Category Archives: Random Thoughts

A Time for the Irish

March 17, 2012 By in Random Thoughts Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments
English: Postcard: "St. Patrick's Day Sou...

Image via Wikipedia

Today’s is St. Patrick’s Day and the wearing of the green is imperative.  I’m not sure about others, but the mere thought of green ketchup, let alone green beer, more or less makes me shudder.  But today we’re all a bit Irish, so even though my heritage is a mixed bunch of northern Europeans not including Irish or Scots, I thought I’d explore my own Irish yearnings.

First, I tried to think of what I knew about St. Patrick himself.  It turns out not much.  Let me see, he was a Catholic saint who Christianized pagan Ireland and threw out all the snakes.  I’ve never known what that meant, although I have read that Ireland truly does not have any indigenous snakes, which is not a bad thing in a country.  I have this vision of St. Patrick picking up the snakes and tossing them, one by one, in the outgoing tide of the ocean.  I don’t think that’s probably how he did it, if he did it.  Perhaps because it is his saint’s day, there are quite interesting articles on the Internet about him, Ireland and the various traditions.  Here’s one I read that I found quite fascinating:  Did St. Patrick sell slaves to the Irish?  In it, a Cambridge scholar posits the notion that St. Patrick was a slaveholder and a tax collector, or at least his family was.  This seems quite different from the vague legends I’ve heard about him.  In fact, I seem to have some awareness that he freed Irish slaves (a very good thing but one which, alas, did not last that long, from the little I know of Irish history).

Statue of St. Patrick in Aughagower, County Mayo

Statue of St. Patrick in Meath--Image via Wikipedia

So what else do I know about Ireland?  Turns out I don’t know very much about the country either.  I know it was originally settled by Celts, who created while they made Ireland their home rather wonderful stories of their origins and their gods and goddesses.  I know that Ireland suffered raids from the Norse, who were originally, I think, some form of Anglo-Saxon or Germanic tribe who settled up in the frozen north somewhat later than the Celts moved into the British Isles.  I know that Ireland became a Christian country (St. Patrick led the wave here, I believe), and for many years Ireland was considered far, far more scholarly and civilized than any other Christian country, even enlightened.  Once England had been made Christian, there was apparently quite a lot of controversy between the two kinds of Catholicism, Irish and Roman, with the Roman Catholics eventually winning.  And I know that at some time during the Middle Ages, the British kings and their armies ‘subdued’ Ireland, from which led all these hundreds of years of resistance on the part of the Irish.  I put quotes around ‘subdued’ in the last sentence because the Irish (how strange) didn’t like being subdued and fought it from that day to this.  Sometimes it seems, from what I’ve read or heard, that the island was colored more with red blood than green trees and bogs.  My other knowledge of Ireland is fairly modern, having to do with the potato famine, the emigration of starving Irish to other countries, particularly the United States, and the ‘Troubles,’ which is a somewhat euphemistic term for many many years of fighting and tragedy that led eventually to the Free State of Ireland, the division with Northern Ireland (which felt more of a compatibility with Britain), the Sinn Fein, the IRA (and, I believe the IRA is an arm of the Sinn Fein, not the other way around), Michael Collins and all the stories of bombings and misery in the sixties, seventies, eighties and forward.

I know that Ireland is a beautiful island, green as chopped parsley, filled with bogs, cliffs, fields, forests, oaks and legends.  The leprechaun with his pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  Dagda, the good god, Brigid, the goddess of water and of fire, Rhiannon, the great queen,  Epona, the goddess of the horse,  Cerunnos, the antlered god, Macha and Nemain, the goddesses of war, all of the Tuatha de Denan.  And one of the loveliest of heavens, the Tir Na Nog, the Land of Eternal Youth and Beauty, somewhere in the West.

And the gorgeous art, the lovely carved stones, the illuminated manuscripts.  More recently, the lead crystal, the fisherman’s sweaters, the Irish linen, the Belleek china, the poetry and prose, the songs and tales, so much that is lovely.  Writers such as (and this is only the recent ones) Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw, W. B. Yeats, Sean O’Casey and of course James Joyce, the writer of “Ulysses,” of which I can say without caveat that I have managed to read the first five pages.  Several times.  And music and dance that, even with very little of the Irish in my heritage, seems to call to me.  Oh, one more legend I think I know is that whiskey was first distilled in Ireland.  (Considering how melancholy much of their history is, perhaps this is not surprising.)  Possibly Scotland would dispute that claim, but after all, in Scotland, it’s called ‘whisky’ anyway.

And all I know of the shamrock is that it exists, has three leaves (not four) and is a symbol of Ireland.  Well, it’s certainly green, and I think it had something to do with St. Patrick, but that’s all.

It seems clear I have some researching to do.  And maybe someday a trip to take.  All my ‘knowledge’ of Ireland is anecdotal and vague and there is so much more to this country so rich in history and lore than I know.  But today, we are all a bit Irish, and so I salute Ireland and its people, so staunch, so unwilling to be ‘subdued’, and its culture and life.

English: St. Patrick's Church St. Patrick was ...

An Irish Church--Image via Wikipedia

All except corned beef and cabbage.  I can’t quite get my mind or heart around that.

An Exploration of Envy

February 27, 2012 By in Random Thoughts Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 10 Comments

A few weeks ago, I posted a blog about one of the seven deadly sins:  sloth.  As I said then, I planned to revisit these sins, at least in my blog, if not in actuality.  And then move on to the seven cardinal virtues if I ever found out what those were.  So today’s post explores the sin of envy.

First, it’s rather interesting that the sin is envy rather than jealousy, a state of mind with which envy is often confused.

The Seven Deadly Sins (ca. 1620) - Envy

Envy--Image via Wikipedia

Jealousy is defined as:

1.  resentment against a rival, a person enjoying success or advantage, etc., or against another’s success or advantage itself.
2.  mental uneasiness from suspicion or fear of rivalry, unfaithfulness, etc., as in love or aims.
3.  vigilance in maintaining or guarding something.

Envy is defined as:

1.  a feeling of discontent or covetousness with regard to another’s advantages, success, possessions, etc.

The first definition of jealousy and that of envy, I think, is where the confusion reigns.  But the basics are clear.  Envy is a feeling of wanting what someone else has, something one does not have oneself, while jealousy is more a fear of losing what one has or resentment about what somebody else has.

So, heavens above, when envy’s very definition is more benign than jealousy’s, why in the world is envy the sin?  Perhaps it has to do with the fact that in scripture, God states that he/she/it/them/whatnot is “a jealous God.”  I presume this means in the third sense of the definition of jealousy, that of guarding vigilantly.  So, perhaps it would be kind of difficult to name jealousy a sin if God is proud of being jealous.

But since it’s envy that’s the sin, let’s explore it.  In the first place, aware all my life that envy is a sin, I have worked not to envy other people’s lives or possessions.  This works about as well for me as it probably works for you or anybody who isn’t Mother Theresa or the Dalai Lama.  Oh,  come on, of course I envy those people, whether they are my friends or strangers, who much more effortlessly than I maintain a slim figure; or those whose health and fitness leaves mine in the dust (literally, usually); or those with better taste, greater talent, more attention from the world, better publicists, a publisher, an agent, a close friendship with Ridley Scott, prettier things, better clothes, more money, and a greater ability to attract the close, ahem, romantic attention of the gender they prefer.  Or an Oscar.  And when some competitive specific something takes place, such as a writing contest, I envy the winner (which I almost never am).  And these feelings can make me miserable, at least for a while.

What does that mean, then, for me?  That envy is an awareness of what I lack, whether that be a thing, a person, a character trait, an opportunity, or a place in the world.  That I, for the time I feel envious, feel lacking, feel less than.  So it’s an uncomfortable emotion, one I don’t enjoy, one which taints my world.  And one which results in, usually, a sequence of mental and emotional events.  The first event is, of course, a deep desire to wrap myself and a tub of Haagen-Daaz (rum raisin for choice) in my warmest comforter and watch old movies without really seeing them.  Done judicially, this is not the worst possible response to an envy crisis (in my case, I don’t eat sweets, so some gluten-free crackers and hummus usually substitutes for the ice cream and I’m more often likely to read a Georgette Heyer novel than watch an old movie, but the principle is the same).  At least, it’s not the worst response if you unwrap the comforter and stop eating the treat at least about the time the movie ends or you finish the novel.  Cocooning in this fashion for much longer than that unfortunately has a tendency to become the problem, rather than address it.

The second event, in my case, is usually a long out-loud monologue (one of the advantages of living by myself) while taking a hot bath in which I denounce everyone or anyone who has what I wanted, explaining to those who made the choice that left me lacking where they went wrong, and then by the time the bath water cools explaining to myself that things aren’t so bad, that perhaps the achievement or possession or person I’m forced to do without is not that desirable, and finally–and here’s where I get down to the real problem–what I did or did not do that made this misery happen.  There’s also the chance here to inject a small dose of realism, often along the lines of the simple fact that with the possible exception of those miserable souls that get perfect SAT scores and Olympic gold medals, every single one of us knows that somebody out there is better at whatever it is we’re doing that we are.  So between figuring out what I could have done better and facing a certain reality that no matter how much I give something my personal best, there’s still a likelihood that somebody else in a world of seven billion people is going to outshine me, I often manage to pull myself out of the slough of despond, as John Bunyan would have put it (and he put it so well, I’m pretty sure he spent some time there).

The third event in this marathon comes when I start to think about what I have to do to fix this, which pretty much boils down to how I can change what I’m doing in order to obtain this whatever it is I want and feel cheated out of, or, alternatively, how I can stop wanting it.  There is a third option, too, which comes under the heading of acceptance of reality.  This kind of takes care of all possibilities, after all.  But let’s look at them with a little more focus.  If what I’m envying is an achievement someone else has made; then thought, action, some change in behavior might possibly get me that something.  And so I will start to think of what it will take, and if it will take more than I am willing to expend.  If what I’m envying is a thing that can be bought or made, my thoughts will turn to whether I can afford it (a log house, uh, no; a pair of red jeans, yes), whether I need it (an iPad, no, a new set of tires, yes), whether I want it and how desperately (an iPad, YES, a new set of tires, no).  And so forth.  If what I’m envying is a state of being (serenity anyone?) or a person who either I will never meet or who has demonstrated that he’s just not that into me (Russell Crowe, anyone?), then I must determine if anything I can do can change that situation.  So, in other words, my job after identifying the enviable thing, person or whatnot, is to determine why I don’t have it, if I can achieve the desirable thing/person/situation through my own efforts, if the achievement is worth the effort it would take to obtain it, and, finally, if the enviable thing, person or whatnot is unobtainable by me through any means I can devise, if I can let it go or, at the least, accept that I won’t be able to get it (at least not right now or through anything but sheerest luck) and find some way to live with that.  This last has to do with learning to live in the real world, in which there are much fewer enviable things than there are people who want them and so, even were I to do my absolute best, to do everything possible, to be completely and always exceptional, luck will indeed play a part.  My getting an Oscar, in other words, does not depend on my abilities and efforts alone.  Meryl Streep got her third Oscar for best performance by an actress last night.  It was her 17th nomination.  I rest my case.

An Enviable Thing

Whew, that’s a lot of mental work to go through just because I want an iPad.  But after all it depends on how much something is wanted, needed, and thus how deep the lack, the hole in the soul.  I can live without an iPad (well, I suppose, if bamboo shoots were stuck under my fingernails, I’d have to admit that).  And, besides, and this is not a rationalization, the longer I wait, the cheaper they’ll become.  Selling my novel has to do with effort, expertise and possibly talent, so I can create a plan and follow it that will get me closer than I am now.  (Obviously, finishing the darned thing is completely up to me and step one to selling it.)  Russell Crowe?  Or any such heart’s desire that is not a thing or an achievement, but another person?  Well, not so much.  It’s not a reasonable thing (person, forgive me) to want some person as a possession and assume that will mean they love us as we wish to be loved.  The slave owners of the old South spent a lot of time justifying their position and insisting that the slaves loved their masters and wouldn’t have it any other way.  We know how that turned out.  We want another person to love us unconditionally, but we don’t take into account the wishes, the tastes, the desires, the PERSONHOOD, of that other person.  Russell Crowe, Johnny Depp, Colin Firth–any or all of these wonderful actors may enchant me, but I have no way of knowing whether that enchantment comes from their own selves or their incredible (and true) talent in creating a character.  Perhaps, indeed probably, it is the character or even body of work that I have fallen for.  These men have lives, tastes, problems, personalities, that I know nothing about and may or may not like.  It’s like assuming I know exactly what the afterlife will be.  I’m virtually certain that whatever my assumptions, the afterlife will be something else that I cannot even imagine.  So as long as I don’t take up stalking as my next hobby, so long as I recognize that this is a person, no matter how desirable, no matter how enviable, I’m not going to get, AT ALL, I can still enjoy watching a movie starring one of the three with warm feelings in my breast.  Or somewhere.

Image representing iPad as depicted in CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

But does this, short of stalking, theft or murder, rise to sin?  I’m not at all sure.  Looking up at those definitions at the top of this blog, jealousy sounds more like a deadly sin to me.  So, as we did with sloth, let’s look at the advantages to the establishments (both religious and civil) of defining envy as a sin.  There is an old prayer in centuries-past England that goes something like “God bless the squire and his relations, and keep us all in our proper stations.”  That can argue anything from active oppression to mere complacency, but I can tell you this, the squire and his relations telling the lower orders that envy is a sin are reinforcing this pleasant (to the squire and his relations) state of affairs.  It is much easier to have a lovely life if the laborers underneath are tugging their forelocks and bending their knees in between scrubbing the floors and plowing the fields.  Now this makes me sound much more radical than I am, but then again I lived most of my life in an America where us forelock-tuggers have not just the opportunity, but practically the mandate to quit that, get an education, find a job that doesn’t require forelock-tugging and move up in the world.  It doesn’t seem to be as easy to do that now as it used to be, but then, it probably never was as easy as it seemed.  It’s just that here in this country it was not only possible, it was something each of us was supposed to do.  As opposed to other countries in which whatever slice of heaven or hell you got born into, there you were, stuck for the rest of your life with only eternity to look forward to.  Another quote that has informed my thinking on this, this time from Emile Zola and translated (badly) from the French:  “The French authorities have, in their infinite wisdom, declared that it is as illegal for a prince to sleep under a bridge as it is for a peasant.”  I believe this is from “L’Assimoir,” but I’m not sure.  So envy, like sloth, is a sin that is very useful for those who are defining sin, and a lot more troublesome for those who have to live under that definition.

So, parsing what we’ve put together about envy so far, I believe it can be two things, separately or at once.  Envy can be debilitating, a way of hiding in your room because you’ll never have what you want and everybody else does and the world sucks.  Or, envy can be a spur to action.  That person has what I want, so I’ll figure out a way to get it.  Put in that sense, envy is a root cause of all achievement in the world, goading the hired hand who envies the farmer into saving his pitiful earnings until he, too, can own a piece of land of his own.  Of course, envy can cause us to do very inappropriate things to get what we want, starting with lies and moving right up through every kind of crime, including murder.  But kept in bounds, envy is at least one of the reasons why people get college degrees, lose weight, dye their hair, wear attractive clothes instead of sweats, work when they don’t feel like it, and actually create.  It might not be the best reason, and it undoubtedly will not be the reason given in the bios, but it’s there, working away all the time.

When it is debilitating, envy is then something to rise above or work through.  There is an old aphorism that states that if each person in the world put their own dirty laundry out in a square and then could choose to take anybody else’s, we’d all take back our own.  Because that’s another thing about envy.  We often envy without knowledge, thinking that what somebody else has is worth any amount of worry and care and misery to get, when if we only knew, we’re  better off without it.  This has never been said better than in a poem called “Richard Cory,” by Edward Arlington Robinson:

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich – yes, richer than a king –
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Rules for Living and Writing

February 22, 2012 By in Random Thoughts, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments
English: we don't like to make rules but...

A very appropriate sign from an English Cafe--Image via Wikipedia

I’ll hopefully revisit this every once in a while, but please don’t think I’m the genius who thought up these rules.  These are the ones that filtered through to me over the years.  I’m not a very good rule follower, but if I work at these, things seem to mostly go better, sometimes.  A ringing endorsement, right?

I call them Life 101

1.  There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.  (Not even my wording, it’s a quote from Robert Heinlein.)

2.  There is only now.  (I think Buddha put this one better.  Or the Dalai Lama.  Or Alec Baldwin.  Somebody smarter than me.)

3.  Say thank you and please and you’re welcome (NOT “no problem”) and MEAN it.  (My mother.  Everybody’s mother.)

4.  Find something you love and do it.  (Every magazine and self-help book written in the last ten years.  Mothers and guidance counselors don’t say this, by the way.  They say “find something that pays a lot of money and do it.”)

5.  Let go.  You can’t make something happen just because you want it to.  (Most recent absolute truth in this vein to hit the zeitgeist:  “He’s just not that into you.”)

6.  Do it anyway.  (The best writing advice I ever got.  The best advice about any kind of performance or productivity I ever got.)

7.  You can’t change anybody else, you can only change yourself.  (And that’s hard enough!)

8.  Be kind.  Everybody else has feelings just like you do.  (Uh, Buddha, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, the Dalai Lama and probably not Alec Baldwin have all put this better:  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  The Golden Rule.  The only guide you actually need for living among other living creatures.)

9.  Say “no” more often.  (You can move from “no” to “yes”, but the other way around makes you unreliable.  Not a good thing.)

10:  No-one can impose on you without your consent.  (This one is from Eleanor Roosevelt.  It’s a very good thing to remember when somebody is trying to get you to bake eight dozen cookies for the high school on the same day you’re presenting your project findings to your boss and you have a dental appointment.  And it’s your anniversary.)

That’s enough for now.  I would love to hear from others who have good advice for living.

Pondering History–Egypt

February 21, 2012 By in Random Thoughts Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 7 Comments
العربية: Deutsch: Alle Pyramiden von Gizeh auf...

The Great Pyramids--Image via Wikipedia

Consider this.  As far away in time as Ancient Greece seems to us, that’s how far away in time Egypt seemed to them.  The pyramids looked much the same to the Greeks as they look to us, the limestone already stripped away to reuse, the tombs looted, the purpose, so clear to the Egyptians they didn’t actually write it down, as mysterious to the Greeks as it is to us.

And, unlike Babylon or Mohenjo-Daro, the Egyptian culture survived to and through Alexander’s conquest and flowered anew, recognizably Egyptian, with the Ptolemaic kings, only being crushed, finally, under Rome’s sandals.

For many years, from the time of the Greeks to now, Egypt was thought of as a culture of death, with the pyramids its most important symbol.  But in reality Egypt was a culture of life, life made possible by the yearly gift of the Nile.  Prosperous and healthy, protected by the nearly impassable deserts from marauding tribes, Egyptians enjoyed their world fully, savoring the pleasures of life and wanting them to continue into eternity.  For most of its history, with a few exceptions, Egypt was a wealthy, sophisticated, remarkably free society, filled with good food, dance, sport, entertainment and gorgeous clothes.

The gift of the Nile, predictable every year, was fertile soil, making it possible for the people who settled on its banks to grow plenty to eat with enough left over to support people not directly attached to the soil.  The gift of the Nile allowed for the first (it is posited by those studying such things) actual civilization, with kings and priests and soldiers and bureaucrats; with infrastructure like roads and taxes (yes, they’ve always been with us), international trade, even postal services; medicine and dentistry, entertainment, shops and businesses.  And it allowed for luxuries like turquoise and gold, ivory and leopard skins, pets (the first recognizable cat and dog breeds started in Egypt), cedars from Lebanon (Egypt had very few trees of its own), marble, copper and limestone.  And stability.  While there were interim periods when the pharaohs were weak or died too quickly or lasted too long, when invasions upset the world of the Nile, for the most part, the serial dynasties of Egypt lasted not for tens but for hundreds of years.

English: The Nile River in Egypt.

The Nile--Image via Wikipedia

It is difficult to see in what has been left behind such a span of years because much of what we can find looks so similar over time.  According to Egyptologists, this was deliberate, not at all a failure of imagination.  The Egyptian way of looking at the world, of governing it, describing it, or picturing it seemed to be “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.”  They liked the way their people looked incised on a plinth; there seemed no reason to change the perspective.  Besides a pharaoh of Egypt recognized he (or much less often, she) was for the ages.  Best to look so, best to look, after all, Egyptian.   Akhenaton, a Middle Kingdom pharaoh who tried to change everything, even the way he was pictured for eternity, was after his death suppressed in all the king lists and historical records as much for his trying to change things as for what he tried to change things to.

But the society did, of course evolve, and even those parts of it that didn’t, that remained timelessly the same on the serene banks of the Nile, was a society more pleasant (for Egyptians at least) than all the others existing.  Recent research even shows how far down into the ranks of ordinary people the prosperity went.  There are hieroglyphs recording sessions of courts of law that sound remarkably similar to small claims court in the modern world.  This mat weaver gets a short count on a delivery of flax and sues the middleman.  That farmer disputes a boundary with a growing township.  A courier complains of being delayed by bad maintenance on a boat.  Archaeologists have now put forward evidence from the hieroglyphs that women owned property and ran businesses and made their own decisions.  There is at least one text unearthed indicating what seems almost identical to a modern restraining order keeping the shopkeeper’s husband off the premises.  And divorce could be–and was–instituted by either party to a marriage.  The world of Egypt, so exotic to us, must have been a busy, bustling, ordinary place to live.  And one which the Egyptians themselves enjoyed so much, they didn’t want to leave.  Or at least, knowing they would have to, they believed with all their spirit that a place as wonderful as their own living Egypt awaited them out in the West, on the other side of the great divide.

The scenes incised or painted into tomb walls of the great do not celebrate death, they celebrate life, showing the tomb’s noble inhabitant (which isn’t precisely the word I am looking for) hunting, fishing, boating on the Nile, feasting with entertainers, ladies and gentlemen together, showing off their wigs and linen outfits and jewels.  And displaying the makeup that gives them such a modern look to us.  They were lean and athletic for the most part, healthier than their counterparts in virtually all other ‘civilized’ societies, finding much the same kind of facial and bodily structure attractive that we do now.  The bust of Nefertiti, now in the Berlin Museum, seems gaspingly, astonishingly modern to us, showing to us easily the most beautiful woman we have ever seen.

Object in the Ägyptisches Museum Berlin (Egypt...

Bust of Nefertiti--Image via Wikipedia

It is now considered self-evident that, Biblical anecdote to the contrary, pharaohs used paid labor, not slaves, to build their monuments, and the choice to do so was as much one of shrewd political economics–to enable full employment during the yearly inundation–as it was to glorify pharaoh.

Egyptian civilization waxed and waned and lasted in its essence for well over 3,000 years.  In comparison, Greece managed only a few hundred years, Rome itself less than a thousand.  Only China had nearly as long a run and was almost as sophisticated and cultured a society.  And we, who pronounce on Egypt’s value as a civilization?  The United States is less than 250 years old.  Just consider.

The Things That Got Away

February 18, 2012 By in Random Thoughts Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

On a prior post, I wrote about trying to edit all my stuff and lighten my Marley’s Ghost style load just a little bit.  Be that as it may, there are possessions, things I owned, that I have, over the years, lost, tossed, given away, sold, or even destroyed that I still miss.  Some of them “got away” because I believed that I no longer wanted them (big mistake!); others because of misfortune; still others are a mystery–I have no idea how they disappeared.  But I still think of them.

One such possession came back to my mind yesterday when I went to a writing group’s member’s house for a lovely lunch she was having for our group (she is an extraordinary cook and we all like to talk, so the whole thing was a delicious treat).  I noticed in her office/study an actual typewriter, a big IBM, I think.  I used to have an IBM proportionally spaced Selectric typewriter, one of the really massive ones, with the whirling typeball and the world’s best keyboard touch.  I can’t remember the exact name of the model, but it was designed to make typewriting look like print, using mylar/carbon ribbons and that wonderful strike.  You could change the typeballs quite easily to change fonts, it had incremental spacing both horizontally and vertically, and it was just the best typewriter ever invented.  I loved that thing and still miss it.  It was, however, huge, and at that time in my life, space was at a premium.  It did not seem sensible to keep a typewriter after I had found the money and the space for a computer and a printer.  It still doesn’t, but that doesn’t stop me missing my beautiful IBM typewriter.  And, of course, at that time, such machines were not dinosaurs, they were still useful.  I got quite a bit of money for it, and that came in handy, too.

English: IBM Selectric II dual Latin/Hebrew Ha...

IBM Selectric Typeball--Image via Wikipedia

When I lived in my California house, I had three genuine Stickley oak rockers.  They had been reupholstered during their lifetimes in a really horrible and prickly green plush (instead of their original leather), but the wood was beautiful and they were comfortable and sturdy.  The Stickley logo, which was actually a brand, was on all three pieces of furniture.  I reupholstered them again, but not in leather, which I could not afford, but in a kind of William Morris-y woven damask that I liked at the time.  When I decided to sell my house and go on my next adventure, for some reason that still passes any possibility of understanding, I not only sold my oak rolltop computer desk (what was I thinking?), but sold at auction those three Stickley rockers (really!  what WAS I thinking???).  I don’t even remember what amount of money I realized from that sale, but it can’t even remotely be equivalent to what they were worth, even reupholstered, let alone what they were worth in intangibles to me, for I had inherited them to start with.   They cannot be replaced, even though there is a Stickley store in Denver, because while the modern stuff is nice, it’s just not the same.  What was I THINKING?

During the clean sweep begun by my decision to sell that house, I disposed of several things that I still think I was right to get rid of, and the money really helped.  But there are still some regrets, such as selling my Fiestaware.  For those that don’t know, Fiestaware is a kind of pottery that is very simple and gets a good deal of its appeal because of the brilliant colors the manufacturers use for the glaze.  I bought my set when Fiestaware came back into prominence in the nineties, and I decided to sell it because the set was in four pastel colors and it was simply too, well, tentative, sort of Fiestaware-lite.  The traditional Fiestaware came in brilliant, deep colors whose very names were delicious, like cobalt, tangerine, maroon, forest and many others.  I don’t regret too much selling the pastels, but I find that I wish I’d bought antique Fiestaware or the new versions of the brilliant and deep colors.  The design is classic and the dishes are functional, sturdy and go with the kind of decor I’m moving toward–mission-y, a little rustic, with touches of older stuff.  My everyday dishes now are white, with a set of red for accent, and I have a small set of Johnson Bros.  Old English Castles.  I’m very fond of this and don’t wish to change, but I still wish I’d stuck with Fiestaware and just gotten more of the deep and bright colors over time.

English: Fiestaware Photo credit: Eric B. Norm...

Fiestaware--Image via Wikipedia

But some losses do not bring minor regret.  Losing my Daddy’s Bibles, well, the experience of that loss is something I will never get over.  I called them Daddy’s Bibles, but one of the small books was a King James Bible and the other was a Treasury of the Sacred Heart, which is, I believe, a Roman Catholic prayer book.  He bought them in Jerusalem during a leave from his work as an Army Major in what was then Persia during World War II.  The books were leather bound, and each had a cover applied to them made of olive wood, incised with a cross.  He was told that the olive wood came from the olive groves on Golgotha, but of course he had no way of knowing if that was so.  The endpapers of both books were inscribed by friends he had met either in Persia or in Jerusalem.  I can remember parts of only one inscription, which was set on the front endpaper of the small prayer book, across from the engraved picture of Jesus Christ showing his Sacred Heart (which is a heart with a perpetual flame on the top of it).  To the best of my memory, it states (partially, I’m afraid):  “Just as this book brought together a Catholic priest, a Protestant man and an Arab boy in _________ [I can’t remember this part, but I think he wrote something like “conversation and understanding”], so may this War bring together all the people of the Earth in a new beginning [I’m also not sure of the “beginning” part, but that was the effect the words had on me].”  It was signed with the appellation “Father”, but I can’t now remember the name of the person signing (or perhaps it was not a very legible signature, as so many aren’t).  Obviously, the person writing the inscription was the Catholic priest, my father was the Protestant man, and who the Arab boy was it is impossible for me to know, but oh I wish I could have heard the conversations the inscription discusses. I would love to (and never will) know what happened and why, and what part that very small book played.  I’m glad to have written down my best memory of the inscription because this is a memory I do not want ever to lose, as I lost those treasured books.

English: Olive Blossoms outside Jerusalem.

Olive Blossoms Outside Jerusalem--Image via Wikipedia

I lost them because I left my husband.  I put them in the duffel bag that held some clothes and the things that I could not part with, even for a little while, that I took with me when I left.  Since I was more or less staying with different friends each night (when I say I left my husband, I mean I walked out the door, with absolutely no plan for the next five minutes, let alone the future), I kept the duffel bag in my car.  Unfortunately it was in the back seat on the one and only time in my life I was robbed.  I didn’t mind losing the clothes or anything else, but losing those books was more than I could bear.  Coming so quickly after the devastation of ending a marriage, the loss of Daddy’s Bibles flattened me and seemed to symbolize all the losses I’d ever had and all the foolish things I’d done to help those losses happen.  It still does.

But let’s end this essay on a somewhat lighter note.  In everybody’s life, there seems to be a kind of black hole, down which household items simply disappear, never to be seen again.  Most of us who have an automatic washer and dryer have one of these black holes, which eats socks (only one of a pair, of course, otherwise we would never know), or the only pillowcase that actually fits that odd but really comfortable pillow.  I have one of those, but I also have a black hole into which books or magazines or notebooks or documents disappear.  For example, I bought, from Dover Publications, a book of houseplans which had originally been commissioned by one of those “shelter” magazines in the 1930s.  The main portion of the book detailed four houses, quite imaginary, commissioned from then-current architects and decorators, to fit certain imaginary pieces of land set theoretically in various places in the country.  I loved reading the descriptions of a bygone era in home architecture and decoration; what the architects and decorators found important and what they didn’t even address; and the four plans were beautiful.  And that book, which I would never have given away, lent, sold or tossed, is simply gone.  When sorting through all my books last spring, I specifically looked for that one and it is just not there.  I have searched through the Dover website, and I can’t find a replacement.  Perhaps I made up the whole thing, but I don’t think so.  I still miss that book.  I’ve also lost, down that same black hole, the only copies of several research papers I was rather proud of, papers I wrote before computers during a student time when I didn’t have the money to get the papers copied (Xerox copies used to cost a lot of money per sheet, like faxes still do) and of course I didn’t use a carbon.  I would like to have those papers again, perhaps because I’d like to revisit that student, that girl, I used to be.  I once created an entire rhetorical system for a class in modern rhetoric I took at CSU.  I cannot remember at all what that system consisted of and I’d like to.  It earned me an A+, so it couldn’t have been really silly.  And I have no memory of what I said in that paper.  None.  Oh well, it’s not like what I wrote was the secret to cold fusion or anything.  At least I don’t think so.

So, even while I attempt to find satisfaction with fewer possessions, there will always be “the stuff that got away.”  Whether because of happenstance, black hole, bad decision or an unforeseen devastating loss, all of us, I believe, have things that were more than things that live now only in memory and the loss of which we mourn.

An Exploration of Sloth

January 31, 2012 By in Random Thoughts Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments
Jacques Callot, The Seven Deadly Sins - Sloth

Sloth -- image by Wikipedia

As I was reluctantly dragging myself out of bed this morning (ahem, actually, this afternoon), I realized that while I don’t spend much time thinking about the seven deadly sins (which, if I remember, include envy, avarice, gluttony, lust, sloth, pride and one other, obviously I need to LOOK THIS UP) and, to a lesser extent, the seven cardinal virtues (of which I remember not even one), I would have to admit that of them all, sloth seems to be my most besetting sin at this point.

Of course, it’s an interesting concept anyway, the idea of sin or virtue.  There are a lot of differences (and a lot of similarities) among the living beings on this planet, but I don’t think any other species than us, human beings, require an operator’s manual (in other words, a religious text, a set of laws, a constitution, an etiquette book).  Other living beings seem to come with a set of instructions that keep them acting according to their best natures at all times.  (No, Virginia, a tiger’s best nature is to stalk and kill prey, it is not being “evil”.)  But we, whether because of our relatively big brains or because we are social animals that operate less by instinct than others, seem to be unable to live in this world without a rule book.  And whatever the rule book we choose, there are certain basics that we seem to have to be continually told not to do — thus, in my cultural and religious background, comes a concept of sin that keeps us from naturally behaving according to our better natures and without requiring that the rules be continually drummed into our heads.  In the Western Christian tradition, there are other greater sins, but the seven deadlies are the everyday sins that, as human beings, we are inclined to commit.

So, today, I’m thinking about sloth.  I don’t normally think of myself in terms of sin and redemption, although there are those people who probably think I should.  But sloth is easy.  I am slothful.  I am not one of those fidgeters who cannot sit still.  I can sit still for a very long period of time without even noticing it.  I am one with the person that originally said “do not stand if you can sit, do not sit if you can lie down.”  I think it’s great advice.  I find it restful and I find fidgeters highly irritating.  I keep wanting to tell them sit down and shut up.  Although I don’t.  (Being irritated irrationally and showing it may not be a sin but perhaps it should be.)  So, it’s a pejorative word, sloth, sounding as sinful as almost all churches, schools, businesses and governments think it is, and thus I need to refresh myself on the rules and get up and at ’em, and DO something.

But, being human, I’m thinking about these seven deadly sins, or at least sloth, in a slightly different fashion today.  What the heck is so sinful, anyway, about sloth?  It is quiet, after all, and apart from irritating busy people, doesn’t really hurt anyone.  And to my way of thinking, there’s a great deal too much busy-ness in the world anyway.  If we all dialed it back a bit and stopped running around like crazy people, perhaps the world would slow down and we could actually catch our breath and figure out what’s going on.  Or so it seems from the perspective of my sofa.

In reality, I do know why sloth is a sin, or considered so.  For the vast majority of our history, a slothful person would either, because of it, die of starvation or in the jaws of a much less slothful beast or, more important to the society, cause the tribe to be less prosperous, less happy, and put the tribe, especially the more helpless members, in greater jeopardy.  Later on, as civilization (and all its discontents) got started, sloth interfered with the creation of wealth.  And that’s from both perspectives.  If you were a landowner, say, your industry and work ethic, your constant busy-ness, would help you increase your holdings, increase your crop yields, give you more clout in your village, town or city.  From the point of view of one of your laborers, you would need to work constantly and diligently, or you would starve, be beaten, be driven off or even killed because you were a liability and not an asset.  As cultural institutions got started, all their wealth and thus continued existence was based on that diligent labor growing ever larger yields since (either through tax or through tithe) all had to contribute to them.  So of course, as a government, church, or business, you would institutionalize the work ethic and the fundamental idea that sloth is a sin.  And, for the development and continued growth of civilization and of wealth, it is.

And I have to (reluctantly) agree.  Nothing comes to any of us without some kind of mental, emotional, spiritual or physical effort.  Sitting on my sofa is pleasant, but the fact that I have a sofa in the first place is due to effort I expended in the past to earn the money for the sofa and to find, choose, buy and have it delivered.  Of course, we all know or know of people whose wealth is hereditary, but let’s face it, somebody had to expend the effort to gain that wealth sometime and, for that matter, a life of such ease in which one does literally nothing is not really a life at all.  And I think quite impossible.  If done right, a rich person’s life of leisure can be spent studying, learning new things (quite a few scientists and explorers in other centuries had private means and did not have to labor to earn the money for expeditions or the time to think), supporting art and artists (or engaging in art and artistry), creating gardens or museums or donating to and working for hospitals and universities.  In my small town, many retired people, if not most of them, or people who have wealth who come here to live, end up working for nonprofits, taking part in the artistic and cultural life of the community, doing volunteer work in many different fields.  At least one retired person of my acquaintance hikes every day and picks up litter to recycle or dispose of as they do so.  That is NOT nothing, by any means, it is part of the rent we pay for our space on the planet.

But I have to admit that fairly recent anthropological studies have reported, after research including today’s hunter-gatherer tribes (and most anthropological thought seems to agree that human beings began our still short run as hunter-gatherers), that even in today’s more constricted world, hunter-gatherers need to work only about 20 hours per week to “make a living.”  That is, in order to hunt, kill, dress, cook and eat the meat from the animals they hunt, and to search out and find the grubs, insects, roots, leaves, fruits and whatnot actually forming the majority of their diet, plus all preparation, takes only about 20 hours per tribe member per week.  And these people are apparently not bored with all that leisure, either, inventing songs and dances and enjoying each other’s company, raising children, listening to tribal history from the elders.  (Current thought says that to maintain this rather idyllic society, there are some drastic measures that are taken by the tribe, including shaming of exceptional performance, discouragement of any private property and maintaining a very small population.)  Some of this sounds good to me (although other parts don’t), and I do wonder for such reasons (and for others such as the inevitable, it seems, rise of treating other people as property) why in the world we ever did something so silly as to invent agriculture.  From the pre-historic traces and the historical record, we were as individuals and as a species healthier, had better teeth, lived longer, and had a much more pleasant life before we started all this growing of food and herding of animals. Agriculture, it seems, provides calories to larger numbers of people in a small area without, apparently, providing the trace minerals, vitamins, and whatnot we need for full health.

NOTE:  Re-reading the above, I would like to firmly state that I am not making any kind of comment on current political views.  If I can manage to do so (although in an election year it may be difficult), I would like to keep this blog clear of my (or other people’s) politics, primarily in my own case because I seem to arrive at my hopefully middle of the road views by a series of rather illogical jumps from side to side.  The above paragraph comes from reading recent research into the pre-history of our species.  I have always loved history and the study of the origins of our world’s civilizations fascinates me.

I’d love to continue to explore how humanity got started on this road, what its benefits (and civilization does have them; for example, probably a hunter-gatherer society would not have invented the computer) and liabilities (working for others for low pay and bad food seems to top that list) are, but right now I’m too slothful.  That sofa is looking very good.

Oh, by the way, a wise person, possibly Mark Twain or more likely my friend Sharon Goldstein, once said that if you are doing what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.  And here, to finish this post, is a picture of a being who is exceedingly good at sloth, because he IS a sloth.

Bradypus variegatus Deutsch: Drei-Finger-Fault...

Central American Sloth - fromWikipedia

The Sunday Paper

January 29, 2012 By in Random Thoughts Tags: , , , , , 2 Comments

So many sources, both on the web and off, tell me that newspapers are moribund if not already dead.  Except maybe for the New York Times (which I, in a fit of irony, get on my iPhone).  My response is somewhat like Chuck Heston’s about the NRA, they’ll have to pry the daily paper from my cold, dead hands.  Practically the first thing I did after I moved here, even before I got all the dishes unpacked, was to call the Denver Post and get a subscription.  My day doesn’t really start until I retrieve the paper (which is usually, alas, at the bottom of my very steep driveway, or in the bushes to the side), separate it into sections I will read and sections I won’t, and sit down with some breakfast (or lunch–after all, I’m retired and don’t have to get up at a specific time) and read.  I’m quite conscientious and read the national section and the state section first before I go to the funnies and the puzzles and the agony columns.  But on Sunday, it’s really fun — there are two magazine sections (neither, unfortunately, published as they used to be by the paper itself), a big Arts and Entertainment section which includes book reviews and a travel section, an op-ed section, and so forth.  Lots of reading, plus a New York Times crossword which, I have to admit, normally defeats me.  The Post is quite generous about putting the answers on the same page, so if I just have to . . . .

Because this is, after all, Colorado, the Post also has, during the fall, a separate insert about the Denver Broncos every week, sometimes more than once a week, but always on the day after the game, whatever game it is.   If it’s a “big” game, there’ll also be an insert on game day.  Some of the best columnists working for the Denver Post handle sports, and it has been such a ride this fall with “Tebowmania”, I’ve really enjoyed reading their take on the phenomenon.  Living in Colorado requires being a Bronco fan.  Nobody seems really sure of this, but I think there’s something in the State constitution.  Either that, or in the water, that simply makes it happen.  There is a huge sculpture, brilliant blue with orange eyes, of a rearing horse outside DIA.  I wonder how many visitors to the state ever realize what that sculpture signifies?  More than anything else, it signifies how rabidly fond of their Broncos Coloradans are (although we have a tendency to like them better when they’re winning, no matter how sloppily).  Ooops, getting a little distracted here.  Back to newspapers.

English: Denver Post building in Denver, Colorado.

The Denver Post Building, image by Wikipedia

I dread the time that newspapers disappear.  When I lived in Los Angeles, I perforce got the Los Angeles Times, which is (horrors!) still my standard for a good newspaper.  They still have a weekly magazine, called “Calendar,” I believe.  And a lot of comics.  And I miss that.  In New York, I had a subscription to the New York Daily News, because the New York Times doesn’t have agony columns or comics.  I still have no idea what their editorial board is thinking.  Don’t they want anybody to read their paper?  In any event, I found I enjoyed tabloid journalism, done New York style, and, after all, I never sank so low as to subscribe to, or even read, the New York Post.

Historically, the first newspaper published, or at least the first one that lasted, in Denver was the Rocky Mountain News, which was the morning paper.  Like the New York Daily News, it was tabloid sized and had lots of comics for little kids like me and lots of columns for grown-ups like my folks.  The Denver Post, which started later, was the evening paper.  I believe, without really knowing, that the Post attempted to be a “record” for the state in the way that the Washington Post tried (and tries) to be for the country.  But my memory of the Post during my years in Colorado was mostly that it was amazingly biased, although I actually can’t remember in  what political direction.  When I moved to California and was told that the Los Angeles Times was editorially biased, I had to laugh, because the LA Times was so much more careful in its punditry than the Post ever was.  A few years ago, when the first wave of newspapers dying off was rampant through the country, the Rocky Mountain News more or less disappeared into the Denver Post, which became the morning paper.  A lot of folks were unhappy about that, including me, although I wasn’t living in Colorado at the time.

Of course, the news on the front page is a little dated by the time it’s published — most of us, including me, get our actual news from the TV or the Internet, which by their nature can get breaking stories to us much faster, but I still find that the newspaper articles seem more reasoned and nuanced than what I hear on the tube (which is a nickname for TV that has recently become completely out of date; pretty soon, people won’t understand where that name for it came from (ditto “the box”, for that matter)).

But it is such a lovely and quiet way of reading about what’s happening, much nicer than having it drummed in one’s ear.  And, after all, if newspapers last long enough, someday I may actually be able to complete the New York Times crossword without having to look at the answers.

A Study in Sherlock

January 23, 2012 By in Random Thoughts Tags: , , , , , , , , 4 Comments
Chinatown, London. Benedict Cumberbatch during...

Image via WikipediaImage via Wikipedia

Not precisely as writing avoidance, but certainly as a part of my, ahem, research into writing, I have been re-reading the entire Sherlock Holmes canon.  The one by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, that is.  To round out the experience, my local (Denver) PBS station is very kindly re-broadcasting last season’s “Sherlock,” an update of Holmes’ adventures set in 21st Century London and starring, wait for it, Benedict Cumberbatch (a name I keep wanting to recite, somehow, as “Bumbershoot,” which I think is an English appellation for “umbrella”), who does make a particularly nifty Sherlock.  I am also reading (us compulsive readers never read merely one book at a time) Laurie R. King‘s latest in her series on Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes, entitled “Pirate King”.  I also plan to see the new Robert Downey movie in which he plays Sherlock and I always record and later watch the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series, also on PBS.  Here are images of Mr. Cumberbatch and Jeremy Brett.  I found a picture of Sir Arthur, but could not, apparently, upload it.

Sherlock Holmes

Image by twm1340 via FlickrImage via Wikipedia

I am relishing all of these excursions into Sherlockia, as I believe it is called, and I’m exploring, today, just why.  Reading the original stories would seem to be an exercise in nostalgia, with stories that were original when they were written, but that seem quite familiar now.   Even so, they are good stories, set well within the characters of Lestrade, Holmes and Watson, and with twists that seem organic and yet rather astonishing (if you, like me, have a tendency to forget plots over time, you have the pleasure of reading a “new” story each time you open a book, no matter if you’ve read it before).

Certainly the setting appeals — London in the smoke, the sound of horse-drawn cabs, men in frock coats and top hats, women in sweeping skirts, rain, fog and gaslight.  Somehow in the new Cumberbatch series (if I use his name long enough, I’ll remember it and NOT Bumbershoot), they have managed to get across the “now” of London, truly a world-class, brilliant city, and yet evoke the original setting of the stories, for which I salute them.  So that’s another reason.

But I think it’s the character of Sherlock Holmes that is so compelling.  No matter how it is interpreted, from the original stories to Basil Rathbone, to Brett, Downey, and Cumberbatch, the character is sui generis — the world’s first and only consulting detective.  And of course it is not only his excellences that appeal, but also his more problematic traits.  The interpretation of those traits make the character of Holmes endlessly interesting, as if he were a real person.  Is he a misogynist?  Well, perhaps Irene Adler would not agree, and Laurie R. King has married him off to her creation, Mary Russell, so something else seems to be going on here.  Is he an addict?  Even Dr. Watson was not sure of that, but was sure — and this seems likely — that the thrill of the chase was Sherlock’s addiction, much more than cocaine.  But just imagine these days, as a writer, creating a series character, one’s hero, with a substance abuse problem.  It is done, of course, but then the book ends up being about the substance abuse.  For Doyle, it was a concern, yes, but a sidebar.  Sherlock’s skills overcome all such problems.  I have read that Doyle, as a medical student, had a teacher who used — actually created — all the techniques Doyle later ascribed to Sherlock and who was the inspiration for the character.  Perhaps somebody reading this knows the name of that man and can let me know it.

What does this have to do with writing, or any other possible focus for this journal?  Just this:  for me as a writer, the importance of Sherlockia, apart from the sheer enjoyment of watching and reading, is that the creation of an original, fascinating, intriguing character is paramount.  I don’t know whether there are only seven basic plots, as some have stated, or 36, which others tell me, but the characters a writer creates can be limitless even while they are bound by the realities of human nature, as limitless (and as bound) as each human being on the planet.  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created a character in Sherlock Holmes that will live as long as people read or watch filmed entertainment.  Something to aspire to.

Oh, and on another topic entirely, here in Estes Park, we are all quite giddy — the wind has dropped.  After what feels like weeks, even months, the wind has died down.  Calloo callay!

Random Thoughts on Writing

January 22, 2012 By in Random Thoughts Tags: , , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

Faced with a blank screen, I’m reminded of all the frustrated thoughts writers have about the process of writing; or as so often happens, the process of not writing.  Entire books have been written about this. I often think that, no matter what a writer may be blocked from writing, he or she can always think of things to say about not writing.

I have loved words in a row since I can remember and I can’t actually remember ever learning to read them.  By the time my memory formed well enough to give me some continuity, I simply read, anything and everything my parents provided and anything I could manage without their knowledge or (sometimes) permission.  I have always spent as much time reading as the world would allow me, even at times holding a book with one hand while I cooked or made the bed or did other chores with the other.  As a character says in a Robert Heinlein novel, “The Number of the Beast“, I would “read when I’m sleeping if I could keep my eyes open.”  Only one exception exists — while I can read in airplanes and trains, I cannot read in an automobile.  I get carsick.  Very carsick.  I think it has something to do with the horizon line, but in any event it used to be so bad I couldn’t actually read a billboard (remember them?) while the car was moving.  Better now, or perhaps there are just fewer billboards.  I will read almost anything, although I am embarrassed to admit that my pleasure in what is considered “good” literature is pretty minimal.  Still haven’t gotten past the third page of “Ulysses” or the second page of “War and Peace“, but I’ve read every novel John D. MacDonald ever wrote.  Twice.

What this has to do with writing is obvious — a lot of compulsive readers turn to writing sooner or later.  Sometimes it’s as simple as “gee, I can do that,” sometimes it’s more along the lines of “well, I could do better than that with one hand tied behind me,” and sometimes it’s just that one thinks one is going to run out of reading material unless one creates one’s own.  In my case, I suppose it was a combination of all three, mostly the first and the third.  Although another impetus was all the non-fiction writing I’ve done in schools over the years.  (It used to be my boast that I could do a 30-page research paper, with quotes, footnotes, and a coherent narrative, from a standing start in a little over 24 hours, using only materials I could find in a two-hour search in the library.  And that was before Wikipedia, of course!)  And after working for lawyers, legalese simply pours from my fingers onto the screen without in any way engaging my brain (or anybody else’s, undoubtedly).  So words on a page is easy.

What isn’t easy is words on a page that make sense, lead somewhere, create interesting characters doing interesting things for interesting reasons, that have a point and that keep people reading not because it’s just Gail maundering on again, but because the narrative is so compelling.  That’s hard.  And unlike some blessed writers (whom I’m sure have their own difficulties), in order to approximate this I must rewrite and not just once or twice and not just to catch typos.  I must plan and outline, I must know where my hero is going before she does (or he), or she’ll never get there.  So sometimes looking at a blank screen makes me think about all the reasons for not writing.

Some of them are outside the writing process itself.  There is absolutely nothing like being faced with writing work to do to make cleaning the oven or sorting the pantry or doing the laundry intensely attractive — and this for a person whose primary claim to domesticity is that I was born here (that’s a quote, by the way, from my writing partner and friend Sharon Goldstein).  I have even gone so far in times past to avoid writing that I would more or less come to and discover that the silver was newly polished and that everything in the Welsh dresser had been washed.  Now this is world-class writing avoidance.

But there are more insidious methods to avoid writing, methods that take place while you are supposedly actually writing, but you’re actually not.  The best and most defensible way to do this is to “edit.”  This means going over past work to “edit” or “copyedit” or “improve” it.  It means placing commas, putting brackets around things to deal with later, rewording sentences that aren’t quite just exactly right, going back and removing the editing you’ve just done.  Every writer, even the occasional writer of a presentation or a school paper, will recognize these ploys and many others.  You can spend several hours “not writing” in this fashion and still feel like you’ve accomplished something.

Another favorite ploy, which works especially well when you haven’t yet written down a word of your great American novel, is “research.”  If you do it right, you can make “research” substitute for actual writing for weeks at a time.  After all, if you’re going to write a book about, say, the Arapahoe tribe’s use of Estes Park as a summer hunting ground, why, then, you’ll have to make a pilgrimage to the Estes Park Historical Museum, to the Estes Park Public Library, and then, just to be thorough, you should undoubtedly hike in the areas where the Arapahoe roamed, as it were.  Of course, for those of us like, uh, me, who live in Estes Park, “research” would be better writing avoidance if it were undertaken in some other spot, such as, say, Rome or Paris, or London.  Which is probably why I, for one, have a tendency to write about Rome or Paris or London (especially London).

Another means of not writing is to plan and outline and then tinker with the plan and the outline.  I find that I can do this for, too, for weeks at a time.  And if, later, as usually happens, my outline falls apart under the weight of the words in a row I finally, all excuses exhausted, get down to writing, then obviously I have to redo the outline.  This dance can take care of actual months of writing time.

But the final writing avoidance takes place during the period I laughingly call “rewrite” during which I realize nothing I’ve written except odd bits of dialogue would interest anybody, even somebody in solitary confinement given only my book to read for the rest of his or her incarceration; when I realize that every bit of it has to be redone from scratch.  This is depressing, of course.  (It also is not objectively true — any writer contemplating their own work bounces inexorably from “this is the best thing I’ve ever written” to “this is the worst piece of something or other (words to be supplied by reader) that has ever been written by anybody.”  There is no middle ground, by the way.)  But the depressing part of it is true, and usually leads to putting away the novel for a while, which is the ultimate writing avoidance.

I’m not doing that at this moment, I’m merely trying to get a running start on this blog, so my not reading through and making notes on the latest draft of “World Enough and Time”, written by Sharon and me, with an absolutely vital plot assist from Joe Bays, Sharon’s husband, is defensible for about the next, perhaps fifteen minutes before I’d better get down to it.

Two more random thoughts on writing for today:  One, that the Brightweavings website kept for Guy Gavriel Kay often has posts by the author that are quite illuminating about the process of writing and what the writer’s life is like (he also writes really good alternative universe fiction).  I recommend the site for all readers and writers.

And, finally, one of the great accessories a writer should have are pets, in my case and I recommend them, cats.  Not only are they accustomed to strange behavior on the part of their humans, they are wonderful means of writing avoidance in themselves.  Here are pictures of my two: