Tag: Life

ALWAYS WASH THOSE HANDS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

and that’s the really frightening thing
the bomb-sniffing dog
on the way to the Laundromat, before

~*~

I’ve had enough this season
to satisfy my sensibilities
though it’s still unseasonably warm
and raining

lingering
over
food

this buzzing
finds pollen
wherever
our sun warms

~*~

yet to the Appropriate Authorities
Immigration and Naturalization Service, the United States Government

unrelated by family or livelihood
my next-door neighbor
together on numerous occasions
I further state
intelligent, industrious, socially responsible
capable of

very truly yours,
the prodigal son, without the dissipation

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Copyright 2015

INVITATION TO FLIGHT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

On one of my solitary walks with Kokopelli, I admire the fullness of purple-tipped grasses along the canal bank. Some offer bunched, short seeds in clusters. Others have long-shafted seeds in plumes. Or oblong, spiked seeds suspended like bells. “There must be a thousand golden variations,” I tell him. Oats. Wheat. Barley. Bread and beer. Silk-enshrouded ears of corn for sweet butter. Fat tender steaks. Sour whiskey mash. Like some people I knew. The many named needles and strands of whips and brushes reach skyward, flaying the wind, inviting birds to flight.

For more insights from the American Far West and Kokopelli, click here.

GETTING ACCLIMATED

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

As I wrote at the time:

It’s the third straight day of temperatures above ninety, with humidity to match. Still, we’ve avoided a miserable July this year, and the heat has not locked itself into the house: we’ve been able to cool everything overnight. What strikes me is that we’re no longer floored by the oppression. We simply move slower, more deliberately. Avoid using the oven. (We’ll grill outdoors this afternoon.)

In other words, we’ve adjusted ourselves to seasonal change.

Come winter, we’ll have to brace ourselves all over again for biting cold. What will be bitter in November or December will instead feel balmy come February or March.

At the office, I know that any sharp change in the weather brings an increase in obituaries. We can joke about the shift that sends those who are barely hanging on over the edge, but the numbers support us. People in climate-controlled chambers all the same responding to minor shifts in barometric temperature or dew points, all the same. Do we inhale and exhale something other than air?

Spaces I’ve entered where silent prayer or meditation are already under way all felt set apart from their surroundings. I’ve sometimes described it as diving into water and swimming beneath the surface or like entering a pressurized rare-book library.

Returning to the ashram and its grounds after being away presented a similar sensation, as have old Quaker meetinghouses, even years after their regular use.

Live within that energy, and you no longer notice it – it’s simply the way life is. Leave it, though, and you can feel you are falling through space, for weeks on end.

~*~

For more Seasons of the Spirit, click here.

ALL OVER AGAIN. OUT OF NOWHERE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Why wait for the dust to settle? Here are 10 bullets from my end.

~*~

  1. A bit of gardening before Meeting for Worship. A round of picking raspberries, peas, string beans. Blueberries and currants are next to ripen.
  2. One foot in the present, the other in the past. Not just a pattern for dreams. It’s intrinsic to the process of writing. Add to that smells, sounds, touch, taste.
  3. I love the concept of the Commonplace Book – a kind of scrapbook of observations of a personal journey. It’s related to the tradition I discovered in whaling ship logs.
  4. The logbooks, by the way, had a specific form, which by 1840 came in printed versions with columns H, W, K – hour, wind, knots – plus course and comments like “lost sight of land” or notations of birds seen. Across the bottom of each page are other notes, such as latitude and longitude or the distance traveled in a day, where I saw up to 140 miles recorded. Turns out the entries also helped determine or justify extra rations for the crew and so on, depending on the conditions. Wonder how that format would work as a personal journal.
  5. What do we make of rounds of thunderstorms, interrupted by bursts of sunlight, knowing more weeds and garden slugs are on the way?
  6. The Portsmouth Greek Festival differs from ours in Dover. Their event has two food lines, rather than one, and an outdoor tent for dancing. It all takes place behind the church, rather than miles away. I’m surprised how little interaction there is between the two Orthodox congregations.
  7. Been meditating for 66 years now, one way or another upholding the spiritual discipline. More than half of that time has been as a member of Dover Friends, worshiping in our 1768 Quaker meetinghouse. Some of the members have been there the whole time with me. (How could that be? Already!)
  8. I’m not a big fan of comparative religion, looking for commonalities and similarities. I’m more interested in vital differences and nuance. How far this is from what I’d envisioned, back when I was largely agnostic.
  9. In a very fragile condition, a snake having just shed its skin.
  10. What was the biggest mistake in my life? (Or in yours?)

~*~

Doesn't everyone have a stone wall for the pots?
Doesn’t everyone have a stone wall for the pots?

WEDDING PARTY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

“you said when you married
you’d still make love to other guys”

the guest at the house party argued
though now
I initially have difficulty telling whether

he’s talking to the bride or the groom
even as he added
“you’re too young to be getting married”

he spent the night anyway
among those of us encamped in sleeping bags
around that second-floor apartment

~*~

we’d had an intellectual tete-a-tete on the corner
and then, upstairs, stoned out and dancing
at the heart of the crowd, I collapsed

it was all ass and thigh from the floor

so she liked flirting with me . Ooooh!
she told me my eyes were a strange, beautiful color

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Copyright 2015

ANCIENT VIBRATIONS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Instead, I looked in another direction and discovered that the Yakama people once occupied 17,000 square miles and had three distinct language stocks. So, even back then one tongue was insufficient to articulate the vibrations of this place, even as an open desert. To try relating the qualities of a simple thing, a pane of hundred-year-old glass, perhaps; the interaction of clouds and sun, alkali and volcanic ash is far more complex. You start by learning the names of flora and fauna. Watch, listen, wait. I open a window and consider the current research, which places the first people here about 14,000 years before my arrival. These nomads made tools from bone and mineral. Hunted large and small game. Fished salmon. Collected river mussels. Gathered wild food plants. Given a guide and sufficient time, maybe I could learn to do these things. (Don’t look at me, Kokopelli shrugs. I’m not from around here.) Maybe I shouldn’t feel so strange about being here, either, even though such long perspective makes me feel incredibly insignificant. The Anglo civilization embodied here is only veneer concealing much deeper systems. The ancient climate was cooler and moister. The land was dotted by many lakes and small streams. Grasslands scattered with pine stands and willow flourished where there’s only sagebrush now. Food sources included bison, antelope, deer, foxes, muskrats, rabbits, ducks and geese (their eggs, too), and turtles.

I want to leap through time to join them, dressing the hides of their game, or making rattles and tools. These people used red and yellow pigments, and valued birds for their feathers as well as their flesh — cormorants, geese, condors, turkey vultures, and eagles all had clothing functions. Maybe I need some ceremonial garb. (Come, now! Kokopelli is hooting with laughter. He loves to taunt and mock me.) Tiny bone needles were used as far back as 10,000 years. I have enough trouble with steel needles today. So what do I make of their earliest burials, cremations that send the body back into spirit?

It’s obvious my own difficulties won’t end overnight.

This is a time of sparrows.

For more insights from the American Far West and Kokopelli, click here.

AS TRULY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

the reality of who we are
becomes too unbearable
to sustain

the animal, adorned
over shame

crawl away, then

in whose image
of Creation
are we naked?

O Holy One
casting light within
the diverse exhaustion
yet exposes
and heals

Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set, click here.

AS I WROTE TO ISAIAH’S MOTHER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

That summer, I read his namesake book again, this time in the New Jerusalem Version, a fresh, scholarly translation that sticks very close to the text—in the process losing poetry while gaining directness. I’ve joked that this version sounds more like a batch of reports from a Quaker meeting’s Peace & Social Concerns Committee than a section from the Bible. Been surprised, too, how early in the text the hopeful, Messianic thread appears to weave through the warnings of doom and gloom; all along, I had thought the first half of the book was dominated by dark jeremiads, with the lightness taking the lead in the second half. Not so!

~*~

For more Seasons of the Spirit, click here.

A BIT OF SWEAT, EVEN IN THE SHADE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The mind dances here and there, rarely in a linear fashion. So what’s on my mind these days? How about counting on these fingers?

~*~

  1. Picking peas and raspberries. Then mow the lawn.
  2. The Hour of Visitation: that moment you have to decide. Accept Jesus. Agree to marry. Call the sale. Or it typically slips away. The door closes, sometimes ever so silently. Reopening it may be far more difficult.
  3. On the street, a fat porcupine pondering his shadow.
  4. How many strange events transpire unseen? A sense lingers after a chance observation, a moment of revelation suggesting a much vaster possibility of reality at hand.
  5. My goal is no longer to collect but to cull. I’ve been decollecting as much as I can, one sweep at a time. Recordings, books, notes, clothing … amazing to revisit so much that’s already here! Trail markers from a long journey to now.
  6. She’s often thought I’d be more at home in an earlier era. Well, maybe if I had some wealth and privilege. There, I’ve said it. That edge that’s too often been lacking.
  7. Watching bridge construction in tidal waters, I’ve wondered what keeps the cranes from swaying in the daily rise and fall of the current. Spud Legs, I’m informed, are sunk into the river bottom for stability. What a funny term! As in potato? Naw, more like spud bar. However the name ever originated.
  8. Sometimes life’s a whirlwind. Just what do we do with the calm?
  9. Teaching or translating as their source of income. The world is bigger than that. And so should the literary horizons.
  10. Looking back on your life, can you point to any work you’re truly proud of? Or does even the best somehow fall short?

~*~

So typical of New England, these overlapping neighborhoods. This one's just over the river from us, in South Berwick, Maine.
So typical of New England, these overlapping neighborhoods. This one’s just over the river from us, in South Berwick, Maine.

EXPECTING A CENTER-POINT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

their house and yard
lined a three-block street
that wasn’t straight but
bent, twice, away from due north
or an east-west axis

the squirrels there knew nothing of the next
state or globe     their world of endless
branching comprehends no sphere

each time he leaped, he’d forget who I am
all the same, gravity fashions
a turn toward chaos or quietude
expecting a center-point
it’s a pattern, yes,
the interlocking repetition
say of old wallpaper
shaping a marriage

of course they like flowers
rolls and glue, page after page,
all through the years
yellowing into decades

whatever turns
you on
makes you sorry
rubs nerves
pulling stuff
like that
live and learn
sweet revenge
isn’t you anyway

flaying those arms in Beulah Land

*   *   *

of course it was us versus them

*   *   *

he could hear masons warning new roofing shingles
were needed, pronto, and even he knew what damage a leak
could inflict all before their Great Plumber Shortage
he switched off This Old House episodes where workmen
arrive in time to preclude disaster     his was now nothing
or all kinds of superstition     so his reserves dwindled
even approaching the sump pump     what music, then?
ring around, pocket full of worry
they had a cache of cash

*   *   *

a true adversary
you soon come to resemble

of course he was furious
returning

to the newly replaced crown molding
they’d gnawed through in an hour

while they nested in the wall
his library reeked

*   *   *

“Calm? When are you ever calm?”

 Poem copyright 2015 by Jnana Hodson
To read the full set of squirrelly poems, click here.