Home

March 21, 2012 By in Life in Estes Park, Random Thoughts, Writing Tags: , , , , , , 9 Comments

My Home in Estes Park

I recently read a magazine article which was primarily about the subtle joys of retirement.  Her point was that, while it was hard to become accustomed to determining her own use of time, she found it to be a great wonder in her life.  I agree with that wholeheartedly, both the difficulty of getting used to it and the joy it brings being truly the captain of my fate, as it were.  But something she wrote got me to thinking.  One of her greatest joys now that her children have grown and she’s no longer employed is that she does not have to be home at any given time, nor stay home.  Her life, now, can be and is spent away from home, in the great world.

For me, however, the entire purpose of retirement, the delight I gain in not having a paid job, is that I can stay home.  I have always liked home best, enjoyed the freedom of doing what I wished inside the cozy, private space of my own domain, taking care of my house and possessions, working on my computer, reading, sewing, needlepointing, even watching TV, enjoying the antics (even if they are mostly asleep) of my cats.  I still arrive back at my house, put my car away and close the garage door with a feeling of safety, security and joy.  I’m HOME!  I remember how glorious that feeling was when I was working, but it still lives in me every day.

So I’m curious.  What about the concept of  home can be to me such a welcome refuge, but to others more a prison?  Perhaps for the writer mentioned above, her time at home had always been spent dealing with, picking up after and mothering children, cleaning the space, figuring out what to have for dinner, and much more.  It could very well have been a place where there was no leisure, no self-determination, no feeling of refuge.  It could very well have been a place where the writer simply had more and even harder, perpetual work to do.  I have heard from women, particularly women with small children, that leaving home, getting out of the house, is like being released from a particularly noisy, messy and sticky jail.  I didn’t have children, so that aspect of life at home was not at issue.  But I was married, once, and sometimes the presence of a husband seemed to loom over me.  My home, my rooms, weren’t really mine.  I was fortunate because our house had a small basement room that I used as a sewing room and (later on) a refuge from my marriage, and I suppose it served as an emotional release valve.  Since he never went in it, my husband didn’t comment about its tidiness or lack of same or the ways in which I stored and organized my projects there.  But I have clear memories of him going through the living room and rearranging ornaments so that they were militarily square with the edges of the surfaces they were on.  I remember quite clearly how that drove me quietly crazy.  I remember, too, that he once made an entire day’s discussion (lecture) over the fact that I had forgotten I already had gelatin and continued to buy packages of it until I had over 20 packages.  Of course he was right and I didn’t buy gelatin again throughout the course of our marriage (that’ll show him), but what irritated me is that he was spending his time going through MY kitchen cabinets.

Now, from his point of view, of course it was also his house and he had a perfect right to take an interest in it and make his stamp upon it.  (It should be noted, he had his own room that he called his dressing room that I didn’t enter except to clean, so there was a kind of parity.  It should also be noted that we had similar tastes (not, obviously, for gelatin).  Also, he was old-fashioned in some ways and thought that the decoration of the house was up to me.)  So I didn’t make an outsize fuss because I did know he had a right to live in our home just as I did.

But I have to admit that I didn’t miss living with him when we divorced.  How lovely to live in my own place where I could have as many packages of gelatin as I wanted in my cupboards.  (Oddly enough, I don’t buy it any longer, don’t seem to want to eat gelatin salads.)

Robert Frost's Farm

Robert Frost's Farm (Photo credit: StarrGazr)

So perhaps my concept of home, as is the writer’s first mentioned above, is doing what we want to do in our own space, whether that is cocooning (me) or spending most of the time outside of it (her).  There are a great many concepts of home, I think, ranging from my own utter sense of refuge and welcome and gladness to the home-as-prison feeling, where the home is just a house, just a place to put possessions and (occasionally) sleep.  Robert Frost once said, “home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”  He was talking, I think, more about family than a physical space, and he has a good point.  When I was a little girl, we moved often, because Daddy changed jobs about every other year.  He always said that “home is where the heart is.”  Again, he wasn’t talking about a physical space, but an emotional place of welcome.  Until his death, I was always completely secure in that emotional loving space.  Later in my life, the specific house got more important, I admit, to my sense of being home, because the emotional center left when he died.

On the other hand, however, the concept of home can’t really be encompassed by four walls and a floor and a roof.  My sense of home now comes deeply because I have returned home, home to the mountains of Estes Park.  My home still is the refuge that shuts out the cold and snow and the demands of the outside world, but my home is also and always the mountains surrounding the Estes valley, the sense of peace and joy that coming back to the place I was raised always gives me.  When I lived in Los Angeles, my sense of home was truncated because I didn’t really like it there, and I kept trying to imagine the house that would make it all right.  That never worked.  My sense of home in Los Angeles became my friends, not the places they lived, but the connections among us that made living in a big city less lonely.  New York, well, Manhattan, was home immediately.  I fell in love with it and made my neighborhood my home (this was of course facilitated by the fact that New York apartments, unless one has pots of money or rent control (neither of which I had), are small, cramped and usually face north for some reason.  So my sense of home expanded to include my block and the public spaces I had the great good fortune to live next to (Central Park and  Lincoln Center).  But now, home is Colorado, or at least that part of it from Denver to the continental divide in which my small town nestles.

Cloudy Afternoon Over Central Park, New York City

Cloudy Afternoon Over Central Park, New York City (Photo credit: andrew c mace)

And one last comment.  Let’s face it, a home would be a prison, by definition, if we couldn’t leave it.  Which is what, I think, the writer I first mentioned above still felt after years as the mother, wife, housecleaner, “chief cook and bottle washer,” as my mother would have said.  Just let me out of here.  Come to think of it, I wouldn’t feel my great joy in coming home, in closing all the doors behind me and feeling safe and enclosed, if I hadn’t, after all, been out in the great world.  In all things, it is the contrast that points up the value.

Finding Leaves on the Family Tree

March 20, 2012 By in Random Thoughts Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 9 Comments

Occasionally, I go to my Ancestry.com page and try to climb just a bit farther up my family tree.  If I explore my mother’s mother’s lineage, I can find quite a

Davy Crockett 1967 Issue, 5c

Davy Crockett 1967 Issue, 5c (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

good many names and historical records and whatnot, because apparently lots of people search through families that came from (or at least stopped in) Virginia.  At some point, my mother was persuaded to join the Daughters of the American Revolution, which was a big deal in her mother’s family.  She eventually abandoned the attempt, saying later (much later) to me that they were too snobbish for her.  I have no way of knowing if this is objectively true, of course–I was surprised to discover that the organization still exists and has quite a few philanthropic activities.  In any event, one of the application processes necessary is to prove through genealogical evidence that one is indeed a descendant of a soldier in the American Revolution (ahem, of course, one on our side–fighting for the British would not, I imagine, increase one’s chances of being able to join).  So after I had started getting interested in looking up the family tree, it was treasure trove indeed to find the genealogical worksheet my mother had gotten from one of her relatives.  It turns out that the Revolutionary War soldier to whom the link was made was a Samuel Crockett, who was a soldier with a Virginia militia and saw action in the American Revolution.  More interesting from my own point of view, Samuel Crockett was apparently a direct ancestor of Davy Crockett, the explorer who served in Congress and who eventually fought and died at the Alamo.  This made me rather popular when I was a child, although a few people now, when informed of my one and only genealogical claim to fame, have a tendency to say ‘who?’.

A dear friend years ago did more genealogical research on that side of the family for me and found evidence that the Crockett family originally hailed from France, their name then being Crocketaigne.  (Of course, we all originally hail from Africa, so this is a kind of interim origination.)  According to records found by my friend, the founding member of this branch (where do you place the cutoff, by the way–every founding member of a family has a father and mother) was an actual Musketeer, doing the same work and living in the same era as the fictional “Three Musketeers”.  From research, my friend told me that this Crocketaigne married a member of the French court, but they left France and moved to Ireland, supposedly because they were Huguenots.  (My own feeling is that this makes little sense, because why would a Protestant being kicked out of a Catholic country, which is basically what happened to the Huguenots, go to another Catholic country, but that’s what the research indicated.)  From there, the Crocketaignes, now Crocketts, immigrated to what was then not quite yet the United States.

Interestingly, my mother’s father’s family tree has quite a few leaves as well.  There seems to be a groundswell of interest in those looking up their Swedish origins.  Of course, not being able to speak Swedish (I know, that disappoints me too), I can’t decipher any actual records kept within Sweden and so need to take some other family tree researcher’s word for the names and locations.  But still, there seem to be a sprinkling of Persdotters and Ericsons who lived in the middle of Sweden who are probably my long ago ancestors.  I do know that my grandfather came to Virginia as a boy to get work.  He met my grandmother there and, after the birth of my mother, in 1913, they moved to Oneida, New York, where my grandfather worked as a forger at Oneida Community Silverplate.  That always fascinated me as a child, because of course I thought if he was a forger, he was forging documents or money or pictures, but it’s not nearly so romantic.  The forger at the silver factory forged the knives, rather as a blacksmith forges iron gates and whatnot.  So my mother was born in Virginia but raised in upstate New York.  She met her first husband there (he was a chef on the big ships that plied the Great Lakes) and she met my father there–his family being from the Syracuse, New York, region.

One aspect of research into family history that delights me is the historical vignettes one comes across.  For example, in my researches just into my mother’s side of the family, I’ve discovered more about the history of the Oneida Community and the wider and deeper history of the utopian movement that led to such communities being established in upstate New York.  This is why there are so many names in that region that are taken from Greek, Roman and other classical sites, such as Oneida, Troy, Rome, Syracuse and so forth.  Nineteenth Century men and women, in an attempt to create a perfect society, would come to the United States, set up what is no more or less than a commune, and attempt to live by classical or Republican (in the classical sense) or other ideals.  The vast majority of these utopians, as they were called, ended up dissipating (as did the more recent communal efforts), but Oneida Community, seeing the handwriting on the wall, turned their apparently considerable talents to figuring out a way to survive in the real world, and started silverplating flatware.  They still do, creating a high quality product.  I have no family ties with anybody who created or lived in the Oneida Community when it was a utopian experiment, but my grandfather was employed by them throughout his working life, even during the depression, when he would work one or two days a week only.  So there’s a tie of interest, if not of family.

Oneida Community, Home Building, Oneida, Ny.

Oneida Community, Home Building, Oneida, Ny. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But back to genealogy.  While I have been able to climb the many branched maternal tree, the problem comes with my father’s side.  No matter how I search or what I search through, I cannot seem to get past my great-great grandfather (father’s father’s side) or my grandmother herself (father’s mother’s side). Now, in the case of the Willwerths (my maiden name), my great-grandfather Fredrick was apparently, according to census records, born in upstate New York, and lived in Syracuse most of his life, but I can find nothing about his parents at all.  And more, the family story (undoubtedly apocryphal) is that my great-grandfather’s name was Carl (or Karl) and that he emigrated from Germany, from Bavaria.  But I can’t find any records of that either, even in the detailed shipping manifests that have been published on the ancestry.com site.  Further, census records indicate that the family came here from Prussia, not Bavaria.   I don’t speak German, either, so even looking at birth or baptism records from Bavaria or Prussia is beyond me.  So I’m obviously not experienced enough a researcher to cut through this particular thicket.  Worse, my father’s mother (whose full maiden name, Nellie Ann Pitcher, I finally discovered by diligent search through every piece of paper signed or written or filed by my father) seems to be an entire roadblock all by herself.  I cannot find any record of her birth, nor can I find any records of her parents.

Frustrating but interesting, all at the same time.  What I am discovering, if not new leaves on my tree, is several facts about genealogy.  First, that amateur genealogists have a tendency to accept all possible records, thus ending up with a family tree in which, sometimes, the dates of the parent generation simply do not match those of the children.  I have often read through records in the ancestry.com database in which the last three or four children were born after the mother’s date of death, which does seem miraculous.  In another instance (on the Swedish line), I discovered a marriage between a man born in 1740 and a woman born in 1688.  Who died in 1720.  I don’t think so.  I try to filter those through what little common sense I have before adding the records to my tree.

Even more frustrating is the cavalier way in which our ancestors got born, got married, had children, lived, and died without anybody thinking it would be a good idea to write down the circumstances.  My own father did not, apparently, have a birth certificate.  When it was necessary in order for him to join an officers’ candidate school class in early WWII, he had to get a notarized affidavit from his father attesting to the date and (presumably) the fact of his birth.  My mother also did not have a birth certificate.  Even more perplexing, the spelling of my father’s name, Willwerth, appears differently in practically every record I’ve been able to unearth (are we really ‘unearthing’ when we’re searching the Internet?).  Wilworth, Wilwert, Wilwerth, many others.  Are they simply misspellings or mistranscriptions of the name, or are they different people?  In addition, I keep finding the right name but in the wrong place.  To my knowledge (which isn’t that comprehensive, of course), my direct Willwerth ancestors never lived, traveled, moved to or even thought about Michigan, but I keep finding records giving the correct name and the right time in Michigan.  Sigh.

I’m  not sure that any but other hobbyists like myself will find this interesting, and those hobbyists, undoubtedly being much better and more experienced at it, will laugh (perhaps reminiscently, because we all start somewhere) at my fumblings.  But this is my own small part in history and I’ve always loved history.  It is quite amazing to have discovered that an ancestor of mine was perhaps a genuine Musketeer serving the King of France, or that my great-grandfather owned a livery stable in Rome, New York just before the advent of the internal combustion engine.  It makes history come alive in a way that even the best book does not.  Real people did those things, and not just kings and princes and presidents and generals, but the forgers (this still makes me giggle) and the train conductors (my paternal grandfather) and the Revolutionary War soldiers.  Perhaps someday I will find out about more of the contributions of the men and, harder to find but as or more important, the women who are leaves on my family tree.

Ahnenblatt Family Tree Example

Family Tree Example (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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.

A Small Poem Written Late Last Night

March 10, 2012 By in Poems, Writing Tags: , 9 Comments
Cat

Cat (Photo credit: sylvia@intrigue)

Cats

What do they think of us?
These small beasts who look at us
Out of such containment,
Who love us so inexplicably?

When we pick them up,
Do they think it is alike unto
Their play with a mouse?

Are we their sisters and brothers
That they curl up
In the bend of our knees and purr?

Do they feel our hands stroking
As they do the grooming of their mothers?

Do they groom us
Because to them we are their kittens?

They are small so they sleep lightly,
Lest danger threaten.
But they trust us and let sleep overtake them.

That trust is enchanting.
Reassuring. We are indeed gods.
Their contained love is all in all.

We are not gods, we are monsters.
They should not love us.

But they do.

The Secret to Writing

March 6, 2012 By in Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 14 Comments

First, there is more than one.  But there are few.  So this should be a rather short post.

The primary secret to writing is to write.  A lot.  Many many words.  Often.  I think we have all known bright, interesting people who are convinced that the Great American Novel hides somewhere in their minds.  But unless the GAN actually makes the trip from inside the mind to on the page, it really doesn’t exist.  Writing is like any kind of performance, it requires talent, opportunity and rehearsal.  We may be intrigued by the possibility of competing on Dancing With the Stars or The Voice, taking a bow for an Oscar-winning role, appearing onstage at the Met or Carnegie Hall, receiving a standing ovation for a rendition of Mendelssohn‘s First Violin Concerto (or, for that matter, for a soulful solo of “At Last”).  (Or maybe that’s just me.)  But, let’s face it, without a combination of chance, ability and practice, the only thing any of us would be able to do if we found ourselves onstage at Carnegie Hall is to blush and sidle off stage right.

English: A post-concert photo of the main hall...

Carnegie Hall--Image via Wikipedia

Native talent is something that we can do little about–it either exists in us or not.  (Although I believe we each of us have more talent, more talents, than we have ever explored or will ever have time to explore.  And there is something to be said for the notion that talent may be another word for desire, for love of the thing.  So it’s not something to worry about.)

Opportunity can be iffy.  If you want to be an astronaut, apart from the training and the scientific and physical abilities you must demonstrate, you have to realize how few slots open up each year.  That’s simply a given.

But rehearsal?  Now, that’s something we all can do, each in our various areas of desire.  All the time.  Every day, in some way.  Keep a journal, start a blog, Write poetry, songs, short stories, novels, words on a screen, as many as you can.  To be a writer, write.

The second secret to writing is to read.  In my friend’s blog, Sharon Sings and Writes, she tells us the many ways in which she organizes her life to make it possible for her to read what she wants and needs to read to help her enhance her writing.  I do many of the same things, skimming through articles, discarding those that aren’t ‘speaking’ to me, choosing books and magazines carefully.  But I read almost to the point of addiction (oh, well, actually, far past that point) every day.  I read when I’m eating (alone), when I’m watching TV (except for Downton Abbey and The Good Wife), when I’m taking a bath (I wish they’d create waterproof books–far too many of mine have wavy edges after an unexpected dip in the tub), when I’m doing chores, and sometimes while I’m writing (this is not easy).  I read the newspaper, magazines, articles on the web, books (books for research, books for enjoyment, books for knowledge, and novels, novels, novels).  I hope you love to read.  Very few writers who love to write hate to read.  And, by the way, if you are writing without loving it, there is very little point.

The third secret to writing is to learn how.  Writing practice and reading as much as you can are key here, but there is also formal learning.  Learn the structure of our language, learn how to write a sentence, a paragraph, an essay.  Read books on writing, such as “Bird by Bird” and “On Writing”. Learn syntax and grammar, punctuation (a fun way to do this is to read “Eats Shoots and Leaves“), and spelling.  Yes, even in a Spellcheck world, you need to know how to spell.  Spellcheck does not pick up everything.  Take classes in composition as well as in creative writing.  Constructing a non-fiction article requires using detail and evidence rather differently than you do in fiction, essays or poetry.  Learn how to touch type.  Unless you are Anthony Trollope, you will probably do your writing on a computer.  While Hildy Johnson in “My Gal Friday” managed quite well using two fingers, touch typing is a lot faster.  And you don’t want the mechanics of getting the words out to interfere with the flow inside your mind.  Learn formats.  In other words, learn the rules of your trade.  You may then break those rules at your pleasure, but you can’t break rules unless you know what they are.  Remember, Picasso knew how to draw.

The fourth secret to writing is to figure out what you want to write, why you want to write, and how.  Not everybody wants to write for publication.  If you wish to write for your own enjoyment, have at it!  And find a writing group specifically designed for expression.  But if you do want to write for publication, first, learn to cope with criticism.  Hopefully you will receive the kind known as ‘constructive criticism,’ that only hurts when you breathe.  But you will have to deal with criticism in one way or the other even if the only person who ever reads your work is your mother. Second, find out what markets there are for what you want to write.  Writer’s Digest can help you here; it is an invaluable resource for the writer for publication.  This magazine will help you learn how to find the market, how to present your work, and how to handle the business end of being a writer.  It will also help you improve your writing with prompts, contests, and articles about specific writing issues.  I can recommend it wholeheartedly.  And if you want to write screenplays, realize that nobody, NOBODY, will read your work if it isn’t in proper format.  This is as the laws of the Medes and the Persians.  Even if you’re the brother of the producer’s nephew’s girlfriend’s nanny, which is as close as most of get to nepotism in a most nepotistic Industry, you won’t get it read unless it looks like a screenplay, reads like a screenplay, is as long as a screenplay should be, and uses camera directions properly.

Summer reading, 2011.

Summer reading, 2011. (Photo credit: revbean)

The fifth secret to writing I may have mentioned.  Write.

And, finally, note I did not entitle this blog post “The Secret to Publishing.”  My list of published writings is so slim that if you blink while reading them, you’ll miss them.  And none of them would you find on Amazon.com.  Ahem.  So that’s a secret I’ve yet to crack.  Anybody out there who’s figured that one out, please do not hesitate to let us all know.  Happy writing.

The Great American Novel -

The Great American Novel - (Photo credit: unprose)

Forests

March 3, 2012 By in Fifteen-Minute Essays, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , 17 Comments

[NOTE:  I belong to a writing group designed for self-expression.  The moderator assigns fifteen-minute essays (stories, poems, whatnot) based on pictures, grab bags of images, words, concepts, almost anything.  Each member of the group writes for the regulated amount of time and then we read aloud.  Occasionally, on this blog, I will publish some of the essays I have written in that group in a new category.  This is one of them, slightly modified.]

A Thick Forest

A Thick Forest (Photo credit: Jon Person)

“A forest which has never felt an axe.”  A time before history began.  Imagine a land filled with the green of growing, with the rustle and creep of living.  A land with no horizon, only trees for up and water for across.  A place where you cannot hear your own footsteps.  There are many such on our beautiful planet, from tropical rain forests to jungles to temperate rain forests to hardwood forests to pine forests in all our mountains to perhaps the most beautiful of all, the redwood and sequoia groves on the west coast of the North American continent.  But, let’s face it, humans really don’t feel comfortable in forests.

We did not start in such a place, we human beings, but in a wider, less lush world.  When we first came upon forests, in Africa and later in Europe, Asia and America, we found them uncanny.  We have always preferred spaces where we can see what’s coming at us.  In all the tales, the forest is a most frightening place, where the very trees, more alive than those in pastoral settings, can capture you and you’ll never be seen again.  Look what happened to Hansel & Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood or what almost happened to Frodo‘s friends in Pangorn.  To our species, just getting started, a forest was not a refuge, but a trap.

Arthur Rackham, illustration to Hansel and Gretel

Arthur Rackham, Hansel & Gretel--Image via Wikipedia

But the forest can be sanctuary.  If it’s harder to see your enemies in a forest, it’s also harder for them to see you.  Snow White found safety in a forest.  And so did the Celts.  Long, long ago, the Celtic tribes moved with their cattle and their looms and combs and swirling artistic designs, their ability to mine and market tin and salt, west and north from the Great Steppes into and over the heavily forested Alps.  Once over that barrier, they found a forest so primeval it seemed black instead of green, a forest anchored by oaks growing for hundreds of years, a forest so solid with growth that the occasional light-filled glade must have felt like a special benison from the gods, a forest in which the flow and pool of water was so astonishing–and so necessary–that each spring and pool soon became inhabited by its own goddess.

The Celts built a beautiful and sometimes terrible culture in the forests of Europe and the British Isles, in those primeval wooded places.  They hacked at the fringes for firewood and charcoal and space for houses and fields, but they worshipped the true untouched forest, feeling at home, at peace and filled with grace within its sheltering branches.

English: Maximum Celtic expansion in Europe. B...

Furthest Expansion of the Celts--Image via Wikipedia

Their culture remained supreme in Europe until the Romans.  The Greeks traded with them and warded them off, finding their religion barbaric, although they discovered the Celts’ priests–the druids–wise and cruel and crafty.  Best to keep them on the other side of Parnassus, after all.  But the Roman legions cut down the sacred oaks, walled and roofed over the sacred pools, renamed the gods and goddesses and so tamed them, even Cernan of the forest and Brigidda of the waters, suppressed the druids and the human sacrifice which had kept those woods so dark over thousands of years, and rammed through their stone roads to open up the forests to trade.  The intricate culture of the Celts never recovered–and neither did the forests.

But it is that Europe, that England, I long to see, the wooded land before the Romans, the sacred groves and pools, the interesting, productive, artistic, cultured and deadly people who, almost unique among the world’s tribes, loved the forests.  There are some pockets of forest left, just as there are still Celts among us, but mostly the black forests covering huge square miles of land are gone in Europe and England, cut down to build ships and palisades and houses, to clear fields for crops, and to burn as fuel.

Apart from the Celts, we humans have always found forests frightening and prefer them once they have felt the axe.

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.

A Winter Poem

February 20, 2012 By in Writing Tags: , , , 3 Comments
Duggleby in the Winter

Image via Wikipedia

Snow

Snow has a smell.  Cold, clear, clean.
Specific.

Snow has a sound.  Deep, dragging crunch.
Pulling.

Snow has a touch.  Shocking, dry then wet.
Compressing.

Snow has a look.  White, thick, surgical.
Tracery.

Snow has a taste.  Chew, melt, refresh.
Chilling.

Snow has a feeling.  Rest, slow, sleep.
Blanketing.

Snow has a purpose.  Softening, hiding, scrubbing.
Renewal.