Cezanne’s Carrot magazine presents short stories and creative non fiction that allow the backdrop of the spirit, the light of the cosmic sky, and the desire to move upwards into it, at times, to expand through it, and to merge down into the glowing consciousness of ground as well, with reverence for it. In a world of jaded literature where including the spiritual epiphanies if often disallowed, Cezanne’s Carrot can warms us with the notion that it is indeed welcomed to combine both bold writing and to explore beyond the mundane world. Today, spiritual writing so often is in the form of seminars, say, telling us how to take their five easy spiritual steps to make a lot of money, convincing us that if we really image we will be rich, we will be rich, and that the law of abundance says if we are not, we are doing something wrong.
This magazine is not about manifesting, channeling generic masters, or unproven overarching statements so it may be more accessible to some who have become turned off by the facile tone of the spiritual writing world. While some of the pieces have less meat than some may be used to, and the art this issue takes a lot of advantage of Photoshop filters, people who are drawn to explore beyond the ordinary world in most literature may find things they resonate with. “At Cezanne's Carrot, words and images explore the higher aspects of human nature, the integration of inner and outer worlds, and the exciting threshold where the familiar meets the unknown…. It is published in alignment with the Earth's natural rhythms, on each Solstice and Equinox.” The title is based on a quote from Paul Cezanne: "The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution."
The magazine provides a list of other magazines with magical realism, irrealism, experimental, and visionary, and spiritual writing, as well as groups of writers of this style networking together.
I am here focusing on the Solstice Issue of 2007. In “God Uses a Headset”, a fascinating creative non fiction by Jewel Beth Davis, she gives us an insider’s view of her work in the theatre, concluding that if we do our work with “with integrity and sincerity, the spiritual channels are open. It is the reaching, the longing for the world unseen, that drives us to work and interact in a way that matters.”
“The 4th Horseman,” a short story by Jim Esch, is a beautifully written piece which surprises in the placement of the words on the page, experimenting with language consistently in a way that allows meaning to shake up the synapses of the brain and let in new connections. He says, “I allowed the free flow of images to lead the way in a surrealistic fashion. Sometimes a writer just needs to follow the stream, take good notes, and get out of the way.”
“Dance Home,” a short story by Kathryn Gossow, is a magical realism piece with sinuous use of language. There is within it the connection with the sky that we all feel, and reading it is like having a familiar dream, leaving us washed in possibilities we feel when we are at home in our astral bodies.
“Random Talisman,” a short story by Catherine J.S. Lee, says “You think about the relationship between randomness and design, how each antagonizes but also supports the other.” Thank goodness this magazine is not insisting upon the formula that everything is by design, claiming it to be a law. There is a personal touch to the writing here that comes from experience, rather than from reading and regurgitating.
My short story, “The Boy Who Was A Floating Flower,” was published here, and sweetly given the Editor’s Pic Prize, a way the magazine generously supports writers of the spiritual ilk. My story exemplifies the new genre of writing I am calling for, Lucid Fiction, which this magazine seems to promote as well. I would like to see more writing in the world that moves beyond the need for traditional plot. Action plots can be a way of reinforcing the needs of our egos for drama, for constant desire and things to make us happy, for conflict. Why constantly pander to that? Can’t we instead at times read stories that live on a plane beyond the ego? And why must literature reinforce the consensus idea of what a person is? We work so hard to achieve enlightenment, to expand our consciousness beyond the Maya, it is called in Sanskrit, the illusion that we are encased in separate bodies. Can we write and include the higher selves, the parallel universes, the continuum, alternate versions of the science of time, more educated versions of history, biology that includes the transformations of the Kundalini, the feeling that we are all made of one love? Quantum physics and Tantra Yoga, are both becoming diluted and sensationalized, but also popularizing the concepts of moving beyond outdated notions of the self and our relationship to the world. Are we not ready to let those notions into literature which is accepted by magazines and presented to an evolving public?
My story in the Solstice Issue says “This is the essence, then: heady freedom of motion between worlds of formlessness and form, that which is formed and that to be formed, and other versions of them all that call to you with clear voices from across the river banks.” Tantra Yoga, with exercises such as alternate nostril breathing, and also, paying attention to lucid dreaming, and hypnogogie, does what this magazine calls for, exploring the thresholds. And integrating the inner and the outer. When we use these tools, our lives can live in that time in between story lines, in between dramas, and they become more surreal, more lit up with the light that comes through the cracks in the surface that before seemed so solid. My story continues: “You have to know what story you’re in before you can get out.” Can Lucid Fiction write stories which use the very means of a story to take us out of our stories? To help us let go of the need for our dramas, and instead, fly, carrying such virtual magazines as Cezanne’s Carrot in our mouths?
Thank you, Cezanne’s Carrot, and the other magazines and groups you list as resources, for letting our world to open up to include the vertical flight out of the trappings of the matrix, and into our true selves.
Mad Hatters Review is gaining a reputation in the literary world as an experimental, daring, zany multimedia extravaganza. There are innovative videos, comic strips, musical accompaniments with every piece unless the author is reciting it instead. In the current issue, you can even pick a channel to watch "TV." There is Don Bergland's Mental Theatre, an interactive absurdity. In this issue, the 7th, see Sandra Scheets' beautiful, soft Daliesque golden visual landscape of the subconscious. And read Rob Stephenson's Library of Glass...."Visitors expect to find reliefs and depressions, instead of flat surfaces that have been scissored out..." Unexpected relationships of surfaces comes again into play in the illustrations and art pieces of Scottish artist Calum Colvin, a brilliant pieces that are impossible to comprehend fully. Part might be painted on a comfy chair, or mannequin, but the chair or mannequin meshes with the environment in a way that befuddles. Assemblages and manipulation. painting, and photography all exchanging as the subject matter exchanges, portraying the way our minds work. Luckily, the magazine doesn't just give a taste of this haunting artist, but features him as well with a gallery and an interview. His work is always surprising as it plays with depth of field.Non fiction editor Peter Dolack's East of East exposes some details about our leaders and the motivations behind the wars. For example, he tells us that although Cheney says he doesn't have any financial interest in Halliburton he was paid $740,000 between 2001 and 2004, recently owned Halliburton stock worth $9 million. Halliburton was given several billion dollars of contracts since the invasion of Iraq. Oil companies are profitting too. I am the Art Director, but before I was, this magazine published some of my poetry, and art. I do have a column, however, and in this issue, my contribution is a surreal piece of short fiction. Being Art Director has been a lot of work, but it's a great honor to be involved in such a creative force. I've never seen a magazine like this, and it fully takes advantage of the potential of the web. It plays with the absurdity of being in this wounded world, being like the hatters who went mad because of being poisoned by the materials of their work. This magazine interesting goes in the direction away from lucidity sometimes into madness instead, celebrating the dark ridiculous, and this is better than bemoaning it, being destroyed by it. While it is not a spiritual magazine, it does delve at times into the more sinister aspects of Lucid Fiction as in my interview in the last issue of a duality cult survivor who was taken advantage of in her multiple personality illness to work to be programmed to carry out orders. Mad Hatters also tears apart the seems of the world through its surreality, its absurdity, experimenting with form and creativity, surfaces, expectations, little rooms of the self that never existed before and which blend in with the cat and the bridge and the playing cards in ways you can't quite understand. But which stretch open the usual bonds of the self and let out darkness and let in light.
Emerging Visions Magazine is for surreal, visionary, experimental art and writing that has a positive, spiritual bent, opening up the doorways to the dreamlike part of ourselves to discover truth through our own intuition, grasp what is blocking our perception of it, and to participate in creating the astral worlds. I have three art pieces in issue 5, the Ritual Journies issue, some of my best work. Another artist here is Craig Blair, who has some intensely beautiful work, such as a white cat walking into a black and red interior, "Liquid Enigma," which reminds me of some of Karl Jung's dream art. Antero Alli gives some suggestions for ways to use dreams in "non-interpretetive dreamwork for the active body." This is helpful stuff. In issue 6, called Electric Dreams, the theme of exploring the dreamworld is continued. Directions from Dreamtime by Kala Snowflower helps us go into the bewildering state of mind we would encounter when no longer conscious. I have a short story in this issue. While this magazine's quality is variable and the blog presentation of it very casual, it is nice to see work that helps us sink into reverie, hypnagogic imagery, delve into our shared subconscious, and swim there, looking for treasures.
