Tag: Life

Finally, something the public could see

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When the scaffolding around the front and side of the house came down after more than a year, the public could finally see what we had intended.

The result actually took off in some tweaks that left it looking, well, we hope for the better – things like the double windows upstairs, which I’ve discussed in previous posts.

In a small community like ours, people were bound to gawk and talk, and so far all we’ve heard has been admiration.

As it now stands.
Starting from this.

When we embarked on this project, I quipped that old-house fixes took three times the estimated time and budget, and ours (alas) has been no exception on both fronts.

Actually, more, or maybe less, if you consider the Covid whammy and inflation. Besides, we got into a great deal more than adding space overhead: many of the extra costs addressed items in our home inspection report, things like rot, wiring issues, plumbing, masonry. Oh my, it was a long list in addition to the more pressing roofing situation that concerned our insurance policy.

So much of what we paid for would be unseen: the aforesaid rewiring (throughout the house, cellar to roof), sculptural work to allow the new farming to sit atop the old (how this structure ever survived before this is a miracle), spray-foam insulation, caulking. The interior storage lofts weren’t as simple as promised but they add for architectural drama (and the name of our architect, mainly us and Adam), nor were some of the exterior efforts to preserve the Cape image as seen from the street while drastically altering the reality.

But then, when our new cedar shingling was finally finished and the construction scaffolds were removed after more than a year, how handsome, as one of the coconspirators put it. Or, from my perspective, dramatic.

I’m hoping both Anna Baskerville and Captain John Shackford, as previous residents, would approve. As well as the list of others who have left their imprint here.

Frankly, we treasure all of it.

With an eye and ear of personal detachment

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

One of the luxuries of not writing under deadline is that you can put a work aside for a while to let it season. Pick it up again a few months or even years later, and you may see so much that needs reworking or the trash can, but at other times the page can astonish you.

I’ve had that experience lately at the monthly open mic nights at the arts center, where I’ve been reading snippets from my published The Secret Side of Jaya as well as selected poems. As I was halfway through my time on the stage one night, I was struck by the thought, “Who wrote that!” It was a daring approach to fiction, completely contrary to what would emerge from the Iowa Writers Workshop, but it was mesmerizing my audience. I certainly wouldn’t write that way again, either. Still, I feel pride.

Sometimes, of course, that sense of “Who wrote that, it is so incredibly fine,” is countered by “Who wrote that piece of tripe? I’m glad it never saw publication.” Sometimes only pages apart.

Reading at an open mic or as a featured reader is a valuable test for how a page works, as you can feel from the energy in the room. Lately, I’ve been taking pages from the middle of a novel and reading them without an explanation of the previous action. Think of them as a trailer for a movie.

~*~

Well, mine is a contrast to the kids who get up on the stage and apologize for reading an old work, meaning something they wrote three weeks ago or even three months. Little do they know!

Parts of The Secret Side of Jaya go back 50 years.

~*~

At the moment, that has me wondering how non-writers revisit earlier times in their lives. Photos, old letters, trophies, musical albums?

The Argentine writer Borges took the concept so far as to ask himself about Borges and the other Borges – the one on paper and the other in the flesh – which one was which, at any given time? He no longer knew.

Or the Japanese composer who insisted he wasn’t the same person today he was yesterday, much less 30 years earlier.

Another consideration in revisiting earlier writing, especially as drafts, is that what we’re most fond of is likely to be what bothers others the most; what we’re about to toss out in the next revision may be what is most effective with our readers. The point was raised, I believe, by Joyce Carol Oates, but it’s true to my experience.

As critics of others’ work, by the way, we’re likely to be harshest on those whose work is most like our own! Too much mirror?

~*~

You can find my novels 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.

Oh, for the tart wit of the Algonquin Round Table   

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Whatever happened to the art of witty retorts? For that matter, the cozy gathering places of sophisticated regulars in urban centers, where at least one of the participants slyly made note of the ongoings?

Does this have anyone else evoking a picture of the New Yorker crowd at their daily luncheons at Manhattan’s Algonquin Hotel, where Noel Coward, Harpo Marx, and Dorothy Parker, among others, held forth. I’m surprised to see that cartoonist James Thurber wasn’t among them, especially since he resided in the hotel, nor was Cole Porter diddling away at a piano. Well, Thurber didn’t enjoy their penchant for practical jokes.

Still, on other occasions, the Algonks delighted in charades and the “I can give you a sentence” game, which spawned Parker’s memorable sentence using the word horticulture: “You can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think.”

I’m assuming you groaned there.

Now, let’s consider ten more caustic wisecracks from Dorothy herself:

  1. “Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.”
  2. “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”
  3. “The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.”
  4. “Don’t look at me in that tone of voice.”
  5. “I don’t know much about being a millionaire, but I’ll bet I’d be darling at it.”
  6. “Tell him I was too fucking busy – or vice versa.”
  7. “Heterosexuality is not normal, it’s just common.”
  8. “Brevity is the soul of lingerie,” along with, “I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.”
  9. “I hate writing, I love having written.”
  10. “That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.”

Let’s not overlook her classic verse:

I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I’m under the table,
after four I’m under my host.

What do you think about doors?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Most of us, I suspect, seldom think about them at all – they’re just there, open-or-shut as we move on to something else or perhaps seek some privacy. Oh, sometimes they stick or squeak or the knob needs tightening, but for the most part we rarely even see them. As for simply walking into one, BLAM! Sometimes it’s not a joke or only a black eye.

As perspective, when our renovation project began, I was occupying a bedroom that had no door. Ours is an old house, after all, and the back parlor, as we also call the room, sat off the kitchen and our tiny bathroom. At least the bathroom had a door, though it didn’t close fully. As a matter of fact, few of the indoor doors in our house closed fully and the exterior ones were equally suspect.

Adam, our amazing contractor, raised another question about which way each of our upcoming doors would open. I assumed, erroneously, that they would be situated to minimize obstruction of open space. Instead, it seems that doors conventionally open with the right hand. Not the left. From either side, at that. Try it and let me know if I’m wrong.

The discussion thickened, no pun intended, when one of the coconspirators in this renovation declared she wouldn’t have hollow-core doors in the house, not even the bedrooms. My leaning for two of the upstairs bedrooms had been for Japanese-style curtains and for leaving the laundry room open. But then considerations of noise, privacy, and smoke-and-fire emergencies overruled me. A bathroom, of course, needs a solid closure, period. Would ours upstairs have a frosted window, like the one downstairs? As you see, this can get complicated. Those popular flip-this house cable TV programs are so lacking.

But back to topic.

The other coconspirator proposed picking up antique doors salvaged from other renovation projects, and we decided to go that route. They didn’t even have to match, did they?

~*~

Still ahead was what to do with the two exterior doors downstairs.

They were leaky, as far as bad weather went, warped, and rotting. The front door presents a neighborhood impression as well as the challenge of upholding the town’s historical character. Its storm door had already fallen away, due to frame warping.

To see some examples of exterior doors of Eastport homes, take a look at the Doors Fit for a Cape photo album at Thistle Finch editions.

A baroque twist runs through my distilled expression

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Samuel Johnson and his baroque literary constructions gave a big push to my writing ambitions after high school. Let me just say I’ve loved the clarity of Mozart from my adolescence on, and Bach and Handel have risen in my estimation in the years since. The brash English master fell right into that, though I now see again just how irreverent he was, despite all of his professed orthodoxy.

What it means it that I’m comfortable reading and writing certain kinds of complex sentences that are foreign to modern readers. Perhaps I should apologize? At least it’s not the only way I put sentences in line. Still, there’s a richness that’s missing in Hemingway and his progeny.

And here I am, drilled in the newspaper journalism Papa Ernie claimed was his inspiration. Think again. (Ernie? Makes me think of Pyle, and his big desk at the Indiana Daily Student, where I once collaborated.)

But then there’s Nicholson Baker’s effortless spinning of sentences of 250 to 300 words spanning a full book page. What wonder!

My wife has noted the dichotomy between my fondness for many Old Ways and the rule-breaking, experimental edge of so much of my writing and thinking. She can point, for instance, to my fascination with the fiery writings of early Quakers in the mid-1660s placed in contrast to wild hippie extremes.

Are they really that different, though? I feel they enrich and deepen each other.

Well, to go back to the late ‘60s, let me share a personals ad I placed in the Purdue Exponent, which charged by the word.

~*~

ANNOUNCING

Dr. Samuel Johnson’s first eventful super cosmic transcendental celestial love in, incorporating the essence of mystical human enigmatic & existential psychic understanding & zodialogical causes of karmic experiences in the metaphysical process.

Syllogistic examination of cerebral chemo electrical phenomena are hitherto banished to the outermost polarities of unconscious stimulation for the duration of the aforesaid soiree.

All persons, souls, and spirits seeking admittance to the heurese beuverie must present evidence of psychological and physical preparedness & predispositions for the event. Mind blowing, seclusivenessly introverted behavior, and abstinence from mind-liberating drugs, drink, or sex, will be considered detrimental to the well-being of the sociological matrix selected for hedonistic propensities &, to avoid contamination & empoisonment of the purity of the greater society therein gathered, will be cause for expulsion.

Adoption & encasement in persona & masquerade are desired for the happening; the playwright hereby assumes no further responsibility for the roles assumed by the characters. Coming soon at your local neighborhood hanging, where all else be suspended for the duration.

RSVP

~*~

In case you’re wondering, she wasn’t impressed.

I have come a long way since then, in more ways than one.

My, that is embarrassing.

That said, you can find my novels 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.

A few personal breakthrough moments

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Can you name ten in your own life? For me:

  1. When diagramming sentences began to make sense back in high school. I can’t imagine writing or editing without it.
  2. Submitting my first letter to the editor. It led to a job offer and opened my career in journalism.
  3. My first course with Vincent Ostrom. It may have been political science, but more than that, it was training in practicing as an ongoing scholar and problem-solver.
  4. Taking up yoga. Well, it led step-by-step to becoming Quaker, too.
  5. Moving to Yakima and, a bit later, on to Baltimore. One introduced the Pacific Northwest mountains I came love so much as well as a desert; the latter came after a long, difficult, dry spell in-between.
  6. Yielding to Christ. You may have noticed my take is highly unorthodox, despite my encounters with Greek Orthodoxy later.
  7. And then New England, where I’ve felt most at home.
  8. Undertaking psychotherapy. Actually, it was a twist of my ongoing mysticism and ongoing search for true love.
  9. Remarriage with children. This one’s been more of a long retraining. Talk about OJT?
  10. Book publications. A kind of affirmation, even in obscurity

Miscellany, one way or another

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Who am I, really? What do I want to be remembered for?

Raccoon as a Trickster, a local Native twist.

Why be clever?

“The distance I felt came not from the country or the people; it came from within me. I was as distant from myself as a hawk from the moon.”— narrator in James Welch’s Winter in the Blood set in Montana

A viral carousel.

Quaker by degrees. Turn up the heat?

Quaker vagabonds were Dharma bums, too. The itinerant ministry proffers its own humor.

Things I learned in two years of college French? Le is pronounced luh.

As a youth, I admired crystals grown from supersaturated solutions. Deep blue copper sulfate was my favorite.

I never expected a film literature course under Harry Geduld would influence my poetry as much as my college writing class under poet Dick Allen. But it did: the clash of thesis and antithesis producing an unanticipated synthesis in reaction, especially.

When I first began reading contemporary poetry (for pleasure, independent of classroom assignment), he sensed that often the poem existed as a single line or two, with the rest of the work as window dressing. Now I read the Psalms much the same way, for the poem within the poem, or at least the nugget your or I as the psalmist is to wrestle with on this occasion. Psalm 81, for instance, has both “voice in thunder” and “honey from rock.”

I’m past the bitterness, the years – all the lost potential.

As an added concern: working from home

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to my poetry and fiction enterprises in my supposedly free hours – well, they’ve rarely paid me, unlike my career in the newspaper office – the idea of having workspace at home has been a given all the way back to the mid-‘70s.

For other members of our household, though, it’s something that’s certainly taken hold since, well, before Covid.

When the downstairs became crowded once the renovation overhead got going, we soon felt cramped. That big printer provided by an employer, for instance, took up some prime tabletop real estate and a precious electrical outlet. We still had a smaller one for our own use. Then there were other things, like a traveling table for presentations, a ream of printing paper, hand-out literature, and it all adds up.

The kitchen table typically became overrun with two or three laptops, stacks of documents and notes, and perhaps a few groceries for one coconspirator. Just what would happen when we were joined full-time by the second, who has her own online ventures? We needed to plan for those.

What became obvious was that each of us could use a second room of our own for these labors. Or at least a room that could do dual service. One where we could even close the door on a project without having to pick it up and put it away for the night.

The smaller front parlor, once cleared of “temporary” storage, would return to use as one office and conference room and, as needed, overnight guests.

The back parlor, which had been my bedroom, studio, and laundry room, would become a dining and crafts room, likely also dedicated to the other coconspirator’s business. And, yes, some of those crafts.

The new guestroom upstairs held the potential of also accommodating some of my overflow. It would also need a desk for our son-in-law in his visits. His company had obliterated its own offices long ago, and he was almost always on call.

And you were wondering what we were going to do with all of that new space? Oh, my.

We still had two storage units to empty, too.

Brace for the intensity of submitting your writing

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

If you’re not a booklover but still think your story would interest tons of readers, let me tell you, Forget it.

An editor can tell immediately when somebody’s manuscript is from a non-reader.

~*~

For other wannabes, the big test comes in submission of a manuscript. Typically, the first step is in approaching small literary journals, but be warned the rejection rate is steep. When I began, it ran to about 20 rejections for each piece accepted. And that went for just one of the three to five poems that went out in each submission. And that was for established, recognized poets.

Another place to start is as a contributor to a local newspaper, covering local public meetings and the like. At least your work will appear in print or the equivalent.

Still, when I was submitting poetry this way, I managed to get more than a thousand acceptances. I have deep gratitude for the devoted editors and publishers who encouraged me, back when. We need more, should you want to step up.

I think, too, of all of the envelopes, clean photocopies (once that was acceptable), postage stamps, time involved researching addresses. It got pricy.

When I was actively submitting to the journals, I could never predict who would accept what, no matter how long I’d known a publisher or how carefully I had examined the publication.

It was a quirky process, this exercise of seeking homes for personal work. The reactions of editors and readers is so idiosyncratic and varied that the same poem could be considered too intense, by one, and not raw and bloody enough, by another.

~*~

The bigger step came in trying to land full-book publication. More was at stake, considering the costs, especially in a marginal niche like poetry.

As for fiction?

Approaching literary agents was generally a black hole. Few even bothered to return the self-addressed stamped envelopes. Book publishers, ditto.

I had some nibbles, even so.

Even with a few non-literary manuscripts, I was repeatedly running full force into brick walls.

And then ebook opportunities came along. It still requires self-promotion in search of a readership. So here we are.

~*~

At this point in my life, I’m backing off from the cutting edge, wherever that is. Hate to admit I’m also out of the loop and haven’t kept up with literary journals. As for the hot celebrated novelists? I don’t recognize their names. Of course, they don’t recognize mine, either.

The real challenge for both of us is encouraging others to read as an essential part of human understanding. Since you’re reading this already, I’m assuming you’re already active in that commonwealth.

Stay the course, please!