Tag: Life

SOMETIMES I WONDER IF PANDORA WAS A NOVELIST

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Maybe it was a mistake earlier this year to reopen the draft of my latest novel, which I’d put aside in July 2015 to season. But I did. (And then, once opened, something like this can become impossible to close tight again – at least until it’s done for now, whenever it decides.)

For the most part, I’m very happy with what I found – nothing embarrassed me, and some sections struck me as quite exciting, especially when I kept asking myself, “Who wrote this!”

Still, it’s been a very slow process for what was supposed to be a read-through, mostly for continuity and consistency. Admittedly, it’s a big book – about twice the length of a typical novel, or 35,000 words more than my longest one yet published. The challenge has been in finding the blocks of time to tackle each of the 16 chapters, and moving along while I have all of the characters floating around in my head. (That alone can turn an author into a rather distant person within a household, even in the middle of conversations.)

I’d made one decision to shift as many of the verb tenses as I could to more accurately reflect the way many people speak when relating events, but determining which verb to change and which one to leave alone – even in a single sentence – could be slow hoeing. (Or is that slow rowing? Another detail to check out later. Even slow going? Yipes, it gets endless.) We’ll see how successfully the verb strategy works.

And then there were the additional details to better explain the action. Instead of big cuts, which I’d anticipated as a normal part of the process at this stage, I found a need to say more. In one chapter, I found that adding no more than two pages actually makes the section move along faster and feel shorter. Anyone else have that experience?

On top of that, as I’ve found in previous manuscripts, certain words repeat through the story and no matter how crucial their underlying meaning to the emerging theme, they simply start sounding like sour notes. In this case, independent, business, gather, vague, vision, even fit topped the demand for thesaurus treatment. Each synonym then amplifies the message and infuses a wider understanding. Still, that step’s tedious.

At the moment, I’m lifted by elation and can breathe that big sigh of relief. It’s done, for now. I’ve shipped off copies to my two harshest in-house critics and can return to other projects before those two fire back with their caustic reactions, brilliant suggestions, essential additions, more essential deletions, smarty quips for my free use, or whatever.

And when that input has gone into the manuscript, I can send it off to a round of beta readers. The ones I’m hoping will be kinder.

There’s no denying my elation, even knowing how much remains to be done before going public.

AS THE WRITING ON THE WALL SAYS, LOOKING FOR FUN?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

In a recent dream, a former colleague was chastising me for not having fun in my free time.

“But I write!”

“No,” he snapped, “that’s work!”

Well, I do swim laps, but I wouldn’t call that fun. It’s more of a release, I suppose, or healthy routine, back and forth, back and forth, looking at the lifeguard, other swimmers, the water, the clock.

The dream somehow overlooked choir, which is fun, no matter how demanding or even exhausting our rehearsals and performances can be. And then there’s folk dancing, especially as New England contras and Greek lines. And, yes, I do like to hike and hope to get back to camping. As for gardening? Well, my wife says I do seem to have fun with composting. Ahem. And then there are the martinis and wine. Add to the list hosting company for a party or dinner as well as visiting others. Travel with my wife or among Friends has its pleasures, too, and I somehow seem to focus on active fun rather than a passive variety like kicking back with a movie, listening intently to music, reading a book, or roaming through art galleries. Oh, yes, taking the train anywhere is fun, and the station’s only nine blocks from my house. Let’s add playing with a digital camera to the list, too. As for blogging? Curious what the dream overlooked!

Well, what I do remember is that at the end, my colleague wound up agreeing that writing could also be fun. Sometimes.

SECRET PAGES THAT SHOULD REMAIN SO

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Somehow I’ve been recalling an invasion of my journals, way back when there were only a couple of notebooks, or maybe a few more, as my collection.

Decades later, I was told that nobody has any business opening anyone else’s journals – it’s an invasion of not just privacy but personal integrity. A form of abuse, actually.

The reaction at the time, though, continues to haunt me: “These look like they’re for publication. There’s nothing personal!”

Meaning, as I still hear it, no deep feelings or emotions.

This, mind you, was coming from a neighbor and dear friend, not a lover.

She had no business – absolutely none – for violating my psyche. Remember that, if you must when facing a similar temptation.

When I started journaling, about the time I graduated from college, I was attempting to construct a thread to help me identify the scope of “my problem” through a period of rejection and deep depression. What emerged was more a matter of observing the world around me and the many startling new experiences my encounters were presenting. To my surprise, I started recording far more of the highs than the psychological lows. Many of the entries have ultimately worked their way into my fiction and poetry, either as prompts or details. And many other pages remain embarrassing claptrap.

Apparently something similar happened when I was living in the ashram. In reviewing those journals much later, I was appalled to find someone had ripped out whole pages. I wish I could see what I’d written – it must have touched realities too close to raw truth.

Much later, when I was more candid in recording my feelings and emotions, a girlfriend did clandestinely dig into my more recent pages and then, when I came home from the office, turned those confessions to myself against me. This was in something that was a difficult relationship from the get-go, and where else could I pour my confusion and anger, much less look at issues I needed to work on? The underlying message was stifling. Bottle your emotions. Keep quiet. Anything you say or write may be held against you.

This countered an underlying problem I’ve had in that I’ve always had trouble fully acknowledging or owning my feelings and emotions. The reasons are many and deeply buried, but one result is that I live far more in my left brain than the right, at least as far as human relationships go. As for expressing them? A first draft might land far from the mark.

Well, for those who might wonder about those journals – now up to volume No. 188 – I can say you’d find most of them pretty boring. Much of the time my biggest challenge comes simply in trying to track the events of the previous week or so. Unlike my wife, who can remember in vivid detail events from decades ago, my days become blurs. She’s come to realize I’m defenseless in arguments, simply because I have no idea what I meant when I allegedly said or did such and so years ago. (Anyone else have that experience?)

Add to that my penchant for an idealistic outlook and, well, what results is often more an outline to be filled in later, should I get a chance.

A FULLER SEQUENCE OF RELATED RENOVATIONS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

From the outset, we could see our bathroom project would encompass more than just the second-floor chamber in question itself. Other crucial home repair issues of longer standing would finally demand attention in the sequence of labor at hand.

For starters, the bulkhead to the cellar had to be replaced. Bulkhead? In many old houses, it’s the entryway to the cellar, from outdoors. (Note that I say cellar and not basement – in my mind, cellars flood and require a sump pump. You don’t put a Ping Pong table down there much less try to “finish” a room.) Our bulkhead’s plywood covering had rotted badly and was padlocked from the outdoors. (Where was the key these days, anyway?) A temporary plywood layer, covered in plastic, had been dropped over the bulkhead several years ago to prevent anyone from falling through to the stairway below. As I said, temporary.

The bulkhead? What’s that got to do with the second-floor, you ask?

Just start with the plumbers who would have to access the plumbing under the house. And then let’s add the carpenter’s need to have a place to set up his table saw and similar shop work.

So replacing the bulkhead turned into a multiday opening round to enable other stages. In an old house like ours, with all of its amateur “improvements,” finding anything on the market that will fit our existing conditions can be a challenge. As we found, accommodating the nearest-size metal unit would mean building the entry wall up another foot – a good move anyway, considering the way water moves around the house … or into it. Water flowing into the cellar, if you haven’t already guessed, is not good. The bulkhead we found at Home Depot was half the price of the one at our locally owned lumberyard. That’s not always the case, in these projects, but it did sway our decision.

One down, many others to go.

At one time before we bought the house, a first-floor cubbyhole had contained a small toilet, shower, and vanity, but these were no longer usable, separated by a second section where our clothes washer and dryer were jammed in. Once our upstairs bathroom was torn up, we’d need a toilet, at the least. (We could use my mother-in-law’s shower in her apartment in the barn or, more likely for me, the ones at the indoor pool where I swim most days.) So restoring the toilet was added to the picture, for use while the upstairs work was being done. Follow this?

We’d have the toilet from upstairs moved to the first floor so the upstairs work could continue, and then return upstairs when the bathroom itself was completed and our attention turned to the downstairs space.

In the bigger picture, this space – two small connected rooms, actually – could be transformed. If we removed the useless shower, with its rotting floor and falling tile, we could use that corner for a stacking clothes washer and dryer, which would then free up the entryway for a food pantry and broom closet, where the vacuum cleaner might also reside. (Whew!) A usable toilet here, of course, would be a welcome convenience, especially when we had company over. Let’s just call that the Utility Room Project, steps one and two.

While we were at it, under the house, we’d need to address our dying hot-water heater and sump pump, which takes us back to the cellar and that bulkhead. And since we had the electrical lines in the bathroom already exposed, we decided to rewire an adjacent bedroom where only one outlet functioned.

As I’m becoming ever fonder of saying, the plot thickened.

It’s hardly worth mentioning the overdue hallway repainting that moved up on the list.

~*~

My poems on the challenges of renovations, repairs, and relating as a husband are collected as Home Maintenance, a free ebook at Thistle/Flinch editions.

BEYOND THE SUPERSTITION AND BLAME

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

How do we deal with a segment of the public that has no interest in factual reality? Where belief, unsupported by critical reasoning, crosses into outright superstition? Too often, alas, it’s even wrapped in religious trappings – tainting both church and state with irrational fervor or madness.

And that’s what we have in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s campaign. The lies and half-truths will be hard to wash clean. The stench will remain even longer.

Yes, the underlying hurt runs deep, but Bernie Sanders tagged the causes of the problems accurately and pointed to joint collective action to repair the damage and heal the common good. Not so Trump or his legions.

There was nothing pragmatic or even logical in Trump’s babbling, no matter how many were deluded by his initial snake-oil charm. He was not telling it like it was but rather how they imagined life that might have been had they not been passed by. And then, toward the end, he was denying so much of what he’d told them in the first place or that his words had been just a joke. Locker room banter, as he claimed, not that many of us white guys recognized anything of the sort.

Now, no matter the outcome of the election, the nation’s divided by what he’s encouraged.

It’s not just racism, though those who think it’s fine for police to murder unarmed citizens is justifiable go about stealing Black Lives Matter lawn signs and then are alarmed if blacks take up the right-wing’s interpretation of the Second Amendment in self-defense. Folks, what would you do in that situation?

I’ll return to Bernie’s to-do list. I don’t think he was the administrator to push the goals through, but he certainly did an admirable job in articulating them. May he continue, building a base to take both houses of Congress in 2018.

Meanwhile, I’ll lament for what passes for national debate these days in all the tumult. We need honest dialogue to advance. And that will include admission of fault where it’s dues, rather than more blaming others.

REAL NEWS CONTINUES REGARDLESS OF THE HEADLINES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Who will cover them now? All the politicians taking office? All of their dealings with lobbyists and special interests? Who will speak for the public? Or the common good?

I’ve covered some of the work of the daily press in my Newspaper Traditions category, and remind you it’s still a rich resource to visit. It’s a major part of the route that landed me here, after all.

The bigger, scarier perspective is one I take to surreal dimensions in my novel, Hometown News, which also reflects the situation many workers endure in the unchecked spread of multinational conglomerates. Think of Dilbert on steroids. Or the vulnerability of localities in the face of global giants.

The real news continues regardless of the headlines. Take it from me. Or my novel.

Hometown News

~*~

For the novel, click here.

 

VOTING WITH SAM

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Usually, I’m tight-lipped about how I’ve voted. But once, my now ex-father-in-law (the retired colonel) and I (still the hippie in the workplace) compared the ballots we cast. To our mutual surprise, we discovered we supported the same candidates – some Republican, some Democrat.

Our reasons were identical: we turned to individuals of character who were interested in solving problems rather than acting on ideology. It helped that we knew many of them – pro and con.

 

 

TALLY THE BODIES, NOT THE NOISE, IN THE END

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Contrary to right-wing proclamations, today’s Silent Majority runs independent, in the middle, far to left of the GOP. The rabid right wing, in fact, is anything but silent. Just listen to AM radio, if you must, or the Fox News propaganda machine.

No wonder they decry independent survey results that fail to support their fantasies, even while they continue to bray loudly.

(Remember, Hillary Clinton did win the popular vote for president. The Electoral College, however, is the one that counts.)

I remain concerned that in focusing so much on the surveys, the mass media introduced one more variable to the equation. In a multi-party race, if you’re assuming one candidate will win, is there a chance that entice casting a “conscience” vote elsewhere? And if so, how many would it take to sway the actual outcome?

Or, might it even have an impact if you’re assuming one candidate will lose, and if so, might enough “conscience” votes seal the deal?

In other words, it’s a case where the experiment itself might alter the results. I’d love to hear of cases in the physical sciences where this has happened. Meanwhile, back to the social sciences, I’ve long wondered about this, but the current situation magnifies the impact – and potential devastation.