Tag: Writing

THERE WENT THE WEEK

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

A call to my cell phone the other Monday threw me for a loop. I was on the way back from my daily swim when I got the news that the first round of three cords of stove wood was on the way.

What it meant was that one end of our driveway would soon be buried in cut and split wood and my plans for the rest of the week would drastically change. Except for one day of thunderstorms and rain, I’d be stacking – always a lesson in the process of writing and revising, actually, including its exercises in structure and observation. Do it right, and it’s solid for seasoning into several winters. Sloppy, and it all falls apart.

Among my other thoughts was the question of how many more years I might be doing this. The wood felt heavier than I remembered. Even with my new routine of daily exercise, achy muscles and joints started appearing. At least I had the perspective of knowing how long you just have to keep plugging away before you notice any progress – and then, somewhere in a sensation of futility, you might experience that flash of realizing you’re making progress. The second half usually seems to go faster than the first half, too, unless you get overly anxious.

Now I sit back and admire that wall of stacked fuel – the one I’ll take down, piece by piece, all too quickly some winter.

END OF THE EARTH

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The mythologies of Greece are easily countered by those of India, China, Tibet, and Japan in the Native tales of the Olympic Peninsula and the coastal tribes of the Pacific Northwest.

Sit down by the fire, then, and listen. Some of the voices are millennia old.

~*~

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

Olympus 1

WHILE SUBMITTING TO LITERARY JOURNALS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time …

It’s a quirky process, this exercise of seeking homes for personal work – the reactions of editors and readers so idiosyncratic and varied that the same piece can be considered too intense, by one, and not raw and bloody enough, by another. I can never predict who will accept what, no matter how long I’ve known a publisher or journal.

Contributor’s note? Just say I hope soon to be tent camping again.

NEW VALHALLA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The Olympic Peninsula of Washington State is a world of its own. About the size of Delaware, it has few settlements apart from its Native American tribes. Its remote coastline is gorgeous. Its forests are thick and varied and receive some of the heaviest annual rainfall in North America. Its central mountains include hot springs and glaciers. There’s a U.S. Navy base on the eastern edge along with an artist colony and ferry connections to Seattle.

Listen closely and the underlying mythologies shape a new understanding.

Here is a place where East meets West in its own nature.

~*~

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

Olympus 1

ARID SHADOW

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

The conditions that created the desert where we lived created what was sometimes called a “rain shadow.” It was ironic, actually, considering that we got far more sunlight by living on that side of the Cascade Mountains than if we’d been in, what, the rain glow?

Sometimes, though, it seemed to dry up all of our emotions, too.

A journey into the murky places of endless fog, mist, and rain, in contrast, could do wonders in the soul.

~*~

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

LIBERATING IN THE END

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

A central question facing compositional artists of all stripes (in contrast to performing artists like actors, dancers, and musicians) is the matter of determining when a work’s finished.

How do you know?

Is just out-and-out satisfaction a measure? A trusty one? Hmm.

Let me suggest some others.

Sometimes it’s a sense that you just can’t go any further with it. And if it’s in a state beyond notes and fragments, maybe that’s it. You’ve hit a wall, a property line, or just the shore or riverbank. So you stop. Period.

There are times, admittedly, when you think something’s finished and put it aside only to find, on returning, it needs more – revision, for starters, and maybe additions and major restructuring. (A friend spoke the other evening of drafting a memoir in the third-person and then redoing it in the first-person, the kind of change I’ve done in some of my fiction. And Brahms had an early symphony that became a piano concerto, if I recall right.)

Working under a deadline can simplify matters. Time’s up! Next!

Nice, if you happen to have an advance or pipeline of delivery or the concert’s coming up.

Novelists might even find doneness appears as the time they find their focus obsessing with the book under the one they’ve been tackling.

Some poets will say that once it’s published, they can let go of it. Finito!

~*~

In the bigger picture, the “finished” question isn’t just about having a manuscript ready. For a writer, it’s ultimately about landing the work in a reader’s hands. A place where a dialogue can begin. And getting that manuscript from a polished draft into circulation can be a huge, energy-depleting limbo, especially if your life is filled with competing claims on your time.

In short, you can either focus on seeing that one work through to publication – or you can create the next one, while the inspiration’s still hot. For me, as I tried to balance my writing life with a journalism career, personal relationships, spiritual practice, and so on, I wound up with a huge backlog of finished material. At least I’d wisely not put off the writing for retirement, as had a number of colleagues I’d known – none of them ever managed to fulfill that dream.

What I did find, though, was that the unpublished work became a burden of its own. Its emotional weight inhibited new work. Why bother? It even had a way of twisting my sense of identity – who was I then and who am I now? Think, too, of the relationships that fed into one work – and the people I’m with today. As in lover or spouse.

So the experience of having my book-length works finally being published brings the “finished” consideration across yet another threshold – the matter of being liberated. I can let go of trying to hold that memory, treasuring that epiphany, honoring that friendship.

Should I have just trashed them long ago and moved on into other, non-literary endeavors? Just think of the hours that could have been directed instead to overtime pay, which would make my retirement more secure. Or travel or …

Maybe it’s just a case of hoping for acknowledgement. Hey, here I am!

Still, it’s what I’ve done.

What I have is a feeling of being true to a responsibility carried to its completion at last. What happens from here is, well, liberating any way it goes.

CRACKLING IN OUR AIR

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

In blogging here, I’ve generally tried to steer clear of current events, as in political and economic news. Even my reflections on the weather have been, I hope, along a larger or more timeless horizon than mere day-to-day changes. Think of watching the grass grow.

But I do live in New Hampshire, and the campaigns for the November 8, 2016, presidential election are already generating daily front-page headlines here. Remember, that’s nearly a year-and-a-half away.

The primary is tentatively set for February 9, but that could move up, depending. We hate when it clashes with Christmas.

The point is, politics is already crackling in our air. How can I possibly avoid it?

BACK AND BACK AND BACK

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

As I said at the time …

You’re home once more, with many fresh laurels, I hope. On my end, the computer’s fixed and I’m dancing with some frequency again. At least between some heavy allergies. (Birch pollen at the moment; pine comes soon.)

I’m still in shock from Sam Hamill’s “To Eron on Her Thirty-Second Birthday” – she’s always a twelve-year-old tomboy in my memory! Impossible, it seems. And that was back when I was still married and my wife studied painting under John Bennett’s wife, Ellensburg, Washington … back in his Vagabond days. Small world. Am still trying to figure out when and where I heard Bill Stafford read. Yakima Valley College, I believe. Will the parts of my life ever come together?

Yes, you certainly are a moon-child, with all of the sign’s gentle humanity. Violet, a variant of purple, the cancer-sign’s color. Star, like the moon, of the moody night. Well-named, it seems! For whatever reason, more of my serious relationships have been with women born under the sign of Cancer than with any other; in fact, there have been no Gemini or Libra, which are supposed to be a natural fit for me. Go figure!

~*~

My, what ancient history this, too, has become!

DIGGING OUT INTO SUMMER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Now that winter’s over, some of us are finding difficulty in trying to shift gears. Yes, the snow’s finally melted, but that’s not how I feel.

I suppose officially I’ve been enduring a mild depression, though for me that means mostly emotional numbness along with some simmering anger. Call it the blahs. No need to go into details here, other than to admit there were a few complicating elements of chronic negativity in the air.

What does matter is the feeling of being stuck. Molasses. Even impoverished, no matter the reality.

Where’s the joy, the sunlight, the ongoing pleasure?

There have been small steps. The daily indoor swimming, for one. Yes, it’s still a daily effort but also an emerging sense of accomplishment and meeting some goals. I’ve also been growing my hair out, which is going much slower than the first time around – don’t know if I’ll keep it this way, either, just wanted to revisit that side of my hippie past. Still, the seemingly terminal winter chilled much of my desire to play with my Christmas-gift camera, even if I did get some shots I’ll likely post next winter. (I just didn’t want to put any more snow and ice up on the Web. It was getting tedious.) And there’s been some overdue reading, including a bout of Philip Roth, pro and con.

The question, on this merry-go-round? Well, a cluster of questions, actually.

What’s really at the center? Where’s my core energy? What do I have to offer to others? To the world? How do I become a better person, more open to others? More compassionate, especially? In other words, how do I more fully engage the spiritual life before me?

Time to turn some soil, transplant sprouts, plant some seeds. Ideally, helping others – or sharing companionship in the process.

In other words, here we go ’round again.