To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour. – William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

It seems to be so long ago now, another world lost in time, within which my heart and mind were at peace, like the gentle light of the break of the day in a calm world, where each day I found tranquillity, love, hope, and most importantly, I could drift off into the vast universe of my imagination to find contentment in the Worlds that opened their doors to my felicity.

I normally try to avoid writing about myself in these daily newsletters. However, a kind subscriber implored me to answer the question of how my mind can tap into unique creativity to write the novels published thus far. The answer may be found in that photograph of me when I was three, taken in the spring of 1972 at my grandparents’ home in Short Street, Southport, in ‘God’s-own-Country’ of Queensland. It had been an unusual beginning to my young life, as my grandparents, Hector and Noreen Spring, had to raise my brother and me. I was about one when I commenced living with them. The Great Drought of the 1960s had almost wiped out my paternal family’s sheep-grazing empire at Longreach, yet the greatest casualty of that climatic catastrophe was the destruction of my parents’ marriage. My father established a career as an industrial advocate in the Bowen Basin, and my mother enrolled at the University of Queensland, eventually graduating with a Bachelor of Arts and becoming a secondary school English teacher. Still, my maternal grandparents were relatively young in today’s standards, were financially stable, and Southport back then, before the merciless covetousness of developers, was Heaven on Earth. And every day, in my grandparents’ splendid gardens, I would get lost in my imagination and dream of worlds and lives so vividly that each day brought me great satisfaction. The irony of my life is that I was being raised as a Spring, yet my paternal surname was Springer, hence my pen name.

That tranquillity which I revelled in was shattered by 1979. My peaceful yet unique life was turned upside down and inside out when my late mother secured work as a secondary school teacher in Brisbane. Consequently, my older brother and I were uprooted from the serenity of our grandparents’ home and moved to Brisbane. It was complicated because being raised by my grandparents from almost an infant until I was almost seven meant that I felt like I was being separated from my parents when I had to live with one of my actual parents. Then, life’s cruel vicissitudes decided to crush my heart and mind. Cancer took my darling grandfather Hector’s life in May 1978, and to consolidate the trauma, for reasons that I cannot explain, I was taken up to Hector’s open casket to look at his lifeless body, and kiss those lifeless lips, which to this day I can still see the thin film of blood that held them together. And then in July 1979, my grandmother Noreen succumbed to her twenty-five years of battling breast cancer. After these numerous harrowing events, when one would think life could not get much crueller, the dark fog of major depression set in on my ten-year-old mind, a tragic legacy of going from Heaven to Hell at such a tender age. Ever since that time, I have ventured on in this world, burdened by that depression, hoping to find the peace depicted in the innocent eyes of that photograph. But alas! Poor Michael, I knew him well, yet I have never been able to find him again since then.

So, my writing is now my Narnia, opening doors in that universe of my imagination, hoping to once again find the little boy who could hold infinity in the palm of his hand and eternity in an hour.