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Unpredictable Paths.

April 1, 2020 by Exangel

by David D. Horowitz.

This sunny April morning I stroll a secluded path in my favorite forested city park. A stream rushes by on one side, and all around me rise evergreens, crowned in sunlight over their shadowy dominion of ferns, bushes, and smaller deciduous trees. I note bird chirpings, louder and more diverse than during the past several weeks. And while small birds flit, small yellow butterflies flutter, in quite unpredictable patterns. These are the first butterflies I’ve seen this spring, and I reflect how recently each was still in a chrysalis. Yes, a chrysalis—oddly enough, this park path feels rather like a chrysalis for me: a place of respite from tight smiles, budgets, and schedules where I can renew and relax.

Of course, I am not a butterfly, and I don’t need an actual chrysalis. I do, though, need a daily retreat where I can find the quietude necessary to reach and honor my inmost core. And my “chrysalis” needn’t be this path; it could be a rolled-out green yoga mat in my studio apartment or a wooden cubicle in a library where I can ponder, explore, and probe. But I need some sort of retreat to feel fully healthy, allowing myself the time to enjoy perceptions and consider ideas from all necessary angles—rather like rotating a kaleidoscope and appreciating each new pattern.

Now, during a retreat I do not fear absorbing new perceptions. I go slowly and thus don’t feel saturated by excessive input but inspired by surprising insight. And, later, I can exchange insights with others, for reflective retreat need not be narcissistic; I can more meaningfully join a community when I continually deepen and evolve as an individual. I recall the wisdom inherent in the title of Ovid’s masterwork: The Metamorphoses. Surely, I maintain distinctive core values, experiences, habits, and passions—but nature always acts on me, and I always react to it. And I need a daily retreat to do so most effectively.

But look: behind me I see several people quietly strolling this path. Good. They’re likely here for the same reasons I’m here, and I honor that in respectful silence. Just now, near a fir tree, I’m standing in a luminous mingling of reddish brown and touched-by-sun green. Something in me reconnects to forgotten parts of myself through such mingling of colors. It’s rather like looking at the stars at night after a month of cloudy weather or seeing a butterfly fresh from its chrysalis vivify an unusual color. And, watching that butterfly, I don’t know where my thoughts will go—and I don’t need to know. I’m enjoying this. I’ll get back to you soon.

Filed Under: EAP: The Magazine, Spring 2020: Got Chrysalis?, Uncategorized

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In This Issue.

  • Who Was Dorothy?
  • Those Evil Spirits.
  • The Screaming Baboon.
  • Her.
  • A Tale of Persistence.
  • A Conversation with Steve Hugh Westenra.
  • Person Number Twelve.
  • Dream Shapes.
  • Cannon Beach.
  • The Muse.
  • Spring.
  • The Greatness that was Greece.
  • 1966, NYC; nothing like it.
  • Sun Shower.
  • The Withering Weight of Being Perceived.
  • Broken Clock.
  • Confession.
  • Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse.
  • Sometimes you die, I mean that people do.
  • True (from “My Life with Dogs”).
  • Fragmentary musings on birds and bees.
  • 12 Baking Essentials to Always Have in Your Poetry.
  • Broad Street.
  • A Death in Alexandria.
  • My Forked Tongue.
  • Swan Lake.
  • Long Division.
  • Singing against the muses.
  • Aphorisms from “What Remains to Be Said”.

In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

supergirls-take-1

In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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