Tag: Life
As for any curiosity about a writer’s workspace?
It was a science fiction writer who suggested this as something the public gets nosy about. Like there’s something magical in where an author works.
Well, it can be personalized, including what’s on the wall or playing as music in the background.
Somehow, many people imagine that having an inspiring view helps, but Annie Dillard argues otherwise. In the newsrooms where I’ve worked, the executives had the windows. The workers had a sweat shop, rows of keyboards on cluttered desks, maybe even with cigarettes back in the day.
My own spaces have varied from a coffee table where I sat cross-legged at the typewriter to the upstairs bedroom I dedicated to the work when I lived at Yuppieville on the Hill before I remarried. There, I did have a commanding view over the parking lot and the water tower beyond as well as some fine sunsets. Usually, the arrangements were more of a make-do nature over the years, often in a second bedroom.
Once I remarried, I envisioned turning the top of the Red Barn into a year-round writing space, something that never materialized. Instead, it wound up being the north end of the attic, as you’ll find in many of the earlier posts here.
Now, as I’ve mentioned in reflecting on shifting from paper to digital, I’m able to work from a corner of my bedroom, where I do have a compact view of the ocean. Just enough.
~*~
Now, for a few related thoughts and reminders.
Note there’s a difference between an office and where you write.
An office may have a phone, filing cabinets, tabletops, checkbooks, mailing supplies, and so on. It’s probably where you pay your bills, too.
The writing space, as mine is at the moment, may be quite compact.
As for desktop maneuvers / chaos busters (by Jennifer Weisel, maybe from Elle, I have no idea how long ago):
The average person spends over four hours per week looking for misplaced papers, according to an Accountemps survey. Gloria Schaaf, a Manhattan-based organization consultant, offers advice on how to conquer chaos:
Make your desk command central (30 x 60 inches is the minimum size; large enough to spread out on.)
Add a “filing” folder to the front of each file drawer.
Avoid piles: Act on every piece of mail when you get to it and you won’t have to look back through mounds of paper later.
Use one planning tool for both personal and professional commitments (meetings, phone calls, errands, television programs …)
Leave time for a half-hour “recovery period” at the end of each day to organize your desk; it will be much more approachable the next morning.
TRAPS: the floor (that’s where piles begin), bulletin boards (if you must hang papers, use a one-inch cork strip, “Miscellaneous” folders, “To File” boxes.
Are you sensing how much this reflects the paper era? Like the size of that desk! Or wondering how to adapt the advice to today? The clutter hasn’t gone away, unless you left it on your last computer before the disk was wiped.
~*~
TOUCHSTONES: those items and reminders of what’s essential, the way home, the way ahead: emotional and spiritual energy points.
Does this mean I put up the cow skull I found on Rattlesnake Ridge in the Yakima Valley 45 years ago?
~*~
As for a routine that keeps you doing the work, as the artist Red Grooms insists, “It’s very bad for an artist to lay off. You get out of shape.” (Catherine Barnett interview, May 1991 on page 62 of a glossy mag. In the interim, I’ve lost the tearsheet. Maybe during one of those purges?)
~*~
So what kind of workspace do you have or aspire to for your own creative endeavors? Include the right kitchen, if you wish. A studio doesn’t have to be a private space, does it?
To see where you live, just listen to an artist
I very much feel the vibrations of particular places, to the point that they become unacknowledged characters in my fiction and poetry. I know I’m not alone, even among writers.
Visual artists are also engaged in observing closely and progressing beyond, if they may. Some are not shy about acknowledging their insights, either.
For a few examples, let’s start by turning to Jamie Wyeth’s commenting about Mohegan Island and then venture from there.
- “You look at most paintings of gulls and they look like doves. If you really look at a gull, it is a beautiful bird, but it is a scavenger. It’s a mean, tough bird. To me they’re the sea more than anything else. The eye of a gull, you could paint a million seascapes and you don’t get the same sense of those eyes looking at you. They’re reptilian really.” Where I live, gulls are inescapable, even when you’d rather they weren’t.
- As for living surrounded by water: “Houses on the island are of as much interest as the people. They’re hanging on as tenuously as the people are. Unlike buildings in Pennsylvania which almost grow out of the earth, I always feel that if a big wind comes, everything would be just swept away.” I’ve already posted on this, looking at the town’s gable-style Capes. No wonder I tremble under a heavy wind, as I did in March so long ago in Ohio!
- “The danger with Maine is that it is so anecdotal and emblematic in terms of pretty houses, pretty lobster traps — ‘quaint’ things. Maine is not that way. Maine has a lot of edge, a lot of angst.”
- On blue sea glass: “Maine people must have drunk an inordinate amount of Milk of Magnesia.” I don’t think we need to go there.
- Taos Pueblo/Dine illustrator and designer Margeaux Abeyta also delivers some specifics: “I can’t count the times my father and I would take the long drive from Santa Fe to Gallup just for mutton sandwiches. … Every now and then we’d come across a perfect sky – a deep cobalt blue with rays of cerulean and clouds growing ever toward us as we drove under their long-cast shadows. They moved with one another in an effort to graze the land. Months later, I would recall our drive, lined on the canvas walls of his messy studio. He had documented that very day, an immortalized memory. Looking at across the room at half-finished canvases filled with underbrush of color, I saw the manifestations of a life lived. In this way, it became his own, his way to have a discourse with the world. Tracing back each part of himself, conversations and feelings embedded into each stroke, his very world as he dreamed it.” I must admit getting goosebumps just transcribing that rich passage. But she has more:
- “When my grandmother would take me chokecherry picking deep in the shaded paths, we would lift the bottoms of our blouses to hold the berries, staining the cotton with maroon impressions. While hauling home our treasures, she told stories of her own childhood. When she and her friends would walk the same trails only to be met by an old brown bear, quickly they ran, as gems of red fell from their hands, rolling down the hill behind them. I would look back into that shaded path where berries grew and feel the immense power of this strange world. Falling back beside my grandmother, I knew I was safe in this place she called home.” I am awed by how much deep memories of color inflect emotions here. The red could as easily be blood.
- Now for Alex Katz on his work done in New York City and Maine: “My paintings take all kinds of light. I’ve done a lot of night paintings, and twilight, and morning paintings. I think when people paint the same light all the time, it gets a little monotonous.” Do you ever think about the light where you live? Or the ways it inflects the colors your life?
- British painter Clare Thatcher returns to that connection of color to emotion: “I select a palette I have felt when at the location. My line drawings in charcoal or pencil suggest color to me. I aim to capture the mood and sensation that transports me back there.” What are the colors of where you’re living?
- For a bit of historical dimension, we have French master of the au plein Jean-Baptist Camille Corot: “I am struck upon seeing a certain place. While I strive for conscientious imitation, I yet never for an instant lose the emotion that has taken hold of me.” That points us back to the vibe.
- Nick Bantock, meanwhile, looks at another kind of color: “Art is like therapy; what comes up is what comes up. It may be dark, but that’s what comes up. You may want to keep some of it in a drawer … but never judge it.
Well, I am trying to think of what would have been representative of my native Ohio or neighboring Indiana as well as what would have emotionally internalized as a result. I’ve been much more aware in my moves since, as a poet and as a novelist.
As Aristotle said, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” And also, Edward Hopper’s, “If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.” Or, for me, to write.
Culture – yes, the word
When I was growing up, it meant something of a Mount Olympus quality.
Not some kind of norm but an aspiration – a better person and society in the end.
Back before the very culture clash between the two concepts.
Now we add to that the concept of supremacy, not just white but European. Or perhaps, grudgingly, Chinese.
The question remains: How do we encourage excellence?
And what do we name it?
Ways my harshest critic corrects me
I would have said alert but she’d counter twitchy.
I would have said observant but she’d counter oblivious.
I would have said free-thinking but she’d counter too serious.
I would have said independent but she’d counter aloof.
I would have said sensitive but she’d counter nervous.
I would have said inquisitive but she’d say I rarely ask questions.
I would have said accepting but she’d counter indecisive.
I would have said nurturing but she’d counter cold.
I would have said serious but she’d counter silent.
I would have said playful but she’d counter negative.
I would have said witty but she’d counter legalistic.
I would have said intelligent but she’d counter uptight.
I would have said slightly bent but she’d counter insecure.
I would have said self-sufficient but she’d counter evasive.
I would have said caring but she’d counter mean.
I would have said spiritual but she’d ask how that makes me a better person.
I would have said spirited but she’d counter lazy.
I would have said somewhat reserved but she’d counter socially deficient.
I would have said somewhat shy but she’d counter loner.
I would have said elitist in quest of excellence and quality but she’d counter self-centered.
I would have said egalitarian in opportunity and expectation but she’d counter workaholic.
I would have said outdoorsy but she’d counter escapist.
I would have said rainbow chaser but she’d counter impractical.
I would have said aging but she’d agree.
I would have said youthful but she’d counter bald.
I would have said honest, direct but she’d counter defensive.
I would have said exploring but she’d counter unemotional.
I would have said hedonist but she’d counter fiscally irresponsible.
I would have said ascetic but she’d counter dull.
I would have said a bit gallant but she’d counter straight-laced.
I would have said organized but she’d notice I rarely dust.
I would have said self-starter but she’d counter with a list of projects.
I would have said visionary but she’d counter icy.
I would have said original but she’d counter quirky.
I would have said inventive but she’d counter weird.
I would have said creative but she’d counter unrealistic.
I would have said hopeful but she’d counter inexpressive.
I would have said responsive but she’d counter boring.
I would have said kind, gentle but she’d counter too serious.
I would have said frugal but she’d counter tight-fisted.
I would have said financially marginal but she would have countered too willing to pay full price.
~*~
Mirror, mirror, on the wall?
Popcorn goes way back in antiquity
Last year I presented a Double Tendrils about the popular and seemingly ubiquitous snack of popcorn. Quite simply, it’s not just for watching movies. And around this time of year, we start eating more. Not only that, but it turns out to be a uniquely American contribution to the world’s cuisine.
The topic simply overflowed so much that we didn’t have room for tidbits about its deep history.
So here goes with ten related factoids that pop up on that front.
- Try to think of a more purely American food than popcorn. Whether salted or buttered at a movie theatre, or as kettle corn at a county fair or a caramel popcorn ball come the holidays, we hoover it up, even when we’re not watching movies, OK?
- Look, archeologists have found traces of popcorn in 1,000-year-old Peruvian tombs. But it goes back way even earlier.
- The first use of wild and then cultivated corn points for now to the Bat Cave of west central New Mexico in 1948. Ranging from smaller than a penny to about two inches, those ears are about 5,600 years old, older than Adam and Eve, for anyone counting.
- In tombs on the east coast of Peru, researchers have found grains of popcorn perhaps 1,000 years old. These grains have been so well-preserved that they will still pop.
- Popcorn was integral to early 16th century Aztec ceremonies. As Bernardino de Sahagun observed, “And also a number of young women danced, having so vowed, a popcorn dance. As thick as tassels of maize were their popcorn garlands. And these they placed upon (the girls’) heads.” In 1519, Cortes got his first sight of popcorn when he invaded Mexico and came into contact with the Aztecs. Popcorn was an important food for the Aztec natives, who also used popcorn as decoration for ceremonial headdresses, necklaces and ornaments on statues of their gods, including Tlaloc, the god of rain and fertility.
- An early Spanish account of a ceremony honoring the Aztec gods who watched over fishermen reads: “They scattered before him parched corn, called momochitl, a kind of corn which bursts when parched and discloses its contents and makes itself look like a very white flower; they said these were hailstones given to the god of water.”
- Writing of Peruvian natives in 1650, the Spaniard Cobo said, “They toast a certain kind of corn until it bursts. They call it pisancalla, and they use it as a confection.”
- Kernels of popcorn found in burial grounds in the coastal deserts of north Chile were so well preserved they would still pop even though they were 1,000 years old. Likewise, in southwestern Utah, a 1,000-year-old popped kernel of popcorn was found in a dry cave inhabited by predecessors of the Pueblos.
- Indigenous Iroquois people in North America were documented popping corn kernels in heated pottery jars near the Great Lakes region in the 1600s.
- The first patent for a microwave popcorn bag was issued to General Mills in 1981, and home popcorn consumption increased by tens of thousands of pounds in the years following.
Young yearning and pining
Remembering gazing forlornly at LS, the cheerleader of the mysterious olive skin, and dark brown eyes etc.
Jenny, a year older, at the other end of our street, too.
The ache … tongue-tied, like facing a childhood hero or famous actor or scientist …
A shadow of that looking at prime foliage.
Kinisi 283
poetential
potential
We’re supposed to be flush with improvements
Naturally, you must be curious about our new bathroom – what we’ve called our real bathroom, in contrast to the water closet on the first floor.
Well, for now, so are we.
As we considered our shrinking funding options, we admitted we didn’t have to finish the upstairs bathroom at this point, though having it done would deliver a definite quality of life improvement.
We wanted a tub that would be deep enough for a real soak – one that I could actually fit into without attempting hatha yoga with water. The tub also had to have a left-hand drain if we were to avoid having the pipe run against the outside wall, where it might freeze and burst in deep winter.
Our original choice, built-in or alcove, switched to a free-standing model after seeing one in a neighbor’s home during a party. We went back a week later to get a second look and measurements.
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The toilet had to be a back-flushing model due to a shallow space in the flooring.
Having lighting above the sink and electrical outlets in the room would be huge advances over the water closet downstairs, as we learned in the 4½ years of its being our only option. Do note that having a carpenter who was also a licensed electrician meant that all of the lines and outlets would be in place before the drywall went up.
As for storage? A large medicine cabinet and a vanity for the sink are considered boffo additions, ones you probably take for granted in your own digs.
~*~
But once the bathroom and laundry room were plumbed, awaiting the next steps, we ran into complications.
First was actually ordering the tub and toilet and getting them delivered to our remote locale. Getting agreement on some of the selections added to our delay. Our plumber kept delaying, too, especially once in took a lucrative gig out in Indiana and then further out in Seattle. A potential replacement wasn’t interested in delivering what we wanted rather than the generic stuff they had it stock. All the while, our available money went to other parts of the renovation. So for, now, alas, this is moved over the next phase, whenever.
Look for the witness in the work, too
Cinema critic Roger Ebert was talking of the importance of the witness in every movie and pointing to the places where the character appeared in the film under discussion, mostly in a lower corner. The comment flashed me to the reality of how often the hardest thing to see is what should be the most obvious. It’s not just the elephant in the room, but also smaller things we take for granted.
One way or another, all fiction is built on the observer, who is also to some degree an outsider or misfit, too. (If there are any exceptions, I’d love to hear them.) Four of my novels, for instance, were intuitively built around a photographer, a profession that makes Cassia’s father a well-trained witness. In turn, as she investigates his archives, she, too, becomes a witness, even before she starts commenting on his earlier life.
Of course, as a reader, you also become a witness. Or even a voyeur, as Camille Paglia has contended. It’s almost like every page is a microscope slide to be interpreted.
Curiously, I now see this also at play in a long-term non-fiction project in my life. Forty 40 years ago, seemingly by accident, I became involved in trying to uncover my father’s ancestry. I thought we were simply homogenous Midwesterners who had always been in Ohio from its beginning. What I discovered, though, was that one branch was – but German-speaking and largely akin to Amish. My name-line, however, was Quaker by way of North Carolina and its slaveholding culture. Both strands were outsiders to the larger society and also pacifist. It opened my eyes to alternative histories and to a recognition that stories don’t always have to resolve nicely – three people may record their memories quite differently, and maybe all three are true, if not factually accurate.
Oh yes, the research was often collaborative, with correspondence going and coming from others working on parts of the puzzle. It wasn’t always quite as lonely as drafting fiction or poetry.
To my surprise, as my novel What’s Left was taking shape, Cassia started assembling bits about her Greek-American grandparents, who had died before her birth, and then beyond to her great-grandparents, who brought the family to the New World. Like me, she found valuable clues in the surviving snapshots and formal portraits regarding their personalities, as she also did in the letters and other documents.
None of my ancestors came by way of Ellis Island, and on Dad’s side they were all in this country by the time of the Revolutionary War. I once pondered doing a series of novels on them, but I’m still intimidated by the technical challenges – a realistic language they can speak and we can understand being high among them.
Witness, I might add, has an extra dimension in Quaker thinking. It’s not just what one sees or hears but how one lives. The goal is integrity, as in wholeness or consistency. Is that what others see in us or our lives and work? Or even as our goal and ideal, even when we fall short reaching for it?
And, as a final twist, I’m realizing that the Indigenous perspective of looking back seven generations when making decisions for the future would take me back to the birth of Orphan George in 1701.
I do find that mindboggling.
~*~
You can find my genealogical gleanings on my Orphan George blog.
The novels, meanwhile, are available in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. They’re also available in paper and Kindle at Amazon, or you can ask your local library to obtain them.
Jnana's Red Barn 