Trees and those wacky Persians' faith and things
Forgive me if I've mentioned it before--I honestly can't remember--but I'm still torn about this idea of a spiritual Jaffar/Princess fic I want to write. One where she has a spiritual crisis about what she sees as Jaffar's polytheism, the way any religious medieval person would, and is seriously worried about whether her husband would be cast into Hell. And they'd work it out and angst quite a bit about it.
Mostly because I feel like it might be of the sort that'd only satisfy *me* (isn't that why I write in the first place?) and that it might be too alienating for some readers, even if they'd be doing their usual banging in it and everything. But... the deeper I get immersed into that medieval Islamic mindset, the more realistic it gets and therefore, religion is in the very air they breathe. And I've been rereading Bird of the Wilderness (acitymadeofsong, I haven't forgotten about answering those meme questions about it!) and I'm just absorbed by that world again because it goes so deep into those spiritual levels that they would've operated on. That, and in that 'verse, Jaffar has had that terrifying limbo experience, which would give him food for thought about the fate of his soul.
Because, dude, medieval people worry about these things.
Although I don't want to write Falcon 3, because I feel I wouldn't be able to do it justice in my current state of health, mostly because my medications mess with my concentration and my writing ability so much and I haven't been able to do yoga and fasting as much as I did back when I wrote the first ones :( Even though I keep getting visions and intensely powerful imagery about it all, but I know I wouldn't be able to dress them into words the same way I did back then, not when I'm in this bloody opiate haze. (I saw a really cool doctor last week and he got me a referral to some pain specialists, so knock on wood that they might find alternatives for my pain management that don't fuzzy up my brain too much. I'm getting sick of it myself.) But... sigh.
Just today, as I was waking up (ironically, this was partially brought on by a mild opium haze from having had to take those heavy painkillers before bed) I had the most intense of visions of a tree. Or, to be more precise, a tree the Princess saw in Jaffar's garden in Falcon, outside her tower, near those flowers that featured in the first story. It was a dark, gnarly tree, a reddish, dark one with dark purple-black leaves and pink flowers, like certain varieties of cherry, but it was also like a pomegranate tree in the way it was twisted and in the way it bore some beautiful red fruit. And it had been struck in half by lightning and then it'd split into this fountain-type shape, of two cascades on either side, these amazing cascades of pink flowers and weeping-willow type branches that swept the ground, so that the entire tree was this fountain shape. And in that fountain shape she saw a heart, somehow, and this was significant, as was the life-death-rebirth symbolism of the pomegranate and the way the tree had kept on living and becoming even more of a symbol of love after it had nearly been killed by the lightning. And she asked Jaffar about the tree and he said he'd been thinking about the tree a lot but he didn't know what kind of tree it was, either. And he said "ask the gardener." And the gardener was some lady servant who'd been there for ages (echoes of versaphile in my mind, as she also talked a lot about her violets and her other plants--I never saw her, but supposed her to be an avatar of Versaphile) and she said it must be some hybrid because she'd never seen that type of tree either. But that it had been there as long as she'd been alive and that it had suffered through a lot but still survived and was stronger than ever. And the gardener didn't know about Yassamin having contemplated suicide long ago and how those flowers and that tree would've been her grave had she jumped out of the tower window. So there was this heavy symbolism about the tree being all about love and life triumphing over sorrow.
And I would say more, but then I'd spoil something important I've been thinking of about Jaffar and Yassamin in that story, but holy hell, that was a profound image. And I'm sure Jaffar's about to sit underneath that tree with her and talk about deep stuff and just fall asleep snuggled with her in its shadow.
Mostly because I feel like it might be of the sort that'd only satisfy *me* (isn't that why I write in the first place?) and that it might be too alienating for some readers, even if they'd be doing their usual banging in it and everything. But... the deeper I get immersed into that medieval Islamic mindset, the more realistic it gets and therefore, religion is in the very air they breathe. And I've been rereading Bird of the Wilderness (acitymadeofsong, I haven't forgotten about answering those meme questions about it!) and I'm just absorbed by that world again because it goes so deep into those spiritual levels that they would've operated on. That, and in that 'verse, Jaffar has had that terrifying limbo experience, which would give him food for thought about the fate of his soul.
Because, dude, medieval people worry about these things.
Although I don't want to write Falcon 3, because I feel I wouldn't be able to do it justice in my current state of health, mostly because my medications mess with my concentration and my writing ability so much and I haven't been able to do yoga and fasting as much as I did back when I wrote the first ones :( Even though I keep getting visions and intensely powerful imagery about it all, but I know I wouldn't be able to dress them into words the same way I did back then, not when I'm in this bloody opiate haze. (I saw a really cool doctor last week and he got me a referral to some pain specialists, so knock on wood that they might find alternatives for my pain management that don't fuzzy up my brain too much. I'm getting sick of it myself.) But... sigh.
Just today, as I was waking up (ironically, this was partially brought on by a mild opium haze from having had to take those heavy painkillers before bed) I had the most intense of visions of a tree. Or, to be more precise, a tree the Princess saw in Jaffar's garden in Falcon, outside her tower, near those flowers that featured in the first story. It was a dark, gnarly tree, a reddish, dark one with dark purple-black leaves and pink flowers, like certain varieties of cherry, but it was also like a pomegranate tree in the way it was twisted and in the way it bore some beautiful red fruit. And it had been struck in half by lightning and then it'd split into this fountain-type shape, of two cascades on either side, these amazing cascades of pink flowers and weeping-willow type branches that swept the ground, so that the entire tree was this fountain shape. And in that fountain shape she saw a heart, somehow, and this was significant, as was the life-death-rebirth symbolism of the pomegranate and the way the tree had kept on living and becoming even more of a symbol of love after it had nearly been killed by the lightning. And she asked Jaffar about the tree and he said he'd been thinking about the tree a lot but he didn't know what kind of tree it was, either. And he said "ask the gardener." And the gardener was some lady servant who'd been there for ages (echoes of versaphile in my mind, as she also talked a lot about her violets and her other plants--I never saw her, but supposed her to be an avatar of Versaphile) and she said it must be some hybrid because she'd never seen that type of tree either. But that it had been there as long as she'd been alive and that it had suffered through a lot but still survived and was stronger than ever. And the gardener didn't know about Yassamin having contemplated suicide long ago and how those flowers and that tree would've been her grave had she jumped out of the tower window. So there was this heavy symbolism about the tree being all about love and life triumphing over sorrow.
And I would say more, but then I'd spoil something important I've been thinking of about Jaffar and Yassamin in that story, but holy hell, that was a profound image. And I'm sure Jaffar's about to sit underneath that tree with her and talk about deep stuff and just fall asleep snuggled with her in its shadow.