As a third book involving Jaya shaped up, I reflected on ways some people perceive things most folks don’t. The angels everywhere, as Hassidic contend, perhaps matching the dakinis of Tibetan Buddhist circles. Some of my fellow yogis saw auras around people, although I’ve seen just one, quite black, surrounding the Reverend Pat Robertson when he and his handlers walked through the newsroom for a conference with the editor-in-chief and the editorial writer.

Since moving Way Downeast, I know of the small rock people some of the Passamaquoddy observe.

You might add elves or gnomes or other creatures to the list.

The concept did give me a threat to unite the three novellas into one.

~*~

What was needed was a third novella, reflecting the place Jaya lived between Prairie Depot and the Pacific Northwest. It would have With a Passing Freight Train of 119 Cars and Twin Cabooses before it and Along With Kokopelli’s Hornpipe following. It would be like an adagio in a symphony or sonata or the middle panel in a painted triptych.

I decided to draw on a wooded alcove I loved to explore during my return to Bloomington. It was a largely unknown tract that had included a city water reservoir as well as several caves and springs that had fed two gristmills.

In the years since I moved on, the site has been cleaned up into a city park that even has a stairway down one of the steep slopes.

It had inspired a set of Leonard Springs poems you can find as a free chapbook at my Thistle Finch blog. As I revisited those pieces, I realized that the hollow’s scene and history just beyond the duplex my first wife and I rented on my return to Bloomington as a research associate would transport well to the Ozarks. Especially the part about grist mills at the foot of the sharp hillsides slopes where springs poured out from cave formations.

The story took off from there, especially when I chanced upon the woman miller. I must confess being especially fond of the result. Was this Cassia from What’s Left whispering in my ear once again?

Researching details for this story was a delight. Grist mills had run for a while in my ancestry; the Hodgson Mill in the Ozarks, for one, reflects one side of my family – they even spelled their surname for a while without the G, like mine. (They descend from one William while the other William, also a miller, was my umpteen greats-grandfather.)

Caves were another thing the Ozarks had in common with southern Indiana.

And, speaking of things some people see and hear that others don’t, we had the American Shakers whose spirit drawings and writings wandered outside of the normal artistic constraints. That gave me one more element to play with, especially when I turned to the artistic projects that Jaya had relied on to replenish her own soul in her spare time. I didn’t want her to be writing poetry, as I had, but to be creating some blend of art forms beyond that. Think of Joseph Cornell’s boxes or Emily Dickinson’s bits of paper constructions as possibilities. While I touch on Jaya’s legacy on that front toward the ending of Nearly Canaan, I felt freer to explore it here.

Just what was Jaya’s off-hours creative activity and spiritual practice leading to? Or what prompted them?

Miller at the Springs became an ideal forum for their consideration. Here it was, the final piece of writing in my range of fiction, and it was the most joyous to draft, the least ambitious in its art, and perhaps the most down-to-earth.

~*~

These three novellas presented a private Jaya much different from the one in the public eye. Titling the book the Secret Side of Jaya came naturally, along with the subtitle, Three surreal and fantastic encounters.

The book rounded out my Living Dharma series.

I was ready to kick back and relax, intending to enjoy the role of an author.