Washington Post/AOL Ads

My new house is at:  http://theresawilliams-author.blogspot.com/

AOL Journals: You've Got Ads Move Draws Protest From Some Longtime Subscribers

By Yuki NoguchiWashington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 23, 2005; Page D04

As America Online Inc. turns more toward advertising dollars to offset the shrinking number of subscribers who pay a monthly fee, the company may be upsetting the longtime customers who have remained faithful over the years.

Virginia Heatwole of Rockville, for example, has been a paying customer since 1993 and turned to AOL when she decided to start her own Web log. One of things she liked about AOL Journals was the absence of advertisements on her blog page.

America Online and Time Warner

America Online Inc. is trying to find ways to keep customers coming back to its Internet community while parent company Time Warner Inc. seeks ways to expand its Internet empire.

• AOL Journals: You've Got Ads
• Time Warner to Buy Back More Stock
• Case Quits As Time Warner Director
• Timeline: AOL & Time Warner
• AOL, and Other Online Keys More News

 Now, her personalized Web page that includes her thoughts about nature and spirituality has become a platform for Netflix DVD rental ads.

"They're flashing and screaming at the top of my blog," she said.

The change came last week, when Dulles-based AOL started posting ads on the pages created by AOL Journals, which had been ad-free for two years. Back in May, the company opened the free service to nonsubscribers, saying that those blogs would contain ads but that blogs by paying customers would be ad-free.

The company, which is quickly losing subscribers to broadband service providers, switched to an "audience strategy" earlier this year, offering free music, video, blogs, and other services and features with hopes of increasing the audience and grabbing more online ad dollars.

"The decision to implement banner advertising on AOL Journals is consistent with our business and advertising practices," AOL spokeswoman Kathie Brockman said in an e-mail. The company, which hosts about 600,000 blogs, received several dozen complaints about the advertisements and is taking suggestions into consideration, she said.

"We have advertising on the AOL.com portal, in email, instant messaging, and across our network," Brockman wrote. "It is also consistent with the practices of other major blog providers on the Internet."

Some users of AOL's instant-message service are also dealing with the automatic arrival of new "buddies" on their buddy lists: AOL services called Moviefone and ShoppingBuddy. The links allow users to search for movies and products by typing instant messages, which automatically generate a reply message.

Users were notified of the change through a posting on AIM.com and were given an option to remove the new listings by going to the set-up menu to delete them, the company said.

However the new ads cannot be deleted from the blogs, and that has other bloggers such as Armand Thompson, a Tacoma, Wash.-based U.S. Army sergeant, steamed. In response, he created a new blog at Google's rival blog site, Blogspot, and is trying to move his older entries to it.

His form of protest: keeping his AOL Journal open to speak out against the ads on it.

"It's using their platform against them," he said.

Hallowed Ground

OPEN HOUSE

by Theodore Roethke

My secrets cry aloud.
I have no need for tongue.
My heart keeps open house,
My doors are widely swung.
An epic of the eyes
My love, with no disguise.

My truths are all foreknown,
This anguish self-revealed.
I'm naked to the bone,
With nakedness my shield.
Myself is what I wear:
I keep the spirit spare.

The anger will endure,
The deed will speak the truth
In language strict and pure.
I stop the lying mouth;
Rage warps my dearest cry
To witness agony.

 

 

My new house is at:  http://theresawilliams-author.blogspot.com/

Dear Reader,

The banner ads on this journal are placed here without my consent.  I do not endorse any of the products being advertised here.  My journal was started more than a year before these advertisements became the headers on AOL Journals. This is an invasion, tantamount to theft.

There are many reasons why people keep journals. 

 I speak now on behalf of any and all who consider their journals to be hallowed ground, a place where their "secrets cry aloud." 

I also speak on behalf of some who are dead and therefore cannot speak.  I speak for those who have left us their words, whose journals we visit as we would graves or memorials, whose journals have been defaced with ads. 

This last entry I leave, as a testament to the sanctity of art.

This journal was once my "Open House."  

To AOL:  We do our living, laughing, loving, and dying on these pages.  They are not billboards for advertisers. 

To AOL:  You have defaced my house.

This entry will remain here, as testament of what you have done. 

--Theresa Williams

 

  

 

REMOVE ADS.

Remove the ad banners.

--Theresa Williams

Dear readers, please consider posting a comment of protest at:  http://journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke/

My comment to "magic smoke" is posted in the comments section of this entry.

I have moved to:  http://theresawilliams-author.blogspot.com/

If you leave AOL Journals, please go here to post a link to your new home:  http://journals.aol.com/pattboy92/TheGreatExodus/

Sign the petition at:  http://gopetition.com/sign.php?currentregion=237&petid=7527

I will return to this AOL journal only if the ad banners are removed.     --Theresa Williams

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From a reader of this journal:

re. banner ads on online journals-
Jonathan Miller, CEO of AOL. Joe Redling, Chief Marketing Officer.
Corporate Headquarters:
America Online, Inc.
22000 AOL Way
Dulles, VA  20166
(703) 265-1000
Personal calls or letters are often best.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead
ggw07@aol.com

Literature of Longing

Painting by Chagall

~>~>~>~>~>~>~>

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From "The Song of Songs"

Like an apple tree among the

trees of the forest

is my lover among the young men.

I delight to sit in his shade,

and his fruit is sweet to my taste.

He has taken me to the banquet hall,

and his banner over me is love.

Strengthen me with raisins,

refresh me with apples,

for I am faint with love ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  A fellow journaler recently expressed some sadness at not having found the perfect lover.  The journaler writes of having unreturned love.   I've found that the best writing comes out of such longing. 

Walt Whitman once wrote of the pain of unreturned love, saying,   "Now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay's certain one way or another.  (I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return'd, yet out of that I have written these songs.)"    

There is nothing else to say:  Channel your longing into your art.

 

Reality

What is Reality?

What is the truth?

I'm thinking now of the writer whose self-concept depends on authencity.   Does this describe you?  It describes me.

Perhaps I'm more comfortable writing fiction than non-fiction because I worry that non-fiction has to be completely "true," detail by detail, and I drive myself mad trying to get all the details "right." 

I'm finding more and more that I don't know how to tell "the truth."  I only know how to tell "my truth."  And in telling "my truth," I find myself constantly departing from facts and into the realm of mythology.  I believe there is so much truth in myths. 

A wonderful poem by Rabia al Basri explains the difficulties of writing from the heart, of writing, to, for, out of, or about the Divine source (by Divine source, I mean that mysterious place our creativity and imagination comes from):

REALITY

In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.

Speech is born out of longing,

True description from the real taste.

The one who tastes, knows;

the one who explains, lies.

How can you describe the true form of Something

In whose presence you are blotted out?

And in whose being you still exist?

And who lives as a sign for your journey? 

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~

"In whose presence you are blotted out..."  This is very much what Yolen means, I think, about the self falling away. 

A Movement of the Natural Human Mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Seventy-Five: Rereading An Old Book

by Hayden Carruth

My prayers have been answered, if they were prayers. I live.
I'm alive, and even in rather good health, I believe.
If I'd quit smoking I might live to be a hundred.
Truly this is astonishing, after the poverty and pain,
The suffering. Who would have thought that petty
Endurance could achieve so much?
                                                      And prayers --
Were they prayers? Always I was adamant
In my irreligion, and had good reason to be.
Yet prayer is not, I see in old age now,
A matter of doctrine or discipline, but rather
A movement of the natural human mind
Bereft of its place among the animals, the other
Animals. I prayed. Then on paper I wrote
Some of the words I said, which are these poems.

--------------------------------------------------------------

I love Hayden Carruth's poetry.  His poems are a unique combination of realism and spirituality.  Whenever I start to feel a little off-balance, or lost, I read Hayden Carruth.

A book of Carruth's letters was recently published.  The book is called Letters to Jane.  The title refers to the poet Jane Kenyon, and the letters in the book were written in the months just prior to Kenyon's death from leukemia.  The letters are a window, looking inward at the friendship of two great poets.  Carruth's presence in these letters is huge.

What's wonderful about Carruth's letters to Jane is that they are so honest.  One of the things Carruth is honest about is what it is like to be a writer.  He's so honest in saying that sometimes writers are just wasteful of their time.  For instance, in his letter of May 9, 1994, Carruth writes:

"So I frittered away the weekend: read a short manuscript, wrote a few letters, watched a hell of a lot  of basketball, read what we used to call cheap-screw fiction. I haven't heard that term for a while. At first it meant under-the-counter porn, but later came to mean any escapist literature. As a consequence, on top of the desperation and depression, I feel guilt. What else is new?"

For those who picture the writer's life as one in which the author sits thoughtfully poised over a manuscript 24-hours a day, this may come as a revelation: writers waste time, they struggle to keep themselves on track, they fail, they get depressed.

I find this revelation uplifting rather than sad.  Ah, so, I'm not the only one!

Carruth was also honest about many of his other human failings.  For example, in another letter to Jane he tells about having to take his laptop computer to a repair shop because of "excessive cat hair." Carruth, a lover of cats, says that his repairman suggested he get rid of the cat whereupon Carruth admits:

"I said immediately, 'Oh, I can't do that,' implying that my wife wouldn't stand for it, which was a cowardly way out, and no doubt sexist too. The fact is I wouldn't stand for it either."

I really had to laugh at that.  There are so many useless little lies we tell to save face.

Looking at Carruth's poem just now, I find myself believing that prayer is really an avenue to help us to tell the truth.

How different might my writing be if I thought of it as a prayer?

  

 

Write With Your Whole Life

One of the ideas I've talked about in my journal before is "loving my reader."  This is something I discovered as I was writing my novel, that I needed to love my reader in order to compose meaningful prose. 

I've not talked about what this means, "loving my reader," partly because I wasn't sure how to explain it.

In my reading the other night, I found something that may serve as at least a partial explanation.  It is from Thich Nhat Hanh's The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching. 

Some of us have been asking about the difference between writing that is theraputic to the writer and writing that is theraputic to the reader.  This is an issue I had to deal with my own novel because so much of the book is autobiographical.  How could I write about my own pain in a way that would be meaningful for readers? 

In his book, Thich Nhat Hanh discusses forms of writing.  He tells us:  "Of course you have suffered, but the other person has also suffered." 

I think this is an important realization.

I think this realization is what transforms our own suffering into something our readers can use.  We have to write with recognition that our reader has suffered, too.

Thich Nhat Hanh  says that the other person's suffering is worth our compassion:  "When you begin to understand the suffering of the other person, compassion will arise in you, and the language you use will have the power of healing.  Compassion is the only energy that can help us connect with another person."

When we write, we are making important connections to others.   As Thich Nhat Hanh says, "We know that our words will affect many other people."  So it helps to consider the affect our words might have.

Thich Nhat Hanh says, "Writing is a deep practice.  Even before we begin writing, during whatever we are doing--gardening or sweeping the floor--our book or essay is being written deep in our consciousness.  To write a book, we must write with our whole life, not just during the moments we are sitting at our desk."

I love this phrase:  "WE MUST WRITE WITH OUR WHOLE LIFE." 

I also like the way Thich Nhat Hanh says that writing is a "Deep practice."

I'm not saying that our writing must be light and happy all the time.  A lot of good writing is dark and a lot of good writing--important writing-- expresses hopelessness.  We need to know that others feel hopeless, so that we don't feel so alone. 

But what I believe Thich Nhat Hanh is saying is that when we express anything in writing, we have a responsibility, not just to ourselves, not just to our own anger, our own hurt, our own need, but to our readers. 

One of the things I'm learning as I read about Buddhism is that there is no concept of "self" because we are all connected. 

I am not separate from my reader!

Isn't that just the most amazing thing?

Serve the Divine

Times are busy for me right now at the university, but I wanted to do this entry before the thoughts slipped through my hands.

Of late, I've seen journalers questioning why they are keeping a journal.  I've seen journals abandoned, journals put on hold, and journals searching for a new direction.  Just a few entries ago, I was writing about how we are finding our tribe.  Now people are questioning what their role is within the tribe.  This is a good thing, it seems to me.

"Where are our moorings?  What behooves us?"  These are questions the poet Adrienne Rich once asked.

In searching for my mooring, I find myself always going back to the heart. 

At the end of our time at Esalen, Sy Safransky, editor of The Sun, mentioned a book called After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.  After I got home, I ordered the book and have just finished it.  I still need to reread it and underline passages that are important to me, but I want to say something now about this book and how I think it relates to my moorings.

After the ecstasy of discovering our tribe, comes the day-to-day work of living within the tribe.  Of "doing the laundry," so to speak. 

In a section of the book, called "The Heart's Intention," Kornfield says that "Becoming aware of intention is a key to awakening ..."  He says that it is in "small things that we fulfill the lessons of the heart.  It is from our intentions that our life grows.  It is in opening to one another that our path is made whole" (253).

I think that as long as we bring some kind of awareness to the table we are spreading for our Internet friends, we are fulfilling an important need.  In opening up to one another, our lives are made whole.

Later in this book, Kornfield quotes E. B. White, who once said, "Every morning I awaken torn between the desire to save the world and the inclination to savor it."

I find this is exactly where my intention springs from--the tension between these two states of being.  If I incline too much toward trying to save the world, my writing gets dull and preachy.  If I write just to savor life, my writing loses its spiritual component, which is very important to me.  I have always been drawn to authors who elevate ordinary objects to the realm of the spirit--Richard Brautigan was such a writer, so was J. D. Salinger.  So, naturally, that is how I want to write, too.  To do that, I have to cultivate awareness. 

Richard Brautigan wrote a story called "The Kool-Aid Wino."  In the story, a child found delight in making a jar of Kool-Aid.  Because the child was poor, he put at least twice the amount of water into the mixture he was supposed to.  But the point of the story is that when he drew the water, the  spigot thrust itself out of the earth like the finger of saint.  Thus, making the Kool-Aid became a ritual, a spiritual act.

That is the kind of awareness I want.  That is the kind of awareness I want to bring to my writing.  Even to this journal.

In my last entry, I talked about the perils of the publishing world, that uniqueness is sometimes eshewed in favor of the "tried but true."  

Another idea I meant to express in that same entry was that if I begin any creative work with the goal to publish it, that piece of writing is dead from the start.  That's because, for me, writing for the sake of publishing is the wrong intention.

Don't get me wrong, getting work published feels good.  But I can't start there, with that intention.  I have to start with the need to reveal an awareness. 

All of us do writings that have clear purposes, writings that are requirements for our job, for our bread and butter.  I'm not talking about that kind of writing.  I'm talking about the kind of writing we do because of what's in our hearts.  The kind of writing that expresses why life itself is so precious.

It is much harder to determine the purpose of heart writing.  But that is indeed what we must do. 

Lest you think your writing is self-absorbed or that you're being selfish by taking the time to do it, consider what Kornfield says in his book:

"Years ago Ram Dass went to his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, to ask, 'How can I best be enlightened?'  His guru answered, 'Love people.'  When he asked about the most direct path to awakening, his guru answered, 'Feed people.  Love people and feed people.  Serve the Divine in every form.'"

Remember what I told you Barry Lopez said?  That sometimes a person needs a story more than food?

Kornfield then asks, "But whom are we serving?"

His answer:

"It is ourselves.  When someone asked Gandhi how he could so continually sacrifice himself for India, he replied, 'I do this for myself alone.'  When we serve others we serve ourselves.  The Upanishads call this 'God feeding God.'"

So then, what are our moorings?  What is our heart's intention? Why do we keep a journal, anyway?

For many of us it is to speak the matters of the heart.

In doing so, we feed ourselves.  In feeding ourselves, we feed others.  In feeding others, we get closer to the divine.

 

The Horror, The Horror

Because I subscribe to writing magazines, I receive a lot of unsolicited mail about writing and publishing.  I received some mail the other day that troubled me.  

It is a pamphlet that purports to contain "Everything you need to know to get your work accepted by a commercial publisher."  Inside the pamphlet is much advice but one piece of advice in particular angered and saddened me.  It says that an author should never claim that "his book is unique."

First of all, how difficult would it have been to structure the sentence in such a way as to avoid the gender bias?  We teach our students at the university a very easy way--use the plural form of pronouns and verbs--Authors should never claim that their ...

That nonwithstanding, I was dismayed at the suggestion that uniqueness is not prized by commercial publishers.   This is what the brochure says about an author claiming that "his book is unique":

"This statement is the kiss of death because editors don't want a unique book.  They want a book that fits into an existing category and meets the needs of an existing audience.  At the very best, this statement implies that the author doesn't understand the market for his book.  At the very worst, it indicates that the book is, indeed, unique--and therefore either has no audience, or has an audience that is difficult to reach."

I understand the very human need to categorize, I do.  Having categories is useful, even necessary.  But strict adherence to categories can be the "kiss of death" for art.  Do we really want to live in a world in which the publishers have already pre-decided that unique books will not be of interest to readers? 

Over the weekend, Allen and I went to Toledo to have a bite to eat.  Afterwards, we decided to take in a movie.  I'd been wanting to see Capote, so we went to the four movie houses near us, only to find that all of them offered the same movies, all of them of the mass-audience genre.  Capote was not playing at any of the theaters.  There were many choices at the 18-theater cineplex, yet to my mind, there were no choices.  I didn't wish to see any of those movies. 

There are more books being published today by the commercial presses than ever before.   But if writers and publishers follow the advice in the brochure I recently received, what are the readers' choices?

The "advice" in the brochure I received in the mail dismayed me.  But it won't change what I want to write.  Writing in order to satisfy a pre-existing category is not something I'm interested in doing.  Each poem, story, essay, or novel I write--or want to write--is a voyage of discovery.  Otherwise, my thinking is, why do it?

I know there are many writers who are perfectly happy writing within a given category or genre.  That is okay for them.  That is great for the readers who enjoy that kind of writing. 

But writing with a certain "category" in mind feels cramped and "smothery," as Huck Finn would put it.  It lacks purpose for me because I'm not that kind of writer.   I wonder how many writers, for the hope of getting published, will heed this "advice," which I feel is killing to the soul.

Believe this:  for everything you write, there is someone in the world who needs to read it.  Barry Lopez said that sometimes a person needs a story more than food. 

To thine own self be true.  In doing that, you contribute something of value to the world.

I Am Bitter

This is the first time I have submitted a piece to Judith Heartsong's Artsy Essay Contest.  This is the contest for October.  The subject of the contest is "The One Thing I Would Most Like You to Know About Me."

The One Thing I Would Most Like You to Know About Me

I want you to know that I am bitter.

Does this seem like a negative thing to admit? 

It's an observation that's related to a painting I recently became acquainted with, "The Vinegar Tasters."

In "The Vinegar Tasters,"  three men stand around a vat of vinegar.  Each man has just tasted the vinegar and is having a reaction to it. 

Vinegar, by the way, comes from a French word, vinaigre, meaning sour wine and has been used since ancient times.  The Chinese saw great medicinal qualities in vinegar and called it the essence of life. 

One man in the painting looks sour.  He represents Confucius, who looked to tradition for meaning and order.   Another man looks bitter.  He represents Buddha.  He represents me:  I am bitter.

To Buddha, life is bitter.  Life is full of  attachments and desires that lead to suffering.  Life is a revolving wheel of pain, which can be escaped by achieving Nirvana.

This sounds awful, I know.  We all want to be happy.  But bear with me, now.

For a long time, I tried to avoid my feelings of suffering.  So I buried myself in intellectual pursuits.  I set a series goals for myself, most of which I achieved.  These are some of the goals I set for myself:  I will get this degree, I will get this award, I will get into this program, I will get this grade, I will be inducted into this society, I will be the best in the class, I will win this contest.   (Not this artsy essay contest, mind you.  I'm speaking of the past!)

Many of my pursuits were in the arts.   I studied studio art and creative writing.  But I'm pretty sure that neither my art nor my writing really spoke to people.  It certainly didn't speak to me.  I was a scholarship girl. 

A scholarship girl is a student who works hard and does all the "right" things, but doesn't know why she is doing them.  She takes good notes, writes good papers, learns techniques, and even creates mildly exceptional works of art.  And her teachers love her.  She loves them, too.  She lives for their applause.

I use "girl" instead of woman because in so many ways I wasn't fully grown.

The whole time, I was pretending I wasn't suffering.  I was suffering, but I had pushed down my hurt.  The details of my hurt aren't important.  The hurt and the reasons for it are common enough, universal.  All of us have hurt in the ways I was hurting.  In a nutshell, I hurt because I had never learned to deal with loss or longing or grief.  I hurt because I didn't know who I was.  Tobias Wolff described my condition in his memoir, This Boy's Life.  He said, "Because I did not know who I was, any image of myself, no matter how grotesque, had power over me."  Images of yourself aren't necessarily grotesque as in "ugly."  A beautiful image of yourself, such as a scholarship girl, can feel grotesque if it doesn't feel true.

 Inside, I was bitter, like Buddha is bitter in the picture.  Outwardly, I smiled a lot.

The one thing I would most like you to know about me is that I was bitter then.  And I want you to know that I'm bitter now.  I'm no longer a scholarship girl (Although there are still many ways in which I'm not fully grown.) 

The difference between the person I was then and the person I am now is that I'm learning to embrace my suffering, as one embraces a child.  I'm not running away from my suffering by trying to find happiness in outside  accomplishments or pursuits.  I'm learning to cherish my suffering as one cherishes a child.  Because out of my suffering comes my art. 

The thing I want you to know about me is that I don't believe that this kind of bitterness is a bad thing.   The Chinese character for suffering is "bitter," and Buddha said suffering is holy.   It is holy because points us toward liberation.  I think the Christ story teaches us the same thing.  When Thomas touched Christ's wounds, Thomas looked deeply into those wounds, the wounds representing all suffering.  Indeed, to look at any wound takes courage.  

Now, when I write.  I look deeply into my suffering, and it is sometimes a terrible place to go, but there's a liberation that happens afterwards.  With that liberation comes a new energy.  That energy feels a lot like joy.

I want you to know:  I am bitter and that is okay.

A few years ago, I ran across a poem by Stephen Crane:

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter-bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

I remember my own heart beating fast as I read this poem.  The hairs went up on the back of neck and on my arms.  Something about the poem felt very true.  But for a long time I couldn't get past the negative connotations of "bestial" and "bitter." 

Now, I see that the creature is bestial in the way we all are.  We are animals, after all, beasts.  We live according to the same natural laws as beasts.  We have to kill to eat, and we have to eat to live.  We are mad to couple, mad to survive.  

The beast is bitter in the same way that I am bitter, I realize now.   The beast is eating its bitter heart because that's where its suffering lives.   

When I write, I'm a lot like the creature in Crane's poem, I think.  When I write, I am naked and bestial.  I am eating my bitter, bitter heart.

Which brings me to my final point:

Who is the third man in the painting of the "Vinegar Tasters"? 

He is Lao-Tse.  He is smiling.  He has learned that life, even as painful as it sometimes is, is sweet.

Do I want someday to be the smiling one?

You bet.

I don't know what it will mean for my writing.  But, yes, I want to be like him, like Lao-Tse. 

I want you to know that I'm working on it.

For Vince!

In my last couple of entries I've gotten rather high flown about writing.  Time to touch the ground again.

Vince, at To Grow Is To Be Anxious, this one's for you!

Thank you, Vince, for introducing me to Becker's Denial of Death and for sharing your poetry with us.  Your poetry teaches us much about what it means to be human.  And Becker's is truly a life-changing book.  I think Becker would agree with the following quote from Kurt Vonnegut's new book, A Man Without A Country:

"The arts are not a way to make a living.  They are a very human way of making life more bearable.  Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake.  Sing in the shower.  Dance to the radio.  Tell stories.  Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem.  Do it as well as you possibly can.  You will get an enormous reward.  You have created something."

I also must include the following quote from Vonnegut's book:

"Here is a lesson in creative writing.

"First rule:  Do not use semicolons.  They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing.  All they do is show you've been to college."

*Note:  I believe I was a senior in college before I fully understood the purpose of a semi-colon.  When I told our youngest son the Vonnegut quote, he laughed and then said, "But semi-colons are so cool!"  (He is a newly minted senior in college).  Semi-colons do abound in essay writing and academic writing.  They are used much less often in poetry and fiction.  I believe what Vonnegut is proposing is not a hard-and-fast rule, but a break from high fallutin' academic writing.  It may be an interesting experiment to pay attention the next time you read a poem or story and see how many semi-colons are used.  I think it helps writers to pay attention to things like that, and that's why I included the quote in this entry.  I wanted people to think a bit about punctuation and what certain marks of punctuation represent. 

(I found, as did our son, that once you figure out what semi-colons are and how to use them, they become addictive.)

I think what Vonnegut would have us ask ourselves is why we are using the semi-colon.  If we're using it to show we know how (i.e. I'm a college graduate), then it serves no useful purpose.

Walt Whitman and the Civil War

Photos: 

#1  Mock war encampment on the Maumee River at the Applebutter festival in Grand Rapids, Ohio.  October 9. 

#2  Allen (my husband) with our dog, Buddha, at the festival. 

#3  The Maumee.on the day of the festival.  I was surprised at how low the water level was.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've only lived in two states, North Carolina and Ohio.  Both states (in part) define themselves by which side they were on in the Civil War.  

Last Sunday, Allen, Buddha (our dog), and I went to the Applebutter Festival in Grand Rapids, Ohio.  Every year, the festival draws thousands, who come for the brats, the hot Apple Cider, the Applebutter, the crafts, and the historic reenactments.  Every year, people dress in Civil War clothes (Union outfits) and display themselves in encampments beside the Maumee River.   It's a step back in time, sort of.

Recently, I've been taking another step back in time.  I've been reading Walt Whitman's Specimen Days.  It is a collection of his stray writings, including writings from his Civil War days, the days he spent comforting wounded and dying soldiers.

I've lived in the South and now I live in the North.   I know the Civil War was about having to choose a side.   It was about being patriotic, about loving your home, your "country."

Yet I once read somewhere that a true writer has no country.  It's always a danger to take quotes out of context, but I believe what was meant by that was that a writer has to be true to a higher calling than governments or politics. 

Walt Whitman was surely such a writer.  Oh, he loved America and rhapsodized about America.  But it was an idealized America.  I believe he thought America should be true to a higher calling, too, a higher  calling than power.

The following lines help to illustrate the higher calling Whitman  answered:

"I staid to-night a long time by the bedside of a new patient, a young Baltimorean, aged about 19 years. ... very feeble, right leg amputated, can't sleep hardly at all--has taken a great deal of morphine, which, as usual, is costing more than it comes to.  Evidently very intelligent and well bred--very affectionate--held on to my hand, lingering, soothing him in his pain, he says to me suddenly, 'I hardly think you know who I am--I don't wish to impose upon you--I am a rebel soldier.'  I said I did not know that, but it made no difference.  Visiting him daily for about two weeks after that, while he lived, (death had mark'd him, and he was quite alone,) I loved him much, always kiss'd him, and he did me."

Whitman's higher calling was to humanity.  I hesitate to say his higher calling was to God, because I don't think Whitman defined himself that way.  I think he was very spiritual, just not religious in the way we've come to think of being religious.  

One day Whitman ministered to a dying soldier who asked Whitman to read to him from the New Testament.  Whitman wrote in Specimen Days:

"The poor, wasted young man ask'd me to read the following chapter... how Christ rose again.  I read very slowly, for Oscar was feeble.  It pleased him very much, yet the tears were in his eyes.  He ask'd me if I enjoy'd religion.  I said, 'Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you mean, and yet, may-be, it is the same thing.'"

I know I would like to be the kind of person and the kind of writer that Walt Whitman was.  Mostly, I'm drawn to his never-ceasing optimism.  Even in the face of ugliness and brutality and death, Whitman never lost his belief in humanity.   He believed all was holy.  He believed we were all connected to one another and to nature and that is what divinity was to him. 

In one of his nature jottings, Whitman said:  "What is happiness, anyhow?  Is this one of its hours, or the like of it?--so impalpable--a mere breath, an evanescent  tinge?  I am not sure--so let me give myself the benefit of the doubt."

How like Whitman to ask, Am I happy?  And, not being sure, to give himself the benefit of the doubt.

That's the way I want to be.

As a writer, I, too, want to be moved by a high calling.  I think this is where anyone who is thinking about being a writer needs to begin, by asking, "What is it to which I want to be true?  What calling?"

Challenge

Engraving by Albrecht Dürer

Challenge:  The quality of requiring full use of one's abilities, energy, or resources.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My, but I was extremely moved by the response the last entry got:  thank you, everyone, for making the effort to click on over here and leave a comment.  Now that I have your attention... (smile)

I thought I would issue a challenge to you bloggers out there, a challenge to look through your archives and mark a moment of change.  What I'm asking you to do is to  identify an entry that illustrates a turning point for you and your journal.  Identify an entry that suddenly set your journal off on a new direction, one never dreamed of before.

My own journal is just a little over a year old.  If you go back to my earliest entries you'll see they are rather sparse little things.  In the beginning, the journal was a way to capture fugitive thoughts, nothing more. 

As I grew in confidence, my journal began to change.  I think it became richer.  As I look through the entries, I can see myself taking on more complex topics.  I also see my attempts at humor.  I have a problem, sometimes, with taking myself and my efforts "too seriously."  I began to learn to relax a bit, to have fun, even as I continued my unending struggle to understand what the imagination is and where creativity comes from.

But the biggest change in my journal came about as a result of the feedback I got from readers.  I look back at my earliest entries and see that most of the time I had no readers at all.  Then there were one or two people who took the plunge and left comments.  It was all so new to me that, in my way, I mixed up names and journals in my head.  It all was so abstract for a long while.

Gradually, friendships began to form.  More and more people expressed an interest in writing and creativity as a topic.  In the early entries, I mainly wrote about abstract ideas and themes.  Reading them, a person would have no idea who in the world I was or why I was even talking about writing in the first place!  In other words, having readers and getting to know those readers made my writing more human.

Then, I began to share more of my personal struggles.  Readers began to share theirs.  And then--presto--my journal had transformed into an organic, living thing.  I found I was spending a lot of time thinking about new directions to take my journal. 

The only thing I was sure of, the thing I knew would not change, was that I wanted to continue to focus on writing, on being an author and what it means.

There are many entries that I consider pivotal ones.  Sometimes the transformation came through my own struggle to understand the topic I'd chosen to write about.  Other times the transformation happened because of something a reader said in his or her comment.

The entry I've chosen as the most pivotal, though, is Mutualaide's Interview Questions.   As some of you recall, last Spring, we were interviewing each other, a process I truly loved because it gave us a chance to get to know one another. 

Here is part of the Mutualaide entry: 

Question # 3.  Having the opportunity to gather with 5 of your 'regular readers' who are they, where do you meet and what do you talk about?  

Okay.  The five regular readers are Vicky, Cynthia, Maisie (Marigolds), Judi, and Beth.  Sorry fellows, this is girls' night out.  First, we loosen things up a bit by going to a Tom Jones concert.  (You fellows didn't want to see Tom Jones anyway, did you?  Tell the truth!)   

At the concert, we laugh until we ache.  We stand on our feet and clap our hands.  We really can't believe Tom Jones can still move like that.  He is, after all, what, in his sixties?  We really do laugh uncontrollably because we feel like teenagers, only a lot smarter (we hope).  We scream a few times and sing along with the music. 

I can't help it, I buy myself a Tom Jones T-shirt, so everytime I wear it I can think about this energy.  

 And then we all go out to a nice restaurant and bar with live Blues music.  I have a beer, probably a Killians.  Beth has a light beer (that is what she usually orders when we go out).  Vicky has a glass of good wine.  I'm not sure about Judi, Maisie and Cynthia ("What's your poison?").  They might be teetotalers, but that's all right, we've all got a natural high going on. 

We say things like, "Can you believe that Tom Jones?"   

And "I can't believe it--we actually went to see Tom Jones."   

And "You aren't going to tell anybody else we actually went to see Tom Jones, are you?"  

 We will all swear an oath never to tell.  

I will say, "My friend Paula went to one of these concerts in Toledo.  That's what gave me the idea."  

Maisie will say, " _________________________."  (Maisie, fill in the blank in your comments)  

I will say, "Maisie, I used to fantasize about Tom Jones when I was 13 years old.  Did you, Vicky?"  

Vicky will say, "______________________." (Vicky, fill in the blank)  

Judi will say, "________________________."  (Judi, fill in the blank).  

Cynthia will say, "___________________________."  (Cynthia, fill in the blank.)  

Beth will say, "________________________."  (Beth, fill in the blank).  

We will then all go for an evening walk next to a river.  We will fold our arms against the cool breeze.  We will  sigh and ask where did all the years go.  It seems like yesterday Tom Jones and all of us were just young 'uns.   Then we will talk about the meaning of life and art. 

This story is to be continued.  But whenever I wear my Tom Jones T-shirt and somebody says, "You didn't really go to see Tom Jones, did you?"  I will say, "What?  Moi?  Are you kidding? No, I got this at Goodwill."  

My reason for saying this entry was pivotal is that it brought together everything I'd been working toward in my journal.

1.  Writing that Tom Jones story was FUN.  So I wasn't taking myself so seriously anymore.  I hadn't had that much FUN writing since I was a little girl making newsletters for myself and my friends.

2.  I wasn't only talking about creativity, I was attempting to be creative myself.

3.  It was interactive:  my new friends, the good sports they are, joined right in. Read the responses for yourself!  They are hilarious!  I was very touched by response and hadn't expected it at all.

4.  The whole experience gave me an incredible sense of well-being.  It lightened my heart, which allowed me to think of ways to carry my own creativity further. 

So, would any of you like to take on my challenge?  If so, go through your archives and choose one entry you think was pivotal.  In the comment section to this entry, leave a link to that entry.  In your comment, explain why the entry was pivotal. 

I look forward to reading your responses!

Finding Your Tribe

This painting is inspired by primative art from India.  It was created by the Warli, a tribe of Maharastra

Last night, I watched the interview with Kurt Vonnegut on the PBS show, Now.   One of the things that has stayed with me from that interview is his comment about how to survive in the modern world.

He said the nuclear family leaves us too vulnerable, too isolated, feeling insignificant in the culture at large.  He said that in order to survive, to find purpose and meaning in our lives, we need extended connections:  we need to find our own tribe.

In terms of our own evolution as artists, finding our own tribe, it seems to me, is very necessary.  Our family or community of origin may not be our spiritual tribe. 

We can, and should, give gratitude to our families and friends who live near and far,  but they may not nourish us in that special way we need.  It's okay to look elsewhere for that.  It's necessary, even.

I believe the world of blogging has opened up the possibility for us to discover our tribe. 

Through our writing, we have a chance to connect with people who are like us, who have the same thoughts, the same longings.  We can ask questions, share insights, or simply let off steam.  We can get courage to keep on.   We can help each other.

 

This dream I could not complete

This entry is for Paula.

It has been a while since I've done the good, hard work of writing.  Since classes at the university have resumed, I've taken to reading more than writing.  I tell myself that by reading I'm energizing myself for the work ahead, and I am.  I know from experience that reading helps me to prepare the ground for my writing.  But it's rather like being a butterfly, flitting from this idea to the next and never making any hard choices.

I'm not in the midst of "the struggle" like Paula is right now.  "The struggle" is when you're wrestling with your ideas down in the dirt and mud.  Even at this moment, Paula sits at a retreat, working at centering herself for the hard work of writing her memoir.

You can support your friends at such a time with sweet words.  But in the end, it's the writer who must rise to the occasion, and the writer knows this.  It's the writer who must find the way. 

Sometimes it's a matter of just sitting still and waiting.  Sometimes it means you must make a hard choice, a sacrifice.  Sometimes you have to roar like a lion and tell the world to leave you alone--you can't attend to it now because now is the time for writing. 

The truth is, sometimes you don't know what you need to do to clear the debris from your roots so you can feed again and feel the connection to your center, where your deepest ideas come from. 

The answer could be right under your nose.  I've found this to be the case, sometimes.

Sometimes writing is easy, and sometimes it is a struggle.  We keep doing it because it brings us joy.  But that joy can be elusive.  In such cases, patience is the only way.

Goethe speaks to this elusiveness in a poem I found in an appendix of his early works.  The poem doesn't even have a title, and isn't well-known, but it speaks volumes:

 

      And joy like a star sound

      Floats only in a dream before us.

 

      In golden moments of the springtime sun

      This vision held me

      Spellbound; sweet

      That darkness of the senses,

      This dream I could begin

      But not complete.

 

In another source (an unusual book by John Gardner called Lies, Lies, Lies, which is Gardner's college journal begun in September of 1952 when he was a sophomore at DePauw University) is a short discussion of big thoughts.

We all want to write about big thoughts, don't we?

In his journal, Gardner writes:  "One grows tired of little thoughts, after a while, just as one grows tired of laughing."  He goes on to say that:

"You can look at things and know that they have in them a big thought--only you can't quite catch it.  Still, you can look at it and know that there is a big thought there.  There are stories--like Grapes of Wrath, that imply big answers--but you can't quite catch 'em."

This describes the search for big thoughts in art.  But it also describes that feeling you get when you try to capture a big thought in writing, when YOU try to walk in the same footsteps as, say, Steinbeck.  It describes that desire to write something important, to capture the essence of life with words, to catch the "big thought."  Only you don't know how.

And this is where the squeamish will quit.  This is the point at which I've quit scores of times.

I don't have "the" answer.  I only know the things I've talked about in this entry are the things all writers wrestle with. 

In the mud and dirt.

 

 

Big Sur and Esalen

This photo was taken on Sunday afternoon, after the Esalen experience had ended.  Yes, I look tired, and I was tired.  It was a very intense experience, flying for the first time, seeing California for the first time, and meeting many new people.

Big Sur, of course, is so beautiful.  This photo was taken on Hwy 1, just outside of Esalen.  Driving the highway is exhilarating.  Often you can look out your window and see the cliffs dropping straight down to the ocean.  Every new turn presents something breathtaking.  I'd never seen anything like it before.

Esalen itself is a veritable utopia.  The sweet aroma of flowers mixed with the clean breeze off the pacific, the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks, and the generous nature of all participants felt marvelous, albeit a bit overwhelming.  Please understand, I'm one who is easily overwhelmed.  My preferred existence is quiet and calm.  My preferred existence is solitude.  So Esalen was a bit of a sensory overload for me.  It simply was almost too much for me to process, and I'm still working at taking it all in. 

I will say that I don't believe I've ever met so many kind, generous, and accepting people all in one place.  You felt like you could be completely yourself at Esalen. 

As some of you know, I was able to meet fellow blogger Vicky (My Incentive) at Esalen.  See her entry, "Too Full To Speak."  How strange is life.  Before The Sun invited me to Esalen to lead  workshops, I would have never dreamed I would meet Vicky in person.  She was an "Internet friend," precious but just a little bit abstract.  Even the snail mail we exchanged didn't quite quell the sense for me that Vicky was a far-off angel, precious but forever out of range.  Now we've met!  It was so easy to be with her, so comforting.  Vicky is so alive, and she is so easy to love.

The Sun had 80-something participants.  Each participant chose four workshops to attend during the weekend.  Workshops were scheduled on Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday morning.  I led three workshops--one on finding meaning in one's story, one on using the shadow in one's writing, and one on autobiographical fiction.

The participants were so open.  They were so guided by a spirit of discovery.  Although many came burdened by fears and doubts, most overcame them enough to create some stunning writing.  Those who were unable to write "on the spot" (I certainly could identify with them; I, too, have a hard time creating spontaneously) took with them the tools they needed to write in the comfort and privacy of their own space.

On Saturday night, the group leaders all read from their work.  I read from my novel, The Secret of Hurricanes.  Gillian Kendall read a piece previously published in The Sun.  Alison Luterman (who was my roommate) read powerhouse poems from her published collection, The Largest Possible Life.  David Romtvedt read poems from various published sources.  And the editor of The Sun, Sy Safransky, read his "Notebook" piece which appears in this month's (October 2005) Sun.  Sy's voice brings a wonderful gravity to what he writes. 

Hearing all the authors read from their work was, for me, like going to church, like experiencing an exceptional service, one you'll always remember.  Listening to the readers, I said to myself, This is how our stories and poems are supposed to be shared--out loud.    

How few opportunities really exist for this kind of encounter with writing, unfortunately.

I attended the AWP Writing Conference when it was in Chicago.  It fed my spirit, and I'd like to attend another AWP Conference someday, perhaps even lead a session there.  But Esalen was by far a better experience for me.  It was less "hurried," if that makes sense.  Although I was very busy working with groups and meeting people afterwards, I never felt rushed.  I never felt anxious in the same way I so often do in some academic situations. 

Yes, I was in my element at Esalen.  Yes, indeed.

Now that I'm home, I have to try to hold onto what Esalen gave me.  Not just hold onto it, but pass it on.

The Comfort of Art II

Okay, I promised to share more from Conversations with John Gardner.  Every once in a while my own well begins to run dry and at such times I visit Gardner for help and support.  Conversations is a new book of mine, and I'm finding it very useful.  I've read Gardner's works on writing for years, but the interviews in this book really help to bring out Gardner's personal side, his humanity.

The first interview in the book was done in 1973.  Gardner was interviewed by Joe David Bellamy.

During the interview, Bellamy asked what Gardner meant when he claimed that fiction should perpetuate "positive" moral values.  (People who know Gardner, know he wrote a book called On Moral Fiction, which caused an uproar when it came out.  The book suggested that much of our modern literature had lost its way, its purpose.).  Gardner was quick to point out that he wasn't advocating that writers should be judgmental or preachy.  Gardner replied that by "positive" he meant that the author should believe in generosity and hope and truth. 

He told Bellamy:  "The ultimate moral value, the moral value I really look for beyond anything else, is to be exactly truthful--seeing things clearly, the process of art."

I like this idea that the process of art helps us to see things clearly.

He then said he believed there comes a point in a writer's life when he or she becomes able to see the world clearly enough to write about it and to express something hopeful.  He said it feels to the writer as though he or she has flown above the world and is looking down on it from a high place. 

I have had this feeling!  But only within the last five or six years have I felt it.

Gardner said that  The writer uses his or her imagination to "redeem the world."

Isn't this the most amazing statement?

In order to be thiskind of writer, Gardner said, one needs faith.  This is what he said about faith:

"Faith and despair have always been the two mighty adversaries.  You don't have to see it in the way of a Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, or any other system.  A healthy life is a life of faith; an unhealthy sick, and dangerous life is a life of unfaith. ...Faith is a physical condition, a feeling of security which enables you to think about what you're doing and yet be subconsciously alert.  Whereas unfaith, paranoia, is a total concentration which makes it impossible for your psyche and body to be alert."

Writing is an act of faith--this is what I think Gardner was saying.  Through writing, we show our ability "to be patient, to be tolerant, to try to understand and empathize."  And this, he said, is "the highest kind of imagination." 

Moreover, writing displays the author's faith, his or her faith in what holds us together, in what gives life meaning.

Then he said something that just blew me away:

"The ability to make up grand images and to thrill the reader is a nice talent, but if it doesn't include love, it's nothing--mere sounding brass."

To that I say, Amen.

I probably won't post again until I return from Big Sur.   The days will be very full.  I'll be the leader for three workshops, one on finding significance in one's writing, one on the "shadow" in writing, and one on autobiographical fiction.  I will take lots of photos and share the experience with you when I get back.

Take care of yourselves, everyone.

The Comfort of Art

Tonight, I read in Paula's journal that she was having trouble getting the old engine going on her memoir, and I was having some trouble snapping to attention on my own writing. 

So I turned again to John Gardner for inspiration.  I've written about John Gardner in this journal before.  He's the writer whose Art of Fiction was a mainstay in my college writing program.  He died in a motorcycle accident in 1982.  When you look him up on Amazon, sadly, you find that most of his fiction is out of print.  (Only Grendel continues to be read widely.)  But his books on writing continue to sell well and inspire new writers all the time. 

Tonight, I was reading Conversations with John Gardner, an excellent book edited by Allan Chavkin and published by the University Press of Mississippi.  In the introduction, I ran into a quote that reminded me of something Vicky (My Incentive) and I were discussing in an IM conversation.  Vicky and I were talking about how important books are to us, and Vicky wrote that books are important companions.  I know many of us feel the same way.  A book isn't just a way to pass time; a book can become a vehicle that transports us into a state of holiness.

What does this mean to us who want to write, then?  What is our role as artists?

In addressing the importance of writing (art), Gardner said that art was the stuff his life was made of, and that his orientation to his art was "Messianic": 

"It's made my life, and it made my life when I was a kid, when I was incapable of finding any other sustenance, any other thing to lean on, any other comfort during times of great unhappiness.  Art has filled my life with joy and I want everybody to know the kind of joy I know--that's what Messianic means."

I can remember when I first realized I wanted to be this kind of writer.  This realization drastically changed the way I wrote.  It changed what I wrote about.  It changed my purpose for writing, entirely.

There are other things I read in Conversations with John Gardner that struck me hard and gave me a  creative boost, but it is 4:30 a.m. and I'm sleepy.  But I will share them in the next day or two.

"Lisping Egos"

Cynthia recently did an excellent entry in her blog, Sorting the Pieces.    She presented the Charles Bukowski poem, "Poetry Readings."  Bukowski's poem elicited agreement in her readers about the prevalence of stale writing.  Here is a brief sampling of the poem:   

I am ashamed for them,
I am ashamed that they have to bolster each other,
I am ashamed for their lisping egos,
their lack of guts.
if these are our creators,
please, please give me something else:
a drunken plumber at a bowling alley,
a prelim boy in a four rounder,
a jock guiding his horse through along the
rail,
a bartender on last call,
a waitress pouring me a coffee,
a drunk sleeping in a deserted doorway,
a dog munching a dry bone,
an elephant's fart in a circus tent,
a 6 p.m. freeway crush,
the mailman telling a dirty joke
anything
anything
but
these.  

In my response to Cynthia's entry, I pointed out that I have been as guilty as anyone of producing elaborate yet dry, stuffy writing.   

One of my major bugaboos has always been the desire to be taken seriously.  So when I took my first creative writing class way back in 1981, a 300-level workshop, I set out to write a masterpiece.  And I was sure I'd accomplished this goal when my first story came up for workshop, for my classmates praised me up and down.   

However, after class my teacher asked to speak to me.  Much to my horror, he revealed to me that my classmates had been wrong about my story.  He told me my writing was terrible, that the language was inflated  and that the story lacked heart.   

Indeed, my story would have fit Bukowski's description perfectly, for it was the product of a "lisping ego."  

When I wrote my second story, I  sent my family out of the house and sat looking at my Smith Carona typewriter humming on the Formica tabletop a long time before I began typing.  Five hours later, I felt I'd produced the most dreadful story in the world.  I'd put words on the page without giving any thought to symbolism or grand themes.  My story was too simple to ever be thought of seriously, I thought.  

However, on the day my story was supposed to be workshopped, the teacher, who had seriously burned his foot that very morning, told us he was in a lot of pain would have to dismiss us.    But before we left, he told me he admired my story and looked forward to workshopping it.  I felt my jaw drop and thought he must be mad.   

As it turned out, this second story, while it had its fair share of flaws, was a very good story.   I'd gotten it down in a rush, before I'd had time to think about it too much and ruin it with intellectual gobbledygook.  

As the years went on, I had my ups and downs with writing, mostly downs.  It took me years to crawl out of my dismal hole of self-doubt.   But eventually I came to believe a few things about writing that have carried me forward.  

*  We should write toward simplicity.  

*  If you don't know what your poem, story, memoir, or novel means, you can't expect your reader to know either. 

*  Fearlessness is the furnace of desire, and without fearlessness, writing is cold and dead.  

It would be terrible to think Charles Bukowski would rather experience anything (even an elephant's fart in a circus tent), rather than read something I had written.  I love Bukowski's poems; they continue to teach me about simplicity;  the power of honesty;  fearlessness.  This tough, gristled man eschewed sentimentality in favor of brutal honesty, and I love his work for this very reason.  

Whenever I feel my work is coming from a "lisping ego," I stop what I'm doing.  Writing that comes from my ego lacks guts.   It may be pretty, it may be slick, it may be praised by people who read it.  Indeed, it may even get published. 

But it is dead in all the ways that matter to me and so it is useless to me.  As useless as all the "anything[s]" in Bukowski's poem, "Poetry Readings."

Just For Fun

I found this quiz on Christina's (Journey With MS) site.  You can take the quiz by going here:  Birth Order Predictor

The quiz was correct.  It said I was likely the third child.  I was the third and youngest child.  The following description sounds very much like me:

***You Are Likely a Third Born***  
At your darkest moments, you feel vulnerable.
At work and school, you do best when you're comparing things.
When you love someone, you tend to like to please them.   In friendship, you are loyal to one person.
Your ideal careers are: sales, police officer, newspaper reporter, inventor, poet, and animal trainer.
You will leave your mark on the world with inventions, poetry, and inspiration.

Paula Lambert-Author

 

Some of you may remember me mentioning my friend Paula.  She's the one who went to the Tom Jones concert, inspiring my entry which was an imagining of several of my online friends going to a Tom Jones concert with me.

Paula has started a blog called Paula Lambert-Author. 

Because I know she won't brag on herself, I'll tell you  that she won a $5,000 grant from the Ohio Arts Council for a memoir she is writing.  I have read pieces of this memoir and the writing is incredible. 

Paula is also a graduate of the same MFA program that Beth and I graduated from (Bowling Green State University, where I now teach).  She's a published author and a serious author. 

She and I are both big fans of Jung. 

She is also one of the kindest and most genuine people I have ever known, and just thinking about her makes me feel a rightness about the world.

I'm sure she is going to have many insights about the writer's life to share with us.

Welcome to the world of blogging, Paula! 

I'm excited about the online writing community that is being built.  May we all grow, be filled with wonder, and have publishing success.  

Tag, You're It

 

Sweet Lily of  This Drama I Call Life tagged me to share my lists of "seven things."

I would like to tag Vicky of My Incentive, Steven of LA Journal, and Beth of Beth's Front Porch (I know, Beth, no promises!)  Hope you will all play along--after all, if I'm willing to embarrass myself this way, why shouldn't you be?

 One:  Things I plan to do before I die

1.  Read Moby Dick all the way through.

2.  Win a major book award.

3.  Pay off my house.

4.  Walk the entire towpath trail from the rail bridge to the dam and back, 16 miles.

5.  Make a documentary.

6.  Get back to painting and drawing.

7.  Eat some "real" Mexican food.

Two:  Things I can't do

1.  Sing.

2.  Directionally challenged, I cannot read a map worth beans.  Nor can I find my way from here to there to anywhere.

3.  Do a push up.

4.  Ride fast rides at an amusement park.

5.  Lie without feeling really guilty

6.  Wear high heels.

7.  Go an entire day without reading anything.

Three:  Things I can do

1.  Pick up objects with my toes, like pencils, pens, and clothespins, and even light clothes.

2.   Open those plastic bags in the produce section of grocery stores.  (Just call me sticky-fingers).

3.  Spell correctly most of the time.

4.  Eat really, really hot, spicy food.

5.  Make a "meal" out of almost anything left in the refrigerator or cupboards.

6.  Whistle out of the side of my mouth.

7.  Weave on a floor loom.

Four:  Things that attract me to the opposite sex

I must say, chivalry is not dead; therefore I am attracted to the seven virtues of knights.  I look for these traits in male and female alike:

1.  Courage
 Courage of the heart necessary to undertake tasks which are difficult, tedious or unglamorous, and to graciously accept the sacrifices involved.

2.  Justice

3.  Mercy

4.  Generosity
Sharing material things and also time, attention, wisdom and energy.

5.  Faith
Faithfulness to promises, no matter how big or small. 

6.  Nobility
Doing the right thing, even in trying circumstances. 

7.  Hope
A safety net in times of tragedy.

Five:  Things I say most often

1.  Okay

2.  Really?

3.  I don't know, maybe.

4.  I love you.

5.  Where's all my little babies?  (Calling my cats)

6.  Gracious sakes!

7.  Keep your mind and your options open. (to my students and my children)

Six:  Celebrity crushes

Oh--do I really have to tell?

1.  When I was in my teens, I had a crush on Peter Duel, who starred in Alias Smith and Jones.

2.  I always fall in love with Gregory Peck when I see him in To Kill a Mockingbird--there's chivalry!

3.  I fell in love with Charles Kurault whenever he talked about art and nature on Sunday Morning.

4.  I thought Brad Pitt was really something in Thelma and Louise. 

5.  I fell in love with Johnny Depp in What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

6.  James Spader, who plays Alan Shore on Boston Legal  has enough darkness, gentleness, and gruesome wit to keep me interested.  (Well, I have to balance out the light of Atticus Finch somehow!)

7.  Cat Stevens

AWARE!

I've not posted for a few days because I've been trying to process what has happened in the American South as a result of Katrina.  I needed to process that event through the prism of other things I've been thinking about the last few days.

I've long wanted to do an entry on the importance of being AWARE when we write.  The recent hurricane has given us all a lesson in awareness.  Certainly, many who were in the hurricane's path--before and after--felt America had no awareness of them.  Was the president aware of the misery of the people when he gazed down at them from Air Force One?  Was he aware when he hugged the two little girls who said they'd lost everything in the storm? 

My friend Beth recently did a wonderful entry on awareness.  In her entry Just a Vignette, she writes of stopping to help a young university student in need, a blind student whose awareness  surpassed that of his sighted counterparts. 

There is also a wonderful Sufi story about awareness that I'd like to share now:

Junaid had a young dervish he loved very much, and his older dervishes became jealous.  They couldn't understand what Junaid saw in the young man.  One day, Junaid told all his dervishes to buy a chicken in the marketplace and then kill the chicken.  However, they had to kill the chicken when no one could see them.  They were to return by sundown at the latest.

One by one the dervishes returned to Junaid, each with a slaughtered chicken under his arm.  Finally, when the sun went down, the young dervish returned, with a live chicken still squawking and struggling.  The older dervishes all laughed and whispered among themselves that the young man couldn't even carry out Junaid's orders!

Junaid asked each of the dervishes to describe how they carried out his instructions.  The first man said he had gone out and purchased the chicken, then returned home, locked the door, closed the curtains over all the windows, and then killed the chicken.  The second man said he returned home with his chicken, locked his door and pulled the curtains, and then he took the chicken into a dark closet and slaughtered it in there.  The third man also took his chicken into the closet, but he blindfolded himself, so he himself would not see the slaughtering.  Another man went into a dark, deserted area of the forest to sacrifice his chicken.  Another went into a pitch black cave.

Finally, it was the young man's turn.  He hung his head, embarrassed that he couldn't follow Junaid's instructions.  "I brought the chicken into my house, but everywhere in the house there was a presence.  I went into the most deserted parts of the forest, but the presence was still with me.  Even in the darkest caves, the presence was still there. 

There was no place I could go where I was not seen.

I interpret the presence in this story as awareness.  It's a reciprocal act, I think:  we are aware of "something" and "something" is aware of us.  This reciprocity is something Beth gets across so well when she describes the young blind student putting his hand on her shoulder.  It's the reciprocity of feeling and awareness that the president couldn't feel until, perhaps, he spoke with those two little girls and embraced them.  It's the reciprocity only the youngest dervish felt when he couldn't kill the chicken.

I think that, for many of us, real writing can't take place until we feel this kind of presence, this kind of awareness.  And it's an amazing experience.  I know that without this awareness, my writing is glib, boring, and dead.

I'm not sure how much sense this entry makes.  I only know I had to somehow knit all these thoughts together because they are important to me.

Give Voice to What You Want

Some people in J-Land have asked about assignments I give my students.  Here's one.   (J-Landers, if you want to give it a try, do it in a journal entry, and please leave a link in my comments section).

This assignment works best if you don't think about it too much.  Choose your issue and your voice, and then just let the writing flow.

1.  Think of something you would really like to happen.  It doesn't matter how "impossible" you think it might be, but it should be something you feel strongly about.  (It should not, however, be a personal desire such as "I wish I was rich"; it should be connected to some current issue or controversy.)  Examples:

--I wish my father would stop smoking. (issue:  smoking)

--I wish my little sister would stop doing ecstasy. (issue:  dangerous drug use among teens)

--I wish my friend Mike would stop drinking so much.

(issue:  teen alcoholism)

--I wish there would be no more wars.

(issue:  war in general or a current war in particular)

2.  Choose a voice that can no longer speak but is knowledgable about the issue.  Write a short poem or paragraph using this voice and addressing the issue.

Sample:

issue:  war

voice:  someone who has died in war

IN FLANDERS FIELDS

by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

     That mark our place; and in the sky

     The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

 

We are the Dead.  Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

     Loved and were loved, and now we lie

     In Flanders fields.

 

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

     The torch; be yours to hold it high.

     If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

     In flanders fields.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

UPDATE:

bY ggwo7@aol.com

one of the regular readers of this blog

in response to this entry:

 

The Mothers

What if we the mothers of the dead

called in one voice?

After roaming the desert

for centuries what would

bring them home?

No one could answer our cry

No one but our lost boys

who we can not comfort

in the cradle of civilization

nor offer the taste of

bittersweet seconds

which looking back makes-

What could we say?

Why were we silent?

Why did we let go

for a flag? For

a grain of sand?

Why did we listen to

the pronouncements of

pontificators instead of

the wisdom of

our own hearts?

What excuses remain?

Who will we accuse

in the night when

the snapshots of love

are not enough?

When the film in

the mind decays and

there is only emptiness

and the voices of

our dead sons

do not return?

Who will hear

the curse we invoke

upon ourselves?

Who will rescue us

from the abyss of

the mirror then?