Where's your "place"?

[tonyv]

I'm reading a book by Stephen King called "On Writing -- A Memoir of the Craft." In one part, King says he is in "another place." He calls it a "far-seeing place" and describes it as a place with "lots of bright lights and clear images." King goes on to say that his is a "basement place" despite the seeming contradiction with bright lights and clear images. He suggests that an aspiring writer might construct a far-seeing place of his own and supposes it could be on a treetop, on the rooftop of the Empire State Building, or on the edge of the Grand Canyon.

I thought about my own place, the place I always knew I had since I started to write (though I hadn't, till now, realized it even was a place or considered that others might have such places, too). Mine is at the ends of the earth, of the universe even. Antarctica, the Arctic Ocean, the southern pole star, that "space between the stars" to which Frost alludes in Desert Places, the realm of the aurora -- I usually come to you from one of these places. (I have other places, too, but this is my primary far-seeing place.)

Do you have your own far-seeing place? Where is it? Do tell ...

Tony

[Larsen M. Callirhoe]

i write down what spirit guides tell me to write down than i touch up where i lost connection with these beings. i meditate and write. i touch a spot where light colored beings shine around me when i write something that is pleasing. just don't understand because i am a living seer to quote the mormons lol.

 

vic

 

and i was givn a pen name anne benn by my spirit guides.

[tonyv]

Thanks for sharing details about your own far-seeing place, Victor. It's true, a writer's far-seeing place doesn't have to be an actual physical place; it can be anything. The spirit world, a parallel universe, another dimension -- there are no limitations.

 

Tony

[goldenlangur]

A great topic Tony :D

 

 

I suppose one has outer and inner scapes. The mountains is an abiding presence for me, the night sky and cave temples also play a large part.

 

Dreams, I would say, is the other, inner scape on which I draw.

 

 

Thank you.

[tonyv]

I'm thrilled you replied here, Goldenlangur! :D Not that I would presume anything , but I will confess that I had a little fun thinking about our members and speculating how each might answer. When thinking of you, imagery of temples did come to mind, though not specifically cave temples! And come to think of it, your work does contain some exquisite night sky imagery, but I never would have guessed the first thing you mentioned -- mountains. Similarly, I had not given much thought to the "inner scape." The significance of the role dreams might play is unexpected and fascinating. Thanks for the glimpse into your own far-seeing places.

 

Tony

[goldenlangur]

Hi again,

 

It would be good to read about other members' places. :)

 

 

I remember an English friend who said that he could not imagine living somewhere where there was no sea. I suppose the mountains have a similar resonance for those of us who grew up in their folds ;)

 

 

I meant to thank you for the fabulous link you so thoughtfully gave in your review of my prose poem. There are some ethereal scenes in that link. I have bookmarked it to enjoy.

 

Thank you very much for the link and your kind words about my night sky imagery.

[tonyv]

I'm delighted that you liked the apod site, Goldenlangur. I think I'll include a list of links to some of my own favorite images from it here in the Art section.

 

As for the sea, I can share your friend's sentiment. Although I have never lived in a seaside community, my home has never been far from the Atlantic Ocean. Even so, I include the geographic centers of various continents among my far-seeing places. Landlocked places like Mongolia and North Dakota (USA), not tempered by any maritime currents, have some of the harshest environments and extremes in temperature found anywhere on the planet. These lands of vast distances are also places on which I draw.

 

I'm pleased that you came back to this topic. I do hope others will join us in the discussion, too.

 

Tony

[Aleksandra]

I do hope others will join us in the discussion, too.

 

Tony

 

Tony, count on me. I am right on the way to join here. I am still in a process of musing after you presented this best poetical topic.

[Larsen M. Callirhoe]

i forgot to mention many of my poems are inspired because of my dreams. i look forward to your response alexsandra. i also imagine being by the seside when i write my poems too lol.

[Aleksandra]

I was thinking about my "place"... And I realize that my place is changing, or I feel it differently, with the time. As for now, my "place" is nowhere. It's not a constant place, not recognizable but familiar to me. If someone else will look for my place, maybe would be able to name it. But not me. Nowhere could mean everywhere. I don't know. I just feel that I can not see it and get comfortable in it.

I write lately more than before, and seems I always do that when I don't know my own place.

 

As from that what I remember when the first time I read this topic, for my "place" I considered the heart of the rabbit, a root of the weeping willow, the heart of the dove...

 

Aleksandra

[tonyv]

As from that what I remember when the first time I read this topic, for my "place" I considered the heart of the rabbit, a root of the weeping willow, the heart of the dove...

Yes, Alek, we talked about these. But I seem to remember there was at least one more ...

 

Tony

[RHommel]

Do you have your own far-seeing place? Where is it? Do tell ...

 

Tony

 

Thank you for reviving this topic, Tony.

 

My place is much like Aleksandra's in that it's nowhere and everywhere. It's emptiness in its purest form and yet it is full of thickly nondescript, dull and heavy substance that leaves room for little else.

 

As a child I had a recurring dream of being in a vast dark grey empty space filled with giant lumps of grey clay slowly rolling and thudding about making low resonating repetitious sounds, something like Gregorian chanting. The space stretched out infinitely, but it was also infinitely full of the "substance of nothing", except for one small light pink rubber ball that sort of pinged around in there in between everything, somehow miraculously managing to avoid hitting the massive blobs that towered several stories above its comparatively minuscule self. The dream frightened me always, but I eventually got used to it because it kept coming back.

 

Later I began to identify with the small pink rubber ball as the perspective from which I see and observe the world around me. The inner place I draw from when I write or paint, or create anything at all is always from that perspective: so small and fast that I am largely transparent while remaining acutely aware of my surroundings so as to never have to "bump into them".

 

~Rachel

[tonyv]

Rachel, as I was reading your reply, a bit of panic set in. Though I have no experience with claustrophobia, I feel I got a dose of it. For me, images of a "thickly nondescript, dull and heavy substance that leaves room for little else" and a "dark grey empty space filled with giant lumps of grey clay slowly rolling and thudding about making low resonating repetitious sounds" are especially unsettling. I was relieved to learn when I read on that you got used to it. And the introduction of the pink ball was generally comforting to me.

 

Later I began to identify with the small pink rubber ball as the perspective from which I see and observe the world around me. The inner place I draw from when I write or paint, or create anything at all is always from that perspective: so small and fast that I am largely transparent while remaining acutely aware of my surroundings so as to never have to bump into them.'

It has been exciting to find out about other writers' "places." The responses have been intriguing. Thank you for sharing about yours. I'll never look at a pink rubber ball the same way again!

 

And you also paint? If so, don't hesitate to share your work in the ART forum and/or to make a topic in our PROMOTIONS forum.

 

Tony

[RHommel]

And you also paint? If so, don't hesitate to share your work in the ART forum and/or to make a topic in our PROMOTIONS forum.

 

Tony

 

 

Hi Tony,

 

Haha! Thank you. I don't paint well enough or frequently enough anymore to share at the moment (and certainly not enough to promote, though thattickles me to no end), but I'll keep that in mind for the future should that change. As it is, I'm kept busy enough by my poetry, my studies in economics and my work in investment research and analysis. The work and studies will make more sense if you talk to Tinker. She and I have been corresponding regarding a cadaeic cadae that I wrote (a poem based on the sequence of Pi). :-)

 

As for the nightmare/dream... it's fairly comforting now, although as a child it caused some generalized anxiety... or more likely was caused by some generalized anxiety. My childhood was less than... shall we say (based on our conversations on Larca's poem)... stellar? Ha!

 

~Rachel

[rumisong]

I will look forward to exploring this topic within myself, and adding something in here later on- but just for a quick note on this, THIS prose-poem was VERY MUCH about how this notion of 'place' lives in me...

 

 

(Im pretty sure, anyway :icon_eek:)

Edited September 26, 2010 by rumisong

[tonyv]

I read it, Rumisong, and I like your place. ;) The nice thing about these "writer's places" of ours is that no other writer will come to us from the exact same place(s). And I would even go so far as to guess that no other writer would come from anywhere even remotely close to your place.

 

Tony :)

[abstrect-christ]

I wouldn't actually say I have a "place" I go to, it's more like I get an idea then I go into a mental state like that of a falcon and have my focus only on how I'm going to present the idea in my head. Then I can pretty much remember all my thoughts in the development of my full vision. The only things that really stay constantly in those visions is that they will never promote religion or talk about any religious aspects unless in a negative to moderate light.

 

I don't actually write alot in 5 years or so I've only done somewhere in the 50's all together. Long stints of ADHD always get the way, luckily my memory for my poetry isn't as short.

[Gatekeeper]

where place

 

your question is about a figurative place

one cannot have a figuratived place without a physical space

even tho for some that may be no larger than their physical being

 

i do not have a physical space that is describable tho i might desire one perhaps an empty top floor in an old building in an old town in the presence of its old ghosts perhaps in a low ceilinged attic loft with an eyelash window in an old house or an old church tho i am not religious or it might be by a spare cabin within earshot of the lapping waves of a freshwater lake as i am a great distance from any but ancient seas and wornout mountains

 

but it is none of those as they are not available to me and i do not imagine myself in any of them tho i might

 

but there seems a space nevertheless and it is a space in time when i am not expected to participate or to contribute or to answer to anyone it is a time of isolation of control such as it might be a time to transport to travel to nontime when time does not matter when it can be left unmeasured unclocked unticked untocked a time when is is when the past and future are not when time is that loft above the fray

 

and for me that is most often the late hours and the earliest hours tho it could be at any clock at all as long as there is no clock

 

enigmatic - of course - and that may be the point - i am still guessing as to what it is or why it is and another half dozen decades surely will not find it

 

 

~by the Gate~

 

[fdelano]

I'm reading a book by Stephen King called "On Writing -- A Memoir of the Craft." In one part, King says he is in "another place." He calls it a "far-seeing place" and describes it as a place with "lots of bright lights and clear images." King goes on to say that his is a "basement place" despite the seeming contradiction with bright lights and clear images. He suggests that an aspiring writer might construct a far-seeing place of his own and supposes it could be on a treetop, on the rooftop of the Empire State Building, or on the edge of the Grand Canyon.

 

I thought about my own place, the place I always knew I had since I started to write (though I hadn't, till now, realized it even was a place or considered that others might have such places, too). Mine is at the ends of the earth, of the universe even. Antarctica, the Arctic Ocean, the southern pole star, that "space between the stars" to which Frost alludes in Desert Places, the realm of the aurora -- I usually come to you from one of these places. (I have other places, too, but this is my primary far-seeing place.)

 

Do you have your own far-seeing place? Where is it? Do tell ...

 

Tony

 

I write at odd times, no special place except that I must be alone in a quiet place. Lying in bed at night--after the goddam TV is off--is a good time for me to compose. Problem is getting back into that zone the next day. Sometimes I just have to get up and at least put the skeleton together. When I could do my daily walk, I often composed poems, many inspired by sights on the trail, and managed to remember them until I got home. I can write in the middle of the night if there is any kind of resource in my brain. Mainly, it's not the location but the chance to go inside myself without interruption.

[Gatekeeper]

Thank you for reviving this topic, Tony.

 

My place is much like Aleksandra's in that it's nowhere and everywhere. It's emptiness in its purest form and yet it is full of thickly nondescript, dull and heavy substance that leaves room for little else.

 

As a child I had a recurring dream of being in a vast dark grey empty space filled with giant lumps of grey clay slowly rolling and thudding about making low resonating repetitious sounds, something like Gregorian chanting. The space stretched out infinitely, but it was also infinitely full of the "substance of nothing", except for one small light pink rubber ball that sort of pinged around in there in between everything, somehow miraculously managing to avoid hitting the massive blobs that towered several stories above its comparatively minuscule self. The dream frightened me always, but I eventually got used to it because it kept coming back.

 

Later I began to identify with the small pink rubber ball as the perspective from which I see and observe the world around me. The inner place I draw from when I write or paint, or create anything at all is always from that perspective: so small and fast that I am largely transparent while remaining acutely aware of my surroundings so as to never have to "bump into them".

 

~Rachel

 

 

This reminds me very much of the dreams (nightmares, in fact) that I had on many occasions when I was a child. They were due, I think now, to high brain temperatures (sickness fevers). Yes, I was a sickly kid it seems. They were very vivid and similar to yours in their simplicity and terror. They trully were terrorizing.

I doubt I would have them now, even with a high brain temperature, but it would be interesting, though dangerous at this age, to explore them freshly in a poetic fashion.

Going places no one else has been is always good subject matter for a poet.

 

~G~

[tonyv]

I wouldn't actually say I have a "place" I go to, it's more like I get an idea then I go into a mental state like that of a falcon and have my focus only on how I'm going to present the idea in my head. Then I can pretty much remember all my thoughts in the development of my full vision. The only things that really stay constantly in those visions is that they will never promote religion or talk about any religious aspects unless in a negative to moderate light.

 

I don't actually write alot in 5 years or so I've only done somewhere in the 50's all together. Long stints of ADHD always get the way, luckily my memory for my poetry isn't as short.

Like that of a falcon ... I like it, Jeremy. But I myself tend to think of it as a place I come from, rather than a place I go to. Perhaps it's that way for you, too. Interesting constant -- no religion unless expressed in a negative way.

 

Tony

[tonyv]

i do not have a physical space that is describable tho i might desire one perhaps an empty top floor in an old building in an old town in the presence of its old ghosts perhaps in a low ceilinged attic loft with an eyelash window in an old house or an old church tho i am not religious or it might be by a spare cabin within earshot of the lapping waves of a freshwater lake as i am a great distance from any but ancient seas and wornout mountains

 

but it is none of those as they are not available to me and i do not imagine myself in any of them tho i might

Though you say you don't imagine yourself in any of them, those sound like some unique places of your own to me, Gatekeeper! They have some kind of meaning to you or you wouldn't have even thought of nor mentioned them. You have some kind of connection to them, and I would venture to guess that no one else would think of these places you mentioned in exactly the same way. They are yours.

 

I understand about the reality. That's how it is for me, too. None of my "places" are places I have ever been, or can ever even go. Comeon.The realm of the aurora? Somehow I doubt space travel will ever be in my future. But even King isn't really in the basement when he writes; he simply calls his place a "basement place."

 

but there seems a space nevertheless and it is a space in time when i am not expected to participate or to contribute or to answer to anyone it is a time of isolation of control such as it might be a time to transport to travel to nontime when time does not matter when it can be left unmeasured unclocked unticked untocked a time when is is when the past and future are not when time is that loft above the fray

 

and for me that is most often the late hours and the earliest hours tho it could be at any clock at all as long as there is no clock

And that's something I think is critical. King says it in the book. You have to be willing to "close the door" to the world and its interruptions or else it will be hard to get serious and to get anything done. Your place where time stands still sounds exactly like that.

 

Tony

[tonyv]

I write at odd times, no special place except that I must be alone in a quiet place. Lying in bed at night--after the goddam TV is off--is a good time for me to compose. Problem is getting back into that zone the next day. Sometimes I just have to get up and at least put the skeleton together. When I could do my daily walk, I often composed poems, many inspired by sights on the trail, and managed to remember them until I got home. I can write in the middle of the night if there is any kind of resource in my brain. Mainly, it's not the location but the chance to go inside myself without interruption.

And that's a big deal, Franklin. It's well-known that interruptions do not work well for most writers. But is there a figurative place you go to (or come from) when you write, perhaps some constant that's always (or usually) there that no one else could guess? That's what I was hoping you would reveal ...

 

Tony

[fdelano]

I write at odd times, no special place except that I must be alone in a quiet place. Lying in bed at night--after the goddam TV is off--is a good time for me to compose. Problem is getting back into that zone the next day. Sometimes I just have to get up and at least put the skeleton together. When I could do my daily walk, I often composed poems, many inspired by sights on the trail, and managed to remember them until I got home. I can write in the middle of the night if there is any kind of resource in my brain. Mainly, it's not the location but the chance to go inside myself without interruption.

And that's a big deal, Franklin. It's well-known that interruptions do not work well for most writers. But is there a figurative place you go to (or come from) when you write, perhaps some constant that's always (or usually) there that no one else could guess? That's what I was hoping you would reveal ...

 

Tony

 

Most often, I start with a concept or image that I want to see if I can put the reader there with me. Many times, I write to try to get myself to understand.

[abstrect-christ]

Like that of a falcon ... I like it, Jeremy. But I myself tend to think of it as a place I come from, rather than a place I go to. Perhaps it's that way for you, too. Interesting constant -- no religion unless expressed in a negative way.

 

Tony

lol I'm Very Agnostic. And I would say that it's a place I come from but most of my material is dark, graphic, and depressing; something I'm far from in reality I more or less concentrate on the dark side and find my way to it as a means of exploring alleys I don't go down myself; the places I go once set may be where the subsequent imagination comes from but the catalyst is the need to go to that place for inspiration. The odd one such as Aesa to the Liar may come from a place within me surrounded by past relationships but that's a rare occurance.

example of majority is like that of Suffering in Everlong of the Omega where I present a serial rapist like I do because I am not one but see interest in the mind behind such a person.