Therapeutic Writing

A while back someone turned in a book called Writing Routes: A Resource Handbook of Therapeutic Writing edited by Gillie Bolton, Victoria Field and Kate Thompson, with a Foreword by Gwyneth Lewis. I flipped through it and it looked interesting so I checked it out. There are chapters about using writing to figure out who you are, how you feel about yourself, your body, your relationships, and how to work through grief, loss, and other transitions. There's even a chapter on using writing to develop mindfulness.

A couple of the writers discuss how they came to write poems reflecting some memory or personal issue. For example, Rose Flint describes how she channeled her feelings of homesickness and depression from getting older into a poem called "The Blue Gate". The poem describes an encounter with "a Being walking across ice towards me- a Swan-Woman, old and wrinkled":

Palms upward, she stretches her hands out towards me,
black bird-eyes intent.
She is holding pieces of ice and she strikes them together
slowly at first, then gathering speed
so they clash edgily, ring like bronze bells
over the ice-field: a call, a warning of breakage,
rupture, opening.
In the cold heart of her handfuls of ice
sparks flick scarlet snake-tongues that rise and grow,
so ice warms, whitefire on her palms, candles of crystal.
She draws the radiance into her body, lets it wander
the routes of her veins, the web of her cells
until she stands gilded, feathers on fire, sun in her skin.
Walking past me her feet melt bird-tracks on the snow.
She is going deeper, and at the point where distance
takes her, there is a spreading cloud of blue

(p. 105).

I am encouraged by the image of the old woman warming herself by her own action, i.e. striking the ice shards together and moving through the landscape. I also like the notion of the woman's swan-like ability to transform her self, to fly. If you like this poem you may want to check out Rose Flint's Nekyia (Flint 2003).

Biographies in Harry Potter

I'm continuing my build up to the last Harry Potter movie by writing about the biographies J. K. Rowling made up to flesh out the world of Harry Potter.

I'm probably stretching it a bit to call the works of Gilderoy Lockhart biographies but I don't think they can be classified as authoritative texts on the various creatures that he claims to have encountered (he swiped other people's work, wiped their memories, and passed off their experience as his own). Though I suppose if the folks whose memories he wiped were experts then their pirated work could be considered authoritative? But unless you know who they were how can you tell? The pirated works are: Break with a Banshee, Gadding with Ghouls, Holidays with Hags, Travels with Trolls, Voyages with Vampires, Wanderings with Werewolves, and Year with the Yeti (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets pp. 43-44). The sappy alliteration of these titles only reinforces my impression of the smarminess of Gilderoy Lockhart! And speaking of smarmy, how can I forget Lockhart's own memoir, Magical Me? (Ibid p. 58)

Rita Skeeter's works rate even lower than Gilderoy Lockhart's in terms of accuracy. I have no idea who Armando Dippet was or what he did to attract the attention of Skeeter's poison pen. Judging by the accuracy (!) of her stories about the Tri-Wizard Tournament, Rita Skeeter's Armando Dippet: Master or Moron (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows p. 252) may have been the first "tell all" work about a prominent wizard. Her book The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore (Ibid p. 22) is only the latest blob (or should I say lob?) of mud in a career of mud-slinging!

There are two other works that could be considered biographies as well. The first is Blood Brothers: My Life Amongst the Vampires by Eldred Worple, a former student of Horace Slughorn (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince p. 315). The second book may be a collection of biographies of former Hogwarts prefects in the guise of a self-help book. You may have guessed that this book, Prefects Who Gained Power, was a big hit with Percy Weasley (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets p. 58)!

Cookbooks in Harry Potter

It's almost time for the last Harry Potter movie! I'm passing the time until the weekend looking at some of my favorite things about the books. Did you ever notice the titles of the books used in Harry Potter world? I didn't until I reread all of the books last year to get ready for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. Some of my favorite book titles are in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Remember when Harry goes home with Ron for the first time? He looks around in wonder at the first wizard home he's ever been inside. The kitchen has a wooden table and chairs and a mantelpiece "stacked three deep" with books like "Charm Your Own Cheese, Enchantment in Baking, and One Minute Feasts-It's Magic!" (p. 34).
Now one of my least favorite chores is that I have to come up with a weekly meal plan and cook it! I would love to bake without heating up the kitchen in this hot, humid weather! How great would it be to forgo sharp cheddar cheese at 2.79 for 8 oz. and just make my own? What I wouldn't give to come home after work and whip up a tasty meal in minutes????

Toughminded optimism

I like to read the Fixes column in the New York times.  A week ago or so David Bornstein wrote a couple of columns about an organization called KaBOOM! that teaches people how to organize and raise money to build playgrounds.  In the second part of the series, The Rewards of Renewal, he mentions the book Self-Renewal: the individual and the innovative society by John W. Gardner (find a copy at your local library here).  I checked out the book and was inspired by what Gardner had to say about the qualities we need for self-renewal.  He writes:
"First, I would stress the importance of a toughminded optimism.  Both the toughmindedness and the optimism are immensely important.  High hopes that are dashed by the first failure are precisely what we don't need.  We need to believe in ourselves but not to believe that life is easy" (pp.xii-xiii).