A Message to my Blog Readers

            My dear friends, readers and followers,

What a time we are in!  Next week or the week after, I hope to post the final installment of my childhood series, “What my Eyes could Read.”  To those of you who are following my main project of my spiritual quest fiction, “Just like Eve,” please accept my apologies for putting it on hiatus for a bit.  The pandemic really threw me.  I live in Washington state, where it all began, and those of us in education were getting not only daily updates, but sometimes, multiple updates a day of changes to our institutions, to what buildings and resources are and are not available -- all without updates on how to manage the changes, until they started coming at an overwhelming rate.  And in my family of four, we were getting these from our four different districts or universities. 

Information over the virus and what to do, of course, was also coming from every angle.  We were being told at every turn to wash our hands and clean our homes.  Why not, I wondered, add a tip as simple as one to take Vitamin C?  Not a single source was.  But my family was running low on it, so I went to get some, and returned teasing that I still couldn’t get toilet paper, but I had no problem getting Vitamin C!

I was praying for those in vulnerable populations for safety from the virus and was grateful for the commitment of health care workers.  Without a vaccine, I found them to be quite brave.

            As orders to stay at home made their way through the entire world, I was thanking God for taking care of our planet.  We’ve done a terrible job at that, and now the divine forces are saving our planet by permitting a planet-wide decision to “stay at home.”  I prayed the pandemic would not harm many people, while the planet would also be cleansed.  This is happening, thank goodness.  Our planet is getting cleaned up.

In summary, my first responses were to feel the tornado of multi-daily changes to our family’s four schools, to pray few would be harmed by a fast-spreading virus, to  pray our planet would be cleansed, and to tease over no mention about Vitamin C, while being grateful I could get some for my own family.  My first question of no tips to take Vitamin C was so simple, so frivolous, and I thought nothing beyond it.  But then the questions involved my son and his friends and these questions got serious, then I took some time breathing and zenning, and then I koaned, and then I fell into a rabbit hole.  I’m whirling in the rabbit hole right now, so I can’t share about it.  But I can say this: I teach Research Writing classes at college, and I practice what I preach.  I consult only highly credible sources.  I go to primary sources.  I go to original data.  I go to the sources the sources’ sources’ sources go to.  I go to experts on the front lines -- those who have deep expertise and who have served as first-hand witnesses.  I go to the most highly credible sources possible.  And though the information is competing, some of these highly credible sources are revealing a daunting rabbit hole.

            With a rabbit hole like our pandemic, I lack  the energy of innovation for fiction writing.  This is especially true given that I was already on hiatus from my fiction.  I have not written anything of “Just like Eve” since the school year started.  Knowing I was going into two heavy quarters at the college where I teach, I pre-wrote a great deal of material over the summer, and then I revised a selection at a time to post each month.  Between my break away from writing my fiction and our pandemic, I have not been in a position to reenter the creative process of fiction writing.

However, my childhood story, “What my Eyes could See,” comes from a wordy, disorganized version of it I wrote in 2006, when the material was fresh in my mind, but too fresh for good writing.  I’ve been meaning to return to it ever since.  Now was the time.

            What does this mean for “Just like Eve”?  Yes, I will return to it.  For now, I am modifying my plan, however, to focus on the second part: Eve’s quest and what she learns.  My pre-pandemic plan for the spring and summer had been to develop the subplots: Jasmine and her husband Tim, Davie and his wife Pam, and Davie with his friend, Ethan, 15 years his senior and a former pastor, with whom Davie confides.  You’ve also already started to see a subplot with Jasmine’s friend Mindy, which I’ve also wanted to develop, along with the subplots of some of Jasmine’s other friends.  But that takes the energy of imagination, which I just don’t have right now.  Therefore, my return to it will be more like the non-fiction writing that my mind can grapple with as I explore Jasmine’s quest.  Her quest into Eve, women, and the ways women have been portrayed in churches, and even treated by church authorities, is my quest.  Like Jasmine, I was also cast from a church for being the object of a pastor’s temptation.  And, like Jasmine, I entered into my own quest out of that experience. 

I hope to post the final installment of “What my Eyes could See” next week or the week after.  Some of you have also expressed curiosity about Aquarius and our transition into it, and I might post one more explanation about that, based on the deepening consciousness that derives from Quantum Physics.  And, I hope! -- pray with me over this – I will turn to second part of “Just like Eve” to explore Jasmine’s quest to answer that question, “Who, really, is and was Eve?”

Blessings to all of you,        

Karina

August 1, 2020 update: Oh, what a whirlwind!