MIDNIGHT RAVEN BLACK

Not really a Raven - he or she is called a glossy starling but everything about it is raven like. Mysterious, beautiful and darkish.

Writing A Book Is No Easy Thing

I was told by one of my friends last night that I should start writing a novel or a book. She said it's overdue.

She said also that I should not just throw my thoughts and reflections out into the world, or for the matter of fact into your face, you treasured friends and readers. She said this was to easy.

I have been told so repeatedly. That it's time for me to write a book.

TRUE. I know for sure I am writer. I am born to write because words come easy to me like bees to the honey and I am story teller in real life.

The problem is just where to start. There is material for 12 books. Yes I think I could do twelve or more in my life time. Long big books. But where to start, where to start...............

Would I have been born 500 years earlier I would have spent my life with great pleasure traveling on a horse-wagon through the countryside, pausing here and there in small villages and earning a coin for every story told. Making people believe. Drinking wine and eating roasted goats-meat in my free time. A man of no conventions and no responsibilities, traveling free like a goose in winter.

But I also fancy myself in the orient, in hot and dry countries- the world of beautiful women in veils. I could have done a little bit of Persian carpet selling at the side. And by the way, I would have been a man for a change 500 years back .

And in the unlikely event that my stories should have dried up - there would be always a nice tea-drinking and resting place on top of the carpets in the airy corner shop with two doors on the market of which I would be the owner. Watching the women in their veils pass by would make me more than happy. Life is great and simplicity is happiness.

Which does not help us with the question now how I will get my first book onto paper? I am not even thinking about publishing but to have it in black and white in front of me would be a miracle.

I have been turning this thought an eternity in my head. So now it's decided. Faites vos jeux.

The book will be written. And unlike the tree in the picture it won't take an eternity anymore to grow.

MY OLD CASSUARINA TREE

Of the Cassuarina Tree they say that if you take in a boat with you a piece of it, be it ever so small contrary winds will arise to impede your journey or storms to imperil your life.

They say also that if you stand in its shadow by the light of the full moon you will hear, whispered mysteriously in its dark ramage, the secrets of the future.

These facts have been never disputed; but they say also that when in the wide estuaries the mangrove has in due time reclaimed the swampy land from the water the Cassuarina Tree plants itself and in its turn settles, solidifies and fertilizes the soil till it is ripe for more varied and luxuriant growth; and then having done its work, dies down before the ruthless encroachment of the myriad denizens of the jungle.

(William Somerset Maugham introduction to his novel The Cassuarina Tree)

These are very old Cassuarina Trees in Cape Vidal Nature Reserve in the St.Lucia Wetlands Park in South-Africa close to the border of Mozambique. It was there in that exact place that I have seen them for the first time and I did not know their name. A friend from Brazil told me their beautiful melodic name " Cassuarina ".

Trees are like big brothers and I have always felt they give you energy when you lean with your back against them or sit under them.

They always have their arms wide open for you like this old wild fig tree in a dried up river bed in Umfolozi Game Reserve in South-Africa.

Soon the rivers will fill with water and will run wild but this tree will stand another season and another and another...... with arms wide open for you

Arms wide open giving you shade...