You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
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?
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?
a pattern of fern shadows cast by candles playing into a snug culmination rented theaters where hillsides tottered in the unspoken gamble of her slightest motion, some indication if anyone commenced singing against the walls and ceiling of an unclothed expanse of potential a warm hand broaches, scratching its initials on frosted windows and then a lower back arched for precision a cappella with the choir we clocked a blizzard of treetop squirrels far below whatever our season and there you have it . tenderly
This round, I’m sticking close to home – places I return to.
~*~
Tell us something about one of your own favorites.
Unless you’re a hermit or a successful recluse, you’re bound to come across a host of humanity in your daily life. Just think of the spaces you inhabit — home, neighborhood, buses or subway cars, classroom, workplace and markets, church, a gym or swimming pool, dances, sports teams or choirs, coffee stop, and on and on — all filled with other people who cross your path.
Just mapping all the places you touch in a week can be a big challenge.
So faithfully following a character in a story presents an impossible task: how many of these intersecting individuals can an author include? Think, too, of the level of importance — whether you’re presenting a central figure whose influence runs through many of the pages; a major character who may be important at some point, even a single chapter; someone who provides peripheral color; an episodic figure, who flits in and out. And how many of these require names versus those who can be quickly sketched by a simple title or description?
I’d still love to do a tale having only two characters. Even holding it to six would be fun. But obviously, that wouldn’t do when the story touches up to five generations, as my novel What’s Left, does. Now you can share my perspective.
Consider, too, that we typically know others in one circle of activity or another. Sometimes they fit in several, but encountering a person out of context can be confusing. There are people I know at the indoor swimming pool, for instance, but we’re always startled when we run into each other on the street or at the supermarket, where our joke usually goes, “I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on!” (Yes, we do wear swimsuits — and often swim caps.)
How many people do you know by name? What’s your most important social space when it comes to being with your cohorts?
~*~
Don’t forget:
You better be good to toads!
~*~
What do you have on your list?
Just don’t throw everything on the brush pile and torch it quite yet. Just one item at a time, recalling its place in the journey.
~*~
As for syllables, may I suggest singing, something without words. Just open your mouth and dance with the breeze or still air as it will. Like incense, an offering and invitation to the Spirit.
The gap between well-crafted prose, especially fiction, drama, or comedy, and the art of poetry has long tempted and then eluded writers. The definition of poetry as “slow prose” further complicates the issue, I suppose, although some see that end of the spectrum as limp verse – many elements make poetry, after all, and can take a piece far from simple conversation or logical progression. Just because something is structured in broken lines doesn’t raise it to music.
Well, that does point to the appearance of rap as standing somewhere between poetry and fully developed music, rather than chanting or a rhythm section … and opera did emerge out of an attempt to recover the tonal nature of ancient Greek language.
So the possibilities of the genre of prose poems stand as a provocation, and the trials can fascinate. As a rule, I’ve found shorter is sweeter – around a hundred words, max, lest you start writing paragraphs and the piece at hand lose its energy.
This year the Red Barn will be presenting a prose poem each Saturday, drawing on a collection published in 2018 at Thistle Finch. I am grateful to the editors of the following journals for giving some of the prose poems their first airing: Bounce Is Bard, Crack the Spine, Jerseyworks, Ray’s Road Review, Red Coral, The Screech Owl, The Singularity Review, Souvenir Lit Journal, Subliminal Interiors, and The Vein.
Most of them arise from correspondence in my years before relocating to the New Hampshire seacoast and thus represent events now somewhere back in my foggy past. The persons they’re addressed to in these whirlwinds are abstractions, more than actual individuals. What I do know is that I could not create these works today, my outlook is so different.
I hope you enjoy them.
and so having examined his cards she shot off fireworks from a waist-high bank of snowy night bottle rockets, the progression silence – whoosh – bang! in some bereavement overcome by momentary pyrotechnics in a furtive event, just once and it’s over who knows how she added fractions to appropriate repeated waves of painters, musicians, singers while he saved five years for some overcast studies prowling the night trajectories into hooting night forest only to detect he has zero bearing as a nightmare impostor posted KEEP OUT and call it quits, entering darkness Better luck next time
Safe to say, it’s been unlike any 12 months before it.
~*~
I’m not counting the big move, which really fits more into the coming year. For now, it’s feeling more like acquiring a summer home, except that our adventure starts in winter.
What’s been big in your year?
