You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
A first attempt to photograph the northern lights using my cell phone. It does look like a sunrise except in the north. Next up is time-length exposures using a tripod and remote shutter. That’s when much fantastic color that isn’t seen at the time by the naked eye is detected.
I’ve even bookmarked the two-day forecast to keep me posted.
I don’t do “resolutions,” which all too easily become self-defeating. Goals are more like compass readings when you’re trying to get somewhere and want to leave some flexibility for when problems arise. So here’s what I’d like to improve in my life in the upcoming year.
They’ll even shuck their treasures from the shells before returning to dock, no matter how cold.
After the close of the Revolutionary War, and by then disgraced as a traitor, Benedict Arnold took refuge among the Loyalists in neighboring St. John, New Brunswick, where he emerged as a merchant and shipowner. Once, he personally directed the work as Captain John Shackford and presumably a crew loaded a vessel at Campobello Island.
Shackford later recalled,
“I did not make myself known to him, but frequently, as I sat on the ship’s deck, watched the movements of my old commander, who had carried us through everything, and for whose skill and courage I retained my former admiration, despite his treason. But, when I thought of what he had been, and the despised man he then was, tears would come and I could not help it.”
The Loyalist impact on Eastport, as I’m seeing in this project, was immense. Neighboring St. Andrews, New Brunswick, and St. John further up the coast were both founded in 1784 by Loyalist families exiled after the American Revolution. Many of them later filtered back into Eastport, including some lines that owned our house.
All of it, of course, has relevance on the house we bought.
If we’re counting from the time I got hooked on what became a journalism career, I’ve pursued a writing life for six decades now.
It began with hope, of course, including the dreams of glorious success and celebrity. You know, prizes and bestsellers and fame plus fabulous romance, family, and social life all reflecting intellectual brilliance. These were all wrapped up in the dream of a teen and beyond.
The reality, as you’re probably already about to pipe up, is that the practice of writing – whether literature or any of its other forms, including newspapers – is ultimately grubby work with none of those high-life perks for most of its faithful ranks.
That side’s not any different from all the fine pianists in our communities who never solo in public, despite their talent and passion, or the athletes who exercise daily and play unpaid in the parks on weekends, or a minister’s lifetime of well-crafted, scholarly Sunday sermons. The list of examples can go on and on. Practice, as I’ve come to embrace, is essential in many life activities, even in medicine and law. Forget the results, just do it.
While daily journalism paid my bills for most of my adult life, I was shunted to the editing side of the field, sharpening the prose of other reporters and correspondents and crafting headlines to capture the essence of their dispatches for a parade of readers rather than appearing under my own byline. Spare me the liberal elite label of the rabid right, please; real journalists, unlike the folks at Fox, put their leanings aside before touching anything. Facts are facts, which I see as important in fiction and poetry, too. Well, let’s not rule out their role in anything smacking of rationale behavior.
As far as my own writing pursuits went, I engaged in my free time in what I consider “the real stuff” – poems, fiction, work somewhere in between – much of it getting published in underground literary periodicals around the globe. It was enough to sustain me in the larger quest, no matter that the big successes kept eluding me, despite some near misses.
So here we are, at the beginning of another new year and a birthday soon to follow, and I have to admit the impact of aging, this time from the perspective of a writer. Narrow that to novelist, poet, blogger, and Quaker. One who finds there are still too many piles of drafted material remaining in the way to wherever comes after.
While I don’t have a new major writing project on the horizon – especially no new novel – I am feeling drawn to see what might still have energy in some of the drafts I’ve done in support of my earlier literary projects. There may be some fresh lessons to be gleaned or perhaps even wisdom in the light of time. It’s even an opportunity to reflect on a writing life.
An important elder for me has been the poet Gary Snyder, usually at a distance. This time, it’s from his Zen perspective of reaching an advanced age, almost a generation ahead of me:
My wife is gone, my girl is gone,
my books are loaned, my clothes
are worn, I gave away a car; and
all that happened years ago.
Mind & matter, love & space
are frail as foam on beer.
So for now, I’ll be going through the piles and clearing them away – before someone else has to. Yes, sort through the debris and move on.
It’s one more step in the practice of writing, something like daily prayer, something that needs to be done even if it seems nobody’s listening.
Now, let’s see where it leads.
A barn is a reminder of work once at hand. Some of it is ongoing, while in other instances it was and then put aside, perhaps for another time. Cows – even imaginary – won’t wait long. Everything needs repair or weeding. Feasting is countered by fasting. Again, the season turns. All together.
The barn was my own. A carriage house, actually – in a small city, the oldest settlement in New Hampshire and seventh-oldest in the nation. How I got there is a long story, told in part here at the blog and in part in the novels.
The barn was a central part of my domestic labors, with dreams of a loft studio, once more pressing house repairs were in place. At least its back half was no longer sinking toward collapse on rotted sills. In our possession, the structure did hold a mother-in-law apartment. The remainder provided storage.
A writer collects many materials – fodder for winter. More important, eighteen years after a divorce, I had remarried, this time with children. Once again, I was with gardens and this time, trails of toys, clothing, and chipped dishes. We did have woodstove heat in the kitchen ell.
Not that anyplace with children is truly idyllic. It was always a near-catastrophe, of the best sort.
Carved in stone in Trout Brook cemetery, Weston, Maine, this portion of the deceased’s name makes its own statement. Can we adapt this as a motto for the New Year, with a sense of zest?
I do suspect that gravestones can be a great source of first or last names when it comes to writing fiction, not that I did that in crafting my existing novels.
With that insight from English essayist and poet Charles Lamb, let’s consider ten more quotes befitting a new year.
If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to get back in shape – or even simply to get more physically fit, period – the characters in my novel Yoga Bootcamp will stand by you as inspiration. Or, as I’ve been confessing of late, as a reminder of what 50 years of neglect can do to you. (Some of the easiest hatha yoga moves are beyond my ability these days, and that’s before getting to my sense of balance. I don’t think I’ll get around to writing that story, though.)
Yoga Bootcamp tells of a back-to-the-earth funky farm not far from the Big Apple and covers a day in the life of its founder and followers as they seek to ride a natural high without tripping over themselves. As they discover, yoga is about much more than just standing on your head.
The humorous and insightful ebook is one of five I’m offering to you FREE as part of Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale, which ends tomorrow.
As they say, Act soon!
Get your copy now, in the platform of your choice, and then celebrate.
For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.
Jnana's Red Barn 