While referring to the story she explains,...
"It is a little like Jonas looking into the river and realizing that
it carries with it everything that has come from an Elsewhere. A spring,
perhaps, at the beginning, bubbling up from the earth; then a trickle
from a glacier; a mountain stream entering farther along; and each
tributary bringing with it the collected bits and pieces from the past,
from the distant, from the countless Elsewheres: all of it moving,
mingled, in the current."
“...now he saw the familiar wide river beside the path differently. He
saw all of the light and color and history it contained and carried in
its slow-moving water; and he knew that there was an Elsewhere from
which it came, and an Elsewhere to which it was going.”A little bubble begins, a little spurt, which will trickle into the river. ~ Lois Lowry
Lowry describes meeting the man who was photographed for the cover of The Giver,
"In the summer of 1979, I am sent by a magazine I am working for to an
island off the coast of Maine to write an article about a painter who
lives there alone. I spend a good deal of time with this man, and we
talk a lot about color. It is clear to me that although I am a highly
visual person – a person who sees and appreciates form and composition and color – this man’s capacity for seeing color goes far beyond mine.""I think about him – his name is Carl Nelson – from time to time." "Later, I hear that he has become blind."
As Lowry talks more about the process she says,
"In 1989 I go to a small village in Germany to attend the wedding of one of my sons. In an ancient church, he marries his Margret in a ceremony conducted in a language I do not speak and cannot understand."
"Can you feel that this memory, too, is a stream that is now entering the
river?"
"Another fragment, my father, nearing 90, is in a nursing home."
"My brother and I have hung family pictures on the walls of his room."
"My father smiles, looking at her picture. “That’s your sister,” he says happily. “That’s Helen.”
Then he comments, a little puzzled, but not at all sad, “ I can’t remember exactly what happened to her.”
"That uncertainty pours itself into the river of thought which will become the book."
"The thinking becomes another tributary into the river of thought that will create The Giver."
"The river begins to seek a place to spill over."
"There are other rivers flowing." ~ Lois Lowery
Life and it's memories are a rush, a torrent, and eventually, a full blown current. These waters descend from the mountains through the valleys, flowing ever constant and carrying our collective to the oceans; to the vast seas of recollection. Here, memories mingle and collaborate to become a collage of overlapping thoughts, ideas, and dreams. They whisk thoroughly to a froth, thrust up in to the sky, where they are distilled by the heat of continental wind in to clouds that travel a great distance back to land. Here, thoughts and times of past are recycled in a deluge of former consciousness. Freed once again to percolate down to the earth where the circular pattern will begin once again and complete another cycle of times, thoughts and memories. ~ Andrew
Thanks For Reading
