Returning Your Call- The Creation Answers Back?

Reality Defines Itself ( it’s in the habit of coughing loudly when you think you have it all sewn up)

I did not intend to post today. But we have all( perhaps) been rudely interrupted in our collective wailing. The time a reader speaks, and times his entrance perfectly. Lest you misunderstand ( and for those who came late to the discussion) I will simply summarize so that you can pick up the thread.

We, a group of writers ( who write un-commercial books) were making a mountain out of a mountain. The welter, the scrabble, the noise, the heartlessness and the impossibility of finding the odd reader who would value what we write. None of us expect to be mobbed or recognised in the street, no paparazzi called for, just a slim chance of ‘cutting through’.

All of a sardine a perfect reader is netted, and he is called George like the future King: that’s his second name and he writes an article in Mythos Media about my ‘never to be discovered books’.(sniff sniff)

Not so much never to be discovered; more leaving no stone unturned, no quote unquoted, no link unobserved between them and no value undisclosed. So that’s me done. Thy servant can depart in peace according to his final word. Just came to kneel at confession and say Sorry Sir, I occasionally forget that time is not only on Your side but under Your control and you have tripped me up.

We all know that pride comes before a fall, only we seldom expect to fall UP, and be seen clearly from below.

Here is a link and the start of the post.

On Listening to the Call: From “A Shadow in Yucatan” to “Involution: An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God”

Posted by Brian George

Brian George

“I used to envy the father of our race, dwelling as he did in contact with the new-made fields and plants of Eden; but I do so no more, because I have discovered that I also live in creation’s dawn.”—John Muir
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Philippa Rees has recently published a new edition of her book A Shadow in Yucatan. Many reviewers have already taken note of the near-hallucinatory verbal richness of this free verse novella, whose style contains echoes of such writers as Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hart Crane, Sylvia Plath, and Dylan Thomas, while, at the same time, remaining very vividly the author’s own. “The monocle of light, now focused, flames her hair,/ it lifts, it falls, it curves, it conceals…/ Her open nectar-mouth, now shaded, breathes.” Among her other activities, Philippa is a cellist, and this play of echoes within echoes is what you will often find in a piece of classical music, so that, in listening to Tchaikovsky’sThird Symphony, for example, you can hear Haydn—the disjunctive trickster!—on one side and Stravinsky on the other, in what you had first assumed to be a kind of new and improved Mendelssohn. Yucatan could productively be read, several times over, with only such formal concerns in mind. I am coming somewhat belatedly to the book, however, after wrestling with Philippa’s magisterial opus Involution: An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God, and so I am going to approach it from a different angle. I hope to show how the challenges faced by Stephanie, the protagonist of A Shadow in Yucatan, recapitulate, on an intimate scale, the more supernatural ones faced by Philippa on a beach on the southernmost tip of Florida; at the same time, they prefigure Philippa’s decades-long struggle to give form to her vision. In one moment, prompted by an accident, the whole of a person’s life can change. If a question is posed, does this mean that one has to answer?

Author: philipparees

A writer ( mostly narrative poetry) of fiction and non-fiction. Self publisher of fiction and Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God (Runner-up Book of the Year (2013), One time builder ( Arts centre) Mother of four daughters: Companion of old man and old dog: One time gardener, lecturer, wannabe cellist, mostly enquirer of 'what's it all about', blogger and things as yet undiscovered. View all posts by philipparees

8 thoughts on “Returning Your Call- The Creation Answers Back?”

Surely, you see this as a benefit—even if no one reads this man’s post?

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philipparees says:

January 26, 2015 at 4:59 pm

Of course I do! Is that not obvious? If not, I should make it so. I thought it an amazing confirmation, and although my friends and followers may be tired of it all, his introduction is far more persuasive than any I could make. I just thought the timing ( after all our mutual commiserations) was extraordinary!

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1. Alexander M Zoltai says:
  
  January 26, 2015 at 5:07 pm
  
  Perhaps by recent battle with clinging fatigue made me less than certain…
  
  Tomorrow, I’m blogging about the four blog posts in the enchanting story 🙂
  
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2. philipparees says:
  
  January 26, 2015 at 5:16 pm
  
  It is easy to be battle fatigued and fogged Alexander. Look forward .
  
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Pingback: Returning Your Call- The Creation Answers Back? | philipparees

I’ll read this later Philippa .. looks like a most interesting review … thank you

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philipparees says:

January 26, 2015 at 7:03 pm

I think it should silence me forever, and told the author it read like an obituary ( too good to be true and only with the safe lens of hindsight that won’t be contradicted). His response was that Eliot went on about dying at 28 and I should pipe down and get to work- or words to that effect.

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