Category Archives: Humanities

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.
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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.

In the Middle Was the Word

It’s pretty clear to me that the books listed in my sidebar cannot compete with the siren song of my newfound love. Knitting and I are united. What is this thing, knitting? My hands. Yes, my hands. By manipulating yarn in loops around bamboo sticks and guiding progress with my fingers, stitch after stitch and row upon row accumulate. Something substantial emerges. I’m fascinated. I’m also getting tired and making mistakes. The bright side to that is that I’m beginning to understand the stitches and see how to correct mistakes. Fine, but I need a break. Yet the books in queue — at least, the ones that aren’t novels — don’t draw me. So it’s time to put Beyond the Writers’ Workshop: New Ways to Write Creative Nonfiction, The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present, and Soul Collage: An Intuitive Collage Process for Individuals and Groups back in the bookcase for another day. Time to sink into some fiction and give the brain a rest from creating new neural pathways.

Fortunately I acquired several books recently based on reader recommendations. I haven’t given The Master Butcher’s Singing Club a fair shake, so I’ll try again. Along with The Boys of My Youth, Miriam’s Kitchen, and Family Matters.

An Unnerving Stranger

Perhaps the deepest reason why we are afraid of death is because we do not know who we are. We believe in a personal, unique and separate identity; but if we dare to examine it, we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: our name, our “biography,” our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit cards … It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely for our security. So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are?

Without our familiar props, we are faced with just ourselves, a person we do not know, an unnerving stranger with whom we have been living all the time but we never really wanted to meet. Isn’t that why we have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and activity, how ever boring or trivial, to ensure that we are never left in silence with this stranger on our own?

And doesn’t this point to something fundamentally tragic about our way of life? We live under an assumed identity, in an nuerotic fairy tale world with no more reality than the Mock Turtle in Alice in Wonderland. Hypnotized by the thrill of building, we have raised the houses of our lives on sand. This world can seem marvelously convincing until death collapses the illusion and evicts us from our hiding place. What will happen to us then if we have no clue of any deeper reality?

–Sogyal Rinpoche, Tibetan Book of Living & Dying

You Make a Promise

For some reason memory brought up Mary Karr’s second memoir, Cherry, which details her adolescent experiences near Port Arthur, Texas (on the Gulf). At one point she recalls falling into a deep depression around age 13, although like all great writers, she doesn’t call it that; she describes her experiences, thoughts, and feelings. There was one passage that I found wry, sweet, and affirming, and that generated a welling in my eyes — both for the message of the tale and her method of writing. Here it is:
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