Category: Personal Journey

Parts of my life I likely won’t be doing again

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

For me, this stage of winding down, or at least refocusing, includes recognizing realities of aging and finances while living in a remote area of the country. Here are some things I’d say are in my past, no matter how actively I pursued them:

  1. Hiking to the top of a mountain.
  2. Climbing a ladder more than a few steps.
  3. Hearing a full symphony orchestra in person.
  4. Ditto for attending an opera.
  5. Peyote, psilocybin, or acid. Not this far after taking up meditation.
  6. Some of the easier hatha yoga positions. Forget even attempting the harder ones.
  7. Writing and revising another novel.
  8. Sending out resumes.
  9. Camping in a tent or out in the open under the stars.
  10. Prolific orgasms.

Thinking of repeated-digit birthdays  

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

11 – In an American Midwest industrial city during a gray period. Boy Scouts and chemistry were everything in my world. Hiking and camping, especially. Much of the rest was a blur.

22 – My senior year at Indiana University, deeply head-over-heels with my first lover and spinning into hippiedelic as a promising young journalist. But just ahead was an unexpected change of events, pointing my route into Upstate New York and then yoga. See Daffodil Uprising, Pit-a-Pat High Jinks, and Yoga Bootcamp for parallels.

33 – Back in Ohio, in a Rust Belt small city, after four years of what I considered my Promised Land, the interior Pacific Northwest. My marriage was rocky, but I was gaining recognition as a poet, despite the exhausting hours I was working as a management-level newspaper editor in some admittedly exciting work. On the other hand, I was also moving into Wilburite Quaker circles of deep spiritual grounding. See Hometown News for parallels,

44 – Now in New Hampshire after a round in Baltimore and a stint as a field representative for a major newspaper syndicate, I was recovering from a divorce and crushing engagement. But I did have a first novel in print and a trove of manuscripts in hand, along with being active in New England contradance circles and about to explode into my second summer of love – the first having been nearly half of my life earlier. The Quaker practice now had a tinge of Mennonite, too.

55 – At last, I had remarried, this time with children, and relocated to what we called our City Farm in New Hampshire’s seacoast region – the place with my Red Barn. What a whirlwind! I was being widely published as a poet, had a decent income for a change, and enjoyed union representation as a member of a Newspaper Guild local. Both ocean beaches and mountains were at hand. Life had never been better, apart from my getting older.

66 – Finally retired, I could focus what I considered the Real Work of literature, mostly. The blogging was underway, as were the novels as ebooks. I was even applying my Mennonite part-singing abilities to more demanding scores as a founding member of the Boston Revels community chorus. I was amazed to be surrounded by such fine singers and grateful it was not an auditioned choir.

77 – In the throes of downsizing, I’m now residing in a remote fishing village with a lively arts scene on an island in Maine. Yes, I’m feeling my age but not complaining. It’s been a remarkable span, overall. You’re reading about it here on this blog.

88 or 99 – I wouldn’t bet on either. I’d much rather take each day as it comes. However much longer.

This one doesn’t seem that long

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Or so I keep muttering to myself when I realize I’ve lived here on an island in Maine longer than eight other locations in my zig-zag life’s journey. Somehow, looking back, those others feel more action-packed, dramatic, even influential while this one seems to have flowed by more gently and quickly and, yes, more pleasantly overall.

This, of course, is Eastport, my remote fishing village with a lively arts scene at the easternmost fringe of the continental United States.

The mere idea of writing from an island in Maine strikes me as pretentious, yet here I am, far further east than the others, and I am here year-round, whatever.

My habitations of shorter duration were all in my 20s and 30s, largely career moves one way or another and mostly taken as professional stepping stones to something higher, though the next move was rarely the one I anticipated. This, in contrast, is in my 70s, with any dreams of next steps largely evaporated. Rather, I’m savoring an awareness of culmination, even if the big successes I desired ultimately remain vaporous. Especially the bestseller rankings or critical approval or genius grant recognition remain vaporous.

Add to that the fact of time going faster the older you get, something I’ve previously remarked on here at the Barn.

Returning to the thought of residency, the three longer locations in my route were my native Dayton (20 years) before I set forth to other fields, and then, finally, slowing down again in New Hampshire, with 13 years in Manchester and 21 in Dover.

I’ve been attentive to what I have in all the turmoil.

How relative is time, anyway?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Let’s consider fourth place, as far as length in time. That is, realizing that I’ve been dwelling in Eastport four years now strikes me as a bit of a shock. I’m finding it difficult to make sense of the fact, at least in light of earlier landings.

Quite simply, I’m still settling in here, even if it’s in my so-called sunset years. And, yes, I’m still feeling this is it, a very suitable end of my road, even if I am being greeted by name by people I don’t recall knowing, this is in sharp contrast to earlier locales.

For perspective, those shorter spans were in my early adulthood: Bloomington, Indiana (four years in two parts); Binghamton, New York (1½ years, in two parts and three addresses); the Poconos of Pennsylvania (1½ years); the town in northwest Ohio I call Prairie Depot (1½ years); Yakima, Washington (four years); a Mississippi River landing in Iowa (six months); Rust Belt in the northeast corner of Ohio (3½ years); and Baltimore, my big-city turn and turning point (three years). You’ve likely met many of them in my novels and poems.

Looking back, each of those addresses was filled with challenging turmoil and discovery, soul-searching yearning as well as glimmers of something more concrete and fulfilling just ahead.

In contrast, my longest period of living anywhere was Dover, New Hampshire (21 years), my native Dayton, Ohio (20 years), and Manchester, New Hampshire (13 years).

Suicides along my trail

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’m reflecting on the list – a best friend ever, a lover who was more passionate about me than I was of her, a woman I dated once and then backed off, the leading anthrax researcher who stayed with us for a weekend or week, the PhD naturalist from my high school (and brother of my first real girlfriend), even my ex- fiancée’s scarred wrists. Add to that the LSD physicist attending our Quaker Meeting or the French-Canadian Catholic up the road in Gonic, and the list of suicides along my life pathway has more examples than I would have expected even without getting into the many people I’ve known along the way but who vanished after.

It’s a dark side that’s usually overlooked but probably more common than anyone admits.

More and more my curiosity involves the question of life itself rather than matters after death.

I’m taking one mystery at a time, as it happens.

Is anyone reflecting you or those you know?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Look in the public media around you and tell me where you see your life presented. Is there anywhere in TV shows, movies, advertising, magazines, newspapers, or novels that reflects life as you know it? Beyond that, is there anywhere that voices your aspirations and values? You know, where you want to be?

Writing this is a painful admission, but true. Somehow, though, I don’t picture myself in a typical suburban strip mall, either, no matter how often I’ve wound up there or been stuck in associated traffic.

What I do see, though, points to the reality that so much of what’s being presented and ingested is an escape from the daily grind. I don’t intend this as a judgmental stand, though I would counter it with the spiritual approach of trying to live in harmony with life as we encounter it in a specific place. Still, what I’m seeing generally rings hollow.

I’d issue a call for revolt but doubt that anyone would follow. Oh, well.

My, I didn’t expect to be hitting at the psychological malaise in the national soul, definitely not this quickly, but here we are. Just don’t hand me a cape and expect me to save anyone. I’m just a lowly writer, remember? Well, you could hand me a very dry martini (gin with an olive), but that would be my own favorite escape.

Now, to return more or less to the topic.

During my stint as a field representative for a major media syndicate, I called on newspaper editors in communities across 14 states. What struck me was how little sense their papers gave me of a unique local identity. There was rarely a distinctive voice in the generic mix. Maybe I’ll wax on some outstanding exceptions as a future post. I did try, mind you, to accomplish some of that where I was as an editor.

~*~

When I entered the workaday world, it was in the height of the hippie explosion, as well as the Vietnam quagmire and the first moonwalk and civil rights and, well, you could say generally everything was in flux and has remained so.

The pace of daily journalism, however, left me feeling there was so much change in the works that we were overlooking, especially in any in-depth way. For me, my impressions became fodder for fiction, which would allow me some leeway and definitely free me from footnotes and fact-checkers, not that I’ve veered from relating what I witnessed or even imagined as truthfully as I could, even with a degree of inventiveness and aspiration.

In that journey I wound up living in places that were outside of the big media spotlight, and what I faced ultimately differed from what was coming out of New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, or similar backdrops. My record reflected, I hope, just everyday folks who had to muddle on, best we could, in irreplicable circumstances of human progress or tragedy.

Ultimately, I tried to distill what I experienced from these unique viewpoints into novels that originated as “contemporary fiction,” though I’ve come to see the paradox of the label. Even without the scheduling conflicts of working a “day job,” I was caught in a time-delay of drafting and revising, even before trying to find publication. At the least, that would be a two- or three-year gap before a piece became public. Tastes and trends drastically change in that span. And here I am, shrinking from the crap shoot of fashion.

Or, now we are, decades later, perhaps trying to make sense of it all.

Not that I was alone. Every book author was running behind the frontlines where even the boldest got shot down, should they make it that far.

The consequence, quite simply, is that too much has gone unexamined beneath the superficial rush of what we once Baby Boomers and now creaky seniors and perhaps great-grandparents lived through, individually and jointly, from Watergate to today. No wonder things are such a mess. Look, kiddos, it wasn’t all our fault. Do note, I’m among those who wants to lend you a hand.

Mea culpa, then, though I’ve left some evidence of sorts to build on. Please stay in touch. That matter of “Don’t trust anyone over 30” was a brilliant slogan but ultimately BS.

As I’ve noted, we definitely needed elders. And so do you, on the frontlines now.

You can find my ebooks in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. They’re also available in paper and Kindle at Amazon, or you can ask your local library to obtain them.