Author: Jnana Hodson

In downsizing to a remote fishing village in Downeast Maine, this eclectic writer feels everything's coming together.

Wrestling with Czeslaw Milosz, fellow poet

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In one poem, which I’ve crunched here from my own journal entry, he replies: “You ask me how to pray to someone who is not. All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge and walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard, above landscapes the color of ripe gold transformed by a magic stopping of the sun. That bridge leads to the shore of reversal where everything is just the opposite and the word is unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned. Notice: I say we there, everyone, separately, feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh and knows that if there were no other shore they will walk that aerial bridge all the same.”

Elsewhere he wrote: “’I could not have had a better life than the one I had,’ she writes to me in February 1983 from Warsaw, Irena who has lived through the occupation of her country by two enemy armies, had to live in hiding trailed by the Gestapo, then adapt herself to Communist rule, witness the terror and the workers’ responses in 1956, 1970, 1976, 1980, and the martial law proclaimed in December 1981.”

I’m not sure I agree fully with his theology, but I completely appreciate the richness of his grappling with 20th century unbelief and its practice with his discovery that there is, indeed, something larger than what we admit – something few other artists in our time have been able to pull off convincingly enough to be considered sound artistically. (Milosz won the Nobel Prize, 1980.)

He also wrote: “To find my home in one sentence, concise, as if hammered in metal. Not to enchant anybody. Not to earn a lasting name in posterity. An unnamed need for order, for rhythm, for form, which three words are opposed to chaos and nothingness.”

And, he quoted from Renee le Senne: “For me the principal proof of the existence of God is the joy I experience any time I think that God is.”

Again, Milosz: “To wait for faith in order to pray is to put the cart before the horse. Our way leads from the physical to the spiritual.” And himself: “My friend Father J.S. did not believe in God. But he believed God, the revelation of God, and he always stressed the difference.”

How existential!

Talents I would love to have

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  1. Empathy.
  2. Name-face recall. You know, an instant recall of names and faces and tidbits about the person.
  3. Better recollection of conversations. Who said what, when, and how, rather than the stew I usually retain.
  4. Small-talk charm.
  5. Woodworking and carpentry.
  6. Plumbing and electrical.
  7. Recall of herbs and spices.
  8. Auto mechanics.
  9. Baseball coordination and strength.
  10. An ability to recall a joke and tell it well.

~*~

Gee, I didn’t even mention making real money!

So what would you admit to?

 

Other panoramas opened

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Thinking of my own time living in the foothills of upstate New York as well as Kenzie’s situation in my novel Pit-a-Pat High Jinks, there’s a big question:

If we loved mountains so much, why didn’t we go climbing? The Adirondacks weren’t that far away, and the Catskills were closer.

For me, anyway, there were so many other fronts to explore, which I did, leading on to the ashram at the edge of forest in the Poconos.

No regrets, then. Besides, what emerged is a better story.

 

How radiant the blood

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a once-removed cousin and new husband came for the 1812 Overture with puffs from cannons spotted before the booms a time delay with the musical score and then, the Esplanade Fourth fireworks about as close as you can get to the five barges, their computer- programmed pyrotechnics in the Charles just upstream, across from the Clam Shell with everyone listening to the live broadcast

 

A prolific writing life

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Many days when I enter the Red Barn, I find myself amazed at the amount of work I’ve created. I can get dizzy just touching on the places I’ve lived and loved, or the friendships that have blessed me in those many moves. Or all of the painful losses as well.

Even though I was employed full-time in other pursuits, I set aside time for writing, revising, and submission to literary journals and publishers. These days I keep asking, How did I do it? Or more accurately, just what else did I fail to do?

Still, for perspective, a new poem a week for 50 years comes out to 2,500 pieces. And some poets consider themselves satisfied with a lifetime collection of 400 to 500 poems. Perhaps they’ve lived a more fruitful and balanced life than I have. You’d have to ask the people around them, though, for their perspective.

~*~

On a related note, I’m wondering if those who invaded my journals and expressed disappointment were expecting juicy gossip. In all of the upheaval and daily scheduling, I was usually pressed simply trying to record a trail of where I’d been and what had been happening. Without that, forget the emotions or gossip. Those just might fall into place later, perhaps prompted by the notation that the event had even happened.

My, it’s been a long trail!

~*~

So here we are. My novels are available at the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Smashwords, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook distributors and at Amazon in both Kindle and paperback. Let me suggest starting with Cassia.

The paperback cover …