Perhaps I was too busy simply getting adjusted to do any journaling?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

There’s a huge gap between the previous journal and the one beginning here. Is another volume, maybe two, missing? Did Kat perchance destroy them?

Instead, this one is half Workshop in Political Theory notes, followed by extensive Snyder transcriptions, many of them no doubt from the Lilly Library.

The chronological sequence is ruptured.

And there’s nothing personal, beyond that, in these pages.

We must have made an earlier trip to Bloomington, because I have a listing of research deadlines as of 6/6/74 but apparently for 1975.

Then the minutes from a trip to my first board of consultants’ meeting soon follow.

From there are many penciled Snyder transcriptions; am guessing they’re from Lilly Library. My deep immersion in that sanctum.

Gary was, in many of these, far more prosaic than I now expected. Perhaps that’s a liberating insight!

As for the Stoney Lonesome poetry crowd or Bloomington Quakers? So far, nothing.

That was about to change, though. And how.

~*~

Stretching between the courthouse square and downtown and the college campus, behind the camera, iconic Kirkwood Avenue figures prominently in my novel What’s Left as well as the earlier, Daffodil Uprising, though not by name. This time I would be living to the west of downtown. Photo by Yahala via Wikimedia Commons.

~*~

From Spiralbound Hoosier, with commentary from now.

Upcoming presentations will break from the chronological sequence into topics, as you’ll see. Our life was getting richer in everything but money.

Making our first relocation together

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Or, as I noted, back in foothills …

Frankly, I can’t envision my return to Bloomington without her.

Our Bloomington goods runs? Three trips, I’m seeing now. Using whose pickup, with the tarp flying behind it? Followed by our green VW Bug.

Ottawa, Ohio, on the site
of the last Ottawa Indian reservation in Ohio

seat of Putnam County on the Ottawa River

Realize that the move to Bloomington allowed me to reclaim, fully, my Jnana moniker.

Bloomington redux was also, in a way, a return to the grad student realm I inhabited in Binghamton, but with the twist I was now married and officially a research associate, quasi faculty. And my hours were so much more flexible, even regular.

This was second of the three times I stepped out of the newsroom career and had no guarantee of reentry if things soured. The ashram was the first. For me, this was risk.

Much of this move is abstracted in detail in my novels Nearly Canaan and The Secret Side of Jaya, though I did move the locale to the Ozarks – I had already used Indiana extensively in Daffodil and, later, What’s Left.

~*~

From Spiralbound Hoosier, with commentary from now.

 

On work itself, when done right

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Reporter Tom: “I was building a cabinet several nights ago and everything kept falling into place, everything fit, I cut the wood just right and there was such a good feeling of simply working that in a way I didn’t want to finish the thing. They never taught us to work that way. It’s always to get the thing done.”

Nowadays, no sense of craftsmanship. No unity of elements or workers. Just things, not creation.

For Esquimaux artists, objects do not have to be seen but treasures to be unwrapped and felt on special occasions.

~*~

The downtown since I left. Main Street by Nyttend via Wikimedia Commons.

At last, a hard, honest look at the relationship

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Kat still edgy, depressed: “I hate myself!” This time burning rice meant for dinner; out of sorts, suicidal?

The emergency brake won’t work: she drove 200 miles with it on …

As she said, Saturday morning, looking at parents and their children in this town: “They never had a chance.”

“There’s no place I feel home,” she pouts in her hometown

Unlike a turtle, going anywhere!

Iron pills seem to be helping her green complexion and mine.

Sunday morning [note, I was writing day of the week rather than the number of the month through this stretch of journaling]:

“My wife was a great thumping bitch this morning.”

I find myself shocked that I actually admitted that. Typically, I make excuses for those closest to me; I try to see their good side rather than shortcomings.

Bly’s Tooth Mother or Stone Mother describes my Nikki, earlier, ultimately pulling me toward paralysis.

I kept seeing the girlfriends in my life as dancing goddesses, not that we were actually dancing. Their role, though, seemed to be as a counterweight to my seriousness.

I’ve been stunned to see notes regarding a playful Gopi at the ashram who at 15 had been drugged, raped, taken lesbian, involved in crime, as well as exposed to museums, art, and literature. She nearly swept me off my feet, and here, two years later, Kat was coming in second by comparison, even at the core of my obsession.

Now, with Kat, I was placing great hopes on our Indiana move: a hothouse, in a way, to raise our seedling in. As I journaled, “We’re so apart here: there are no models, no challenges, no competition. The wind beats her down. She’s afraid to give rein to her private visions, her terrifying garden, ‘going over the edge.’ She won’t know herself till she does.”

On the reflection of this span of my life, I’m seeing how bitchy she was throughout the marriage. Where would she be if I had just walked? I was about to say this is the biggest point where I ultimately failed, but will leave other possibilities open for comparison.

Revisiting these pages is emotionally heavy for me, I’ll confess.

Now I see neither Nikki nor Kat or even Fay as “mothers,” at least with me. And Celeste had already ruled herself out.  

~*~

From Spiralbound Flatland, with commentary from now.

For me, walking has often been therapy

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Let’s clarify.

  1. Not in hallways, parking lots, malls, or many suburban housing developments.
  2. Not purely for exercise, especially walking in circles.
  3. Often, I’ve found downtowns invigorating.
  4. Neighborhoods with homes that reflect individuality and care. Craftsmanship, detail. Gardening, shrubbery, and trees, too. Ivy can be magical.
  5. To get from one point to another. Think of exploring.
  6. On trails. (Going back to Boy Scouts.)
  7. Forests.
  8. Riversides and beaches.
  9. Up and down a hill or a mountain.
  10. As a break in the practice of writing or revising. I’m recalling the orchard and irrigation canal banks, especially.

 

  1.  

There was so much to wrap up first

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The next volume, another wide-margin notebook, included our preparing to relocate from Fostoria to Bloomington: much rough verse but, to my surprise, many riches, too: a fertile profusion. I’m so glad I didn’t incinerate this stretch before the final gleaning.

I am surprised how little I have regarding my boss, Doc Bordner, who was quite an original. Perhaps sometime?

Instead, I was preoccupied with the suffocation by conformity.

The poison here is unbearable; I wish we were long gone; am counting the days till we move

As I walked in autumn leaves bordering a savage Scout jamboree, the words, “Look, Mrs. Smith, there’s an Indian,” meaning me, in my headband.

Two fine lines from Snyder’s Japanese lesson:

“It is unspeakably wonderful to see a large volume of water falling with a thunderous noise.”

“Sparrows entertained me singing and dancing, I’ve never had such a good time as today.”

Reopening Snyder (now is the time), am struck by how much larger his vocabulary is than I had thought: not just accurate and clear, but broad and sometimes academic.

High blood pressure wears away the organs, leading to failure in 20 years, may explain my headaches, eye trouble, need for more sleep: must reduce salt intake sharply (Sivananda’s day without salt each week) [much less a true fast, food or speech].

Sometimes, deep in memory-desires, making love turns not to the finite body with me but someone else even fresh from the street adding to her thousand faces and shapes into a new woman as my lover-wife

Always that heart, with the million clouds of emotions, expressions passing over.

Here, I thought I was rejecting / renouncing newspaper journalism as my life’s calling, leaping beyond the gossip and fashionable tides that sweep the barroom, clubroom, of deluded masses …

They forget what they read, discard it all …

As for me, on to Cold Mountain?

Except that was his destination, not mine. And I was still ensnared in Maya’s web.

Communism capitalism?

Too much stress on the supporting THINGS.

Far too little on the SOUL.

Either way, everyone is reduced to objects, without loving brotherhood or broader community support.

~*~

“Dolly? What can I do for you,
Dolly?” Always, Dolly.
Owner/manager of art/health food store in Findlay.

~*~

~*~

The modern “leisure” classes, those with education working in professional or managerial roles, are those with the least amount of free time. Many work 50- to 60-hour weeks, leaving little time for culture.

As for the novel? I thought my biggest potential readership would be in students or those just out before responsibility is foisted on them.

It’s success, of course, would be my escape out of all this. Maybe in four years or so, from Bloomington.

My railing at “they” can more recently be seen even within my own congregation!

“For when the will fails, so do the hands, and one lives at the expense of life” – Wendell Berry, Farming.

Harvard president on the quality of a leader: His ability to inflict pain.

Japanese children are taught calligraphy as inculcating composure

Wondering how we’ll define ourselves in Bloomington … late hours, attending concerts etc.? Or early mornings, meditating and getting simpler? Dharma Bums or Down So Long artists?

A note on card systems for scholarly mags etc. … for the Workshop or my own poetry submissions? Or both?

What did happen in the upcoming Bloomington sojourn was aligning with Friends, finding a poetic voice, and renewing my hiking in nature time. I am surprised I didn’t partake of more cultural performances, but my early rising and personal writing can be blamed more than Kat, perchance. Lifestyle definitely included gardening and organic funky.

After handing over my desk in the newsroom, I went through all of my front pages and editorial pages, felt very good: so much solid work after all, especially with Marcy. There is goodness and sweetness in all her work.

And then, in moving, came the first snow since we married, as Kat said.

Do note that one of the paradoxes in this practice is that when life’s going well, there’s often very little time for journaling.

~*~

From Spiralbound Flatland, with commentary from now.