Tag: Musings

Lost and found in the woods of Lampkins Ridge

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

VO showing the grave sites of two infants at the edge of his ravine: one stone left, the other one, dating to early 1800s, stolen …

~*~

I see now, 50-some years later, there’s actually a public-access trail around there.

~*~

Further to the east was Brown County, with its rugged geology, state and national forests, and a large state park, making it Indiana’s outdoors destination. It definitely feels like stepping back in time. I have memories of hiking and camping there as a Boy Scout, even before my explorations during the time covered in my return to the university.

Hiking trail photograph by Kgirischandra  via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Panorama views by Elizabeth Nicodemus via Wikipedia Commons.

I had friends who lived in log cabins, which remain in widespread use in the southern part of the state.

 

 

 

Among unspoken initiations along the Way, befitting an Ashram Journal  

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When we sit silently in worship, clouds that separate us may evaporate, allowing us closer to oneness, our own fullness, which is the essence of God.

The closer we get to Truth, the more tolerant and understanding we become of others. There can be no lasting revolution in the world until we’ve changed ourselves, as in reborn or liberated or enlightened, even self-realized.

 

A few things that have bugged me about open readings

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
  1. Poets who expect to read as soon as they arrive and then depart when they’re done.
  2. Those who have not revised their work.
  3. Those who hold the stand too long.
  4. People who don’t laugh at my funniest lines.
  5. Readers who arrive when I’ve just ended.
  6. Folks I’ve heard who won’t hear me.
  7. Nights there’s no sharing, no worship of the muse. Too much competition.
  8. Dishonesty. Pretense. Would-be actors.
  9. Poets led astray by bad models. Wrong breathing. Lines that don’t fit the poet’s mouth.
  10. Erroneous observations, fallacious reasoning. The facts must be correct.

You could add listeners who try to categorize each reader. or overly critical folks like me.

Regarding Nosmo, our King cat

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

He got his name from signs I saw all over campus. NO SMOKING. Just move the space and it became Nosmo King. He was a solidly black cat with Siamese lines and smarts. As I noted when he was a kitten:

  1. He’s been here two weeks. Or is it three?
  2. Gained a pound.
  3. Approaching adolescence, he’s learning the ropes.
  4. Out of control.
  5. Banging the walls.
  6. Losing his balls.
  7. Jumping to the table top.
  8. Forgetting to wipe behind.
  9. Staying up all night.
  10. Adding chaos to our lives, not that he cares.

 

Like a breath of fresh air

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

“Learned Audience, those who recite the word ‘prajana’ the whole day long do not seem to know that prajna is inherent in their own nature. But merely talking on food will not appease hunger, and this is exactly the case with these people. … Talking alone will not enable us to realize the Essence of the Mind, and it serves no purpose in the end.” – Hui Heng, the Sixth Patriarch of Zen, “having taken his seat and asked the assembly to purify their minds collectively.”

The Patriarch again: “Do not talk about the ‘Void’ all day without practicing it in the mind. One who does this may be likened to a self-styled king who is really a commoner. Prajna can never be attained this way. ….”

How I feel listening to so many sermons or radio-evangelist preachers.

“Prajna [Truth] does not vary with different persons; what makes the difference is whether one’s mind is enlightened or deluded.”

 

I never saw her in a skirt until her wedding

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

At the small-town paper, Marcy made all the difference. She was also a future Pulitzer Prize winner.

With her camera she cut through all the crap to find something of real value in the people.

Her signature touch often blended humor and compassion while giving a glow to black-and-white images of daily life. What she found added up into a larger statement over time.

Photographer Burt Stern was one of her inspirations of the hard work to strip an event down to a simple, direct image and underlying message, albeit his were often of commercial intent.

In those days, please remember, ours were mostly black and white shots, though her darkroom technique did wonders with the grays.

I noted her remark about a coworker’s husband who had no concept of aesthetics – a photographic silhouette, to him, meant something went wrong. He saw everything as “good” or “bad” reduced to a scale of “I like” or “don’t like.”

Yes, “good people” (like us) versus “bad people,” who may simply be different rather than evil.

It’s been a problem across much of humanity, though consumerism cashes in on it.

Sticking to what you like means taking the easy way out, rather than aiming for greatness or achievement. Many of the things I value in my own life started out as dislikes – opera, contemporary classical music, asparagus, lamb, meditation, beer …

I suspect she was the inspiration to make the protagonist in the novels that became Subway Visions, Daffodil Uprising, Pit-a-Pat High Jinks, and What’s Left a photographer rather than a writer. It was a step away from glorifying the writing trade. Besides, I had seriously considered becoming a visual artist but settled on writing instead.

“The camera itself creates and destroys illusion.” (Source long since lost.)

 

Why were those rocks adorned?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I became fascinated with Native petroglyphs, or carvings in stone,  largely through reading scholarly reports when I was a social sciences research associate at Indiana University. The readings had nothing to bear on my paid work, but they did touch on some of the poetry I was engaging. I had no idea I would actually be viewing these in the wild barely two years later.

And here I am, 50 years later, living in a landscape at the other edge of the continent and aware that Native petroglyphs and petrographs, or painted images,  are found hereabouts, though their precise location is kept secret.

Here are ten points I noted from the field notes.

  1. Were the drawings (petroglyphs) made during ceremonies before an important hunt? Did the hunting leader draw them? Or were they done by the young, during puberty rites?
  2. A given rock surface had “power” to bring good luck. If it worked, he drew again on the same rock. Others, seeing this, added their own pictures.
  3. Dummy hunters were erected as piled rocks.
  4. Pictures were used only when food, or the particular animal, was hard to obtain.
  5. In the sheep cult, the immortal sheep had certain supernatural powers.
  6. Salmon ascended the streams to benefit mankind, died, and then returned to life as a race of supernatural beings who lived in a great house under the sea. When the time came for the run, they would assume the form of fish to sacrifice themselves. (Sounds to me like prototype Jesus.)
  7. Eskimo keep the bladder of a whale, seal, or walrus they have killed and kept that in a jar of water all winter. Come springtime, it is taken to the edge of the sea, poured back in, and its soul is told to swim far out where it will find one of its own kind about to be born.
  8. The cult priests, or shamans, talked to these animal spirits.
  9. Did the advent of the bow allow excessive hunting?
  10. Appearance includes desert varnish, a patina where high summer temperatures and thunderstorms were found together. Lichen will grow in the drawings but not the surrounding rock.

 

Oh, hail, Indiana University

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Or “heh-ell,” as the dialect might say. It’s been a half-century now since I left Bloomington as a research associate, and a few years before, when I graduated.

Rather than rave about the graduate library or the celebrated rare-books temple or the music or business schools, let me take a different tack, as viewed from now.

  1. We’re still in disbelief that the football team could have a winning season, much less be ranked in the nation’s top 25 teams. Basketball’s a different matter.
  2. Considering the conservative nature of the state, it’s a bit shocking that the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction is located on the campus. Its extensive archives and research initiatives are discreetly housed, though, in the ivy-covered former Women’s Residence Center – or was, back then.
  3. Its collegiate gothic-style buildings are clad in locally quarried limestone. As are some more contemporary ones.
  4. The stream that meanders through wooded parts of the campus is called the Jordan River, not as a Biblical reference but rather in honor of David Starr Jordan, the school’s first non-ordained minister to serve as president – he was a scientist who believed in Darwinian evolution and left Bloomington after six years to launch Stanford University in California.
  5. Founded as a seminary in 1820, the school is one of the oldest public universities in America.
  6. The alma mater, “Hail to Old IU,” was set to “Annie Lisle.” a Scottish melody, as was Cornell University’s, and perhaps brought to Bloomington from Ithaca, New York, by Cornell alumni Jordan.
  7. A practical joke is spelled “boress” but pronounced a bit differently.
  8. The dining hall service continues to suck, as I’m finding in online comments. It was a major factor in the upheavals in my novel, Daffodil Uprising.
  9. On-campus parking is limited and expensive.
  10. Nobody’s ever figured out what “Hoosier” means, as far as I can tell.