I have long believed that it is the unusual in life which opens us and awakens us; that it is the extraordinary that catalyzes our self-realization in the midst of the ordinary. While we dwell in the ordinary dimensions of reality as a rule, it is those strange, disorienting, inspiring, awe-filled moments that will make us aware of our being alive.
Sometimes these moments are subtle. Other times they can lift us into a transcendent state; raise us into a higher ‘level’ of consciousness—even if only for a few moments or minutes—and then leave us to descend back into our earthen skin, touched if not somehow changed. Strange experiences are things that tend to stay with us; coming back from memory for us to rehearse and contemplate, over and over again.
This old book of mine culled together all of the stories I had which spoke to me of the unusual, the mysterious and the extra-ordinary. Many are drawn from or based upon actual experiences. While these experiences occur but infrequently, they give me pause in this collected-together format; they enable me to revisit a variety of experiences in which I was lifted-out of the ordinary or dis-placed, momentarily in experience, out of the ordinary moment into ‘something more.’ The stories collected here begin in May 1990 and conclude in November 2000.
If you follow the cover pics from upper-right clockwise to bottom-left, you move through images of the Four Seasons; Winter-Spring-Summer-Autumn and back to Winter again—those that we who live in the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere pass through and experience on a yearly basis. This annual journey suggests the Olde Wheel of the Year, which – in certain Olde traditions, begins and ends at Winter Solstice.
Reading and engaging with the stories in this book you will follow numerous characters from my fictional world, hearing of their hikes, adventures and epiphanies, and in some cases their reflections on these moments. As such this book is not a simple ‘collection’ of ‘short stories and poetry.’ Rather, I think of it is an interlinked series of spiritual vignettes, in verse and prose, in and through which you will journey – in your own ways – through the seasons from 1990 to 2000.
If you have read any of my other books, you will recognize here characters quoted or featured in those texts. Many of the characters in my old novel – Ham-Farir: The Faring of Matthew Thorin Dier (2008) – are portrayed here in other contexts. Most of the characters quoted in either The Fires of Yule (2013) – a guide to the keeping of a Pagan calendar of “Thirteen Days of Yule” – or WellSprings of the Dier (2002) – a primer on Celtic spirituality; codified into “Nine Wayes” – are given voice here, being shown in significant moments as they live the spiritualities bodied-forth in those other texts.
Tales from the Seasons is available from the publisher:
https://www.authorhouse.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/271459-Tales-from-the-Seasons
As well as from Amazon:
