Stuck in My Throat

"Na'an came to me in a dream this night. It was early. I had not been in bed long and the night was newly dark. 'It is time,' she said, 'time to fix The MoonQuest on parchment.'"

 ~ The MoonQuest: A True Fantas

yI've had a raw throat and stuffy head for nearly a week now. Through much of that time, I've done little other than sleep, guzzle gallons of water and honey-infused tea, and clear my throat.

"Oh," you might murmur with sympathy, "a summer cold."

I don't look at it that way. Whenever something physical goes out of whack for me (mercifully, not often), I spend at least as much time tuning in to what in my emotional life precipitated it as I do to self-care. My philosophy is that if I look after the underlying cause, the symptoms will largely take care of themselves.

When the throat-clearing kicked in, I knew that it was about my voice. Not my speaking voice (even as I grew hoarse and teetered on the edge of laryngitis). My writer's voice.

And when my throat got worse on Thursday, after Anvil Springs producer Kathleen Messmer and I spent the afternoon compiling ideas for directors and a principal cast for The MoonQuest movie, I knew it had something to do with the film project.

I was even clearer that evening, after we added a particularly illustrious director to the top of our list.

This isn't the first time we've assembled an A-list slate of actors and directors for the The MoonQuest movie. But something about this director pushed all my worthiness buttons. I spent the evening feeling intimidated by the prospect of not only working with someone of that caliber, but of having someone that, well, literate, read my screenplay.

This director has acted in and/or directed nearly three dozen films, and has won close to half of the four dozen awards he's been nominated for. As well, two of his Oscar nominations were for a film that, indirectly, helped propel The MoonQuest book to completion. He's also had an award-studded history on the stage.

I spent the next day letting myself feel my fear and discomfort, grudgingly grateful for the opportunity to work through yet another personal growth issue, one that had little to do with a potential director and everything to do with me.

During the many years when The MoonQuest book was nothing but a stack of manuscript pages languishing in a file box, I kept telling myself that regardless of whether it was ever published, the life lessons I'd learned while writing it had been valuable beyond measure.

It's true. Writing The MoonQuest the way I did -- moment-by-moment, word-by-word, with no idea where my Muse was taking me with the story -- prepared me for a life of ever-deepening surrender to my story, to the life story that has revealed itself to me in each moment through that infinite mind I wrote about here a while back.

It's also true that I had to tell myself that, or I would have been hard-pressed to feel good about all the time I'd invested in a project that, for too long, seemed to be going nowhere.

Similarly, I kept telling myself through the day Friday that, in the long run, my current journey was not about whether a particular director would sign on, or whether there would even ultimately be a MoonQuest movie. It was about what I'm learning and about all the ways I'm growing along the way.

This morning, still hoarse and laryngitic, my head still feeling as though it was jammed with mucus-soaked cotton balls, I wondered why I wasn't feeling any better. After all, I had identified the root cause of my physical discomfort and had committed myself to doing whatever it would take to move through and past my feelings of fear and unworthiness.

And then, while I was out walking, I had flash of Na'an's words to a reluctant Toshar in the prologue to The MoonQuest book: "It is your story to tell," she insists. "It is for you to fix it in ink, to set the truth down for all to read."

"So many seasons of storytelling and still I hesitate," Toshar replies. "Of all the stories to stick in my throat, how ironic that it should be The MoonQuest, a tale of the freeing of story itself."

When, in 1994, I began writing The MoonQuest, this "tale of the freeing of story," I was freeing my story. I was dissolving not only Toshar's reluctance, but mine. I was breaking through not only generations of repressed creativity in Toshar's heartland, but decades of creative block within myself.

As I've written here before, I don't like the expression "coming full circle" because it suggests that we're returning to a place we've already been, having learned nothing and grown not at all. My preferred image is that of a spiral, where we return to a place along the same axis, but at a higher level of consciousness and understanding.

As I wrote in The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, "Each cycle’s completion returns you not to where you began but to a higher level of awareness, mastery, openness and trust." I wrote that about the creative process, but isn't life the ultimate creative process?

Now, I realized on my morning walk, The MoonQuest is once again "stuck in my throat." Not in the same place it was stuck 17 years ago, when the Toshar in me tried to avoid telling his story. It can't be. I've moved through many turns of the spiral since then, turns that got the story written, the book out and the screenplay completed and on the cusp of production.

What's sticking in my throat now -- what's causing my hoarseness and loss of voice -- is the prospect of taking The MoonQuest to a new level: letting it be read by Oscar-nominated professionals and exposing it (and me) to audiences far greater than the book could ever reach.

Like Toshar, I'm scared. Like the Mark David who was creatively shut down for so many years, I'm afraid of being judged...and found wanting. Like so many creative artists through the millennia, I'm terrified that I'll finally be revealed as a fraud.

And so my story sticks in my throat, as parts of me try to protect other parts from the perceived danger of moving forward.

Years ago, in the early days of my conscious spiritual and creative awakening, before I know there was a MoonQuest inside me, I had a dream.

In the dream, I’m walking out of a multistory parking structure when the uniformed attendant steps out of his booth and stops me. He won’t let me leave. I shout. He shouts. I shove. He shoves.

I woke from the dream drenched in perspiration, more angry than frightened. Later that day, as I had done in the past, I took the dream-confrontation into meditation.

"Why won’t you let me leave," I ask the guard, politely this time.

"I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll be out of a job," he answers simply.

"I still need you," I offer reassuringly. "But I need you to act more as a filter than as a gate. I need you to protect me more discerningly."

"I don’t know how," he counters.

"Are you open to learning how?"

He pauses for a moment, his face screwed up in concentration.

"Yes." He nods. "I am." He stands aside to let me pass from the dank dark of this structure -- this place of parking, of storage, of non-motion -- but not before we’ve shaken hands and hugged.

Today's fear, today's self-judgment, today's stuckness in my throat -- they all come from the present-day equivalent of that dreamworld parking attendant, trying to protect the only way he knows how.

Today, once again, I ask him to be more discerning, to widen the weave on the screen of his filter, to not only let me move forward but to come along for the ride in his once-again redefined job. And as I do so, I feel the rawness in my throat abate somewhat and sense some of the stuckness of the past week begin to unstick.

The MoonQuest is once again on the move...and so am I.

"I see it all now, in the leap of light against dark. The shadows will tell me the story and I will write what I see. I will write until my fingers and beard are black with ink. I will write until the story is told.  Only then will I be free to continue my journey. ..."
 ~ The MoonQuest: A True Fantasy

**********

• Read the full prologue and first chapter of The MoonQuest

• Read another excerpt from The MoonQuest  book

• Read more about The MoonQuest book and film project

• Order your copy of The MoonQuest book in hard copy or ebook format

• "Like" The MoonQuest book and movie on Facebook

• Tune in to Insight for the Soul Radio, August 22 at 7pm PT, when Mark David talks to host Charmaine Lee about his MoonQuest journeys. Use the same link to download/listen to an archived version of the broadcast.

Photo: Nightmare parking structure by Mark David Gerson.

**********

Please "like" my Facebook pages:
• Acts of Surrender book
• The Q'ntana Trilogy Movies
• The MoonQuest book
• The Voice of the Muse book
• Mark David Gerson

In The Moment...In Your Writing and Your Life

Too often we sit in judgment of ourselves and our work.

"This is not good enough," we think. "This will never be good enough." Or, "This story has been told better before by someone else." Or, "This book has been written before."

Know this now and for all time: It is good enough. In this moment, this word is good enough...and so is this one.

This moment is always as good as it gets -- in this moment. So make the best of it. 

In this moment, give yourself permission to write the worst junk in the world, the same permission I give myself in this moment when I fear what I write for you isn’t good enough. It is, in this moment. I must believe this, as must you, or we can never move into the next moment and then the next, when those moments, too, form the present moment.

It is good enough. If you do your best to write freely and easily from your heart, it is always better than good enough. It is perfect.

Whatever you write is perfect. Whatever you experience is perfect. Whatever you feel is perfect. In this moment. Which is the only moment that matters, for it is the only moment that exists.

• What can you do in this moment to bring you back to the present moment? 

• What can you stop worrying about, wondering about or trying to figure out? 

• What can you stop judging? 

• Can you apply those questions as much to your life as you do to your writing...as much to your writing as you do to your life?

Close your eyes for a moment. Focus on your breath. Be present. With your words. With your writing. In your life.

• adapted from  The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write (c) 2008 Mark David Gerson

• You'll find additional tips and inspiration on my website, where you can read my "Rules for Writing," sign up for my mailing list and read/hear more free excerpts from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.

Photo: "In Search of Lost Time" by Alexander Boden

Please "like" these Facebook pages:

• The MoonQuest movie

• The MoonQuest book

• The Voice of the Muse book

• Mark David Gerson

You Can Write (Yes, You Can!)

Close your eyes and remember. Remember the stories you invented...

Remember wonder and imagination... Remember make-believe...

You can write.

If you can read these words, you can write.

You're saying "I'm not creative" or "I can't make up stories" or "I don't know how."

Well, you are, you can and you do. And you can do it without struggle.

Whoever you are, whatever your background, whatever your education, you can write -- in ways that bring meaning to your life, in ways that touch others.

The ability exists in all of us. We were born with it, with a unique voice, a unique way of seeing and describing the world, a unique palette of textures, images and hues with which to express what we feel, what we see, who we are.

As children we concocted imaginary places and playmates, soared with seagulls, raced with tigers. Close your eyes and remember. Remember the stories you invented. Remember wonder and imagination. Remember make-believe.

Watch your children, or your neighbor's children. Listen to the timeless stories they weave. We all crafted similar riches as children but, somehow, life got in the way. We grew more self-conscious. We were told not to make up stories. We feared being different. We were taught to write a certain way. We grew older, busier, more cautious. Slowly and without our being aware of it, the door to our creativity edged shut.

Now we wonder whether the key is lost for all time. It's not. That key remains within your grasp, always. It's your birthright. It's your story, your voice. And it has value.

There are many ways to unlock that door...

• Start by letting the child you were back into your life -- not to displace the adult you've become, but to enrich it.

• Start asking how and why again.

• Slow down.

• Run your hand over a tree trunk.

• Inhale the perfume of an autumn evening.

• Get up early and watch the sun rise.

• Study people. See how they walk. Hear how they talk. Make up stories about them.

• Pretend you're on vacation and start a journal, recording your impressions of people and places as though seeing them for the first time.

Try writing for 15 minutes without stopping, without thinking, without editing. You'll be amazed at how much you can write in such a short time. You'll be amazed at how good it is.

Don't censor yourself. Give yourself permission to write nonsense. Give yourself permission to begin without knowing where you're going. Writing is a voyage of discovery. Be open to the journey.

Look for books and groups that support your creativity, that let you tap into the writer you are. Find a quiet place and quiet time where you can write regularly. Find a quiet place within yourself.

Listen.

The stories are there.

Photo #1 + #2 by Mark David Gerson: Story, AK + Pyramid Lake, NV.

Please "like" these Facebook pages:

• The MoonQuest movie

• The MoonQuest book

• The Voice of the Muse book

• Mark David Gerson

The Voice of the Muse: "One of the Best Books on Writing I've Ever Read!"

I don't usually post complete reviews of my work on my blog, but this review, for The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, so eloquently expresses my intent and philosophy in writing the book, that I can't help but share it here with you. The review was posted yesterday on Amazon as the book's 26th five-star review by author/coach Julie Isaac, founder of Twitter's #writechat.


A Guest Post by Julie Isaac

I've read dozens of books on writing, but none have moved me as deeply as The Voice of the Muse.

Mark David's words are not only eloquent, they have a meditative quality about them that takes me directly to the core of my own creative being. He picked the perfect subtitle, "answering the call to write," because his book is the embodiment of that call. Every page invites me to open, and then compels me to write.

His approach is decidedly spiritual, yet it's the spirituality of being totally present, open, courageous, alive, and consciously connected to your creative source. He often talks of surrendering -- to your writing, to your Muse, to your deepest and most sacred Self. He says that "when you sit down at the black page or screen, you have three simple tasks: Trust. Let go. Leap." There are several guided meditations in this book, but simply opening to any page, and reading, can give you something to meditate about, or inspire you to write.

To help me find a way to sum up what this wonderful book means to me, I opened up The Voice of the Muse to see where it would lead me. The page I landed upon was the title page for chapter 5. There, in large bold letters, it said, "listen to your heart." What a perfect message to receive, for the call to write both emanates from, and ends within, the heart. It is with our heart that we hear the voice of the muse calling us to write. And it is from the still and silent center within our heart that our "yes" joyously arises to answer the call.

Mark David Gerson's, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write sits atop my list of favorite writing books, and holds a very special place in my heart. I highly recommend it.

• For more information on The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write and The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers (CD), including text and audio excerpts, visit Mark David's website.

• Join Julie Isaac on Twitter every Sunday from noon to 2pm PT. Look for the hashtag #writechat.

Please "like" these Facebook pages:
• The MoonQuest movie
• The MoonQuest book
• The Voice of the Muse book
• Mark David Gerson

Once Upon a Time...The MoonQuest: An Excerpt

Imagine a land where stories are banned and dreams suppressed...a land where dreamers are tortured and storytellers killed...a land stripped of vision, hope and imagination.

This is the Q'ntana of The MoonQuest, a land where "once upon at time" is a forbidden phrase and fact the only legal tender...a land whose moon is so saddened by the silence that her tears have extinguished her light...a land where fear rules and storytelling spells death...

Imagine it...if you dare...

********************************
First published in 2007, Mark David Gerson's The MoonQuest has won multiple awards for both fantasy and visionary fiction and is now on its way to the big screen in a production based on his screenplay and produced by Anvil Springs Entertainment. It's the first book/movie in a trilogy, The Q'ntana Trilogy.

Dreams and storytelling are, not surprisingly, important elements in a story where both are outlawed. When Toshar, the story's reluctant hero, is sent out on his MoonQuest, for example, he's given no concrete goal or direction, other than to journey northward to the mysterious place of the moon's rising and to let his dreams and stories guide him there. They do, often mystically merging into the journey itself.

In this excerpt, Toshar has fearlessly stood up to his nemesis, Bo'Rà K'n. Immediately afterward, he collapses into a feverish coma...and has a dream...

********************************
Wetness touched my lips and dribbled down my chin. Coolness bathed my face. I tried to open my mouth to speak, my eyes to see. They wouldn’t obey. “What are you saying?” I wanted to ask. But I couldn’t feel my tongue in my mouth.

My mouth. I can’t feel my mouth! A flash of panic and then...I feel nothing... hear nothing...know nothing...

I’m falling...sinking...floating...breathing cool, damp air. Now, no air...no sound...no light. Everything is black...dark...empty.

Nothing.

And then, something. The faintest riffle of air. A light, feather touch. It’s there, then gone. There again, enfolding me, cushioning me...embracing me. Am I still falling? Everything is so dark...impenetrably dark. Everything? No, nothing.

And then, something. A distant flicker. It wavers and gutters as it draws closer, grows larger. A hand cups the flame from behind. The light is nearly upon me, dancing atop a yellow taper. No, gold. No, blue. No, red. The colors dance as the flame pirouettes. Now the taper is white, as white as the halo of hair behind it, as white as the robe emerging from shadow.

“Do you know me, Toshar?” a woman’s voice issues gently from the flame. Toshar. I know that name from...from somewhere. Where? “Do you know me?” the flame repeats, now in a man’s voice, equally gentle.

“You are fire,” I say. “But who is Toshar?”

“Who is Toshar?” The voice is male and female, neither and both.

“I can’t remember. Does it matter?”

“You are Toshar.” The hand falls away and, with it, the shadow, revealing an ancient face etched with wrinkles. Candle flames dance in eyes as black as the blackness that surrounds us. It’s a woman, long white hair flowing freely over her naked breasts. No, a man, his chest buried under a snowy beard. The face is male and female, neither and both. “You are Toshar MoonQuester. I am Toshar Ko’lar. We are one, you and I. One out of time.”

It makes no sense, yet I understand in a way that surpasses understanding. I reach out to touch the apparition, but there is nothing to reach out with. I have no body.

“What am I?” I whisper. “Where am I?”

“You are here and not here, everywhere and nowhere. You are dream, you are reality. You are light, you are dark. This place, too, is all that...and none of it.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“You will...in time. Why have you summoned me, MoonQuester?”

“I, summoned you?”

“Forgive me. I forget. It was so long ago.”

“What was?”

“This encounter, this marriage of past, present and future into the eternal now.”

“You confuse me.”

“Do you remember nothing? Nothing of Q’ntana? Nothing of M’nor? Nothing of Bo’Rá K’n?”

Memory’s door opens a crack. I pull it shut with a cry of pain.

“Was it truly that bad?” he asks, more to himself than to me, as his image begins to dissolve.

“Where are you going?” I cry.

“If you do not know yourself in me...”

“...then do you know me?” Holding the candle is a wrinkled crone, leaning on a walking stick. Behind her, beyond an archway and through a misty, fluttering light, sits a steaming teapot atop a three-legged table.

“Come,” she says. She releases the candle, which hovers in the air unassisted, and extends her hand to me. I see another hand -- mine? -- take it and follow her across the threshold. “Perhaps some tea will reawaken your self-fullness.”

“Grandmother?”

“Come,” she says, “sit on your favorite pillow and drink from your favorite mug.”

I cup my hand around the familiar piece of clay. Its green chevron shimmers luminously against my skin. I raise the mug and feel the steam bathe my eyes. As the sweet heat touches my lips and slides down my throat, I remember. I remember it all.

“Oh, Grandmother. I’m so frightened.”

“I know, child.” Her voice is the cool evening breeze that sweeps away a scorching summer day.

“But why? Why did I feel no fear then only to feel it now?” I start to tremble.

Eulisha refills my mug. “Drink this,” she says. “It will restore the balance.” Her eyes never leave me. “Do you understand yet who greeted you when you reached this world between worlds?” I shake my head. “You will be Elderbard, son of my son. What you saw was you, in the time to come.”

“But she...I mean he...that is, both...I mean, which?”

Eulisha’s smile fails to ease my confusion. “He and she,” she explains. “A union of all the qualities, masculine and feminine, resides in the truest of bards.”

“Will I...I mean, how...?”

“No,” she laughs, “you will not appear that way to the world, no more than do I.” Her voice grows serious. “Look at me closely. Look at me with the eyes of a bard, with the eyes of Toshar, Elderbard-to-be.”

I shut my eyes and reopen them. As I stare through the violet of Eulisha’s eyes, her face shifts subtly — a masculine jaw, firmer mouth, cheeks sprinkled with the salt-and-pepper stubble of a day’s growth. It lasts only an instant, then the familiar features return. There is so little difference, and yet...

“And yet we are one, as will you be when your time comes.” She gazes at me, her eyes boring through skin, bone and blood, then smiles. “And come it does. You ask why you fear once the fearful has passed.”

“Yes, grandmother.”

She lifts her mug and takes a first sip of tea. “Know first, child, that you needn’t understand everything, that mystery is among life’s greatest gifts.” Setting her cup on the table, she takes my hands in hers. They are like velour -- soft, smooth, warm. “You fear your strength. You fear your power. You fear your fearlessness. You fear the future because you cannot see where it will lead and you fear what you cannot imagine.

“You have glimpsed what may lie ahead. But you are only now building the foundation of that future. If you continue to build, stone by heavy stone, you and that Elderbard will meet again. If you continue to follow the path that is yours alone to follow, you will be that sage, the greatest sage in the time of Q’ntana’s greatest king, under the gaze of a grateful moon. If not... If not, then who can say?” She gestures to the door. “It is time for you to return to your friends. They worry and there is much traveling before you reach The Mir. Much traveling...”

As I stand, Eulisha’s image fades. “Wait,” I cry. I reach out but my hand passes through her as through a cloud. “What of my fear? I’m still frightened.”

Only the candle and Eulisha’s voice remain. “Walk with your fear. Walk through your fear. Walk on...into the promise.”

The candle recedes and darkness returns. Everything is black...dark... empty...

Nothing.

And then, something. Voices. Familiar voices. “...breathing regularly again...skin cooler...” “...more water...raise his head...” “...hear me?...” “...speak...Toshar...one word...?” Slowly, black turns gray turns cloudy and the mist dissipates. Leaves. A thick curtain of leaves, framing a face that peers anxiously into mine.

“Ro’an?” A hand pressed down on my shoulder as I tried to sit up. It was another dream. It had to be.

(c) 2008 Mark David Gerson. All rights reserved.

Read the complete, award-winning novel in hard copy or ebook form.

Photos #1 + #2 by Mark David Gerson

********************************
Mark David Gerson is a screenwriter, award-winning author and creator of The Q'ntana Trilogy of fantasy novels and films.

The MoonQuest: A True Fantasy, the first book in the trilogy, has won multiple national and regional awards, as has his book on writing and creativity, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write. Both books, and his The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers CD, are available on his website and on Amazon. Ebooks are also available on Kindle and Kobo and via Apple's iBook Store; the CD is downloadable from CDbaby.

The MoonQuest, the first feature film in The Q'ntana Trilogy, will be in theaters in 2012.

As a creativity coach and writing-workshop facilitator for nearly 20 years, Mark David has guided writers and non-writers alike to connect with their innate wisdom, open to their creative power and express themselves with ease. Mark David is also a script analyst and consultant.

Mark David is currently working on a memoir and on The StarQuest and The SunQuest, the book and screenplay sequels to The MoonQuest.

Please "like" these Facebook pages:
• The MoonQuest movie
• The MoonQuest book
• The Voice of the Muse book
• Mark David Gerson

Snap a Pic for Me and Promote Yourself / Part 5

Welcome to the latest installment of my online readers' gallery, featuring photos of people from all over the U.S. (and beyond) reading my books -- in hard copy or ebook form. (You'll find previous posts and pics here, here, here and here.)

If you'd like to join the online fun (and get your book, business, event, blog, website or other success promoted here and on Facebook), read on...

Do you have a copy of either of my books? If so, I'd love to include a pic of you reading either The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, The MoonQuest or both in my Readers' Gallery Photo Album on Facebook.

I'm also happy to include you if you're listening to The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers. Just make sure the CD cover is visible.

And to help you promote your book, event, business, success, blog and/or website, I'll include in the photo caption not only your name but your promotional info/link. I'll also post the next batch of reader pics here in a future blog item.

If you have my email address, simply email me your pic and caption information. If you don't have my email address, contact me via Facebook, Twitter or my website once you have the photo, and I'll tell you where to send it.

Feel free to send one pic or several and to include one book, both books, the CD or any combination. Just send separate photos for each item (unless you really are reading both books at the same time!).

Thanks for their reader pics to 
• Gabriel Sinatra (top pic, above), 
• Greg Halpen
• David Hamilton
• Eric Montoya
• Mark Hopper
• Douglas Beliakoff

Please click on their names to learn more about them and about what they're up to.

And please send me your pics. I'd love to add you to my gallery and let the world know something about you and your work and successes..










Please "like" my Facebook pages:
• The MoonQuest movie
• The MoonQuest book
• The Voice of the Muse book
• Mark David Gerson

The Story Knows Best I

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
~ E.L. Doctorow

So often, the story we're writing is wiser than we are. So often, our creativity begins when we abandon control and just let the story direct us.

As we move forward, writing the word or sentence we know, the next will always appear...if we're open to it. If we have our eyes on the road and our headlights on, if we're prepared to trust in the unknown that lies just beyond the reach of our vision, that unknown will become illuminated...and known.

There's a scene in my novel, The MoonQuest, that reminds me of that Doctorow quote. In it, the main character is walking a fantastical celestial road that only forms as he steps forward. As stressful as the journey is, the road takes him where he needs to go.

Ironically, that's the same journey I have travelled in writing each installment in my Q'ntana Trilogy of novels and films (The MoonQuest, The StarQuest, The SunQuest). Some days Doctorow's headlights showed me the next scene. Some days, they showed me only the next sentence. Some days, only the next word.

But as I surrendered to the journey -- and to the voice of my Muse -- the stories unfolded, magnificently, and in ways I could never have predicted, plotted or imagined.

As I write in The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write: "All I can do -- all we can ever do, in writing as in life -- is trust in the story. It has never let me down before. Truly, the story knows best."

• How much control do you cling to in your stories? In your life?

• Where you can let go some of that control and trust that the story -- the one you're writing and the one you're living -- knows best?

• Where in your creative journey can you more fully trust that the headlights illuminating your way will carry you to your destination?

Headlight photo by Peter Roome

Please "like" my Facebook pages:
• The MoonQuest movie
• The MoonQuest book
• The Voice of the Muse book
• Mark David Gerson

Inspired Quotes: Living Your Dream

"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try."

~ Beverly Sills

Dreams and Desires: A Guest Post

This is the second time author/poet Dan Stone has appeared on my blog. The first was back in November 2009, when he was a guest on my Muse & You radio show. Then, we talked about his first novel, The Rest of Our Lives, later nominated for a prestigious Lambda Award.

This time, it's to help celebrate the publication of his new poetry collection, Tricky Serum. In the following guest post, Dan tells about the power for him of dreams and of the moon and shares three poems from the new book. Not surprisingly, I'm partial to both themes, given their connection with my novel and soon-to-be-movie, The MoonQuest: A True Fantasy.

In fact, this is an exchange of sorts. Today, as Dan's post appears here, a guest post of mine appears on his blog: a dream-excerpt from The MoonQuest.

Enough from me. It's time to turn it over to Dan...and his elixir of poems...
********************************
Moon as Metaphor...
and the Tricky Serum of Our Dreams

A guest post by Dan Stone

Most of what has come into my life so far, or what I hope is on the way, started with a dream. I love dreams and I believe in them, and in one way or another nearly everything I do is connected to them. Maybe it’s a Pisces thing.

I believe the Moon is a perfect metaphor for the guidance that is our emotions. It reflects the light it’s receiving -- relative to its position in the sky, to the way it is turning and to what it is facing. The Moon is always making its journey and is always reflecting a focus relative to where it is and where it is going. It is always telling us something about the distance between what is and what can be.

The Moon’s phases are pictures of that emotional journey -- pictures of desire, pictures of resistance to desire. We can see new desires being born, desires waxing and evolving, desires manifesting fully, resistance to desire releasing, waning.

As the Moon makes its journey through the constellations, we can observe and feel the desires and resistance relative to that focus, that topic. We have endless opportunities to observe our progress along the emotional journey toward any and every desire that is active in us. Or we have the choice to sleep through it all -- to never look outside our window to see how we’re doing.

The Moon continues its journey regardless of whether we are conscious of it or not. The Moon does its job whether we observe or acknowledge or respect it or not.

If our feelings feel like they’re feeling us, all we really have to do is wake up, look through the window that is our focus and notice where the Moon is and how it’s doing. We can know then, and any other time we choose, what our feelings are about and where they are taking us. Our mood is only a mystery as long as we are choosing not to notice or pay attention to its position in the sky that is our own cosmos of dreams and desires.

The poems that I've included here, from my newly released collection, Tricky Serum: An Elixir of Poems (Lethe Press, 2011), are a sort of tracing of dreams and desires and the illusions that sometimes confuse or impede or delay them.

Whether present or merely implied in these poems, the metaphor of the Moon as our own emotional guiding light leads us on our journey through and to our dreams, to whatever extent we are able to pay attention, to listen and to learn.

As suggested by the title, these poems address the tricky prospect of elixirs ...the quest for the substance of our dreams, the magic potion for fulfilling what we hold to be our fondest and often most elusive desires. The poems are intended to be read as a progression, a journey through the process of seeking, finding and relinquishing our convictions about what we need or want...from an "other...and from ourselves...about waking up, or not...from some of the dreams we dream about the only life we can save..."


Luna Leading

She walks in beauty, yes,
but not just like the night.
She moves through the day as well,
a knowing goddess not a guess,
divinely sure of what she tells.
Time and tide and blood
are at her beck and call,
measuring her journey
through the stars, responding
to her signs and phases
even as she points the way
to any heaven that is held
close to the heart,
any distant hell that needs release.
She gently shows us where we are,
whether in or out of sight.
We push back the curtain
or pull the covers to our head.
Either way her lady finger gestures,
lures us to the dreams, desires
reflected in her light.


Awake

On the lake the winds are calm
enough to tell one breeze from the other
and the water lies as still as two lovers’ eyes
holding one another in the space before a kiss,
like sea desiring sky in a privacy before the dawn.

The earth stops turning
long enough to feel that we’ve arrived,
that a wish has just come true
and the only prayer remaining
is a thank you whispered to the trees,
attention to the hummingbirds and cranes.

There are times a lover’s arm around your waist,
his breathing in the night,
will take you home
and other times the memory
of his calling out your name
is all the joy you get to keep.

In the morning
dreams will drop you at your door
and drive away, leaving you to wonder
where they go, and what they came to say,
leaving you alone, awake,
and aching to go back to sleep.


Nondisclosure

I keep some things to myself,
knowing that disclosure
is a sound that sometimes
only dogs and critics hear.
I know the damage dreams
can suffer in some hands.
So I hold them close—
my dreams—
like newborns needing suckle,
like secrets that are magic
only when they are not shared.
Because they’re mine alone
they are untouched . . .
undefiled . . .
unattached to any word or deed,
to any face or form,
to any foreign need.
These dreams they are the force
that moves across the surfaces
and through the depths
and to the heights
of what I most believe . . .
like the stars that speak
the language I am learning,
like a god who only
answers prayers from me.
In my silence I can keep
the faith I feel,
leave it burning and becoming
what I want, without explaining.
I can choose it anytime
and it will always call me
to a place that’s clearer,
sweeter, more than
where or who I’ve been,
more than any company I’ve kept
or kingdoms that I’ve seen.
These dreams, they know the way
and in the not revealing,
in the nondisclosure,
I am getting where I’m going,
I am letting myself go.
I am just not telling.

********************************
Dan Stone is the author of Tricky Serum: An Elixir of Poems, and the gay romantic fantasy, The Rest Of Our Lives: A Novel (Lethe Press, 2009). He's also an essayist, photographer, intuitive coach/consultant and college instructor.

Dan's fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in Focus on the Fabulous: Colorado GLBT Voices, Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling, White Crane Journal, A&U Magazine, Astropoetica, Mostly Maine, Bay Windows, Gents, Badboys, and Barbarians, New Gay Male Poetry, and Rebel Yell: Stories by Contemporary Southern Gay Authors.

He is the co-creator with artist Cher Odum of a line of original poetry-art and author of the spiritual blog, The Shower Channel. More information about Dan, his books, fine art photography and consulting services are available through his website.

• From now until July 4, get the ebook version of Tricky Serum: An Elixir of Poems for only $5 when you purchase the book at Smashwords using this coupon code: JG44A. The paperback version is currently available at Amazon.com, as is Dan’s novel, The Rest of Our Lives (Lethe Press, 2009)

Risky Writing

"If 20 percent of the people aren't against you, then you're not going anyplace interesting, whether you're name is Martin Luther King Jr. or whether you're a dorky management guru [named Tom Peters]."
~ Dorky Management Guru Tom Peters

Creative expression is about risk-taking. It's about boarding the Starship Enterprise, taking off for parts unknown and going where no one has dared to go before.

When you do that, chances are that not everyone is going to like what you've written. Chances are someone is going to hate what you've written.

It's all right to offend people, to push people's buttons, to take them up to that ledge on which we, as artists, live...and then to give them a gentle nudge.

Art is about pushing boundaries. It's about forcing people (including the artist) out of their comfort zone and inciting them to reexamine their beliefs and rediscover who they think they are. Sometimes, it's about getting people mad at you.

"You've got to go out on a limb," American humorist Will Rogers is reputed to have said, "because that's where the fruit is."

• Where are you going out on a limb and taking risks with your writing? With your life?

• Where are you clinging to the tree trunk and playing it safe?

• Where are you willing to get people riled up? Where are you holding yourself back for fear of being judged or attacked?

Commit today to taking more risks, to going out on a limb. Commit today to letting yourself be judged...and letting it be okay.


Photo Credits: Tom Peters by Allison Shirreffs; Will Rogers from www.willrogers.org