Tag: Life

Just to thicken the plot

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As we looked for ways to personalize our bedrooms, I quickly settled on white as the dominant paint color for mine. We had already agreed on keeping the downstairs walls white, on the creamy side, especially for the way it enhances the marvelous natural light we have here on the island.

In my case, I wanted the purest white possible, a reminder of the incredible beacon at the fringe of the moon immediately before and after a full solar eclipse. On a more practical note, the white theme guaranteed that the line between the ceiling and walls would be continuous rather than jagged.

To close off the closet, I wanted a curtain rather than a door, in part to maximize space in the room and in part for a bold accent. I quickly gravitated toward indigo for the fabric. Yes, I have a taste for sushi and sashimi and Japanese design in general. The curtain inspiration, should you ask, springs from a few favorite restaurants. Besides, I have a long love of ascetic clarity, including the Shakers as well as Zen, even before I became Quaker and flirted with its historic Plain style, which can also be seen here.

The bedspread and bookshelves would add their own colors and textures to the mix.

~*~

Playing around with the blueness, I even did some online scans and duly noted:

My desired bedroom blue accent
Somewhere around 13 red, 27 green, 54 blue, 100% opacity
Just give me a name, somehow
Hex #0D1B36, for starters
As for the purest white of whites?
Is it even possible?

Just so I’d be ready when it came time to trot off to the paint store or fabric shop.

~*~

Christmas intervened before the upstairs was ready for painting.

Gift-giving in our family often turns into an art, sometimes including items found at yard sales. Other times it includes items you never knew you wanted or needed, though you soon discover otherwise – I’ve often been advanced on high-tech edges that way.

So, this past holiday, I unwrapped one box and encountered sample strips of cloth, all blue, nine in total, traditionally Japanese and dark blue. Along with an offer to make the curtain from my fabric of choice.

Just to see how they might work in the room.

I had no idea it could get this complicated.

They were darker than the indigo I originally envisioned, as well as more intriguing. How would each one interact with the rest of the elements in the room? I invited reactions from others in the family, and weighed those in with my own observations. What caught my fancy early on soon moved toward more subtle patterns. I’ll leave it at that for now.

The full array plus a batik dinner napkin that had started my thinking.

~*~

Beyond a café curtain on the double-hung sash window, I’m planning no “window treatments” in the room. (How I detest that term.) Privacy isn’t an issue, considering the height of the other windows, nor is direct sunlight in a north-facing room.

~*~

Continuing with the color choice palette and turning to the floor, online searches quickly convinced me that dark blue would be too much, even in small exposures. Dark red, which we had in Dover, would have resulted in a red-white-and-blue cliché. I started leaning on hunter green but began wondering if going lighter, as others in this project were thinking, might make sense.

However this turned out would be nothing like anything I had before.

Along with the emergence of a personal voice and style

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Preparing my collections of poetry for release, as well as the shorter chapbooks appearing at my Thistle Finch editions blog, has been eye-opening, especially after spending so much time concentrating on the novels.

A lot has changed in my half-century at this. At first glance, my work has seemed to shoot off in every direction. But then, in spite of that, commonalities appear. Some of them, to some extent, apply to both the prose and poetry.

Despite all of the changes in my life and the differing approaches of my writing that accompanied that, I believe some underlying qualities run through my output.

Here goes, mostly from notes to self from way back and up:

  • No tolerance for fluff. Anti-romantic. Playful twists are another matter.
  • My quest for accuracy has invoked sharp focus – despite the blur and whirl of my own life.
  • I’ve relied on flashes, gathering. Like snowfall, curiously. A burst of storm, however brief or long the season.
  • Surrealism & absurdity can be more accurate than what’s seen on the surface.
  • Jagged and leaping make sparks, akin to my Kinisi here at the Barn.
  • As for what makes my work unique? What makes me unique? (My niche?)
  • In much of my writing, I’ve mapped organic geo-history, the overlapping energies of a locale and its spirit(s), as truthfully as I can, however fragmentary the result. Personal relationships, including marriage, hover within these landscapes, even as their own physical places as well as spiritual, influencing and influenced by the larger ecosystem. I try to comprehend this within a concern for the larger, more timeless harmony (Logos).
  • My investigation of invisible vibrations of specific landscapes has led me to cherish alternative cultures that embody healing energies – Native practices, Amish, Mennonite, Quaker, and so on – in contrast to our increasingly rootless, violent, unstable society at large.
  • An awareness of the wonder of the universe and an appreciation for our own unique places within it. Out of that, roots, a radiance of peace, and the sustaining nurture of a community of kindred souls.
  • Mine is a unique, distinctive name reflecting my originality (or eccentricities) in bridging many diverse currents. My writings, as I see them, are tightly compressed, radiating clarity, and highly polished with a raw edge.
  • What’s my trademark, my signature touch?
  • Starting with poetry:
  • Distillation. Compression. Radiance.
  • Lean and polished lines.
  • An aversion to formal forms.
  • A rejection of poetry as a hidden code requiring an interpreter.
  • A preference for allowing the images and details to speak for themselves.
  • Delight in allowing the individual reader’s interpretation to unfold on its own.
  • The land and the girl / spiritual landscape / the girl in a spiritual landscape. Somehow, they overlap.
  • An unexpected snap in each line. (Thus, lines long enough for something to happen.)
  • Silences as positive openings.
  • Writing as a means of discovery and deepened memory, more than to embellish or escape.
  • As a journalist, my touchstones have been Accurate, Informative, Useful, and Entertaining. I wonder how those apply to poetry, too.
  • To honor life and its wellspring.
  • Writing as an act of gratitude and humility.
  • To be audacious without subterfuge or scrabble or sleight-of-hand.
  • To be enterprising without deception.
  • To be daring without falsification / ruse / trickery or bombast.
  • Much of my writing emerges as an attempt to record and investigate the Hidden Way as it has opened and shaped my life. Often unconventional, prompting experimental inquiry, this unfolding has led me to its ancient roots and traditions, which in turn provoke contemporary responses.

And the fiction? You can add:

  • That aversion to formula or genre, especially when it comes to marketing.
  • A preference for allowing the images and details to speak for themselves.
  • I write to discover, and to remember, more than to embellish or escape.
  • As a newspaper editor, I have often found daily journalism to be better written than many of the novels and other books that crossed my desk.
  • An awareness of the artifice of linear, rational exposition and development. How do we get beyond that?
  • Deep Image is not confined to poetry.
  • Life as an experiment. So much variability with the basic laws and given conditions.
  • I’ve relied on flashes, gathering. Like snowfall, curiously. A burst of storm, however brief or long the season. Or even confetti or a ticker-tape parade.
  • I’ve preferred discovery to fabrication. Accuracy to cleverness. Mandala engagement over private code. What is brought forth in each individual reflecting on the icon, from deep personal experience, rather than the artifact itself.

Well, that’s how I’ve defined my efforts over time. Sometimes the results do startle me, all these years later. And some of my results come closer to my ideals than others, not that I’ll fault those, either.

~*~

You can my works 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. Or you can ask your local library to obtain them.

 

Ten things Baskerville, so do come along

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

As I’ve related in other posts here, ours is widely known around town as the Anna M. Baskerville house.

For a writer and editor like me, though, Baskerville was also an important typeface in the advancement of printing.

It was the body type of the first newspaper I edited, the Belmont Hilltopper. Yup, back in high school. Our headlines were mostly Bodoni, another classic that’s mostly vanished in the internet era.

Here’s an introduction to its founder and a bit more.

So here goes for this week’s dive into arcane wonders.

  1. The typeface was designed in the mid-1750s by John Baskerville in Birmingham, England, as an intermediary between older styles, including one of my favorites by William Caslon.
  2. Baskerville increased the contrast between thick and thin strokes, making the serif faces sharper and more tapered, and shifted the axis of rounded letters to a more vertical position. Maybe you take that for granted, but it does enhance readability. Trust me.
  3. He was a wealthy industrialist who started his career as a teacher of calligraphy and a carver of gravestones before making a fortune as a manufacturer of varnished lacquer goods. You never know where you’ll encounter a true inventor or artist.
  4. In 1758, he was appointed University Printer to the Cambridge University Press, where in 1763 he published his master work, a folio-size Bible. Glory be!
  5. On his death his widow Sarah eventually sold his material to a Paris literary society, placing them out of reach of British printing, not that the move stopped imitations. The French, on the other hand, seem to have loved his openings.
  6. Oh, my, the technical discussions lead to a true rabbit hole of fine distinctions. I’m not going there, though some of you readers definitely should.
  7. John Baskerville is also noted for inventing a wove paper, smoother than laid paper that allowed for better printing impressions. One advance can definitely lead to another.
  8. Even as an avowed atheist, he was appointed printer to the University of Cambridge where he printed The Book of Common Prayer in in 1762 and a splendid Bible in 1763.
  9. By the way, you won’t find a town named Baskerville on a map. There is, though, a Baskerville Hall in Wales.
  10. A more likely place to find Baskerville is in the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle, one of the most popular novels ever.

Plenty of space for hanging clothes, by New England standards

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

A traditional New England home comes without closets, or perhaps has some quirky ones that were added later but inefficiently. It’s an unanticipated jolt for those of us who grew up elsewhere.

That tradition was something our renovation sought to rectify. Indeed, maximizing storage space was a pivotal consideration in our planning. As I’ve noted, our present home is smaller than the previous one, not that its closets were notable, even before considering all the storage capacity we had in the red barn. Yes, the barn that inspired this blog. The garden shed we added here is much, much smaller.

A few locals have been surprised by the results – what they see as closets everywhere in the newly redesigned upstairs. Each bedroom has one. Although these are shallower than a full-sized walk-in closet, they are deep enough for hanging clothes, which is our primary need.

The key in adding these came in realizing that the distance between the gable windows was two feet, enough to run narrow closets along the dividing line between the front and back bedrooms. Our original plan had those closets alternating, half for one bedroom and the other half for its neighbor. But that changed when we decided to give all of that opening to the back bedrooms, which were also smaller.

In compensation, the two front bedrooms got a shallow loft running atop those closets, as well as their own closets elsewhere in the reconfigured rooms.

Quite simply, the closet in each bedroom is unique.

Guest room closet will have three doors.

Additional storage space appears in the laundry room as well as a small hallway broom closet. Yes, even a place to stash the vacuum cleaner.

Not every lover finds roses comforting

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In support of that statement, let me offer Long-Stem Roses in a Shattered Mirror, my collection of poems released to the public today.

Think what happens when a hot relationship goes belly up and everything you trusted turns painful.

These poems arise in a brutally honest reevaluation of those interactions, as one of the lovers insisted on at the time, as well as the larger hopes and desires.

Many of the poems appeared in small-press literary magazines around the globe, but this is their first outing complete.

I have come a long, long way since, perhaps because of lessons I learned in these earlier relationships.  The poems remain intense, vivid, and powerfully moving, even at my age.

For my series of passionate roses, check out my collection in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords.com and its affiliated online retailers. Or ask your public library to obtain it.

 

How many types of boats under sail do you recognize?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Living around big waters, as I do now, means hearing a number of new terms to identify boats big and small. When you merely read about them, say in a history book, you can usually skim over the word and move on.

Not so when you’re trying to describe what you just saw.

Today we won’t attempt to get into the array of mostly motorized vessels. Not even a Bayliner versus a Boston Whaler. Naval ships alone would require a long list.

Instead, let’s look at a general overview of boats originally powered by the wind. (Admittedly, today many of them will have an internal engine for additional power.) These can range from small sailboats to majestic tall ships.

  1. Sloop. The most common type of sailing vessel, it has a single mast, usually with one triangular mainsail (in what’s called Bermuda rigging) and, in the front, a triangular headsail, usually a jib. These can range from small, single-person fun boats to larger racing boats manned by trained crews.
  2. Cat. Or catboat. Has a single mast rising from the front of the boat and a large, single sail on a long boom. A second beam of wood, called a gaff, runs along the top of the sail, turning it into a four-sided sheet of hexagonal shape rather than the triangle. They were popular New England workboats around the early 1900s, short (typically ) 20 to 30 feet long and wide, highly stable, and have made a comeback today.
  3. Cutter. A single-masted vessel resembling a sloop, but often having a gaff-rigged mainsail and an extended spar called a long bowsprit extending from the bow, which allows a second headsail (a staysail, or “staysul.”)
  4. Schooner. Two or more masts, with the largest sail (the mainsail) at the aft, plus a foresail (resembling the mainsail) on the mast ahead of it as well as a jib and staysail at the bowsprit. They may also have one or more topsails and a small sail called a mizzen aft of the mainsail. With their complex rigging, they can be fast and undeniably majestic. And, yes, my favorite.
  5. Ketch. Resembles a schooner but has an extra mast behind the mainsail.
  6. Yawl. This term has several different meanings, the first regarding rigs with one or two fully equipped masts plus a mizzen mast aft. It can also refer to a double-ended hull boat that could be worked from the beaches, not that I’m finding any reference to sailing in what would be the equivalent of reverse gear. Some of them, if you’re a bettor, may have been the fastest-sailing open boats ever built. And it even seems to be a kind of dinghy. Just so you get an idea of how loose some of these terms can be.
  7. Brig. This two-masted ship introduces us to square-rigging with sails arrayed on horizontal spars perpendicular to the keel and masts – that is, “squared.” The spars, called yards, present the sails to face the wind from behind. The foremast of a brig is always square-rigged, but some varieties may have a gaff or lateen sail on the mainmast. (Lateen is an ancient arrangement I won’t get into unless you’re going to Egypt.) “Square,” as far as masts go, means more or less perpendicular to the hull, unlike the ones more or less parallel to the hull. Trust me on this.
  8. Barquentine. Its foremast was square-rigged, with gaff-rigged masts behind. But let’s skip ahead.
  9. Barque (or bark). A three- to five-masted square-rigged ship consisting of a foremast, mainmast, and a smaller, often gaff-rigged mizzen mast at the aft for steering stability. Far and away the most numerous of the square-rigged vessels. Enough of the finer points. Let’s turn to the most glorious.
  10. Tall (or full-rigged) ship. Three or more masts, all fully square-rigged, one sail above another, often five or six on a mast, with a hull often much longer than a schooner. The individual sails were smaller than a schooner’s and less likely to rip out in a storm, but the number of them provided more overall sail surface, allowing for maximum speed. The downside was that crews of 30 or more sailors were required for handling those sheets. Still, seeing one of them is exciting. It’s what you really picture first, after all. Now, for all of the subcategories, such as a frigate.

Underfoot counts, too

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Another consideration I haven’t mentioned was the upstairs flooring.

As much as we would have liked polished hardwood, our budget called for something more affordable.

The existing flooring was more piecemeal, with unevenness and knots. It did speak of the rustic origins of the house and its historic character. Our contractor mentioned some flooring that would match it, and we were onboard. (Sorry for the pun.)

Refinishing those planks might have looked historically charming, though they were never great to begin with. Instead, we salvaged what we could and added fresh to continue.

The next question was how to treat it. Apart from two rooms and a hallway of vinyl flooring downstairs, the existing flooring, upstairs and down, had been painted a light blue that easily flaked. Could it be sanded and refinished in a natural finish? Did we have time to undertake that? Otherwise, what color of paint could we agree on, at least for the bedrooms? The bathroom and laundry room might be a different matter requiring something more waterproof.

I had hoped to decide on a paint color extending across all of the upstairs. Mine was the minority vote.

That left me facing a decision for my room. Please stay tuned.