something new

"Perhaps the excitement of a new idea 
comes partly from the feeling of freedom that accompanies the loss 
of the previous idea." 

 -John Tarrant  
Bring Me The Rhinoceros

 Something new, from this week. A girl and a dragon...

 

wonderful

"Oh," said Sister Marie out loud in her sleep, in her chair by the door, 

"how wonderful.  Didn't I know it? I did. I did. I knew it all along."

-Kate DiCamillo, The Magicians Elephant

I've been delving into a world of blackness and stars and flight as I work on a new story.  And so it feels like a good time to share this excerpt from Kate DiCamillo's book, The Magician's Elephant. The beauty of the language and storytelling takes my breath away each time I read it.

***
"As the snow fell, Sister Marie, who sat by the door at the Orphanage of the Sisters of Perpetual Light, dreamed too.  She dreamed that she was flying high over the world, her habit spread out on either side of her like dark wings.  She was terribly pleased, because she had always, secretly, deep within her heart, believed that she could fly.  And now here she was, doing what she had long suspected she could do, and she could not deny that it was gratifying in the extreme.
    

Sister Marie looked down at the world below her and saw millions and millions of stars and thought, I am not flying over the earth at all.  Why, I am flying higher than that. I am flying over the very tops of the stars.  I am looking down at the sky. And then she realized that no, no, it was the earth that she was flying over, and that she was looking not at the stars but at the creatures of the world, and that they were all, they were each- beggars, dogs, orphans, kings, elephants, soldiers- 
emitting pulses of light.
   

 The whole of creation glowed.
 
    Sister Marie's heart grew large in her chest, and her heart, expanding in such a way, allowed her to fly higher and then higher still- but no matter how high she flew, she never lost sight of the glowing earth below her.  "Oh," said Sister Marie out loud in her sleep, in her chair by the door, 
"how wonderful.  Didn't I know it? I did.  I did. I knew it all along."

 
-Kate DiCamillo, The Magicians Elephant

***

when we no longer know

"It may be that when we no longer know what to do 
we have come to our real work 

and that when we no longer know which way to go 

we have begun our real journey... 

The impeded stream is the one that sings."

-Wendell Berry, Standing By Words