Road to the Interior

Painting by Sesshu

Weather-beaten bones,

I'll leave your heart exposed

to cold, piercing winds

 

After ten autumns,

it is strange to say Edo

speaking of my home

--Basho

This entry was inspired by Robert Brimm's poetry and art Journal, Chosen Words.  Robert,the author of Chance of Rain, a poet twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, writes Haiku and reading his excellent work made me want to read Basho again.  So I picked up my copy of Narrow Road to the Interior, translated by Sam Hammill.

Narrow Road to the Interior is a collection of prose and poetry travelogues written by Basho (1644-1694).  Basho undertook several contemplative travels during the last ten years of his life.  The title is a wonderful metaphor for the journey each writer must make within.

The following excerpt from "The Knapsack Notebook" speaks eloquently of the writer's spirit, which Basho calls "Windblown": 

Within this temporal body composed of a hundred bones and nine holes there resides a spirit which, for lack of an adequate name, I think of as windblown.  Like delicate drapery, it may be torn away and blown off by the least breeze.  It brought me to writing poetry many years ago, initially for its own gratification, but eventually as a way of life.  True, frustration and rejection were almost enough to bring this spirit to silence, and sometimes pride brought it to the brink of vanity.  From the writing of the very first line, it has found no contentment as it was torn by one doubt after another.  This windblown spirit considered the security of court life at one point; at another, it considered risking a display of its ignorance by becoming a scholar.  But its passion for poetry would not permit either.  Since it knows no other way than the way of poetry, it has clung to it tenaciously.

Saigyo in poetry, Sogi in linked verse, Sesshu in painting, Rikyu in the tea ceremony--the spirit that moves them is one spirit.  Achieving artistic excellence, each holds one attribute in common:  each remains attuned to nature throughout the four seasons.  Whatever is seen by such a heart and mind is a flower, whatever is dreamed is a moon.  Only a barbarian mind could fail to see the flower; only an animal mind could fail to dream a moon.  The first task for each artist is to overcome the barbarian or animal heart and mind, to become one with nature.

Truly, Basho's "home" became his art:  That is where I want to live, my art. 

Heaven On Earth

If there ever has been a person who has had the experience of heaven while living on this earth it would have to be William Blake.  Just thinking about him, just letting his name run through my mind (let alone reading one of his poems or looking at one of his drawings or paintings!) makes my pulse gallop.  I believe there is so much mystery about the man and his works.  If he were all we devoted ourselves to, we would never reach the bottom of the experience.

According to the Writer's Almanac, his birthday was Sunday, the 28th:

It's the birthday of poet and artist William Blake, (books by this author) born in London (1757). When he was 25, he married an illiterate girl named Catherine Boucher, who was a devoted wife, although she once remarked, "I have very little of Mr. Blake's company. He is always in Paradise." A friend once dropped by to find them sitting in their garden, naked, reciting passages from Paradise Lost. "Come in!" cried Blake. "It's only Adam and Eve, you know!" Blake and his wife printed and bound his books, including Songs of Innocence and Experience.

Being A Writer: In Perspective

The following information comes from the Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of writer James Agee, (books by this author) born in Knoxville, Kentucky (1909). He was 16 when his father was killed in a car accident, and as an adult he worked for nearly two decades, on and off, on a manuscript that tried to recreate, as he put it, "my childhood and my father, exactly as I can remember and represent them." He never finished it; but after he died it was published as the novel A Death in the Family, and won the Pulitzer Prize (1957). He's also the author of the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), generally considered to be a masterpiece. He was an obsessive person, an insatiable talker, addicted to cigarettes, alcohol, and Benzedrine. He died of a heart attack in a New York cab in 1955, with no will, no insurance, and $450 in the bank. 

I had to put this in my journal because James Agee's A Death In The Family is one of the first books that made a big impression on me.  I still have the copy I bought from the Scholastic Book Club back when I was in the 7th grade.  It's a paperback with pages that are now brown and brittle.  I'm not sure how much of the book I understood at age 13, enough that I remembered the haunted feeling it had given me, the realization of the temporariness of life.  The beauty of Agee's prose is something I would discover many years later.  

The common manner of Agee's death reminds me of another situation involving a writer I admire:  Dorothy Allison.  I participated in the Southern Festival of Books in 2002 by doing a presentation of my novel, and Allison was also at the festival that year.  I went to her presentation (I was a lowly first novelist; to me she has "rock star" status), and the presentation was very powerful.  I learned a lot by watching her that day about the power one's voice should have during a reading, about how to act out one's story (I had not thought of a reading as a "performance" before I saw Allison). And then I practically ran to the signing collonade so I wouldn't have to wait in a long line to have her sign my books.  When I got there, my heart fell because a long line already snaked from the table.  But then I realized the line was for Garrison Keillor, and no one was in Dorothy Allison's line.  Indeed, only two of us had books signed by Allison that day.  I couldn't believe it! 

What the death of Agee and the Dorothy Allison signing show me is that "being" a writer has got to be enough. There can't, there shouldn't, be an expectation of reward greater than that.  

From A Death In The Family:

We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.  It was a little bit mixed sort of block, fairly solidly lower middle class, with one or two juts apiece on their side of that.  The houses corresponded:  middle-sized gracefully fretted wood houses built in the nate nineties and early nineteen hundreds, with small front and side and more spacious back yards, and trees in the yards, and porches.  These were softwooded trees, poplars, tulip trees, cottonwoods.  There were fences around one or two of the houses, but mainly the yards ran into each other with only now and then a low hedge that wasn't doing very well.  ...

But it is of these evenings, I speak.

Supper was at six and wasover by half past.  There was still daylight, shining softly and with a tarnish like the lining of a shell; and the carbon lamps lifted at the corners were on in the light, and the locusts were started, and the fire flies were out, and a few frogs were flopping in the dewy grass, by the time the father and the children came out. ...

It is not of the games children play in the evening that I want to speak now, it is of a contemporaneous atmosphere that has little to do with them:  that of the fathers and families, each in his space of lawn, his shirt fishlike pale in the unnatural light and his face nearly anonymous, hosing their lawns.  The hoses were attached at spiggots that stood out of the brick foundations of the houses.  The nozzles were variously set but usually so there was a long sweet stream of spray, the forearm and the peeled-back cuff, and the water shishing out a long loose and low-curved cone, and so gentle a sound. ...

...By some chance, here they [my family] all are, all on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of night.  May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.

After a little I am taken in and put to bed.  Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her:  and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home:  but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.

 

Is It Alive?

I had a discussion with a friend recently about writing.  She said she had trouble writing because she had trouble with plotting.  I will share what she said because I think her opinion of her writing life is illustrative of the way a good many people feel:

I  think that for me, the main problem is having a plot.  That is what it really comes down to.  When I have something to write about, the words come easily and flow out in style.  But I am very bad at thinking up stories

My advice to her was not to worry about plot, then. This is what I wrote to her:

A wonderful book by Jerome Stern called Making Shapely Fiction teaches that fiction needs a "shape" to exist in.  That's a perfect description for me to wrap my mind around, because my thoughts and energies are so fluid.  So I have to find a shape to pour the liquid into.  You discover the proper shape through imitation or trial and error.  So what if it takes a while to find the right shape?  You can let your ideas flow on paper however they want to.  The shaping can come later.

The main thing for her--and for the rest of us--is to get thoughts down. The main thing is just to write. 

Stern writes:  "A shape invites you to fill it.  The shapes of fiction inspire by presenting ways to embody your experiences, memories, and imaginings" (3).  This is a useful book for anyone seriously engaged in the writing of stories.

Sometimes a "shape" comes to me right away when I write.  Sometimes my stories come out in a whoosh; the organization is associative, very right-brained.  Sometimes I have bits and pieces that must be arranged and shaped, like a puzzle.  My process varies from writing to writing. 

Recently, I ran across something that Emily Dickinson is supposed to have said.  I read that when she sent her poems to her editor, she didn't want to know whether or not her poems were "good."  She wanted to know if they were "alive."

That's the question my friend can ask herself.  Is her writing alive?  I know she can write works that are alive; she does so when she writes to me of her experiences, longings and dreams.    

Dickinson's question to her editor:  Are my poems "alive" is the question I want to ask myself regarding the stories I write. 

It's the perfect question for any writer to ask herself or himself. 

In Relation to Our Imagination

Read more about Spinoza here.

Benedict Spinoza said, "I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused."

This quote came from the Writer's Almanac that my friend Beth introduced me to. 

Spinoza's quote reminds me the extent to which we shape our personal reality every day.  The quote helps me to step out of "my reality" for a few minutes and to ask myself how I might have the life I truly want. By giving the right things? Giving UP the right things?  Doing the right things? Thinking the right things?  Being thankful for the right things? 

What are the "right" things?

Story writing is like this, like shaping the reality of our every day lives.  Both make sense of our place in the world. Both need to be done with utmost care 

Both Spinoza and O'Brien make me take a closer look at "truth." 

Right now, I feel far away from being able to say, with certainty, that anything is THE truth.    

I hope this feeling lasts a while. 

 

Emotional Truth

The following information is taken from the BGSU Monitor Monthly.

"Truth is a complicated thing," novelist Tim O'Brien told students during his October visit to campus.  "Be careful about the word 'truth.'  It's not all black and white in this world of ours--there are many shades of gray."  ...

O'Brien explained that in his stories and his writing, he strives for emotional truth as opposed to literal truth, which can never be expressed in its totality anyway.  "Even if it's made up, it doesn't mean it isn't true.  I'm writing about the human heart, and the emotional truth there." 

Or, to quote Picasso, he said, "Art is the lie that makes us realize the truth." ...

 

The New Neruda

To protect his identity, I will call him G. 

G is the student who makes you glad you became a teacher.  (Sometimes you forget why.)

 He was in my developmental composition class last year.  Despite problems with punctuation and grammar, he wrote soulful, insightful essays.  He is from Texas and has been speaking English since he was 10.  I told him his writing reminded me of Pablo Neruda's.  He surprised me by saying he knew Neruda's work.  A couple of weeks later, G arrived at my office with a gift, a portrait he had painted of Neruda.  Monochromatic, mostly grays, with splashes of bold color here and there, the portrait captures Neruda's spiritual bearing, it captures his wise eyes.  G took my imaginative writing class the following spring.  In this class, we read Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair aloud.  Each student read one of the poems. G read his Neruda poem in both Spanish and English.  It was the first time I had ever heard Neruda's poetry read in Spanish.

This fall I ran into G once in a while.  He visited me briefly, gave me a tape on meditation that I have yet to use.  Then a long spell of not seeing him.  You both get busy; you lose track.  Then on Wednesday, he showed up at my office.  He was practically breathless with excitement.  He had heard I was teaching the junior fiction workshop in the spring, he said, and he wants to take it.  He handed me a draft of a story he had been working on.  He said his disk had broke; this was his only draft.  Would I take it home and read it and tell him what I thought?  And he would stop by next day?  I said I would find time read it.

I read the draft late into the night.  This was after I had read a pile of composition papers.  The story is in its infant stages.  Even so it has a haunting power.  It has details that you feel in your heart and gut.  The one I remember best:  the boy reverently touching the "wrinkled body" of a tree.  G's face burned red today as I told him how much I loved his story.  He revealed he had  been about ready to give up on his writing.  He said the more he studied the technical aspects, the less he felt able to write, the less he wanted to write.  (He is taking a techniques class now).  He said he had decided he would chuck his idea to minor in creative writing.  It was just not working out.  Then he heard I was teaching the workshop; he would give it another try.

I told him that feeling of being unable to write is normal.  He has momentarily lost his connection to why he needed to write stories in the first place.  You can do that when you study technique too long; I really believe that.  Creativity as a scholarly pursuit can only take you so far.  It is like what Tim O'Brien said to us during his visit, I reminded G:  You don't experience stories in your head but in your whole body.  You are just disconnected from your heart and gut, I told him.  It's temporary. 

I think he believed me.  He left on his own two legs.  He is so much like Neruda, complicated, in love with his senses, in love with love.  Ineffably sad.  Happy beyond reason.

"Poetry," by Pablo Neruda

                       And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
         in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
                     it came from, from winter or a river.
                          I don't know how or when,
                no, they were not voices, they were not
                                  words, nor silence,
                    but from a street I was summoned,
                               from the branches of night,
                                 abruptly from the others,
                                     among violent fires
                                     or returning alone,
                              there I was without a face
                                       and it touched me.

                    I did not know what to say, my mouth
                                            had no way
                                            with names
                                   my eyes were blind,
                        and something started in my soul,
                                 fever or forgotten wings,
                                 and I made my own way,
                                           deciphering
                                               that fire
                           and I wrote the first faint line,
                         faint, without substance, pure
                                           nonsense,
                                        pure wisdom
                  of someone who knows nothing,
                                     and suddenly I saw
                                         the heavens
                                        unfastened
                                          and open,
                                            planets,
                              palpitating planations,
                                  shadow perforated,
                                              riddled
                          with arrows, fire and flowers,
                       the winding night, the universe.

                             And I, infinitesmal being,
                          drunk with the great starry
                                               void,
                                likeness, image of
                                           mystery,
                                 I felt myself a pure part
                                       of the abyss,
                           I wheeled with the stars,
                     my heart broke free on the open sky.

From Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda:

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to a pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distancesomeone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Flash of Lightening

Shelby Foote

"A fact is not a truth until you love it."

"I have noticed that when a man dies, no matter at what age
or by what cause, his life then has a beginning and a middle and an end, and sometimes his death explains his youth."

My friend Beth said:

This quote "reminds of something I once read about how a good story's  ending should be like a flash of lightening, enlightening the reader  about the whole story."  

Writer's Almanac

My friend Beth sent the following poem to me.  It came to her from an e-mail service called the Writer's Almanac.  It is from public radio.

I especially like stanza two of the William Stafford poem below.  In particular, there's something amazing about the use of the preposition "at" instead of the expected "to."  That creative choice startles me!  "At" feels much more intimate for a reason I can't quite explain.

Of course, I love the idea of living our dreams into stories.

Stanza three reminds me again of why I love the Icarus myth and why I believe there's something laudable in Icarus' venture.

Poem: Poem: "An Introduction To Some Poems" by William Stafford, from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems © Graywolf Press, 1998. Reprinted with permission.

An Introduction to Some Poems

Look: no one ever promised for sure
that we would sing. We have decided
to moan. In a strange dance that
we don't understand till we do it, we
have to carry on.

Just as in sleep you have to dream
the exact dream to round out your life,
so we have to live that dream into stories
and hold them close at you, close at the
edge we share, to be right.

We find it an awful thing to meet people,
serious or not, who have turned into vacant
effective people, so far lost that they
won't believe their own feelings
enough to follow them out.

The authentic is a line from one thing
along to the next; it interests us.
strangely, it relates to what works,
but is not quite the same. It never
swerves for revenge,

Or profit, or fame: it holds
together something more than the world,
this line. And we are your wavery
efforts at following it. Are you coming?
Good: now it is time.

=======================================================

“If you don't write your books, nobody else will do it for you. No one else has lived your life."   Jose Saramago

Trying (Maybe Failing)

 

To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Triumph

by Anne Sexton

Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wings on,
testing this strange little tug at his shoulder blade,
and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn
of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made!
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels;
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past
and think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well:
larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast
of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!
Feel the fire at his neck and see how casually
he glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling
into that hot eye. Who cares that he fell back to the sea?
See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down
while his sensible daddy goes straight into town.

Conventional wisdom says that Icarus should have flown the middle way, like his father.  However, Sexton seems to suggest there was something important about the trying and the failing, something more glorious than the sensible way of the father.  When we think about the myths and what they say to our own lives, we need to look at them with fresh eyes; forget the conventional wisdom.

Quote by Anne Sexton, sent to me in a recent e-mail by my friend Beth:

"Poetry is my love, my postmark, my hands, my kitchen, my face."

3 Great Quotes

Following are three great quotes I found in the November issue of The Sun

Well, while I'm here I'll do the work and what's the work?  To ease the pain of living.  Everything else, drunken dumbshow.  --Allen Ginsberg

 

 

Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I myself am good fortune.  --Walt Whitman

 

 

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions.  All life is an experiment.  The more experiments you make the better.  What if they are a little coarse, and you may get your coat soiled or torn?  What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice?  Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.  --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Carl Phillips--At Winter Wheat, BGSU 2004

CARL PHILLIPS is the author of Pastoral, published by Graywolf Press, and three previous books of poetry, From the Devotions (also published by Graywolf Press), Cortège, and In the Blood, which won the 1992 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize.  He has received prizes and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Library of Congress, and has been a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He teaches at Washington University in Saint Louis.

"Writing poetry is a very quiet, solitary sort of activity.  One writes with no expectations beyond the poem itself, and I sometimes forget that the poems are going to go out into the wider world."  --Carl Phillips in the Washington University Record, October 22, 1998.

Custom

There is a difference it used to make,
seeing three swans in this versus four in that
quadrant of sky. I am not imagining. It was very large, as its
effects were. Declarations of war, the timing fixed upon for a sea-departure; or,
about love, a sudden decision not to, to pretend instead to a kind
of choice. It was dramatic, as it should be. Without drama,
what is ritual? I look for omens everywhere, because they are everywhere
to be found. They come to me like strays, like the damaged,
something that could know better, and should, therefore—but does not:
a form of faith, you've said. I call it sacrifice—an instinct for it, or a habit at first, that
becomes required, the way art can become, eventually, all we have
of what was true. You shouldn't look at me like that. Like one of those  saints
on whom the birds once settled freely.

 

Regret

Painting by:  Michael G. Laster

After I posted my last entry, I settled on the couch to read this week's New Yorker and ran across an extraordinary poem that made me start thinking about REGRET.  Here is the poem by Jack Gilbert:

For eleven years I have regretted it,

regretted that I did not do what

I wanted to do as I sat there those

four hours watching her die.  I wanted

to crawl in among the machinery

and hold her in my arms, knowing

the elementary, leftover bit of her

mind would dimly recognize it was me

carrying her to where she was going.

After reading this poem, I thought about my last entry, about my enthusiasm for the Keirsey Temperament Sorter and I thought about why I am so taken with it.  It is because of my fear of regret--that I will fail to do what I am supposed to do in this life. 

Since I was a very young child, I pictured myself on my deathbed, thinking back over my life.  The thing that I didn't want to happen is this:  that I would be dying and full of regret.

The Keirsey Temperament Sorter, by showing me that my ways of perceiving the world are valid, gives me the courage to pursue many dreams and desires, including--especially-- my desire to write.  This one desire is now asserting itself in the forefront of my consciousness.  It is--more and more--how I'm choosing to define myself.  As a WRITER.

Reading the Gilbert poem also reminded me of a poem I played for my workshop participants at Winter Wheat by Muriel Rukeyser, called "Waiting For Icarus."  This poem is also about about regret.  I wanted my participants to hear it--and in Rukeyer's own voice, too--because I wanted them to think about the metaphorical meanings we can associate with gods.  Keirsey attributes a Greek god or goddess to each temperament type:  Idealist=Apollo (prophecy; seeing hidden potential); Guardian=Demeter (providing); Rational=Prometheus (giving humans fire of reason); Artisan=Dionysus (shaking off sedentary ways; call to action.)

I chose Rukeyer's poem because it is about Icarus, who was not one of the four gods or goddesses my participants might be working with, and because the poem presents Icarus from a somewhat unusual perspective.  In the poem, the speaker, a woman whose lover will not return to her, regrets her lack of opportunity, her lack of action:

 

Waiting for Icarus by Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980)

He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together
He said that everything would be better than before
He said we were on the edge of a new relation
He said he would never again cringe before his father
He said that he was going to invent full-time
He said he loved me that going into me
He said was going into the world and the sky
He said all the buckles were very firm

He said the wax was the best wax
He said Wait for me here on the beach
He said Just don't cry

I remember the gulls and the waves
I remember the islands going dark on the sea
I remember the girls laughing
I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me
I remember mother saying : Inventors are like poets, a trashy lot
I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse
I remember she added : Women who love such are the worst of all
I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer.
I would have liked to try those wings myself.
It would have been better than this.

This poem of regret is similar to the first poem.  In both cases, the speaker regrets inaction.  In both cases, this inaction possibly results from societal expectations (i.e., "Don't make a scene" or "Women can't do that.")

Rukeyer's final lines never fail to ring in my ears:  "I would have liked to  try those wings myself/It would have been better than this."

My point is that the Keirsey Temperament Sorter gave me the courage to try the wings on, to attemt the improbable success--to write a novel; to write stories someone would want to publish and others would want to read.

I wasn't born with confidence--far from it.  Confidence wasn't fostered in me at home, either.  I had to find courage in other ways.  The courage to try on the wings.  Keirsey's book Please Understand Me II  helped to give me this courage.

*Whereas my childhood guardians had often told me that I daydreamed too much, Keirsey pointed out that my primary mode of living is internal. 

*Whereas I was told I was too sensitive, Keirsey said that I deal with things according to how I feel about them or how they fit into my personal value system. 

*Whereas I was told that I worried too much about things I couldn't change, Keirsey showed me that my primary goal is to find out my meaning in life, my purpose, how I can best serve humanity, how I can make the world a better place. 

"That's stupid," I hear in my mind, "That's not realistic," "That's a waste of time," "That's laziness--do some real work for a change," taunt the voices from the past.  Yet Keirsey has shown me a different way to view myself.  My goals are valid.  Natural for me.  I am okay.  Keirsey's book has helped me along the path to individuation.

I realized after reading the Gilbert poem in the New Yorker that what my last entry lacked was my personal story.  This book was not just a book about theory to me--it was part of my salvation.

Winter Wheat

This weekend I participated in Bowling Green State University's Winter Wheat Festival of Writing.  I'm not sure who came up with the name for our festival, but I would guess "Wheat" was chosen because the grain is the main ingredient in bread, which is the staff of life.  I believe it was Barry Lopez who pointed out that some people need a story more than food.  Thus our festival gives us a way to share our experiences in the making of stories and poems, and the festival itself becomes a kind of food for the spirit of the writer. 

This year the festival focused on "identity."  Accordingly, I gave a presentation on temperament.  I based my presentation on two websites, the David Keirsey site and the Personality Page site, as well as the book Please Understand Me II, by David Keirsey. 

I became familiar with temperament theory about five years ago when a colleague at BGSU gave me a copy of Please Understand Me II.  Initially, I was skeptical about the theory that Keirsey proposed, because I prefer to look at life as a vast mystery.  I didn't like the thought that people could be categorized into "types."  But after taking the temperament sorter and reading about my "type," I became intrigued.  Later, I began to regret I had not known about temperament theory much earlier in my life.  Keirsey's books have been around since the 1970s and are based on his dissertation research into the theories of Plato, Aristotle, Jung, Briggs, and Myers.  As I studied temperament theory, I came to accept that people are not born as blank slates, that we are each born to experience the world in a certain way, the way that feels best, most familiar to us.  Yes, our life experiences also determine our personality, but life experiences do not tell the whole tale.  For instance, no matter how much a parent might want a child to play the piano or play little league baseball, that child might not be suited to that activity temperamentally.  No amount of experience, practice, pushing, or cajoling isgoing to change the fact that the child would rather make things from clay or write stories.  

During my presentation, I gave a quick overview of temperament theory, led the participants through the sorter so that they determined their own temperament type, and then allowed the participants to write and reflect on what their temperament meant in terms of their writing.  The last activity we did was to consider what each type means metaphorically.  To do this, we looked at how Keirsey matches each type to a Greek god or goddess.  I asked the participants to write about how their god or goddess embodies their life preferences.  One participant, a rational whose god is therefore Prometheus, shared with the other participants that she had the night before chosen the poem she was to read at the festival that night.  She told us that it is a poem about fire.  (Of course, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans.) 

Temperament theory today suggests that all of us have a "primary mode" of operation within four categories of our lives:  our flow of energy, how we take in information, how we prefer to make decisions, and the basic day-to-day lifestyle we prefer.  Within each of these categories we prefer to be either:  1.  Extraverted or Introverted; 2.  Sensing or Intuitive; 3.  Thinking or Feeling; 4.  Judging or Perceiving.  The theory holds that we naturally use one mode of operation within each eategory more easily and frequently than the other mode.  The theorists are careful to point out that we "prefer" one function over the other, although we all function within each mode.  The combination of the four "preferences" defines our temperament type.

I wanted participants to understand that temperament theory is not about putting people into boxes.  As the personality page online suggests:  "Learning about our ...type helps us to understand why certain areas in life come easily to us, and others are more of a struggle.  Learning about other people's ...types help us to understand the most effective way to communicate with them, and how they function best."

Temperament theory has become invaluable to me in working with other writers. It has also helped me in my own writing, particularly in character development.  It  helps me to get inside my characters' heads and to understand their motivations.

Many find temperament theory useful in their own personal growth.  Knowing your type helps you to clarify and to understand what is important to you.  It helps you to recognize your weaknesses without hiding behind them.  It helps you to strive for balance.  Most importantly, temperament theory helps open the door to our success, however we define it.  Theorists are quick to point out that there is no magic formula or scheme that will make us successful people.  But knowing your temperament type is a powerful aid in our quest for excellence.  It will help us to expand our understanding of human nature.  It will help us to reach what Jung called "individuation."

Individuation, according to Jung, is the conscious realization of your true self, beyond the ego that is presented by your conscious self.

There are sixteen types.  These sixteen types exist within four broad categories:  Idealists, Artisans, Guardians, and Rationals.

Many of the participants in my workshop felt as though the scales had fallen from their eyes and had a new understanding of what "makes them tick" as individuals and as writers.  Many were quick to perceive how the description of each type could aid them in character development.  And those who were teachers said they felt more aware about how their students process information.  Many also said they understood more about why each of us choose to write.  And why each of us enjoy reading certain types of literature more than others.

Participating in the Winter Wheat Festival was an excellent experience.  After leading my workshop, I participated in two other workshops and then listened to the poet Carl Phillips read from his work.  It's wonderful to be around other writers for day, to be with others who recognize the importance of the writing life.

Cosmic Egg

November is always a difficult month.  I teach college English and in November there is a flurry of grading and student meetings; this November has been particularly difficult because of the divisiveness of the election. During busy and difficult times, I have to find stories that will reestablish within me a feeling of unity; otherwise, I can't create.  I can't even THINK about creating.  I can't create out of a divided self.

It's very important for me to read myths.  As J. F. Bierlein says in his book Parallel Myths, which I use in my Imaginative Writing class at the university:  "Myth is a unique use of language that describes the realities beyond our five senses.  It fills the gap between the images of the unconscious and the language of conscious logic."

The following myth is one of my favorites.  I especially enjoy portrayal of the pre-patriarchial goddess-creator.  In this myth, the goddess keeps her power, unlike the Babylonian creation myth wherein Marduk finishes the work of creation by slaying Tiamet, his mother. 

Eurynome And Ophion  

In the beginning was Chaos and darkness.  Chaos was a great vast sea in which all elements were mixed together without form.    Out of this sea rose Eurynome, the Great Goddess of all things. 

She emerged from the waves naked and began to dance on the sea, as there was nothing firm for her to stand on.  Suddenly, the south wind blew and spun her around.  

It is said that the north wind has miraculous fertility powers and, when she spun around, Eurynome grasped at the north wind.  The great serpent of the waters, Ophion, saw Eurynome dancing and was filled with desire.   

He made love to her immediately.  She then assumed the form of a lovely bird and gave birth to the great universal egg.  Ophion coiled his tail around this egg until it cracked, spilling out creatures all over the newly formed earth.  Eurynome loved Ophion for a time and they went to live on Mount Olympus, home of the gods.  

However, Ophion became obnoxious and tiresome, bragging how he had fathered all living things.  Eurynome grew weary of him and bruised his head with her heel.  He was then cast down to the dark regions of the earth.  

It Should Have Been Different

This entry is about darkness and how stories can show us a way out--

The night is darkening round me,

The wild winds coldly blow;

But a tyrant spell has bound me

And I cannot, cannot go.  --Emily Bronte

For those wishing things could have turned out differently:

"as the ancient Chinese proverb says:  To dream of happiness is in itself a grief.  We are isolated and fearful.  ...our sorrow ... demands our attention, for even though the acute phases of grief are ... behind us, we still need to come to grips with the final remnants of our longing. ...

"We hear the final whispers of our protest that the way of the universe should have been different. 

"When our days and nights reflect such witheld mourning, it may be helpful to listen to the story of Coyote in the Land of the Dead."  --Alida Gersie

Coyote and Eagle-man set out on a journey to bring back the people, so they might be renewed.  At last they came to a grey, sombre land, where the sun was rarely seen.  When darkness was about to fall they reached the wide river which flows between the land of the living and the land of the dead.

Coyote and Eagle-man lifted their voices, calling into the darkening night that someone might send a boat to fetch them,.  Nothing stirred and no one came. 

Then Coyote thought.  His thought travelled deep inside himself, and he lifted to his throat an ancient song, unknown to him, and as he sang this song of power, a canoe set forth from the faraway shore, and made its way towards them. ...

I don't know where Coyote's song of power comes from.  I only know I have experienced the feeling evoked in this tale.  I have felt a thought, a longing, travelling inside myself, and I've felt myself rising to the power of an old, old song.  It is indeed a resurrection from the land of the dead.

Like Every Other Day

Today, like every other day

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

--Rumi

Underworld Seed

Photograph of a seed, by Maneesh Agrawala and Apostolos Lerios

Next week promises to be the first full week of cool temperatures here in Northwest Ohio.  I'm happy to see and feel the onset of winter. 

When I lived in Eastern North Carolina I didn't experience winter the way I do here--weeks of relentless cold, forcing you to slow down and to be quiet.  I find winter to be an excellent time for thinking up stories.  I love the gray days and the long, dark nights.  It's a time of storing and gathering energy.  I don't always write a lot in the winter, because I'm teaching.  But I do a lot of mental writing, mental sorting, planning for future projects.  I do a lot of jotting in my notebooks.  I do a lot of reading in preparation for when I will have time to write.

Living in Northern Ohio, close to the Great Lakes where the winters are long and cold, I have new appreciation for the myths that address the change of seasons, like the story of Demeter and Persephone.  I've been revisiting that myth over the weekend. 

Like Bridget, Demeter existed before the patriarchal religions were established.  Demeter has her origins as an Earth Goddess. She represented the fruit of life (grain).  Persephone came to represent the seed of life (corn). 

On the surface, this is a story about the origin of winter.  David Leeming and Jake Page write in Goddess that:  "During the seasons when Persephone abided with Demeter, the earth would bloom and be fragrant; when she dwelled in the underworld, Demeter would ... become the crone and don her weeds of mourning, and the earth would grow cold and grieve with her."

However, I am most interested in how mythology and psychology intersect.  So therefore the interpretation that I like best is that Persephone's journey to the underworld is a metaphor for our assimilation of the fruits of the dark unconscious.  (According to Jung, the dark unconscious is where we relegate that which we do not want to face.)  

David Leeming and Jake Page write in Goddess of how this myth can be interpreted as a person's movement beyond "paradise" and "innocence" into the adult world.  

David Leeming is Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut.  Jake Page is a science writer, essayist, and novelist.