or something crazy. And her overweight buffoon of a sister, clumsy Malvina. These two characters absorbed so much of my time, wasted? Well, it depends on how you look at it, that writing is part of the many thousand pages which got me

HERE. EIGHTEEN YEARS LATER trying to finish SISTER MYTERIES/CASTENATA.
This is the latest version of so so many, I would begin, I would begin, I would begin again and over and over. Finally I began writing this version of SISTER MYSTERIES in November, 2010, November 14th to be exact and NOW I AM ACTUALLY DETERMINED TO WRITE THE ENDING, TO FREE RENATA FROM JAIL ONCE AND FOR ALL, TO REVERSE HER CONVICTION. But meanwhile this letter is what I am writing

Dear Suzanne, I'm sorry I can't come to NYC today I woke up with such a wicked headache, I have pain in my head my neck my shoulders my back my legs. Aygh. I have to write you though because I came to the realization just this morning just a few minutes ago that I have to face my feelings once and for all. I have to try to figure out a way forward. As I wrote in my journal, every time I hear those interviews with authors on the BOOK SHOW they always bring me into the lowest spirits, it is awful to listen to those interviews with REAL AUTHORS knowing I will never be in the position to talk about my book(s.) I feel this morning that I have to look steadily and unflinchingly at this hard reality because it is/was a core issue in my depression. Can Mary my therapist help me understand or accept this reality? (YES SHE SAYS TO STAND BY YOUR WORK< YOUR CREATIVE SELF DON"T GIVE THE EXTERNAL WORLD DOMINION OVER THE WRITING) I know I don't want to be depressed any more not for a moment I went through hell this past year it was so so so so 

hard, no more please God please MARY PLEASE NO MORE! (I am not going back there anymore.)

I want to celebrate my writing, I want to send it out into the world with joy and pride. It's taken so much out of me to be depressed about my writing it might actually be the reason I got sick with the lymphoma eleven years ago but that is another story I really don't want to tell, another hellish episode ]

MARY SAYS EVERY SINGLE THING IN MY LIFE MUST BE CELEBRATED IT ALL ADDS UP TO WHAT I'VE DONE I'VE USED THE LESSONS AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO GOOD BECAUSE OF THEM> OR IN SPITE OF THEM, IT IS IN HER WORDS NOT WASTED TIME. 

"in my life.

"IN MY LIFE I'VE LOVED THEM ALL" THE BEATLES SPEAK TO ME

Mary says to me over and over that I must love my inner self, my "baby," she tells me repeatedly that I have to love and nurture my baby, pick her up, hold and comfort her, accept her feelings listen to them, dwell in them, accept and hold them near my heart, no matter if it's scary, no matter if she's sad and depressed, no matter if she's frightened or insecure, never abandon her no matter what feelings she brings to the forefront in me.  Mary keeps telling me that is my main job in life, it is my first and only duty, my first and foremost and eternal job (SHE SAYS IF YOU DO THIS LOVING OF THE BABY YOU WILL GET DIVINE HELP AND SHE'S WRITE I MEAN RIGHT I HAVE HAD THE EXPERIENCE OF GETTING DIVINE HELP) my job is to pick up the baby, hold her and reassure her, let her feel what she feels, never turn away or abandon her.

This morning it hit me for the first time: my first novel Dreaming Maples is all about mothers who abandon their babies! Candace, Eileen and even Lucy, Eileen's mother, who doesn't abandon or leave Eileen (I LEAN? I LEAN? I FALL I FALL?), not technically, not physically, except she does abandon EILEEN I LEAN emotionally, because Lucy is an old fashioned Italian woman who has no idea how to mother a modern young rebellious woman like I LEAN (EILEEN.) 

Curious that just today, for the first time, I'm thinking about D MAPLES  and all the time Mary has been telling me not to abandon or PUT DOWN my baby I never thought about Candace and Eileen and Lucy who put down who abandon their babies. ONLY AUDREY X, CANDACE"S PATERNAL GRANDMOTHER, SHE'S THE ONLY ONE WHO STANDS STRONG ALMOST A SACRED FIGURE A KIND OF GODDESS OF MOTHER NATURE AN ASPECT OF THE DIVINE FEMINE? Perhaps, in any case Audrey X DOESN'T ABANDON HER CHILDREN, ONLY  HER HUSBAND.

In the end, the so-called NEW ENDING I WROTE AFTER THE REVISED VERSION I PRODUCED FOR THE SECOND AGENT, AFTER TALKING TO THE VIKING editor

IMPORTANTLY Eileen saves Candace AND Candace's baby (GRACE) and maybe that is/was me saving myself (or the aspect of my psyche I am calling Baby C) and my art, my inner life, my art, my writing, I used to call my writing my fourth child, it's so hard to have your child rejected by the world, I must I LEAN I LEAN OVER THE BABY AND I MUST SAY TO THE BABY, it's OK THE WORLD MAY REJECT YOU, THE PUBLISHERS MAY REJECT YOU THE PUBLISHERS MAY PUT DOWN THE BABY MAY BE BUT I LOVE YOU ANYWAY I LOVE YOU NO MATTER WHAT! 

Is that it, is that what I need to do, to find freedom must I love and "feed" and nurture my baby my art no matter what, no matter that the publishers will have none of me or it I sit here with my shoulders aching and my head and my back. AYGH.

I want so much to write. I want to feel as though my writing matters, that I can make art/writing that people read, I want to be inspired the way I used to be when I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. In those days I felt genuinely hopeful that the world would receive and read...sigh. 

Then when I published the second novel, SEEING RED, I began to see I began to dread I began I could not sell many books and then I WENT KIND OF DEAD INSIDE.  MARY SAYS I HAVE TO CELEBRATE MY INNER SELF, I CANNOT LET THE OUTER COMMERICAL WORLD DICTATE MY ART.

Dear Mary, I still need help with this. I really need guidance. I know what you will say, embrace it face it with love love love love love your self enough to STAND UP FOR YOUR BABY YOUR ART

A I am writing this I am thinking/singing the Beatles: 

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE
ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE
ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE, LOVE
LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED.

And then I sing the other song:

"When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, whisper words of freedom/wisdom, let it be, let it be. Let it be LET IT BE (LET ME BE ME A WRITER) or let it be oh let it be, Whisper words of 

(How do I encourage to myself?)

WHISPER WORDS OF FREEDOM HOW TO FREE THE NUN HOW TO FREE ME FREEING RENATA I AM FREEING MYSELF, SISTER MYSERIES SISTER MYSTERIES is all about me freeing this nun in 1883 and me freeing me in 2013. ONLY 130 years separates us, HA!

SO SUZANNE, THANKS FOR LETTING ME RAMBLE VENT ON THIS WAY SUZANNE I WOULD BE HAPPY IF SOME DAY YOU WROTE BACK AND RAMBLED ABOUT YOUR WRITING TO ME!! :)

Have a happy day it's beautiful and blue out, a powerful blue, the color of the VIRGIN MARY'S veil. 

Love,
Claudia P.S. MARY MY THERAPIST INTERPRETS MY DREAMS, SHE IS A JUNGIAN ANALYST SHE IS AMAZING WHAT SHE SEES IN DREAMS! Last night I dreamed I was in a classroom again (God save me from that :) and I kept wanting to write/teach/understand the word "INTRANGIENCE," I COULD SEE THE WORD ON THE BLACKBOARD or MAYBE INTRANSIGENCE (or INTRANSIENCE )which I just looked up IT MEANS "the quality of being intransiGENT uncompromising hostility, irreconcilability unwilling to compromise unwilling to negotiate or make any concessions I UNDERSTAND I THINK I THINK THAT THIS FEELING ABOUT WRITING BEING REJECTED is a feeling that I cannot change or compromise. But now I realize I want to change, I do INDEED I REALLY NEED TO want to transform my intransigence. Mary says I should meditate on the word, that it might be my psyche wanting to change from a rationally-oriented mind to one that is more spiritual.





Chapter Seventeen: EXPLODING TIME, AND SWITCHING BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN BOOKS


By Gina Morrison

To write a good novel
you have to go forward
one scene after another
holding the reader's
attention by
building suspense and drama
and naturally, a good plot
oh and the book must
have action too
but sometimes you just
end up going
around in circles
or backwards 
doing a kind of
literary somersault
back back back back
or back and forth
in the case of this book,
or books, I keep
going back and forth

SWITCH!! ing
between this book, SWITCH!!
and the other books,
SISTER MYSTERIES and
CASTENATA,
please be patient with me,
GINA MORRISON,
NARRATOR AND AUTHOR,
because I haven't quite figured
out what exactly I am doing
juggling no less than three books,

WHAT I AM DOING
WRITE NOW NOW NOW NOW
IS

EXPLODING [ TIME ] LIKE
a bomb so everything ends up
POW POW POW POW WOW

NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW

Let me explain, first I had to go

far back in time as far back
                as 1883 when Sister Renata the nun is falsely accused of killing her cousin Antonie

I started writing about Renata in 1995 or was it 2010, it's both, it was just about the time that time started to unwind, I started meditating, my mind changed profoundly, some time ago, maybe 18 years ago which seems like a LONG TIME BUT NOT WHEN YOUR CHARACTER RENATA LIVED IN 1883 

You begin to see time in
You begin to see and feel INFINITY
So that now I see
INFINITY
WHEREVER I TURN WHENEVER I
SWITCH!! like I am
WRITE NOW NOW I finally see
what it means to
to free myself, to free the nun,
to do both at one time,
to find yourself myself, liberated,
to join the ranks of all the illuminated
or ascended souls
where the whole universe is

ONE GIGANTIC UNITY OF VOICES

I am myself unified as me,
as GINA, as the nun, Renata, and she is me

and she still stands falsely accused of killing her cousin Antonie
and I'm still trying to free myself of time, the ego, suffering
among other things.

I wake up this morning IN A NEW CHAPTER with my mouth as dry as cotton,
I've got to turn myself into authorities
I've got to turn myself 
INTO ONE VOICE THIS ONE
I, GINA, and me
slide
into
Renata.

I've got to turn myself in.

Last night, Señora

woke up in [CHAPTER 64 IN SISTER MYSTERIES] she was deep in a coma but she woke up
out of deep sleep and squeezed my hand and told me to take the missing pages of my journal
and tell the world show the authorities prove once and for all

that she? I? ME? WE are/is/am free and innocent

it wasn't me who killed

it wasn't Renata who finished off 

It was Señora and last night, she lay there in bed in 1883 and begged me to take the pages to show the

Was she really awake or did I/ME?Renata make that up or did she/we hallucinate
don't accuse me of that, don't you dare say
I am making up this whole
cloth, making this up out of
words alone.

ALL THE BOOKS I AM WRITING ARE NOT LIES I/WE/SHE ARE TRYING TO TELL THE TRUE TRUE STORY ONCE AND FOR ALL

The whole world is different now that I am Renata. The world is in my heart and my heart is beating to the
new rhythm of LOVE LOVE

This morning as Renata wakes up her mouth is cottony dry, as dry as her sheet on her straw mattress, [THAT IS CHAPTER 66] and I've got to figure out I am not sure where how to go next I know
she delivers

just give me a minute or

WHILE I TELL YOU ABOUT DOTTIE'S CAFE
where I happen to be, my laptop here right here write on the table

Mary my therapist said I need to live a little bit more spontaneously, don't rely so much on your mind so much she said live life as it comes, live by honoring your feelings rely on what you feel like know

So this morning after a doctor's appointment I felt hungry, I felt like coming back to

Dottie's cafe in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where

so many chapters ago, so many novels ago I sat and wrote a different version of this other novel, Sister Mysteries,
in those days it was called plain and simply



of this book I sat on the orange sofa at Dottie's

and I wrote under the pseudo

name

of Gina Morrison instead of

me and Renata united in time

the actual time being 11:57 a.m. on April 10th 2013, but remember time is meaningless in the realm of the DIVINE WHICH IS AN INFINITELY LOVING SPACE WITH NO CLOCKS now that I know that
now that I FEEL THAT

TIME doesn't really exist, or if it does it overlaps and things happen and then things happen and then they happen again but when you are in one time frame you are in all the others too,

just like these blogs which jump all over


constantly

NOW THAT I HAVE SEEN the light, glowing glowing the VIRGIN MARY RIGHT THERE IN THE LIGHT, now that I know my therapist Mary is right SHE SAYS TO BELIEVE IN THE HIGHER DEITIES SHE IS A JUNGIAN SHE IS AMAZING SHE SAYS it is wonderful that I believe in the Virgin Mary, she says that believing in the Virgin will help me take care of myself the Virgin Mary is just one of what she called THE ASCENDED HOSTS, an aspect of the Divine Feminine, she told me to invoke the Divine Feminine,

She also says that ANYTIME THERE ARE TWO OF SOMETHING

say, Renata and Antonie
or    Renata and Me

there is an opening, the two opens the possibility of some kind of synthesis, some kind of pairing, some kind of penning, a merging and then an emerging from that merging is

a unified voice the two yields the one, DENISE MY ENERGY HEALER SPEAKS CONSTANTLY OF THAT UNIFYING, THE COLLAPSING OF THE BINARY I HAVE WANTED TO BE THERE IN THE UNITY FOR YEARS AND

here now I am

the two into the ONE, which opens up the possibility of the DIVINE FORCES MANIFESTING THEMSELVES

that is what my therapist Mary said, she thinks THE WAY THERAPY WORKS IS THAT
IT IS A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO PEOPLE THE UNIVERSE IS ALL ONE WE ARE ALL OF US CONNECTED SHE THINKS SHE IS WIRED INTO MY HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS MY DIVINE SELF MY BEING and she is SIMPLY reacting and reflecting back to me, mirroring my higher consciousness like a radio tower

Isn't that a completely divine thought? We all ought to operate on that assumption, that the DIVINE IS READILY AVAILABLE

EVERYWHERE at all times of the day or night not just on Sunday or Saturday or whatever your Sabbath (ShABAT) happens to be

the entire world and everything every single thing is somehow sacred, MARY SAYS THAT I AM DOING HOLY WORK THAT MY ATTEMPT TO HEAL IS HAVING AN IMPACT ON THE WORLD WOULDN'T IT BE NICE TO KNOW THAT OUR SUFFERING HELPS ANOTHER SOUL I WOULD BE SO GRATEFUL IF THAT WERE TO HAPPEN

MEANWHILE, I am just sitting in Dottie's Cafe in Pittsfield where I have come for a second breakfast, a biscuit with cheddar and egg and a latte



today being just an ordinary day

BUT NO, NOT WHEN YOU ARE THINKING VIA DIVINITY,

I am drinking a fairly delicious a typical latte but think of it this way behind beneath woven through and through into top and bottom and every which way every ordinary event of this day every day every thing we call reality

HAS A DIVINE LAYER THIS ENERGY THIS ULTIMATE SPHERE THIS INFINITE PLACE  where

MIRACLES HAPPEN EVERY DAY

here just look at that gorgeous little girl playing in the cafe the little girl blonde girl she waddles and wobbles she is two,

she belongs to the woman Jessica who owns Dottie's

Jessica amazingly recognized me when I walked in I have not been there in months or years but instantly when I walked into the cafe, Dottie's, the first words from her mouth were:

"We had to get rid of that orange striped couch, and I thought of you," 

I was so touched she
remembered that I used to come in to sit on the couch

It was a place I tried so valiantly to write
this book,


instead of that book,

Sister Mysteries

or the other one, Castenata

I sat on the orange striped couch where there are now two wing chairs

and here is one of them, right now, holding Dottie's owner, Jessica and her daughter

Jessica is pregnant with child number two

number two according to Jung's protege Louise Van Franck, according to my PhD therapist Mary says wherever there are two of something, there is an opening into the INFINITE, into the realm of miracles, and

if you want a miracle HEAR HEAR

BABIES R A MIRACLE SO ARE PREGNANT WOMEN AND PETUNIAS AND ORCHIDS AND EVERY KIND OF CACTUS AND PARROTS AND OCEANS AND STARS AND PALM TREES AND SUNSHINE

and so too is it miraculous

THE FACT YOU ACTUALLY CAN READ THESE WORDS THAT WE ARE COMMUNICATING RIGHT HERE WRITE NOW ME TO YOU

I guess I need to stop screwing around and go forward with one or the other or the other story:

I am sitting here at a table at Dottie's thinking, what will Renata, what will I do? How will she/I/me go free? How will I/her/me go free.

SIMPLE TURN YOURSELF IN

into infinity, TURN THE

SWITCH!! Let Mary HELP YOU

PLEASE MARY HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME

What shall I do?

I must go forward, but for now I just sip the latte. I use my phone to take a photo of the cup and my laptop sitting side by side. AND
I DECIDE TO KEEP TYPING JUST THE WAY I AM BREATHING, AUTOMATICALLY
Sooner or later something will add up to something will work out, perhaps even a bookkkkkkk or three

BOOKS BUT THEY ARE NOT BOOKs YOU CAN PICK UP OR EVER PUT DOWN

"Don't ever put yourself or your writing down." Instead, write the books on a set of blogs. What fun!