Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Time as a fountain bubbling up, not running out

The other day, while fretting over the difficulties encountered while writing the sequel to The Scent of God, I came across a quote that read something like this. Waiting for inspiration is like waiting at a train station to catch a plane. I read these words and smiled. Why would we head to a train station to catch a plane?

I asked myself this question as I plowed through 23 years of accumulated journals, medical reports, letters, and notebooks, trying to connect the disjointed but important factors of the story leading to my daughter's violent death nine years ago. I felt like I was in a train station wild with the mess of gates, and timetables and platforms and levels with time breathing heavily behind me.

There is another way to deal with the pressures we impose on ourselves. We can think of time as a well bubbling up into our days -- monk's time as referred to by Brother David Steindl-Rast in one of my favorite books, The Music of Silence. Monk's time is not chronological. It is what the Greeks called the kairos: time as opportunity or encounter.

The thought that “there is always enough time for the task at hand” frees me when I hit the barrier of my limitations; when I worry that I might not have another 10 years to finish this book, as I had with The Scent of God. It is in Kairos that I will catch the muse’s hand, not in the train station while waiting for inspiration.

5 comments:

Kristen M. HÃ¥vet said...

I love this, Beryl. Thank you for posting.

Patry Francis said...

I believe in Kairos, but I also believe that some stories need to steep, to be contemplated deeply before they are ready to be told. I have great faith in you, Beryl. You have something important to give to the world, and you will give it.

Sheila Deeth said...

Lovely piece, and a wonderful quote. I shall remember that.

Beryl Singleton Bissell said...

Thank you Kristen, Sheila, and Patry. Patry, your belief gives me such a boost. Right now, I'm facing the task I find most difficult -- finding the proper structure in which to tell the story. I've got it written, now I need to turn it into a story that will resonate.

amy o said...

Your post made me think of this Brian Andreas quote:

"Everything changed the day she realized there was exactly enough time for the important things in her life."

I have this hanging in my kitchen as a daily reminder.

Looking forward to your next book... whenever it comes.

About Me

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Beryl is the author of The Scent of God: A Memoir published by Counterpoint NY in 2006 and A View of the Lake published by Lake Superior Port Cities Inc. in 2001. She’s been living on Lake Superior for seventeen wonderful years, and spent 10 years writing two popular columns for the Cook County News Herald: Newcomer Notes and Putting Down Roots. Beryl is past president of the Schroeder Area Historical Society and a long-time chair of its Oral History and Marketing committees. She is a past board member of the Violence Prevention Center in Grand Marais and committee member for the Grand Marais Art Colony’s first ever annual North Shore Reader and Writers Festival. She’s been published in the Sun Magazine, Minnesota Monthly, Lake Superior Magazine, and The Trenton Times and in the anthologies, Surviving Ophelia published by Perseus Publications in 2001 and The New Writer's Handbook, Vol. 2, published by Scarletta Press in 2008 and was named Best of Minnesota Writers by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. She is currently working on her third memoir: the sequel to The Scent of God.