Attraction includes conflict. Passion. Suffering. Adjustment. Breakthroughs. Surrender, even.
A tender touch. Renewal. A dance, together. Our song, in the end.
For the full set of poems, click here.
~*~
NOT YOUR EVERYDAY LOVE POEMS
Tag: Counterculture
A RATHER CHECKERED CAREER
For someone who has engaged in a writing life his whole adulthood, I’ve had a rather checkered career as a reader. After a precocious outburst in the classics – Robinson Crusoe, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in second- or third- or fourth-grade (not as class assignments, of course – who knows what we were reading there), I found myself largely oblivious to fiction. My attention turned to history and biography (the Landmark series, especially) and then science and politics. Non-fiction, with a sense of content. Fiction came later, in high school, curiously through political fiction – Brave New World, Lord of the Flies, 1984, rather than any of the traditional British canon. Throw a little Shakespeare in, and I was off – into journalism. (Let me mention that Huck Finn was much harder reading in my junior year of high school than it had been when I was younger; as a novice reader, I wasn’t tripped up by the strange spellings of dialect.)
In college, for whatever reason, I developed a passion for Samuel Johnson. Not for his moralizing as much as the sarcasm, I’d say, as well as a fascination with the baroque richness of his style. Maybe it was just the force of personality projecting from the writing. And then came Virginia Woolf, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brautigan, Jack Kerouac … the widening stream.
Surprisingly, a major turning point occurred in the span when I had the fewest opportunities to read – my years living in the ashram, a monastic community in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania. Out of the practice of meditation and reflection, however, I began to approach literature in a new way. The quietude opened poetry to me, both as a reader and a writer. The experience also introduced me to mythology, with the Hindu stories being more fantastic and meaningful than anything I had encountered in the Greek and Roman stream. Later, I was able to leap from this into the stories of the Bible as well, returning me to my previously unknown roots.
Others have written of being a promiscuous reader. I wouldn’t say I’m addicted to reading that way – at least, not any more. One of the ashram exercises, in fact, was a “reading fast,” meaning written words, rather than food. It’s all a matter of focus. That is, when I’m eating, I want to choose to concentrate on my food rather than a text. When I’m traveling, I want to see where I’m going. (Airport terminals, on the other hand, or stretches before takeoff, are another matter — they are among those place of limbo.) Later, when the newspaper first comes off the press, I found I could no longer focus on the stories – not after a shift of heavy editing. If anything, my head was so full of disjointed stimulation I needed to slow down to savor what I’d already encountered. For that matter, I prefer walking to jogging, with its restoration of a natural pace. I rush too many places and deliver on too many deadlines as it is. When I enter someone’s home for the first time, I must take care to pay attention to them more than the spines on their bookshelves. Now what were you saying?
I read, then, with greater focus these days. More selectively. I can no longer have classical music playing in the background. (It used to provide a barrier for noise from my family or neighbors.) Now, I immerse myself in what is before me. The text, then, as in scripture.
~*~
Out of all of this, my own work emerges. As a writer, I strive to create a linear progression. That is, the parts must advance is some sort of logic. Curiously, in my own work, I am often inspired by a Hegelian model – thesis, antithesis, synthesis – as drawn from cinema theory. On a wider scale, my earlier interests surface in new ways, resulting in something more akin to a matrix or spiral or collage than a straight line. I have been called a Mixmaster, with good reason. On top of it all, in my many moves about the continent, I’ve found myself exploring the soul of each place – something wine aficionados consider, in a smaller range, when they discuss terroir.
A CASE FOR NURTURING SERIOUS READERS
One of the challenges facing contemporary society is the shrinking percentage of active readers. (I say percentage, but fear what we face is more a shrinkage of actual numbers.) It’s not simply the decline in readers of fiction or the number of people who recite poetry from heart, but the lack of literary engagement of any kind. So I rat on myself early here, with my belief that the act of reading carries social value – especially when serious literature is the subject.
It is no mere coincidence that Americans’ widespread ignorance of history and our political system has accompanied the growing addiction to a sensual media orgy – large-screen television, movies, rock music – while habitual reading, including newspapers, has been declining. That is, what is superficial and easy – and ephemeral — has the upper hand. Little is demanded of the receptor, and loud excitement, rather than a deepened awareness, is the expectation; escapism, rather than engagement with life itself. Several European writers have suggested something more troubling is at work – the loss of reflective people, contemplative individuals – a theme I see developed, obliquely, in Stephen L. Carter’s Integrity and the labor of moral discernment. In other words, is the mind being enlarged or merely numbed? The fact that so many people cannot name their own senators or governors or are largely ignorant of geography, yet recognize countless actors and rockers points toward a disintegration of community and social service.
Paradoxically, the act of reading is largely a private enterprise. It’s a dialogue between a reader and a writer, sometimes separated by continents or centuries. It requires more activity from the receptor than a movie, short song, or television sit-com does – in fact, one of the concerns these days is the atrophied state of the imagination among those who have been raised on “electronic media” rather than the printed word or, for that matter, stories read aloud or in radio broadcasts. (There are, after all, degrees of imaginative challenge.) In the act of reading, there are no visible intermediaries – no actors, soundtrack, directors, sets, or costumes. The editor or printer or bookseller is of an entire order altogether. Here, the reader and the writer engage in a dance of the soul or a passionate argument. (Serious readers can be as demanding as lovers when it comes to this relationship.)
But the act of reading can also take us into the existence of another person, viewing the world from within that context. A movie, in contrast, leaves us looking at that person, hoping for a hint of emotion or profundity. The author can reflect on the situation, suggest ranges of experience, voice moral struggles in ways a movie might only touch in passing.
Here I think, too, of large-scale musical compositions – symphonies or string quartets, for instance – that demand intense listening, inducing reflection and emotional awareness. Like reading, the audience for serious music is in decline – and with it, a link to the riches of the past and its aspirations and wisdom.
CARPE DIEM
Among the historic divisions among Friends, none were more traumatic than the Hicksite-Orthodox separations, 1826-27. While New England and North Carolina were spared, most other American yearly meetings were torn in two. The reasons were deep and complicated – often along socio-economic and geographic lines. Subsistence versus commercial farming, artistan-craftsmen versus industrialists, rural versus urban, traditional versus forward-looking, tensions between having the polity of Friends lodged within the monthly meeting or at the yearly meeting level, even language itself, one holding to old expressions versus those wanting to embrace a new evangelical ecumenism.
We were not alone. The Puritan legacy, for instance, splintered into Congregationalists and Unitarians about the same time we Quakers split, theirs ostensibly over naming the president to head, first, Dartmouth College and then Harvard. The Dunkers (or German Baptist Brethren), meanwhile, managed to hold together, although their tensions would finally reappear in the 1880s, leading to a five-way split, producing the Church of the Brethren – about the same time many Friends began turning to pastor-led programmed worship. Curiously, the Brethren, laboring under a single yearly meeting, faced major tensions between the Eastern, old-fashioned members and the “Western” (west of the Appalachian Mountains) progressives – the same lineup that Friends would see in the quietist versus pastoral worship styles, with our Western Yearly Meetings going programmed and the Eastern ones largely holding to tradition.
These tensions were fueled by and reflected in many larger societal issues. In politics, the Jacksonians reflected the emergence of westward expansion. In religion, the Great Awakening first blazed through New England (sometimes as the New Lights movement) before igniting in Kentucky and the newly settled regions. In the economy, the industrial revolution was well under way.
For Quakers, the divisions essentially shut down the itinerant ministry from traveling Friends, which had kept the central messages of the faith and practice intact. That loss no doubt played into the emergence of the pastoral system in places where Friends were settling, rather than long settled. Another loss was a breakdown in the sharing of epistles and other written material. We no longer had a common vision to express or unite behind.
I reflect on these not so much as history but as a recognition that our larger society is in one of those watershed transitions – as our presentations and discussions on envisioning the future have suggested. How do we parlay what’s been entrusted to us into the future? Will Friends, as a whole, respond with radically new worship, organization, expression? Will we be sufficiently open to be led where we are needed? Of course, Israel under Roman occupation turned out to be another of those watershed moments, spreading both Judaism and the newly emerging Christianity across the empire. But that’s a much larger and more complicated story, except for the fact that we’re Friends as a consequence.
Or, as old Quakers would say, “Christ is come and coming.” It’s more than “Season’s Greetings,” after all.
MOVING ON FROM BLUE JEANS
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.
FINE PRINT CRITICISM
You know that reaction after reading a page that leaves you with a sensation of missing something. A treatise about poetry or art or theology, especially?
If you’re like me and largely autodidactic, you no doubt feel yourself an outsider. So I write from the fringe, in more ways than one. Reading some reviews and critiques, I soon wonder: Am I simply inattentive? Clueless? Ignorant? Is it that such subtlety, speaking only to the highly initiated, will never accept my own efforts? Or is it that I prefer what is simple, direct, grounded in experience and place, over what is convoluted and cloaked – even in form? Without falling into cliche or triteness?
Or am I the one, despite myself, who becomes convoluted and cloaked? How do we reach higher, anyway, in this thing called art, while striving to stay true … to whatever?
How does originality run through it all? And life?
By the way, just who are the critics writing for? Even when we ourselves turn critic.
REMEMBERING ONE FINE DAY
As I said at the time …
You know, of course, what an absolute delight it is to have all five submissions accepted. I’ve been floating all day.
Thanks.
EN ROUTE TO BECOMING A RESPONSIBLE MALE AUTHORITY FIGURE
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.)
~*~
For another take on a changing home life, click here.
AFTER MANY INTENTIONS
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 boyfriendtheir 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.
~*~
For another take, click here.
PICKING THE RIGHT, RIPE WILD BERRIES
I keep thinking about the stories children are taught, especially here in America. Carol Bly once wrote of the Scandinavian tales the descendants in Minnesota never heard, unlike the mass-media mishmash they were served. I’m left wondering if Ohio ever had anything like Kokopelli or Coyote from Native American lore and wisdom. I can keep hoping.
The fact is, most Americans are estranged from their roots. We don’t even know where we live, not really.
Forget the Zombie Apocalypse, we rarely know how to select the healthy wild berries. Leave it at that.
As for the hornpipe? It’s a Celtic dance, faster and more complicated than a jig – or gigue, if you insist. But I also like the vision of a pipe carved from a horn and played.
Care to join me for a dance?
~*~
For your own copy, click here.
Jnana's Red Barn 