Author Mitchell Stokely – Book Notes 1

As I completed my first novel in the fall of 2015, Phantammeron Book One, I saw that the story bad begun to write itself. It’s odd how often that has worked, at times. But as I filled in the missing elements, there were a few ideas that seemed to say something meaningful beyond the book.

One of my favorite scenes was added towards the end of Book One. In the last chapter after Ana perishes in the well and releases the Sacred Waters, there is a scene where the Gardens of Abrea come back to life. By this time all my characters have been killed off….all save Agapor.

In the scene Agapor is lying injured in the garden, near death. But as I describe the garden returning to new green growth, I briefly suggest Agapor is amazed by the wonder of seeing that event. And that one scene made me actually feel for Agapor many months after the book was published. I began to think about that scene.

There was something profound about it in my mind. The feeling it gave me must have been conjured up from some deeper mythological moment inside my brain. It was that universal human feeling of redemption that comes after a long struggle in one’s life that ends in justice for some great hurt caused, like a relief from years of long labor, or understanding from a long period of misunderstanding and pain from a dear loved one.

The feeling I got was connected to what Agapor must have felt knowing his father was gone, his daughter lost, and all he had fought for wasted away….a torn life he had suffered through in his mind so that some fragile garden could be reborn.

But there was something so redeeming about that, that I myself cried when I wrote that scene. It was Agapor’s light-bulb knowing moment he must have had as he let go of his troubled past; a moment where all the darkness of his life seemed to now be at peace. It was a life ending that yet was illuminated by something more, his heart opening up to the the idea of sacrifice for Beauty itself, something so pure and innocent beyond himself. This is something selfless which all of Humanity needs.

And that must have been so alien to Agapor. Shocking, really. In his mind he must have realized the meaning of all that had passed in some divine play. And that’s exactly what I had wanted as his writer; that something bigger than his daughter and him and their conflicts had taken place. It’s then he must have felt awe for the beauty of Phantaia. All the power struggles and rage he carried must have seemed to melt before the majesty of that moment when the waters of the world were released and that perfect paradise shot forth from the muddy soil around him.

He must have felt some new and strange emotion, some catharsis and rebirth in his own spirit, just like all the Primordial Ones must have felt knowing all their wars against each other was in the end but a part of the Great Father’s grand plan for Phantaia’s rebirth (the larger subject of the book).

That’s when I realized the Essence Eternal in Chapter 1 had set this all in motion, this tragic book for me to write. It’s what made me really feel the emotion of seeing that scene unfold. I was witnessing something that had died but resurrected itself for a second life in me, like Jesus Christ in my life, a faith in the world driven by a secret purpose beyond my own life.

Agapor who really was dying, having lain bleeding in the green grass, must have felt overjoyed, even healed a bit, by seeing the sudden unexpected beauty of that moment. But knowing it was really his daughter’s sacrifice that created that new paradise reborn there must have been something more to it for him that was deeply moving. And so the emotion of a dying child enhanced that scene. For what greater loss is there? Seeing beauty from the pain of such a sacrifice is beyond anything a write could ever hope to capture.

It’s these sudden unpredictable and totally unexpected aspects of life that move us…..that moment after great suffering or anguish when we suddenly see the end result as something rare and beautiful and unexpected that makes life so rich by its unshakable truths. Otherwise we are but like the rock, cold and immutable. It’s very close to what a Creator must have felt when the Universe was made and the earth formed and strange life rose up on earth.

And so I wept with Agapor at the rebirth of Phantaia’s new paradise and of the One Tree and the beauty of that scene. I had not planned that which my imagination summoned forth to tell me something new. And that comes from the power in our minds should we be sensitive to it; that something mythological yet lives deep in all of us we have yet tried to really understand or explore.

— the Author



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