Living in a temperate zone where green returns after gray slumber, I always find the leafy proliferation a wonder. It’s a festive temple, of sorts, and a comfort.
Restore your soul in its abundance.
~*~
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Category: Arts & Letters
ENDLESS PERSPECTIVES
Rarely do you stand at the summit. It’s a lesson of life.
Even on the trail, the climax awaits, somewhere overhead.
We need something to look up to, from infancy on.
And then there are clouds – or the surrounding range.
Or the streams, threading together, below.
~*~
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PERUSING THE PERIODICALS, MORE OR LESS
An opportunity to stop by the periodicals room in a well-stocked town library had me sensing something had shifted since my last visit. The room itself, at the heart of an 1884 building, is gorgeous, with tabletop reading lamps and much dark woodwork. The local history archives are in a tall-ceilinged room behind glass at one end, while the rest of the chamber is embraced by an open contemporary addition from 2006.
This time, though, as I looked around, I realized how few of the shelves had magazine covers facing me. Mostly it was the plain metal finish. And then what hit me was that of 14 of us sitting quietly there, all but two were working on their own laptops. We could have just as easily been at Starbucks, apart from the no talking and no food requirements.
As I read short stories in Ploughshares, with its heft an assurance in my hands, I reflected on the paradox of being one who treasures a room like this and its contents and then being one who’s appearing more and more only in digital formats read on these flickering screens.
What are we to make of it, ultimately? The library has posters telling patrons they can now access their favorite magazines online at home, thanks to an institutional subscription. So how do we simply wonder and peruse, open to whimsy and discovery? What are we losing and gaining in this exchange?
TRAIL NOTES FROM MY YOUTH
The lessons remain:
- Travel light.
- Take no more than you need.
- Leave a campsite cleaner than you found it.
Not a bad model for a poem, either. Or a whole collection to pack along the way.
~*~
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FORGET ZEUS AND HERA, FOR NOW
The Olympic Peninsula is an extraordinary extreme in continental United States. It juts out in the far upper left-hand corner, surrounded on three sides by ocean and inlets and featuring a jagged mountain range in its center. Much of it is lush and tangled, and there is relatively little human habitation.
It could be a land of the gods, as its very name suggests. Or as the Native Americans, with their stories still intact, will relate. Forget Zeus and Hera, then – this is a panoply arising from American roots and its westward focus.
Come along into the rainforest and then camp just in from the beach. As I did, collecting these poems.
~*~
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A LITTLE THING LIKE A TRILL
A common touch in classical music is a trill — a fast fluctuation between one note and another and back again. Executing it properly is difficult enough for a soloist, but for an orchestra? Well, it usually comes across as a flutter or blur, at best.
But once in a while, it’s different. When everybody’s precisely in sync, it becomes an exciting miniature roller coaster. In fact, the first time it happens, you’re uncertain whether you actually heard right. Your ears perk up for the repeat.
I remember the first time I encountered this — Max Rudolf leading the Cincinnati Symphony in a Cimarosa overture. I remember another time, as James Bolle led the New Hampshire Symphony in early Beethoven, and the smile on the concert master’s face in response. She was actually glowing over her violin.
Just heard it again, in the Metropolitan Opera orchestra in a broadcast of Mozart.
An opera house orchestra? Few major symphony ensembles can pull it off. Bravi, indeed.
REFLECTING ON MY COLLECTED ROSES
How long ago these events seem!
Yet, they still bloom.
Even through winter.
~*~
For my poetry collection and others, click here.
TRIPLE PLAY
Any writer tackling a large work such as a novel or screenplay will need to consider the matter of structure. The easiest way out, of course, is to follow a conventional model.
In fiction that might mean 60,000 words, more or less, spread out over 20 to 24 chapters, typically in a straight chronological order, past tense. For the film, something that would come in a little under two hours. To that you’d add pacing, points of conflict, resolution, number of main characters, and so on.
Sometimes, though, you find that’s not the best way to organize your material.
For example, in its revisions, Promise emerged with three sections, each set in a different locale – Prairie Depot, the Ozarks, and finally the Katonkah Valley. Each one, as it turns out, can be viewed as a novella held together by the central couple, Erik and Jaya.
I didn’t intend it this way. The original version had five sections, for one thing, which I came to feel were simply too unwieldy. The cuts provided what I feel gives a better balance.
Let me also admit to a fondness for shorter novels. Novels, mind you, not simply novellas, no matter how much I enjoy them, as well. Maybe it’s a reflection of my typically crowded schedule.
Still, both short stories and novellas stand as kinds of orphans in today’s literary scene. They should be more popular than they are. An occasional solution, one I’ve enjoyed reading, runs a central character through a set of short stories to culminate in a volume of novel length. It’s a tricky strategy, though, and hard to pull off.
Maybe that’s one more reason I feel a special satisfaction with Promise.
Hope you do, too.
~*~
For your own copy, click here.
HIDING OUT AND FLYING
Where does genius find safe haven?
How does it fly across the centuries?
Where does a Laundromat fit in the action?
Who’s serving your coffee this morning?
You’re new in town, aren’t you?
Maybe welcome?
~*~
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THE INVISIBLE FACTOR
In the buildup of national elections, once again a major influence remains the elephant in the room. I’m referring to the legacy – make that plural, legacies – of the hippie outburst, especially in contrast to those on the Vietnam war side of the divide.
The wounds and tensions haven’t gone away. Just look at the continuing proliferation of POW-MIA black flags across the landscape, on one side.
For the other, the lines are much more hazy yet festering. As I’ve been arguing, hippies came – and still come – in all varieties and degrees, and likely nobody ever fit what’s become the media stereotype. With the end of the military draft, the movement lost a crucial motivating force and focusing definition.
Complicating the situation was the distancing many youths on the antiwar side felt when it came to politics. With its support of the military at the time, liberal politics were tainted with outdated Cold War ideologies like those of the conservative side. For hippies, radical was the label of honor. And the Democratic Party base of the left was splintered as its youthful potential allies had nowhere to turn or direct their forces in the political arena.
The horror meant going from a hawkish LBJ administration to one of Richard Nixon.
Fast-forward now to the present American landscape. Gone are the grandparents and parents of many of the now senior baby boomers – the core of the hippie movement versus the older generations. Yet political candidates still tiptoe around many of the reality issues, beginning with marijuana and other illicit substances, as if they’re too hot to touch. Let’s get real. Want to talk about litmus tests?
As we look at candidates, ask where each stands on a scale of continuing issues from the hippie stream. I find it enlightening.
- Peace and social justice activism.
- Sexual equality … including abortion rights.
- Racial equality.
- Environmental and ecological issues, including the outdoors.
- Educational alternatives and opportunities.
- Sustainable economics and fair trade.
- Spirituality and radical religion.
- Fitness along the lines of yoga, bicycling, kayaking, hiking.
- Organic and natural foods.
- Marijuana reform.
- Arts and crafts.
- Community as common wealth, including health care.
- Labor as a matter of respect and a livable income.
Well, we have Bernie running straight true to the cause. Hillary, more cautiously so. But on the right? Let me suggest being wary of anyone in the pro-war camp who hasn’t served. Period. As for other life experiences?
~*~
All of this returns me to my Hippie Trails series of novels. I’d love for you to come along. Just click here.
Jnana's Red Barn 