Traversing Landscapes & Stories

Sikkim is filled with temple secrets, sprawling tea gardens, and waterfalls that flow down mountains and over roads. It oozes untamed lands, mysterious rituals, and unspoken words hidden in the folds of everything. This land swallowed me and showed me what it means for a place to be woven with mystery, for a place to haunt you long after you leave. But that is not where this story begins.

On a high hill over looking the Batasia Loop where the toy trains make stops coming and going from the city, we sat in our room and gazed toward the hill stations scattering the landscape. And in the far distance, Mount Kanchanjanga loomed high above the clouds. We sat in the our spacious, sparse room wrapped in our warmest clothes, attempting to acclimate to the high elevation and cold temperature--from Delhi to Darjeeling in one day is bound to shock anyone's system. 

Five in the afternoon sunsets and late night dinners with the windows wide open. The alarmed looks we'd get when we asked for them to be shut. Climbing near vertical stairs that narrowly squeezed between the buildings etched into the mountainside, riding the train from the city back to our hotel as it wound around the cliffside in slow motion. 

In the afterglow of the sunset, we followed the train tracks and made our way up the steep hill to our hotel. Like the vibe of Twin Peaks, one could easily lose themselves in the ambiance, the lurking surrealness, an underbelly of strange. But this was just the edge. We hadn't even crossed over into the vast, mystifying land of Sikkim yet. 

Sikkim is a place you energetically feel and visually absorb. It's one that cultivates magic and holds secrets. And if you move slow enough and listen, it has layers of stories to tell. Themes of intrigue, meandering detours, and raw beauty dominated our entire trip. The towns, the villages, the temples, the mountains, the roads, the people all veiled behind something invisible and indescribable.

The iconography of all the Tibetan Buddhist temples throughout the state is wild enough to stir one's imagination in strange and dark directions. I think of The Lightness and the strange, dark path the characters go down as they dig deeper into the esoteric practices of Tibetan Buddhism that lead them nowhere good. I can see how and why it happened. I tend to lean into these hidden realms, exploring just far enough, but never so far as to lose myself. But Sikkim doesn't just lure you to the edge, it pushes you to the center and leaves you grasping for the familiar which is no longer there. 

Olivia's journey began as something entirely different. Much like Richard from the Secret History or Samantha in Bunny, these characters were simply on a path that led them straight into the orbit of darkness with a gravitational pull so strong they couldn't escape. As the familiar falls away, they each lose sight of their path and begin a new journey with no sign posts or memory from where they came. 

I stood in the small room at Pemayangtse Monastery and stared at the Tara covered walls. Stories of the goddess told through murals, her image ancient, yet evoking something much closer to me. In an early draft of my novel, there was a nameless minor character that stood in the background of everything happening around her. But a dear reader of that draft honed in on her and asked all the right questions. This is her story, my friend told me. This is who you are channeling. Ask her name and tell her story. By the final draft, Tara had become a far more important character than I had ever planned. 

Tara, I later learned, is commonly translated as star or planet. When I dug a bit deeper, I discovered the root of the word comes from the verb "to cross" as in to cross over as stars and planets cross the sky. Without giving too much of my story away, the name represents my character to her core. To walk into this room and see this goddess painted across the walls felt more than a coincidence. It felt inevitable. Another reinforcement that when we stop looking and forcing meaning onto everything, it simply appears. 

We crossed Sikkim from west to east and back again, hours in a car over one lane gravel roads that hugged cliff edges, moved across remnants of  avalanches where boulders were still blocking half the road, through water fall flows that cascaded down mountainsides and over the roads. Getting from point A to point B was not for the faint of heart. But the majestic untamed wildness of it with eyes wide open, proved to be a risk worth taking.

We uncovered hidden gems tucked down steep city staircases and up endless ones etched into mountainsides. Within sacred spaces and behind locked doors. In cups of chai, pages of books, inscribed along the walls of a rare Hindu temple. 

I could go on about all the wonders our trip entailed--from the mist and prayer flag covered peaks of Lake Tsomgo to getting caught up in Yuksom's local Diwali celebration that involved decorating cows and being serenaded by villagers in the night. Precarious hikes and leech attacks. Quaint bookshops and cozy libraries. But I will end with a story about ghosts and shadows.

After nearly not finding a ride out of Yuksom, we ended up on a three hour detour that landed us in  Rinchenpong--a far flung, rundown village on the edge of nowhere. Most guesthouses were shuttered and many buildings abandoned. Clouds covered the view of Kanchenjanga, and life shuffled around us as though we were ghosts floating through the town. 

One hundred years prior, Russian painter Nicholas Roerich had passed through painting some of his most well known works of the Himalayan Mountains. And not too many years before that, Rabinranath Tagore had written one of his Nobel winning poems there. It was easy to picture the place 100 years prior as not much developed over those years, a forgotten place existing in the shadow of the mountains, haunted by what was or what could have been, where people pass through and feel the distances between. We didn't linger too long, and being in our most remote, off the beaten track destination, we were once again nearly stuck. 

But we did eventually find our way out and made our way to Kalimpong where we rested and recovered and gazed northward toward the mountains and the vast land we had traversed. 

Unlike the characters in The Lightness or my character Tara, I've crossed back from somewhere otherworldly with stories and impressions that I carry with me. These days I'm not so sure I ever fully cross from point A to point B, but continue to traverse layers of places and stories and people, including myself.

As we cross into this new season and into the new year, what will you carry over with you? What ghosts and shadows will you shed or choose to embrace? Or will you simply traverse the complex layers of this raw and wild universe again and again? 

Worlds of Words

"What an astonishing thing a book is....one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person....perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding people together who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." --Carl Sagan

Something akin to telepathy, books bring you inside the mind of another, far removed from where you stand, transmitting thoughts and insights and channeled worlds directly to you here, now. I can I travel deeper and further than anywhere I could reach on earth--through time and space, the world over, and into dimensions and realities that I otherwise would not have access. 

I've written about this idea before--from my experiences of looking up into a dark, clear moonless night sky to sitting in deep meditation--tapping into realms beyond what can physically be seen or experienced. But in the case of reading, I stare at words and allow my imagination to transport me elsewhere--to a time, place, land, culture, body, or mind, that is unknown to me. I lose myself in these worlds and bring pieces of them back into my reality. Perpetually shifting the way I think about and see the world around me and the people in it. 

Donna Tartt had once said in an interview that reading was a kind of concentrated experience, one that adds to our understanding of human nature that is otherwise very difficult to have. I believe this is true. As an undergraduate, I studied psychology, but about halfway through my program, I became disillusioned with the whole idea. The best way to know people, human nature, and the world outside of our own experiences and interactions is by reading. And so, I abandoned the idea of studying psychology and became even more of an avid reader of literature and eventually a writer, a creator of worlds. 

I lose myself in these worlds of words, and then I rip them apart. I analyze the structure, the voice, the craft, and the whys and the hows. Whereas writing, for me, is an intuitive act that sprouts from elsewhere, reading (including my own work) is an act of purposeful exploration, pulling back veils and uncovering the hidden layers between the written words. 

And so, in the spaces between traveling, I'll be exploring these spaces between words and sharing the multilayered universes of books. Those worlds of words that have left me spellbound and changed. I will write about individual books and my favorite genres. Expect speculative science fiction, dark academia, magical realism, and postmodern / experimental of all various forms. And I might throw in some memoir and nonfiction too. 

And now, where to begin? 

I will let the seasons and general happenings in my life dictate. What is resonate at that moment. I keep so much inside--what wants to spill out? What books do I keep revisiting in my mind, mulling over and over until I want to burst? That is where I will start. 

And what about you? What books do you want to step inside of and never leave? What books haunt you? Which ones have stuck with you over time and changed your life and they way you see the world out there? 

Sacred Journeys

🗝

Back in December, I had decided to shelve my first novel. I had worked on it, on and off, for the better part of a decade and spent about two years trying to find an agent to represent it. It was strange, experimental, and ambitious. Over the years, I'd gotten all kinds of contradictory advice from all kinds of people from all walks of life on how to improve it. All I gained from that experience was confusion and frustration. I had other projects to focus on that weren't quite as polarizing. I knew I needed to let this one go. And so I did. I surrendered it fully. 

Then, a few days after I returned from India in mid January, something peculiar happened--a serendipitous anomaly that has made all my efforts, risks, and patience worth it. 

∞

Mid-March. Our pants rolled to our knees, bags over our heads, we hopped off the small, longtail boat and took in the surroundings--where savanna meets sea, a desolate landscape of wind whipped sunbeds and swings. A nothingness, full of silence and secrets, took us in and taught how to witness the world in a new way. When you give up looking for it, paradise reveals itself.

🗝

She had read our Aeon essay and followed the link to my blog where she learned that I was a fiction writer with a completed novel. She was an agent at a major agency, and she wanted to read more of my work. After vetting her far more than necessary, I sent her my query and sample pages from the novel I had shelved a month prior. Less than two weeks later, she asked for the whole manuscript. And once again, I let it go.

∞

From deserted beaches to busy mountain villages, we hiked into the forest and took the least traveled path up hundreds to stairs and along a ridge, high up in the jungle canopy. We stepped with attentiveness, careful of faulty steps and slippery ground. In every direction, a misty atmosphere landscape made of dreams and fairy tales enveloped us. Rainy season in the mountains. Ephemeral and wild, ungraspable. 

To counteract my brushes with the impermanent, I began to write 500 words a day toward my second novel with uninhibited furor, my fleeting imagination grounded into the permanent.

Late March. While on another nearly deserted island of slow life sounds and perpetual sunsets, she called me to talk about the potential she saw in what I was doing. She wanted to work with me. And in an instant, everything changed. A new adventure, a new trajectory, new decisions to be made. 

🗝

I thought about not telling anyone. Keeping it a secret because I'd always believed that holding the sacred close kept it potent, kept it magical. And maybe this is true in some circumstances like finding unknown, pristine islands and beaches. But in other cases, there is magic in sharing the journey.

Going the traditional publishing route is a long process and nothing is guaranteed--the book still needs to be sold, then published, then released. But unlike other paths, there is more potential for me to find success, for more doors to open that otherwise would remain closed. I will continue to be patient as I move forward on this path. And I'm choosing to bring you along on this journey--however far it goes. 

I hope this spring has been treating you well. And I hope this summer brings you many kinds of journeys--those you choose to share and those you keep close to your heart. Tell me about a journey you are currently on--creative or otherwise. How has it changed you or guided the direction of your life?

Taking Comfort

Kerala, January 2016

What strange trajectories life can take. 

I remember thinking this lying in my bunk at the Ashram, staring up at the world map pinned to the crumbling wall next to me. I'd been in India for less than a week, and I had already found a rhythm to my days and nights, enveloped in comfort--more comfort than I'd felt in a long time. Ever, in fact. Comfort. A word as foreign to me as everything I was now surrounded by. I had walked away from one life to live a completely different one. I'd done this before so the concept wasn't new to me, but India was. And, I was noticing, so was comfort.

Chiang Mai, December 2023

I'd left Chiang Mai in a state of discomfort days before the new year. Six weeks prior, I'd returned from the US to an unwelcoming energy that left me frustrated, drained, and eventually injured in a way that stopped me from doing many things. There had been a series of events stretching back to earlier in the year that had me questioning my relationship to this city and many people in it. Was I still thriving here? Was I tapped into community in the same way I once was? Did I have any friends left I could turn to and trust in a time of crisis? Had I outgrown my time here? 

Kolkata, January 2024

In the heart of a bustling city, I found all the answers I needed. Venturing out of the comfort of our cozy Kolkata hotel and later the safety of the monastery, I expected to get caught up in the chaotic energy of the world around me. I expected discomfort. But, much like my first time in India, I didn't. In the midst of nonstop traffic and honking and crowds of people, I found peace. 

I found comfort in a bookshop off of busy College Street where we found a book I'd been trying to track down for nearly a year. I found comfort (and the best coffee ever) in a well known noisy, crowded café. I found comfort wandering parks and libraries, sipping chai at a small roadside stall, and meeting monks and philosophers and enthusiastic students. I found a sense of acceptance and belonging I'd forgotten I could feel. 

Rishikesh, March 2016

After nearly three months in India, it was in a yoga teacher training course where I finally learned not to get caught in the washing machine (as our teacher so eloquently put it)--a lesson I'd be reminded of again and again over the years, one that would bring me back to center when the world around me seemed to keep knocking me down and luring me back into the spin cycle.

Goa, January 2024

The dark sky took me by surprise. It had been awhile since I'd seen sky so clear--the constellations and planets brilliant against the moonless sky. We walked the length of Agonda Beach, from one edge of the bay to the other and back. The gentle break of the waves was the only sound, and their cool splash around my ankles kept me grounded. I'd only been to a handful of places like this in my life--dark sky and ocean--one of the last being on the northern coast of Borneo several years ago, one of the first during a journey induced by a hypnotherapist nearly 10 years prior, learning then that this space of dark sky and water was where I needed to be to feel safe, to bring me comfort when I needed it most.

Chiang Mai, January 2024

After having spent nearly four decades of my life in a mostly constant state of discomfort and anxiety, what comfort I found lying in that Ashram bed I've carried with me. I'd like to think it's what's guided me toward and away from most people and places and things that have crossed my path these past 8 years. Being back in India reminded me what comfort feels like. I returned to Chiang Mai with a renewed sense of vitality and a plan to help me navigate through my life during the times I'm based here. So far, it's working. 

Where do you find comfort? What brings you back to it when you find yourself spinning in the washing machine? 

The Last Quarter

At first it was challenging--the constant movement, disrupted sleep, the unfamiliar yet familiar sights and sounds. The vast distances between point A and point B. The unanticipated caution, kind attention, and eventually comfort. I became accustomed to all these things and grew to enjoy them to the point I didn't want to leave, not quite yet anyway. Hindsight or perhaps intuitive foresight is something else isn't it. 

Week 1: Conduit

Maria and I drove south from the valley to the coast and stood silent on the cliff edge. The ocean violently slammed into the rocks, then receded. The silent stories from my past slammed into me, then receded. I no longer need these stories to remind me of my strength and resilience. Why do I keep coming back to this town, these cliffs, and these memories to be reminded of what I survived and left? Like the four leaf clovers and daisies that grow through the cracks of hardened cement, the good memories and accomplishments from this era of my life find their way through the bad and settle like a cool mist, gently obscuring the harsh edges of everything. 

I flew further into my past, to Ohio, where the remoteness and the distance from everything familiar created a vacuum that sucked me into a vortex I nearly couldn't pull away from. A stark, cold late October chill hung in the air. I was at the mercy of everyone and everything. The unbreathable environments, the hospital and graveside visits, faulty cars, and long distance phone calls in the frigid rain gave way to long overdue catch-ups, a cozy hotel room, astrology readings, and surprise birthday parties. 

I've only been back to Ohio a handful of times since my college graduation. And each time I return, I find significant pieces of my past erased from existence--people, schools, businesses, homes. I stood on the edge of the property and gazed over the flattened landscape. An absence hung heavy over the emptiness. But like a conduit standing on nothing but memories, they bubble up from the ground and move through me, then finally to somewhere beyond. 

On my last night, the night before my birthday, I came back to my friend's house in Columbus--her kids had made me a birthday cake, Halloween themed and all. A send off to my next destination. I closed my eyes, made a wish, and blew out all the candles.

Week 2: Distance

Vast and distant and desolate, on a Gulf island where the desert meets the sea, waves crashed halfway under the stilted, front row houses. In other spots old piers dead ended over sand dunes stretched over swaths of desolate beach, the ocean roared in the far distance. A delicate dreaminess permeated everything, and I took it all in--the cocktail parties and wine tastings, community yoga classes and events, talk of the the town hall and island meetings. Gilmore Girls vibe was strong, another world completely removed from everything in my normal life, and I embraced it.

I rode a beach cruiser bicycle from one end of the island to the other. And on Halloween night, I dressed up and gave candy to trick-or-treaters in the public park. A family of farmers sat across from me with a small petting zoo of goats dressed as unicorns. This world, so surreal, yet so tragic, so beautiful, yet so painful.

Week 3: Suture

The disjointed details fell over each other, and in my mind, stitched together like a quilt wrapped around me, filling me with patchwork of memories. The taste of the soup at the Tibetan restaurant in Kensington Square, the warmth of the hot cocoa at the Soma chocolate shop after running through the freezing rain at dusk as our umbrellas flipped inside out, the crunch of brown and yellow fallen leaves on the winding pathways of High Park and the way the sunlight bent through the branches of the strange ritualistic structures we stumbled across, the click of chess pieces moving around the board, moody wine bars, and finding calm in a cup of chai amongst the chaos of Diwali. Evening chats around the fireplace and moka coffee mornings. 

The endless bus and train rides where all the characters of some Toronto story came and went. On one particular trip, I sat across from a college girl wrapped in so many scarfs she nearly vanished beneath them. She wrote pages and pages in a journal, perhaps taking notes, collecting stories, reimagining lives in other worlds.

Week 4: Enfold

Old libraries, academia, warm, buzzing cafes, organized protests, college lawns full of students lounging in the grass chatting, and autumn giving way to winter--Providence emanated the ambience of a Donna Tartt novel, a world I could too easily lose myself in. We wandered the university pathways and in and out of the old, drafty New England houses turned offices, found the literature and creative writing departments, and met up with students in the philosophy department--where one guy gave us a run down on Providence's shady past and another girl lamented on her novel writing process. 

At dinner on the evening of our last night, I took the opportunity to ask all the classics and philosopher professors if they'd read The Secret History. Most had not, but eagerly took note. Blurring the lines between the real and unreal--the edge where I live and create and never stray too far. 

Weeks Beyond

For the first time since I've lived in Chiang Mai, my return didn't feel like a welcoming one. The soft energy and gentleness I usually find was replaced by an abrasive one--one of over crowded streets and recklessness, perpetual misunderstandings and glitches, and an overwhelming sense of no longer belonging--not in the way I once felt anyway. Hot, dry days lingered well into a winter that would not come. The unbearable stress of unfocused work grated on my soul, and finally enduring an injury that has prevented me from driving anywhere--a blessing in the end, I suppose. An injury that has kept me focused on what is important, kept me from not going too far from home, one that has rattled me awake to make a change. A warning, perhaps, to make something happen soon, or I could lose everything I've spent my life working toward. 

The combination of these events (including my trip back to the west) has forced me to reevaluate my relationship with this city and the life I've created for myself here. Place does not always have to do with how well a person thrives, but sometimes it does--it has to do with community and opportunities and how well that place aligns with the goals of those who live there. 

Places have a way of communicating with you--to let you know they are there to hold you or teach you or guide you in new directions. A drop of clarity in the fog. And right now, it is still fog. But it's time to make a plan, a time to open myself to guidance that lies beyond the horizon of what I can currently see.

As we turn over into 2024, are you open to being guided to new heights and directions? If so, what is helping to guide you there? 

The Inevitable Writing Life

My writing journey extends as far back into my childhood as I can remember, back when I would write plays and comics for my friends and family to read (or perform). Perpetually lost in books and in my imagination, it should be no surprise that I struggled as a student, struggled to listen, and I genuinely thought telepathy was a valid form of communicating. Writing was truly my only form of outward expression, my only source of magic and power in this chaotic and ruthless world. 

In retrospect, there was no other path I could have possibly taken. My life experiences did not so much drive to me to write as much as writing shaped my experiences--as though I became a magnet for a life that kept me moving and asking questions. Ideas sparked from books I read and endless days daydreaming informed most of my life decisions, for better or worse. 

At some point, a turning point perhaps, was when I began to morph journal entries and photographs into stories. I could easily create characters from people I knew. I could easily turn an old photograph of a deserted highway or a scene from a busy ski lodge into a day-in-the-life of someone who was not me. It was like I had discovered a magic trick, like I possessed a power where I could transmute anything into my own. The world exploded open into many worlds and possibilities. I could create and inhabit any world I wanted. And so I did. 

What I love about writing fiction is that it allows me to explore ideas that aren't always mine. It allows me to experience the world through someone else's decisions and processes. I step out of myself and explore the possibilities. I can sit on the edge of a cliff overlooking a deep caldera and dream of all the scenarios that could have led a person there--to the edge of the world, thousands of miles in the middle of an ocean, staring out over a distant vastness where no horizon exists. 

In one rather alarming case, after being knocked in the head by a disc falling from my sun-visor while driving, a handful of characters came to me, fully formed, begging me to tell their story. I wrote about that experience in a blog post long ago. And years later, one of my beta readers of that particular novel told me I had actually been channeling one of the minor characters this entire time, that it was actually her story I was telling. And for an even more bizarre twist, my friend also told me I was channeling her because she was me, in a parallel life. 

I believe it was Carl Sagan who said that books were a form of telepathy--a way to speak to others over time and space, to crawl around in the mind of a living, breathing individual who lived centuries before you. So, who's to say writers aren't channels as well--channeling stories from other times and places, of this world and not of this world, yet worlds that we're a part of or connected to in some way. 

Interweaving these channeled stories with the world I experience around me is how I write fiction these days. I'm excited about the stories I'm creating, the novel I'm crafting, and the creative sparks that are shaping themselves into essays or blog posts. Never lose your sense of wonder and curiosity (those spaces where creativity blooms), and you will never lose your imagination that connects us over time and space. 

Do you think writing a form of channeling, a form of telepathy? How do you best express yourself? Think back to how you expressed yourself as a child. It's here you'll find clues to unearth and discover your source of magic and power.