Stirring up other troubles

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The next spiralbound notebook covers summer ’72, ashram, and well into autumn.

As I inscribed in the inside cover:
More tracings in the water 
into Sannasyn, 8:VII:72 11:45 am

Much of the following was from a trip home for the funeral of my grandmother.

Regarding my mother: she slapped me when I stood up to her / “We are poor,” she kept saying / “Don’t touch girls” /

SHAME / too thin and ill-dressed in hand-me-down clothes or my three-a-year new too-short trousers

She was inwardly jealous of each girlfriend, waited up for her 22-year-old son, furious when I came home at 3 am …

Resented me, says I nearly drove her insane: two years all alone with me while Dad was working / an interference with her own depending on her own dad: her insecurities as a conceived out of wedlock and therefore overly protected child

Mom makes herself so unhappy: nobody is better / does more / has less / she thinks too much of herself, “How poor!”

I cannot return home: there’s no room to grow

In high school, R.R. so sexy / at 22, a skinny mother, so sexless.

Even the green beans become heavy and dull in their passions .

The one-eyed pacifier (TV).

(My diatribes) Trying to comprehend the outside world.

The Christian suffers constantly because he can never be as good as Jesus.

The silent grace of Hap and Pauline Moon, a meditation so strong in one minute a rush, you don’t know what hit you.

Everybody on 3rd street walks as if under a burden: dead and unhappy, unlike New Yorkers who exhibit style and confidence. Such a shock to discover I prefer New York.

Virginia at the Journal-Herald was into yoga with Mishra and Vitaldas 20 years ago, takes another drag on her cigarette and is cool.

Surprised by this entry of meeting with Jim Millikin, at this point assistant managing editor at JH.

“I didn’t recognize your face (the long hair etc.) but I recognized your eyes.” 400 applications on file & he said, “Look me up when you leave the ashram. If I can’t help you, I may know somebody who can. There are so few sensitive, creative people in the business.”

“Yeah, that’s why I came in to see you!”

“When a man if 50 is willing to uproot, he’s usually a wino or something.” (Many [more] desk jobs than reportorial [open].)

Down (very) on Gannett, where we both had worked. And his own “lame” desk as well as the “flak” reported rather than “story.”

Kathy Hoerstein (leo/virgo cusp): “Oh, I just read some of your letters!”

Grandpa: “And he had nine children and 42 grandchildren, just a regular army of (offensive term now deleted).”

Clifton Gorge: such a piddly canyon “But it’s all we got”

Rundown house in Yellow Springs, windows open, no screens / artifacts carefree & lazy / memories of Olaf and D-Man in our ghetto summer stoned in the mountains.

This constant drive to do more / never satisfied to rest, to be / ambition is a hunger that devours the host / an inner fire.

Midwestern women trained to be sweet, smiling, o my! Tight curls and cut, print dresses. Do the right thing and worry about neighbors.

On this trip] find girls looking at me with desire – a free, long-haired fantasy of unfathomable sensitivity

So difficult to be alone and not lonely

The attraction of HIGH art etc / genius /

Mother of myself

The attraction and repulsion of pornography

The women in my life get more beautiful.

Keep demons
in place
under rocks

~*~

The farmlands around us retained a Pennsylvania Dutch character, though not necessarily of a Plain identity. The Delaware Water Gap and higher Wind Gap were dominant features in the horizon to our east. Photo by Chuck Walsh via Wikimedia Commons.

~*~

From Spiralbound Yoga, with commentary from now.

 

Newfoundland is really out there

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

It’s a remote land of icebergs, northern lights, puffins, and moose, the easternmost part of Canada. Now, for a few details.

  1. Although the province also includes Labrador, making it larger than California, the usual focus is on the island itself, the world’s 16th largest, ahead of Cuba, Iceland, or Ireland. The island aka “The Rock” sits at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, creating the world’s largest estuary.
  2. It has the only verified Viking settlement in North America, around the year 1001, possibly with Leif Erikson. The UNESCO World Heritage Site is on the northern tip of the island and includes restored sod buildings; for a sense of the size of the island, it’s an 11-hour, 20-minute drive from St. John’s. Legend has Irish Monk St. Brendan arriving in the 6th century, and Englishman John Cabot may have landed in 1497. Portuguese fishermen were also prominent explorers.
  3. Newfoundland was an independent country before joining the Canadian confederation in 1949. It’s one reason it’s not considered a Maritime Province like Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.
  4. It has its own time zone, a half-hour ahead of Atlantic, although, strangely, it appears a half-hour later, as in “9 a.m. Atlantic, 9:30 Newfoundland.”
  5. Getting there can be convoluted. Flying from the U.S., for instance, generally takes nine hours; driving, 36. There are two ferry routes from Nova Scotia – the shorter one runs six- to seven-hours; the longer one, 16 hours.
  6. Just 12 miles away, off the southwestern coast of Newfoundland, are the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, technically part of France and a vestige of what was once New France.
  7. The Newfoundland dog and Newfoundland pony are symbols of the province.
  8. As for those striking North American puffins, 95 percent of them live in Newfoundland and Labrador, a good reason it’s the official bird of the province.
  9. Between 400 and 800 icebergs a year typically get as far south as St. John’s. Hamlets further north, such as Twilingate, get even more.
  10. It’s pronounced NEW-fundlund. Its people, informally, are Newfies – and Canadians second.

While we’re at it, do note that the Rock has some eye-raising town names. Here’s a sampling, without explanation or commentary:

  1. Dildo.
  2. Goobies.
  3. Tickle Cove.
  4. Blow Me Down.
  5. Come by Chance.
  6. Witless Bay.
  7. Cow Head.
  8. Gander.
  9. Placentia.
  10. Botwood.

St. John’s, the provincial capital and largest city, is not to be confused with St. John, New Brunswick. Both are significant seaports.

 

Surviving another hard winter and more

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The next volume, beginning Winter ’72, begins with our first week-long intensive seminar. Some really bizarre group action, both from the guests and the staff.

The volume also includes my trip to Ohio for Grandma’s funeral; she died June 21. 1972.

~*~

Afterward, reading my seminar notes aloud to Swami, Cedar flipped out. “You just kind of pass through my life, but from your reading, I realize I’ve had you completely wrong.”

Now I know why I write: it’s the way I can be me, release my inner voice.

In mid-February, Swami announced she was closing the place, sending us into a tizzy. On the 17th, I recorded: Swami sez I have so much hate. [My unspoken reaction, I’m guessing.] It is necessary energy arising from saturation, frustration; I am different, and anyone who tries to make me like them is desexing me, perverting my love.

On the 22nd, I noted a Binghamton trip, believe it was my first of manicotti (when I wanted pizza) and spending the night with Celeste. Among other things, she said she cannot kiss someone she cannot look in the eyes and know she’s communicating with. (She is so much more than her body, which is where I too often stop communicating.)

In bed, to me: “and we will never marry,” in a positive voice. “Sometimes I think you’re too self-critical.”

I TRY TO POSSESS BECAUSE I AM INSECURE

24 February went to Philadelphia with Swami to sell her diamond wedding ring. “Everybody is so slow (unlike NYC), but dead eyes, no smiles except a fleeting twinge …

In meditation: WE ARE ALL LITTLE FISHES IN A VAST OCEAN OF AIR.

“Truth can be reached only through a comprehension of opposites.”

Swami Sivananda was a fruitcake.

(2 days later: all of us here but Swami are fruitcakes)

Beware of the vegetables.

Ria (and others) said they like my hatha classes “because you give long rests”; tonight I gave a hold-the-position (once) class, and she (and they) said “you were like a drill master.”

25:III:72, after one of our spring break seminars, Swami laid it on me heavy; Levi said he felt apologetic in asking me to do anything – a reading fast, for one thing …

Sometime later, Swami: “Jnana, he’s solid. He doesn’t always look it, when he’s walking around here, looking like he’s not doing anything, but he’s like Levi. Don’t worry about it. Also, he can’t say what he’s thinking. What’s in his head is very beautiful, but it just comes out different. His tongue gets him in trouble. As I said, he’s solid and as much a part of the ashram as the stone. He won’t collapse until the stone does.”

Harmony talked about her being pimped experiences.

Cedar: Can’t you accept the idea that someone might be superior to you?”

“Very difficult.”

Swami: loud, crass, crude: nouveau riche. Wants to be a big shot. And we are her playthings.

A dream of climbing up a glacier (or frozen stream/gorge like Buttermilk Falls / years before Rainier! – one of our party slips and lands far below, not dead: Rainbow, nude, as usual. Johnny Cash comes up behind her, singing …

This photo by Doug Kerr via Wikimedia Commons shows Interstate 80 rammed through the Delaware Water Gap, where the Delaware River cleaves the long ridge along the edge of the border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The gap was the route between us and New York City, the route for many of our visitors .

 

As it was seen by artist Granville Perkins and engraver Robert Hinshelwood, via Wikimedia Commons.

~*~

To continue:

Since we lowered our rates, the people who used to come and stay free (because “we have no money”) now pay; so now we probably come out about the same as before, except now everybody contributes.

36 people for brunch after everyone had left from a crowded weekend

On my trip to Grandma’s funeral, I slipped off to Quaker Meeting in Yellow Springs: such a high!

The members look weak and shaky, nervous and overly intellectual, almost ineffectual: but also strong in their vibrations!

“The other day, a 7-year-old Quaker came in the house and asked her mother, ‘Do we Quakers believe in God?’ After hemming and hawing a few minutes and saying essentially yes, the mother asked what brought this question on. ‘Oh, my pal at the playground says they don’t believe in God, they believe in revolution”

(Ten minutes or later:) Mention of a vigil at Wright-Pat the previous day and how a mocking bird singing from within the base reminded her of a verse about how out of the mud and mire a song always rises.

Next message: how many woes arise out of either/or thinking. There are so many more alternatives.

And finally: “Our Father! I am grateful for the world the way it is! For all of its riches, and for all of the problems we can apply ourselves to. Let us use our goods and riches for others, to make the best use of them, to share and multiply them. Bless our fellowship and interaction!”

Girl afterward: “I had given up on religion. I had tried everything, including Bahai, then last week I went to Meeting. I feel like I just smoked marijuana.” (Yep!) She thought I was in yoga; the straight back, closed eyes.

Nikki assumed art to be religion … were it so, artists would not be so fucked up, so neurotic and selfish! (Malcolm Frager’s wife told him his work as a pianist is no greater than anyone else’s work, including the janitor; that deflated him, until he saw its wisdom.)

Fay? “Kissin’ F, the Witch Goddess, the Lid … she stood me up the night before I left for IU …

Norman O. Brown: negation begins with the denial of being born, separated from the womb …

Mistake of many: the Good Life depends on things.

Susan Sontag: “Of course, a writer’s journal must not be judged by the standards of a diary. The notebooks of a writer have a very special function; in them he builds up, piece by piece, the identity of a writer to himself. … The journal is where a writer is heroic to himself. In it he exists solely as a perceiving, suffering, struggling being. … Solitariness is the indispensable metaphor of the modern writer’s consciousness.”

Paradox of self-hate: you can’t decide to get rid of it, that leads you to hate yourself for hating yourself. You must accept the self-hate. By loving it and yourself, you no longer hate yourself.

[Incinerated]

~*~

From Spiralbound Yoga, with commentary from now.

 

 

Did He rise? Hear it, ye nations!

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Music written with distinctive shapes for each pitch became a way of training American amateurs to sing harmony in a choir. Fa-so-la plus mi, rather than do-re-mi, for starters. Known as shape-note singing, it led to a distinctive style of hymn performance called Sacred Harp, especially popular in the South. Here’s a bit from the Easter Anthem by colonial New England composer and tanner William Billings. I learned the piece with Mennonites and can attest that shape notes can be so much fun.

 

And there we were

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The next volume was undated, except one entry in late November.

The inside front cover was inscribed “Swami Jnana-Devananda into winter: ashram,” something added later.

Mostly quotes: Zen, Ginsberg, Hutterites, etc.

Includes Swami’s return from her first India trip.

~*~

Only Christ is arisen? Ignores the greater evidence of reincarnate lamas.

Swami, to disciple undergoing many tests (i.e., struggles): “Enjoy them!”

Traveling out, to support followers in “the world” and to distribute pamphlets about our programs:

WASHINGTON DC, a Tuesday in November

White House a surprise … zipping thru Georgetown and out, suddenly, turn corner, this ivory phantom! Expected much official buildings first, but just the monstrous ancient cake of Executive Office to prepare one for the icon itself

DC’s “42nd Street” just three blocks from the Executive Mansion

… what happens to the minds of the power elite who see all of these monuments at their command – the vast sweep of parks, White House tucked into one corner, Washington and Lincoln memorials in the middle, the Capitol on the other? A new Rome!

(encounter with York, Pa, and its oldness in rolling farmland)

Levi-Dev: When you try to find shortcuts to your meditation practice, you will miss some of the most delicious & precious steps in your spiritual growth.

In Japanese, prajana means wisdom!

~*~

Goddess Lakshmi , in an image from Hhite at Wikimedia Commons.

Swami Lakshmy: I tell you India is a civilized country. America is uncivilized India is civilized because you can walk the streets at night without fear. You cannot walk the streets of an American city at night without fear. America is an uncivilized country because we do not respect human life, because we are a fearful people.

The falcon rips the wayward rabbit but cannot stop the cloud.

How do you write down the sound of your laugh, the taste of your smile?

Appenzell Lutheran, Reeders Methodist. Our neighbors.

Deer Park
Where Buddha sat
dogs now bark

The Swami/Levi relationship / mother/son oedipal stuff, statistically more aberrant than the homosexuality she calls sick? I judge, too!

Fern: Sometimes I wish I had known you before you came to the camp. You must have been pretty fascinating.

Swami: You write like the Wall Street Journal: very well but not colorful.

Beatrice: “It’s amazing how everyone has changed in a year. I wouldn’t have believed such a change is truly possible if I hadn’t seen it in the people at the ashram. Everyone is so much more remote, distant.”

[Incinerated]

~*~

From Spiralbound Yoga, with commentary from now.

Dixie fiction friction

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the Southern literary tradition was a linkage with Scotland, a love of Walter Scott and, unsaid, its Presbyterian literal Bible, clans becoming klans, some of the same intonations and expressions, a shared rebellious nature, plus the repulsion of Quakers in general.

Yet many of its young writers in the ‘50s devoured Jewish influences (Mailer, Malamud, Bellow) and then the Calvinist Congregationalists of New England (Updike, in particular) and then their own Thomas Wolfe and Faulkner. So I’ve read.

Their own writers had been presenting the Dixie heritage as all happy and macho, which did not fit what they observed. The Jews and Congregationalists, on the other hand, were presenting something hard and ugly about themselves.

From that, I’ve wondered: where and how my Midwestern heritage was being addressed or examined. I saw escape but no reality being addressed. Things that ought to be said but weren’t, at least in the mainstream view.

The best I’ve come up with is Jeffrey Eugenides, Greek-American of Detroit. And, my, how he delivers.

Not every entry was worth saving

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The next volume was one of three notebooks from the Cornell Campus Store. These had a kraft cover but also, to my delight, wide left-side margins, 3½ inches.

I must have stocked up before shoving off from Binghamton.

There was nothing notable in this one: bad poetry drafts, early ashram experiences, mostly.

For whatever reason, half of the book was never used. After discarding the written pages, I’ve saved the blank lined pages for scrap-notes in the future.

~*~

How is it I had a stash of these varied campus notebooks?

In retrospect, so much transpired when I thought nothing was – the travels as the most conspicuous example.

[Incinerated]

~*~

From Spiralbound Yoga, with commentary from now.

 

Advice from writers for writers goes way beyond the page

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Just consider:

  1. “A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God.” ― Sidney Sheldon
  2. “One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing – writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.” ― Lawrence Block
  3. “Be willing to write really badly.” ― Jennifer Egan
  4. “You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.” ― Octavia E. Butler
  5. “Never use an adverb to modify the verb ‘said.’ … To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange.” ― Elmore Leonard
  6. “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” ― Ernest Hemingway
  7. “I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.” ― Tom Clancy
  8. “Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.” ― Ray Bradbury
  9. “Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.” ― James Baldwin
  10. “When your story is ready for a rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.” ― Stephen King