Poem: White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field

Coming down

out of the freezing sky

with its depths of light,

like an angel,

or a buddha with wings,

it was beautiful

and accurate,

striking the snow and whatever was there

with a force that left the imprint

of the tips of its wings –

five feet apart – and the grabbing

thrust of its feet,

and the indentation of what had been running

through the white valleys

of the snow –

And then it rose, gracefully,

and flew back to the frozen marshes,

to lurk there,

like a little lighthouse,

in the blue shadows –

so I thought:

maybe death

isn’t darkness, after all,

but so much light

wrapping itself around us –

as soft as feathers –

that we are instantly weary

of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes,

not without amazement,

and let ourselves be carried,

as through the translucence of mica,

to the river

that is without the least dapple or shadow –

that is nothing but light – scalding, aortal light –

in which we are washed and washed

out of our bones.

By Mary Oliver

A Real Live Author

Just when you think that maybe your mother (and The Bens (B) and (C)) are the only people who read your blog, Barry Eisler, the author of the John Rain thriller series, posted a comment on Brad’s blog (which has 2,914 subscribers at this moment) saying

And Amy and Brad, thanks for your kind words about my books. Really glad you’re enjoying them. Cheers, Barry

How cool is that? A real writer taking the time to connect with his readers..

Learning Joy from Dogs without Collars

I read this memoir last summer and ran across it on the shelves today while looking for Tobias Wolff books for Brad. It’s a fascinating story of the childhood of Lauralee Summer who grew up in poverty and homelessness and went to college at Harvard. Ben Casnocha, I recommend that you read this book in your voluminous spare time as you think about college choices. Pros and cons, food for thought.

from p. 223

During the first week, we attended many orientation sessions about diversity. At one of these gatherings, the speaker asked the audience of two hundred to raise their hands if they were from working-class backgrounds. I looked over the heads of the mass of students and saw seven raised hands, one of which was my own. Only seven out of two hundred Harvard students were from working-class families. My mother and I were not even working class; we were welfare class. During Freshman [sic] Week, I met many students whose parents owned companies, had millions of dollars, or were faculty at other elite universities. It was a shock to learn that such people existed in my own world.

The Audre Lorde quote in my last post is from the epigraph from Chapter 28 of this book (p. 266).

A poem written by an anonymous homeless youth is the main epigraph:

we are not lost

we know where we are

but our itinerary is chance and weather

we do not believe in destinations

and we are in no hurry

we have learned patience

from statues in a thousand parks

and joy from dogs without collars.

Free Speech: Audre Lorde

We can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid…[I]n this way alone we can survive, by taking part in a process of life that is creative and continuing, that is growth. And it is never without fear — of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment….But we have lived through all of those already, in silence….And I remind myself all the time now that if I were to have been born mute, or had maintained an oath of silence my whole life long for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die. It is very good for establishing perspective —

from "Transformation of Silence into Language and Action," Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider, Santa Cruz, CA: Crossing Press, 1984

Poem: For the Anniversary of My Death

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveller
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

(by W.S. Merwin)

Blogging Anniversary

I passed the one year anniversary of Thoughts in Random Patterns about ten days ago. I wrote my first blog post on Saturday, June 19, 2004, and then did what apparently a lot of bloggers do: I didn’t write another post until Monday, January 3, 2005. Then I only did one post in February. It has taken me awhile to build momentum, but I’m in the groove now and definitely intend to keep communicating this way. Going to Paris steadied my blogging practice, both because it was an easy way to communicate to friends and family what I was doing, and because I felt like life in Paris was "worthy" of writing about. It’s so hard to realize that all of our daily lives are "worthy" of writing about. I wanted to share my experience of that great city, and writing helps me synthesize my own thoughts, too.

Part of the long blogging hiatus last summer and fall was that after my initial post I had a couple of frustrating experiences with blogging and got discouraged. Just a couple of days after my first post I crafted a long essay about something and posted it as a draft. When I went back to do some editing, the post was gone. That was frustrating. Typepad has improved significantly in the past 6 months, but I still use a blog posting tool called BlogJet that allows me to create posts without needing to be connected to the internet and has a spell-checker and lots of editing options and saves files to my local hard drive. Formatting still has challenges. I changed from a 2 column layout to a 3 column layout after I got back from France and all the pretty pictures that I had incorporated into text got squished instead of magically resizing to fit into the new column size. I’m sure the blog magicians will figure all of that out, too — and the technology is at a point where I feel fairly confident that my labors won’t be lost.

Two friends whose blogs inspired me to get going aren’t blogging anymore. Jerry actually closed his blog down, and Jenny just doesn’t write much anymore. I keep them on my Blogroll as an optimistic gesture that there may come a time that blogging works better for them than it does now. The ocean of language always awaits us.

And part of the long dry spell was that I didn’t write at all last summer, and didn’t write much last fall, and haven’t been doing much writing work in the last year at all. I still haven’t come to a place in my writing life where I’ll say no to six weeks in Paris to stay home and work. I am committed to working on my writing this summer. I have a two month window of time here with only the occasional interruption (e.g., a trip to Japan at the end of July). I printed out the current draft version of The North Side of Trees and am going to start working my way through what I’ve already written and see what remains to be done. I’ll have my very own writing desk and music and candles and no excuses.

Every day you must say to yourself, “Today I am going to begin.”

(Jean Pierre de Caussade SJ)

Monday Mornings

01/03/05

Every day you must say to yourself, “Today I am going to begin.”

(Jean Pierre de Caussade SJ)

Monday morning, first writing/working day of the new year. I’m at my Spruce Street writing office, having abandoned my chaotic home office with its piles of unopened mail and unpacked suitcases in favor of the serenity of my writing space and at least a glimmer of the chance to get some writing done. I like Monday mornings and new years and the possibility of changing habits and patterns for the better. Hope springs eternal and all that. I think of new beginnings and New Year’s resolutions as a particularly American impulse, but I don’t actually know whether other countries have this broad notion of the clean slate. I somehow think that dates like January 1^st have magical starting powers.

Brad forwarded an email to me from Jeff Nolan, a VC blogger, who apparently cares about numerical dates also.

http://sapventures.typepad.com/main/2005/01/prime_number_da.html

Jeff writes:

“Today is 1-3-05, all prime numbers. What does that mean? Absolutely nothing, but I thought about it in the shower this morning and wanted to share.”

I’m going to give writing a blog another try. I had a brief impulse last summer that disappeared into long days spent reading in Alaska. I didn’t work on my novel or do email or much of anything that I didn’t want to do. Just being, I think that’s called. Or maybe it’s called laziness. I did read an enormous amount, which was restorative and a little wild. It turns out that my answer to the “what if I won the lottery” question is that I would read incessantly. My desires aren’t radical or rebellious; they’re to return to the bookworm days of my childhood when I had to be called multiple times from my bedroom to set the table for dinner. I read a bunch of junk; but I also read deliberately from a pile of first novels and from Indian novels by Indian authors. I was tired of only seeing India through the lens of a media showing it as a good place to outsource jobs. I had some inkling that there was more going on there. After reading maybe ten of these books, I think that much of the literature is concerned primarily with domestic issues: who marries whom? A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth is the biggest and best example of this. A Suitable Boy is the longest book I’ve ever read – not metaphorically, but literally. 1474 pages in a small font and narrow margins. An enormous, sprawling story of four families in early 1950’s post-colonial India, centered around a Hindu woman and a Muslim man. I have a pile of un-read Indian novels, too; which keep my other piles of books company. I’ve made peace with the reality that even if I read all day every day I still won’t have time to read everything that I’d like to. I think one of the attractions to me for the blog is that it will remember for me how much I do read, and connect me with other readers.

Happy New Year and to new beginnings..

First Thought, Best Thought

I’m a blog novice. I’ve read a few, but never written anything until just now. As a writer, the thing I struggle with is Fear in many of its (probably infinite) guises. When I look closely, all of my other struggles in life are actually all about fear: fear of criticism, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of getting in trouble, fear of people saying mean things to me. These fears slow my writing progress as they move into my writing studio and bring along friends (Distraction, Procrastination, Obligation) and set up large encampments where other fears can breed. I’m hoping that the spontaneous nature of blogs will diminish the presence of these fears and reduce the illusory importance of the written word. After all, it’s only writing.

Jerry Colonna’s blog, in particular, has inspired me to be brave about just putting it out there. I don’t know Jerry very well, but feel that I know him better after I read what he writes. One of my biggest writing guides, Natalie Goldberg, says in one of her books that all readers really want is to know the writer better, and while I quibble with that (which is my skeptical nature), when I read Jerry’s blog I admire his courage and his ability to create a sense of intimacy through his writing. In addition, I share his interest with Buddhist thought and action, and that commonality probably helps me feel connected to him. Thanks, Jerry.

And really, thanks to Brad, my funny husband, for guiding me through the blog setup process, which entailed downloading a newer version of Windows and other ugly computer stuff and patiently sitting near to me while I clicked on things that he told me not to click on. He’s a good guy.

And how do you end your first blog post? I guess I’m figuring it out as I go along, which is only what all of us are doing, all the time.