April Awesomeness: Monthly Missives from The Dream Pedlar

Monthly Missives turns 3 this month! The very first missive, April Alchemy, went out three years ago this week. 🥳

Many of you have been with me right from the start. Many of you have joined me en route. As always, I'm eternally grateful for the time we spend together. Thank you for being here.

My intention with these missives was to create a small space of beauty and wonder to share my love for the written word. In my mind, that is how I see these monthly offerings to you. I hope that is how you feel about these missives too!

On another note, I'm in Toronto this weekend attending the Toronto Indie Authors' Conference. If any of you are there, please let's get together and grab a cuppa and talk about all of our favourite things, especially books and writing!

On Writing

I am currently penning the last chapter of Book 1 of the fantasy duology I've been working on. I'm fairly certain that in a few days, I'd be able to type 'The End' on the first draft and enter the phase of editing Book 1 while beginning to write Book 2 alongside.

I had earlier aimed for a spring/summer release for this collection of books, but the stories have been gaining in scale and length as I've been writing them. Book 1 stands at 400+ pages as of now, and I have no idea what Book 2 has in store for me.

A secondary character from Book 1 already has his own story written down, as I mentioned earlier, causing me to digress from Book 1 for a bit. Now many other characters wish to tell their tales too.

I'm typing as fast as I can to capture the sounds they whisper urgently in my ears and the images and visions they conjure up in my head. It's a thrilling place to be in for me as a writer, and I'm riding the wave for as long as it lasts.

Tales For Dreamers

I have a lovely collection this month with all four tales somehow perfectly timed for the season!

One is a seasonal warning about the 'coyote area', another beckons 'invisible horses for the wagon'. Yet another is about a dilemma found 'at the end of a pilgrimage'. And if you've watched Snow White (I haven't, yet), 'the poisoned apple' is sure to give you a chuckle and some ideas!

Life, Unadulterated

With the days getting longer and the evenings getting brighter and warmer, I've been spending more time outdoors, my face turned towards the blue sky and white clouds, rather than looking inwards in contemplation.

I don't know if I'm the only one who feels this way, but as much as I love this season, the wide open periods of spring and summer seem to bring their own pressures.

The pressure to spend more time outdoors. The pressure to travel. The pressure to fill weekends with activities in order to have an answer that sounds intelligent and/or cool when someone asks, "So, how was your weekend?" And now, with D in the picture, there's also the pressure to create 'perfect' childhood summers for him so he'd have some fond memories to fall back on in adulthood.

Yes, I know how futile these thoughts and anxieties are, but old habits and thought patterns really die hard and tend to resurface when I'm not looking. They're very sneaky that way.

One of the wisdom teachers I turn to often in moments of confusion is Tara Brach. While I was looking for her podcast on Spotify, I came across an artist named Monique Rhodes who has created astounding pieces of music incorporating the teachings of various wisdom teachers.

It's incredible how Rhodes' music matches perfectly the timbre and pitch of each speaker's voice, and how the rhythm of each melody is completely in sync with the respective speaker's cadence. If you listen to these pieces, you'd think the music came first and the words followed, rather than the other way round.

A piece I'm absolutely in love with right now is titled 'Accepting Yourself' by Tara Brach. I wonder what made Rhodes choose these particular lines to set to music, but these were the words I needed to hear to comfort myself in this state of thinking I was caught up in. Perhaps you'd find solace in them too.

Now just imagine for a moment what it would be like in your life to be without anxiety about imperfection?

Not to be numb or uncaring, just simply without anxiety, accepting yourself just as you are. With this body. With this appearance. These behaviours. These life circumstances.

One of the most reassuring lines from Zen tradition was writing by Zen master Dōgen, and it goes like this:

"To be in harmony with the oneness of things is to be without anxiety about imperfection."

Now I love this teaching because it assumes imperfection. It assumes that these bodies and minds will be reactive, that we will grasp and get attached, that we will be angry at times, and fearful, that we’ll even hurt the beings that we love the most out of our fear and our confusion.

It assumes imperfection and says what matters is how do we relate to that? 

But when we feel deficient and we’re aware of that deficiency, there’s a real sense of shame, and that shame ties us up in knots. It gives rise to the most profound sense of self-aversion.

And what this means is that for awakening beings of our times, people on the spiritual path, that paying attention to shame, paying attention to self-aversion, is a necessary gateway for awakening.

It’s not something to get rid of. Rather, the way we pay attention to self-aversion is actually the grounds of the path. 

~ Tara Brach, Accepting Yourself

Did the music and words move you as much as they did me? Write to me and let me know.

Books You May Love

This month's reading experience has been very unusual, in an excellent way. First I read an English translation of a novel originally written in Italian. Titled Imago Mortis and written by author Samuel Marolla, the story is about a private eye named Augusto Ghites who is also a junkie. Not only that, but his drug of choice is the ashes of the dead. When he sniffs their ashes, he's able to relive their lives and interact with their ghosts.

An old prostitute hires him to investigate the decades-old murder of her colleague, and we follow Ghites as he looks for his next fix, runs into a bunch of goons who beat him up, and searches for the truth among all the falsehoods that are fed to him.

Imago Mortis was such an exciting story to read. In addition to the intriguing premise, one of the beautiful things was that I didn't feel as though I was reading it in English. There was a certain cadence to the translation, certain choices of words and phrasing, that made it sound like a foreign language in my mind.

Another memorable book I read this month was a fictional recounting of the life of the Scottish author, Robert Louis Stevenson, by Nancy Horan, titled Under The Wide And Starry Sky.

Just last month, I shared with you the delights of reading Miss Austen by Gill Hornby. It felt almost serendipitous when I came across Horan's title in a similar genre, featuring another beloved writer, while casually browsing books in the library. I had to borrow this title and read it.

There are so many things to love about these kinds of books. There are several a-ha moments when we find references in these books to the authors' works we've come to love and adore.

Incidentally, two summers ago, I went to The Writers' Museum in Edinburgh. It features memorabilia from the lives of three Scottish literary giants — Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and Robert Louis Stevenson. In that month's missive, I shared the words of Stevenson that touched me greatly.

When I suffer in mind, stories are my refuge; I take them like opium; and consider one who writes them as a sort of doctor of the mind. And frankly, it is not Shakespeare we take to, when we are in a hot corner … It is Charles Reade, or old Dumas, or the best of Walter Scott … We want incident, interest, action; to the devil with your philosophy.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Imagine how glad my heart was when I was reading Nancy Horan's book and came across the following lines.

"What are you working on now?" Baxter asked.

"A poetry collection," Louis replied. "I'm calling it A Child's Garden of Verses."

Henley nearly choked. "A child's garden ...?"

"Go write your damn masterpieces!" Louis shouted. Henley and Baxter laughed, but everyone in the room knew Louis was livid when he jabbed his fork emphatically at Henley as he spoke. "When I suffer in mind, stories are my refuge; I take them like opium. Anyone who entertains me with a great story is a doctor of the spirit. Frankly, it isn't Shakespeare we take to when we are in a hot corner, is it? It's Dumas or the best of Walter Scott. Don't children, especially children, deserve that kind of refuge? Even if it's poetry?"

~ An excerpt from Under The Wide And Starry Sky by Nancy Horan

These are the moments of beauty and serendipity that make my heart sing with joy!

Another missive comes to an end, dear Dreamer! Time has a way of simply flying when we're lost in an immersive experience. Writing these missives to you always puts me in that state of flow. This is a task I look forward to every month.

Thank you for allowing me space in your day. I hope my writings inform or inspire you in some way or the other.

Thank you for all the time you've spent with me. Here's to 3 years and counting! 🙏🏽

Much love,

Anitha