The New Haircut

These photos were taken less than an hour ago.  The sun was bright and Allen and I were commenting on how the predicted rain never got here.  And now it's raining.  Allen got a haircut today, so that was a good excuse to take pictures out in the yard.  I took pictures of him, the boat, and of Buddha, our Boston Terrier. 

Photo 1 is of the canopy that Allen designed and built.  He bought conduit pipes and fitted them together, then measured and had the tarps made at a place not far from the house called, simply and appropriately, TARPS.  (They make tarps for trucks.) 

I think Allen's creation is ingenuous.  It will save us from baking in the sun, that's for sure.

Photos 2, 3, and 4 are of Allen and his best bud, Buddha.  Number 4, the silliest one, is Allen's favorite.  I like #3.

**I will not post a new entry before I leave, but I plan to update this entry just before leaving.  I have already shut off all my alerts in preparation for the journey.

UPDATE 9:38 p.m. eastern standard time.  Thursday May 12.

This is the last thing I will post before leaving on my Ohio River Journey.  I'll be gone at least 8 weeks, although we may be gone longer.  In any case, I should be back by the very end of July (at the latest).

I thank all of you who have been coming to my journal and posting comments.  I appreciate your insights.   Journaling has yielded a wealth of experience for me.  I had no idea when I started my journal that I would make so many intriguing connections.  All of you have been very integral to my search for "why I write" and "what being a writer means."

I was mighty impressed with the questions that were posted in "Theresa's Book of Questions."  I'm proud of these and will print them out and take them with me in my accordian folder that is filled with notes I've been collecting since January.  You've all given me much to think about.

Please don't forget about me while I'm gone; I'll be carrying you down the river with me.

Best, Theresa

p.s.  Those of you who are familiar with my Sun stories:  the final story of the collection will be published in The Sun in the July issue.  If you run across an issue somewhere, think about the fact that you'll be seeing it before I will!  The story is called "The Falls."  Check the Sun website at the beginning of July when they post the new issue--they have excerpts of stories and articles; perhaps they'll have an excerpt posted of "The Falls."

Good-bye, everyone.  Have a wonderful summer.

We Must Not Know

I have done a lot of reading lately about the "Dark Night of the Soul."

My latest discovery is a book by the same name by Gerald G. May, a psychiatrist who explores the connection between darkness and spiritual growth.

I believe that my writing comes out of my inner darkness.  May says this darkness is a good thing.  He quotes from John of the Cross, who believed this darkness of the soul is "night more kindly than dawn."  According to May, we cannot fully liberate ourselves from our fears alone because "our defenses and resistances will not permit it."  The "Dark Night of the Soul" guides us toward truth. 

I can see how writing for me is akin to the biblical concept of salvation:

May writes:

Hebrew words connoting salvation often contain a root made of the letters y and s, yodh and shin.  One example is the Hebrew name of Jesus, Yeshua, "God saves."  This y-s root implies being set free from bondage or confinement, enabled to move freely, empowered to be and do according to one's true nature.  In contrast to life-denying asceticism that advocates freedom from desire, Teresa [of Avila] and John see authentic transformation as leading to freedom for desire.  For them, the essence of all human desire is love. (73)

I don't think I'd be exaggerating if I said that as I write, I feel an intense love for my imagined reader.  Unless I feel this love, this spark, my writing is dead. 

May also says that:  "To guide us toward the love that we most desire, we must be taken where we could not and would not go on our own.  And lest we sabotage the journey, we must not know where we are going" (73).

This would explain why I have no interest in tight plots. 

IT   IS   THE   JOURNEY   ITSELF   THAT   IS   IMPORTANT.

I believe it isthe love for my imagined reader (and for my characters) that frees me, not the writing itself.

Thanks to all of you who have posted questions in the entry "Theresa's Book of Questions."  There's still time to post a few more.  Click HERE to post.

I will post in my journal at least one more time before we leave early Saturday.

 

May's book helps me to see myself more clearly as a human being and as a writer.

Blue Girl

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo of Theresa, about 4 years old.

So I have been researching the Ohio River the last couple of days.  A conversation I had Wednesday with a professor planning a course on women's travel narratives got me to thinking about how a woman's travel narrative would differ from a man's.  Thelma and Louise comes to mind, but let's not go there for the moment.  

Allen christened our boat "Blue Girl" because, well, the boat is blue, and because he wants me to do much inner exploration aboard her. 

Today, I found an article about women's narratives on the Internet.  This article uses quotes from Dharma Girl:  A Road Trip Across the American Generations  by Chelsea Cain; I'd never heard of the book, which is now out of print.  I liked the following quote from the Dharma Girl:

She doesn’t know it yet, but she is about to run into herself. She is a psychonaut—a voyager into the soul—and since she has read the Tibetan Book of the Dead she will soon realize that in order to find herself, she first has to create a self to identify. She has to tell the story. She has to find the child she was and the girl she became to get the answers she wants. She has to see if she can find what she has lost track of, before she can go on to anything else.

I know that back in December, this is how I was thinking about the Ohio River Journey, as a way of looking back.  Looking back as a way to help me to look forward.  Since, I've done so much research on the history and geography of the river, that I kind of lost sight of the original intent. 

I'm happy today for the reminder.

 

 

Power of Story--Questions from Vince

These questions are from Vince at the journal, To Grow Is To Be Anxious.

FIRST: The rules because every game has got to have them, you know. Leave me a comment saying "interview me." The first five to leave a comment requesting to be participants will be interviewed. I will respond by asking you five questions via e-mail.  You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions and a link to my site.   You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. (Write your own questions or borrow some)  

1. Jos. Campbell seems to be a guiding light in your present thinking. Do you find him reflected in your personal life?  

Like so many, I discovered Joseph Campbell on PBS by watching his interviews will Bill Moyers.  Campbell at that time was a retired professor from Sarah Lawrence.  Listening to Campbell, I felt my thoughts about storytelling congealing into a philosophy.  Why do I write?  For many years, I couldn't answer that question and feel my answer was truthful.  My writing life is my personal life.  My writing life is my life.  Moreover, Campbell helped show me how to look at the world every day, whether I'm teaching, writing, grocery shopping, taking a walk, whatever.  His explanation about life, that life is a series of transformations and passing through inner thresholds of experience, made more sense to me than any I had ever heard.  I now own the DVD, The Power of Myth, thanks to our youngest son, who gave it to me one year for mother's day.  Many libraries have the Joseph Campbell conversations with Bill Moyers on videotape or DVD, and I highly recommend them.  

2.In which environment are you most comfortable-- teaching or writing?  

Writing.  

3.Has the journalling experience helped to congeal your thoughts vis-a-vis writing? Does teaching continue to contribute to this?  

Yes, the journaling helps a great deal.  The way I piece together life is associative, rather than linear.  This journal helps me to "see" what I'm thinking, what I've been studying, what I've been experiencing, and it offers me a way to piece it all together.  I don't have to worry about any of the things we normally concern ourselves about in academic writing--focus, organization, development, control.  I can forget all that and let the answers slowly bubble and rise to the surface.  I'm in no hurry.  Teaching can do the same thing, especially creative writing classes.  I really feed off the energy produced by those, although classroom dynamics can also get in the way.  You do have to be much more organized in your approach to the classroom--the students deserve that.  And then there is always the chance of a clash of personalities.  Finally, there's the problem of having to give grades at the end of the semester, a task I don't find enjoyable.  

4. Who is the Author who first excited you?; who caused you to take those first steps?  

As a very young adolescent, I discovered the short stories of Guy de Maupassant.  They were so frightening to me, so close to the bare bone of truth, I thought at the time, that I hid his collection under my bed for fear I would be "found out" reading them.  The story I remember best is "Mother of Monsters."  It was about a poor woman who bound her abdomen with corsets during her pregnancies so as to create "monsters," which she then sold to side shows.  It was how she made her living.  As you can see, I never forgot the story--who could?  The gruesome nature of the story reinforces the metaphorical implication.  The story forces us to ask ourselves to what extent we endanger ourselves and our children for the sake of money.  How do we "contort" our children psychologically so that they (and we) will "succeed" or "fit in,"  and thus become financially successful. I'm sure I didn't understand all the implications of the story when I was young; but the story has grown in my mind all these years, and it has served as a warning.   

However, it was probably J. D. Salinger that made me want to write stories.  I was fascinated by the precocious children in his stories.  

5. When you read fiction that you`ve finished, do you smile at those parts of your experience that have been unconsciously reflected in your writing?  

Definitely.  I am constantly amazed at what surfaces in my writing.  My stories give me so much insight into how different facets of life connect--reading, experience, hopes, education, mythology, psychology, dreams.  

Thanks so much, Vince, for these wonderful questions.

P.S.  Just one week left to post to Theresa's Book of Questions.  Click HERE to post questions.  All questions will go with me down the Ohio River!