Snow Goose.

Paul Gallico’s The Snow Goose is a tale about a disabled painter living in a lonely lighthouse on the south coast of England. One day a girl brings to him a wounded snow goose, which he nurses back to health. The goose returns each year, as does the girl, and a romance develops between the girl and the artist. But the artist is killed rescuing soldiers after the evacuation of Dunkirk, while the snow goose flies overhead.
Gallico is a self-described "storyteller."

Many of his stories are told in the apparently artless style of a folk tale or legend. Like other "storyteller" writers, the charm and power lie in something about the cumulative effect of plainly told detail after plainly told detail.

A summary outline of a Gallico story may sound uninteresting, even bordering on ludicrous; an individual quotation broken out of its context falls flat; their essence exists only in their entirety.

Gallico distanced his writing from a "modern" point of view, and used the language of legend and fairy-tale, the literary equivalent of what painter Victor Vasnetsov did in his day.

Hallelujah ! I've found an example to build on.

I'm a self-described Irish/Dutch/Polish/Jewish "storyteller," a painter of words and images, following a trail created by Paul Gallico, Herman Hesse and many others..

Herman Hesse is said to have tried to live his life as an unfolding fairy tale. I loved and emulated this idea until I visited South America. Witnessing dire poverty made my life purpose sound fickle. The bonds of family and community and sharing amongst the poorest of the poor changed this view for ever.
I prefer now to see life as an unfolding poem.


And as I write, a neighbor passes my village house leading his old mule to graze on the mountainside. Antonio has a sore back. His mule needs new shoes. What better sign could I ask for that I'm on track. A mule. A farmer. Winter under a blue sky in southern Spain. Almond blossom everywhere. Dogs barking. Real life unfolding just like a poem.
Me sitting by the wood stove, becoming new, again.

Long gone, 1897 – 1976, Paul Gallico’s example to quit his day job as one of the US’s most successful sports writers, to write fiction, to become a storyteller, has set my inner bonfire ablaze. It’s not that I have a day job to quit, but I do have an attitude to change.

I don’t have to develop a slick modern writing style to tell my stories.
Gallico constantly broke writing rule Number 1: show, don’t describe!

It’s time to stop being shy of telling stories with deep mystical moments, strange archetypal characters, and the lessons of love.

High time to stop worrying about being judged whacky.

I will tell my Patagonian travel stories in a new book, starting here on the blog. And after that, I may decide to... switch to... give myself permission to ...find new legends myths and fairy tales, even make them up. I will paint them with words, like Chagall painted his canvasses, like I paint my own canvasses! I will. I will. I promise you.

From today onwards I will follow the snow goose's example.

How extraordinary I've been painting snow geese for the last fifteen years!!

“Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are at home. Understanding nourishes belonging. When you really feel understood, you feel free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person's soul.”
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom