Glastonbury Tales, pt. 3

Here we are, week three of the Glastonbury-based blog serial; magic, light and romance surrounding my life in a way I never thought possible, and finally (at long, long last) knee deep in Pentacle!  It’s a particularly intense moment in my life, because I’ve happily come to understand at last where the blockage lies, so what comes next is dissecting important bits from its origins, healing those moments that have yet to be healed that relate to my life, and write away my friends!  When I moved to London over the summer, the plan had been to start working straight on Pentacle after I’d cleaned up the six chapters that I’d need from Wideawake to send to agents; but as luck would have it, I found that it was better to finish Wideawake and focus on Pentacle afterwards, although the process of understanding and rearranging my childhood world never really stopped, so by the time when I first visited this town at the end of the summer, it so happened that Glastonbury rekindled many aspects of the original story.

The actual storyline has suffered so many changes over the past ten-fifteen years that when I was telling Stephen about it the other night, he said that it in no way resembled the story that I’d told him about during the time we first got together.  I don’t feel bad about that, because it really feels like most changes have been for the better, except for a few details that I want to bring forth from the different stages of creation; however, because that obviously means giving up some of the things that I’ve gotten used to now, I haven’t really found a way to do it in which we are all happy… I mean, me and my characters!

Ah, my characters… we’ve come a long way, them and I.  I created them at a point when I needed friends and strength and a hope for love; I nursed them back to life every once in a while, whenever they’d undergone a change that I regretted forcing onto them; I’ve talked about them with people from different backgrounds, ages and literary tastes; and I’ve made it through dark and creepy passages with their help and healing properties.  Yes, my characters deserve happiness, indeed, just as much happiness as I’ve already got in reality!  The fact is, that because so many of them were there for me to bounce off whenever I experienced a disillusionment, then the emotional links and relations between them took a bit of a turn from what I had visualised 21 years ago, and I don’t necessarily feel that they deserve that sort of treatment.  I have come to understand, after so much remodelling, that both characters and story have become not something I created, but something that my surroundings and circumstances created for me, and that I went along with that because it was something I needed for my own benefit at each one of those stages.  Yet, an amazing thing that Glastonbury has brought me along with all the healing from the very first moment my feet touched the wet grass as we set up camp, is a clarity of mind that I didn’t have six, seven months ago.  Now, don’t get me wrong, it still took me a few weeks to admit it (and maybe having to move here in order for that clean energy to flow through my body as my legs pump up and down the streets, hills and stories this town has to tell), but now I’m ready to admit that I was unclear about what was going in my five-part saga because I’ve been afraid to take control of it.

There, I’ve said it and now I can’t take it back.  Wait a minute, I can erase this entry if I want to… but no, no more erasing and backing down.  No more hiding behind the uncertainty of my own ideas; no more groping in the dark for the light switch when I know full well that I’ve got the candle and matches in my pocket.  I have the tools, now I have to use them.  I have the consciousness of the whys and wheres and hows, so I will make the story be told, one way or another.

By the way, it’s been five months since that light was put inside my pocket (or is it inside my mind?), five months since I jumped off the precipice to land in my true love’s arms (there’s the blind Fool that we keep talking about, the one who now truly enjoys the flight), five months since I reached the peak of my healing so that those main baddies that I was fighting inside my brain are gone, five months since I was regenerated (in a form of speech?), five months since I discovered how mad my loneliness was making me, and that only because I found health as a possible romantic way of life…!  Five amazing things that happened to me five months ago, interconnected through my desires in life within the path that I’m following, and so I feel the five elements flow inside of me and give me the powers of sight, hearing and mobility that I needed in order to make my life my own…

Well, there’s the “take control” thing once again, isn’t it? Written in another form, but nevertheless there… the Universe has spoken: We have given you the tools, now use them to create what you’ve been intending all along!  I have undergone the five stages of Cassandra’s spiritual route, marking it little by little, creating alternatives in The Shadow Behind, Wideawake and even in most of my tales told from the rooftop, so that anything that needed an urgent outlet could flow correctly, and now I’m in that fantastic, scary-as-hell place where I can actually, for once and for all, take those tools that are being handed to me, take my gifts and rewards that I have succeeded in obtaining from life, and take control of that life I’m being rewarded with!

Now, this seems scariest of all, but I’ll wait no longer for my characters to tell me what they wish me to do with them, or who they are and where they’re going; I’m going to decide for them, and will take responsibility for the outcome of what I send them off into; I will trust in myself and my instinct that those who deserve rewards will get them, those who need to learn are successful in their trials, and those who need to be gone are gone…  And that is, for the first time in my life, me taking charge of the different aspects of myself that have run erratically as I tried to put them down on paper to make sense to me…

… and scary as it sounds to my own head, holy frick it was due time!

Hm, let me rephrase that so it sounds more mature and poetic…

… and scary as it may seem to someone who’s undergone the type of things I’ve had, where control has been lost so many times that I’ve lost count, I’m ready for whatever I have to do to take control of my life and my writing, because yes, it is due time!

There, seems more credible.  Now I can go ahead and be considered a serious person and writer.  I can go ahead and enjoy my weekend, as I very much hope that you all will do as well!

 Best wishes,

Sandra Tena ≈ Writer, dreamer, healer, lover