She risks a thought, a long-sought-after desire ... then risks so much more

what's it all about

well-heeled & incessant traveler Sara Melina has been on a quest since she was a mere girl, searching for answers and facts, and in her constant pursuit ends up falling in love with two men at separate yet intertwined times. When she runs across meridians to the multitudes and solace of India, unaware of one another, they both go in search of her. With Adrián on her heels and Turner waiting at the Mumbai airport, in a moment that almost slips away, Sara unearths what she's been looking for: not in what either of them have to offer, but in what she discovers herself to be.

excerpts

9

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,

the fingerpoints look through like rosy blooms,

your eyes smile peace.

The pasture gleams and glooms

'neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,

are golden kingcup fields with silver edge

where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.

'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

 

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly hangs

like a blue thread loosened from the sky.

So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.

Oh! Clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,

this close-companioned inarticulate hour

when two-fold silence was the song of love.

Silent Noon

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

from The House of Life

A fabric is woven, woven with yarn,

textured or uniform,

single or plied.

The yarn is twisted for cohesion,

stretched out from strands, drawn from a sliver,

cleaned, picked, sheared, unwound.

Fiber taken from the source.

 

The design of the fabric goes on paper.

 

Yarns are let off the beam,

threaded through heddles

suspended from harnesses that move up and down

to the motion of the chain.

Through the opening created

the yarns shuttle back and forth,

interlacing with the others to create the pattern of the cloth.

A fine mesh pushes the yarns forward

and the fabric's taken up.

And wound.

And thus,

the woven fabric grows.

to

fall in love with

two

men

was

never

In her plans

Finally she has arrived

of flyers  &  nomads

9

How it Happened

Riding the train, my heart on my sleeve,

I wrote on a notepad, then tore the pages and folded them into my briefcase. By the time I got to the office I was over "it." Fumbling through the briefcase later that day, I saw the pages and, with as little thought as it took me to write, crumpled them into a wastebasket. But the basket was made of metal mesh, so I un-trashed the pages and put them back in the briefcase. Months later, I came upon the pages again and cried all over again. More shocking than finding them was feeling so strongly about something I had written . . . that I had written it at all, and decided that perhaps I could make a story around them.

116,000 words later, those crumpled pages are buried in this novel, seamlessly woven into a body of discovery. Yet still, at times, when I re-edit or come across them again, I cry.

The reason

On my way to work,  distressed beyond words, I was at the brink of tears when dropped off at the station, but I gathered my stuff, bought the train ticket and an apple strudel, and sat among my soon-to-be-fellow-passengers as if nothing was wrong. But pain seared, it was palpable. When at last I got to a window seat and tucked away my things, the dam broke. I can bear just about anything with the best of them, but not that day. And not only did I cry: I sobbed uncontrollably.

The outcome

What drove me to write a conversation between two fictitious people is a mystery to me. I continued sobbing, I'm embarrassed to say, while scribbling page after page, with no idea of what I was doing, aware only of the silence around me. I felt refreshed and put away the pad and all that went along with it, until months later when the pages resurfaced. Little did I know that giving them a reason for being would be the impetus for my writing, and that all the empty notebooks, and reams and boxes of paper in drawers and closets, were for that day and for every day since.

It is finished, but I am unsure it conveys what it is meant to convey.

originated

| fall of 1997

begun

| with fervor in 1998

published

| at last in 2022

The ending was proposed by a stranger who gave me an option so logical and sensible . . . I used it.

a tale of redemption

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to fall in love with two men was

never

In her plans

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9

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,

the fingerpoints look through like rosy blooms,

your eyes smile peace.

The pasture gleams and glooms 'neath billowing skies

that scatter and amass.

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,

are golden kingcup fields with silver edge

where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.

'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

 

Deep in the sun-searched growths

the dragonfly hangs

like a blue thread loosened from the sky.

So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.

Oh! Clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,

this close-companioned inarticulate hour

when two-fold silence

was the song of love.

9
9

A fabric is woven, woven with yarn,

textured or uniform,

single or plied.

The yarn is twisted for cohesion,

stretched out from strands,

drawn from a sliver,

cleaned, picked, sheared, unwound.

Fiber taken from the source.

 

The design of the fabric goes on paper.

 

Yarns are let off the beam,

threaded through heddles

suspended from harnesses that

move up and down

to the motion of the chain.

Through the opening created

the yarns shuttle back and forth,

interlacing with the others to create

the pattern of the cloth.

A fine mesh pushes the yarns forward

and the fabric's taken up.

And wound.

And thus,

the woven fabric grows.

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