Author: Jnana Hodson

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

One way to summarize Ipswich, on the North Shore

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Northeast of Boston, before you get to New Hampshire, is the Colonial town of Ipswich. Though it’s one of many, it still has a distinct flavor. Consider this, from the street signs:

Labor in Vain takes off from Turkey Shore Road.

How much more Puritan can you get? I just picture the blunderbuss in hand as someone in a big black hat and buckle goes out looking to bag a bird for dinner.

Or, the memories, back when we could travel …

Along Friar Roads

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We had to wonder the background of this building in Eastport, Maine. Could have been a factory, maybe fish processing, or a warehouse. Turns out to have once been the world’s biggest sardine cannery. The potential also intrigues, should anyone take up its restoration before it collapses into the tide.

 

Ten more ways ‘Canaan’ is new and improved

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My newest book, Nearly Canaan, is a thorough reworking of three earlier novels that now flow together as one.

Here are ten reasons the new version is new and improved.

  1. The book now focuses on the question of what impact one person can make for lasting good in our world, especially in and through our closest relationships.
  2. Jaya’s professional identity in her pioneering approach to nonprofits administration is quickly and more clearly established. Her career and its demands become a source of major conflict in the course of the story.
  3. Her character now grows out of her role in Yoga Bootcamp, which provides further understanding of her motivations and inner direction.
  4. The actions now show that the best intentions may have unanticipated negative consequences.
  5. Jaya’s desire to find an appropriate way of personally expressing her spiritual experiences finally creates a unique artform.
  6. Events are no longer left hanging at the end of what was the first novel. Life moves on in the aftermath of disaster.
  7. The overall work is now structured within three large, overarching sections, each presented by a different teller. The first one, focusing on Jaya, is comprised of three telescoping parts that propel the action to the distinctive landscape where the second and third sections also take place. The second section is told by one of Jaya’s yoga students while the third is told by a young wife who’s been a close neighbor. Each of them reveals details unknown to most of the other characters in their social circle.
  8. The story now has a short fourth section as a coda. I’m especially fond of it.
  9. Once again, changing some of the names of characters makes a huge difference, especially when that leads to fond nicknames. Just see what happens to Jaya’s beau, especially.
  10. I have far more sympathy for Jaya’s husband’s situation, even if it’s what he pressed so hard to find himself in.

Be among the first to read the story!

Nearly Canaan

Magnetic center as a point of growth

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I think it was in Peter Ouspensky’s writing that I came across the concept. He argued that having a foundation in  an activity that requires patience and long training is essential for anyone hoping to grow in spirituality.

Simply put, practicing an art, a sport, a craft, a trade, or the like provides the stamina for personal religious enhancement. He called it the magnetic center.

It’s not a passive pleasure but rather active, with deferred gratification in terms of results. It requires doing something for its own nature rather than some final event or production, even though such things might provide inspiration. What’s important is the means itself rather than the end.

These other activities aren’t a substitute for spiritual progress, which can come about by undertaking any number of tested traditions, but it does offer a solid starting point.

Maybe there are exceptions, but I still find it an interesting insight.

What do you love to do as a disciplined practice?

 

Deep in the throes of fiction

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I was in the midst of revising what’s now Nearly Canaan and found myself surprised to find myself living vicariously in the minds and hearts of the villains. Well, three of them. (I won’t name them, since they all start out as darlings. Don’t want to spoil your reading.)

Yes, I was even looking for reasons to like them.

Not so, their real-life counterparts.

The villains, eh? Never expected that!

Do you ever feel trapped by your family?

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In my novel What’s Left, Cassia’s brothers and cousins — the ones she calls the Squad — are essential for bringing the story fully up to right now. It’s their turn to move forward. What do they want to do with their lives? What does this family mean to them?

Cassia makes her own bold decision for her future — one I sense is enabled by their solid identity.

But there are the other cousins — the ones from the other side of the tracks, the ones who don’t fit in and never will.

So it’s not just about the family restaurant.

~*~

As she noted in an earlier draft, comparing her mother’s side of the family to her father’s:

From everything I’ve seen, his family wasn’t warm or truly close. They did what they were supposed to. Had what they were supposed to. Basically, they followed orders. So what Baba found and embraced with Manoula’s family was more disorderly and conflicting and yet also affirming when it came to his own existence. Privacy here is not taken for granted. Thea Nita, for all of her love of solitude, would spend far more of her working hours surrounded by the public, where the action and people were. Maybe that’s why the Buddhist meditation held such appeal for Nita and her siblings — it was one time they could really focus on themselves alone. 

~*~

There are flip moments when I’d say my family was defined by the TV programs we watched together. Think of the TV dinners we ate on those TV trays we set up between us and the screen (black-and-white, for the most part). Even the pizza we ate on very special nights, scraping off the toppings to eat separately from the dough and its crust. Or the burnt popcorn we ate afterward.

Cassia’s close kinship was more active than that, but working with her father’s photos did give her a place of retreat.

Do you ever feel trapped in your family? Or in your social circle? At moments like that, where would you rather be?

~*~