October Offerings: Monthly Missives from The Dream Pedlar

Hello, Dreamer!

The autumn breeze is sweeping away red and golden leaves from the trees, and far from it all feeling like an ending, I find myself at the threshold of a new beginning!

Buoyed by the encouragement and enthusiasm I received from so many of you who filled out last month's survey, I am ecstatic to announce ... drumroll, please!!! ... the launch of Tales for Dreamers as a weekly, paid subscription service!

Every Thursday night (EST), so Friday for everyone east of the Atlantic/west of the Pacific, a new whimsical tale paired with an image will pop up in your inbox.

Most of you are already familiar with Tales for Dreamers. I've been writing these short, zany pieces of fiction for more than a decade now – in fact, that is how The Dream Pedlar website came into being back in November 2011 – and readers have loved and cherished them.

There's a free 4-week trial, so you can check it out for yourself, what it feels like, this experience of a wee bundle of whimsy and wonder slipping into your inbox at the same time every week.

It comes with options for monthly or yearly subscriptions for you to choose from.

The first tale will go out this coming Thursday, November 3, which is also the day my mom turns 71! I can't wrap my head around that number.

But why now, you ask? Because November is my birth month too, so this is as much a gift to me as it is an offering to you.

And what's more, I turn all of 42 this year! As Douglas Adams so wisely enlightened us in tHGttG, the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is ... 42.

That makes me feel wiser and wilder at the same time, and I think to myself if that isn't a sign from the Universe, what else could possibly be?

So sign up for the trial, and join me on a wild, whimsical, wondrous ride. You can always unsubscribe at any time. But I must warn you; once you're on board, you will never want to leave!

We've had an incredibly long fall season this year. Autumn has typically been a blink-and-you-miss-it affair these past few years. So to be able to savour it at leisure and find ourselves stepping into red, yellow, orange, and golden worlds at every bend this year has simply been magical.

This is also the month we get to celebrate Diwa-lloween, as little D coined it. A combination of Diwali and Halloween. For the first time in years, I showed up for Diwali and Halloween with an attitude of celebration.

For Diwali, I had mehendi on my hands and a saaree for my attire. I remember driving back home with still-damp mehendi on my hands, holding the steering wheel with my fingertips (an impossible feat!), and cupping my hands to keep inhaling the scent of the mehendi for days afterwards.

We decked out our home in rangoli that D took great delight in creating, string lights and flowers, diyas and a floating candle set-up. Sparklers and sweets, which we shared with our neighbours, added to the festivities.

For Halloween decorations, D and I went shopping at the dollar store after school one day and picked up stakes, glow-in-the-dark wall stickers, and stretchable skeletons. We even made a jack-o-lantern! KrA did all the carving, while D and I were content with scooping and admiring.

I share these pictures to illustrate the fullness of life I experienced in showing up for the festive season after six long years. Six years – that is how long the dark night of my soul has lasted.

I won't say I'm completely out of the woods either, far from it, but there is once again an eagerness to live and seize the day, and not merely go through the motions of day-to-day living.

There is once again in me a desire to taste and savour whatever life brings, to show up in any way I can, not worrying if it is too little and not wishing it could have been so much more.

For the first time in a long time, I've begun waking up in the mornings not dreading the length of the day stretching ahead of me, not wishing that the day were already over, not eagerly looking forward to the refuge of nighttime when I'd feel free to place no demands on myself for those few hours in bed in the dark, even if they ended in me waking up at 3 a.m., filled with dread and anxiety.

If I had to choose a song to describe my life in those years, it would be Pink Floyd's Sorrow.

Sweet smell of a great sorrow lies over the land
Plumes of smoke rise, merge into the leaden sky
Man lies and dreams of green fields and rivers
But awakes to a morning with no reason for waking

He's haunted by the memory of a lost paradise
In his youth or a dream, he can't be precise
He's chained forever to a world that's departed
It's not enough, it's not enough

~ Sorrow by Pink Floyd

That was me alright, the one who 'awakes to a morning with no reason for waking'.

I don't know what has shifted now. Surely a lot must have changed within, but one lesson that seems to have seeped into my subconscious after years decades of trying to learn and re-learn it is this: There is nothing, no one, and no situation in the outside world that is indispensable to our happiness and peace of mind. We can be OK, no matter what.

Of course, to know this intellectually is one thing. To feel it and to remember to believe in it, especially when in the throes of despair, is quite another feat altogether.

This recently led me again to the concept of amor fati, love of one's fate. My earlier embracings of this concept were laced with a hidden desire to bend fate to my will by loving it enough, an impossible condition for both me and for fate to fulfil.

Now that I've plunged into the depths of insanity and somehow, miraculously, come back, there is a greater understanding of and appreciation for Friedrich Nietszche's words.

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it.

In another text, he goes on to say the following:

For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event—and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

After years of floundering in regret and self-rebuke, harsh loathing and criticism directed at myself, this concept of radical acceptance—of myself, my life, the world around me, the world within me—comes as a breath of fresh air.

It is liberating to adopt this stance that acceptance does not mean passive resignation or submission, but a letting go of all that is not in my hands and showing up to the life I'm living to the extent that I can, moment by moment.

For the first time in a long time, I'm beginning to see how good it feels when I'm not spending my hours and days wishing I were someone else, somewhere else, doing something else. For the first time in a long time, I feel splendid to be me.

Now that I've bared my heart and soul to you, it's your turn. So tell me, does the concept of amor fati speak to you in the same way?

Tales for Dreamers

pumpkins in protest

I was on a wagon ride when I saw this patch of pumpkins, and it appeared to me as if the pumpkins were rolling away. Running away from something. And that led to this month's tale, which I wrote only a couple of weeks ago. A dose of whimsy for you on this day before Halloween.

Books You May Love

This month's recommendation is the English translation of a Japanese novel titled The Easy Life in Kamusari by Shion Miura and translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter.

It is a coming-of-age story of a high school-graduate and city lad, Yuki Mirano, who is forced to attend a forestry training programme in a remote mountain village of Kamusari. His parents enrol him in the programme against his will. Initially he seeks to run away from the place, and the story is all about how he eventually comes into his own, both professionally and personally.

This book was so different from what I'd been reading lately that it took my breath away. The rural setting, the simplicity of life, the simplicity of the plot itself. No earth-shattering, world-saving schemes but the simple life and traditions and rituals of a community caring for the mountainside and making a living from forestry.

It was a soothing book to read. Filled with plenty of humour and heart-warming moments. Like listening to a story narrated with great indulgence by my late grandmother. There was something timeless about it.

Another couple of books I took great delight in reading were from the Ian Rutledge series by Charles Todd. I was introduced to this series through book #24, A Game of Fear, following which I read book #1, A Test of Wills, and then book #14, The Confession.

I have many more books to go, but I absolutely love what I've read so far, and I loved these books so much I wrote an entire blog post on them. And the best thing is that there are many more books to be read in this series, so many more countless hours of reading pleasure to look forward to!

That brings us to the close of yet another edition of Monthly Missives, dear dreamer! I'm usually despondent when I write these last few lines, but this time I'm quite excited.

Because right after bidding you farewell, I'll be off to put the finishing touches on the tales that will begin to pop up in your inbox in only a few days from now with weekly regularity. Only after you sign up, that is!

So go ahead and sign up, and I will see you on the other side of October. If you have any questions at all, please write to me at anitha@thedreampedlar.com.

As always, I thank you for your enduring support. For what is a story without a reader? What is a dream without a dreamer?

~ Anitha