Tag: Memories

Is anyone reflecting you or those you know?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Look in the public media around you and tell me where you see your life presented. Is there anywhere in TV shows, movies, advertising, magazines, newspapers, or novels that reflects life as you know it? Beyond that, is there anywhere that voices your aspirations and values? You know, where you want to be?

Writing this is a painful admission, but true. Somehow, though, I don’t picture myself in a typical suburban strip mall, either, no matter how often I’ve wound up there or been stuck in associated traffic.

What I do see, though, points to the reality that so much of what’s being presented and ingested is an escape from the daily grind. I don’t intend this as a judgmental stand, though I would counter it with the spiritual approach of trying to live in harmony with life as we encounter it in a specific place. Still, what I’m seeing generally rings hollow.

I’d issue a call for revolt but doubt that anyone would follow. Oh, well.

My, I didn’t expect to be hitting at the psychological malaise in the national soul, definitely not this quickly, but here we are. Just don’t hand me a cape and expect me to save anyone. I’m just a lowly writer, remember? Well, you could hand me a very dry martini (gin with an olive), but that would be my own favorite escape.

Now, to return more or less to the topic.

During my stint as a field representative for a major media syndicate, I called on newspaper editors in communities across 14 states. What struck me was how little sense their papers gave me of a unique local identity. There was rarely a distinctive voice in the generic mix. Maybe I’ll wax on some outstanding exceptions as a future post. I did try, mind you, to accomplish some of that where I was as an editor.

~*~

When I entered the workaday world, it was in the height of the hippie explosion, as well as the Vietnam quagmire and the first moonwalk and civil rights and, well, you could say generally everything was in flux and has remained so.

The pace of daily journalism, however, left me feeling there was so much change in the works that we were overlooking, especially in any in-depth way. For me, my impressions became fodder for fiction, which would allow me some leeway and definitely free me from footnotes and fact-checkers, not that I’ve veered from relating what I witnessed or even imagined as truthfully as I could, even with a degree of inventiveness and aspiration.

In that journey I wound up living in places that were outside of the big media spotlight, and what I faced ultimately differed from what was coming out of New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, or similar backdrops. My record reflected, I hope, just everyday folks who had to muddle on, best we could, in irreplicable circumstances of human progress or tragedy.

Ultimately, I tried to distill what I experienced from these unique viewpoints into novels that originated as “contemporary fiction,” though I’ve come to see the paradox of the label. Even without the scheduling conflicts of working a “day job,” I was caught in a time-delay of drafting and revising, even before trying to find publication. At the least, that would be a two- or three-year gap before a piece became public. Tastes and trends drastically change in that span. And here I am, shrinking from the crap shoot of fashion.

Or, now we are, decades later, perhaps trying to make sense of it all.

Not that I was alone. Every book author was running behind the frontlines where even the boldest got shot down, should they make it that far.

The consequence, quite simply, is that too much has gone unexamined beneath the superficial rush of what we once Baby Boomers and now creaky seniors and perhaps great-grandparents lived through, individually and jointly, from Watergate to today. No wonder things are such a mess. Look, kiddos, it wasn’t all our fault. Do note, I’m among those who wants to lend you a hand.

Mea culpa, then, though I’ve left some evidence of sorts to build on. Please stay in touch. That matter of “Don’t trust anyone over 30” was a brilliant slogan but ultimately BS.

As I’ve noted, we definitely needed elders. And so do you, on the frontlines now.

You can find my ebooks 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 true confession of one writer’s life, in perspective to date

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

If we’re counting from the time I got hooked on what became a journalism career, I’ve pursued a writing life for six decades now.

It began with hope, of course, including the dreams of glorious success and celebrity. You know, prizes and bestsellers and fame plus fabulous romance, family, and social life all reflecting intellectual brilliance. These were all wrapped up in the dream of a teen and beyond.

The reality, as you’re probably already about to pipe up, is that the practice of writing – whether literature or any of its other forms, including newspapers – is ultimately grubby work with none of those high-life perks for most of its faithful ranks.

That side’s not any different from all the fine pianists in our communities who never solo in public, despite their talent and passion, or the athletes who exercise daily and play unpaid in the parks on weekends, or a minister’s lifetime of well-crafted, scholarly Sunday sermons. The list of examples can go on and on. Practice, as I’ve come to embrace, is essential in many life activities, even in medicine and law. Forget the results, just do it.

While daily journalism paid my bills for most of my adult life, I was shunted to the editing side of the field, sharpening the prose of other reporters and correspondents and crafting headlines to capture the essence of their dispatches for a parade of readers rather than appearing under my own byline. Spare me the liberal elite label of the rabid right, please; real journalists, unlike the folks at Fox, put their leanings aside before touching anything. Facts are facts, which I see as important in fiction and poetry, too. Well, let’s not rule out their role in anything smacking of rationale behavior.

As far as my own writing pursuits went, I engaged in my free time in what I consider “the real stuff” – poems, fiction, work somewhere in between – much of it getting published in underground literary periodicals around the globe. It was enough to sustain me in the larger quest, no matter that the big successes kept eluding me, despite some near misses.

So here we are, at the beginning of another new year and a birthday soon to follow, and I have to admit the impact of aging, this time from the perspective of a writer. Narrow that to novelist, poet, blogger, and Quaker. One who finds there are still too many piles of drafted material remaining in the way to wherever comes after.

While I don’t have a new major writing project on the horizon – especially no new novel – I am feeling drawn to see what might still have energy in some of the drafts I’ve done in support of my earlier literary projects. There may be some fresh lessons to be gleaned or perhaps even wisdom in the light of time. It’s even an opportunity to reflect on a writing life.

An important elder for me has been the poet Gary Snyder, usually at a distance. This time, it’s from his Zen perspective of reaching an advanced age, almost a generation ahead of me:

My wife is gone, my girl is gone,
my books are loaned, my clothes
are worn, I gave away a car; and
all that happened years ago.
Mind & matter, love & space
are frail as foam on beer.

So for now, I’ll be going through the piles and clearing them away – before someone else has to. Yes, sort through the debris and move on.

It’s one more step in the practice of writing, something like daily prayer, something that needs to be done even if it seems nobody’s listening.

Now, let’s see where it leads.

Remembering my barn

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

A barn is a reminder of work once at hand. Some of it is ongoing, while in other instances it was and then put aside, perhaps for another time. Cows – even imaginary – won’t wait long. Everything needs repair or weeding. Feasting is countered by fasting. Again, the season turns. All together.

The barn was my own. A carriage house, actually – in a small city, the oldest settlement in New Hampshire and seventh-oldest in the nation. How I got there is a long story, told in part here at the blog and in part in the novels.

The barn was a central part of my domestic labors, with dreams of a loft studio, once more pressing house repairs were in place. At least its back half was no longer sinking toward collapse on rotted sills. In our possession, the structure did hold a mother-in-law apartment. The remainder provided storage.

A writer collects many materials – fodder for winter. More important, eighteen years after a divorce, I had remarried, this time with children. Once again, I was with gardens and this time, trails of toys, clothing, and chipped dishes. We did have woodstove heat in the kitchen ell.

Not that anyplace with children is truly idyllic. It was always a near-catastrophe, of the best sort.

Finally, the goddess Kali

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I awaken to a horrible surprise, the feminine face of death.

Well, at least in the dream.

 

I’VE BEEN DIGNOSED WITH a terminal illness. Suppose what or who was on my mind was the retirement or “brand-value” issues. Somehow Ohio was in this or related sequences as someone was trying to reconnect with me or seduce me … while I kept moving on to my own lover and eventual wife and projects.

I’ll label this part Disturbing.

Along with a dirge

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Touring a Roman Catholic church that’s known for its graves, the ones inside around the sanctuary and in chambers off to the side and, presumably, in the basement. The ceiling is relatively low and the dominant color a light yellow. Feels something like a Mount Auburn Cemetery and may have been surrounded by the like.

Noticing a man who’s obviously perplexed (he may have even been in clerical garb, I now sense), I approach and offer my help. He has a map that may simply have some directions, but he’s looking for such-and-such Avenue. Together we circle the inside of the building and come upon a stone wall that’s been painted black and both agree that’s where we should have found his destination. We’re both baffled.

We then join a small group in a chapel or, considering the slanted floor, lecture hall auditorium where a nun’s doing an end-of-tour kind of Q&A session. She keeps overlooking any questions hands up from either me or the man; I’m three rows back and in the center, he’s at the back about four rows behind me. Finally, I shout out my question about the black wall. “It’s the Williams family,” she answers, as if everyone should know they owned the property long before the church was erected.

We scatter to make way for some kind of ecumenical program in the sanctuary that evening.

Our Greek Orthodox priest is already there, sitting on the floor, his back to the wall, with his family.

Spanning both coasts and much in between

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

IN SEATTLE, LATE AFTERNOON in a modernist house with a view of the twinkling bay. Think my ex- is in there somewhere, too. Or perhaps in a now-forgotten earlier sequence.

Then there’s a trailer of some sort, touting the movie along with a kind of genealogy that mentions me among others and “the books yet to be written.” I start screaming at the screen, “But the books are written! Nobody’s reading them!”

Scarface, up till now politely distant, begins taunting. I wind up overturning him in his curvy laminated wood folding chair, the kind we used to own.

A few words are exchanged, and we leave. That’s it.

 

MAYBE I WAS A REPORTER … or just working with one. Somehow, the Washington Post was involved. The subject we were following, though, was sentenced as an incorrigible offender – one of those three-strikes-you’re-out type felons – and placed in a large prison behind three big sets of gateways, each with a different password, and five smaller ones. The unspoken message was that if you failed to remember them, this person was lost in the maze – there would be no contact from you, on the outside.

 

ALL SET TO VISIT FRIENDS IN CUBA, I discover three days before departure I have forgotten to obtain my passport and visa. Had tickets and was already packed.

We do eat well

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

FOR A POTLUCK, a coworker creates a big bowl of turtle soup. Curry-color in a big wide bowl. Just as she’s serving it, the auto racing columnist dashes toward me with his own milk-color version in a broad blue-and-white bowl. (Like my pasta bowl.) I wind up taking a spoonful first from his outdoorsy one and then from the marvelous one beside it.

 

PREPARING A LARGE FISH from a Korean market, I’m in the set-aside (set to one side?) modern kitchen of a motel restaurant and something being held for a private birthday party.

I have skills I was unaware of!

 

THE KID AND I ARE AT THE MEAT COUNTER, someplace like Janetos little downtown supermarket. We’re there for chops, but she suggests we get a chicken, too. The clerk returns from the cooler with an array of boxes, each containing a chicken. “Select one,” I tell my younger daughter.