With the harvest

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Kitty’s new place: the smell, the copper drain ring in the kitchen sink, the freezer box suspended within the refrigerator all remind me of Gran’s second-floor apartment. All of those motionless Sunday afternoons hearing invisible traffic, bells, and wind.

Sign outside her window

FORD (blue
LINCOLN (white
MERCURY (red

just like our place in Prairie Depot, Ohio

~*~

A fine salad Kitty created tonight

Pieces of homegrown
watermelon
cantaloupe
peaches

~*~

One of every five commercial apples in the U.S. was grown in Yakima County. Peaches, pears, plums, apricots, and cherries were also valued fruit harvests. They play a major role in my Nearly Canaan novel.

Irrigation had come a long way from the ditches used in orchards in this circa 1913 Webster & Stevens glass negative photograph via Wikimedia Commons.

Orchard labels from Yakima in a Chris Light photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Lithograph label from California Historical Society collection …

~*~

13:IX:77

Pickers began on the apples this morning

seis y media

first the Goldens: the reds come off later

man with a limp
carries the ladder

~*~

14:IX

Ordered new car yesterday, Subaru

Legs for Kitty’s loom finally arrived after a long wait: it’s now “grown up”

Mention of Kitty taking the Greyhound to Ellensburg …

~*~

Where did I hope to be at 30? And how close am I?

Where have I been? What dreams and teachings have I forgotten?

A dusty novel manuscript, an unopened violin case, a holy title I seldom use — and all of these chains to Maya

~*~

28:IX

apples, gone from the orchard
at least around the house
prop sticks stacked between the rows
ladders, folded
sweet smell of bins
awaiting the straddle buggy

She’s in a bummer today. Not a single good word till I got mad and screamed and left the house and mowed the lawn.

Our orchard shack cleaned, inside and out, everything back in place and straight. TV moved from the meditation room [living room] to the bedroom. Good vibes back, our home is home.

~*~

3:X:77

[Desert reality}:

How strange that dew should be a sign of autumn!

This ink has an odor I now associate with Mr. Weiner’s junior high school art classes and later with my high school art class wash room.

Overheard: Yeah, Fort Lewis is a wild place. Kids go in, find live grenades. Fort Carson, too — stretches almost from Colorado Springs to Boulder. They wanted to expand it but faced a vote.

~*~

10:X:77

Called Subaru, told our car’s on the way, probably off the boat on Friday. Last boatload, they couldn’t get our five-speed, though it was promised, per the salesman.

The mail had a letter to Mrs. James Hodson from Mom Moran …

~*~

Later in month:

Sharon P from Kitty’s Ohio Northern days showed up in the Central State art building, wants to be an actress, just got a divorce. Seems Kitty really dumped on my in her journal the night before, can’t figure out why we’re married, “Most people need each other but we don’t,” ignoring the joys of shared freedoms. So Sharon’s husband had come in and asked why not, I’d say they were never married. And now she’s coming to visit us in the orchard?

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Along more than artistic lines

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Canadian Opera’s Marriage of Figaro at the Capitol [theater in Yakima]: well done yet I’m perplexed by what makes a performance exciting and vital rather than merely competently technical …

I’m sure I enjoyed it all the same. It is one of my favorite operas.

~*~

By the way, in reviewing my journals, I see there were more musical performances in my life during those years than I’ve recalled.

 

Slices of life

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

An evening party in town, a political party fundraiser, after a rare rain had finally soaked the earth …

An old woman’s bathroom, ointments, creams, bottles of prescriptions, tweezers, scissors, lipsticks, perfumes, dirty towels, an unpleasant smell. Quotations taped to the wall.

Hamburgers on the grill. Why do none of their names stick for me? Why don’t I want to speak?

Two old women sit mysteriously behind their cigarettes, one in golfing attire, the other in a pink dress. Sometimes I don’t want a cocktail. I can’t find my friends. Who are these infants, crawling around my legs? Why did I find this place?

~*~

Don’t ever want to live again where I can’t see the Milky Way — Eternal Light — River of Light — our home in the universe.

[Not knowing there was a long dark period ahead.}

~*~

Kitty found an apartment in E’burg and is excited, a “place like Laura’s” or our “town house.” A bohemian dump. Maybe even my encampment on Mondays with a college library or movies and jaunts to the mountains … even courting her anew …

Dinner at New York Pagoda Café …

~*~

Picked up a hitchhiker on my way to work this afternoon. Seldom stop nowadays, did so today as an afterthought, his smile and the modesty of his destination: Union Gap. Fact was, he was walking, not standing; his big backpack barely fit in the Bug’s backseat. Turned out he’s a picker from Tempe, Arizona. Worked last five days on pears, $20 his best day’s pay. Got his check today. Getting cold, wished he hadn’t lent out his second sleeping bag to a friend with a job in town. He puts one inside the other. Once he’s home, he’ll play basketball, get a student ID, perhaps take an acting class.

“Oakland,” he says, “a lot of baseball players come from there.”

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

It has to be the story you’re drawn to

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

If you’re dreaming of writing a book, here’s some perspective.

  1. “Write what should not be forgotten.” — Isabel Allende
  2. “The story must strike a nerve in me. My heart should start pounding when I hear the first line in my head. I start trembling at the risk.” — Susan Sontag
  3. “Run your own race. Don’t worry about how fast someone else writes, how much another author makes, how many followers another author has. Write what makes you excited, and the enthusiasm will come through on the page.” — Christina Lauren
  4. “Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.” — Stephen King
  5. “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” — Toni Morrison
  6. “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” — Madeleine L’Engle
  7. “I always write in the morning. I was pleased to hear lately that Rousseau, too, after he got up in the morning, went for a short walk and sat down to work. In the morning one’s head is particularly fresh. The best thoughts most often come in the morning after waking while still in bed or during the walk.” — Leo Tolstoy
  8. “The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.” — Gustave Flaubert
  9. “You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.” — William S. Burroughs
  10. “I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English — it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep.” — Mark Twain

Some of them seem to think it has to be book-length. Short and sweet can be compelling, too.

 

Looking at the notebooks themselves, beyond their content

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

My journaling in college-style spiralbound notebooks would continue for another seven years before getting interspersed with hardbound sketchbooks. I wouldn’t move away from them altogether until mid-’87.

Some of the habit no doubt was reenforced by the fact the notebooks were cheap. Money was always tight for me. I also enjoyed picking them up casually in bookstores, especially in and around university campuses.

They’ve always been workbooks for me, something of the moment. Frankly, I never expected to live this long, and any posterity was intended for my published poems, fiction, histories, and essays.

Look at how some of mine opened in this period.

Vol. 49, 1 July 77 / day after the full moon: blue Western College Bookstore Association, 100 sheets, usual size

Vol. 43, Turns out to be the second a spiral-bound Strathmore Sketch 400 series, 9-by-12, 100 pp, fine arts paper. Cover in Cordoba Brown (First of three in series.) Entries in large, black, chancery-cursive script. Quite elegant.

Vol. 43, 1 Sept. 77, Orchard Shack. (Numbered out of order.)

 Vol. 42, 1:X:77 Orchard Shack. So this is really out of sequence! Covers just the month of October …

The first of my beloved longbooks was not from Cornell in ’71 ….

Now they morph into long unruled sketchbooks … or so but rather a spiral-bound Strathmore Sketch 400 series, 9-by-12, 100 pp, fine arts paper. Cover in Cordoba Brown (First of three in series.) Entries in large, black, chancery-cursive script. Quite elegant.

Vol. 44, 1 Nov. 77, Orchard Shack, the third of the Strathmore sketchbooks

Observing seasons
in one place

Note the impact on Hometown News, Nearly Canaan, and Secret Side of Jaya. Also the poetry, especially American Olympus …

Each journal volume somehow opens anew, yet usually fades off at the end.

~*~

I wonder how others approach the practice. I’ve heard of using loose-leaf pages and binders, to facilitate reordering of pages. An alternative is to have several volumes at a time, each devoted to a different subject.

Use of writing instruments can also be considered. Ballpoint pens gave way to felt-tips, for instance, and much later fountain pens. As for journaling exclusively on a laptop or smart phone? The plot thickens …

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Have you ever got stuck playing with rubber stamps?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My hand these days may not be as reliable for sketching or painting as it once was, but my eyes are still alert. In our downsizing on our remote island in Maine, as I chanced upon our collected rubber stamps and inks, I started playing. Add to that some related artistry.

Do take a look for the results at my free digital bookstore, Thistle Finch editions.

The albums are Inked. Stamped, Pressed, Visual Twists, and Shore Things (collages arising from beachcombing findings).

You might even what to download and print some of the images. I humbly think they’re great.

 

Slant shots with a cosmic ricochet or two 

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When you sit for Meeting and see only chessmen on a board around you, you’ve lost touch with yourself.

Who knows whose game has you trapped, much less in what game.

Example of miscommunication:

“Are you Saved?”

“Are you Self-Realized?”

“Are you Yielded?”

Before Self-Realization, my belief that truth or the mystery could be found and answered in a woman’s love, classical music or jazz, a fine set of books. And thus the constant sorrow interspersed with flashes of delight. Now, further along, a taste of energy that goes so far beyond as well as a dryness of what’s been lost.

As for the girls I desired in high school? How common! [Sex and spirituality are closer and more essential than is often acknowledged. My, this could fill volumes!]

3 July, ’77 … evening Quaker Mtg at Dory Matson’s, the Wilkenings were there … Ellensburg?

First Mtg after summer: 20 adults, five children.

Me, thinking of the Mountains and Rivers sutra

and our Meeting’s love of hiking-skiing-camping

3:X: Been wondering about the break with the ashram, whether it even still exists …

What is the role of religion in a “man’s world”?

To give death meaning?

To uphold what’s good, noble, heroic?

To overcome the Little I?

Meeting last Sunday was at Michael and Tarn’s …

My first Quaker memorial service was Ken Scott’s …

The difficulty most had with the silence, women whispering (gossiping?) to husbands, etc., a packed room — having many standing didn’t help. The service began with the family singing songs informally …

He was 31 …

~*~

JESUS APOLLONIUS

Did Christianity change the Romans?

Or did they change Christianity?

Their vestal virgins redressed as nuns?

Thus, the Reformation

as another uprising of Germanic tribes

against Roman tribute

The mafia

supports its church

~*~

ARE WE GETTING CLOSER TO QUAKERS OR ZEN?

“There were no representatives of the gods inside; the place was empty, and the secret shrine contained nothing” — Pompey, on the Second Temple of Jerusalem

“They worship on the clouds and the Spirit of the heavens” — popular saying of the Jews, recorded in Juvenal.

Geeze, is that all it takes to confound Empire?

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

As my world turned

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

So we were settling in.

our orchard tenant shack here
like Snyder’s place in Dharma Bums
out back of a holy family’s
out toward the birds
and simple
like the long-legged house
of Wendell Berry’s uncle
close to nature
beside the river

Noz [our black cat, half-Siamese] goes berserk when we’re not home: rolled a geode across the floor and ripping caulking from the windows …

Noted on 15:VIII:77: Kitty received notice of her in-state status today. Next up, $50 in the mail to Central.

A week later: With Celeste over Saturday night.

And then we to Seattle Sunday: dinner at Costas [my delight at souvlaki?}, then a movie house of 99 seats, lobby three times larger than the viewing room …

In the morning, my wishing Kitty would say something profound rather than weeping over a slender girl or some fine threads …

Back in our desert orchard:

Tarts baked in stars

So hot that apples sunburn

and I’d thought Ivar’ was joking

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.