Blog Archives

La Création de l’Homme, by Marc Chagall

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream. ― Vincent Van Gogh

We don’t usually post our thoughts about spiritual matters, directly, on our blog but I (Tina) decided, ‘Oh, why not!’ So, here we go. Lately, I have received more than my usual share of recommendations via friends, acquaintances, and strangers of books and events promoting ‘spiritual’ ideologies that confound me and leave me wondering if people are really so desperate and lost that they will swim to any port in a storm. Perhaps this statement, which I’ve long mused over, is true: ‘When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.’― G.K. Chesterton

I decided to post a few of my own thoughts, cobbled together from years of practice as a psychotherapist, as well as studying and exploring various religious and philosophical paths. There are a few foundational principles which are the markers of any great philosophy or religion, and quite a few more which are poison. This list is by no means exhaustive, but represents my musings on this particular Sunday morning.

A worthy and noble religion or philosophical belief system:

Encourages a noble aim (noble: reflecting high moral principles) based on the belief that life, while unavoidably filled with suffering, is also meaningful and worthwhile (i.e. does not promote nihilism).
Teaches and exemplifies principles based on the ancient wisdom and traditions humans have developed over thousands of years, rather than their gutted and insubstantial offspring that have been flourishing since the 1970s, which only serve to feed our natural vanity and promote the cult of the self.
Understands that human beings thrive when living a purpose-driven life and contributing to their communities—i.e., the focus is outwards, on others, rather than on oneself to the exclusion of others. Whether your community is made up only of your family and friends and workplace, or extends to the world at large, the outcome of following any path to ‘enlightenment’ should be to integrate you more fully with humanity, not to isolate you within a self-selected group that alienates you further from others. A sense of belonging and contributing are necessary to people who are not psychopaths, but they cannot be sustained in a vacuum.
Recognises that happiness and contentment can only be achieved and sustained by living with purpose and caring for others. * Of course we want to be happy! But happiness is an outcome, not a goal, and it cannot be hit when aimed at directly. (As in archery, you have to aim a little off centre to hit the target.)
Is neither selling you ‘secret, exclusive knowledge’, nor making you pay in order to advance to the next level of ‘enlightenment’, nor promising miracle cures for whatever ails you. (‘You will no longer have problems! You will never suffer pain again! You can manifest any life you want by changing how you think and opening yourself up to receiving abundance!’) I have seen this particular charlatanry sprouting like topsy, and I cannot stress this enough: These folks are frauds. It is sad to see otherwise intelligent people foundering in a cesspool whilst seeking transcendence. Sadder still, once they are sucked in, they do not welcome any suggestion that they may have been duped, so the rest of us stand by idly, watching them drown. I hope their inevitable collision with reality isn’t too painful when it occurs. **
Does not encourage you to be self-absorbed, rigidly unforgiving, dishonest, hateful, cruel, or violent. We humans do this all on our own, quite naturally. We are forever trying to mediate between our reason and our passions, and our moral principles should give us a higher goal to reach for rather than encouraging us to wallow in our basest impulses.
Whilst seeking the transcendent, nevertheless remains tethered to reality, the facts of which will never be erased via linguistic gymnastics and thought experiments. NB: 1. The earth is really and truly here. 2. We are living on it with other humans and other real species. 3. There are physical laws of the universe, which we are still struggling to comprehend; these, too, are real and not created or controlled by us. 4. As biological beings bounded by space and time, we and all other animals suffer and eventually die—whether we survive in spirit beyond death is outside the scope of this post. 5. Our thoughts do not create or sustain the universe. (That should be obvious to anyone who thinks, but apparently is not.)

Suffering is one of the most profound ways by which we know we are alive. It doesn’t get more real than that. The answer to pain is not tricking yourself into believing that it’s not real and trying to do so is, I believe, an egregious error against psyche and soul that will only amplify your pain and that of others. No path which denies reality and the pain of existence is going to take you anywhere worth going, because it’s predicated on a lie. While we do live our lives guided by our perceptions, emotions, and reason, we do not create reality. We are a part of a shared reality in which all creatures live and strive and suffer and die together. There is not only pain but also beauty and grandeur in living out that fundamental truth.

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.” — Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

* For me, caring for others includes being loving custodians of our planet and its creatures.

** ‘We welcome illusions because they spare us emotional distress, and enable us instead to indulge in gratification. We must not complain, then, if now and again they come into collision with some portion of reality and are shattered against it.’ — Sigmund Freud, Thoughts for the Times on War and Death, (1915)

Where I Live: Favourite Daylesford & Hepburn Springs Vintage Tourism Posters

td Whittle

Posted on December 8, 2017

Stranger Places: A Pie Town Novel

td Whittle

Posted on February 1, 2017

Welcome back to Pie Town, Dear Readers!

We are pleased to announce the release of our second book in the Pie Town series: Stranger Places: A Pie Town Novel, available in Kindle and paperback editions. For those of you who enjoyed The Infinite Loop: a novella of spaceships, time warps, and free pie, consider this your invitation back to Pie Town. We’ve introduced quite a few new characters, but you’ll recognize many from the first book too.

“The town is talking to you, Ava.”

Ava’s watch has died, and the mobile phone she’s found in her bag reads “No Service.” Her memory is spotty and her imagination running wild.

This isolated town in the West Texas desert is the strangest place she’s ever been.

She isn’t sure she can trust the locals, who range from hostile to strangely familiar. Is she paranoid, or is half the town avoiding her?

Maybe so, but she is intrigued by the town’s architecture, charmed by its quirky inhabitants, and delighted by its endless supply of fresh pie. She believes that the town and its people harbor secrets about her life and, the longer she stays, the more she recalls of the events that triggered her two-year odyssey.

Does Pie Town hold the key to Ava’s lost sense of self? Can it teach her about the nature of time, existence, the universe? Can she finally find love and friendship in this most unlikely of places? To find her answers, she’ll first have to learn to think like the locals, confront her dreams, and survive the motel swimming pool that beckons her into its depths.

Happy reading, everyone!

Sandra and td

Thirteen Ways Press

New Year’s Goals: read all the books and write the other books

td Whittle

Posted on January 13, 2017

Happy New Year, Dear Readers!

We are completing the final edits on our second book in the Pie Town series, Stranger Places, which will be released on or before 14 February. If you enjoyed The Infinite Loop, and you’re missing Pie Town, here is your invitation to return.

In case you’re wondering, it’s not necessary to have read the first book in order to follow the second. Stranger Places focuses on a new character named Ava. Lenie and Rachel, our protagonists in book one, will return later in the series.

Cheers,

td & Sandra

Happy Holidays

td Whittle

Posted on December 24, 2016

Merry Christmas, Dear Readers!

Clearly, we’ve been on hiatus for a while, having not posted since July of this year. This was not a planned break, but a result of our using our time to focus on our second book in the Pie Town series, which begins with The Infinite Loop: a novella of spaceships, time warps, and free pie and continues with a full-length novel we are calling Stranger Places. We are releasing the Kindle and paperback versions on our before February 14, 2017.

In the meantime, we hope everyone is enjoying time with their friends and family. For those of you who have lost loved ones over the holidays, this year or any other, or who are experiencing your first holidays after a loss, we know this time can be especially hard. We wish you peace, love, faith, and courage.

Cheers,

td & Sandra

Remnants: A Fairy Tale from the Wombly Wood (part one)

td Whittle

Posted on June 1, 2016

Bonk propped his feet up on the old wine cork that sat in front of the couch in the home he shared with his wife, Trellis. Having just eaten two fly kebabs, he was well stuffed and ready for a relaxing evening. Trellis smiled at him and suggested fire and music. They had recently wrangled a recording of butcherbird and currawong songs from a family of magpies, and this was their new particular favourite. During the spring just passed, Dody the fox had dragged a pink plastic radio-and-cassette player over to their caravan park from the local rubbish tip but only the magpies and ravens had been able to figure out how to make the thing work. This had surprised no one, as it had been these same residents who’d hacked into a co-axle cable from the local petrol station. The man who ran the station, even had he not been an inattentive and drunken sort, would never have suspected, since the birds had been clever enough to intercept the feed before it reached the meter. As a result, the animals had a regular supply of electricity, which they used sparingly. They often left gifts they’d gathered from the wood over at the petrol station, in appreciation for the stolen watts: edible mushrooms and berries, beautiful pine cones, discarded feathers, and even an occasional silver or gold coin dropped by some long-gone human.

The Rimey Times caravan park was a retirement home for aged creatures who had spent their working lives in various community-wildlife posts and were now enjoying gracious living at the edge of a small forgotten lake, in a remote section of the Wombly Wood. At one time, the wood and its surrounding area had bustled with tourists on holiday, who would camp, hike, swim, and entertain their children with marshmallow roasts and wildlife spotting. But several years back a bypass had been built and the local highway left to rot, while the tourists had found other places to visit. Within two years, the wood had come to feel like a place that had fallen off the world’s maps. The nearby town had always struggled to survive and the bypass had been the final blow to the local economy that had sent most of the locals packing; all except those too sentimental, stubborn, or poor to go elsewhere. The Rimey Times’s only neighboring establishment was the petrol station and milk bar that serviced occasional drivers-by on the desolate highway, whose owner spent most of his time drinking beer and watching telly in the ramshackle caravan that he kept parked next to his business. Old Jake had been planted in that spot for thirty years and had no intention of leaving, no matter what everybody else did. The animals considered him harmless. He was not a hunter or arsonist or litterbug, and he had never been accused of any unkindness towards local wildlife. He had an old beagle who lived with him, who was likewise harmless and rather well liked by the Rimey Times group.

Once the humans had cleared out, the permanent inhabitants of the Wombly Wood had begun to reclaim their home. Scurrying out from under bridges, slithering from beneath logs and rocks, hopping out of ponds, swooping down from trees, they came together one evening at late dusk, as a full moon rose in the east. The animals of the wood were, for the most part, a united group, their ancestors having formed a pact to protect and preserve their ecological birthright from the inevitable destruction brought about by humans constantly trampling through their land. Like all living things, they wished to survive, and for their wood to remain healthy and life-sustaining.

This creaturely alliance worked, in most ways, but tensions between predator animals and those they preyed upon could not be helped. For this reason, the predators remained outsiders, quiet loners who contributing generously to the well-being of the wood by scaring off interlopers, clearing out rubbish left by the humans, and collecting things needed by the other animals. Dody the Fox was one such creature. The rabbits did not like Dody, which was understandable since they were her main food source, but she was a friendly and helpful fox with no family of her own, who enjoyed lending a paw where she could. This is how she ended up at the Rimey Times, where most of the residents were either naturally vegetarian or eschewed the eating of other living creatures. The wood’s worms and insects, being incapable of higher-level communication, had not been consulted on the question of whether they were suitable food for vegans, and so were considered fair game.

Rimey Times had once been a booked-out holiday caravan park for humans. Being resourceful, the animals had made good use of its abandoned infrastructure, re-purposing the objects left behind, as well as scavenging other useful supplies from the local tip. Over time they had created a pleasant and comfortable home for themselves and had assigned Bonk, a natural manager, as their overseer.

Bonk was a pobblebonk, otherwise known as an eastern banjo frog, who had spent his working life tucked under an everlasting toadstool that had been there for as long as anyone could remember, at the edge of the creek near the main entrance to the wood. From this spot, he would keep an ear out for danger and be prepared to alert the other animals. The bonking sound he made had been intended as a warning, rather than a mating call, and yet it had been just such a series of bonks that had alerted Trellis to his presence. Trellis was a young troll whose new job it had been to guard the sturdy hardwood bridge that passed over Bonk’s creek, from her post in the shadowy bracken undergrowth beneath the bridge. The bridge had been heavy with human traffic, in those days. The bonking call of an eastern banjo frog, under ordinary circumstances, should not have lured this tiny troll away from her post and up the creek, where she stood stock still, gazing upon Bonk with dull orange eyes and feeling, for the first time, the stirrings of love. So perhaps these circumstances were not ordinary.

Bonk had not known what to say. Seeing her standing there, this grey-green troll with bumpy muted-orange spots, dressed in a pink tutu she’d scrounged off a Barbie found in the water under her bridge, Bonk’s bonking had dried up in his throat. He, too, felt a stirring. She was small for her kind, being no larger than himself. And, though her form was that of a troll and his that of a frog, their colours and markings were astonishingly similar. He, too, was grey-green with bumpy muted-orange spots. Even their eyes matched. Her irises, like his, were the same orange as her spots, and her pupils, like his, were enormous and inky black.

Well, odder things have happened, and inter-species romances were not entirely unheard of in the Wombly Wood. But this love-match of frog and troll did cause a stir among the animals and, even all these years later, remained a source of wonder and amusement. What kept the old-timers talking was not so much the scandal as the fact that Bonk and Trellis’s bond had proved true and had never grown cold or contemptuous. They were a local legend, these lovers, as adoring of one another now as they had ever been, regardless of his hop having lost most of its pep, and her spots having faded.

On warm evenings, the couple could often be found sitting by the lake holding hands, watching the sunset. On cooler nights, such as now at the brink of winter, Bonk and Trellis were more likely to sit under the carport of their refurbished Barbie van, warmed by a small fire built in a baked-beans tin, and listen to recorded birdsong while chatting amiably to one another. Frequently, Dody would join them, forming a strange but affectionate trio.

Trellis was just reaching up for the on switch that would start up the butcherbird-currawong chorus, when she was startled by the sound of a twig snapping behind her.

“Pssst . . . Trellis, it’s me!”

Trellis glanced up to see her friend Monty, a gang-gang cockatoo, smiling down at her. But then, Monty always seemed to be smiling.

“There’s a gathering on tonight, under the moon, over by your old bridge. The birds are landing in droves, and all you lot from Rimey are invited. Big news coming to the wood, big news.”

Trellis cocked her small green head at Monty and cocked one brow up at him. With Monty, everything was big news.

“Really? Because we were just about to settle in for some music and fire, and Dody’s going to come round. So you mean this is truly big news and not just the birds getting all worked up over nothing?”

“The way I hear it, it is BIG big news. Changes coming, big changes. The swans have the full story though, so I don’t know the details. All I know is something to do with a witch, a WITCH, A WITCH! And not a white witch either, no fairy godmother this one. She’s dark as death, to hear them tell it.”

Trellis laughed.

“A witch? Right. A witch. Well, that is big news. Monty, are you crazy? I don’t believe in witches, and neither should you.”

“But . . . ” Monty hesitated.

“But, but, but . . . go on, say it. I know you’re thinking ‘but you are a troll and no one believes in trolls either’, and you’d be right about that. But I know trolls are real because I am one and I come from a long line of them. How many witches do you know? I ask you that. Seriously?”

Monty was thoughtful for a moment and then said, “You may be right, I don’t know. But the swans are serious people, not silly gossips like the geese and . . . well . . . like me. If the swans say there is a dark witch moving to our bright and happy wood, and that we should make a plan, then I believe them! And at the very least, I should think you would want to come to the gathering to hear what they have to say. Even the snakes and turtles are coming, and you know how standoffish they can be. The water rats are setting up a moon picnic — always such a sense of occasion, that lot. At the very very least, you’ll get to see folks you haven’t seen in a while, and it just might be fun. Bring Dody with you, she’ll be welcome too.”

Monty flew off and Trellis was left staring at the branches where he’d been, watching the last wisps of pink and orange fade into the coming twilight. She popped her head into the van and called for Bonk, and within ten minutes, they’d gathered Dody and were heading for her old bridge. When they arrived, the three of them were surprised by the enormity of the turnout. Whole families had come, so children were hopping and waddling everywhere, their parents frantic to keep them in the clearing and as far as possible from the predators in attendance. Although the woodland gatherings and the time it took to travel to and from these events had been officially enshrined as hunt-free zones, it was not unknown for some young fox or owl to temporarily lose his mind and attack, even knowing that the penalty was banishment from the wood.

Dody leapt onto a flat-topped boulder with Bonk and Trellis perched on her back, where they would have a good view of the evening’s speakers, two popular swans named Hans and Parsifal. As the full moon rose, all of the animals settled down around Trellis’s old bridge, a hush falling over them as they waited for the swans to appear there, eager to hear the story that was already taking form in their minds as The Coming of the Dark Witch to Wombly Wood. They had come for a party, or to satisfy their curiosity, or merely for an evening’s entertainment. They had not come for the real story they were about to hear, the story that would change everything, forever.

To be continued . . .

On things unreal, but true.

td Whittle

Posted on April 18, 2016

DSC00201-Goslings-by-Daylesford-Lake-Oct2015

“The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue . . . ” Bruno Bettelheim, from The Uses of Enchantment: the Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. Published December 1986 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (First published 1975.)

We Pay Our Fare in Apples Here
by Megan Arkenberg

Everything in this station has a story, he said.
The walls are curved in such a way that the echo
of a penny dropped in the exact center of the tunnel
sounds like an apology from your late father.
If you crawl beneath the turnstiles in the wrong direction
the next train you board will take you
to every place you’ve ever forgotten,
and the ride will last for seven years.
One time, a woman fell off this platform
and touched the edge of a rail.
She turned into a swan.
Commuters find feathers in their briefcases,
sometimes. They always smell like summer.

Photos taken by Robin Whittle, at Lake Daylesford, October 2015.

Poem source here.

A tree forms itself

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on March 16, 2016

Winter, Spring
by Jim Harrison

Winter is black and beige down here
from drought. Suddenly in March
there’s a good rain and in a couple
of weeks we are enveloped in green.
Green everywhere in the mesquites, oaks,
cottonwoods, the bowers of thick
willow bushes the warblers love
for reasons of food or the branches,
the tiny aphids they eat with relish.

Each year it is a surprise
that the world can turn green again.
It is the grandest surprise in life,
the birds coming back from the south to my open
arms, which they fly past, aiming at the feeders.

Sabbaths IV (1999)
by Wendell Berry

What a consolation it is, after
the explanations and the predictions

of further explanations still
to come, to return unpersuaded
to the woods, entering again
the presence of the blessed trees.
A tree forms itself in answer
to its place and to the light.

Explain it how you will, the only

thing explainable will be
your explanation. There is
in the woods on a summer’s

morning, birdsong all around
from guess where, nowhere
that rigid measure which predicts

only humankind’s demise.

*****

Photo by Sandra Peterson Ramirez.

Wishing You a Happy & Bookish New Year

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on December 31, 2015

empty road leading into sunset with 2016 written in the sky

xo,

Sandra & td

The Infinite Loop: a novella of spaceships, time warps, and free pie

td Whittle

Posted on December 26, 2015

Dear Readers,

We are excited to announce that our second book, The Infinite Loop: a novella of spaceships, time warps and free pie, is available in Kindle and paperback formats at Amazon.

Lenie and Rachel are two old friends sharing a road trip and a new vision of life, beyond marriage and children. Things begin to feel strange out in the West Texas desert: a buzzing, tingling kind of strange. An aircraft appears to be following them and distant lights shine from a town that doesn’t appear on their maps. What awaits them there is a tidy RV park boasting modern amenities and fresh all-you-can-eat pie.

Feeling lucky to have landed in this quiet oasis under a star-strewn desert sky, the women are reluctant to leave, even as they find themselves drawn into a series of increasingly disturbing events. Is it the town, the pie, or some kind of shared hallucination? One thing they know for sure is that they can’t leave without seeing the local attraction that has beckoned them ever since their arrival: the Infinite Loop.

This is the first book in our Pie Town series. Watch for our second, which we plan to release in February 2017.

Happy reading, everyone!

Sandra and td

Thirteen Ways Press

Blog Archives

I know this much is true

td Whittle

Posted on January 13, 2018

La Création de l’Homme, by Marc Chagall

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream. ― Vincent Van Gogh

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.” — Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Where I Live: Favourite Daylesford & Hepburn Springs Vintage Tourism Posters

td Whittle

Posted on December 8, 2017

Stranger Places: A Pie Town Novel

td Whittle

Posted on February 1, 2017

Welcome back to Pie Town, Dear Readers!

New Year’s Goals: read all the books and write the other books

td Whittle

Posted on January 13, 2017

Happy New Year, Dear Readers!

Happy Holidays

td Whittle

Posted on December 24, 2016

Merry Christmas, Dear Readers!

Remnants: A Fairy Tale from the Wombly Wood (part one)

td Whittle

Posted on June 1, 2016

On things unreal, but true.

td Whittle

Posted on April 18, 2016

A tree forms itself

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on March 16, 2016

Wishing You a Happy & Bookish New Year

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on December 31, 2015

The Infinite Loop: a novella of spaceships, time warps, and free pie

td Whittle

Posted on December 26, 2015