Faith: A Writer's Life

 

Charlotte Bronte Resolute

Sometimes I think a writer’s life is really many writers’ lives. One of the most moving and illustrative examples of this idea is this image of Charlotte Bronte from the BBC drama, To Walk Invisible: The Bronte Sisters. Charlotte has in her arms, safely tucked under her meager shawl, protected more than she is from the driving rain from which everyone else is running, the precious manuscript of Jane Eyre. Where would the generations of future writers be if not for the fortitude, determination, and faith of Charlotte Bronte? Faith, the thing that carries her forward along that stormy path out into the world. 

I remember Betty Smith walking her dog at midnight, mailing her manuscript and wondering if anyone would ever get excited enough about her book to publish it. They did; it was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I think of Jerome Salinger sending story after story to The New Yorker Magazine, rejected every time until Ernest Hemingway served with him in Europe and called him over to the bar, “Hey, Jerry! Jerry! Everyone, this guy’s a helluva writer!”

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby only sold a few copies until the United States Army wanted to create small paperbacks for soldiers to carry with them; they chose Fitzgerald’s little book. The soldiers loved the story of the girl, the car and the house, The American Dream, reading it over and over, sharing the hand  sized books, causing such a demand for the story that Fitzgerald was restored as a great writer.

I am struck anew by the long road of writing. I look at my own work - Telling Time By Apples And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, for instance. It took years and years of heavy yard work and gardening - me digging, planting, raking, weeding, pruning; me creating a wheelbarrow out of a huge tree branch to haul gigantic loads of yard waste, me planting the infinitesimal seeds, nurturing the tiniest seedlings that could drown if watered if not lifted patiently by hand out of the puddles, these would grow to be cosmos taller than me that the goldfinches used to sway on, chirping deliriously. It took the subsequent illness, followed by recovery and the slow regaining of strength, the tyranny of the garden, the terror of winter, the slow recovery of Spring, the clean, new, fresh garden! When I wrote that long poem, I was sure no one would appreciate it, but I was wrong. Everyone who has ever gardened can’t help but shudder and sigh when they read it.

Besides all the living that is required, I also make my own books (with the help of my team, my daughter and husband). Perhaps every writer should have to physically make their books at least once! I decided to illustrate Telling Time By Apples. I didn’t know anything about making illustrations, which is very different from painting or drawing. These paintings or drawings are specifically made for print, which is a different matter. I could only paint on canvas, so that’s what I did, hoping the images would have a quaint, sampler look. 

I designed the cover, which was meant to have an apple flaming with autumn leaves. It was my husband who added the robin. Together, we chose the paper color to match the parchment look of the cover. We chose the typeface and the spacing of the lines and the margins. Then, I was propped up in a program called InDesign where I set the type and images. 

Thanks to Amazon’s publishing program, we are able to publish and sell books. This is pretty much the process of making our books: First, years of real life agony or joy, then writing, then the physical book. My daughter often created the covers, using my design joined with her art work or photography. She took the photos of the marble on the cover of my poetry book Atlantis and the deep blue water on the cover of Dreamwater. She painted the airplane on Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse, a cover designed around her original painting and the idea of daydreaming over coffee, plus the fact that the owner of the café had been a pilot. She designed the striking, glossy black cover for When Two Women Die. And, together, we bravely created the muted grey cover of Holy Days using a vintage photo of me at three-years-old. 

I am reminded of Virginia Woolf who, at Hogarth Press, set the type manually, letter by letter, with her husband, Leonard. Or, similarly, D.H. Lawrence having his banned books printed in Italy, letter by letter, by a printer who could not read English.

Woody Allen once said that he didn’t know where the words came from, no one really does, but they come and he’s grateful for them. I remember being extremely nervous at one of my first readings, in a little shop called Ironic, run by two women, one who made wrought iron furniture and objects, another who painted furniture. She had painted a lovely Italian countryside mural on the shop wall by which I was sitting. I loved being in such a charming, work-rich environment. I looked down at the book in my lap and saw my daughter’s graphic and exciting artwork on the cover of my poetry book, Marblehead Moon - a wild rendition of the  moon, the stars, and the ocean that she had made when she was quite young - and I thought, “What am I nervous about? The words are right here!” I still remember the warm rush of faith that enveloped me.

You see I believe the words come from God, or, if you will, the Universe. That is my faith. One’s talent and one’s work, they are a trust handed to the writer. The writer must then carry and carry and carry that work out into the world. I am grateful for my readers, the ones whose faces beam, who proudly tell me in the supermarket, “Patricia! I read your book!” chin jutted out in pride. I remember the woman at a reading who reached out and touched my arm as I passed her after reading, on my way back to my chair. Thank you, dear heart, I feel your touch every time I despair. I remember the gasps from the crowd. Gasps! Can I really be so lucky? Hey, I also remember the potato chip bag and the crunching of chips in the audience - infinitely more compelling than poetry at times!

Lately, we have just finished publishing Low Flying, a stunning dark green book with type that truly glimmers like gold though it is only gold in color. Though Low Flying is fictionalized, it came out of many painful conversations I had over the years with women telling me horror stories about their marriages; also plenty of lurid town gossip, as well as my own experiences with an abusive boss that I wished I could - well, the imagination can be very therapeutic. In Low Flying two women who suffer psychologically abusive marriages, gain strength from the simple act of working together in the nurturing environment of a beautiful old greenhouse. So, you see, years of suffering, years of writing, months of grunt work at the computer. In writing the book, I was especially proud of the “garden quotes” at the top of each chapter which I found over years of reading, some tidbit from the garden or from poetry, literature, even movies that enlightens the thought and action to follow.

Low Flying was finished in the late ‘90s. I’ve kept it close all that time, hoping one day to get it from manuscript to actual book form. My husband, who began in the book business, is very proud of this book. Right now, we have my author’s copy on the dining room table. He admires it every time he walks by, “You got yourself a beautiful book there!” Or “Look at that shine! You’d think it was gold leaf!” Or he’ll pick it up and say, “It even has a nice hand.” That’s the way a book feels if it feels good in your hand.

Faith.

©PatriciaGoodwin, 2020

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her latest novel is Low Flying, about two women suffering psychologically abusive marriages who find and nurture each other. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.

Within this blog, Patricia writes often about non-fiction subjects that inspire or disturb her, hopefully informing and inspiring people to be happy, healthy and free.

The Salvator Mundi – Savior of the World – Yin and Yang

Salvator Mundi, Savior of the World

by Leonardo Da Vinci

This year, on November 15, Christie’s will offer Leonardo DaVinci’s lost painting, Salvator Mundi, Savior of the World, at auction. This enigmatic work of art has supposedly been “lost” for decades, that is, hidden, out of sight, in private collections, including that of England’s King Charles I (1600-1649); it disappeared (from 1763 to 1900), was purchased in 1958 for 45 pounds, and disappeared again until its dramatic unveiling by Christie’s in 2011.

That must have been when I saw it for the first time. One look and I ran from it. I covered my eyes and ran away.

Why? My initial impression, and it’s rather a burden, but every one of my first impressions have been spot on, my first impression was that I was looking at Jesus in a dress.

I still think so. Bear with me. I don’t think the artist meant it literally, though, clearly, to me, at least, the neckline is low, there is a suggestion of slight cleavage in the chest. The clothing is rich and richly decorated; Da Vinci used the luxurious lapis lazuli for Christ’s heavenly robes which are very much a departure from the simple cloth in which Jesus is usually depicted. And he is wearing two jewels in the center of his chest. Not typical for Christ but very Renaissance. These jewels seem to take on a deeper mystery, as though we could look into their depths and discover some truth. The Salvator Mundi was painted around the same time as The Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa has long been considered by some to be androgynous, and to be smiling at some secret shared with the artist.

We know that Da Vinci was what I like to call a Magdalena, that is, a member of the Priory of Sion, who believed in the idea that Jesus had not been celibate as the Catholic Church proclaims, but had married his apostle, Mary Magdalene and together they’d had a child, a daughter, Sarah, who continued the Sang Réal, or Royal Bloodline. The hexagon embroidery along Christ’s robe could be considered the Magdalena Rose or the Flower of Life in a continuous line, like the Bloodline itself, or, like some ancient replication of a human DNA strand, making Jesus truly the giver of life.

Did Da Vinci also paint the Salvator Mundi as a joining of the masculine and feminine forces of nature? Yin and yang?

Jesus taught yin and yang. He said, “If they ask you, ‘What is the sign of your Father in you?’ say to them, ‘It is a movement and a rest.’”

Regarding how to enter and live in the Infinite Universe, Jesus said to his disciples, “When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer s the inner and the above as below, and when you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female not be female (as in the Salvator Mundi which joins male and female), when you make an eye in the place of an eye, and a hand in the place of a hand, and a foot in the place of a foot, and an image in the place of an image, then shall you enter the Kingdom.”

In our modern words, Jesus was saying that when his disciple could change yin into yang and yang into yin, and achieve harmony and balance through the unification of both, then they could live in health, freedom and happiness.

An understanding of yin and yang can truly bring salvation to the world. How? As a macrobiotic person, I use yin and yang every day to keep healthy. The world may achieve salvation through health because healthy people do not want to destroy anything or make war.

How does yin and yang work? Energy moves in two ways: spiraling inward, yang; spiraling outward, yin. By controlling the balance of these two energies in the body, we can maintain or achieve health. The yin/yang symbol shows us the movements of this energy. Yin and yang complete the circle. Yin is always trying to become yang. Yang is always trying to become yin. This movement is shown by the tiny dot within each section. Within yin is always some yang. Within yang, a tiny bit of yin. Together, they achieve balance. The Infinite Universe.

In the Salvator Mundi, DaVinci paints Jesus holding a crystal globe, representing the world, in his left hand. DaVinci scholar, Martin Kemp noted, “The Saviour literally holds the well-being of the world and its inhabitants in the palm of his hand.” Gods, both Christian and pagan, have throughout time held an orb in their hand as a symbol of their power and control over the world. However, we can clearly see a line dividing this orb into two parts, along the curve of his robe, yin and yang. Christ holds the ultimate power of yin and yang in his hand and he is offering this knowledge to the world.

According to Christie’s article about the painting, “Christ’s orb is an emblem of kingship as well as a symbol of the world itself…the tiny specks and inclusions that Leonardo has painstakingly reproduced in the orb indicate that it is meant to be made of rock crystal, the purest form of quartz, and widely believed in the Renaissance to possess formidable magical powers. Rock crystals cut in Antiquity had been set into reliquaries since the Middle Ages, giving the stone sacred associations. Therefore, the very substance of the globe, as well as the perfection of its regular and continuous spherical form, endows it with a nearly miraculous essence. “

We now know that crystal can hold information – the Superman crystal, so named after the crystals of knowledge in the movie Superman - a realized modern incarnation of the so-called mythical crystal ball that “tells all.” Crystal fascinated Da Vinci as a substance light could pass through without altering – “diaphanous bodies like glass or crystal produce the ‘same effect as though nothing intervened between the shaded object and the light that falls upon it.” The light, in this case, seems to emanate from the palm of Jesus. He holds the world and the light.

Jesus, especially as adopted by the hippie movement, has often been represented as a gentle, almost effeminate entity. Jesus taught Love. He has always had long, wavy hair. In this painting, I think his curls refer once again to spirals of energy. His lighted right hand, blessing us, is extended, almost three dimensionally, reaching toward us. He does not have a halo. The light comes from him as it does from healthy people. I used to call it the “macro glow,” but it is really the glow of life, the power of our pulsing blood, and his. We know from the Shroud of Turin that Jesus was a perfectly proportioned, balanced human form, unlike the rest of us who are unevenly proportioned all over. His physical balance, coupled with eating and living simply, would have just about sealed his health and spiritual perfection.

Jesus most certainly, by his presence, must have projected a powerful energy. The power of this painting cannot be denied. Christ’s gentle, lighted face emerges from the darkness with an almost mesmerizing intensity, not a challenge, but a communication, a grip, a lock on us. We feel – I felt – the artist communicating with me through time, telling me everything all at once in a way only a painting can.

This time, I became immobilized. Yes! was all I could say. Yes!

©Patricia Goodwin, 2017

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest book is Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author.