I emailed William a few days ago, giving him news of the website. This morning I got this reply.
Hello Gordon
I just got your email in an internet Cafe in Sofia. This is the first time for many weeks that I've bothered to check in with the virtual world. The real one seems more than enough for me.
Thank you for the news about our Albion's Children website. Yes I'm happy for you to post any of my emails on the website (unless of course I specifically ask you not to). Talking of which it's a few months now since I last emailed you on my way to Finland, where I have spent some of the summer in the company of my Sami shaman friends, friendships that have lasted nearly 50 years after we met at a shaman's circle in Canada in the 1960s.
How the world has changed since then.
Other shamanic practitioners from across the planet were there too, many of them were also at that gathering on Vancouver island in the 60s. So it was an extraordinary few weeks of endless daylight in the Arctic circle on the edge of the summer reindeer pastures with Northern Lights, music, song, celebrations & a couple of long rituals involving sacred mushrooms. I had forgotten how powerful & transformative some plant spirit medicines can be.
But absolutely the right place, time & people for me to be with.
I left the company of those wonderful men & women in mid July & since then I have been moving, as late summer slid into early autumn, in a slow arc through Russia, North Germany, Poland, Slovenia then down into Hungary & Serbia. I'm now spending some time in this fascinating Bulgarian capital.
So much history. So much time passing.
Soon I may head south into Greece towards Athens. I suppose that a few months ago I might have met up with you & your friends in the Pelion peninsula. We really must meet in person sometime soon!
In all my recent travels since leaving Russia I have encountered the traces & realities of so many refugees fleeing the insane conflicts in the near & middle east.
It would seem from the stories (harrowing, heartbreaking & often uplifting) that I have heard from individuals' own experiences or the reports of things done to friends & family that Islam in that part of the geopolitical landscape is busy tearing itself apart.
I wonder when it will have another renaissance or possibly even an enlightenment such as transformed european christianity a few centuries ago?
But enough speculation or opinions from me.
I have been writing a little. In pen on the pages of notebooks as I currently have no digital devices with me. Not that I have any particular prejudice against iPads, smart phones & their like. It's just easier (& safer) to travel as I do without any unnecessary temptations to my changing world of fellow travellers & those I meet on the way.
So I'll put the new written notebook fragments of Albion's Children that I've recently created in a large envelope & send them safely to you. They contain some character outlines that may be useful as part. A kind of expanded & further framework of Dramatis Personae....
If you do get round to transferring the notebooks into digital form please feel free to do any editing, reorganising or general adjusting, likewise with any of the existing chapters. It would be good to get a look at them before they're published on the website but of course that assumes I will be contactable in the digital world.
I may eventually head East overland with destinations in mind of Burma, Thailand, Vietnam & Laos on the long haul back to Australia so I could be incommunicado again for some months from the end of October.
But so far Gordon you're doing fine with all the editing, admin & general digital messing about. I trust your judgement.
Let's get some chapters on the website. Then I suppose the next step is to find the readers. Not sure quite how we go about that but I trust they will find us.....
Thank you for your work & thanks to those of you who have already read the fragments published on wattpad. For those new to Albion's Children I hope it will be an interesting & engaging creative experience.
With the new website up there I hope we can grow the narratives & develop the stories.
I'll let you know what my movement plans are once I get some clarity myself.
Go well & dream deep my cousin.
Love
William