Category Archives: Literature

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Literature

A Source of Mutual Creativity and Emotional Support

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15  steep rise 30.31  NNW2  windchill 14  Winter

Waxing Gibbous Wolf Moon

Kate has responded well to the injections.  She is pain free and giddy about it right now.  She bought me supper at Canyon Grille tonight.  A nice place and good to be out with her.   We reaffirmed our love for each other and the joy we have in our relationship, a source of mutual creativity and emotional support.   This pain has been constant since early November so it is difficult to overstate the relief she feels.

That was the high point of the day.

Finished The Given Day by Dennis Lehane yesterday and began White Tiger, a book recommended by Woollies Charlie Haislet and Paul Strickland.  A good read for those of you in Southeast Asia.  An Indian entrepreneur communicates his life story to the premier of China via e-mail.

Much to do tomorrow, then preaching on Sunday.  We’ll see how Homecomer goes over.

Literature

Story of Edgar Sawtelle

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6  bar rises 29.89  3mph W  windchill 6  Winter

Waning Crescent of the Moon of Long Nights

Last night before bed I finished reading the Story of Edgar Sawtelle.  This is a big book and well-written.  The arc of the story brings Greek tragedy to mind.   A few people wend their way through a period of some 16 years or so, making choices and living out their consequences.  This book features notable passages of an American magic realism with ghosts playing significant roles.  There is, too, a village crone, Ida Paine, who dispenses sour wisdom as she runs a small grocery store.

Edgar, a mute boy, and the title character has a life of wonder and pain.  He interacts with a cast of well-drawn and closely observed dogs, his mother and father, an Uncle, a veternarian and his sheriff son.  The isolation of their circumstance in northern Wisconsin near Lake Superior and Chequamegon National Forest provides an at turns bleak and rich natural world for this story.

If you like a good story, well-told, this is a book for you, but beware.  It will break your heart.

Garden, Literature

Quack Will Inherit the Earth

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42  bar steady 30.28  0mph WNW  windchill 42  Autumn

Waxing Gibbous Blood Moon

That damned quack.  It has begun to overtake our new plantings.  So, purity to the wind.  If it warms up to 60 degrees, we’ll hit it with Roundup.  Then again.  And, probably, given the tenacious qualities of quack grass, again quackgrass_rhizome2300.jpgnext spring.

Over the years I have become a grudging fan of these hardy herbaceous plants, the weeds.  Without sophisticated gardening intervention they thrive; in fact, they often thrive in spite of it.   They are true survivors and give succor to anyone worried about humankind’s ultimate effect on the planet.

Herbicide us.  Nuke us.  Poison Gas.  Plague.  Quack grass and creeping charlie will soldier on.  I have not yet read The World Without Us but if it’s honest, it will tell the tale of a world dominated by weeds.  Only they will not be weeds anymore, since a weed is a plant out of place.  No, The World Without Us will be quack world, dandelion heaven, creeping charlie nirvana.  Long may they reign.

Until then, however, I want to get the damned stuff out of my young orchard.

Right now I have no Sierra Club responsibilities, except my last rounds of stranger phone calls ever.  I have no tours for which I have to prepare.  My sermons have left the computer and entered the world.  So for the next week or so I can devote myself to finishing up gardening chores, cleaning up my spaces infected with piles and perhaps catching up on a bit of reading.

Speaking of that, I have a recommendation for those of you who like literature and mysteries:  The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, by Swedish author Steig Larson.  A smart mystery and an intriguing look into contemporary Swedish life.

Literature, Weather +Climate

Reading

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82  br falls 29.82 2mph NNW dew-point 63  sunrise 6:22  sunset 8:02  Lughnasa

Waning Gibbous Corn Moon

Started “The Street” last night. It is by Ann Petry.  I found it while hunting for good books on the novel.  A literature professor recommended it as a gritty, realist account of life in Harlem circa 1947, or post-WW II, a neglected work of genius.  After the first chapter, I can see she was right.  It is literally gritty, opening with a young woman looking for an apartment on St. Nicholas Avenue in a vicious wind that throws dust and sand from the gutters into her eyes.  She wants the apartment to save her brother, Bub, who is 8, from her father’s girlfriend who gives Bub gin.

Further into “Maus” and it continues to amaze me, not only with the detailed account of the author’s father and mother and their extended family during the years preceding WW II and the war years, but with the uncomfortable honesty with which he portrays his father and his second wife, Mala.  This contemporary honesty seems to underwrite the veracity of the European story.

Late afternoon and the sky has become cloudy.  The transpiration cycle bundles moisture from the plants and the soil, the lakes and rivers and pumps up, up, up until it meets the air transports dew point.  It then goes in to clouds and, if conditions are just right, thunderheads form and the water returns, perhaps to the same place, perhaps somewhere else.

Art and Culture, Literature, Woolly Mammoths

Reading the OED

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90  bar steady 29.83  0mph NNW dew-point 59  sunrise 6:18  sunset 8:14  Lughnasa

Full Corn Moon  moon rise 2053  moonset  0816

The salmon is in the house.  So is the shrimp.  And ice.  Plus beer, NA, diet pop and bottled water (for entertaining purposes only).  We have the leaves in the dining room table, the first time since we bought the table a year ago.  It’s long.  Really long.  Kate has the triangle of refrigerator, sink, stove cordoned off and wants no helpers in there.  I don’t think anybody will fight her for the privilege.

Who said late August had no heat.  Not this guy.  With 90 and dewpoint at 59 outside dining stretches the Minnesota tolerance limits.  Good thing we have air conditioning and tables inside, too.

Got an Amazon order.  A couple of things that look fun.  Reading the OED, a guy who read the entire OED in one year.   Also, the Landmark Herodotus, an annotated version of the Histories.  There’s something about history and  historiography that fascinates me.

My first two tours of the new academic year have come in over the transom.  4th graders from Lakeville who want to see things Made In America and an MIA patron who wants a tour with an emphasis on Korea.  Be good to strap back into the harness and pull a wagon or two.

I’m off to sweep the patio and arrange furniture.

Faith and Spirituality, Literature, Writing

Dark Energy

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67  bar rises 30.17  0mph NNE dew-point 58  sunrises 6:15  sunset 8:19

Whole Corn Moon

“We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter, we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, conservers at night.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of the beauties of Emerson is his immersion in the rhythms of the natural world.   Any farmer, any gardener, even any denizen of the farmer’s markets has a visceral sense of the way human activity changes with the seasons, at least in temperate latitudes.  Once the growing season begins, and for a bit before it does, our attention begins to move outside.  At first we watch temperatures, frost dates and the warming of the soil.  Then, we begin to watch for plant emergence, the ephemerals.  Once spring is in full gear with last frost date past, the growing season begins in earnest.  This means we are outside, working.  In this work we express, as Emerson subtly suggests,  our confidence as changers of the world.  We plant corn here and corn grows.  We plant tulips there and color blossoms.

Then, when the all the plants save the ancient firs and pines have begun to die back and the vegetables have given their harvest, we turn back toward the inside, reading and crafts and puttering in the workshop perhaps, or focusing on our work for pay.  As the nights grow longer, as they do even now, we light our fires and gather in our modern caves, lights on against the dark.

Still, I part company with Emerson a bit at the end of this quote.  The night, as it grows longer and deeper, heading toward the winter solstice, the heart of mid-winter, encourages creativity.  The metaphor of the day goes from verdant field to fecund womb.  As we slow, pull in our senses and live more in our interior, seeds planted long ago begin to sprout.  The novel we muttered about while weeding the tomatoes begins to demand a place in our lives.  The child we wondered about in the spring begins to insist, pushing us toward family.  The painting influenced by the play of light on brown and withering plants takes on shape and color.

Hecate. Persephone. Jesus in the tomb.  Osiris scattered among the reeds.  The rebel angel in Pandemonium.  The shadow within our own psyche.  All these are night time, dark energy forces.  Their energy often sublimates when the external world draws us; but when winter or melancholy strikes,  they can draft upward, burst out into full awareness and with their explosive power drive us either toward self-destruction or acts of creation.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Literature

Colma, California City of the Dead

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69  bar falls 29.80 1mh SSE dew-point 53  sunrise 6:11 sunset 8:25  Lughnasa

Waxing Gibbous Corn Moon    moonrise 1816  moonset  0130

Finished Alive in Necropolis. A fascinating book, part ghost story, part coming of age story, part police procedural set in Colma, California.  Colma, California is not just anywhere; it is where San Francisco chose to bury its dead.  There are way more dead people in Colma’s 17 cemeteries, 1.5 million, than citizens, 1, 280.   This one I read almost straight through.  It kept what John Gardner calls the fictive dream alive.

Feels good to have read the last two nights rather than watch TV.  I might let it become a habit.  I love fiction, write fiction.  That’s not to say I don’t pick up non-fiction, in fact, I do.  Quite a bit.  Some folks I know rarely read fiction.  I rarely read non-fiction books through in the same way I do novels.  I tend to treat them as resources, reading them more in the manner of college reading.  I seek the big ideas, the general arc of the argument.  Sometimes, I’ll finish them, but rarely.

Kate is home, the night is pleasant.  The kids are healthy, the grandkids, too.  And the dogs.  The gardens productive and the flowers are beautiful.  A good now.

Garden, Literature, Writing

Du Fu, Li Bai and Wang Wei

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79  bar steep drop 29.95  0mph S dew-point 54  sunrise 6:06 sunset 8:30  Lughnasa

First Quarter of the Corn Moon   moonrise 1326 moonset 2226

Each day of the Olympics I will post a poem from a famous Chinese poet.  Du Fu, Li Bai and Wang Wei are the three most admired T’ang dynasty poets.  It is so easy to forget that this last century is only a tiny portion in the sweep of Chinese civilization.  In all the sturm und drang about the rise of China the fact that China has risen and fallen many times over the last 5,000 plus years often remains buried.  That’s right, 5,000 years of a continuous culture, sometimes dominant, sometimes ruled by foreigners, many of whom embraced Chinese civilization.

It is arrogant of us to judge China by our standards, standards that have stood nowhere near the test of time.  In China the collective always comes before the individual, at least that has  been true historically.  This is not to say that there have not been individualists in Chinese history.  Taoism tends to produce them, as does the famous literati system of rule by intellectuals.  Many painters and poets also walked their own distinctive paths.

Well, anyhow, China doesn’t need my defense.  I just want to add a bit from the depth of Chinese culture as we go through Olympics which often seem more about air pollution and human rights than sport.

Yes, I know.  This seems like a conservative position, but in reality it is a position informed more by anthropology and history, a position not too different from walk a mile in the other person’s moccasin.

I spent an hour or so this morning admiring the work of the Irishmen who dug ditches.  Put the shovel in the earth, push it down, lift it up, heave.  Repeat.  Not back breaking, but a workout.  I had a good nap.  The fire pit has begun to appear.  It will be deep enough for a fire when the Woollies come, though whether the area around it will be is another matter.

Art and Culture, Friends, Literature, Memories, Politics

More Radical Than Thou

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80  bar falls 29.66  0mph E  dew-point 76!  sunrise 5:55  sunset 8:43  Summer

Waning Crescent of the Thunder Moon

Jerry Stearns sent word that he worked with rebels in Central America and served a stint as a bodyguard for Rigoberta Minchu, the Mayan activist.  This reminded me, though I don’t think it was his intent, of the old game, More Radical Than Thou.

This was a game of gotcha and it drove the Everything Matters part of the personal is political.  If I, say, was a draft resister and an anti-war marcher, you might say that you planned to go to Canada.  If I planned to go Canada, you might say you were going underground.  If I said I was going underground, you might say, me too, but I’m going to bomb federal buildings, too.  This macho ratcheting up of the stakes in a round of how far can you travel away from middle-class morality and conventional politics lasted for a long, long time.

It was an aspect of movement politics in which I always felt one step behind, never quite outré enough.  I was back then, as now, stuck with this dipolarity, radical and conservative, both alive and well, never reconciled, perhaps irreconcilable. Come to think of it this same dipolarity might have been the tense spring that kept me going back to the bar for one more round.

Nowadays I cherish this peculiarity.  I can engage radical environmental politics, continue in my radical analysis of American society while loving the MIA and my docent role there.  I can continue opposition to conservative politics while loving the classics, poetry and faith traditions.  These two poles now serve as a creative edge for me, a sort of tectonic junction where volcanoes are born and subduction feeds the volcano.  Back then I felt the need to exist on only one end of the pole, rather than embracing the tension that came from them.

More Radical Than Thou pushed me to one end of the pole.  I ended up denying, repressing the conservative part of me that wandered art museums, read Ovid and Homer and yearned for a connection with God.  Seminary and a stint as a Presbyterian minister only reversed the pressure.  While I could affirm my love of biblical study and prayer, I felt constant pressure to be more radical, to engage in more and more radical political activity.   This change from one end of the see-saw to the other was no resolution either.

Only now, in these days when the introvert has settled into a quiet writing existence have I begun to live from both ends of the dialectic.  I can work as a docent amongst the fascinating details of art history while I the Sierra Club work blossoms.  I can write novels while I search nature and the American literary tradition for a pagan faith relevant to today.  Though the Jungian analysis moved far along this ancient trail, only unconditional love can heal these splits and I have found such love in Kate. We are soulmates.

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Literature, Politics, Writing

Steamed Dumplings Stuffed With Yak

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78  bar steady  30.03  0mph ENE dew-point 56  Summer, warm and sunny

Waning Gibbous Thunder Moon

A trifecta.  In to Minnehaha.  Back to Andover.  In to Kenwood.  Back to Andover.  In to Sierra Club and the MIA.  Back to Andover.  Geez.  As I said, I gotta check with my scheduler.

Katarina is an intern from east Germany, Jena.  We folded letters and surveys to candidates for Minnesota House races.  She’s a bright young lady whose lucky boyfriend lives here.  They both study political science and enjoy comparing US and German culture/society.  She gave the example of her parents:  “They have never worried.  They have no debt.  They live modestly.”  She said her mother was not allowed to finish high school in the old East German regime because her husband was a mathematics professor.  If you had an intellengentsia in the home, you also had to have a proletarian.  Odd logic, even for Marxists.

After doing the mailing, I called about half a list of candidates who received the survey by e-mail last Friday.  This was just a reminder call.  Margaret Levin cajoled me into making phone calls and I’m glad she did.  It wasn’t so bad.  Of course, these were all friendly folk, too.

Across the street from the Sierra Club is the Himalaya, a Nepalese restaurant.  It was noon, so I stopped in for steamed dumplings stuffed with yak and a tasty sauce.  The next course was a soup with potatoes, black-eyed peas and bamboo shoots.  Nan accompanied this dish.  Hmmm.  I enjoy finding these small ethnic places and sampling cuisine from countries I have not visited.  Food is one of the fastest ways into a culture, even faster, because more immediate, than language.

I discussed purchasing a Nepalese thangka with the owner.  When I said I would like a Yamatanka, he said, “Oh, you like Yama?” He stuck his tongue out and down, Yama’s typical presentation. “Yes,” I said.  “Scary.”  I’ll speak with him about it again when I go in to the Sierra Club political committee meeting next Wednesday.

Before I went to the Sierra Club, I stopped at the Northern Clay Center and picked up a small plate.  It is my intention, over the next few years, to replace our Portmerion with unmatched pieces from many potters.  This is the fifth or sixth acquistion so far.

Each quarter I define a retreat.  It can be brief, three days or so, and it can be long, like the stay in Hawai’i.  I find I need to punctuate my normal routine with these caesuras or I get stale.  This habit began when I was in the ministry and I’ve found it a good carry over, so I’ve continued it.  Here’s my retreat for the fall quarter:

7/22/08   No traveling for this retreat.  I will take two weeks and stop writing, stop using the internet (except for the blog and e-mail) and study books on novel craft.  In this retreat I will create a reading program and a writing program that will guide my work for the next ten years.