The rapids, part #1
Sometimes a dream just has your name written on it
We threw our books on a pile.
All four of my young adult novels and a fair selection of Jurgen’s much larger body of published work: children’s books, books for which he had done either the cover artwork, lay-out, illustrations or all of it combined. We added his two beautiful self-published works, Whom the glove fits and The star, the god, the wings & the star (on the right in the picture) and we threw in two other random books in order to photoshop the covers so as to include Jurgen’s latest (Relmuis) and our short children’s story together (Mendel’s greenhouses), both of which are due to appear in print in the course of either this or next year.
Jurgen took the photograph, straddle-legged across this fanned display of more than a decade of literary work (I don’t call him Longshanks for nothing), then uploaded the photograph and fiddled with the book covers in Photoshop down to the last detail on his huge computer screen.
As soon as these two perfectionists sitting side by side were satisfied, we sent the picture to deAuteurs (theAuthors), the Flemish copyright organisation who is managing the rights of our books.
Why?
Because the photo needed to go with the press release announcing that Jurgen and I have been awarded an author’s residency in Sweden.
Sometimes a dream just has your name written on it.
Last autumn, Jurgen sent me the link: for the third consecutive year, deAuteurs were offering a two-week author’s residency in Sweden. I hadn’t even seen the announcement, I’m the proverbial equivalent of someone walking with her eyes fixed on the sidewalk. He, on the other hand, sees about everything there is to see. Uncanny. (We make a great team.)
The Sweden residency comprised two full weeks, four days of which were to be spent at the SmåBUS international children’s literature festival, including a visit to author Astrid Lindgren’s home (now a museum), followed by ten more days amidst the forests and lakes in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, to work on a literary project. Transport, rent and living expenses all covered. Both festival and residence are supervised by Joke Guns, a Flemish lady very active in the literary world, who moved to Sweden with her family a few years ago.
And the best part? DeAuteurs was — explicitely — looking for a dynamic author-illustrator couple, who would be working on a joint project there.
This felt too good to be true.
‘Are you serious?’ I asked Jurgen when, without much comment, he forwarded me the link to the residency description. In normal circumstances he would already be back to teaching during the forwarded dates (late September, early October).
‘Sure, why not? Tiny chance we’ll get it, anyway. But it doesn’t hurt to apply. And at the very least they’ll know we exist.’
You have to understand this much: both Jurgen and I have made some name for ourselves in the Dutch-speaking literary world (he more than I, frankly, since he’s extremely good at his craft and way more productive than I am), but this collaboration of ours, even if it is probably the most important and certainly the most gratifying enterprise we have ever undertaken, still had much of a well-kept secret — regular Sapling posts nonewithstanding.
We did not shove our work in people’s faces, but we tried to be present, somehow. That’s what you do when you feel you are on your Soul’s path, I discovered over the last year. You just keep going. You keep doing what you love, and you mention it now and again, when the occasion arises, without ever expecting too much. But you do it nonetheless, for this is so bloody imporant to you, and you feel you are producing your very best work, in several ways. Even if no one will ever read it or look at it, this is what you want to be doing and what you will be doing for as long as you can, for this is nothing more or less than coming home.
So we worked steadily for a full year, enjoying every second of it. And now an occasion arose, so we applied.
Not expecting anything doesn’t mean doing anything less than your best. So I wrote the most heart-felt application letter I ever have, and we compiled a portfolio showcasing the diversity of our shared work (there is a lot more of it than I have shared on Medium so far, see below for a teaser of more to come in the future.)
Earlier this month, like we knew we would, we got an email with the results of the contest. I confess it was a long time ago since I opened correspondence of any kind with sweaty palms and palpitations, but there I was.
And there, too, was the liberating answer: the dream was ours. In reality as well as in spirit. An acknowledgement of our work as well as an incentive to take off for the horizon and fly.
When I grabbed my phone to text Jurgen that he should go and check his mailbox, there already was a message: ‘We are going to Sweden!!’
Boy, are we ready.
Rapids, here we come!
They are filled to the brim with trees, shrubs, flowers, ferns and mosses. Inside, it’s often warm and always moist. Water will slip down the leaves in fat beads, slide down in droplets along the stems all the way to the ground. The greenhouses have high domes and corridors that lead down to tiny, secret corners, and they stretch out further than you can see.
Reya has been living in the greenhouses for eleven years now, all her life. She doesn’t know how she got here. Mendel says he found her one morning, curled up like a tiny snail underneath one of the giant ferns, as if she had grown there in a single night. Reya doesn’t know if she believes his story, but she does believe Mendel when he tells her this is her home, and that he is glad she’s here. ____Illustration for De serres van Mendel (Mendel’s Greenhouses), Van In Publishing © Kirstin Vanlierde & Jurgen Walschot
