From a Letter to a Former Husband

My second husband is a former teacher of English Composition (hope he didn't want to correct my grammar too much), a voracious reader, and one of the courageous men working hard to recover from the aftermath of a stroke several years ago.

He asked me the other day to summarize Halfland for him so that he could describe it properly in the pages on me in his memoir/novel. It was due to him that Halfland began. He graciously (after my sobbing hysterically) took me to New York with him when he moved there to achieve his Doctorate in English Education. The experience of living in New York utterly transformed every aspect of my life and resulted in both directions of daily activity I follow, graphic design using computers and personal art of this sort. He gave me many books to read that shaped my life and was completely encouraging when I began to work (and lug around) the makings of the film.

Here's part of what I wrote him as directly and simply as I could put it...

... I promised to tell you the general story of Halfland. In a nutshell, it's an original folktale about a world that dwells between the worlds, the ones we know, and the ones we don't. It's a world where everything is half of something else. Where everything in it is alive and becoming more aware, to varying degrees.

It centers around a quiet cottage in a tree where a wise old goat woman and her friends live. One of her friends is a black mermaid who comes to visit. Another is a crow woman in crisis who reaches her cottage just in time to collapse. The goat woman and the mermaid set out with the unconscious crow woman carried on a sled, across the desert to the the mystical musician who is half serpent. He sits alone in the vast dunes playing instruments whose sound can heal. At the end, the sounds bring about a healing for the crow woman and she lifts above the desert sands and transcends in consciousness, leaving a trail of thoughts, blossoming like flowers, behind as she goes.

That's the story/plot/action mostly. But it's more than just that. It's also an allegory (like those you've taught so well in school) of Time and Seasons, Day Following Night, and what happens at night when no one is there to see. It imagines where butterflies come from and gives us a glimpse of who it is that weaves all the lace. It's about home and hearth. The comfort of a quiet place in nature. And whether what we think we almost see with our eyes is in fact really there in some ways.

It's what I want to do all the time. It's what I began in 1993 with you. Thanks to you, in so many ways...