Category: Personal Journey

MAYBE I’VE BEEN LOOKING AT LIFE WRONG

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

Let’s be honest. We have days like this. Ones where we wish we didn’t have to deal with these a#!/?\*s. You know the ones I mean, even if you live halfway around the globe. They’re one and the same.

But we’re all in this together. No matter what they think.

Now, what can we do together … to solve the real problems we’re all facing?

Well, that’s how it too often feels. But could another take give us a healthier way of dealing?

Suupose, for example, what if we’re all nuts?

Not just the others, the ones all around us who leave us pondering the rampant lunacy. (Not just in politics or the workplace, either. The highways are full of them. As for the checkout line at the store?)

No, what if we who’ve thought ourselves responsible and sane, are really the looniest of all?

Might we enjoy life more if we joined the out-to-lunch club?

~*~

Close to home, I’m seeing how trying to cope with an elderly family member afflicted with advancing dementia can put the caregiver in a tailspin. Somehow there must be a better way to span their alternative outlook and our reality without losing our own balance or course of action. Is it possible to enter their world and still stay grounded?

Just why am I here, anyway? What am I supposed to be doing? Or, as my dad used to ask when looking at his nursing home, “Who’s paying for this hotel? Who’s paying for this dinner?”

From my perspective, he seemed to be trapped in a dream that would rarely allow him to waken. As much as I love good dreams, I anticipate and appreciate the clarity of a wakeful state.

But then I write and read fiction and poetry, and maybe they bridge these awarenesses in alternate worlds. And I meditate, which enters other realms as well, at least as far as most people are concerned.

~*~

So here I am, still trying to make sense of it all. Maybe it’s time to reread some of those old stories about celebrated lunatic Zen monks. Think we’d find a clue there? Loud laughter, after all! Unexpected twists in everyday perception!

Stuck with a similar diagnosis, I’d want to be the one filled with childish delight in the trip. Maybe the one lost in a world of prayer for the world and all within it. Maybe I shouldn’t even wait – start now to look at all my surroundings with such wonder.

I’m open to other perspectives and suggestions. Anyone else on board here?

MOVING ON FROM BLUE JEANS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Over the past few years, there’s been an unanticipated shift in the way I dress, one that’s not entirely related to retirement. One of the lessons I carry from the hippie experience is an awareness that clothing should be comfortable, rather than conforming to the marketplace – and, if possible, it should express some degree of style.

As someone who never fit into the half of the bell curve the clothing manufacturers targeted, I’d always had difficulty dressing to general expectations. Back-to-school shopping was always a terror, one abetted by our family’s financial tight outlook, and one result was my pants were always way too short on my tall, skinny frame. You can imagine my delight discovering during my college years that Levis were actually available in my size. It was heavenly, even if radical at the time. I remember breaking unvoiced rules in attending classical concerts in my denim, even while wearing a necktie. Fortunately, the shift prevailed and later, when I discovered Quaker meeting for worship, came an expectation of dressing humbly rather than for pretentious show. Viva denim!

Moving to New Hampshire, I was delighted to learn that the San Francisco-based Levi Strauss relied on denim produced in the water-powered Amoskeag mills in Manchester, where I lived. So the product linked the continent, New England to California Bay Area, with cotton from the Deep South, and back.

As prices rose, my brand-name loyalty evaporated, even at the outlet store in nearby Maine, but some alternative sources still satisfied. And then they all started tinkering with the fit and gone was that feeling of comfort. Well, all except my Amish jeans – no zipper or belt but a pair of braces (suspenders, if you will) – which seem indestructible. Mine are going on 20 years, I reckon, and just starting to show real wear. The braces, though, can be a pain, as can going to the john when I’m also wearing a sweater.

For everyday usage, I’ve now drifted into variations of khaki or olive cargo pants. I really like all the pockets, along with the fit.

This has been accompanied by a shift from the oxford shirts I always wore to the office. From my first copydesk job, I’d learned to wear my wallet in my shirt pocket rather than sitting on it and throwing my back out of alignment – and so my shirts always had to have that pocket, which never, ever had a plastic liner like nerdy engineers include. Well, with the new pants, I could place my wallet in the other front pocket comfortably and that, in turn, allowed me to move on into turtlenecks for daily wear.

Turtlenecks are simply more flexible – no need for undershirts, I don’t even have to take them off at bedtime, for that matter, and they’re warm, even in our cold house. Yes, they also go with the sweaters I used to wear with those shirts.

I am surprised by my reaction looking at men my age or older who are still going about in blue jeans. They’re appearing somehow, uh, inappropriate.

AS THE WRITING ON THE WALL SAYS, LOOKING FOR FUN?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

In a recent dream, a former colleague was chastising me for not having fun in my free time.

“But I write!”

“No,” he snapped, “that’s work!”

Well, I do swim laps, but I wouldn’t call that fun. It’s more of a release, I suppose, or healthy routine, back and forth, back and forth, looking at the lifeguard, other swimmers, the water, the clock.

The dream somehow overlooked choir, which is fun, no matter how demanding or even exhausting our rehearsals and performances can be. And then there’s folk dancing, especially as New England contras and Greek lines. And, yes, I do like to hike and hope to get back to camping. As for gardening? Well, my wife says I do seem to have fun with composting. Ahem. And then there are the martinis and wine. Add to the list hosting company for a party or dinner as well as visiting others. Travel with my wife or among Friends has its pleasures, too, and I somehow seem to focus on active fun rather than a passive variety like kicking back with a movie, listening intently to music, reading a book, or roaming through art galleries. Oh, yes, taking the train anywhere is fun, and the station’s only nine blocks from my house. Let’s add playing with a digital camera to the list, too. As for blogging? Curious what the dream overlooked!

Well, what I do remember is that at the end, my colleague wound up agreeing that writing could also be fun. Sometimes.

SECRET PAGES THAT SHOULD REMAIN SO

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Somehow I’ve been recalling an invasion of my journals, way back when there were only a couple of notebooks, or maybe a few more, as my collection.

Decades later, I was told that nobody has any business opening anyone else’s journals – it’s an invasion of not just privacy but personal integrity. A form of abuse, actually.

The reaction at the time, though, continues to haunt me: “These look like they’re for publication. There’s nothing personal!”

Meaning, as I still hear it, no deep feelings or emotions.

This, mind you, was coming from a neighbor and dear friend, not a lover.

She had no business – absolutely none – for violating my psyche. Remember that, if you must when facing a similar temptation.

When I started journaling, about the time I graduated from college, I was attempting to construct a thread to help me identify the scope of “my problem” through a period of rejection and deep depression. What emerged was more a matter of observing the world around me and the many startling new experiences my encounters were presenting. To my surprise, I started recording far more of the highs than the psychological lows. Many of the entries have ultimately worked their way into my fiction and poetry, either as prompts or details. And many other pages remain embarrassing claptrap.

Apparently something similar happened when I was living in the ashram. In reviewing those journals much later, I was appalled to find someone had ripped out whole pages. I wish I could see what I’d written – it must have touched realities too close to raw truth.

Much later, when I was more candid in recording my feelings and emotions, a girlfriend did clandestinely dig into my more recent pages and then, when I came home from the office, turned those confessions to myself against me. This was in something that was a difficult relationship from the get-go, and where else could I pour my confusion and anger, much less look at issues I needed to work on? The underlying message was stifling. Bottle your emotions. Keep quiet. Anything you say or write may be held against you.

This countered an underlying problem I’ve had in that I’ve always had trouble fully acknowledging or owning my feelings and emotions. The reasons are many and deeply buried, but one result is that I live far more in my left brain than the right, at least as far as human relationships go. As for expressing them? A first draft might land far from the mark.

Well, for those who might wonder about those journals – now up to volume No. 188 – I can say you’d find most of them pretty boring. Much of the time my biggest challenge comes simply in trying to track the events of the previous week or so. Unlike my wife, who can remember in vivid detail events from decades ago, my days become blurs. She’s come to realize I’m defenseless in arguments, simply because I have no idea what I meant when I allegedly said or did such and so years ago. (Anyone else have that experience?)

Add to that my penchant for an idealistic outlook and, well, what results is often more an outline to be filled in later, should I get a chance.

PREPARING A SHROUD

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time …

Paradoxically, to meditate on death and dying is to consider life itself in its manifold opportunities. The blessings of teachers and mentors, guides and ancestors, family and friends all spring forth.

~*~

WAY BACK

six blue ridges:
five valleys in between

a procession of black carriages
to white tombstones
in a coal-dust haze

scarlet, purple, and gold
fade into rusty wheat and gray

wind in birches:
water falling on rock

Poem copyright 2017 by Jnana Hodson
For more, click here.

Poetry
Poetry

PARA MIS AMIGOS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Whatever my reasons for enrolling in Spanish to fulfill my foreign language requirement in high school – rather than, say, Latin, French, or German, the other options – I have only the vaguest notion today, but I did have a fabulous teacher my first year. Profesora Hughes was animated, strict, immersion-oriented – and we quickly achieved a level of proficiency, even playfulness. Unfortunately, my second-year teacher only muddied the waters instead without advancing my skills. So when it came to college, I shifted to French, which had the effect of mixing both tongues in my mind.

Well, the French did give me a clearer sense of the workings of English, which I see as a Germanic language overlaid with French. Forget those who argue for the Latin influence.

For the past quarter-century, though, Quakers in New England have had a relationship with Cuba Yearly Meeting of Friends, and that’s included annual visitors to our Meetings. Finding myself at the mercy of interpreters – when we could find them – has been mildly embarrassing. Once I spent two hours driving one Cuban between connections in New Hampshire and Boston, and our attempts at communicating were a revelation. That is, largely non-verbal communication.

This past summer’s visitors somehow tipped the balance for me. Maybe the fact that Odalys, Candido, and Melissa came to Dover, stayed at our neighbors’, even went to a contradance (“baile folklorico,” rather than “social” dance), made the exchange more personal, even before they became next-suite residents the following week in Vermont, meaning we were always bumping into each other on the campus where our sessions were taking place. The possibility that one of them, staying in the States for a year of schooling, might be our guest over Christmas break gave me the impetus to brush up on that Spanish. I even still had my second-year high school textbook to fall back on.

Now for the update. I quickly discovered my skills were much, much lower than anticipated. Vocabulary, conjugation, irregular verbs, tenses – the whole shebang. Working from the book was going to be a struggle.

From family and friends came the advice to look online for free courses, a suggestion I viewed with suspicion. Still, I decided to take a look, enrolled in DuoLingo, and found I tested out of … nothing. That is, my Spanish was essentially nada. OK, it was time to get serious.

Four months later, after a half-hour or so each day but Sunday, let me say I’m an enthusiastic supporter. I’m impressed with DuoLingo’s system of teaching in a way that saves some of the more technical aspects for later. Much of its early vocabulary, in fact, was never part of my high school learning but would be much more useful in real life. Emparedado, or sandwich, for example. And I’m feeling some of the youthful joy of discovery I felt back with Profesora Hughes. I certainly didn’t expect that!

I do get dinged, though, when I type “elle” instead of “ella” or something similar in my responses. Still gotta watch out for that French, along with those crazy accent marks that rarely make sense to me.

Further down the pike, I’m thinking of a round of Greek. Hey, you wouldn’t believe the language options. And it’s all free.

EN ROUTE TO BECOMING A RESPONSIBLE MALE AUTHORITY FIGURE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time …

The writing had rather burned itself out by the time my love life was heating up. The big project, in fact, was a volume on personal finances with a holistic Certified Public Accountant who hasn’t been all that active in the project, but whose credentials are a big help. Or would be.

More recently, I’ve gotten back to a big series of poems – one that, if it works, will be about 160 pieces long. Many ifs, though.

In the meantime, had four paying gigs, and that’s always nice! But finding time to write, to submit, and to read in public seems to be mutually exclusive: doing just one is almost a full-time job, and when you already have a full-time job, to say nothing of other responsibilities, it can become a nightmare!

Finding myself the Responsible Male Authority Figure in a 17-year-old’s life (her term for my role, for now) gives me a different perspective on much of your own activities, (And telling the authorities one thing and printing another is not precisely wise, my dear.)

On top of it all, we have her other best friend, a Pisces, in fact, undergoing a similar set of explorations -– while we hope she manages to survive it without lasting psychic or physical harm. (Someone, in fact, who appears incredibly young to me – even as she tries to appear much older, attempts that seem merely to accentuate her youthfulness.)

~*~

Home Maintenance 1For another take on a changing home life, click here.

 

AFTER MANY INTENTIONS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time …

Aha! Thanks for both your latest edition and the letter. So I finally get down to replying, after many intentions to do so … and wind up with writer’s block instead! Last night, all fired up to get this piece down, I instead encountered a message from my Norton Utilities warning me that my PC was on the verge of death if I didn’t defragment the hard drive immediately … which took up the next hour. In the portion of the evening remaining, I wound up replying to my honey’s last email, which naturally took far more time than I had expected … and then went to bed without a real dinner because, well, time was up and two martinis were kicking in.

Yes, so much has changed since we last communicated in any depth. I know how unsettling it is to move and then be living out of boxes. Roommates, too, can unsettle any routine/rhythm in your life – and it’s so crucial to find ways of maintaining those quiet times/spaces in our individual lives if we’re to nurture our own vitality or at least any depth in our experience and outlook.

In a nutshell, I’m preparing for a major move in the next several months. Get out your atlas and notice where Manchester and Dover are situated in New Hampshire. While my job is in Manchester, the Quaker Meeting I attend is in Dover – a congregation founded in the early 1660s by three traveling English women. John Greenleaf Whittier, whose parents married in our meetinghouse, has a long poem about the persecution of those fearless visiting ministers (and so, you know my outlook on the failure of many denominations to recognize the ministry of women). In the best of conditions, the trip is 40 minutes each way, but the route is quickly being built up and will no doubt be heavily congested in the next half-dozen years. At any rate, because of the social life of our Meeting – between committee functions, workshops, presentations, dinner invitations, even parties and picnics – I’ve been considering moving in that direction for some time, but the idea of a commute, plus the further distancing myself from Boston, now an hour away, kept me in place here where I am.

That is, until things began to connect.

You mention “being single for two years now,” and that rather parallels the way my life had been going. I realized there was no point jumping into a relationship if it wasn’t going to have a chance of continuing for the rest of my life. For so much of my life, it has seemed that when I finally did connect with someone, she could offer only half of what I needed, and my love-life history appears as a zig-zag course between two polarities.

Jump ahead again, and I’m now spending half of my free time living out of a duffel bag and half trying to catch up on things here on the hill – and feeling not totally in place in either location. The relationship itself is incredibly solid, in ways I’ve not experienced before. This is the woman I’ve dreamed of, one who could go to the symphony with me or to the mountains (we’ve done both) and felt equally at ease. Someone who could understand the importance of Meeting – both as worship and as a community – in my life. Who could enjoy a whale watch (throw up three times and still smile) and Canobie Lake amusement park down the road. One who owns as many books as I do – and perhaps a larger vocabulary – while maintaining both girlish delight in life and an earth mother ability of keeping a household afloat. One who can be intensely intellectual and also viciously humorous. As well as compassionate elegantly frugal. The upshot is a recognition that we will marry – just when is the question, depending, in part, on the reality of college aid for the elder and health benefits for the younger child.

What we are looking at now is the move – whether to leap straight into the purchase of a home, or to find a large apartment first. I’d love to skip the apartment step, having packed and unpacked too many times already. But I’d like to have more in hand for a down payment, and prices are ballooning again. I’ve already seen that bubble burst, cutting some valuations in half. Fortunately, we recognize we have no reason to rush … and just beginning to dream about some of these matters has both my imagination and hope reawakening.

I realize that even as we piece together the essentials for this move, there’s more discussion – and give and take – than I had experienced in marriage when purchasing a house. A place, in fact, that would be perfect for this set-up if we could only find it, and afford it, here.

Or, as the elder one and her boyfriend call all this, Geriatric Love. Never mind that her age and her mother’s combined finally surpass my own – by one year!

Now, of course, for the Geriatric Love poem all this brought about:

Imagine double-dating
with your sixteen-year-old daughter
and her twenty-year-old boyfriend

their shock
realizing
our tongues meet.

That, actually, inspired from events while watching a video of The Full Monty together nearing midnight.

Or her revenge, in the conclusion of a long bit of verse concocted at Ogunquit beach in Maine, July 5, air temperature 100, but the ocean 56 F, and 20 mile-an-hour winds blasting sand:

Somebody, come rescue me, please!
This is all the fault of my mother’s Main Squeeze!

As I’ve said to others, we had a choice between Hell or Hell Froze Over – and all the Novocaine delights of being pushed into the frigid Ogunquit River as the icy tide rolled in. Egads! Only a week before, arriving before low tide (the timing, it seems, makes a huge difference), we had floated blissfully more than a mile down that river, on our backs, along the dunes and beach, only to run back upstream and jump in again.

Well, you get a sense of how the summer is going. Add a bit of Junior Chautauqua at Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth (a collection of antiquity along the lines of Williamsburg, Virginia, but covering a wider time span and less contrived in its presentation) and British Coaches’ Soccer Camp. Many new experiences for me, to put it mildly.

~*~

Rat Tat 1For another take, click here.

 

STEPPING OUT OF THE PRESENT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Strolling around older neighborhoods of a community like mine, it’s quite possible to feel yourself moving through another era. Imagine horses instead of cars and let the utility lines overhead fade from sight. I find a tinge of time travel is especially likely to kick in around dawn or sunset.

Mentioning that to my wife prompts memories of her own experiences while working in a museum comprised of a district of historic houses in nearby Portsmouth. For her, the sensation would settle in during late afternoons in the tourism shoulder season as she’d step from the kitchen into the outdoors. No wires in the air, no traffic, no tourists to spoil the perfect scene. Truly harmonious and timeless.

Maybe even a vision of the future in an eco-friendly environment.