Author: Jnana Hodson

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

POINT OF TRANSCENDENCE

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Curiously, growing up in Ohio, I was nonetheless somehow fascinated by mountains. They arose in my early drawings. On family trips, it didn’t take much for a wooded hill to become a mountain in my mind. An astrologer might argue it has something to do with all the air signs in my chart. Whatever the reasons, a ridge line or summit calls to me.

There were a few tantalizing early encounters in childhood trips to the Great Smokies and eastern Kentucky. My true initiation, however, came at age eleven with a week of backpacking on the Appalachian Trail in Tennessee and North Carolina. It was miserable and magical, and left lessons for a lifetime.

Still, it wasn’t until after my college graduation that I came to fully appreciate mountains – living, by turns, in the Southern Tier of Upstate New York, the Poconos of Pennsylvania, the Cascades and Olympics of the Pacific Northwest, as well as Maryland (with its Catoctins and access to the Shenandoah Valley) and finally New Hampshire.

Many of my poems arise in some of those experiences over the years.

We could collect them as “By Gully,” playing off Louis Ulrich’s vow to climb Ulrich Couloir to the summit of Mount Stuart (9,415-foot elevation) one final time – “my gully,” as he referred to the trajectory more than four decades after he and two partners established the now basic mountaineering route in July 1933. A climber explores a slope, recognizes the avalanche chutes along the higher crests, approaches summits themselves via passes, gaps, or notches, usually following a streambed. The connection of gullies and mountains is established. By Gully.

Yet that is only half of the equation. Mysticism, as I’ve known it, keeps a foot to the ground, and often a hand or the butt, too. The spiritual journey leads to the mountaintop and back – if you don’t run ahead of your Guide.

~*~

It’s the background for some of my novels and poetry now appearing at Thistle/Flinch editions. To read more, click here.

Back Pack 1

DWELLING WITH A GHOST

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New Englanders – at least those living in old houses – will occasionally speak of ghosts, and their stories can be compelling, no matter how skeptical the listener.

Of course, the specifics can differ. A dark apparition moving silently through dark hallways – or, in other modes, clumping loudly up and down the staircase. Leave empty junk food wrappers and soda cans and bottles on the counters and coffee table and even in the unmade sheets. Laugh eerily at midnight. Slide in front of you at the bathroom door, close it, lock it.

Drain the wi-fi bandwidth.

Expect steak and lobster and cheese while ignoring lettuce or eggs or peas.

But have you ever heard of a trail of stench that follows its movement? Oh, that detail is so telling. The fear of taking a shower, as well – the soap and washcloth remaining untouched.

They speak of the chill you feel, more than the dense smoky cloud. Or the echoing conversation as it’s twisted with a chortle and thrown back.

One version, in fact, has every intimate conversation accompanied by a Hollywood laugh track. And that, I’ll contend, is the most annoying.

A SIGNATURE FLOURISH

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They’ve become a kind of signature for our place every summer, even though it’s been a number of years since we’ve planted any. The neighbors tell us how much they enjoy the sunflowers. They’ve become self-seeded, no doubt enhanced by our bird feeders.

As for all of the goldfinches, now that’s another matter! Just look at that bright yellow on bright yellow …

MORE THAN THE BAKLAVA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

When I moved to Baltimore, I was surprised to find all of the local pizza parlors were owned by Greeks. Not Italians?

Well, it took time before I discovered the alternatives, beginning in the city’s Little Italy.

But that occurred about the same time I was told most diners were owned by Greeks, too. And I’ve come to love diners, even though I’d been introduced to the real thing way back right after college. They just weren’t fashionable then.

Well, somewhere in-between there had been the Dairy Queen owned by a Greek-American who, though a big error by the Bank of France, wound up instantly nearly seven-figures rich – and took flight to his homeland before the error was discovered. It was a big news story where I was for the next month, before he repented and returned.

So more recently, I ordered a pizza from a local parlor. Wanted to support a young friend who works there. When I picked up the box, there was no gaudy image of a fat smiling chef on the top of the steaming box – a good sign, in my book. And then I noticed the design was mostly white with blue trim, adhering to the national Greek colors. Along with a border of … the signature Greek key pattern. OK, I thought. I get it. Even before I noticed the words gyros and pizza in a little house, side by side.

That does it. I’m definitely going back for a gyro.

And, for the record, the box is distributed from our favorite Italian grocery in Portland, Maine. Has me wondering about the rest of the story.

SIGNS OF STATUS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

I learned to backpack as a Boy Scout. Our troop was big on primitive camping using homemade trail tents.

When you successfully passed the requirements for the Second Class rank (twice – ours was a strict troop), you got to construct your own pack frame. When we went camping, you had everything tied tight to it – inside your sleeping bag, which was rolled into the trail tent.

When you were awarded the First Class rank, you were privileged to weave and stain a rectangular basket that was then bolted to the frame. Your sleeping bag would be rolled up in the tent and tied to the top of the basket, while the rest of your goods went into the basket itself – a much more convenient arrangement.

You couldn’t buy a backpack like that anywhere except, maybe, a very expensive outfitter’s.

What I learned along the way was equally priceless.

The pack on the cover of my poetry volume is a more traditional design, but it still stirs the memories.

~*~

Back Pack 1To see more, click here.

ANYBODY SEEN JULY?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

I don’t know how it is where you live, but here in New England, we seem to have gone straight from the end of June into August. Not just my household, either – ask around, and everybody admits the same. We just didn’t have a July. Nobody knows where it went. Hiding out in one of the closets?

Some years we know it’s July by a prolonged steamy oppression that finally breaks out into a glorious August. Not this year. The only evidence of passing time I see is in the profusion of weeds – the garden was still orderly at the end of June. At least the produce is coming along on schedule. Oh, my, yes! Real tomatoes!

If it were just me, I’d blame being obsessed with drafting my newest (and likely final) novel. But then I ask around. Yup, everybody agrees.

Now, let’s make the most of August before it, too, has passed.

NOTTINGHAM SQUARE

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Quaker 5 170
The town is proud of the governors who lived here, as well as its role in the Revolutionary War.

Hearing the distant sounds of cannon at the Battle of Bunker Hill to the south, local militia mustered here on Nottingham Square in New Hampshire and began marching to combat. It’s only an hour-plus drive today.

Quaker 5 176
You can easily pass by the square at the top of the hill. Houses line one side; farms line two others.
An earlier Indian massacre is also remembered.
An earlier Indian attack is also remembered. In scenes like this, I always wonder about the American flags. Shouldn’t they be the Union Jack?

 

TRIANGULATIONS

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As I said at the time …

So you’re moving out – congratulations! For one thing, it puts you on much firmer ground when you do commit to a live-in relationship – rather than jumping from your parents’ care into the care of another. Yes, your parents are much more liberal than mine were, but I too was forced to spend my first year-and-a-half of college at a local commuter school (fortunately, it had an excellent English department) and to live at home – something that deeply stunted my emotional growth. Getting away to Bloomington was a lifesaver, even if I wound up in political science and urban studies instead.

Well, I have another reading coming up Tuesday, same venue. This time, plan to read one poem – a longpoem in thirty-seven sections. Should take just under an hour. A piece that was nearly published by a highly regarded press twenty years ago – and was withdrawn because of deep cutbacks in federal funding for the arts. When I began to submit sections to journals a couple of years back, acceptances quickly followed. Now, to get the full piece out!

So here I am, wishing you could be with me in that smoke-filled room – have you on as the next reader, in fact, unless I gallantly step aside to let you wow them with an extended reading of your own. Or, more intriguing yet, share the stage, alternating pieces. Yes, I like that!

Oh, yes, you start to apologize about talking so much about him and that love poison. But I wonder, unless we are blessed enough to have a fulfilling life with our initial childhood sweetheart, whether a great deal about any current affair is actually an attempt to work out the failings of the previous hot fling. For one thing, we really do become attuned to the other person’s touch, timing, interests, movement – everything that makes him or her distinct. Nicolas Mosley, an English novelist, has argued that every coupling is actually a triangle – or more accurately, two triangles, with each partner having a side affair, a past, a demanding career, or whatever attached here. I’d agree.

Now, if you decide to hop on that bus and head off to some escape, what can I do to lure you here? (Just phone ahead, to make sure I’m not seriously involved with a very jealous girlfriend by then.) As I was saying, how do you like your coffee? Ever gone contradancing or English country dancing? And you wouldn’t be the only person in this neck of the woods dressed in black and stainless steel or exhibiting striking jewelry piercings, unlike New Orleans. In fact, a number of years ago, Donald Hall once wrote that there’s something Gothic about New England. I was living in the desert of Washington State when I read that, and it intrigued. Even more so, now that I’m living here. But that’s another conversation.

Well, it’s my turn to be up way too late – and to write disjointed stuff. Hope it makes sense. Now, for me, off to engage in, hopefully, some sensual and sensational dreams of my own. Care to bet if you’re starring?

Keep sizzling!

~*~

Olympus 1For a free copy of the complete American Olympus, click here.

A QUESTION OF INTEGRITY IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

The New Hampshire Republican Party’s recent reiterations claiming the centrality of integrity have me looking at the party’s record of the past few decades in national elections.

Just where does integrity fit in the win-at-all-costs school of politics manifested by Karl Rove and his kind? And where has it been thrown overboard, especially?

Put another way, and not just with politics: Where do words and actions converge? And just where do they diverge?

Integrity, of course, demands convergence – of the head, hands, and heart, as well. Here’s hoping …