In July I treated myself to an adventure I had long day-dreamed of taking: to see some of the great gardens of south-east England. It was a treat, a veritable sensory feast. England, and all of Great Britain of course, is a history and literary theme park. Every town and hamlet has old manor houses, historic churches, celebrated battle fields, ruined castles, and ancient abbeys. A lover of English literature I chose a tour that centered on the gardens of horticulturists, writers and artists. Everything about the trip was a highlight, but there were highlights of the highlights. Here are three:

Chartwell — the home of Winston and Clementine Churchill and their children. It is the second most visited site in Britain and redolent with history. It is a homey and comfortable house and the photographs tell the story as no book of potted TV series can, of the immense role this man and his wife played in shaping the destiny of our planet during the first half of the last century. The Weald welcomes one and from the terrace one can see for twenty miles across forests and fields. As I stood and gazed I am sure that I like many thousands of others couldn’t help but think of the famous men and women who had stood there too.

Hatfield House — home to Henry VIII’s three children including the future queen, Elizabeth. To see the Elizabethean knot garden in front of the ruins of the original house and wander in the ascension garden where Elizabeth first heard of her ascension to the throne of England is truly to walk in the footsteps of history.

There is Petworth with its original Chaucer manuscript of “The Canterbury Tales”. The idyllic hamlet of Bosham on the coast near Portsmouth, with a tiny church that reputedly was the place where King Canute worshipped, and which is featured on the Bayeaux tapestries. The gardens of reknown horticulturists Beth Catto and Christopher Lloyd. Charleston the farmhouse and gardens of Vanessa Bell (artist sister of Virginia Woolf) and keystone of the Bloombsbury circle.

And then there is the garden at Sissinghurst, the creation of diplomat Harold Nicholson and his literary wife Vita Sackville-West. There is nothing I can say about Sissinghurst that is not a superlative. Here are two photographs that speak for themselves, one a plant  astrantia major from Vita’s famous white garden and the other of “my pink tower” as she called the centuries old tower that houses her writing/sitting room filled everyday with fresh flowers, as if patiently anticipating her return. Magic. Like the entire two-week experience.

© 2010 Janet Levine, White Garden, Sissinghurst

© 2010 Janet Levine, Sissinghurst

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My new book, a novel, “Leela’s Gift” has been released. In fact it can be viewed at http://lulu.com/spotlight/JLevine1. It will soon be (early August) available at amazon.com and many online venues where book are sold as well as in book stores (remember www.indiebound.org and independent book stores). “Leela’s Gift” is the story of a luminous inner spiritual  journey. It is set in New York and high in the Himalayas near Darjeeling in northern India. The novel uncovers archetypal and highly relevant spiritual teachings. East meet west in Leela. The book offers teachings on meditation and yoga,  practical paths to freedom from the often dispiriting and desperate quality of our contemporary lives. The novel intertwines Leela’s journey with modern philosophy  and primal wisdom and is infused with some of the inner teachings of Buddhism and the Enneagram. “Leela’s Gift” tells a story as old as the human heart.

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© Janet Levine 2010

Coming soon to online and brick book stores.

Seven years ago, one July, on a clear but cold winter’s day on a beach in Nature’s Valley, South Africa, one of my sons asked me. “What is your next book?” (“Know Your Parenting Personality” had recently been published.)  I replied that  I would like to write a novel somehow using the personality types of the Enneagram. He thought it was a good idea and we spoke about it a bit. Through many twists and turns “Leela’s Gift” took on a life of its own and became much more than the sum of its parts. I am pleased it will shortly be available (by August) for readers who love fiction and who love to delve into the depths of spiritual and philosophical matters.

In the beginning after two years of working on several drafts , my ex-agent did not like the structure of the material. Two more years, and two more drafts, she still did not like the material. So we agreed to part. Over another year and because certain characters refused to leave my mind and insisted on being in the book,  I rewrote it to incorporate them. I shared drafts with a group of readers, had it professionally edited and hit the slush pile over another year in scores of agents’ offices. So hard to be flushed out of the slush pile, I share great empathy with every writer who tries. But the manuscript idea did grab many agents and I do have a publishing record so “partials” and “fulls” went flying across the virtual world of the wide web.

The problem is I like to be on the cutting edge, I like to write hybrids, I like to break new ground. This is true of everything I have done in my life, from my anti-apartheid activism to how I live my life to my writing. So my manuscript did not fit a “niche”, a “genre”, it is an original. The New York publishing cartel does not take chances on “originals”. I am not a product of the American grad school MFA pipeline.

Agents “loved the writing” “appreciated the material” “enjoyed the well-developed characters” but (and the following are by far the two most common responses) “…I do not have time for a special project like this” “…I can’t give a project like this the attention it deserves to see it published.” What is it agents do, if they don’t have time to be an agent? “No publisher in New York will even ask to read it” one honest agent told me, and when I inquired why, he said “Traditional publishing is in paroxysms of decline and panic and does not know how to save itself…”

Okay…so now what? An agent-friend for over twenty years, semi-retired now, agreed about the decline, “We are in a revolution in publishing, self-publishing is not defeat, it is an exciting avenue to amazing new ebook and other markets. You don’t know how many other authors, well-known, well-published authors can’t find a traditional publisher and I have suggested to them: self-publish. So, yes, do the research, self-publish, you believe in this work, don’t you?”

I believe in this work.

Tags: consciousness, creativity, cyberspace, Enneagram, fiction, Kabbalah, Leela's Gift, meditation, Mind-training, Plato, Sufi, teacher, Universal Forms, Vedic origins, www.janetlevine.com, yoga