Tag: Literature

IRRIGATED BLOSSOMS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Making the orchards bloom was a labor of irrigation. No matter how fertile the volcanic soil of the valley, water was the missing element man worked to provide.

~*~

There’s good reason the rattlesnake-infested, corrugated humps encircling the orchard valley are pale brown: they receive none of the snowmelt impounded from late March into July in the high mountains. Agencies release and distribute that water through blazing summer into October. Green agriculture parallels the river and irrigation canals, defying the tough, roasted inclines above, where sagebrush and bunchgrass stroke tawny eternity. In this compass, wind rarely precedes rain. Beyond lucrative strips of orchards, the principal agriculture involves herds or hay; because of irrigation and unfettered sunlight, five mowings a year are common; bales are trucked to dairy cows and pleasure horses on the rainy side of the tall mountains. Desert has few chickens — and no pigs to speak of. Somewhere out there, Basque shepherds elude the heat. Forests begin at the top of high ridges observed fifty miles distant.

~*~

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Kokopelli 1

 

POINT OF TRANSCENDENCE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Curiously, growing up in Ohio, I was nonetheless somehow fascinated by mountains. They arose in my early drawings. On family trips, it didn’t take much for a wooded hill to become a mountain in my mind. An astrologer might argue it has something to do with all the air signs in my chart. Whatever the reasons, a ridge line or summit calls to me.

There were a few tantalizing early encounters in childhood trips to the Great Smokies and eastern Kentucky. My true initiation, however, came at age eleven with a week of backpacking on the Appalachian Trail in Tennessee and North Carolina. It was miserable and magical, and left lessons for a lifetime.

Still, it wasn’t until after my college graduation that I came to fully appreciate mountains – living, by turns, in the Southern Tier of Upstate New York, the Poconos of Pennsylvania, the Cascades and Olympics of the Pacific Northwest, as well as Maryland (with its Catoctins and access to the Shenandoah Valley) and finally New Hampshire.

Many of my poems arise in some of those experiences over the years.

We could collect them as “By Gully,” playing off Louis Ulrich’s vow to climb Ulrich Couloir to the summit of Mount Stuart (9,415-foot elevation) one final time – “my gully,” as he referred to the trajectory more than four decades after he and two partners established the now basic mountaineering route in July 1933. A climber explores a slope, recognizes the avalanche chutes along the higher crests, approaches summits themselves via passes, gaps, or notches, usually following a streambed. The connection of gullies and mountains is established. By Gully.

Yet that is only half of the equation. Mysticism, as I’ve known it, keeps a foot to the ground, and often a hand or the butt, too. The spiritual journey leads to the mountaintop and back – if you don’t run ahead of your Guide.

~*~

It’s the background for some of my novels and poetry now appearing at Thistle/Flinch editions. To read more, click here.

Back Pack 1

TRIANGULATIONS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time …

So you’re moving out – congratulations! For one thing, it puts you on much firmer ground when you do commit to a live-in relationship – rather than jumping from your parents’ care into the care of another. Yes, your parents are much more liberal than mine were, but I too was forced to spend my first year-and-a-half of college at a local commuter school (fortunately, it had an excellent English department) and to live at home – something that deeply stunted my emotional growth. Getting away to Bloomington was a lifesaver, even if I wound up in political science and urban studies instead.

Well, I have another reading coming up Tuesday, same venue. This time, plan to read one poem – a longpoem in thirty-seven sections. Should take just under an hour. A piece that was nearly published by a highly regarded press twenty years ago – and was withdrawn because of deep cutbacks in federal funding for the arts. When I began to submit sections to journals a couple of years back, acceptances quickly followed. Now, to get the full piece out!

So here I am, wishing you could be with me in that smoke-filled room – have you on as the next reader, in fact, unless I gallantly step aside to let you wow them with an extended reading of your own. Or, more intriguing yet, share the stage, alternating pieces. Yes, I like that!

Oh, yes, you start to apologize about talking so much about him and that love poison. But I wonder, unless we are blessed enough to have a fulfilling life with our initial childhood sweetheart, whether a great deal about any current affair is actually an attempt to work out the failings of the previous hot fling. For one thing, we really do become attuned to the other person’s touch, timing, interests, movement – everything that makes him or her distinct. Nicolas Mosley, an English novelist, has argued that every coupling is actually a triangle – or more accurately, two triangles, with each partner having a side affair, a past, a demanding career, or whatever attached here. I’d agree.

Now, if you decide to hop on that bus and head off to some escape, what can I do to lure you here? (Just phone ahead, to make sure I’m not seriously involved with a very jealous girlfriend by then.) As I was saying, how do you like your coffee? Ever gone contradancing or English country dancing? And you wouldn’t be the only person in this neck of the woods dressed in black and stainless steel or exhibiting striking jewelry piercings, unlike New Orleans. In fact, a number of years ago, Donald Hall once wrote that there’s something Gothic about New England. I was living in the desert of Washington State when I read that, and it intrigued. Even more so, now that I’m living here. But that’s another conversation.

Well, it’s my turn to be up way too late – and to write disjointed stuff. Hope it makes sense. Now, for me, off to engage in, hopefully, some sensual and sensational dreams of my own. Care to bet if you’re starring?

Keep sizzling!

~*~

Olympus 1For a free copy of the complete American Olympus, click here.

SNOBBERY, ALL THE SAME

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

To see the old meetinghouse at China, Maine, as it’s been turned into a Friends Camp arts studio (a messy one, at that) is a pointed symbol of the tensions many of us encounter as we attempt to live out our faith – and not just on the cultural front. (For the record, I am, after all, a published poet and novelist, a professional journalist, an avid contradancer, gallery-goer, foreign film buff, occasional violinist and harmony singer, and a lover of opera and classical music – all of which can raise eyebrows in various spiritual circles, and most of which would have been forbidden in traditional Quaker discipline – all this even before we turn to the struggles of the workplace, families, neighbors, or politics. Call me a snob, if you will.) The fact remains that the Society of Friends today is filled with many artists pursuing every imaginable medium. Dover Meeting is not alone in its range of talent.

A while back, I spoke of practice as something that’s ongoing and never finished, in contrast, say, to a performance or even a rehearsal. Practice as something done more for its own exploration and pursuit of a discipline than for any finished product. Practice as being part of a bigger encounter: the practice of prayer, practice of poetry, practicing musical scales, play practice, football practice, even medical practice. Something done with care, and if freedom follows in critical situations, as we often hear in interviews after a Patriots’ game, then all the better. Weeding and composting, I suppose, are part of the practice of gardening, apart from any harvest.

When I think about qualities that mark Quaker artists, I would tentatively suggest: placing the ongoing work ahead of themselves; “cool” rather than “hot”; a sense of experience and discovery rather than make-believe or escape; honesty rather than pretense; wonder rather than irony; humility rather than egotism or arrogance; candor rather than flamboyance; a preference for simplicity over complexity; directness rather than confusion; economy rather than extravagance; calmness rather than shrillness; curiosity and listening rather than dogma or bombast.

We might also turn the old Quaker views toward a critique of today’s cult of celebrities (almost universally entertainment/professional sports figures) and their exorbitant incomes – a situation that I believe accompanies a lessening of power within our communities. To that we could add the ways the arts are often used as a secular religion to sanctify public occasions. As for the Oscars?

But maybe that’s just another part of our unfolding spiritual awareness.

THE BIG TREES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I still miss the Douglas firs and the Western red cedars. In their maturity, they stand tall – not quite to redwood stature but still impressive, especially when they’re massed together or the clouds roll through the branches.

Close your eyes and let the aroma present another unforgettable impression.

Maybe off in the distance of night you’ll hear the singing.

~*~

Mountain 1

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CANYONS OF DESIRE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Follow the rivers, then. Some lead into the mountains and form the “passes” to the high breaks in the crest line. Others lead out the other way.

You can also follow the currents of your passions.

~*~

Having come to the desert, we now know the fuller value of water. Something simple, essential. No one can live without it. The list of necessities is a short one; the possibilities of embellishment, endless.

There are rivers on every map you rely on. Sometimes when I walk out into the expanse, I encounter one. Sometimes, one deep enough to block my way. And then I turn to the page for a bridge.

Or, better yet, call out for my buddy, Kokopelli.

~*~

Kokopelli 1For a free copy of my newest novel, click here.

 

NATIVE INSPIRATION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Dwelling at the edge of a large Indian reservation, I found it impossible to ignore a vibration in the earth itself of their spirit.

Had I remained there a few more years, I no doubt would have collected turquoise-and-silver jewelry, the work of many Native masters.

Sometimes I still see their inspiration in the stars, though. Especially on a clear night. A very clear night, at that.

~*~

Mountain 1To see how it’s inspired my collection of poems, click here.

NORTHWEST OASIS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Three hundred sunny days a year in a fertile land may seem like Paradise.

But it’s surrounded by desert. And every irrigated ribbon of orchards was a relief.

~*~

In rain on Mount Cleman, sage and conifers become cloud wisps treading updrafts. Black talus glistens. The mountain’s so quiet that what seemed important hardly matters any more. Boulders float past the relics of the lookout, elevation 4,884. Step away. Over the edge, where black scree cascades, the carbon rods and oxidizing metal loops and plates of electrical batteries from some previous decade are now scattered among elk and deer scats. On downed trees and furry branches, too. A battered coyote skull stares up between shellrock. The mountains gasp repeatedly in their wrinkled embrace of limbs stretching out from the forest. Cupping vistas of orchards and rivers, the desert yawns.

~*~

For a free copy of my newest novel, click here.

Kokopelli 1

 

GOLDEN DETOUR

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

The land was often golden in the bright sunlight. Not green, but a permanent range of yellowish brown only flecked with green in a few weeks of spring passing.

Once I adjusted to its palette and air, I hoped we’d live there forever.

~*~

It’s the background for some of my novels and poetry now appearing at Thistle/Flinch editions. To read more, click here.

Mountain 1

TRUMPED BY … McCAIN?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 7 Comments

Is the Donald about to go Missing in Action? Or is he just a Prisoner of Wordiness?

Or, more critically, did he just misjudge his fan base … and their power to fire him?

We didn’t expect anything this damaging to Trump’s White House campaign this early in the race. He already has the largest paid Republican staff in the state. Who knows about real grassroots volunteer motion. But I, for one, expect a new frontrunner each week on the GOP side … a lot like the last time around. And maybe the time before that.

Who will be the next to implode? Please stay tuned. And it’s just beginning to be summer, heating up, in New Hampshire. It really can be a sport to watch.