Current Reads

This week I’ve been finishing Exile and the Kingdom. Camus is amazing. I felt strongest about “The Guest” and cried most at “The Renegade”. I wanted so much for “The Silent Men” to speak, and “The Adulterous Woman” reminded me so strongly of a good friend that I almost disliked it. I am reading e.e. Cummings aloud to Petka while we dance around the house, actually enjoying him. In the evenings I’ve been picking up Taproot magazine, a new independent magazine about living in the natural world. I ordered it as soon as I heard of it, and anticipated it eagerly, but when it came I found myself reading just a bit at a time, digesting, and coming back after a day or so to read again. It’s not a journal to devour, but one to consider, discuss, and reconsider. I’m thrilled to have it.

Through the day, I’ve been listening to the radio. NPR is fantastic, and in the afternoons I tend to migrate to the ‘funky’ station, where “different is good”, and where I can hear everything from John Prine to Kate Bush, from Ani deFranco to Counting Crows.

50 Days..: Day 21

What 3 songs have affected you most this week, and why?

Shake it out (Florence and the Machine) - the imagery. It’s haunting, and rich and dark. The imagery fills my mind with bonfires and disturbing night shadows. The music is infectious, really. It makes me want to dance.

Let me down Hard (John Eddie) - I’ve never been through a break-up, but this song makes me almost wish I had. The attitude is everything I’d hope to express, the lyrics are fantastic.

Perfect (Pink) - this song makes me cry every time. I feel like she wrote it for her daughter, and I think of mine every time I hear it.

The Mundane Wilderness

"Go to your cell, and your cell will teach you everything."
   ~Desert Fathers

"I wish to be with those who know secret things, or else alone."
  ~Rainer Maria Rilke

Mr. Pond’s response to last weeks discussion particularly interested me. He writes, that "the act of writing itself is an act of seclusion, a turning away from speech and community into the solitary, silent voice of the writer." We are at odds. Writing is not an act of seclusion, it is an act of reaching out, of embracing, challenging, or calling forth. It is an outward act which requires silence and seclusion, but then calls to the world it meets, embracing it and welcoming it in. Silence and seclusion are essential, but they are essential in the same way they are essential to the prophets and to the desert fathers - we retreat so as to find our voice, but our voice is not meant for the wilderness, it is meant for the community, which is not a community of comfortable tradition, or those who write and think and see as we do, they have their own voices, the community is anyone and everyone who can hear, and who will listen.  

Perhaps we disagree because I consider this to be the role of the poet in the world, among the people he meets and among those whom he will never meet, except in bits of writing or fragments of thought passed along. In this he is active in the community, he doesn't need to fill his life with running about. His writing is active, it is interactive, and it is a living voice for him to raise up. 

Jenna's response is encouraging though, she gives me the eyes to see Mr. Pond's post in a holistic way, as one aspect of the writer's otherness, expressed in a rejection of the mundane things of neighborhood block parties, activism, and other distractions, and an embrace of the solitude that leads to writing.  But I would like to follow this discussion with clarification, if my friend's don't mind dwelling a bit.

 Mr. Pond's statement: " I know of no other way to write than that Romantic vision" brought to my mind the romantic tradition, and it's effect on the image of The Writer. I would like to probe a bit into the act of writing as it relates to daily life.  Is there a value in mundane life for the work of the artist? How can the writer in the romantic ideal combine the demands of daily life: family, bills, housework, and physical labor with the dramatic aloneness of the writing life.

I am very much convinced that daily chores are a grounding, inspiring, and essential aspect of my own creative process. My best writing came during a time I spent working long hours at a dairy farm, it was constant, heavy labor, and I know I've never been healthier physically or creatively than I was that year. Now, with the direction that comes from consistent, physical chores, I am beginning to come again into an active creative period. I'm grateful for the demands of my life, there is less time to write, more time to feel and know the world around me. Ora et Labora, the blessings of balance. It is what the Romantic's lack, balance, aching muscles, roots, and the soothing resistance of bread dough. Not everyone is suited to physical labor, but the presence of mundane tasks is an essential to creative wholeness.

St. Joseph

The feast of St. Joseph on Monday gave us a much needed break from Lenten fasting. I had cream in my coffee and beer late at night. I always feel as though St. Joseph must have been a bit exhausted, being the only imperfect member of the Holy Family, and now, as the patron of nearly everything, he is equally exhausted. We even ask him for help finding the things we’ve lost, as St. Anthony can’t be trusted not to hide them himself. St. Joseph doesn’t have time for games like that, though he sometimes gets distracted. When we want something particular, we tuck a note behind his icon, so the reminder is always there.

On his day, Petka and I gave him a special place at the table, and a candle all his own. Petka tasted a corner of his icon and waved to him while I prayed; the sun shone down through the dome. I put out new candles around the house and realized later that they were all bright red - a good color for luck, for new life, and long, happy days

Solitary Voices

“Artists discover as childern that they have inappropriate responses to events around them, they also find..that these oddities are what constitute their value to others.”

~Kathleen Norris

Last week I tried to direct the discussion toward understanding the motivation of the reader. Not necessarily the dedicated reader, but the consistent reader. Last week Mr. Pond and Jenna agreed that we read because we read, and Jenna's conclusion "I put a pen to paper and pray for magic" was simply beautiful. This week I am able to truly draft my discussion post, and I’d like to try continuing to connect the writer to his audience. It’s the Equinox, and Petka is napping long and heavy in her cradle under the window. She’s been asleep for an hour and a half, despite Luba’s best efforts to wake her. I’ve been short with Luba, who gives me wounded looks now, when I come to the door to shush her. The Cure is on the radio, and I feel as though an old friend has surprised me with a visit. There are pussy willows anticipating Easter on our table along with all my scattered books and papers, my coffee cup, and now, my computer.

My commitment to writing is less than it ought to be, but even in my distraction, I can see that writing well takes a good deal of dedication, almost as much as it takes talent; it also takes a particular calling - a vocation to ‘otherness’, to take up the voice of the community, and in writing to “make us look at the way things really are,” refusing to let us “deny our pain” (Kathleen Norris), and our glory. Like the prophets, who filled the Old Testament with warnings and insistence, writers can’t stop at pain, they reveal again and again the richness and beauty of our humanity.

Often, we have a mistaken view of the nature of writing. We cling to the “nineteenth-century image of the poet-as-romantic; the lone rebel,..seized by holy imagination” (Kathleen Norris). It is a dangerous and isolating image. The writer is denied his voice - his words no longer have the power to call the community tnot deeper understanding, because the community cannot see beyond the enjoyment they receive or fail to receive from his work.

50 Days of Self Reflection: Day 19

If you were a tree, what sort of tree would you be?

I would be a beech tree, if I could choose, with smooth bark and leaves that turn bright gold in the autumn and rattle away in the winter wind. Beeches comfort me. They're grand, but homey, common, but each one seems exceptional in it's own way. We have a beech at the head of the property, gracefully curved from some storm long ago, with wide branches that reach out across the road, and a look of welcoming in it's leaves.

Early Morning Art

Recently I spent the afternoon cleaning the desk my husband and I share - putting away books, dusting, tossing papers in the stove. I put fresh paper in my typewriter and a clear notebook beside it, with the good pens in a jar. I went about my day, waiting for a moment to sit down and write. Ideas came and went, but the opportunity eluded me until late in the evening, watching the moon rise above the trees, I was able to fall into the work, while my husband read, Yarrow crawled off in pursuit of danger, and Luba followed her, sniffing nervously. Since the I’ve been rising early again to eat up more time writing at the window, and typing it up in the evenings when the clack-clack of the old machine won’t wake the household. My husband is grateful, as an early morning for me insures him a warm house, hot coffee, and oatmeal by lamplight. I am grateful because the mornings are mine.