I just re-read Ammonite for the first time in oh it must be 12 years or more, and enjoyed it all over again. No possibility of a continuation of the story? Late in 2006 and early 2007, when I was finishing Always and working on my memoir, my creative engine just wouldn't shut down. Every night, exhausted, I would start falling asleep only to have these weird dreamlike writing scenes drop into my head. I'd write them down, in the dark, on 3x5 index cards. In the morning, they were sometimes not legible. Sometimes even if they were legible they didn't make sense. Sometimes they sort of made sense but were incredibly strange. I have twenty or thirty of these snippets, which I call my hynapgogic writing. Here, specially for you, is one I wrote from the POV of a native of Jeep settling in to tell a story to a stranger. (For those of you who haven't read Ammonite, this might make no sense at all. For those of you who have, well, this might make no sense at all...)From: George Killoran
I've learnt to never say never, but Ammonite II is unlikely at this stage--though I do occasionally have thoughts about Jeep and its people.
Far away, in a time we have forgot, live the nine riding soestre... Oh ha, ha ha ha. For we never forget. For we are not nine, we are a hundred, an army, a tribe. We are then and now and forever. We are here. We are the hills and the breath in the grass, we are the rain above and the burn beneath. We are. We were. We will be.
You think that because we know, we will be known--how can we not, then or now or later? We are soestre and viajeras all. So must we be saints always? Meek as milk? Sweet as honey? No. People do as they are. The dog bites because she must. The bird flies because he has wings. If a mother's pain and fear are so great that she can only share it, then she will. She will beat her child. She will beat her child, and sear the act into the memory of the tribe for now and always because she cannot do otherwise. For we are soestre and viageras all. So then we judge, because we know. We all judge: we all know all. And this, then, is the village: a village of judges.
Much of my other hynogogic stuff is odd poetry, the kind of thing soothsayers and oracles and bitter bards at the end of their days might speak. It's all very strange.
The hypnagogic downloads just...stopped last year. I find I miss them. Still, it was lovely while it lasted.
