Tag: Culture

‘TIS THE SEASON, FA-LA-LA, FOR AN ALTERNATIVE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

Here, in the midst of the annual holiday season excess, is a good time to remember that for most of our history, Quakers did not celebrate, in their words, “that day the world calls Christmas.” In New England, at least, they were joined by the Puritan legacy. In Massachusetts, for instance, Christmas was not legal until the 1850s.

Of course, these days it’s very difficult to ignore the hoopla – especially if you have children present. And I’m not even going to get into that Santa Claus stuff.

What I will do, however, is speak of the practice of Advent – observing the weeks building up to Twelfth Month 25th as a period of preparation and anticipation. Babies, after all, arrive only after nine months (or so) of pregnancy, and there’s much to be said for the changes in both the mother and the father in that period. Some Advent calendars come with verses and stories for the family to share over dinner.

Admittedly, by not bringing the tree in until Christmas Eve and not taking it down until Epiphany (the real Twelfth Day of Christmas, contrary to what some advertisers broadcast), you’ll be out of step with most of American society. That can have its own revelations, as you recognize the struggle some other faith traditions have here. But you may also find that unwrapping the presents can just be the beginning of a holiday fullness, not its anticlimax. Actually, our tree usually stays up a few weeks past Epiphany, but that’s another story. Oh, yes, and remember to have a few oranges. (Speaking of other stories.)

~*~

My wife makes reference, too, to all the Puritan diaries from New England, which recorded December 25 pointedly and repeatedly as “an ordinary day.”

THE DESIRE FOR DOCUMENTATION … OR AT LEAST CONFIRMATION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

My career of editing newspapers often introduced a tension between trying to be the first to present important developments to our readers (that is, news) and their desire to have us run the olds – photos and lists of names from activities days or even weeks previous. My feeling was that their club and church items were usually of interest only to those who already knew about them – hardly the stuff of urgent news – and rarely added to our paid circulation. I’d met enough people who wanted others to read their publicity far more than they themselves were willing to extend the same courtesy to others. Put another way, if the “names-is-news” imperative had much merit, the telephone book would be much more thoroughly read than it is – and much fatter than it keeps getting in an Internet age.

More recently, though, in my retirement I’ve become involved in public events that could make the news spotlight – and haven’t, even when the TV cameras were turned on us. I’d love to show folks around me what we were up to. It’s confirmation we were there, actually. And that, I suspect, is what those readers wanted all along.

Curiously, that’s where social media are filling the gap in documenting everyday life. In the examples I’m thinking of here, the photos of us look great, for starters. The only problem, personally, is that I’m always somewhere in the corner, often cut in half. I guess it just goes with being in the bass section.

Well, maybe I could start taking selfies and posting them here. On second thought, though … I’ll spare you.

~*~

As a footnote, I’m also remembering one locality where everybody was willing to sign up for an event, especially as the committee chairman. Or more accurately, chairwoman. And as soon as the promotion announcement appeared in print, they all somehow vanished, leaving the two newcomers to the group with all the responsibility for actually pulling it off.

We never ran a follow-up to that effect, either.

MEMORY, IMAGINATION, AND LITERARY INTENT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

A passage in an essay by Joyce Carol Oates stopped me cold in my tracks:

Literature is not a medium that lends itself well to the Surrealist adventure of disponibilite. Even radically experimental fiction requires some strategy of causation, otherwise readers won’t trouble to turn pages. Unlike most visual art, which can be experienced in a single gaze, fiction is a matter of subsequent and successive gazes, mimicking chronological time, as it is locked into chronological time. … (“Inspiration and Obsession in Life and Literature,” New York Review of Books, August 13)

So that’s been my “problem” as a poet and novelist? A surrealist adventure? Oh, my! I’ve long been fond of surrealism, often because I often see and hear life in that vein. While stopping short of subscribing to any manifesto, including those that gave rise to dada and surrealism, their ambitions continue to suggest possibilities for artistic exploration and discovery. As for chronological narrative, certainly there must be other ways to relate an event. Right? Well, even the alternative realities of dreams seem to emerge along timelines of some sort, even if they overlap from episode to episode that form what is remembered as a single dream event. A poem, moreover, can aspire to exist purely within a given moment it expresses, even if the reader returns to the lines repeatedly.

Maybe my saving grace here is in my assumption of invisible roots – everything happens for a reason, even accidents. (You don’t have to impute divine intervention there, either.) Perceiving these underlying currents, as some would suggest, demands something other than Aristotelian logic. Hence, the surrealist option, among others.

I do like Oates’ sense of gazes adding up into a quilt-work pattern, though, especially when they can bounce off each other to create yet something more.

And then her essay takes a remarkable turn that reinforces my invisible-roots assumption:

The hypocampus is a small, seahorse-shaped part of the brain necessary for long-term storage of factual and experiential memory, though it is not the site of such storage. Short-term memory is transient, long-term memory can prevail for many decades … If the hypocampus is injured or atrophied, there can be no further storage of memory in the brain – there will be no new memory. I have come to think that art is the formal commemoration of life in its variety – the novel, for instance, is “historic” in its embodiment of a specific place and time, and its suggestion that there is meaning in our actions. It is virtually impossible to create art without an inherent meaning, even if that meaning is presented as mysterious and unknowable.

Again, I’ve long viewed my writing as an attempt to remember what’s right in front of me in my life. Let’s face it, everything often seems chaotic. Times of reflection and self-evaluation are crucial. It’s easy to leap from there, as I’ve found, into meditation and the Quaker practice of group worship grounded in silence itself. Along these lines, Oates puts all this into another framework:

Without the stillness, thoughtfulness, and depths of art, and without the ceaseless moral rigors of art, we would have no shared culture – no collective memory. As if memory were destroyed in the human brain, our identities corrode, and we “were” no one – we become merely a shifting succession of impressions attached to no fixed source. As it is, in contemporary society, where so much concentration is focused upon social media, insatiable in its fleeting interests, the “stillness and thoughtfulness” of more permanent art feels threatened. As human beings we crave “meaning” – which only art can provide; but social media provide no meaning, only this succession of fleeting impressions whose underlying principle may simply be to urge us to consume products.

The motive for metaphor, then, is a motive for survival as a species, as a culture, and as individuals.

Of course, I would see true religion, not art, as the provider of “meaning.” And now the conversation would turn lively.

CRITICS AND A MODEL OF POETIC INTENT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Arts critics are often portrayed in the negative. Listen, for example, to the excerpts of voices who denigrated what became symphonic mega-hits or operatic standards. It’s a long list.

On the other hand, some critics (when it comes to classical music, dramatist Bernard Shaw and composer Virgil Thomson come to mind) have proved invaluable in sifting through artistic output and finding those jewels who would otherwise be lost in the volume before us and the drive for monetary success. Quite simply, good critics glean value from gems lost in the estimation of box-office success, bestseller popularity, and high audience ratings. With an eye for lasting quality, they guide individuals to work – and workers – they esteem.

As I look at the flood of artistic output on the Internet in our time, the role of good critics appears to be more crucial than ever.

Let me add that good critics are also teachers. I’m deeply indebted to people like Hub Meeker of the Dayton Journal Herald or Winthrop Sargeant of the New Yorker for their role in shaping my artistic awareness. As I’ve found over the years, reading a familiar critic becomes an active dialogue.

This leads me to a recent essay by the poet Charles Simic, long a star on the University of New Hampshire campus one town over from where I live. In “The Incomparable Critic” (New York Review of Books, August 13), he touts a collected volume of reviews by Helen Vendler and her examination of contemporary poets, centering down to her high estimation of one in particular:.

However none of these [William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, Robert Frost, even the Beats] had the audacity, she points out, to switch back and forth between the sublime and the ignobly ridiculous as [A.R.] Ammons did. … for Ammons there is a “continuo of the personal – the ‘noise’ of the everyday mind – from which the lyric rises and into which it subsides.” This setting “of the lyric moment within its non-lyric ‘surround,'” Vendler writes, “is the fundamental device of modern poetry, from The Waste Land to this day.

That, in itself, is an audacious insight, of one reviewer to another.

Apart from any specific works, what is described is an ideal I admire – one I’ve sensed present in the works of Philip Whalen I’ve admired. And so we continue, writing and reading, in whatever quest we follow.

HALLE STREET, AS I’VE CALLED IT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Big or little, it’s a city, after all, with daily encounters. Along the street. From the porches. In third-floor apartments. It’s broken glass on cracked pavement. Parking along the curb, maybe requiring a permit. It’s the bakery, Laundromat, or bar around the corner. It’s decay and repair over the years imbedded in the floors, walls, and ceilings. It’s a stale cigarette in the morning of love.

~*~

To see more, click here.

Riverside 1

 

EVERYDAY BEAUTIES, IN RETROSPECT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

After recently coming across some now-historic Playboy centerfold playmates online – models we adolescent boys worshiped – I was struck by how average they were in retrospect. Not surgically enhanced nor abnormally thin waists nor even fashionably tall, as we’ve come to expect. Even their hair looked like the girls we knew – or dreamed of knowing.

Looking back, let me say it was the smile, more than anything, that got us.

And then, in the midst of the sexual revolution of the hippie era came a feminist rejection of Hugh Hefner’s free-love philosophy, even as events pushed far beyond his now pathetically comic hedonism. Quite simply, he went one way and we went another.

Yes, the glossy periodical was a rich patron for short-story writers and novelists, interviewers, and cartoonists, no matter the reality they were window dressing all along. Still, in many ways, Playboy appeared as a hip rival to the more staid New Yorker. For a while, it was even Chicago versus Manhattan in the realm of publishing.

And then Penthouse and Hustler attacked Hefner’s little empire from the other side of the respectability divide.

Oh, how long ago that all seems!

These days I’m reflecting on the magazine’s admission it can no longer compete with the nudity that’s readily available online for free and its decision to go more respectable, as Esquire did decades earlier. No more centerfold? Wasn’t that the magazine’s identity? What else has been stripped away?

In light of today’s world of publishing, let me say, Best wishes!

Especially considering Tinder and the rest of the new social-media lifestyle.

CHANCING UPON A DESIRED TALE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

In today’s publishing world, it’s impossible to keep up with the output. Even in a specialized niche.

I recall asking an English department chair at a respected college if she’d heard of so-and-so – the kind of novelist who gets reviewed by the New York Times both in its daily edition and again, independently, in the Sunday Book Review section. The answer was no.

(In fairness, she and her husband always introduce me to a range of fine authors when I scan their many home library bookshelves.)

Why wasn’t I surprised?

More recently, recognizing the extent of Greek-American influence in my own community and throughout much of the Northeast, I began searching for works that might reflect its family life and culture. Even a search by a public library research desk came up pretty empty. The Greek-American authors we did find seemed to be writing about other things.

There are, as I’ve noted, a few exceptions, but there should be more.

And then, by chance, I picked up Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides. His was one of the Greek-American names I’d come across, but this story was focused on five sisters in a Roman Catholic family. I quickly resonated with the Midwestern setting of the story, which easily fit into a band across northern Ohio and Indiana and, as became more apparent, southern Michigan. This was familiar terrain, not far from my native soil – and another one that is rarely represented in literary fiction (yes, I know the objections to the term – but how do we distinguish it from commercial genres that are sales driven?). Despite its gruesome premise, this is a humorous book, befitting the thwarted desires and misunderstandings of its adolescent male observers.

And then, on page 171 of the paperback I was reading, came a glimmer of the novel I’ve been seeking. In the household of the narrator’s friend Demo Karafilis, we encounter his grandmother, Old Mrs. Karafilis, who generally stays to her room in the basement, where she keeps her memories of growing up a Greek in Turkey who managed to escape with her life. The next three-and-a-half pages are an incredible portrait that left me yearning for the novel-length development. As Demo explains it, “We Greeks are a moody people. Suicide makes sense to us. … What my yia yia could never understand about America was why everyone pretended to be happy all the time.”

What I discovered a few nights later, in the stacks of the library I’d consulted earlier, was the elusive Greek-American novel. How could it be so invisible after being acclaimed on Oprah’s list and even awarded a Pulitzer Prize? It was Eugenide’s second novel, a 529-page masterpiece.

Maybe part of it has to do with the sexuality theme that masks everything else – the narrator’s peculiar adolescent gender shift thanks to a recessive gene and the impact of earlier incest. Well, it is a riveting tale. For me, though, the primary story of Middlesex is the multigenerational presentation of a Greek-American family and its culture, done in a matter-of-fact way, with nothing sentimentalized. It’s an incredibly rich novel, no matter which part of the narrative claims your attention.

Not to take anything away from all the novels of ethnic life in New York City or Chicago or the regional flavors of New England, the South, southern California, Texas and other Far West locales, it’s safe to say many other strands of American life are greatly underrepresented or even missing entirely.

Any you want to point out?

FOR THE STORYTELLER, A SCANDALOUS ZIPPER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Obviously, not me …

“I’ll have to explain,” the woman said as she insisted on placing a garland around my neck. It wasn’t a garland, exactly, but a lanyard-like ring of cream-colored lace. “You see, this was a zipper from a favorite aunt’s sewing box. She was very fond of her fabrics.”

I was baffled, but she obviously appreciated my performance that night and the relationship between an artist – and someone who has been touched by the work cannot be slighted. So a mixture of gratitude, humility, and pride flowed through me as I bent slightly to accept her admittedly eccentric token.

On awakening the next morning after an uncommonly deep sleep, nothing in my room was in its place. To my horror, my closet was empty, as were the dresser drawers. At least I still had a selection of shoes. Mystified as to what might have transpired, I noticed an envelope addressed to me on my dressing table. I lifted it, inhaled gardenia, and carefully slit the fold. No one could have been here while I slept, could they? My husband was away on a business trip. The kids were off at camp. This was supposed to be time for myself, and appearing on stage was my one indulgence in celebrating myself.

The note reminded me of the garland and instructed me to once again place it around my neck. The front came down to my navel. The guidelines informed me I could zip it as low as I wanted, should I desire to be open to inspiration, or close it as tight if I desired more privacy. How strange, I thought, the flowery handwriting was telling me I did not need to wear anything else, the zipper would be more than sufficient. Actually, the words were more specific. They said I dare not wear anything else when I set out.

Well, I thought, I’m really in a pickle. I can’t go out like this, I’ll just have to stay put. On the other hand, I was also out of milk and coffee. I was thinking about calling my best friend, but she was on the phone first, saying she was going to be in the neighborhood and hoped to stop by. None of my excuses were working. At least she agreed to pick up a few necessaries.

When she arrived, I was wearing only the garland and a pair of flip-flops. “My, aren’t you being risque today,” she said as gave me a brief hug. “I never wear that so unzipped.”

“You really think so?”

“Oh, yes, you could be a bit more modest, a bit more of a tease.”

“There, that’s better. Why don’t you grab your purse and we’ll head to the mall?”

“But I’d need to get dressed,” I protested.

“Oh, no, you’re fine,” she assured me.

Reluctantly, I headed off with her.

Amazingly, nobody noticed I was totally naked apart from the yoke and my shoes. “My, what a lovely collar,” some murmured with approval.

“You shouldn’t bend over so far when it’s unzipped that far,” another counseled. “People can see a bit too much of your taa-taas.”

I couldn’t believe it, especially how free I felt, even on stage. Did nobody see anything but the collar? Well, they saw the skin within it and above it, but no more.

That, in turn, created its own forms of impropriety …

ROLLING THE POLITICAL DICE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

One of the Quaker objections to gambling or gaming is that it instills an expectation of getting “something for nothing.” We haven’t earned the money.

And it’s not charity.

In addition, the pot might come at the expense of those less fortunate than ourselves. (That, in practice, seems to be the case with the state lotteries now found across the United States, supposedly for the support of education.)

Listen closely to the campaign rhetoric for the “something for nothing” appeals. They come from both sides of the political divide. Then ask who’s really paying – the rich or the poor, especially. Who can most afford it? And who will most benefit? And where does justice fit in the mix?

WHERE ARE THE VOLUNTEERS?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 8 Comments

Some years ago, as I recall, a New York Times op-ed piece mentioned that America’s reliance on volunteer service in public affairs shifted after World War I. We started turning more and more to paid workers – the ones we now call professionals.

Maybe some of it had to do with the shift from a rural and small-town society to big city life. And some of it, no doubt, as a matter of working inflexible hours in factories. Nowadays I’d add the shrinkage of local ownership, with executives who were expected to participate in public service, and the necessity of two-income families to make ends meet in the face of lower pay levels.

It’s a complicated issue, one that can lead to long discussion – maybe even some wailing.

I see it most directly in my Quaker circles, which function on an expectation that everyone in the faith community will offer service to the whole. That is, serve on a committee. I’m among those who are arguing that model needs to change to adapt to current conditions. Of course, it’s a matter many other groups – secular and religious – are facing. But it’s refreshing to read others who are thinking along similar lines. For one presentation, click here.

Maybe you have some helpful suggestions to add.