Category Archives: Humanities

In Which I Recognize a Need

I am having one of those restless yet stuck days. The kind in which I realize that having a job, even part-time, would probably be a good thing. I’ve been applying without much success.

I feel a void in my life, in myself. Not enough fresh input is flowing; I’m stale. I need more interaction with other creators. However, I’m not feeling extremely well, so venturing out of the house is taxing. Writing doesn’t appeal these past few days, which means I’ve prepared nothing for tonight’s memoir group meeting. I’m making art, but feel a need for an infusion of ideas. I feel as though I live in slow motion.

This too shall pass. Usually when I’m mired in sluggishness, just writing about it breaks me out.

Where Wisdom Begins

Disappointment and loss are a part of every life. Many times we can put them behind us and get on with the rest of our lives. But not everything is amenable to this approach. Some things are too big or too deep to do this, and we will have to leave important parts of ourselves behind if we treat them in this way. These are the places where wisdom begins to grow in us. It begins with suffering that we do not avoid or rationalize or put behind us. It starts with the realization that our loss, whatever it is, has become a part of us and has altered our lives so profoundly that we cannot go back to the way it was before.

–Rachel Naomi Remen

A Chance to Redeem

It is the rare person who, looking back over his life and seeing what he has done to it, hasn’t sighed for a chance to redeem what he has cheaply used or carelessly ruined. If only somehow, somewhere, there was a way to live again the days we have darkened with our blind haste – the innumerable occasions when our indifference trod on all the pearls of GodÂ’s graciousness; the times when our pride, or our fear, or our meanness poured the acid of contempt over the fair countenance of anotherÂ’s soul! If this grace were ours, how we would leap to the chance!

–Samuel Howard Miller

Look at Every Path

Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question… Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn’t. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

–don Juan Matus

[via Whiskey River]

So Moving

I just have to post these three lines here, because they are so moving — even haunting — to me. The entire piece is a treat of images and metaphors that radiate with a daughter’s love for her mother.

She was the daughter of broken hearts and the mother of unbroken daughters.
She was a dream I had as a child that took me decades to wake up from.
She was an emerald, brilliant, flawed, a tragic mess of perfection.

–La Peregrina, Santiago Dreaming: Writing Love Letters in the Sand

About Life and Death

I have always believed that death does not end a relationship (mentioned in “I Never Sang for My Father”) and that the honoring of our dead is important for our own quality of living. Death not only does not end a relationship, but as I said yesterday, we must periodically learn to “dance with it.” Am I scared of dying? Yes, I am, but I no longer hide from it as I once did. Day of the Dead has that childish, fun quality of spoofing death, teasing it, to take the fear out of it. All my extremely conservative Dutch relatives are probably squirming in their graves right now protesting their inclusion in a custom they probably would find pagan, but I’d rather think they are happy to be remembered this week.

–Fran Pullara, Sacred Ordinary: Day of the Dead is About Life

Art Everyday

We are on the cusp of NaNoWriMo, which I signed up for. No pressure. I’ll write and see how far I get.

With the same relaxed attitude, I have also joined up with Kat for her version of Nano. This is her third year.

One way or the other, creativity will find its expression this month!

Falls to Pieces

The whole argument about whether one believes in God falls to pieces if you change the question to: do you believe in yourself? If you don’t psychologise it, don’t interpret it as meaning “do you have self-confidence?” but just take it literally, you’d have to say yes, even if you’ve won the top prize for the person with the least self-belief ever to have existed. Because you exist, whether or not you or others believe in you. The same may be true of God.

—Natalie d’ Arbeloff

You can read her 15th interview with God. This in an astonishing series of communications with Self and Mystery. Natalie’s artistry awes me, and I don’t use that term often.

Finished

I am finished reading my friend’s manuscript. All I can say here is, “Wow.” I was impressed over and over by the deft plot, rich characters, and the way it all meshed. She has truly created an intricate alternate reality.

One reason I don’t write fiction is that I am simply terrified and immobilized by the prospect of creating something from nothing. I’m intrigued by it, and I’m glad others do it, but real life feels full enough to write about. It takes enormous energy to write fiction, especially a novel. So this leads to the question: why in hell did I sign up for NaNoWriMo? I think it’s a “join the crowd” thing. I don’t have any plans, as yet, of writing. But trying counts, yes?

Can’t Talk Write Now… Eating Reading*

I am immersed, absorbed, engrossed, held captive by, and otherwise engaged in reading my friend’s manuscript. It grabbed me by the lapels (well, it would have if I wore shirts with that type of collar) from the first page.

Posting will pick up when I am released.

*A play on a line stolen from Homer Simpson: “Can’t talk now, eating.” This can usually be heard around our family dinner table during holidays as we settle into gnoshing after much cooking.

Novelty

I just checked snail mail, and a large rectangular package teetered diagonally in the box. I immediately knew what it was: the manuscript of my friend’s first novel. She worked on it for a long time, and has chosen me (and other friends) to read it. I’ve never been given such an opportunity before, and I’m eager to delve in.

Recognition

I haven’t written a poem in two months, so I turned to my library for inspiration.

Recognition

Playing truth or dare an hour before daylight
among the bean trees, I encounter a stranger at the gate.
When I ask what she is doing, she replies,
“Composing a life.” She seeks to answer the question,
“Is there no place on earth for me?”

I ask how she will know the answer, and she says
she will track her progress in the stone diaries.
She has an amazing grace, this girl with a pearl earring
wearing borrowed finery, and I want to know more.
I ask with an open heart, open mind, what it is she seeks.

She wants to understand the savage inequalities,
to have a reckoning with the fact that she lives
in a world where the poisonwood bible increasingly
becomes the rule of law. She wants to help people
to stop running with scissors and enjoy the perfection
of the morning.

We are surrounded by landscapes of wonder, if we
would only make the effort to see differently.

She in turn asks what I seek. I reply that I want
the courage to be, to cast a slender thread
of hope into the sea, the sea of humanity.
I want to plant new seeds of contemplation,
embrace the grace in dying. I want to
know the mystery of tying rocks to clouds.

From her angle of repose under oleander,
jacaranda, the magnificent spinster listens.
I tell her she has a beautiful mind, that
I can see the molecules of emotion swirling in her.
She tells me that I am a succulent wild woman,
that I have zen under a wing. She reminds me
that art is a way of knowing and solitude
a return to the self.

Then we part, blessing each other with traveling
mercies, with a promise to meet again
at the healing circle in Gilead.

If these words ring a bell for you, look below to see why.
Continue reading →

The Sun Also Rises

A couple days ago, Kat posted a poem that appeared in The Sun magazine. Then last night, a member of my memoir group brought issues of the magazine to share. In every issue, there is a section of writing submitted by readers on a topic; the topics are broad (games, decisions, hair, risk) and allow for diverse interpretations. They must be non-fiction only. She proposed we use the topics as prompts for writing and consider submitting our work.

Now, I’d heard of Sun before, but only vaguely. As a subscriber to Utne and Ode Magazine, I’ve probably read excerpts from it. I’d never seen a copy, yet it is exactly the kind of magazine I love. It presents poetry, memoir, fiction, and interviews — rich, in-depth works. It isn’t a political, spiritual, or literary magazine, but these elements do exist in it. Its agenda is to present the work of people trying to understand themselves and make sense of their lives — people who are trying to express, discover, renew, and create.

How grateful I am to be enlightened about this publication! Thanks to both women for introducing me to it.