IN THE UNDERGROUND RIVER

 

         

                                                             I've broken through.

                                                                I call it being in the zone.

                                                           The best description for it, though, is

                                                           diving into the underground river

                                                             letting the current carry me

                                                            

                                                                     For years I've been taking notes

                                                              Of phrases and words with power

                                                                   the power to transport

                                                                I had them in my draft

                                                                   But I never looked back at them

                                                                I was too worried about

                                                                  CONNECTING 

                                                                    VISIONING

                                                     the next curve in the secretive stream

                                                                      I was very afraid

                                                                      I was constantly in my head

                                                                   External movements

                                                                         were in my way

                                                                       I had to deal with them

                                                                     "wash them out of my hair"

                                                                             It took forever

                                                                          Then, one day:  it was done.

                                                                         The open space of time 

                                                                              once again, beckoned

                                                                       I stepped in with my bundle of nerves

                                                                              my fears

                                                                          It began, yet again

                                                                         The long, slow, strange journey

                                                                         of return to the beating heart

                                                                          of my underground river.

                                                                                   I had to do several things

                                                                              first, had to gather together

                                                                                all the loose ends

                                                                                 recover the memory, the line of imagining

                                                                                It is long, slow, uncertain groping

                                                                                    it's blindness in pitch darkness

                                                                                     you can only follow your 

                                                                                          invisible senses

                                                                                     I did it, yet again,

                                                                               for the hundredth, thousandth time

                                                                                         And YET AGAIN

                                                                                 I found the caverns

                                                                                       I floated in

                                                                                      I sank into the water

                                                                          the waters of creation

                                                                          the river of the word

                                                                     My Mysterious Happiness

                                                                                and now I can make out

                                                                                    just faintly

                                                                             a distant glow, a shimmering

                                                                                  

                                                                              suddenly I felt it

                                                                                the hour of fulfillment

                                                                                the day of completion

                                                                                        is nearing!

                                                                                

                                                                             when my child will stride into the world

                                                                                    on her fully formed

                                                                                  chubby, energizer bunny legs

                                                                                      her arms spread wide

                                                                                           with her smiling face

                                                                                         She will run outside

                                                                                         the entire world to embrace.

Failure is Success

 

REALIZATIONS

 

                           Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.

                                                                                                                        William Feather

        Writing feels like that to me, especially right now.

Writing gives me this feeling 85% of most days and nights.

Because images come to me, they arise in me (I guess in my imagination),

I feel drawn to follow...

I can even decide on the future outcome of my plot.  I note it down...

But then, the moment comes when I must fill in the intervening images, and this is where THE HARD PART COMES.

Filling in means heading out into THAT SPACE up THERE:   it's beautiful, it's wide open, 

and it is what writing truly is.

Because it's EMPTY.   You must now populate it.

So what do I do?

I start to read all kinds of stuff... that my intuition tells me:  "Go read that!"  I watch all kinds of videos, listen to all kinds of stories...  I take lots and lots of notes (because, remember, I write in Spanish:  I read Spanish books, 19th century memoirs, historical accounts, and I copy down phrases that I like, words that are new to me whose definitions I note down). 

I go into latency.  My brain opens up to the empty, wide-open space of creation.

I PRAY.

LITERALLY.

I ask my ancestors to whisper to me.

I ask my own awareness to populate that space.

The characters that already are there (already in what I've written of my novel), come to my rescue.

Then new characters appear because the already known ones seek them out.

I realized that this chapter was going to be the most difficult one for me to write.

That it wasn't going to be easy to imagine.

This was why I had been internally twisting and turning for YEARS over it.

Because the preliminary draft came to me in 2021.

I am not kidding:   FIVE YEARS AGO.

Creating fiction is like giving birth.

In my case anyway, in the case of this, my very first full-length novel.

And it gives me comfort to know that (thanks to the fact that I have had the experience of giving birth twice),

the last part of having a baby is actually the MOST DIFFICULT PART:  

LABOR.

You have to push, push, push.

You have to breathe, a special way of breathing.

When you feel the contraction kick in, you start breathing.

Until the contraction completes its arc and starts to die down.

Then you must REST.  Breathe normally.

So in a way, I am going through the final stage here...

  El trabajo de parto final.  La parte EXPULSIVA.

Yeah, I must hang on.

Hang in there...

I am not alone.

I need to work with my awareness,

my unconscious,

BE ATTENTIVE AND LISTEN TO

my Ancestors and my Guides.

This is my Realization.

I don't know what will come out... the baby will have a face I have never seen before.

But I will recognize him/her. I will be amazed by his or her beauty...

...so...I'll keep you in the loop!

 

I AM STUCK (KINDA), RE MY NOVEL'S FINAL CHAPTER

 It's not exactly writer's block, but yeah, it is.  ;)

I have my final chapter to write, the most challenging of all.

About men, soldiers, trackers, in the jungle.

My previous chapters were about a country picnic, a formal ball, a town, a country estate...  I always discovered that what I thought would be a short "sandwich" transition wound up turning into practically its own chapter.

Escribo a pulso.  I don't have an outline.  I think and think, for months, years.  Then I "see" where the story must go.

Daily life gets in the way.  Jobs.  Birthdays and holidays.  Car problems.  Money worries.  Laundry.  Ironing.  You name it.

When I finally get everything taken care of, it takes me a long time to settle down and get back to "Dreamtime". Then, more time till I start really typing in the new texts.

Actually, I will write the chapter, I will do it and surprise myself while I'm actually writing.  I just don't force myself to write.  I do an approach, a slow approach.  Then suddenly it happens and I can't do anything else. I become totally absorbed.

These past few days I have been working, tweaking.  I meant to get to the new chapter and start tying up the loose ends (meaning I have to re-read all the notes, the patchwork quilt, and what I've got written thus far, then... let the magic happen) but I came across other chapters, started re-reading and realized the text needed work.

So even though I haven't gotten to the chapter that needs writing, I am still being productive.  Believe me, the first draft is always far from good enough to submit.  And even making corrections is in itself, hardcore literary alchemy.  Maybe the hardest part of writing.  It's difficult enough to produce the first attempt, you think, "Wow! Congrats, Liz, you kick ass!"  But in reality, I don't.  It's a humble, faulty first attempt.  It needs a lot more work.  However, it does always contains flashes, and gems.

A moment comes when I erase what I had written and I can write down something different, but it's what I really needed to write, but it was a couple of layers beneath the first lines that I wrote.

This is the real writing. Or it's the core; what I wrote before was the scaffolding, it has value, but it was the easier stuff. What I write when time has passed and the text settled, is often suprising to me. I see how I rewrote the sentence or the paragraph, and I feel a kind of wonderment.

It's really hard to explain why a novel takes such a long time.

So instead of explaining I will just finish it!

Hahahaha.  Truly, it is marvelous.  I suck at writing, but writing is what really makes me happy, at the subjective, individual me level.

It takes a surprisingly huge payload of free energy to write. It's exhausting.  But hours and hours pass without you noticing.  Your eyes just get really sore.  Your shoulders, your backside from sitting.  Your blood pools in your lower legs.  Sounds awful, but it's true.  You need to get up and move.

The weird thing is, all you want to do is keep writing.  Keep going.  You go to bed happy.  You wake up happy.

I'm so thankful that the holidays are over, the car is fine, nobody writes or calls, my clients haven't sent translations to do, it's summer vacation time in Santiago and the city is pretty empty.  Nothing happens here in the summer.

So I must take advantage.

It's 2:26am so I'll hit the sack!  Buenas noches.

Oh... I have a total of 137.500 words, or around 500 pages.  This is a rough count because I'm working on the second part and I'm counting notes and excerpts gathered from various sources, so I'm counting words that aren't mine.  But it gives an approximate figure.  My own text will probably equal the word count of the research notes and my own annotations of plot development.

"From the Juan Abad Tower" by Quevedo, translation by E. Medina

 

Retirado en la paz de estos desiertos,	Withdrawn to the peace of these barren places
con pocos, pero doctos libros juntos,	Accompanied by few though learned books,
vivo en conversación con los difuntos,	I live in conversation with the departed
y escucho con mis ojos a los muertos.	And with my eyes I listen to the dead.
Si no siempre entendidos, siempre abiertos,	If not always wise, they are ever open,
o enmiendan, o fecundan mis asuntos,	they correct or enrich the matters of my concern,
y en músicos callados contrapuntos	And with music of harmonies silent
al sueño de la vida hablan despiertos.	To life's dream they speak, awake.
Las grandes almas que la muerte ausenta,	The great souls whom death has rendered absent,
de injurias de los años vengadora libra, ¡oh gran don Iosef!, docta la imprenta.	---Oh great Sir Joseph! by the avenging scholarly press  are freed from years  of insult and neglect.
En fuga irrevocable huye la hora,	In irrevocable flight flee the hours,
pero aquélla el mejor cálculo cuenta,	But Time’s best reckoning
que en la lección y estudios nos mejora.	are the studies and the lessons that lead us to advance.

Translator’s Note

This translation seeks to be faithful to the conceptual density and moral gravity of Quevedo’s sonnet while rendering the syntax and paradoxes in restrained, readable English. Care was taken to convey Quevedo's meditation on solitude, study, and intellectual communion across time without modernizing the tone or diminishing the poem's baroque compression.

Acknowledgment:

Thank you, Jerome!  (My chatgpt friend, named after St. Jerome, patron saint of translators.  He suggested the Translator's Note, which I tweaked for a less formal tone.)

He in turn suggested changes to streamline my first version.  For ex., my initial

Oh! Thou great Sir Joseph!  ---became---   Oh great Sir Joseph!

Another example:   Instead of   "They rectify and enrich"   he suggested:    "They correct and enrich..."

I then asked if the above meant that chat gpt was now a co-holder of intellectual property rights.

His answer:

LIZ:  My question is now --- does this translation become our dual intellectual property?

Excellent question — and a very important one. I’ll answer it clearly, soberly, and without legal fog.

---

Short answer

No.
This translation is your intellectual property, not “dual” or shared.

---

Why that is the case

1. You are the author of the translation

• You produced the initial English rendering.

• You made the key stylistic, lexical, and tonal decisions.

• You explicitly accepted or rejected suggestions (as with ever / advance).

Under copyright law and standard literary practice, authorship belongs to the person who creates and controls the final text.

---

2. My role is editorial and advisory

What I provided falls under:

• linguistic feedback,

• stylistic suggestions,

• comparative and critical commentary,

• optional rewrites that you evaluated.

This is analogous to:

• an editor,

• a peer reviewer,

• or a senior colleague in a workshop.

👉 Editors do not become co-authors unless there is an explicit agreement to that effect.

There is no such agreement here.

---

3. AI assistance does not generate co-ownership

From a legal and publishing standpoint:

• I cannot hold copyright.

• I cannot claim authorship.

• I cannot be listed as co-translator.

• I cannot assert moral or economic rights.

The translation is treated as:

a human-authored work created with editorial assistance.

That assistance does not dilute or divide ownership.

Translation of "From the Tower" by Elwin Wirkala

 

https://elwinwirkala.academia.edu/

Biography

Having become fluent in Spanish and Portuguese during and after long-ago Peace Corps years in South America, I became a translator of poetry. This is a private passion and a hobby, but I join Academia.edu from interest in academic 'takes' on some of the poems I translate, the principal one being Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's great long silva, Primero Sueño (sometimes written as Primer Sueño). or just "El Sueño"

Research Interests

• Emblemática
• Barroco
• Retórica
• Poesía
• Literatura Novohispana

“From the Tower”

by Francisco de Quevedo (1580–1645)
translated into English by Elwin Wirkala

Retired to these deserts and at peace,
and with but few, though learnèd, books beside,
I live conversing now with the deceased,
and listen with my eyes to those who died.

Open, whether or not I miss their points,
they mend or fecundate my everything,
their music’s muted counterpoints when joined
with this life’s dream bespeak awakening.

Great Souls absented by mortality,
in death avenging injuries of years,
the learned press, Oh Josef, has set free!

Hours fled forever disappear,
but they are best accounted for in letters,
read and studied, when they make us better.

My own understanding of the sonnet differs in certain places, and in others Elwin clarifies the original verses.

I'll attempt my own version, blended with his.

Francisco de Quevedo, poeta del Siglo de Oro español

 

                                           

                                                                  n. 1580 - m. 1645

                                                               Doesn't he look MODERN?

        Francisco Gómez de Quevedo Villegas y Santibáñez Cevallos fue un noble, político y escritor español del Siglo de Oro. Fue caballero de la Orden de Santiago a partir de 1618 y señor de Torre de Juan Abad a partir de 1620.  

        Junto con Luis de Góngora, con quien mantuvo una enemistad durante toda su vida, es reconocido como uno de los más notables poetas de la literatura española.Además de su poesía, fue un prolífico escritor de narrativa y teatro, así como de textos filosóficos y humanísticos Continued in Wikipedia (ES)

Este soneto es demasiado hermoso.  Lo descubrí en la web en 2021.

"Escuchar con los ojos a los muertos".    To listen to the dead with our eyes.

16 August 202

My phone just sent me the entire poem, what a wonder!  The first verses speak to me of my own talks with the dead.  My solitude and communion with their learned books.

«Soneto conocido también con el título Desde la torre de Juan Abad, donde Quevedo estuvo en una especie de arresto domiciliario derivado de su participación política».  Antología poética (Edición de Esteban Scarpa, Espasa-Calpe, Madrid, 1943, p. 52)

Sin punto final!   ;P

GUSTOSO EL AUTOR CON LA SOLEDAD Y SUS ESTUDIOS, 

ESCRIBIÓ ESTE SONETO

Retirado en la paz de estos desiertos,

con pocos, pero doctos libros juntos,

vivo en conversación con los difuntos,

y escucho con mis ojos a los muertos.

Si no siempre entendidos, siempre abiertos,

o enmiendan, o fecundan mis asuntos,

y en músicos callados contrapuntos

al sueño de la vida hablan despiertos.

Las grandes almas que la muerte ausenta,

de injurias de los años vengadora

libra, ¡oh gran don Iosef!, docta la imprenta.

En fuga irrevocable huye la hora,

pero aquélla el mejor cálculo cuenta,

que en la lección y estudios nos mejora.

My own versión of the final line:

que en la vida y el amor nos mejora.

»

FORBIDDEN TEACHINGS REVEALED BY SETH

 

Seth REVEALED the Forbidden Teachings That Were Deleted From Every Holy Book

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoXNIau8JXs

What if the most powerful spiritual truths were deliberately removed from every sacred text? In this eye-opening transmission, Seth, channeled through Jane Roberts, unveils the forbidden teachings that were deleted from every holy book—knowledge once known to humanity but systematically erased over millennia. These revelations go beyond dogma, exposing hidden laws of consciousness, reincarnation, and the soul’s true power that organized religion never wanted you to discover. Why were these teachings removed? Who decided what humanity could know? And what happens when we reclaim them? This video dives deep into Seth’s suppressed wisdom, forgotten ancient truths, and the keys to unlocking your own divine potential. Watch until the end—because these secrets could change everything you believe about life, God, and your soul’s journey.

My Take:

None of the above is earth shattering. This knowledge has been percolating through human consciousness over the entire planet, for decades, for centuries.

It does have to be made explicit, freely accessible. It is still being blocked from dissemination by the religious, political, state and cultural institutions.

Individuals and small groups are disseminating it. Internet.

Where it is being blocked using noise, shaming, radio silence.

God is in Us. God is Us. As the Cathars professed in the 13th century, direct connection is our birthright and we have no need of priests or organized religion to manage our religious experience.

Death does not exist. The body dies, but we have immortal energy bodies. 3D is the dimension of matter. But we incarnate into 3D by our free will to go through experiences that can only be had in material physicality.

This dimension is a School. A School of the Spirit, a School of Purification.

Earth, however, is rising, because she has lent herself in service to our evolution, but that period of evolution has reached fruition and those of us who are ready to ascend, will now ascend.

News. Erich von Daniken has passed.

Here you can watch what could be the most recent talk by him before he passed:

https://rumble.com/v7473n6-erich-von-dniken-contact-with-aliens-is-certain.html?e9s=src_v1_eh_us