Dragonchasers

Life’s been really hectic lately, as evidenced by my lack of posting here. Hopefully things will ease up soon and I can get back to my regularly scheduled blatherings… 🙂

In the meantime, I finally got around to finishing C.S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy (Book 3 in the Narnia series) last night. I was pretty underwhelmed with the first two books in the series since they felt more like long vignettes than novels. The characters just seemed to be swept along without really doing very much. Horse was much better in this regard, with the protagonists taking an active role in their fates. The religious symbology was either gone or subtle enough that I didn’t pick up on it (of course, a Bible scholar I am surely not). The ending was predictable but relatively pleasing.

However, liking them more than The Magician’s Nephew and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is really damning with faint praise. I’m still failing to see what all the fuss is about. As children’s books, Horse works. I can certainly imagine reading it to a child, but there just isn’t a lot here to hold the attention of an adult.

In fact…I think I need to put the series back on the shelf for a while. I need to read something with a bit of meat before I start seeing the Narnia books as a chore I need to get through.

For the sake of simplicity, I’ll say I finished One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers by Gail Sher tonight. But the truth is, I’m not ‘finished’ with it. Rather, I just completed my first cover-to-cover read-through. The book will remain on my nightstand indefinitely.

This is a hard book to peg. Its about writing, of course, but it touches on so many facets of the craft. Good practice habits, nurturing your muse, seeing and opening yourself to the world around you…all kinds of things. Sher started her craft by writing haiku and in a way that influence is still with her. The book is broken up into many short 1-2 page nuggets of wisdom. She is also a Zen Buddhist and you really feel that influence as well.

What’s really interesting is juxtaposing this book with Spiritual Cleaning (see previous post). Sher does all the things that Robyn tries, and fails, to do. And it feels so effortless. Did I accept everything Sher said at face value? Of course not. But even when I was disagreeing with her, I still could respect her thoughts. Sher just makes a lot of sense.

If you write, or you want to write, or you just fantasize about writing, pick up this book. Open it at random and get an injection of wisdom. Highly recommended. I can’t wait to start reading ita second time.

So, I finally finished Spiritual Housecleaning by Kathryn L. Robyn. What a chore that was.

Now, I should set the stage by explaining that I found this book in the laundry room of my apartment building (its the traditional spot for folks to leave things that are no longer wanted but too good to throw away). I flipped through the first few pages and it sounded pretty good. Ms. Robyn talked a bit about how a messy house can glom up your creativity, basically, and I’ve often found that to the case. So I decided to read it.

But the farther in I got, the more surreal the experience became. She takes us room by room through the house, explaining how to clean it…at first. The chapter on the kitchen made a lot of sense. But as she moved on, there was less about physical cleaning and more and more about why your house is messy in the first place, and towards the end the phrase ‘sacred space’ cropped up frequently. I didn’t mind the latter so much as the former.

Because according to Ms. Robyn, if your house is messy, you must have been abused as a child.

Indeed. She comes back to this point over and over. Now, I don’t want to belittle the trauma that way too many people had to endure as children. And if this book was called “Cleaning house as a means of dealing with childhood abuse” then things would’ve been fine. I would’ve passed it by. But that’s not the title, and the way Robyn keeps returning to this point has me assuming that she herself was abused, and I’m sorry for her. But I don’t want to read all about it.

Mix in a bit of paranoia… when talking about the bedroom and sleep issues, one of her suggestions is “Good locks, extra locks, and locked and wired windows” so you can feel safe to sleep. Shortly after is the advice to “Masterbate! It releases pent-up energy like a steam valve. A good vibrator will minimize any exertion involved.” I have to say using a vibrator would maxmize the exertion involved for me, but I guess the reader is assumed to be female.

I could go on and on. Her ‘Practice Pages’ are exercises to help us accomplish…um, a clean house? Again, they start as practical exercises, but by the end she has us meditating and speaking to our spirit guides.

Ms. Robyn could probably write an interesting New Age metaphysics book. And that’s what she should have done. Spiritual Healing ends up being a mish-mosh that isn’t going to please anyone. If you really want tips to help you manage the chaos of life so that you can stay centered and focused on things that are important to you, then a great chunk of this book will be useless. If you’re looking for a book on metaphysics and a sort of inward spirituality, then the bits about how to clean an oven aren’t going to be much use.

Two thumbs down. In fact, I wish I had a third hand so I could give it 3 thumbs down. Stay away from this book!