Am I the man you wanted me to be?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The question is asked by Zorro in the opera by Hector Armienta recently premiered in Albuquerque and Fort Worth. This version of the story is much more subversive than the one I encountered as a kid. And the musical drama is, from what I heard on the radio, very much worthy of retelling.

What stunned me in the question that it’s directed toward the father. How often in today’s Western culture does a son turn toward his father that way, rather than his mother? Not in my experience.

It is making me look toward Dad anew and suspect I hadn’t failed him that much, after all. But the question remains disturbing and enriching, all the same.

How do we males find this working as well in terms of our wives – or lovers? Or our children?

This really gets serious – and unending.

If you’re a writer or a reader, look at the competition

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Do you ever feel guilty as a reader? Not just in what you’re reading or in the things you “ought” to be doing in the time you’re engaged in a book or even a magazine, but also in the reality that you just can’t keep up in your particular field of interest?

And how about that nagging fear that maybe somebody else, somewhere, is already covering what you’re trying to develop … and probably doing it better?

Lest we Friends be too proud

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

From Bowen Alpern’s book, Godless for God’s Sake:

“Much of what we tend to regard as the achievement of Friends as a whole was, in fact, the work of individual Friends, or small groups of Friends, often in the face of opposition or neglect of their monthly meetings. (One of the most positive – if often tedious – aspects of Quaker culture may be its capacity to produce or attract individuals who are willing to stand up to it).”

 

Never mind the turkey

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

goose
in the cranberry
bog

neck
tall above the green
water

 

A SMALL PARTY, MAYBE WE’RE HOSTING, and we have a small animal, bunny or kitten? but something’s wrong with it, like it bites people, yet we set it on the floor and it zips wildly through the crowd, a beeline to the wall, which it hits or bounces from, and zips back again before people are fully aware of what’s happening.

Everyone’s amazed by its speed.

 

FILLING IN FOR A FRIEND AS A WAITER. When I get my first paycheck, I’m so overwhelmed listening to the pitches of my coworkers to quit my job as a journalist, I buy a luxury foreign car. Etc. Real money.

 

Chinese restaurant
in a former strip-mall
pet store

not sure I’d really
want to eat there

next to the Post Office

If you’re an author, here’s what you’re up against

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Let’s begin with the competition. Readers are a minority in today’s society. If you want to tell your story or deliver the data in readable terms, it’s a shrinking audience, one further diced by increasing alternatives.

Let’s start with the first question. Do you read books? If not, nobody’s interested in yours. Period. Forget all the movies and so on of fame and wealth.

Google Books concluded that 129,864,880 books have been published since the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press in 1440 up to 2010. But, thanks to self-publishing and ebooks, there’s been an explosion since.

It’s enough to make the writing life feel futile.

Does every act of creation begin with demolition?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Or at least making a mess?

The observation here originates with an artist’s amazement at the mess at the beginning of the book of Genesis in the Bible. As panelist on the Bill Moyers’ PBS series, he picked up on the matter of chaos at the outset. Not the blank canvas but rather all the surrounding disarray, probably including thinking.

More recently, I’ve been seeing that in our own home renovation project. For a while, there was a lot less of our house than when we began. How quickly the Dumpster got filled and another delivered!