Alive

Leap into the ripe air

E.E.Cummings (1894-1962) is widely regarded as one of the most innovative poets of the twentieth century, famous for his rejection of traditional poetry techniques and structures. He experimented radically with form, punctuation, syntax and spelling, to create a new, idiosyncratic and lyrical style of poetic expression. I have a number of favourites among his poems, but the one that I love the most is quoted below.

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I will wade out

i will wade out
                        till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers
i will take the sun in my mouth
                        and leap into the ripe air
Alive
                        with closed eyes
to dash against darkness
                       in the sleeping curves of my body
Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery
with chasteness of sea-girls
                       Will i complete the mystery
of my flesh
i will rise
               After a thousand years
lipping
flowers
             And set my teeth in the silver of the moon

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My thoughts

To me, this poem speaks of being intensely alive - of being spontaneous and making the most of every living moment. I find this poem very vibrant and sensual - it perfectly captures the feeling of motion through active images such as "leap", "dash" and "rise" which emphasize the vitality of life. It also conveys to me the joy of awakening one's true self amidst nature - of being one with the flowers, the sun and the moon.
What does this poem convey to you?

For the word is quiet and powerful

Book review: The Bird and the Sword by Amy Harmon

"For the word is quiet and powerful
Sharper than any two-edged sword.
Piercing even to the divided asunder
Of soul and spirit,
Of joints and marrow.
It is a discerner of the thoughts
And intents of the heart."

- Amy Harmon

After a long time, along comes a book that is so enchanting, imaginative, intriguing, unique, poetic and romantic that I just can't find the right words to do full justice to its beauty, though I will try. It is a book about the power of the word and this blog of words is the perfect place to extol the virtues of this extraordinary book.

"In a land purged of enchantment, love might be the only magic left."

In a world similar to the Medieval Ages, little Lark is born with a Gift - a gift of words that she can speak and bring into existence. She can make puppets fly, dance and jump just by saying those words and stop them by taking away the words.

"You don't need wings to fly."

"What do you need, daughter?"

"Words."

She has inherited the gift from her mother, Lady Meshara, who tries to keep this a secret from everyone including her father, Lord Corvyn. In this world where magic is shunned, exhibiting the powers of a Teller, Healer, Changer or Spinner is forbidden and anyone with such a Gift is persecuted and even killed by the King Zoltev's orders. As the book opens, an inadvertent demonstration of Lark's gift results in her mother's murder by the king. In that one moment, everything changes and Lark is so shocked that her voice is gone forever, urged by the dying words of her mother:

"Swallow, daughter, pull them in, those words that sit upon your lips. Lock them deep inside your soul, hide them ‘til they’ve time to grow. Close your mouth upon the power, curse not, cure not, ‘til the hour. You won’t speak and you won’t tell, you won’t call on heaven or hell. You will learn and you will thrive.

Silence, daughter. Stay alive."

Before dying. Lady Meshara curses Lark's father, the king Zoltev and his son, the young prince Taris:

"The day my mother was killed, she told my father I wouldn’t speak again, and she told him if I died, he would die too. Then she predicted the king would sell his soul and lose his son to the sky."

Shocked into silence, Lark grows up as a mute and neglected girl, kept a virtual prisoner by her father who fears that if anything were to happen to her, he would die too. He doesn't even teach her to read or write words, knowing that this might cause her to exhibit powers like her mother. Lark has only a faithful troll servant, Boojohni, for company, the only one who cares for her and protects her. She longs to be free and to live a life of her own. She feels emotions and words bottled up within her all the time and is able to hear words emanating from trees, animals and even people. Her loneliness and desolation come across strongly - bereft of words, she has no way of communicating with others:

"I have thoughts and feelings. I have pictures and colors. They are all bottled up inside of me because I can't make words.

But I can hear them.

The world is alive with words. The animals, the trees, the grass, and the birds hum with their own words.

"Life," they say.

"Air," they breathe.

"Heat," they hum.

I love these words. There is no deception or confusion. The words are simple. They feel the joy of creation. They feel joy because they ARE. Every living being has a word, and I hear them all.

But I can't make them."

One day, as Lark is wandering in the forest trying to hear words that she can't speak, she is captured by King Taris, the young prince of her childhood who is now the king after the sudden death of his father. He brings her back to his kingdom of Jeru to ensure her father's cooperation in the war that he is fighting against the Volgars, vicious half-human, half-vulture invaders.

Lark soon discovers that Taris is a man in the throes of an unknown anguish which she can't ignore and is compelled to use her abilities to alleviate his pain. She also realizes that Taris is nothing like his cruel father, especially after he makes her secret wish come true - by patiently teaching her to read, write and articulate words, thus giving her back the ability to communicate. Lark's newfound knowledge of words enhances her powers to make things happen with the words in her mind, and Tariq realizes that her powers can now be used to his advantage:

"You are a dangerous little bird. But I think I will keep you."

But Lark wonders if she is just a political pawn turned into a useful tool for Tariq or something more. She is also aware of how her abilities may hurt others and hence is against Taris' idea. In spite of her frail and bird-like structure and seemingly weak exterior, she is actually strong inside, a morally responsible character who wants to control her thoughts and use her unspoken words only to help others:

I was free. I was powerful. I was terrified. .
I was only limited by my ignorance,  by my fear, and by my own sense of right snd wrong.

In spite of their differences or maybe because of them, Lark and Taris share a strange bond and Lark is slowly able to communicate with him without speaking. The love story woven into the fantasy is slow to unfurl but breathtaking and sometimes poignant:

'“You glow, Lark.” His hand climbed back up again and swept over my unbound hair. 
I swallowed, suddenly close to tears. Then why does no one see me? 
“I see you,” he said..

The words had risen from his skin even when he wasn't speaking, and I had called them to me, collecting them like falling leaves, pressing them between the heavy pages of my memory so I could keep them.

Suddenly yearning had a flavor. It tasted like a king, a beautiful, frightening, infuriating man who flew into my life and began to free my words.

Though the love story is beautiful, this book is so much more than just a romance. It is ultimately a story of being true to one's own abilities, of making choices for the common good, and of accepting everyone as they are. I loved the way the story keeps moving forward, especially towards the end when there is a desperation in Lark's and Taris' relationship and they think that their time together is limited:

I welcomed him, feeling the battle within us both to reconnect and disconnect simultaneously...We were urgent. We were slow. We were barrelling towards the finish, even as we started all over again.

Surprising curses are revealed, hidden enemies emerge and epic battles need to be fought. The epilogue was just perfect and left me with a wonderfully content feeling. 

Very rarely do I come across books of this caliber - books that I want to re-read immediately after the first reading. I am mesmerized by Amy Harmon's magical writing and am definitely going to explore more of her books. This book is a romantic fantasy unlike anything I have ever read before and which I will wholeheartedly recommend, even though it has left me with a major book hangover:) I know it will take me months to find another book which matches up to this one! 

Of visions and illusions, mediums and magic!

Book review: Born of Illusion by Teri Brown

I've always been fascinated by seances and spirit mediums, tarot readings and magical illusions. I have read quite a few books on this theme set in the Jazz Age when seances and mediums were all the rage, especially because of the number of grieving widows and parents who wanted to contact the spirits of soldiers killed in World War I. The books set in this time period that I really enjoyed are "The Other Side of Midnight" by Simone St. James and "Things Half in Shadow" by Alan Finn. I also liked Jaime Lee Moyer's Delia Martin series about a woman in San Francisco of 1906 who can see and communicate with ghosts. Hence it is small wonder that I picked up Teri Brown's "Born of Illusion" which promised to be about a young and gifted illusionist experiencing frightening visions. While this is part of a series, I figured out from Goodreads reviews that each book is a standalone novel and this one is undoubtedly the best of the lot.

"Born of Illusion" is about a young girl, Anna Van Housen, whose mother is a popular spirit medium in post-World War I New York. Anna has had a lonely and unconventional childhood, moving from place to place, while her mother performed in physic shows in various small towns and cities. Her mother, Marguerite, is a stunning beauty who is always hungry for fame and fortune but has no real psychic abilities. She relies on tricks and fake illusions to make her stage shows and seances seem real. Only Anna knows her secret. Marguerite has also changed her real name to gain popularity and has spread rumours that Anna is the illegitimate daughter of the famous magician, Harry Houdini, and even Anna doesn't know if that's  true or another of her mother's elaborate deceptions. Anna is fascinated by magic and has taught herself various magic tricks over the years. Her dream is to perform independent of her mother and become an acknowledged illusionist, which is a difficult thing to do in an age when female magicians are rare and the ones that do practice are not taken seriously.

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When the book starts, Anna and her mother have recently moved to New York as a result of her mother having found a well-connected manager, Jacques. Anna is happy that their days of barely scraping through and evading the law seem to be over and that they are now able to live in a well-to-do neighbourhood. Anna is the responsible one in the family, knowing that her flighty and unreliable mother is incapable to being prudent in money or household matters. She has a strange love-hate relationship with her mother - she loves Marguerite but is wary of her controlling and grasping nature. Anna agrees to be part of her mother's stage show in New York, where she demonstrates magical card tricks as the opening act before her mother's psychic act starts. She has always known that she has more psychic talent than her mother and struggles to keep that fact hidden from her jealous mother, as her act gains more popularity. She increasingly wonders if her powers have been inherited from her alleged father, the mysterious Houdini, and feels a strong desire to meet him in person.

Anna has more secrets that she has kept from her mother and everyone else - she is able to sense the emotions of people through touch and sometimes sees uncanny visions of impending disasters such as the sinking of the Titanic and the Spanish influenza epidemic. Her visions suddenly increase in frequency and this time they are frighteningly personal - she sees her mother in danger and feels herself drowning and unable to save her mother. She also starts experiencing emotions of others more strongly, even without touching them. During one of her mother's seances, Anna is unexpectedly able to communicate with a spirit - something that she has never able to do before. To add to her constant feeling of impending doom, the spirit Walter warns her that her life is in danger.

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Anna's personal life is also in turmoil. She meets an attractive young neighbour Cole, who she feels a strange connection to. Her senses are heightened whenever Cole is near, but she is not able to trust him completely as he seems to have his own ulterior motive in befriending her. Anna is suspicious of her mother's manager Jacques, whose emotions are obscure to her even when she touches him. She also meets Owen, Jacques' dashing nephew, who seems to be interested in courting her. She accidentally comes across Harry Houdini and cannot restrain herself from revealing her illusionist abilities to him.

Things start becoming more complicated when some of her mother's clients start acting weirdly, she discovers the existence of a society which investigates paranormal abilities and realizes that Houdini himself is bent on unmasking phony mediums. Anna is caught between trying to protect her mother, discovering whether Houdini knows about her existence and fighting her growing attraction to Cole. All the while, she continues to question whether her own mother loves her enough and whether she will ever be able to move out of her mother's shadow.

Who can Anna truly trust - Cole or Owen? Can she reveal her true abilities to Dr. Bennett, an erstwhile member of the Society for Psychical Research? What is Jacques' hidden agenda? How much can she reveal to her own mother? What are her visions warning her about? Can she stop these events from happening in the future? All these questions start plaguing Anna and the reader. Though I managed to figure out the culprit before the final revelation, it was still an engrossing read and one I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone who enjoys a light, paranormal mystery about the coming-of-age of a likable heroine with unusual psychic abilities.