Kim Batchelor

Writer of magical realism and other imaginative fiction

Meditating Stories

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As a writer, I tend to be a ‘pantser’ (“fly by the seat of my pants”) rather than a ‘plotter’ (relying on detailed outlines) when I write. Before participating in last November’s “National Novel Writing” (NaNoWriMo), though, I reversed course and created brief descriptions of a set of scenes ahead of time that I turned to when writing each day’s 1700 word installment.

My writing process each day usually begins with a short period of meditation. Resisting the impulses that strike at my mind—tasks that need to be done, places to go, people to see—helps me to empty my brain, to let the unexpected image or scene make an entrance. I realize the purpose of meditation is not accomplishment but mindfulness and relaxation. Still, I find it to be a useful tool to sometimes generate the unanticipated image that I use in my work.

One morning during NaNoWriMo, I sat down to meditate first. During the meditation, I experienced a peaceful scene of floating over fields of golden wheat, a light blue sky above me dotted with a few fluffy clouds and illuminated by a muted yellow sun. I let that scene carry me along for several minutes, feeling as if I were flying over a serene landscape. I returned to my pantser roots when that scene later made its way into my NaNoWriMo novel. A young woman with a disability that left her unable to walk soars in her imagination over a field where, unbeknownst to her, she accidentally bumps against the back of a young man working in that same field. In that moment, the paths of two of the four main characters—Angelique and Ash—cross for the very first time.

The great writer Pat Conroy once said that he couldn’t wait to get back to writing so he could “find out what [his] characters will do next.” I relate to that and have the same motivation that compels me to write. I find that a few moments of not deliberately imagining but letting my imagination take over allows stories to find their own way into my consciousness. Each day, after a brief period of meditation, I can’t wait to get back to where my mind guides me before I put a single word to page.

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Flying

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For most of my life, I have been acrophobic–afraid of heights. Once, when I was about ten years old, I found myself clinging to the wall, as far as I could get from the railing, while standing 12 stories above the ground at the base of the Iron Man statue in Birmingham, Alabama.

I experienced airplane travel starting at six years old, but in spite of decades traveling by air, as an adult I went through a period of white-knuckle flights during any kind of turbulence. Luckily, that only lasted a couple of years–after I learned the statistics on how rare it is to die in a plane crash.

My acrophobia sometimes creeps in during sleep. I find myself in planes without ceilings. Or I step from elevators reaching the highest floor of a building and discover that the walls haven’t been built yet. I keep my head down on the topless plane or cling to the floor of the unfinished structure trying to figure out how to get down.

But in my dream life as a child, I always loved flying. My favorite dreams were of jumping off swings and soaring over backyards in my dreamy neighborhood. Skirting the clouds, approaching the moon, experiences that, for most of us, only happen in our imaginations, or while we sleep.

In spite of my continuing fear of heights, flying often finds its way into my magical realist novels. My children’s book, The Island of Lost Children, a modern take on Peter and Wendy, is naturally full of children flying. In my novel, GEM of the Starry Skies, the main character, Gwen Mora, takes to the skies, fueled by her growing love of astrophysics. And in The Mists of Na Crainn, the main character, Lyric Doherty, experiences signs that she’s developing the ability to ‘soar’—a wind-swept capability that keeps her above ground but close to the treetops.

Me, I only wish I could fly in real life. Part of me is an acrophile, someone who loves (imaginary) heights. But I’m not inclined to slip into a hang glider or wingsuit. I satisfy my craving instead in my writing and occasionally by climbing aboard the Soarin’ ride at Disney.

If wishes were horses…then Pegasus would be real. Or maybe just a character in my dreams.

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Freedom and Apology

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inmatesThe jail where I teach creative writing once a month is almost all concrete and steel. I check in on the first floor, trade my id for a clip-on card indicating I should be escorted and make my way up to the classroom on the fourth floor. At various steps, I wait at those heavy steel doors to be buzzed in, one right after the other, passing the desk where I tell another set of deputies who I am and who I’m with before making my way to the final set of doors where the class is held, to examine the subject of apology.

Last  month, the subject was apologies. We started with three songs—from Brenda Lee, Elton John and John Lennon. “What’s the common thread?” I asked them. Several surprised me by how the songs brought out their emotions of regret. Children, partners, family members—they related to the singers’ words of apologies even though the songs were more than a decade old and they are largely in their 20s and early 30s. Later, gathered in groups, they turned the words of those three songs into one of their own—and then sang or rapped them. One performance was musical, another serious and passionate, and the third, extremely funny.

We wrapped up with one of William Carlos William’s poems, the one about the plums he apologized for taking from the ‘ice box’ but that were so cold and delicious, so how could he not? Apology with no regrets. The women wrote their own poems about apologizing for something that they weren’t really sorry for. One wrote of the rush from taking a drug she was now ready to say, ‘bye, bye’ to. Another prefaced her reading by saying she never really believed an apology was sincere, while all around her the women she shared space with spoke of their feelings of regret. About what they’d done in the past. The affect of their actions on others.

We ended by talking about the act of saying, “I’m sorry,” apologizing with intent of making things right. The 12 Steps of Recovery are posted on the wall. Make a moral inventory. Make a list of all persons harmed. Become willing to make amends to them all.

And not apologizing for everything, as we women tend to do, as if everything’s our fault.

Once the class was done, I walked into the night with the two volunteers who provide vital assistance during those two hours. We escaped the concrete and steel, free to do what we wanted to do and go where we wanted to go, I thought of those women I left behind, hoping the power of putting their thoughts to paper helps them along to that same freedom I enjoy at the end of each class. Free of whatever regrets holds them now and threatens to keep them coming back.

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From Nightmares to Lemonade

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Scary Asylum Interior Background

I rarely remember my dreams, except for those that instill some sort of terror in me. Those nightmares come in three flavors. In one I find myself in an elevator taking me to the highest floor of a building. When I step out, that level is only a floor with no walls and I find myself clinging to it to keep from getting swept off by the wind or standing and plummeting over the edge. In the second scenario familiar to a lot of people, I’m in school, searching for the class I forgot to go to for the entire semester so I can take a final on the subject I probably know nothing about. And I’m not wearing pants.

The first in which I never think of getting back on the elevator, or maybe the elevator disappears, probably reflects my fear of heights or some subconscious insecurity. The second is that fear of something neglected or some subconscious insecurity, and the fact that I’m always questioning my clothing choices.

Earlier this year, I had that third type of dream, one I don’t have often. I was being chased by some seriously deranged killer wielding a knife while I hid in some unfamiliar house hoping to get away from him. That night, I took refuge in a closet while knife-man was skulking downstairs. As he got closer I started forcing myself to wake up, like swimming through thick syrup to bring myself to waking consciousness again. When I have those dreams, I often wake up feeling frightened and disoriented. That night was no different, but instead of dwelling on the dream and eventually slipping back into sleep, I started concocting a story.

What if the person hiding in the closet is listening to the murder of her philandering ex-boyfriend? What if the philandering ex-boyfriend cheated on her with her sister, and that same sister is doing him in for not being faithful to her? And what if somehow their mother is involved, the same mother who told the woman in the closet that she’d been responsible for taking out their philandering father by monkeying with his medications?

By the time I got back to sleep again about an hour later I had constructed the basics for the novel I finished this summer, a murder mystery propelled in many ways by the myriad social media outlets–#BadSister. The #BadSister hashtag has many connotations, and not what you might assume.

While I’m currently revising for future publication, I look at nightmares very differently. I can feel more comfortable now as I fall asleep at night. As much as I hope I don’t have a bad dream, I’ll never know what good might come out of the next one.

Have you ever had a creative project fueled by a nightmare?

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Teatro Dallas: A Vibrant World in a Small Space

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2014 Christmas Night Moon (KWickline) - on canvas

In muted light, a culebra slinks across the floor very close to those who sit in chairs only a foot or two away. Music plays as the dancer mimics the snake writhing and slinking. A celestial orb—sun, maybe moon—provides little light to the audience as they feel the momentary danger of the menacing serpent moving so close to them. In moments, the part of the room that serves as a stage will erupt in a lively dance typical of the Caribbean, or more specifically, of the island nation of Cuba.

Teatro Dallas' "poetry dances" - Nicolas Guillen
Teatro Dallas’ “poetry dances” – Nicolas Guillen

These are only a couple of scenes giving a glimpse of the world of Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen, a world captured in the latest production of the “poetry dances” series by Teatro Dallas. Guillen, once national poet of Cuba, incorporated history, social justice, the African and Spanish of his heritage and the rhythms of nature indigenous to the island. Verse combines with rhythm and melody and history to inhabit the actors and bodies of the dancers in one of the best productions I’ve experienced by the 30 year old theatrical institution.

In the early 1990s, Teatro performed in a larger theater in downtown Dallas, the place where they introduced one of their most memorable productions, a play capturing the life and untimely death of 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez. “Santos,” killed by a Dallas police officer in 1973 during an act of Russian roulette, portrayed that short life in a play immersed in sound and light that places the theatergoer into the scene. A shot is not just a sound in this production. It is the herald of a young life cut short. And the beauty of Jeff Hirst’s work creating those scenes never detracts from the characters representing those who loved a boy lost.

Since then, vampires and ghosts regularly visited—both the larger venue and, after a fire, the smaller location in a nondescript strip shopping mall tucked away between freeway and the city’s hospital district.

I confess I had not heard of Guillen before seeing the play that incorporates so much of his passionate poetry into this multi-media gem. Just about everything that Teatro does is visceral with tragedies interwoven even what seems to be comedic. This is no exception.

Guillen’s poetry and dance on the Teatro stage breathed its last (for now) on July 7, but there will be more poets, more dance, more music in the future, I suspect. I will not miss the next opportunity. As Guillen wrote in his “Son (Cuban style of music and dance) Number 6,”

“Let the heart-warming ‘son’ break out,
and our people dance,
heart close to heart,
glasses clinking together
water on water with rum!”

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