Tag: Musings

RULE OF ECONOMICS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

So there we were, in one of our informal noontime forums, this one led by an economist. The group itself was multidisciplinary, which made for some lively discussion.

As we analyzed the problem at hand, we saw that there were downsides to every possible solution we envisioned. No course of action was perfect, although some appeared to be better than others. Any way we turned, we’d be making some kind of mess for someone else to clean up or a burden for one group or another to carry.

We laughed, realizing that this is the way most of life actually is. There’s almost always a cost involved, and often unintended consequences.

And then one of our colleagues summed it up in a line that became our institute’s unofficial motto:

UNMIXED BLESSINGS ARE IN SHORT SUPPLY.

Once in a while, economics really does touch on reality.

STUFFED TO THE GILLS, BUT WHERE?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

After moving to the house – and taking up a family – I began facing a profound mystery. Possessions would simply disappear. It wasn’t like my bachelor days, when things returned to their proper places. And it wasn’t always little stuff, either, meaning we couldn’t always suspect the kids.

While I obviously fretted, my wife took the calmer “it will turn up eventually” approach, which occasionally actually worked.

It didn’t take long for me to conclude that we have another room in the house – I know it’s not in the barn – one we haven’t yet located. And I’m certain that’s where all of our missing objects have gone, just waiting to be rediscovered. It has to be quite large, centrally located behind a wall or two. Or maybe even between floors.

There’s one more thing I’m certain of – it will be stuffed to the gills.

My wife has finally agreed with me. And she promises me the room will turn up eventually.

Now, where did I put my glasses?

COMPARING NOTES FROM THE ANNUAL YULETIDE CORRESPONDENCE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

As I said at the time …

Your harvest, meanwhile, is most impressive. Just how much land do you have under cultivation? Our little “city farm” is a mere third of an acre, including house, barn, shed, and driveway – all of it having clay soil and partial shade. In a wet spell, our garden slugs rival Seattle’s; they took out most of our potatoes last year – the ones I was growing in barrels, up off the ground. Maddening. And, by the way, you have a longer, milder growing season. Last summer, we came close to buying half a pig from a couple halfway up in Maine – maybe that will happen yet. We are able to support some small-scale agriculture around here, which is satisfying. And there’s a lot of produce-swapping at Meeting – including eggs. Oh, yes, we have an interesting exchange with my wife’s best friend and her husband – the ones I jokingly call my in-laws; we provide them with a lot of seedlings, and since they work a much larger community garden tract, we get a lot of it back for the table and freezer. In addition, she does help herself to a lot of our strawberries, currants, and asparagus. Even some of the irises and daffodils. I really hadn’t thought about the range of connections going on there. Still, there’s no substitute for the taste of fresh food, or having your own, from the freezer, come deep winter. Maybe we go through all of it for a spiritual awareness and gratitude or simple out-and-out holy deliciousness?

To say nothing of all the wildlife we attract, especially around the bird feeders. We rather miss the skunks, and were surprised to find some possums living in the crown molding a story up in the barn last fall. How’d they ever get up there? Just don’t ask about squirrels.

Keep dry, but don’t forget to water the seedlings –

THERE’S NOTHING EXALTED ABOUT THE ‘WRITERS’ LIFE’

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Not infrequently, fellow bloggers will begin a post by apologizing about not writing for a spell. The fact they feel they have to apologize bothers me. Nobody’s obligating any of us to produce, and we all have regular lives to pursue, or at least lives we ought to engage. After all, that’s where so much of the grist for writing originates.

Besides, there’s no shortage of good reading in the blogosphere. Take a rest or catch up, and feel good about. Heavens! If we need anything regarding the written word, it’s more conscientious readers … ones who will encourage a wider audience for deserving work, especially.

Somewhat related, and just as disturbing, are the giddy proclamations of joining in the “writers’ life,” as if it’s some carefree club out there free of everyday obligations and cumbers. Maybe they’re envisioning the legendary Dorothy Parker and her Algonquin Round Table, or even the martini named after her, or some other crossroads in literary history, but let me proclaim that’s largely an illusion or mirage, especially in today’s publishing reality.

It’s one thing to be a casual writer and quite another to be a serious practitioner, and for the latter, the only shared lifestyle I’ve seen is a dedication to hard, daily work that includes not just writing but research, reading, and correspondence as well. It’s not glamorous, for sure, and in the current literary scene, you won’t get famous. Not compared to any of those so-called celebrities.

So if you must, then write. And then, because you must, revise repeatedly.

And if you aren’t so obliged, then read … for pleasure as much as anything. And maybe that’s where you’ll really find the “writers’ life,” one you might even share with others over coffee or cocktails.

Now, for me, it’s back to work. And thanks for listening.

HONEY, WE HAVE IGNITION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 8 Comments

Finding the perfect fire starter for the wood stove or outdoor grilling has been a challenge. Paper burns too quickly and usually with insufficient heat to do the job, plus it can quickly clog everything and then simply smolder.

Small twigs occupy a lot of storage space, at least during winter. You want to keep them dry, by all means.

Corrugated cardboard leaves a lot of papery ash – nothing you want flying up into the food on the rack.

And so on.

Maybe it was by accident I discovered that using cardboard tubes – those found in toilet paper and paper towels – works much better. Plus, you can crush a few and insert them inside another for extra oomph. They’re firm enough to allow air to circulate while the fire’s starting. And they’re easy to store.

You never do know quite what’s going to turn up in the Barn, do you?

A FINE STATE OF THE SEASON

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Sorting the holiday cards coming into the house renews my appreciation for the human scale of the state we live in.

There’s a card from the governor and her family, and another from our U.S. senator. (Note the singular: the other one’s a national embarrassment who represents the One Percent, non-fulltime-residents of New Hampshire all, even including any who do summer here.)

OK, these cards aren’t personally signed, but it’s still a reminder that retail politics is a Granite State tradition, one that carries some responsibility as well.

No, we aren’t responding with cards to them as well. But we still wish them a very merry Christmas. And we’re glad they’re on the case.

JUST PAGES APART

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

As I said at the time …

For me, writing means watching my own shifting mind while opening myself up to all the living energies around me. It means simplifying, following unexpected leadings and openings, sometimes to dead ends, other times to unanticipated ranges. Some time ago I discovered that to write poetry I had to be sitting in meditation every day. And later, I found once a week would suffice.

If ego is an ever present trap, the practice can introduce repeated humbling. As do the rejection slips.

Detachment: who wrote that! And when? (The surprise of rediscovering your own work five or ten years later. Who wrote that, it is so incredibly fine! Or: Who wrote that piece of tripe? I’m glad it never saw publication. Sometimes only pages apart.)

And then the piece goes its own way: a living organism: readers, editors see it differently from you. What you would cut they love. What you love they see as sore thumb.

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. (Point raised, I believe, by Joyce Carol Oates; true to my experience.)

As critics of others’ work: harshest, at times, on those whose work is most like our own! Too much mirror? Push ourselves as far as we can, coming to a point where we no longer know if a piece is any good or not only that we’ve done everything in its pursuit that we possibly can at this period in our life.

Prophetic practice: light in the wilderness.

The dilemma of arts/responsibility/spirituality brought into focus by looking at something like the Florentine court of the Medici: High Art interwound with brutal political/economic force. (Throw the man out the fourth floor window; nowadays, we have helicopters. How exquisite.)

The dilemma of the news photographer: Should I save the victim and lose the opportunity of taking a great photograph? Or should I be “professional” and observe the world as an outsider? This holds for all artists: at one point are we being selfish in our pursuits? At what point is our solitude essential for the well being of all?

Into solitude / the Silence / the Holy Now, as Thomas Kelley phrased it.

At its core, I write to discover / remember / connect / distill.

In my writing I collect – that is, bring myself back together. More and more, I think on paper. I write to find what is under the words and phrases before me. Go deeper, and then wider. I write to listen. Eventually, I write to sing.

WITH ALL DUE SYMPATHY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Once each week I get more than enough of rush hour, Boston style, which doesn’t rush at all when you consider the traffic’s at a standstill. Don’t know how people do it morning and evening, day after day, week after week.

It’s what I’m calling “crush hour,” even though it’s more than an hour.

Even if it’s where the jobs are, especially the ones that pay.