Tag: Life

Trying to deal with a foreign language

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

When we have foreign guests staying with us, I have to watch is the need to speak slower and more distinctly. (Well, that’s obviously on hold during the Covid outbreak, though we have heard from one back in China assuring us she’s fine.) The exchanges can start to sound comical, even before I face the difficult challenge of using smaller words. Me? Smaller words? Look, we have more than 200,000 in the English language for a reason!

You can imagine our situation when they’re Chinese students here for a month or so as they volunteer at ono-profits internships. Somehow, shorter visits just don’t seem to rise to the more complex communications.

~*~

My daily Spanish lessons raise the translation issues from an opposite direction, but I think I’ve crossed an important threshold there, one that goes beyond vocabulary.

Have you noticed how a spoken language becomes a musical line rather than individual words? My wife remembers her shock learning that “come on” was two words, not one, as in “cumon.”

When the Duolingo voice tells me, “Type what you hear,” I know to write what I’m supposed to hear rather than what I actually encounter at fast speed.

You could say that in common usage our sentences lose all of the spaces between words. In Spanish I sometimes notice this more as a rhythm across where a word should be between two other words rather than hearing that word or even a letter itself.

Somethinglikethispoorexample.

Rather. Than. Some. Thing. Like. This.

I’m also noticing that the endings of some words are vanishing, as they do in so much French, especially a final “s.”

Must happen in English, too, ‘cept we just take it for granted and naturally fill in the meaning.

Now, as for all of those hearing-aid solicitations I keep getting in the mail? I doubt they’d help my Spanish any.

What do you have to say here? (Please type slowly and distinctly.)

When one road’s blocked, try another

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes details advance a story. And sometimes they raise unnecessary hurdles. In my novel What’s Left, what Cassia discovers about her deceased father (her Baba) is much better than this. So I cut it.

Hey, how many 12-year-olds would even know what a biochemist is? Or, for that matter, 16-year-olds, depending on when she’s making the connection? You still get the drift in the final version.

Under a different system of education, he might have become a biochemist or mathematician. He had leanings that way, which were not supported over time. So instead, he became a photographer — a very adept one who leaves behind what I’m finding to be an astonishing archive of social upheaval and redirection.

~*~

Oh, my, she wouldn’t ever say that last sentence, would she? Of course it had to go!

The point of her observation, though, remains pertinent. Many kids are thwarted at key points in their development, not just educationally, either.

What would you say has been a crucial obstacle in your past? How have you coped? Has it changed the direction of your life?

~*~

A large Queen Anne-style house with a distinctive witch’s hat tower something like this is the headquarters for Cassia’s extended family in my novel What’s Left. If only this one were pink, like hers.

~*~

 

Do we really mean the same thing?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

I’ve had to learn the hard way that a word can mean something quite dissimilar for two people. Sometimes it’s based on assumptions or misunderstandings. Sometimes, on deliberate deception.

Either way, one person can be deeply injured by the outcome.

Take “I love you” as an example.

A used car is in “perfect condition.”

“I’ll be right there.”

In the hippie era, we had a raft of phrases that glossed over differences – “Hey, I’m cool with that,” “Don’t hassle me,” “I dig,” “Chill out.” Meaning?

It comes up especially with “God” or even “peace.”

There are plenty of other examples, some of them keeping lawyers in business.

What’s one from your own experience?

 

High on the trail, the view becomes clearer

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In my novel What’s Left, what she discovers about her deceased father (her Baba) is much zestier than this passage. So I cut it. You’ll still get the drift in the final version.

As a kid, your Baba figured out he never quite fit in with his surroundings. He thought about things he couldn’t explain to others, though to be fair about it, he rarely caught their signals, either. Deep within himself, he sensed there was much more to life than what was happening around him. I think he wanted the big picture, which is what he must have felt when he was climbing mountains.

~*~

Too many things are trying to happen there, I’m afraid. We can move along better without having to trip over the added baggage. I do like the image of climbing mountains to feel the big picture, though — something I see as recharging his soul.

Where do you turn to recharge yourself? Anyplace special? Music? Dancing? A deep bubble bath? Meditation? Or is it something else altogether?

~*~

I’m also thinking about typical encounters with professional photographers. There were strange, formal portrait sessions when my sister and I were very little. Do families still do that anymore? Then there were the senior portraits in high school or yearbook group shots, which were akin to elementary class pictures earlier. But weddings are the big event for many, the mother lode of the profession.

Tell me about your parents’ wedding pictures. What do they reveal? What do they mask?

Greek-run restaurants are a staple of the American scene. Cassia’s family ran one. This was another, in Lowell, Massachusetts, where her aunt Pia was from.

~*~

 

More than colorful pins stuck on the wall map

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Wow, I really have been all over the map in getting to here. That’s what’s stirred up as I look at the range of experiences reflected in my novels and poetry as well as here at the Barn. That ‘scape has covered a childhood in the Midwest, college in a Big Ten school, an inner city ghetto during my hippie years and then the farms that followed, as well as desert and mountains, more Midwest and then Baltimore, along with my first marriage and some wild romances, and finally New England and my little city farm here.

Sometimes I wind up feeling dizzy. Those pins and needles are all over the place.

Are you one of the lucky ones who got to stay put?

 

Simply building the hole in the doughnut

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The application of positive and negative spaces — that is, the contrast of light and dark — is a basic concept in visual art. One of these will appear solid; the other, empty. Think of black versus white, with no shades in between.

In another way, think of a doughnut or bagel, defining an empty hole.

In my novel What’s Left, she applies a similar strategy after her father vanishes in an avalanche when she’s 11. She yearns to know much more about who he was — in fact, intends to recover him in her own way — so she assembles everything she can find to create a positive impression and then dives into the remainder, the negative, to dig up the rest. Maybe you’d see this as trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle.

Since he was a professional photographer, she carefully investigates another kind of negative for answers — the many strips of film stored in his studio. At first what she views is reversed from normal perception, where everything that’s light should be dark and everything that’s dark should be light, but then she learns to transform what’s there into contact sheets and glossy prints. Just like he did.

Photo studio trash in the old day, back before digital took over.

Thanks to digital photography, negatives are ancient history. Maybe that’s somehow appropriate, since Cassia’s life at that point would now be ancient history, too, even as she’s investigating what she would consider ancient history.

Have you ever handled photographic negatives? Is there some other way you’ve looked at things reversed from normal? How about funny mirrors? How did it change your perception?

~*~

Remember, What’s Left is available at Smashwords.

 

Entering a photographer’s private world

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Her father’s photographic trove gives Cassia the pieces she eventually assembles into a massive picture puzzle of his world. It spans some big changes in his own life, as well – especially regarding her own family.

In my novel What’s Left, this task also means she has to master some now obsolete technological skills, including reading photographic negatives, where blacks and whites are reversed, moving around in a dusky darkroom, using a photo enlarger, and developing glossy prints in trays of chemical liquids she’s mixed on her own. (My, have those things changed thanks to digital photography!)

Continue reading “Entering a photographer’s private world” →

Two more years of THIS?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 10 Comments

We were wrapping up yet another committee session on Zoom and trying to look ahead to our next one when one member made an unsettling comment.

Said he, “I don’t expect to be out of this (self-isolation) for another two years, not until they have the vaccine in place.”

He’s a retired medical professional, and the other (now unretired) one in our group didn’t correct him.

It’s a gloomy prognostication, not just personally, I’ll admit as senior with a pre-existing condition, but as one considering its dire social consequences as well.

I was going to say the quip hit like a ton of bricks, but considering that the emotional impact had more of a slow motion effect, I’ll say like a ton of hay (hey, a ton is a ton, right?).

So much for dashing our hopes.

I think I’ll go listen to “Casey at the Bat” again, the poem with the phrase “but there is no joy in Mudville.” As if we’ll ever again have baseball, either.

Your turn to whine! I’m all ears.

Finally hitting ‘real’ time

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

In this self-isolation during our Covid-19 outbreak, I no longer have weekly Meeting for Worship, regular committees or social gatherings, rehearsals, or daily indoor lap swimming to define my daily schedule. Even for an introvert like me, their absence can be disconcerting.

It does alter my awareness of aligning myself with the outside world. I mean, it’s been ages since I’ve watched television, so knowing what’s on any particular night is irrelevant.

What happens is an alternate awareness.

For example:

It was Saturday afternoon, no doubt in my mind.

No, it’s Friday, my wife asserted.

No, it’s Saturday. I had the number of the date in my head, thanks to the little numerals in the corner of my laptop screen earlier in the day. But the name of the day didn’t register. A Saturday would explain the number of people I encountered out on the trail in the woods along the Isinglass River.

Back home, ready to prove my wife wrong, I turned to the wall calendar. The date fell under a Friday, not a Saturday. How could that be?

The jolt left me feeling a bit wobbly. You know, Rip van Winkle mode. I felt I’d lost a day, like a pair of missing socks, maybe. Well, actually, I had gained one, but it didn’t feel like finding a 20-dollar bill. Something still felt hollow.

But then, something also felt healthy, as in being more fully focused on the little things I’m taking on.

It’s been a long time since I experienced that, probably nearly a half century, back when I was living in the yoga ashram, distanced from the daily affairs of society. There, every day was full and special. Yes, we had some connection with the weekly calendar – guests arriving and departing on the weekends, especially – but there were few other demands that required knowing the names of the days. Instead, it was more Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday.

I came to consider that living in “real” time, rather than externally defined hours and days and their nights.

So here we are. Yes, I still need to consult my weekly planner. No escaping that.

And my daily to-do lists remain important.

I know things will change when we all get back to normal, whatever that will be at the time. The fact remains that what we’re encapsulated in now is unique.