Tag: Life

Abundance versus scarcity in my life

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Perhaps you’re familiar with the abundance versus scarcity question. You know, do you feel you’re blessed with enough – or do you instead feel you’re always lacking.

I’m programmed from early childhood to feel the latter. My parents were children of the Great Depression, after all, and handed the attitude down.

It tends to make me something tighter than frugal. Generosity doesn’t come easily, I don’t open up to others easily, either – not even to ask for help. It’s a long list of negatives.

As I returned to this concept recently, I’ve been feeling a lot more sense that I have more than enough in many ways, even on a very limited budget.

So much for material goods.

Curiously, it’s time where I’m feeling the scarcity kick in. There’s just never enough. Not for what I’m trying to do.

I’m realizing, often after the fact, how much that outlook crimps my relationships.

This is, ultimately, a spiritual matter. The one place I find time opening up is within the hour of mostly silent Quaker worship. Not that it’s always easy, not even after all of these years I’ve been doing it. But it is always refreshing and renewing.

To think, I started meditating to get naturally high, as in stoned. But somewhere along the way it became a practice to simply get natural – to breathe and get grounded again.

Oh, but I’m still on the internal clock, even there. How on earth am I supposed to cope with Eternity just around the corner?

All under Cassia’s spell

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I keep thinking of What’s Left as “my latest novel” or “my newest,” even though other works are appearing after its publication.

I don’t mean to be creating confusion, but here’s my take.

One way or another, my earlier novels addressed the hippie era, which I still believe remains misunderstood and misrepresented. It’s too important for that. And, yes, it’s still hard to define.

What’s Left started out to put those stories in a broader perspective but, revision by revision, the book moved in a much different direction. Quite simply, Cassia and her generation took over.

It became the most difficult writing project I’ve ever undertaken and forced me to completely rethink my approach to fiction. Remember, my career was in “just the facts, ma’am,” journalism topped by Beat-era literature.

Unlike the earlier works, in drafting this one, I had a structural model I wanted to pursue – one that remained intact.

What I hadn’t anticipated was how much the focus would shift.

Many of my favorite parts were created in the final revisions, especially as other members of her generation became fully fleshed out characters, as did the Goth side of her mourning through her adolescent years.

That also meant ripping out a lot of other material, which either became background for my own understanding or was vastly condensed by the final version. The Red Barn’s been quoting heavily from those discards, just to add to your own understanding of the project’s scope.

Whew!

Unanticipated? The paranormal fourteenth chapter is one of my favorites, even though I’d never done a ghost story before. By they way, they wrote it, not me. I simply recorded the dialogue.

Continue reading “All under Cassia’s spell” →

So what’s so special about Iowa?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

It’s not Ohio, for one thing, even though a surprising number of people don’t know the difference. And it’s really quite distinct from Idaho, out in the Rockies further west. It doesn’t even have a big-league sports team.

But thanks to its unique party caucuses for presidential candidates, the Hawkeye State is back making headlines, at least for now. It makes for a big diversion, now that the crops are in.

Here are some quick perspectives.

  1. Dubuque, the state’s oldest city, grew out of the arrival of Julian Dubuque in 1785, shortly after the Revolutionary War. He was a French-Canadian lead miner working the bluffs along the Mississippi River, and Iowa was still claimed by France.
  2. Cedar Rapids-based Quaker Oats is the world’s largest cereal company.
  3. Wright County has the highest percentage of grade-A topsoil in the nation.
  4. The St. Francis Xavier basilica in Dyersville is the only Roman Catholic basilica in the United States outside of a major metropolitan area. The pope is supposed to hold forth there whenever he’s in the area.
  5. In key social justice advances, married women received property rights in 1851. Women were allowed to become lawyers in 1869, making Arabella Mansfield the first female attorney in the U.S. “Separate but equal” schools were outlawed in 1868. Prohibitions against same-sex marriage were struck down in 2009, making Iowa the third state to allow gay marriage. On the other hand, the state was also a leader in prohibiting alcohol sales: bars were outlawed in 1851, followed by a strong prohibition law in 1855, and a constitutional amendment in 1882 made Iowa a “dry state.” According to one version, women wanted their men to stay sober. The Women’s Christian Temperance Movement was big in Iowa.
  6. West Branch native Herbert Hoover was the first U.S. president born west of the Mississippi River. His mother was a Quaker minister.
  7. Iowa State University is the nation’s oldest land-grant college.
  8. The device for creating sliced bread was invented by Iowan Otto Frederick Rohwedder in 1912. He wanted his bread to fit into the toaster more neatly.
  9. The state has the nation’s highest concentration of wind-powered turbines. The towers produce nearly 40 percent of the state’s electricity.
  10. There are more hogs than humans – 21.2 animals to a tad over three million people.

~*~

Ever been to Iowa? What can you add to the list?

Don’t overlook your guardian angels

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

In my Freakin’ Free Spirits novels, aunt Nita serves Cassia’s guardian angel.

Earlier, she had played a similar role for Cassia’s future father, from their college years together onward.

In fact, without Nita in the background, the daughter may have never come along at all, as she eventually appreciates in What’s Left.

Reflecting on my own life, I’m now sensing moments when someone stepped in, behind the scenes, to affect a change that opened an opportunity in my life. At the time, I was clueless. One led to a summer job and later part-time employment. Another, to my being able to transfer away to college, rather than continue at a commuter campus.

There were another attempts that were turned away, in my ignorance or incomplete understanding.

But there were also the other, more typical and ethereal guardian angels, the kind that kept me a brush away from death or serious injury, say being hit by a car or bus or finding myself in the deep end of the pool when I could barely swim or maybe even getting sexually involved with the wrong person.

Has someone in your life ever functioned as a guardian angel?

How many seasons do you have?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

I’ve already written of my sense of having eight seasons a year where I live, created by blending the four solar-seasons with the equinox- and solstice-based calendar seasons. (To wit: Solar spring begins around February 2, while the calendar season begins on the equinox six weeks later. Thus, the “six more weeks of winter” the groundhog gets blamed for. And so on.)

But we get a slew of other seasons, too. Here’s a sampling.

  1. Sports seasons. As in baseball season, football season, or basketball season. In professional sports, there’s a lot of overlap. Throw in skiing or hockey in my part of the world.
  2. Indian summer, technically after the first killing frost. It can greatly extend our short, six-week summer.
  3. Freezin’ season. Here in New England, that can run five months, from early November into April. One variation is heating season, which can start in early October and run into June, eight months.
  4. Mud season. Rural New Englanders who live along unpaved roads know this one well. When the ground thaws, their cars are soon thoroughly splattered with mud – and a trip on foot can do the same to their clothing.
  5. Black fly season. Follows mud season. The swarms of these tiny, nearly invisible ravenous insects are truly nasty, making mosquitos seem nearly benign.
  6. Waves of flowers, fruits, and vegetables. Ours start with asparagus and end up with apples. In large parts of Maine, blueberries or potatoes are big markers.
  7. Fall foliage. Generally, the month of October. As the landscape goes Day-Glo, the highways, restaurants, and motels are crowded with tourists, all before we’re plunged into November and its dreary clock change into Eastern Standard Time.
  8. The so-called holiday season. Or, more accurately, shopping season. Nowadays, it starts with the Halloween buildup and runs through New Year’s Day.
  9. Allergies season. For some, it’s the whole year.
  10. Campaign season. In New Hampshire, the big one comes every four years. Like right now.

~*~

What would you add to the list? Hunting and fishing, perchance?

 

I still don’t feel ‘retired’

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Yes, it sounds whiny, even insensitive, but it’s true. Since taking the buyout nearly eight years ago and leaving the newsroom altogether a year later, I still have no idea of what kicking back full-time means. You know, like playing golf or sunbathing or heading for the mountains.

What it has allowed is more time to tackle projects I’ve felt are important – and more sustained focus. The fiction, especially, has gained depth in the process. Remember, in the past two years, I’ve thoroughly revised nearly all of my novels and pulled related volumes from public view.

Curiously, poetry has taken a backseat. I’m not attending readings or society meetings – the latter conflict with other obligations. Meanwhile, submissions to small-press journals and presses have ceased altogether, replaced by my blogging presentations, which I feel are far more effective in relation to the time involved. What I sometimes refer to as collecting rejection slips.

I hate to admit that despite early warnings, blogging takes up more time than I expected – and even then, I’m not reading as widely as I hoped. The WordPress Reader has tons of fine postings to always check out.

Related to blogging is the photography. I’ve always had a strong visual awareness, abetted by four years of strict art training in high school. When I launched the Red Barn at the end of 2011, I expected it to be fully text-driven, but you can see how far we’ve moved away from that. I’m still at a point-and-shoot rather than technically precise attitude – last thing I need is another obsession – but I am proud of much of what I’ve collected and shared.

Quaker picked up with service on the New England Yearly Meeting’s Ministry and Counsel committee and its deliberations throughout the year, but my anticipated daily early morning meditation and yoga haven’t materialized. Frankly, Quaker could become a full-time but unpaid job all its own.

Instead, the daily swimming at the indoor pool has been giving me a cardio workout and a half-hour for clearing my head, and my early-morning Spanish drills just may come in useful if I ever travel to fellow members of the Iglesia de los Amigos in Cuba. The language itself is harder than I remember it being in high school.

Well, I wasn’t planning on being a member of a solid choir, either, or of finally self-publishing as I have at Smashwords. In today’s literary scene, getting a book out is only the beginning of the labor – promotion and marketing, for all but the best-selling authors, is a task left to the creator. It’s a common lament.

Should I mention falling way behind in household chores, gardening tasks, and general maintenance?

On reflection, I still don’t know how I managed all I did while I was still duly employed.

So here we are, beginning year No. 8 at the Red Barn. Let’s see what really happens ahead.

Ten big events in my life during the past year

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
  1. Completing my “final” book of fiction. The middle novella and end pieces are entirely new and quite a departure for me. The other two-thirds are major revisions of two novellas now linked by Jaya’s imagination. Look for The Secret Side of Jaya at Smashwords, available for preorder now.
  2. New wheels. I probably jinxed the old one by a Tendrils posting early in the year, but my Camry fell victim to rusting serious enough to keep it from passing state inspection. There were enough other problems to make me concede it was time to move on (and downsize) a bit before the odometer rolled over to 300k miles. Wound up with a three-year-old Chevy Sonic I call the Scooter.
  3. Recovering my swimming distance and time. I try to swim a half-mile every weekday, but one of my cardio meds kept taking a toll. Getting to a quarter-mile was an effort, and my speed was way down. But at the checkup on my one-year anniversary of the stent implant, my doc decided he could switch to something less potent. Hallelujah! I’m back to normal, or something like that. The nosebleeds and bruising have lessened, too.
  4. Downeast, Maine. We got away for an extended weekend in May and were astounded by the desolation and poverty of much of the easternmost corner of the United States. But we’re also enchanted by the natural awe and community and have been returning. Somehow, it reminds me of the Pacific Northwest, where I lived for four life-changing years. I’ll be posting a lot of photos in the coming year that reflect our discoveries. Hey, it’s still New England and far less well known than Boston. And, oh yes, we bid on a piece of property with an ocean view, though the sellers turned it down and still have it. Please stay tuned!
  5. Beekeeping. Yes, you’ve been reading about it.
  6. And the rabbits. This time, I took the lead in our pet situation. They’re evermore cute and entertaining.
  7. Backing off from the choir. I’m a charter member of an amazing community chorus in Greater Boston, but the weekly commute to rehearsals is getting too demanding. The trip to and from occupies a half of a day, for one thing, and keeps me up later than usual, for another, plus the mileage and tolls add up. When my carpooling buddy’s new job meant he could no longer fit our music-making into his schedule, the time for change had arrived. Still, I had an opportunity to sing behind Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary fame at an outdoor concert in September.  That said, I really do miss the group and our shared high. We’ll see what happens ahead.
  8. Shifting into “author” mode. With my books now in place, my focus should be shifted away from drafting and revising new work, which is essentially solo time, and into more presence in the literary world. At the beginning of summer, for example, I started reading and reviewing ebooks at Smashwords that touched, one way or another, on subjects in my novels. It’s been refreshing.
  9. Closing out my IRA and getting serious about downsizing. It’s not like there was a huge amount, but it had grown to the equivalent of two years’ salary at my maximum income. We realize the house (and barn) are really too much for two people to sustain, and some costly work is needed before we put it up for sale. After all, we’ve accumulated a lot over the years, especially in our two decades together. And we’ve taken on a lot to manage, sometimes too much, as I often feel about the garden, or at least its weeds. If we relocate to another house, it will have to be somewhat smaller and definitely more economic to heat and maintain. We realize something has to go sooner or later, so we’ve started. Unlike a diet, this brings us to stages of reflection, not always easy. Many of the items are infused with memories or dreams.
  10. Our younger daughter’s engagement. Saving the best for last, we finally get to call him “son” officially. Yay!

~*~

What’s been a highlight of your year?

 

Joyously, then

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

From a wonderful book by Czeslaw Milosz, poet: “To find my home in one sentence, concise, as if hammered in metal. Not to enchant anybody. Not to earn a lasting name in posterity. An unnamed need for order, for rhythm, for form, which three words are opposed to chaos and nothingness.” And, he quotes from Renee le Senne: “For me the principal proof of the existence of God is the joy I experience any time I think that God is.” Quoting from Milosz: “To wait for faith in order to pray is to put the cart before the horse. Our way leads from the physical to the spiritual.” And himself: “My friend Father J.S. did not believe in God. But he believed God, the revelation of God, and he always stressed the difference.”