Category Archives: Writing

Art and Culture, Writing

Racing

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Beltane                                                                        Early Growth Moon

A holiday weekend, chilly and gray, some rain.  It has reminded me, all day today, of another Indy race day, sometime around 1957 or 1958 when it was rainy and cold on Monroe Street in Alexandria, Indiana.  Nobody else wanted to listen to the race, so I went outside, crawled in our 1957 Ford, turned the radio on and followed the race.  Nothing in my memory about who won, what the race was like, but I recall feeling perfect in the car, in the rain, alone with the commentary.

(like this except it had white detailing)

I’m beginning to think I may push myself too hard.  Ha, you say.  Finally.  Well, it hasn’t really occurred to me, but when I took that day last week and read poetry, it gave me a feeling of luxury, of relaxation.  When I mentioned this thought to Kate, she said, “Uh-huh.”  We both push ourselves, Kate and me, in different arenas of our life.  Kate wants to get practical tasks done:  laundry, weeding, cooking, paying the bills.  I want to get a book written, Ovid translated, art ingested, faith reimagined.

Here’s the interesting twist on this for me.  I want to get things done, too.  That is, words per day, verses per day, a painting or sculpture analyzed, a specific concept mastered–like the work I did on the numinous over last three weeks.  Or, writing this blog.  In this way, I have a trail of bread crumbs, I guess, a path that can show I’ve been up to something.

(Yue_Minjun-Execution)   [It occurred to me as I wrote this entry that execution has two starkly different meanings but that they might be related.]

Oddly, this does not include reading, except for very focused reading in service of a particular project.  Oh, I read plenty, at night, after the work day is done, but I don’t have time in my schedule for serious reading like the works on Ovid I’ve collected, or poetry, or that biography on Edward Hopper.  Strange, really, since I consider myself a reading partisan, working the trenches to keep the Philistines well away.

Somehow, I imagine, all this will result in a changed schedule for me, what it will look like I don’t know, although I’m going to keep the morning for writing.  That’s my good time.

Notice, however, as I just did, that this does not include the sabbath, a day of rest or a week of rest or a month of rest.  Our trip around South America had as one of its chief merits an enforced laziness, especially during our days at sea.  Watching the ocean go by.  I never sit around and watch the ocean go by.

Garden, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

The Wall

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Beltane                                                                          Early Growth Moon

I’ve hit some kind of wall.  All this straight at it time, working on Missing and translating Ovid, reading about the numinous and researching Edward Hopper, modernism and romanticism, all fun, all core to what I’m about in this phase of my life, but the weather and the constant intellectual push has me wanting some relief.  The garden often provides that balance for me, but the rain has kept us out of there and it looks like it might for the next couple of days, too.

Those tomatoes and peppers are in some UPS warehouse, supposed to be here today.  Kate bought annuals, laid in some root stimulator to support the transplants after they move from pot to ground.  So we have planting to do.  She also found a possible source of garden help for us while shopping at the Green Barn.  That would be nice.  We could do much more if we had an extra hand for the heavy and tedious stuff.

These walls come.  Then they go.  Right now I’m feeling over-stimulated, I think, too much going in and not enough going out.  Rewriting is no help in that it involves a lot of analyzing, decision making, recrafting.  Doesn’t have the same juice as writing from scratch.

Cooking, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Beets, Romans and High Fantasy

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Beltane                                                                       Early Growth Moon

Kate has been trying to reconstruct an amazing beet pureed soup we had at Fika in the American Swedish Institute.  The chef gave us some of his or her ingredients, all of them?  I’m not sure.  But Kate’s done a good job of closing in on it.  It’s delightful, tangy and creamy with a great feel in the mouth.

I’ve spent the Sunday beginning to check my Latin translations against the commentaries and entering notes into the file I’m keeping for the commentary Greg and I may write.  This is fun work, finding better words, puzzling over the thoughts of Ovid scholars.  Once I’ve finished the recheck, I’m going to start reading the Ovid scholarship I’ve collected.

In the afternoon I’ve proceeded with the revision, rewrite of Missing.  I’m well into the first third, adding thicker description, plumping up character development, making the narrative a more coherent whole.  This is fun, too.

Even so, my mind can only take so much fun before the brain that supports its work begins to wear out the rest of my body. That’s where I am now.  Tired. Enough for the day.

 

Art and Culture, Cooking, Great Work, Latin, Third Phase, Writing

Gotta Get Out More

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Beltane                                                                              Early Growth Moon

My docent class is on a 5 day jaunt to Chicago.  Were it not for Kona’s vet visits, I’d be there, too.  This is a full week now since I sent in my resignation to the MIA.  Nada.  Silence.  Nothing.  12 years.  Almost as weird as the weather.  It’s like the Institute has organizational autism.

It’s been a full day with work outside and inside, a quiet evening reading.

Though I can see that the chained mornings and the Latin in the mid-afternoons is very productive, I’m also seeing a desire in myself to get out more.  Kate had to sort of drop kick me into it, but now that she has I realize the path I’ve chosen will increasingly isolate me and us, if we’re not very intentional about getting out.

To that end I signed up us for a fund raiser for CSA Roots, apparently the former Community Design Center with which I did a lot of work in the late 70’s and early 80’s.  This fund-raiser features a hand-crafted, all locally sourced meal at the Heartland Restaurant across from the former site of the St. Paul Farmer’s Market.  Appropriately enough the dinner is on June 21st, the Summer Solstice.

We’re also planning a trip into the American Swedish Institute this week to see the Sami exhibition and eat at the Institutes new restaurant.  Hmmm.  Do most of our activities involve food?  Which by the way is ok since I’ve lost at least 14 pounds on this lower carb diet in addition to increasing the nutrient load of my food consumption and, the point of it, lowering my blood sugar well below levels of concern.

 

 

Garden, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

A Good Day, Even If It Is 95

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Beltane                                                                         Early Growth Moon

Got outside around mid-day and planted chard, kale and carrots.  Need to get a second round of beets in the ground, too.  We’re well under way now, with beets emerging, leeks going well, garlic beginning to curl skyward though a bit behind, onions still a bit pale at the top, but progressing.  No bees today due to the cloudy morning, the best time to check on them, but not when its cloudy and rainy.  So tomorrow.

Using the time, the mornings for Missing, writing and revising in turn, trying to remember all the pieces.  A little difficult.  Like juggling chainsaws, bowling pins, feathers and knives.

Not unlike the afternoon’s translating.   Holding those words and ideas in the air, not committing, or at least not over-committing, to a particular meaning until all the pieces have been considered.  Mentally tired.

Art and Culture, Humanities, Latin, Literature, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Like Attending My Own Funeral

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Beltane                                                                                 Early Growth Moon

Sort of like attending my own funeral.   All day today notes have come in from docent classmates responding to my resignation from the program which I sent out in a private newsletter we have just for our class.  Mini-eulogies.  It’s interesting because it is often this kind of stuff that we don’t feel liberated to say until a relationship has been severed, either by death or by saying a permanent good-bye.  Would probably be good if we could learn to say these things more often.  Thanks to all of you who’ve written.

The revision process has legs now, new material being written, older material rewritten.  I’m back in the fictive dream of Missing, inhabiting the two worlds and living with their characters, their flora and fauna.  It’s a homecoming of sorts.  Though I’ve been into for a month or so in terms of writing, I’ve been at it for longer with reading material from beta readers, re-reading the text myself and plotting a strategy for this third revision.

Put another 5 verses of Book I into English today, making better and more notes about items for the commentary.  I really want this commentary to synch with Perseus, but I also want it to live on smartphones and tablet computers.  I want it to be the commentary for this media age.

Greg and I talked last Friday about how this kind of reading necessarily becomes close reading, a sort of reading often promoted, but less often executed.   You might call it slow reading.

Speed reading has its place, I guess, and I certainly tried to put it to use, having taken the Evelyn Woods program when I started college in 1965.  This program preaches adapting your speed to the kind of reading you’re doing.  So, say Time magazine or Sports Illustrated (of equal depth most of the time) might take your quickest scan, finger moving down the center of the page with some speed.  Philosophy on the other hand would go much more slowly, say 150 words a minute.  The idea preached by speed readers is that the quicker you go the more your mind concentrates on reading alone, not wandering away.  Maybe.

What I do know is that if you want to learn, slowing down to the pace translation forces, often word by word, looking up the word, its grammatical forms, figuring out how they fit together before the sense of the sentence begins to emerge, then you read slowly.  Letting the mind wander when it will, tracking words down through paths already in the mind, making connections, asking questions, probing the text.  This is how you make a work your own.

So, I’m for slow food, slow travel, slow reading, slow thinking.

 

Art and Culture, Family, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Laboravi

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Beltane                                                                     Early Growth Moon

Out to Famous Dave’s at 11:20 this morning, just ahead of the Mother’s Day rush.  We had a nice meal, discussing family, as the restaurant slowly filled up, the number of very large patrons noticeable unfortunately.

I’ve been back at work on Missing, now writing new material, most focused on John’s origins, where he came from and what if any implications that might have for his time on Tailte.  This will lead into the work of experimenting with point of view, which I’ve given a lot of thought but have not made any decisions about as yet.

Greg, Latin tutor, began to push me a bit this last time, saying how many verses he wanted me to tackle before our next time.  Up til now I’ve been learning at a pace comfortable for me, maybe a bit slow for him, but ok since I was the student.  Now, I’m closer to a colleague and we need to have adequate material before us each time we meet.  We’ve met in person once in the last three and a half years, at Kate’s retirement party at the MIA two Januaries ago.  Odd.

I sat down and pounded out five verses in a little more than an hour.  This includes making commentary notes in Microsoft Notes, words to highlight, helps, ways in which Perseus confuses the matter, words Perseus doesn’t have.

Here’s a strange, and a bit disturbing, thing.  I turned in my resignation from the MIA last Tuesday.  I’ve heard nothing from them.  12 years.  Nothing.  Weird.  And confirming of my decision.

 

Art and Culture, Cinema and Television, Writing

The Veiled Narrative

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Beltane                                                                       Early Growth Moon

Shane Carruth, Upstream Color (see below), was also the cinematographer.  Forgot that last night.

In answering questions, in particular about the density of his works, he made two points, both interesting.  First, he said he makes a narrative as it needs to be to tell his story.  That means it may take  more than one pass to take in all  the narrative has to offer.  Just like reading a book or seeing a painting.  Made sense to me.

(Barrias, French, 1893)

Second, all narratives, he believes, are veiled, which he emphasized in answers to more than one question.  In this he means the viewer or reader never knows the whole story and often knows a very limited portion of it.  I took from his overall answers that this conviction comes from life, where the future veils the narrative in every instance and, too, I suppose, since we never know the interiority of the other, veiled in that sense as well.

While I agree intellectually with this latter point, as an intention in a work of art, I’m suspicious.  It can too easily serve as an excuse for careless ambiguity and might enforce an aterminus approach to story telling; which, though it is true as Carruth said last night, that all film narratives must end (and by implication in that way deviate from the truly veiled nature of the narrative future) that departure from reality should not encourage pointless realism.

There may be some of that in this film.  Until I’ve had longer to consider it, and until I’ve seen it at least a second time, I’ll reserve my opinion on that.

 

Art and Culture, Writing

Writing.

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Beltane                                                                            Planting Moon

Writing and revising all morning.  A 1,000 new words.  More thoughts on how the story can unfold with fuller descriptive details, deeper character development and a unified narrative line.

More Ovid this afternoon.

In the wake of my resignation from the MIA I feel liberated, as I knew I would.  The sadness has begun to lift.  I will stay connected to my class, that will suffice in terms of relationships.  Just what it will take to keep me connected to the world of art?  Still unclear, but it’s something I can’t let slide either.

In fact, I’ll also be working today some more on Nighthawks and my interpretive matrix.  The world has so many opportunities, no matter your gifts or motivations.  I’m grateful, as my buddy Bill Schimdt says, to be Still Here to enjoy them.

Friends, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses, Weather +Climate, Writing

Cartography and Snow

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Spring                                                                                       Planting Moon

Spent the morning redrawing a map of the Winter Realm and Summer Realm on Tailte.  Tomorrow I’ll work on detailed maps of both separately, the islands and the Dark Range.  This was a constant among the beta readers and I agreed.  Doing them now will help the rewrite.

This afternoon I hit a wall on the next four verses of Book I, the Metamorphoses.  My mind seized up and would go no further.  So, I went upstairs and took videos of the dogs play in the already 5-6 inches of new snow.  And, it’s still snowing.  Supposed to get heavier over night.

Worked out, aerobic only because my back still complains from my lifting the hive box with honey on Tuesday.  I could have done without this, but I caused it so what can you do?

Sheepshead canceled.  With the snow coming down heavy now and predicted to be heavier still we decided to put it off.  It was a wise decision, but I will miss the conversation and camaraderie.   Wanted to hear what the Jesuits thought about the new pope.