The Kikuyu Medicine Man
*
For the story behind the photo see The Medicine Man
*
Kenya 1955
When war comes it can rip your
family apart. Then you have to decide
whose side you are on.
Ransom Books
Teen Quick Read/Adult Interest
More about this book and extract
I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams…
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
We lived in Kenya during the late Moi years, the last days of the one-party state. By then the President was feeling under threat from external pressure to democratise, and whenever the President felt threatened, the crime rate rocketed – white collar crime that is, AK47 operations such as car-jacking that especially targeted expatriate aid workers, and organised by people whose elitist way of life was also at stake. There were episodes of ethnic clashes thrown in for good measure, stirred up in the same quarter. A German forestry consultant was murdered on his front doorstep for complaining about some bigwig chopping down Mount Kenya’s forests to grow hash.
In some ways it was fascinating to observe the bloody devices by which some people cling to power – and by fascinating I mean in the way you might stand frozen, staring into the headlights of an oncoming car. It was stressful then, and especially as election time approached, and so one year we decided we’d had enough, and needed a break. We went to Dubai. While we were there we spent a night out in the desert. You will appreciate the bliss we felt, standing alone in all that emptiness, seeing for miles, and with not one thing on the horizon to trigger our internal security scanners. A landscape arranged by the wind, timeless and mysterious, and with a welcome absence of humans.
© 2015 Tish Farrell
Paula’s Thursday’s Special: Arranged
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” Lewis Carroll Alice in Wonderland
*
I sometimes feel I know too much about the process of fiction writing; I’d like to unknow it, and begin again from scratch. Sometimes I think I don’t know enough, and will never make it over that learning-curve hump. In between these two positions, there is also the problem of having taken in too much ‘how to’; the ensuing overburden of advice that can make for self-consciousness, and lead to an unappealing tendency to manipulate characters and events in ways that lack integrity.
The narrative content becomes inauthentic. Untruthful. You see it a lot in book-packaged series for children, the kinds of titles that are written by a host of poorly paid writers under the name of a pretend author whose persona has been created by the packager. (I worked on one of those deals once, but you won’t see my name on the Harper Collins title).
But then isn’t that the point of fiction, that it’s fictional; not real; make believe; just a story.
Well yes and no. Mostly no, I find.
Perhaps this photograph might help to unravel the paradox. I will do as the King of Hearts commands, and begin at the beginning: the laying of a story’s foundations.
In any good opening you are quickly introduced to the protagonist(s). In the photo let’s suppose the main characters are the marsh grasses in the foreground. The eye is drawn to them; they are the most obviously defined; they stand out from the crowd. There is also something particular about their disposition, their relationship to/place within their setting which adds to their interest. At this stage we do not yet know them, but they have attracted our attention and we want to know more.
Along with meeting the story’s protagonists, and in accordance with the usual conventions of storytelling, the reader will, either immediately, or very soon, become aware of some conflict affecting them. Trouble is brewing, or has just descended.
The ‘trouble’ can come in many forms and moods from gritty realism to high comedy. In the photo it might be represented by the soft focus rock in the foreground. We can see it is a rock, but only the top of it is looming. In other words, we sense the imminent drama, but we don’t altogether know what form it will take, or the full implications for the protagonist. Now we’re hooked: we want to know what is going to happen, and in particular how the characters we have glimpsed will confront and resolve their difficulties.
To use another kind of image, then, these elements are the storyteller’s warp and weft. They are key to the construction process, but they are not the actual story. What is needed is substance and texture, the interweaving of details that will give life to the story’s characters and their situations.
This all about creating an internally convincing context, a believable world, a setting within which its inhabitants and their preoccupations articulate authentically. Everything must ring true.
And when a storyteller succeeds on all these fronts, then the fiction does indeed become a kind of truth. This is what Stephen King means when he says a story is a ‘found thing’. The storytelling process is about discovering something that already exists. In this sense, it is not ‘made up’. I think the analogy King gives is the retrieving of a fossil from its rocky matrix; how good a specimen you end up with depends on the quality of your excavation techniques and your understanding of the materials involved. You also need a steady hand, and a sharp eye.
Looking again at the photo, the stream, the marsh, the distant wood and the sky are all part of the context for the foreground grasses and rock. They are the setting. The wood adds depth of field and also a sense of mystery. It contrasts coldly with the pale sky. Perhaps, after all, the trouble is coming from that direction; the rock in clear sight is just a distraction, or only a foretaste of worse to come. Storytelling requires cycles of tension, building in intensity. The triple helix is a useful image to think of.
While we’re here, we might also imagine the stream as the narrative thread. No matter how the storyteller chooses to reveal the series of events that make up the story (and of course they need not be consecutive or chronological in the way that the King of Hearts demands of the White Rabbit) there must always be onward momentum, pressing the reader along, piquing their interest, not losing them on the journey.
This means creating a balance between revealing and withholding information – adding suspense or a new twist. And it’s at this point the storyteller needs to look out, and stay true to context and characters – no rampant extraneous invention and manipulation to create gratuitous excitement.
“A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled. ”
Raymond Chandler
This does not mean flat writing. Far from it. There must be light and shade, surprise, variety, and glorious detail (though not too much), yet all must arise naturally from within the story, have believable existence within the created story world. It is a form of alchemy. Or conjuring. Or mediumship, and the makings have their source deep within the storyteller’s subconscious.
The narrative that emerges is the result of dialogue between the subconscious and conscious mind. Although, just sometimes, the subconscious will do all the work. And it is then that the writer will say the story simply downloaded/was dictated to their inner ear, and all they did was type.
Of course all I have told you here is the ‘how’ of story, and not the ‘what’. And so where does the ‘what’ come from? All I can say is that any writer must find and stake out their ‘territory’, explore every inch, and command it the best they can, only then will the full story emerge.
Hilary Mantel’s muscular recreation of the Tudor world of Thomas Cromwell (Wolf Hall, Bring up the Bodies) is an excellent example. She has done her homework, and then she has conjured. Most of my own published short fiction has grown from years of living in, and reading about East Africa. A host of characters without stories lives in my head. The gathering process, the interrogation of data never stops. One day I will excavate the perfect fossil.
But before I leave this photo, I have to say that of course the actual story is not about the upfront grasses or the rock. There is someone in the foreground who does not appear in the shot. A dark-haired girl. I think her name is Eirwen and she has come to the seashore to gather the marsh grasses for thatching. As she cuts the sheaves, she is thinking of Ifor, the seer’s son, and if he will come as promised. She is sad because he won’t, and thrilled because he will. Then a cry of a heron makes her look towards the sea. A fleet of dark ships is heading ashore. She sees the glint of iron – shields, spears, men on horseback leaping into the shallows. The cry of the heron becomes her cry…
© 2015 Tish Farrell
Related: Also see my post about creating setting/world building at Knowing Your Place
This post was inspired by Paula’s Black and White Sunday: Inspiration
*
Secrets, conspiracies, tragedy,
dark comedy – a fast-paced
novella of interwoven tales set
somewhere in East Africa
Available on ePub Bud
When war comes it can rip your
family apart. Then you have to
decide whose side you are on.
Ransom Books Teen Quick Read
…Green Man/Morris Dancer/Goth at the annual Rochester Sweeps’ Festival.
To find out more go to “Unexpected with bells, sticks and hankies at the Sweeps Festival” HERE
This batch of colanders made smile. They were spotted in a cook shop window in Portsmouth, Massachusetts, where we had stopped en route for Boston. I was entranced. Like a child eyeing shiny new building blocks, I wanted them all. What was the point of buying only one colander when they looked so good in a crowd? And which would I choose – the red, or the mauve, or the sky blue, or…? My companions walked off without me. Lunch was calling. So in the end I simply snapped them, and now they seem just right for Paula’s Multicoloured prompt at Thursday’s Special.
Christmas morning and we find ourselves in a general pilgrimage of families and dogs. We have all had the same idea: to trek along Anglesey’s Newborough Beach to Ynys Llanddwyn, the island sanctuary of Dwynwen, Welsh patron saint of lovers.
As you can see, the day was brilliant, but down on the shore the wind was bitingly cold. It was a challenge to take photos, but taken they must be. For one thing, the views across the Menai Strait to the mainland’s Llŷn Peninsula were mesmerizing, and had to be captured.
For another, there were some rather shocking scenes of coastal erosion. I promise, though, when we reach the island I will tell you the story of Dwynwen.
First things first. Newborough Beach is some two miles long and ends at the promontory that forms Llanddwyn Island. It is famous for its dunes which apparently arrived there in the great storm of 1331. It was the Feast of St Nich0las (December 6) when the disaster struck, and on that day the wind and sea rose to such a pitch that they drove, from the shores across the Strait, great mounds of sand and deposited them on the once fertile fields and dwellings of the medieval Newborough.
Ever since, many of the dunes have continued to shift, although there have been various strategies to stabilize them. In the sixteenth century marram grass was planted, and this gave rise to a successful local industry wherein the grass was cropped to weave into mats and baskets. Far more recently, in the 1940s, the Forestry Commission planted the promontory with conifers. The small forest that has thrived there since is home to ravens and red squirrels.
Now, though, there are new threats from the weather. Last winter severe storms lashed the Welsh coast, causing great damage and much local concern about a future where rising sea levels and erratic storms are likely to figure more prominently.
It is a simple demonstration of the power of weather, and instead of arguing about its precise causes we should perhaps be wondering what is best to be done. At the present, the people of Newborough are doing just that. There is an on-going public consultation as to how the forest and nearby salt marsh may be protected. This whole corner of Anglesey is a much treasured resource to locals and visitors alike.
Meanwhile, sister Jo’s labrador Molly is hardly concerned with matters of coastal erosion. Nothing a dog likes more than sand in its paws, wind in its ears, some smelly crabs and dead fish to nose, and also to lay claim to everyone else’s stick.
She always wins. ALWAYS. Bad luck, Graham.
When we reach the crossing place to the island, the tide is still too high to walk across. So we ponder the rocky deposits of pillow lava, that were apparently blown up from undersea volcanic eruptions in the Precambrian era, and wonder if Dwynwen really did choose this exposed promontory for her sanctuary some fifteen hundred years ago. There is no doubting the elevating beauty of the place.
And so, as I promised, to Dwynwen’s story. She lived in the fifth century CE, and was one of Prince Brychan’s twenty four daughters. She fell in love with a young man called Maelon Dafodrill who apparently returned her feelings. Yet in a fit of caprice, Dwynwen refused his proposal of marriage. Some say it was because she wished to remain chaste. Others say it was because her father had arranged for her to marry another man. For his part, Maelon made his displeasure at the refusal known by spreading tales that cast doubt on Dwynwen’s honour.
In a frenzy of anguish, she thus took herself off alone to a wood where she prayed to be cured of her passion. And so it was that an angel appeared to her in a dream and gave her a potion that not only erased her feelings of love, but also transformed the spurned lover into a block of ice. Heaven also granted her three wishes. Dwynwen thus asked that Maelon be unfrozen. She then requested that if any true-hearted lover invoked her name, they should be granted their heart’s desire or relieved of their painful emotions. Finally, she sought never to be married, and thence withdrew from the world, founding a convent on Llanddwyn Island which, after her death in 465, became a place of pilgrimage. Her feast day is 25 January, and is celebrated by many in Wales with cards and flowers in the same way Saint Valentine’s Day is marked in many European countries.
And so unable to complete our own pilgrimage and reach the island with its ruined church, we retraced our steps, thinking more profanely of a turkey to be roasted, presents to be opened, and a glass of champagne to drink.
And it was under this patch of marram grass, as we left the beach, that my Kodak EasyShare gave up the ghost. You could say, then, that this post is its last post. Just as well I still have the memory…
copyright 2015 Tish Farrell
Inspired by Jo’s Monday Walk
See her latest post and other bloggers’ walks at Roker Pier
*
![Losing Kui -Final[1]](https://tishfarrell.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/losing-kui-final1.jpg?w=164&h=240 "Losing Kui -Final[1]")
Secrets, conspiracies, tragedy,
dark comedy – a fast-paced
novella of interwoven tales set
somewhere in East Africa
We spent our Christmas with my sister, Jo, and chap, Bob, and their labrador Molly, staying in a cottage in the grounds of Henllys Hall on Anglesey. These huge sculpted dogs guard the entrance drive to the cottages, and are caught here in light shadow with the sun on the scene behind them. I find them intrinsically noble, and they unavoidably remind me of the story of the great dog Gelert, owned by the thirteenth century Welsh prince, Llywelyn of Gwynnedd. But beware, this tale does not end well. Here it is.
One day Llywelyn went hunting with his court, leaving his faithful hound, Gelert, to guard the stronghold, and in particular to watch over the Prince’s young motherless son who was still only an infant. At sunset when Llywelyn returned to his castle, Gelert rushed to meet his master, but something was horribly wrong. The dog’s muzzle was all smeared with blood. Filled with alarm, Llywelyn ran to his son’s chamber and, seeing the cot upturned, and bed clothes strewn about and streaked in blood, he leapt to conclusions, and drawing his sword, he killed his beloved dog. As the dog yelped his last, so a child’s cry rang out from under the cot. When Llywelyn ran to right it, he found his son quite safe beneath. But he also found the corpse of a large wolf that Gelert had killed to save the child. Filled with remorse, Llywelyn built a cairn of stones to honour his faithful friend, and the place where it may be seen is at Beddgelert (grave of Gelert), beside the River Glaslyn, on the road to Porthmadog.
copyright 2015 Tish Farrell
Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge: Shadowed
Secrets, conspiracies, tragedy,
dark comedy – a fast-paced novella
of interwoven tales set somewhere in
East Africa
Storm lashed
Wind wrought
Winter’s tracery
*
Inspired by Laura Bloomsbury at Tell Tale Therapy who was in turn inspired by Linda G Hill’s Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday. I love the way one blog leads to another. Go to both links for quick-fire creative responses to Linda’s prompt: the letter ‘T’. The rule is no forward planning. Just write.
Badge by: Doobster @ Mindful
*
Secrets, conspiracies, tragedy, dark comedy
– a fast-paced novella of interwoven tales
set somewhere in East Africa
