Tag: Life

In my dreams for 2021

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Here’s to restoring civil discourse to public places. Here are a few ways to begin.

  1. Real analyses rather than tweets and insults. A respect for facts rather than fabrications or superstitions. Yes, empirical science balanced by intuition and empathy. And historical perspective as well.
  2. Ethics and spirituality voiced from personal practice as essential points within a wider community rather than kept to the margins of polite discussion. Faith really matters and touches on our highest aspirations. Let’s not bury it.
  3. An embrace of high culture as enriching human awareness and feeling.
  4. Financial and artistic recovery for musicians and actors and others whose livelihoods depend on public performance. Covid-19 has been especially devastating.
  5. A renaissance in reading and literature as well as lively conversation thereupon. Even at the reopened coffee house on the corner or local bookstore.
  6. Lengthening attention spans and a recognition that “fun” is not a destination in itself but at best a way of living and working playfully.
  7. A Second Amendment firearms stance requiring membership in and supervision by a well-regulated militia. Anything less is on the road to anarchy and slaughter.
  8. A celebration of work ethic rather than gambling. And an admission that CEO compensation is way out of line, any way you dice it.
  9. Reframing corporate existence, starting with its legal basis (not as a fictional “person”) and extending to size, global spans, and taxation. We’ve been socializing capitalist risk too long, while privatizing the public.
  10. A day of Sabbath for all. Not necessarily Sunday, but one that could float through the week. Does any company really have to be open 24/7? Much less, any one worker be on constant call?

~*~

Gee, this almost starts pointing me in the direction of a set of Ten Commandments.

What would you add to the list?

A little idealism helps

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Somehow, in starting from the finale of an earlier novel, my novel What’s Left would have to resolve a gap between the five siblings’ Greek ancestry and their interest in Tibetan Buddhism, along with the challenges of running a restaurant shortly after the loss of their parents. Their view of business is more radical and community-focused, for one thing.

Yes, they were young and idealistic, but would that be enough to get them through?

What would you hope to see change in your surrounding society? Or even your own life?

Looking at movies set in the subway

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’ve expressed my surprised there aren’t more stories set along the underground rails, and now I learn of one based on the eight fortified trains that were painted yellow like other MTA service trains as a disguise. The so-called money trains regularly picked up millions of dollars of toll fares in the wee hours every night in New York City.

Their existence was a well-kept secret that finally surfaced in a 1995 flick starring Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson, and a young Jennifer Lopez. If only the movie had lived up to its promise. The film, though, was a bomb, snarled in Hollywood clichés and comical misteps. Maybe they should have played it as comedy rather than criminal action.

Meanwhile, the trains themselves have become history, in part due to the MTA’s switch to from cash and tokens to MetroCards issued at vending machines, typically using credit cards.

Well, it’s one more element that could have gone into my novel Subway Visions, maybe as a somewhat friendlier bank-on-wheels, back before we had ATM machines everywhere.

Can we really keep up with all this change, everywhere we turn?

 

When she phoned again

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

within some perspective, the past and future as an hour-and-a-half chat in part about her new love or lover, how could Squirrel not be pained trying to separate truth from layers of self-deception making him wonder if she’d ever seen him clearly as he was after all moving into other circles as one eligible male the single women had their eyes on yet what shock he realized later seeing how blinded he’d been, his heart solely on her, the news coming amid gossip of that “intimate little dinner that breaks things off” where he heard, fourth party from a third, “first, pour me something stiff” and salty as teardrops running for miles while most really do want nuts, no matter what they say

 

As for my greatest extravagances?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

We’re on a tight budget, but even so …

  1. Bombay Sapphire gin. Or a few other brands in that price range, when they’re on sale.
  2. An hour-long professional massage once in a blue moon.
  3. Two two-pound lobsters from a roadside stand. A purely impulse buy.
  4. Upfront seats for the whole family at Christmas Revels.
  5. Yearly Meeting boarding in a dorm rather than a tent.
  6. Time squandered online.
  7. Dining out. Not that we do it often.
  8. Drafting and revising rather than attending to household chores.
  9. Serving the rabbits too many greens each evening in season. Won’t they get fat?
  10. Feeding the wild birds. Those bags of blended seeds get expensive.

~*~

Anyone have generosity on your own list?

 

Little room to be fully alone where she is

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When it comes to her cohort of close cousins in my novel What’s Left, I don’t want to give away too much. Let’s just say there are a lot of them, and they come to prominence in the last half of the story. You just might have reason to be envious.

As an author, this presents a challenge. How can I narrow the focus for the reader yet maintain an awareness of the scope involved by the time we get to a fourth generation of this family in the New World?

In this case, I chose to concentrate on a handful of Cassia’s cousins, at most, and deal with the rest of them in quick glances, often as part of the pack, sometimes simply a cluster of names in a single brushstroke. I hope it’s sufficient.

Perhaps it also helps that apart from Cassia’s best friend forever, Sandra, the cousins don’t step into the spotlight until we’re well into the story and some of the other earlier characters have already stepped offstage.

~*~

As a passage I deleted from the final version suggests, her upbringing was quite different from her father’s.

He must have been very lonely, always on best behavior, without any of the competitive mischief that runs through my family.

~*~

One of the things that amazed me about my college girlfriend’s family was the number of cousins she had and how often they visited each other — second- and third-cousins included. They seemed to know where everyone lived and what they were up to. Mine was nothing like that.

Do you have any close cousins? Do you find any of them to be special? Annoying?

Or if you’re from a big family, how close are you to your brothers and sisters? Which ones more than others?

Who would you turn to if you were in trouble?

~*~

Coming across a family photo like this one online fills me with admiration. They seem so close and happy together. The one I found is captioned Three Greek Sisters. I’m assuming they’re Greek-American, but who cares? By the way, those look like some lucky guys, too.

Care to share in my field notes from a lifetime’s zigzag trip?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Writing has been a means for me to investigate the question, “Who am I,” and of recollecting fragments, especially those that might eventually coalesce into a larger perspective. Unlike many adults, I have few vivid childhood memories, but what I am piecing together is often troubling. I grew up in Ohio in a mainstream Protestant tradition, became an Eagle scout, loved chemistry, hiked and camped, that sort of thing. I can blame becoming a hippie on my first lover, and thank her, too, for pointing my life in an unanticipated direction even after she flew ever so far away.

In the years since, I’ve followed a zigzag journey that’s been rich in many ways excepting money. Let’s just say it’s been off-beat.

Now retired from a career in daily newspaper journalism, I’ve married for the second time, live in a historic mill town in the seacoast region of New Hampshire, and am an active Quaker. It’s a full plate. What I didn’t expect was how much of my own “contemporary” fiction is now history – so much has changed so quickly in my own lifetime.

It’s hardly the end of the story, though. Not if we can help it.

 

Let’s get back to addressing some really big social problems

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

Had enough with boogie men spooking us? The last four years have only let the really big issues fester. Here are some top items that need our full attention now. All of us.

  1. Ending systemic racism in society and its underlying assumption of white superiority.
  2. Climate change. It’s real and worsening.
  3. The environment and energy. We were making progress, weren’t we? Clean air and water should belong to all, not the corporate polluters.
  4. Curbing the undue influence of political lobbyists and PAC funds. Yes, Citizens United, too.
  5. The gross imbalance of wealth in America and the demise of the middle class. Progressive tax rates could provide for many services such as health care and education – now borne privately, largely by the lower brackets – to instead be provided across the board.
  6. Also, reviving Social Security. Taxing excessive incomes at the full rate would be a start.
  7. Redress the changing realities of labor, compensation, community, and commonwealth. In short, who benefits when computerization takes over? It’s a much bigger issue than simply raising the minimum wage.
  8. Abolish the Electoral College and voter repression. Under the current system, a shade over 25 percent of the total votes – meaning a bare majority in just 12 states – could elect the president. The majority of the nation’s voters lost their voice in three recent presidential elections, with Republicans given the office. It’s still an attack on democracy and the people.
  9. Health system reforms. Obamacare was a start, but much more needs to be done, including mental health systems and, as we’ve seen with Covid-19, pandemic planning.
  10. Education systems have also gone largely unchecked. Student loan debt is a serious burden on their lives and our economy, just for starters.

Yes, we really can get the upper hand here, if we join together. But the damage has been deep and need time to repair.

~*~

What would you add to the list?

Conformity isn’t necessarily comfortable, is it?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My novel What’s Left deals largely with a new generation as it attempts to make sense of its legacy. Yes, the story centers on Cassia, the daughter of a professional photographer and practicing Tibetan Buddhist in Indiana. She’s trying to make sense of how they got where they are now – and what’s always made her extended family unique.

Do you feel you fit in easily with the world around you? Or is there usually some sense of alienation?

 

It’s been a hard lesson for me

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Long ago, I was taught that it was wrong to assert what I want – to accept what was given instead. It’s embodied in a Christian concept of humility, for one thing, and reinforced by poverty, for another. Living in the yoga ashram underscored that as a spiritual lesson, differentiating between wants (or desires) and needs.

My first lover introduced me to the Asian concept of Tao, as taking a path of least resistance. In the long run, that didn’t help much. At least I still had ambitions and kept working toward them, albeit more as a team member or leader than as a social climber.

More recently, as part of some deep psychological work, I’ve instead learned the importance of being able to voice and engage those personal yearnings and preferences – to make them active in a way that’s not selfish, self-centered, but rather an embodiment of my very essence. You know, to give this life a direction rather than a passive reaction.

These days I find myself correcting a phrase from “I’d like” to “I WANT” … as in deciding to do or have such-and-such. It makes a huge difference.

In the jargon, I’m feeling empowered. In doing so, fewer things feel like duties or obligations, which in turn become weights and encumbering .

For instance, I’ll say “I want to mow the lawn today” rather than “I have to.” In this scenario, it becomes, “I want to get it now rather than later, when it’s harder to cut” or “I want the place to look better.” And I can even look closely at the wonder of how it all grows so quickly.

Well, Swami had tried to instill that kind of awareness in the mundane chores and labors we had to do in the ashram.

It comes round to faith, after all.

Prayer can be a time to choose and voice

WHAT I WANT!

As Jesus said, “You do not have because you do not ask.”

It doesn’t mean I can have everything, either. And that’s OK, too. In fact, I don’t want the burdens that so many things carry. And that, too, is liberating.

How about you?