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Terreson Profile
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In The Cedar Weave (an intro)


I am committing to putting on our board a second novel, this one called, In The Cedar Weave. It is the story of Ena, a woman I created, fell in love with, then decided to never subject to the stupidities of editors and publishers. Presenting her here is a first event, first time she's gone public. I'm taking the opportunity to do a bit of verbiage house cleaning.

The novel is in four parts, which parts are the increments in which I'll post it: The Retreat, The Inheritance, Artful Insiders, The Mothers.

With the first novel I posted, two years ago, Chris set a precedent of making all comments on the novel in its introductory thread. I'm asking for the same protocol again. It is a clean way to go.

Tere
Jun/22/2013, 7:11 pm Link to this post Send Email to Terreson   Send PM to Terreson
 
Christine98 Profile
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Re: In The Cedar Weave (an intro)


hi Tere,

I'm looking forward to it!

Chris
Jun/23/2013, 9:11 am Link to this post Send Email to Christine98   Send PM to Christine98
 
Terreson Profile
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Okay. First installment posted. Putting up the novel, Open Faces, took about 10 months. This is a shorter novel but I have less time in which to play, less energy with which to play. Besides, I never just copy and paste, actively editing while typing out the whole of the story again. It's the only way I know how to proceed. Anyway, hoping to give entertainment.

Tere
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Katlin Profile
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Re: In The Cedar Weave (an intro)


Hey Tere,

I'm glad you are feeling well enough to commit to this undertaking. I'm looking forward to it as well. Should be fun.

Did it really take you 10 months to post the last novel? It didn't seem that long.

Thanks for the reminder to post comments only in this, the introductory thread. I had forgotten we did that last time; it really is the best way to go.
Jun/24/2013, 11:35 am Link to this post Send Email to Katlin   Send PM to Katlin
 
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Re: In The Cedar Weave (an intro)


Okay. Second post made.

Tere
Jun/28/2013, 8:47 pm Link to this post Send Email to Terreson   Send PM to Terreson
 
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Another installment made, it being a weekend and I have time and requisite energy. I had forgotten just how carefully, deliberately, tenderly I made this portrait of a woman I named Ena. Single mindedly I tried to give her her own voice. I still think of her as a natural beauty.

Tere
Jun/29/2013, 4:21 pm Link to this post Send Email to Terreson   Send PM to Terreson
 
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Re: In The Cedar Weave (an intro)


Last installment for the weekend up, maybe for the week. How in the world did I write like this over 20 years ago? How did I get into a woman's character like this? I've already said it is an idealized portrait. Not something I feel the need to apologize for. How can my reader, man or woman, not fall in love with Ena?

Tere
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Re: In The Cedar Weave (an intro)


hi Tere,

I googled the name Ena and found: "passionate,
fiery, ardent, graceful, little fire" All celtic in origin, I think.

I'm taken by how consciously she has chosen and created the conditions she lives in. Strikes me as very empowering, enabling her to
live closer to herself than most,

Chris

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Re: In The Cedar Weave (an intro)


That's how I see her too, Chris. She is a deep one. I think of women like her. You know how it can be. Such beauties tend to go unnoticed.

Tere
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Enjoying reading: in the cedar weave the sheer beauty of the detailed portrait of ena is quite amazing - the inner life so rich in texture - it's as if you're sitting at the loom & weaving a rich beautiful weave - the color of each strand chosen so carefully & with such love & diligence of thought & incidently the title alse has weave in it!

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Re: In The Cedar Weave (an intro)


Queen, I'm delighted you are reading along too. I remember thinking I would pull out all the stops in my portrait of her. You'll see.

Tere
Jul/4/2013, 11:32 am Link to this post Send Email to Terreson   Send PM to Terreson
 
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New installment posted for the week. By now Ena's identity must be clear.

Tere
Jul/6/2013, 4:31 pm Link to this post Send Email to Terreson   Send PM to Terreson
 
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Re: In The Cedar Weave (an intro)


as crystal! fascinating - how deep you've dived - & come up with a pearl - ena!
it's hard to imagine a guy actually acknowledging: it's a woman's world!

wonder if you've read: women who run with the wolves.
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Re: In The Cedar Weave (an intro)


Hi Tere,

I just read the first section. I really liked this part:

Or the goldeneyes who do not seem to have a voice, sometimes like Ena who does not seem to have a voice, but who still have a marvelous way of whistling on the wing when they fly. Whistling and on the wing and maybe so they are like the women singing on the radio, singing solo, whose songs have a way of striking close, of sometimes even striking an unbearable chord, and who always sing in the familiar notes of a woman wrapping her knuckles on love-time’s left over table top. The kind of singing, or whistling on the wing, Ena’s machine man called her misery music as he walked out the door. And maybe so, Ena thought, maybe so. She still can’t remember a time when he made her want to whistle on a lighter wing, and maybe that is cause enough for the mourning. Maybe also there are some places where a woman has to go alone, where she has to be free of prying eyes, and where her man, no matter how much a king he might be, can’t follow after. Maybe that too. Maybe now. Maybe so.

And in light of your thread in Discussion1 about Poetry's Inside Jokes, I looked up goldeneyes:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Common_Goldeneye/id

BTW, I think you got it right about Ena's quietness: "Her quietness is just her way of keeping lively to her own emotions, to her own emotional responses."
Jul/8/2013, 8:01 am Link to this post Send Email to Katlin   Send PM to Katlin
 
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Tere,

Just read the second section. Thinking that kind of quietness can only be found in solitude, inner and outer. A return to nature, also inner and outer. An SUV driving soccer mom won't find it. Neither will a high-heel clad executive or executive's secretary. An artist might find it or a healer, but I supsect among the gifts, there'll be a price to pay.
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Part 3

The story itself, so far, is very quiet. No dialogue and most of the action center around Ena alone. In this age of drama and short attention spans, I wonder how many readers you will lose? This is not a criticism but an observation. Speaking of observations, the N is a close observer of the natural world: trees, birds, the stars, mythology. Regarding the last: mention of the white sow and the three sisters, e.g.

Maybe in her first flesh she knew, she thought she knew. Maybe then she must have known. In her first flesh, it seems to her, when she would have always known how things are, how they were coming to be, and how soon. In her first flesh she must have been a garden she knew. In her first flesh she must have been a delight, a delicious day, a darling to the night. In her first flesh. But that would have been before her last man, or some man coming over the horizon before him. That would have been before some man’s hand finally stoppered the flow of her trusting.

I like this passage, but it made me realize that sometimes the stoppering happens long before a man's hand touches a girl/woman. Mothers, fathers, families, society at large can all be first flesh stoppers.
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Part 4

I enjoyed this passage:

Ena hadn’t looked up until now, and when she did, when her pupils were ready to take the wide bowl of the night sky in, she heard the catch in her breath. Such a night sky really is what some poet once said of it. The indigo mystic. And the spangling stars like spangling beads that have a way of lighting Ena’s own insides. Just once, she thinks, she would like to have a dress of that color, that texture, that sparkle, even as close fitting so that she could feel the soft crush of it smoothing over her skin. Yes, a dress fitting that well for her, and nothing beneath, and a veil or a sheer scarf she would never raise, if only to keep the whole universe always half-seeing her face and half-guessing how her face must seem. What fun that would be, Ena thinks, while still thinking the funny thoughts.

Every fall some trees turn a certain orange-ish color that is hard to describe but always takes my breath away. And I always think I'd love to have a piece of clothing that color. A scarf maybe. But I'm such a bad naturalist I don't know what tree's leaves they are. Maybe this fall I'll take the time to figure it out.

It is that she instinctively knows. She now knows she is seeing into the cyclical swinging of her own life’s lead. What she is finding tonight are the body keys to her own flesh’s doors. As with now, in the open bowl night, in the late rising moon light, and in the cold and quiet darkness where there is everything to persuade her she is all of what she wants to be.

I see Ena is a nature mystic in the making. I also like the way this section reveals the earth as a living being in her own right. How far most of us are from that concept.

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Part 5

Ah, this is good. Before we get too comfortable with nature, too misty-eyed about emotions reflected in tranquility, badda bing! A snow and ice storm intercedes. The dark side of the goddess. Nature as nuturer, yes, but also nature as renewer, and renewal often requires death before resurrection:

Ena feeling as if the whole world had entered into a great gray grave with the wasty winter wheeling down into the frozen land where all promises get broken, all first flesh becomes putrid and swollen, all the harshness tearing through the lonely life lovers until even the smallest sighs of love become frozen on the fingertips of unfeeling force. Ena knew on the night of the blizzard that she was down in the grave too. Like her grandmother. Like her grandmother’s frozen and silent slope side. Like Ena’s sense of the slope side. Like the slope side’s sense that had not been able to respond to her for some days after the storm. And Ena now knowing just how much she is coming to need the slope’s responsive sense to her.

I have a feeling there are allusions I'm missing, secrets I'm not savvy enough to catch: the symbolism of the elder tree, e.g. At least I know there might be symbolism involved and can do the reasearch. As a young girl and as a young woman I did not know, was never instructed in such lore.

I love the paragraph that begins: "Whole afternoons she has sat by her spring, not having any place else she wants to be, sitting in the snow, sitting like a roadside mother-girl in her niche along the slope." The self-loving scene (doesn't that sound better than masturbation? lol) came as a surprise. I wondered, Is he really going to go there? He is. But I thought it was well done.

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Terreson Profile
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Queen, the acknowledgment, that it is a woman's world, comes easily to me. Naturally, something I was born to, then formed to and by. I rather enjoy depicting what it all means. To me it is as rich and savory as it is cause for amusement. Carl Jung said of Merlin the magician in the Arthurian legends that he was the archetypal son of the Great Mother, always looking to do her will. I can relate to Merlin in a way I cannot relate to all the Arthurian knights. I wonder. In India's culture is there a similar, analogous figure? And, yes. I have read the Running with the Wolves book. A book I always recommend to young women friends. But just to be clear. My Ena story came before that book was published.

Kat, I'm delighted by your thoughts and reflections. This is a treat for me. As for the touch of erotica there is more of that part of Ena. How could there not be, since, the logic of the novel is that Ena is a natural beauty, a Venus Naturalis, or, as Plato called the type, a Venus Vulgaris? Oh and also you will soon enough find Ena in an active way. So far novel is looking to establish who and what Ena is and is not. Truth is, I want you, my reader, to first get her firmly in her world.

Thanks all for reading.

Tere

Last edited by Terreson, Jul/14/2013, 12:22 pm
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So I've been spending the weekends posting Ena's story. Habit is to do again what I did when posting the first novel: put it in a word document, typing and editing, then posting the installment here. But I've had to work this weekend. Next installment will be a bit delayed.

A note on the novel's organization. I think of it as made up of panels. The introductory poem explains what I mean. Each panel (set off this way: *******) is like a picture-panel you might view as you walk down a hall. It both stands by itself and contributes to the story's progress. There is an ancient Persian poetic form that proceeds in the same way. The ghazal.

Tere
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dear tere

the description of winter - nature is beautiful. it's sheer poetry!

ena's natural beauty complements the beauty of nature - & her response to it.

in this modern world of noise - it's difficult to be in harmony with yourself & nature.

her inner self in some ways symbolizes the natural beauty all around.

that's the part i like best in ena - her inner self so in harmony with the natural world - i think ultimately that's what gives us total freedom!

living in mumbai i'm very grateful that i have a terrace on top - i call it my quickest get-away! i can go up any time & i'm under an open sky - shooting the breeze! enjoying the clouds / sun / moon / stars! otherwise the city is a huge concrete jungle with high-rise buildings - everybody shut up in their apartments - the roof-top terrace is very precious to me - uplifts the body & soul & gives complete freedom!

people who really enjoy nature are far healthier in mind & body than people who don't.

there's a beautiful passage on clouds written by Hesse in his novel Peter Camenzind
which truly exemplifies what i'm trying to say - will dig it out & quote - really worth the trouble - i'm sure you'll enjoy the passage!
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dear tere

well i used to wonder why i love watching clouds so much - until i read this passage from Peter Camenzind by hermann hesse.

with your love & feel for language & sensibilty towards nature as is evident in Cedar Weave i think you'll enjoy this:

"Show me a man anywhere in the whole wide world who knows and loves clouds more than I! Or show me anything more beautiful. They are a plaything and a comfort to the eye, a blessing and a gift of God; they also contain wrath and the power of death. They are as delicate, soft, and gentle as the souls of newborn babes, as beautiful, rich, and prodigal as good angels, yet somber, inescapable, and merciless as the emissaries of death. They hover as a silvery film, and sail past smiling and gold-edged; they hang poised, tinged yellow, red, and blue. Darkly, slowly they slink past like murderers, roaring head-over-heels like mad horsemen, drooping sadly and dreamily in the pale height like melancholy hermits. They assume the shapes of blessed isles and guardian angels, resemble threatening hands, fluttering sails, migrating cranes.

They hover between God’s heaven and the poor earth like beautiful likenesses of man’s every yearning and partake of both realms - dreams of the earth in which the sullied soul cleaves to the pure heaven above. They are the eternal symbol of all voyaging, of every quest and yearning for home. And as the clouds are suspended faintheartedly and longingly and stubbornly between heaven and earth, the souls of men are suspended faintheartedly and longingly and stubbornly between time and eternity"



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Terreson Profile
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Thank you, Queen. For your thoughts, reflections, and for the Hesse passage. Hesse always one of my favorite novelists. Clouds do indeed occupy a liminal space, something of a threshold between the 2 worlds maybe. Very easy to get caught up there. In Native American literature, there are stories told about the Cloud People. A handsome race that lives in the clouds. Sometimes a shamanic hero will climb a ladder, ascend into the clouds and either take or receive a gift. He then returns to earth and gives over his gift to the village. It tends to be a cultural gift, some art or craft that benefits the tribe. kind of the same idea, maybe, as what you experience on your rooftop terrace.

Can't remember if I've said this already but I lived in Ena's cottage for 5 years. I had the novel idea in mind when I moved there. But previously I had imagined her living on the side of a river somewhere or maybe in a houseboat. Anyway, I got to know her environs as intimately and as seasonally.

Tere
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Finally. A new installment posted to the board. Again, I think of each installment as a picture panel. Today's panel is not riveting or dramatic. It doesn't shout out or demand much for itself. But I find it to be utterly graceful. I don't think it possible any man cannot fall in love with Ena. I think it also likely that every woman might want to be Ena. Something else. I'm reminded again I am a poet first, novelist a distant third. (esayist second) I'm struck by how a paragraph reads like a stanza or strophe in form. Pretty interesting.

Tere
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A next installment typed out and posted today. A little surprised at how easy the scene reads to me. It involves something I cannot know anything about, but it doesn't read awkwardly. Oh this Ena girl. Such a beauty.

Tere
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Part 6 (maybe I should say Panel 6?)

I can see why you said this section is "not riveting or dramatic". It's more about developing character, mood, setting and theme. I've been enjoying your comments about the novel as well:

Can't remember if I've said this already but I lived in Ena's cottage for 5 years. I had the novel idea in mind when I moved there. But previously I had imagined her living on the side of a river somewhere or maybe in a houseboat. Anyway, I got to know her environs as intimately and as seasonally.

Loved learning that you actually lived in Ena's cottage for five years.

Panel 7

This section certainly surprised me. I didn't see the love-making scene with Ginny coming (Groan. Didn't intend the bad pun). I like the way the symbolism of the white snowberries with the twinning leaves becomes evident in the last paragraph:

She still can’t say for sure, as she finally descends her steps and seeing how the bay spoons itself in the dark morning chill, except to say that between them she felt a circle, a closing circle like the snake eating its tail. And that, if she stayed there, went back circling inside there, she was not likely to stray very far, or test her own perimeters, or even reach out for anything other than the clustering white snowberries with the two perfectly twinning leaves still in her hand.

I don't think you are saying that loving another woman would be limiting, but that loving Ginny, who is married and lives next door, would be comfortable and easy for Ena, perhaps too easy in someway?

"Oh this Ena girl. Such a beauty."

You could probably write an essay, field note, story about a writer who falls in with his main character. I bet it would be a fun read. emoticon

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Glad you are reading, Kat. I hope it is more pleasure than work.

Yes, that is kind of tricky business, Ena's "no" to Ginny, as she puts it. She herself doesn't know the answer, the why. But I hope it comes through that, perhaps for the first time in her life, Ena has started to trust herself, follow her own lead, without demanding an explanation. Maybe for her it is Ginny's particular offer she refuses. Or maybe it is the idea of settling in with another woman itself. Either way the prospect seems to strike her as too easy, too complete, or too comfortable. That's what she comes to and that is good enough for her I think. But here's a game to play. Come back to this moment of Ena's decision after you've finished reading the novel, ask the question of her again.

That is an intriguing idea, a field note on what it is like for an author to fall in love with one of his characters. It's a strange thing that's for sure.

Tere
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But here's a game to play. Come back to this moment of Ena's decision after you've finished reading the novel, ask the question of her again.

Oh, I hope I remember to do that! I wish there was a way to star, or mark as unread, posts on here.

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Another installment posted today. This is the last panel for Part One, called The Retreat, here I am calling In the Cedar Weave I. Chris and Kat, the thread can be closed. Next comes Part Two, called The Inheritance. I'll make of it a new thread.

Today's installment kind of suprises me. Until now I hadn't realized that what I was doing was going to the root of, of what?, how to describe it? My words here are stupid but I think the panel goes to the root of the human fascination, which is a perfectly inadequate term for the draw, with the moon. I think so. In that beautiful body-way knowing of hers Ena comes to what has enthralled human type animals since at least the paleolithic days. That's kind of big in one girl's own small way.

Tere
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Hey Tere,

Panel 8 Having Ena walk out into the storm tells us something about her character. I wonder if this section isn't also a bit of foreshadaowing with regard to the eye of some storm she willl, literally or metaphorically, walk into later in the novel.

Part 1 is now locked.
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