2/28/2008

Hitting the spot

In his essay, "The Specialization of Poetry," Wendell Berry examines the way 20th Century poets developed inner worlds of words, often to the exclusion of experiencing an active life outside themselves. He quotes one of those poetic guys: "I have the feeling that I am a metaphor for my own being."

While he bemoans this state of affairs, Berry, a poet himself, appreciates many contributions of the specialized poets. He simply notes that we have to think in broader terms, no matter what we're doing with our talents, jobs, livelihoods.

I love best what he says here. It grabs me where I exist these days, and I've thought along somewhat similar lines many times, but have lacked Mr. Wendell's eloquence:
Perhaps the time has come to say that there is, in reality, no such choice as Yeats's "Perfection of life, or of the work." The division implied by this proposed choice is not only destructive; it is based upon a shallow understanding of the relation between work and life. The conflicts of life and work, like those of rest and work, would ideally be resolved in balance: enough of each. In practice, however, they probably can be resolved (if that is the word) only in tension, in a principled unwillingness to let go of either, or to sacrifice either to the other. But it is a necessary tension, the grief in it both inescapable and necessary.

2/27/2008

But it keeps me out of trouble

Feel free not to subject yourself to another of my posts featuring: a)look how much I want to be able to write stuff, and b) look how much I go through to try and be able to write stuff. Go read any of the bloggers listed on my sidebar. They're funnier, funner, and some are less driven at the moment to drive others to distraction.

Lately my husband, Tim, works hard (as always) at his engineering stuff, takes me to movies made from books I've read, listens to me read aloud my manuscript that depicts our marriage and himself, not always in the loveliest light. Yep. He's a good one.



My son practices driving (when I mentioned I'm a driven person I wasn't joking), rehearses for two plays in which he's acting, does gobs of other schoolwork, keeps a busy social schedule, and will graduate in June (yes, for those who read that he might wait till next year, the plan has returned to his original graduation date, and it's a good thing).

Victoria, my dear daughter, will graduate from college on Friday the 13th of June. Anyone who knows her recognizes this is an appropriate date for her and her classmates. To have made it this far, those Gutenberg seniors are not to be daunted by what some consider ill luck.

Victoria, by the way, is working on a senior thesis. Before graduation, she'll need to present and defend it. I can't wait to read that piece of intellectual writing by my little girl. (Sniff.)

So, I am actually having a fun week, but I tend to forget it while knee-deep in preparing my book proposal. This is the business part of the job I wish to get to continue with. An editor won't initially want to read my complete manuscript - he or she wants me to sell the idea, the concept (accompanied by a sample of good writing). I also need to convince these behind-the-scenes book developers that I can market myself. I'd rather not have to sell me to the world. But I've always known it would be part of the deal.

I'm back to 4:30 mornings, so I can get this done. I really do enjoy early arisings, since at that time I usually unearth the other half of my brain, and often I discover creative expressions as well. Even for something stodgy and required, like a proposal.

And genuine fun was had Monday night, when Dorcas spoke to my writing class, giving us lots of encouragement, and just being a person. If I ever get to speak to gatherings about a book I've written, I'd like to just be real, too.

Travelin' Nan wrote more about Dorcas.

2/24/2008

Amidst the things I need

It could be argued I have not been provided everything I need in my life right now.

In fact, I think I overheard myself arguing that very thing the other morning.

But then I reminded myself I have this:


Throughout my days I've listened to and repeated such phrases as "God supplies all my needs." Once, though, someone grabbed my attention by asserting that God had not given her what she needed.

The person making the claim wasn't angry, bitter, rebellious, or PMS-ing, so far as I could tell. She simply stated the truth. I her case, God had withheld marriage, something she'd come to see she needed. We were made to long to share our lives with another person.

God determined, this woman could see by the way her life played out, that her story would not be containing the provision of one of her significant needs. And so she grappled with her belief in a creator who withholds. Is this still a creator who is good? Who provides what is absolutely necessary in order for Life to happen as it should?

I've applied her words to various situations since then. Even though I received marriage in my own life, I see that in this wedded state I haven't had all my needs met. Sure, I don't get what I want. But, yeah, I don't even have some things I really need.

And yet some days, truly needy, I glimpse anew what I guess I'd call radical truth. My ultimately necessary thing. Of which it once was written, "It will not be taken from her." At least for me, when everything else falls to ashes, it's the shard I'd like to discover clutched in my grimy fist.

2/21/2008

Into wild, honest life

Last week I finished reading Jon Krakauer’s book about a young man who walked into Alaskan wilderness in 1992 and didn’t come out.

I’m drawn to such stories by master nonfictionists. I read Krakauer’s Into Thin Air a while ago and was haunted by his account of an ill-fated Mt. Everest climb. On my shelf sit other books about true, dramatic events: The Perfect Storm, by Sebastian Junger; Seabiscuit: An American Legend, by Laura Hillenbrand; Apollo 13, by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger; Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea, by Steven Callahan; Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, by Piers Paul Read (a bit grizzly, but great); and the one I began with, preteen and romantic: Dove, by Robin Lee Graham, about a boy who sailed solo around the world. These sorts of tales involve many elements, layers, details, and I can’t help it – I love an immersion into the worlds they reveal when someone has limbed them with style.

This latest read, Into the Wild, made me catch my breath early in and debate whether I’d chosen a wise leisure activity. The story’s main character, Chris McCandless, was an intelligent, idealistic guy who could become ensnared by forays into deep thought, who came to be repulsed by our techo society, and who loved to hike out into nature. A boy reminding me right away of my son.

It turns out Chris reminded a lot of the people he met of sons, brothers, or themselves before life had tested and changed them. Prior to leaving for his “great Alaskan adventure,” he leather-tramped (wandered without a vehicle) throughout the western U.S. He made friends of all ages. Chris kept in touch with everyone, except the family he left behind in West Virginia. Having severed contact with his parents; he introduced himself on his travels as Alex.

What intrigued and ultimately satisfied me about Chris’s story is that its lesson, while tragic, is real and not without hope. Like a lot of young people, Chris got angry with his folks. He was a moral kid. He learned his parents had done some awful things back when they were younger. What bugged him the most, it sounds like, was their dishonesty regarding their pasts. Chris came to feel like his childhood had been a sham.

I remember throughout the year Tim and I went through our worst times, having people we’d grown up with – even our wonderful parents – share their failures. We appreciated the gestures. We also wondered to each other, “Why didn’t they tell us this stuff sooner? Maybe we wouldn’t have considered them too perfect to bring our less-than-lovely admissions to.”

As a parent, I felt determined to be honest with my kids. And yet, going through the raising of children taught me there’s a time for discretion. It would be easy to dump a load on a young person’s shoulders that he or she’d have no capacity to bear. Minefields can’t be avoided, I discovered. There’s no perfect way, either, to navigate them. We do the best we can.

Yesterday, Tim and I found time to meet at our city’s cheap theater, where movies on Wednesdays cost a buck apiece. Tim had called me earlier, to say, “Into the Wild is playing.”

“Let’s go!” I said.

The movie, perhaps even better than the book, handles the roles of Chris McCandless’s parents very well. There’s honesty about who and what they were and where they failed. The final credits thank the real-life couple for being brave.

As I contemplate my freshly finished book manuscript, with its bits of drama and details to which I hope readers can relate, I remain hopeful regarding its honesty. People have already told me I’m brave for writing about my failures. Yep, brave or stupid, I suppose.

Truth will out, though. I guess I want to be the one to tell it.

If you’re into truth well told, and if you can handle tragedy’s expression in your life right now, I recommend Into the Wild, both on the page and screen.

2/16/2008

Agh! and hair-pulling ensues

Have you ever tried to title a book? Some of you, yes, I know you're out there. How did you settle?

Probably you're less wishy-washy than me.

Today I'm waffling, flapping all over, seeking to be certain I've found the best title for my book. Even though I know it could well be changed later on by someone in publishing land. Still, I need one to work with.

This reminds me of the week or so before Victoria's birth. We had a girl's name decided, and then I'm like, no, maybe Andrea. Or wait, maybe... My wussy side accelerated.

Good and Desperate. That's the choice I made eons ago, it seems. I continue to like it. But it requires a subtitle. Here is where I go bananas.

I want the word mercy. I want a reference to being a prodigal. And, did you know, prodigal means extravagant (on the positive side) and wasteful (at the negative end)? It refers more to monetary resources than to ditching your responsibilities which, I think, we assume it means when we hear it nowadays. But, considering the original definition, I like prodigal more and more as a compliment to mercy.

I've been shown, throughout my life, prodigal mercy.

And did you know, there are liturgical, lectionary readings mentioning this very phrase?

Kinda interesting.

Doesn't help a whole lot at the moment. Tim is offering his assistance. He'd like, of course, to see this book sell many copies. He's reminding me that in the book I mention how he dismembers trees near transmitter sites, and once he badly cut his knee doing so, and that a title should intrigue people, so they'll purchase the book. So here's Tim's idea:

Secretly Evil: A Bloody Chainsaw Story

2/13/2008

The last day

Uncle Jim, riding shotgun with Dad up front, reached into one ear. “Look what I got,” he said, bringing forth something similar to a small wad of Playdough. Only a miniscule antenna protruded. “I’ve been half deaf all my life.”

Mom and Dad and I nodded. We knew.

“Now I finally got hearing aids that don’t loop over my ears. They work great; they’re set for me especially. The old kinds – they always broke, because I got in fights and shit. So they’d be in the repair shop more’n in my ears. I gave up on ‘em.”

Each of us expressed our joy for Jim. I said, “Uh, oh, now Mom and I’ll have to watch what we say about you back here.”

I could tell Dad had fun conversing with his many-years-younger brother the rest of the way to Portland. Mom and I found plenty to chat about. Once or twice Mom paused mid-sentence to call to the front, “Peter, watch your speed. You’re not remembering where you are.”

At last we parked in front of a pretty house not far from a school in a tidy Portland neighborhood. Cousins Kandy and Landy and their mother, Dad’s Aunt Shirlijeanne, greeted us at the door with hugs. Aunt Linda rose from the couch.

Beyond her, sleeping on her back in a hospital bed, lay my Aunt Nancy. She looked skeletal, the cancer having ravaged her frame. Still, her hair was nicely combed, and the covers drawn around her appeared comfy and warm.

I hadn’t been with Aunt Nancy for far too long. Mom had told me the minute she learned Nancy’s cancer returned. Metastasized, appearing in her liver – shot through it, really, and therefore inoperable. I’d talked to Nancy on the phone, viewed pictures of her on our extended family’s website, even mailed a Christmas card last month. But I knew this minute how remiss I’d been. I should’ve driven up here to visit. Instead, I let life’s details excuse me.

Mom went immediately to Nancy’s side to greet her.

“She looks asleep, but she can hear you,” Kandy said.

I followed Mom. When my turn came, I set my hand on her wasted arm. “Aunt Nancy,” I said. “Hi, it’s Deanna.” Gently I squeezed.

“Notice the difference in her breathing,” Uncle Jim said from across the room. “When someone’s talking to her, Nancy breathes harder. And I can’t believe how well I can hear it.” Jim went on to show everyone his hearing aids and describe how he obtained them.

Friends and other relatives stopped by throughout our time at Nancy’s home. People reminisced. Everyone recalled her boyfriend, Ron, who’d been a bear of a man, a motorcycle rider, who died several years ago. Aunt Nancy tended him with great care until the end.

I marveled at the scene around me. Laughter at familiar stories, good-natured teasing, even of the sister who lay dying. “She’s sure got the family nose,” Jim said.

This group of siblings had watched others linger upon the precipice of life’s end. A talented brother who died of Hodgkin’s just before I was born; the beloved grandmother who raised them; a brother from Eugene who lived long-haired, bearded, and drug-using, but who made his peace with God and the family before crossing over. Even the mother who made each of them strive with conflicting emotions, because of her glaring absence from their formative years – even she’d received all the attention her children could muster at the end.

Now they kept gentle vigil at Nancy’s bedside. This sister, fourth in descent of the original nine children, had never married. But as Dad would remark a week later at her memorial service, “Nancy was the prettiest sister.” The other female siblings in attendance would huff in mock protest. “But it’s true,” Dad would say, and they’d all smile.

I didn’t ever really know Aunt Nancy. Yet she enfolded me in tight squeezes at each family gathering. If my kids weren’t there, she pumped me for their latest exploits. I remembered her in yellow, with a broad straw hat, at summer reunions. She’d add witty remarks to the end of everyone’s family stories.

I’d find out at her service the next week how fond of Nancy her coworkers had been. One man took her on trips during the last months she was able to travel. They even made it to Ohio to see Uncle Tim, the family’s youngest brother. That friend of Nancy spoke with quiet grace and humor about her.

Uncle Tim would also make it to the service. He’d tell me about riding on the bus with Nancy and how she helped him out so many times.

My memories of Aunt Nancy also involve thoughts of the bus rides she took. A hostess on Trailways back in the sixties, Nancy paused on layovers to stay at our house, in my room straightened up pretty just for her. I was eight or nine. I considered Aunt Nancy the coolest adult in my little realm of acquaintance.

That last day in her home Nancy’s eyes never opened. Before leaving with Dad, Mom, and Uncle Jim I went over to her again. Awkwardly I hugged her narrow shoulders. “Nancy, I love you,” I said. My heart was grateful for the permission she gave me to participate, to care. Even though I’d mostly done it from a distance, uncool as I am.

Our goodbyes that day were garnished by Uncle Jim’s exclamations. “Was that a sparrow singing? Let me tell you how many birds out by my place I’ve noticed since I got these hearing aids…”

2/05/2008

Mostly quietly, with a bit of fanfare

Beginning next Monday, I get to teach a writing class. Smaller and of shorter duration than the one I'd planned for the community college, this one will happen in a building owned by Gutenberg.

A few friends plan to attend. Even people I don't know are sending me checks. I'd better get something worthwhile ready for them.

Most fun, Dorcas Smucker will be our guest author-speaker one of the class evenings. That night, anyone's invited to drop in (just let me know ahead of time, if you'd like to be there). Even my dad, who has enjoyed the lively Mrs. Smucker's books, plans to come!

These plans and other projects are keeping me away from blogging, but I aim to get back soon. Observations on life ought to be published when possible, after all.

What I did this last week, I also must share: I got up at 4:30 eight mornings in a row (Tim was out of it; sick with a feverish cold; so we had no weekend plans). I became feverish only in the sense of wanting to write and write. Rather obsessively I worked to finish. that. book manuscript.

And I did.

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