My computer is working: for now. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t.

As soon as the parts come in, it goes back to the It Help Center, where it will have the monitor replaced. After that, it should work again. It’s an old computer, but I do need it to work: without it, I feel as though I’ve lost an important part of my life.

I have so much to do right now, and I’ve been doing a lot of it today, although I’m still terribly behind. But you can understand why I need something, some glimpse of something brighter, better, wilder. And so today I’m going to post some pictures of imaginary gardens. These come from The Hanging Garden, which I described several days ago as the most beautiful blog on the internet. They are of course pictures of real places, but I think of them as imaginary because to me, they are parts of a country of the mind, which I’ll explain in just a moment.

And as I’m posting these, I’m going to start thinking about the story I was writing online, a while back. You remember it, right? It was about Thea. She took a train to the town of Shadow, which is the town where Mrs. Moth, Miss Lavender, Miss Gray, and Hyacinth all have a house. On the outskirts of town. That house has many doors, and some of them, sometimes, lead to the Other Country, which is Mother Night’s country.

Thea went to that country, and there she met Mother Night and saw the tapestry she is weaving. She even caught a glimpse of the front of the tapestry. And she met the Gentleman, and Mother Night’s children, Morgan and Merlin. Especially Merlin. And she was accompanied at least part of the way by Cordelia the obnoxious Cat.

What I think about gardens is, I think the best of them are glimpses of Mother Night’s country. That’s what makes them magical. They are earthly glimpses of something unearthly. So if you want to look at portions of that country, reflections of it as it were, look at these gardens.

These old towers and bridges and streams, that’s what you would find there, if you could find your way there.  But that takes magic.  Cats have that magic, and witches have that magic.  And sometimes writer do too.  The problem is, if I go back to telling that story, where would I start?  I’m just not sure anymore.

Would I tell the story of Thea and Merlin?  That was a story that came out of a particular time, and I don’t know if I can go back to it.  Or perhaps I can.  Perhaps this is the time to write it, to capture it.

Since I finished the PhD, I have not been much of a writer.  I’ve been an author, sure.  But I haven’t been writing, haven’t been creating the things I should be creating.  It’s as though there’s been something in the way.  As though I haven’t been able to get back, myself, to Mother Night’s country, that country of and in the mind. So what I need to do, of course, is find the magic again. Because the thing is, if you know how to get there, any door is the door to that country.  Every threshold becomes the threshold. For witches, every door connects to every other. Spaced and time mean nothing to them. (Or to cats.)

So how to go back, where to start? I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it . . .