Return of the Dragon Painter

The Dragon Vision

(photo courtesy of dragonlady7137)

She was like a shivering limp rag when the neighbor kid held her out to me.

“You knock too loud,” I told him. “How many times do I have to tell you not to knock too loud? It gives me headaches. I don’t like headaches.”

The kid held his ground, wincing as he pushed the white fur toward me just another inch.

“My mom says people need company,” he said.

“I don’t like company."

“She sneezes around cats or maybe she’d keep this one.”

“Who’d keep a dead cat?” I asked.

“It’s not dead yet.”

“It will be if you don’t feed it,” I said, and closed the door.

I turned away and was about two steps across the hardwood floor when I started talking to myself, telling myself I didn’t like kids and I didn’t like cats. My back hurt from sitting in front of the computer all day and my eyes were fuzzy from staring at the screen.

“I need some peace and quiet,” I said.

The kid was still there when I re-opened the door. His lips were pressed tight together and his eyes were squinted closed. He looked like he was praying hard.

“I don’t trust your mother,” I said, as I yanked the cat from him.

I don’t like being jacked around by women and I just plain hated living next door to Wiccans.

excerpted from "The Companion," by Ferrel D. Moore

*****

Over the last six months my life has been an incredibly interesting mixture of meditation, study, training, and writing. I've driven across the United States, Canada, and back again in my personal quest to spend time with my teachers. I've missed all of you who were so kind to stop by to read the first installments of "The Secret Dragons of Creative Writing," and hope to see you join me again as I conclude the series. In answer to where I've been, there is a recital in one of my arts that explains the journey:

I face my life

By beholding this day

I am one with Earth and Heaven.

Where fire purifies

and Water cleanses.

I am a tree in the wind

looking at the world.

I gather the best that I see.

I refine it to save what is good

and wash away what is not.

I am one with God.

I embrace the tiger,

and return to the mountain.

It is, as many of my friends might say, a very Zen answer. But it is very true. I have the greatest respect and fondness for my teachers, but my journey was not only about spending time with them, it was also about my quest to once more find my personal Earth and Heaven.

Was I retreating from this world, from an environment saturated with politics as drama, bickering, media bombardment, and information overload? In a word, no. I went to seek goodness in the world, and to explore the creative gift that we as writers can offer back to our readers. I was not looking for economy and theme or the secret of staging scenes or character development- they are still there in the Walmart of Writing and the books on them are endless in their lack of either economy or theme.

Although it is important for writers to read other writers and immerse themselves in the media of the day so that they can be current and "up with it," I wondered if it was not more important at a certain point in my life to listen to the world and consider my role in it. And, frankly, it is sometimes difficult to understand ourselves in between twitters and text messages. In our manic rush toward the cliff of total interconnectedness, we risk throwing our individuality headlong to its death on the rocks waiting below. So, like so many writers before me, I went away to think and consider.

One thing that prompted me was the realization that over the years I have studied with masters of many arts, but I realized I was not giving enough to any of them because my life was littered with too much unfinished business that caused me to trip when I tried to move forward. I chose to study, perhaps, too many arts, which further complicated resolution and mastery. My first teacher used to tell me that I should study no other arts. "In the end," he would say, "if you do that you will drift from art to art looking for perfection and learn nothing." Perfection, you see, demands devotion and practice, practice, practice. And focus above all else.

I have struggled with this my entire life. It is, I think, an affliction that is particularly crippling for writers, as we too frequently abandon the mist-wrapped path of our art for the clear highway and billboard plastered roads of a writing "career."

So, having been gifted with the vision of the Dragon of Condensed Starlight, I was at the crossroads that many writers find themselves. Having had some success, I could rest and remember or go forward. The way forward leads to the darkness and rebirth of the Dragons of Fermentation and Putrefaction. Neither dragon's name fills the writer with comfort.

The ability to see the quintessential goodness of the world and to be able truly understand the creative gifts that allow us to write with meaning to lift up the world around us come at a fearful cost. It is difficult for me to pass a season without remembering what it cost John Steinbeck to write "The Grapes of Wrath."

Shall we write to please only our ego or just to be published? Or can we truly write to make a difference in the world? I believe that we can create wonderful, even brilliant stories to astonish and entertain our readers if we have made it as far as the lovely Dragon of Condensed Starlight. But if we wish to do more than that, we must face the dreaded dragons known to all who aspire to greatness as the Dragons of Fermentation and Putrefaction.

If you doubt you have the stamina, simply come along for the story, and perhaps the courage to pursue this terrible confrontation will come to us both because we travel together.

The Dreaded Twin Dragons