Yearly Archives: 2011

Art and Culture, Humanities, Writing

A Novel. Again.

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Imbolc                                           Waxing Bridgit Moon

Signed up for 8 nights at Blue Cloud Abbey, Feb. 28 to March 8.  My goal is to push Missing at least to the 2/3rds mark for a rough draft, maybe more if I get on a roll.  I’m considering getting up into time for the early morning prayers, 6:45 am, just to get the day started and feel that living connection with the 5th century.  Since Missing has a medieval feel, an abbey carries a lot of that time in its essence.

Missing is the first novel I’ve written that could, conceivably, be a series.  It has a range of characters and its rationale will make it easy to introduce new plotlines and new characters. In the world of fantasy the series has good traction, a way to build an audience.  Who knows?  Maybe this is the one.

I do have two other novels, Superior Wolf and Jennie’s Dead, that are a good way along, too.  If this process works, maybe I’ll head out to Blue Cloud from time to time.  We’ll see.  There are, of course, those other novels:  Even the God’s Must Die, The Last Druid, The God Who Wanted It All and, believe it or not, two whose titles I can’t recall.  Each one could use a revisit, a revision.  So much work to do.  Glad I still feel excited about everything.  Life could get long otherwise.

I’ve been at this, more and less, since 1992, so it should be no surprise that I have some production.   Several short stories along the way, as well.  Still, I’ve not pushed them out there, perhaps its fear, perhaps its indolence, perhaps its reluctance to discover my ability outside my own head.  None are compelling reasons, though all are, at least to me, understandable.  I’m back to the writing, wonder what it would take to get me marketing?

Art and Culture, Bees, GeekWorld, Humor

Disassembled

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Imbolc                                         Waxing Bridgit Moon

Looks like I’ll get a chance to peek into the colonies this weekend.  Got my fingers crossed on survival.  Best guess?  Two dead, one alive.  Very glad to be wrong.

Got my second Gateway part way disassembled and still not sure I can get at the pint sized disc I stupidly inserted into the DVD drive vertically.  It fell out of the holder, as I could have guessed it would.  Have to get this in though to make the computer recognize the cable to USB cord.  That will shift my old HP printer to the new gateway, making it accessible directly from the network rather than through my old, now terminally ill, Dell.  Once I’ve accomplished that I can bring online the new HP multi-purpose printer.  When that’s up, I can scan in my Ovid commentary and send it to Greg so we can both have the same info.  I need both of these printers working, but there are these other steps I have take.

On to Latin.  This chapter, chapter 27, contains this section heading:  Adjectives Having Peculiar Forms in the Superlative.  Peculiar forms, eh?  Maximus peculiar.

More Latin today, some Titian, too, in advance of the walkthrough tomorrow with Patrick Noon, the painting’s curator.  I’m looking forward to this since I haven’t seen the paintings yet.  In the evening there is a lecture on Ukiyo-e prints, another favorite genre for me.  A feast of art education, tomorrow.

Bees, Great Wheel, Great Work

Bee Diary: 2011

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Imbolc                                                           Waxing Bridgit Moon

Out in South Dakota, near Hecla, the ewes have begun to swell, an ancient, very ancientrail.  They will give birth, lambs.  Around that time, lambing time, the fields, too, will freshen with grass, food for the little ones.  Think of the shepherds at Jesus’ birth.  Jacob and his twelve sons.  Shepherds rescued Oedipus, Romulus and Remus.  The shepherd became a metaphor for closeness to nature, a life untrammeled by the woes of civilization, watching over flocks in difficult places, protecting the sheep from wolves and foxes and dogs.  Sheep provide wool for cloth, milk for cheese and meat for the table.

Similar, I suppose, to beekeeping, another very ancientrail.  In both cases the shepherd and the beekeeper are partners in a collaboration between, in one instance, fellow mammals, and in the other, with insects.  In both cases the primary goal is to maintain the flock and the colony in good health, free from disease and predators, and in return receive wool and honey.  It is, to me, a special case though, to enter into an intimate partnership with insects, and not just insects individually, but insects in community, a colony.

This last, this partnership between humans and bees, crosses not only a species barrier, but phyla, both animals yes, but with very different evolutionary paths.  I don’t believe there is much fellow feeling between the bee colony and the beekeeper, at least from the bee’s side, yet the collaboration demands each do their part and I find it entrancing that, when I work in the garden and the bees are there, too, dipping into the flowers, that we are colleagues here at 7 Oaks, the bees of Artemis Hives and the humans of 7 Oaks.

When the weather warms above freezing, I will go out and inspect my three colonies, see how many have survived the winter.  Just a quick check, the only purpose to discover if the colony is alive.  If not, I will order a package for each dead colony.  Also, I will remove the bees and try to diagnose cause of death; since a diseased colony, especially one with American Foulbrood, may require burning of all the frames and scorching of the hive box with a flame thrower.

I hope they’re alive, all of them.  It was a good feeling last spring to find a thriving colony.

Aging, Holidays, Writing

At The Midnight Hour

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Imbolc                                                     Waxing Bridgit Moon

Reading the pages from Missing, making marks here and there with my pencil, amazed at the material that has come from me, from some part of me, a part I may not know well myself.  A strange feeling, as if a new relation were to be discovered in a family, familiar, yes, but whose origins are unclear.

The night has fallen and the temperature has dropped to zero, an odd idea, it seems to me, a place between high and low, a balance point below which we know cold lurks, a point of no temperature, zero.  Odd.

Kate worked tonight, as she did last Wednesday, seeing 19 patients.  That’s her old pace, back before the pains began.  If she did it night after night, it would debilitate her, but now she doesn’t return to work until the 14th.

Valentine’s Day is my birthday, as it has been for 63 years, soon to be 64.  Inching toward the 65th, still one of those birthdays, a turning point, a bridge.  One more year to go.

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Humanities, Retirement, Woolly Mammoths

Words.

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Imbolc                                                            Waxing Bridgit Moon

“Belief in the truth commences with the doubting of all those ‘truths’ we once believed.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

This intellectual bomb-thrower has always been a favorite of mine though I’ve not ready any of his stuff cover to cover.  A recent bio tries to make him into a closet hyper-religious, but if he is he did the damndest job of hiding it.  Sometimes I think an atheist is just an atheist and not a cigar.

I have felt the force flowing with me ever since the retreat.  There’s something about being lifted in the mosh pit of old friends that buoys the soul.  I’ve got out the pages of Missing I’ve written so far and am finishing an edit/revision I began a while ago, then I’m going to pick up the keyboard and set byte to screen.  Kate and I also identified a week in March when I can go back out to Blue Cloud and work intensively on the novel.  I’m still weighing it since it seems indulgent, but, hey, maybe it’s time for this kind of indulgence.

We had our business meeting this morning and I had a post-retirement anxiety tremor, so we ran numbers out past 2012.  Hah.  As if it matters.  After 2012.  Just in case, though, we ran them anyhow and the numbers do begin to make sense when looked at over a period of time.  My tremor quieted.

Had a call this morning from a brother asking for some reassurance.  I gave it, though I’m not sure how my input helped. It’s humbling to be asked for such a thing.

Met with Leslie, the UU student at UTS that I’m mentoring this year.  It’s fun to watch a young person, she’s my age when I was in Sem, go through the back and forth of this strange vocation, ministry.  Had I a chance to do it over again, knowing what I know now, I would have worked at McDonald’s.  No.  Not really.  But, I wouldn’t have gone into the ministry.  Maybe art history.  Maybe politics full time.  Maybe something else, but I wouldn’t have ended up in the ministry.  But, I did.  Go figure.

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Woolly Mammoths, Writing

Back From The Cloud

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Imbolc                                                           Waxing Bridgit Moon

The drive home with Frank is over.  We followed route 12 back east, away from Blue Cloud Abbey and the snow which had claimed a semi and an SUV on the road away from the Abbey, stopping only in Litchfield for a Chinese lunch, a buffet.  We talked as usual about many things religion, politics, women and family history.

Another Woolly retreat has finished, our 24th by some counts.  The 25th will break with our two decade long tradition of late January, early February dates and move us into the last days of September and the first of October, September 29-October 2.  We hope this will encourage more of us to get outside, walk, hike, enjoy the weather and the place.  We’ve opted for our fourth retreat at Blue Cloud Abbey.  It suits our sensibility as a place dedicated to the sacred and brotherhood and is far enough away to count as a trip.  It also has individual rooms and prepared meals.

We have also developed a relationship with the monks, two brotherhoods with different founding purposes, yet a common focus on the life of men together.  We explore different facets of common ground each time, this time the chanting with Father Michael and some time with Father Tom.  We will, I believe, prove resistant to their attempts at evangelism, hamfisted as they are, but not done in mean spirit.

Now I’m on my study computer where I’ve just entered the upcoming activities from calendar, trying to spot the time to get back to work on Missing.  That will emerge this week, as I plan to get at least an hour a day in until I can squeeze out more.  I may still go back out to Blue Cloud for a quiet and solitary place to write.

Woolly Mammoths

Last Day Under the Bell Tower

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Imbolc                                 Waxing Bridgit Moon

Last day.  We leave this morning, having already taken breakfast with the monks.  At the table I learned that someone had noticed I left the dome light on in the truck.  I know what happened.  That damned seat belt.  When we finished unpacking, exhausted from the drive, I parked the truck, slipped out of the seat and closed the door.

But.  In an otherwise excellent vehicle, the seat belt does not retract all the time, sometimes staying elongated and falls to a point  where it blocks the doors.  Most often I would notice, but after the drive I must have been careless.  Now the Tundra will require a jump.

Sigh.

General

Snow on the Prairie

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Imbolc                                     Waxing Bridgit Moon

The snow comes down here like a fluffy waterfall.  Behind its flowing curtain pine trees bend to greet it, a gentle wind bends it slightly toward the southeast.  The limestone of the Monastery stands out brown and tan and rust, a wainscoting for the horizon while rising above it is the gray sky, its up turned pitcher still full with frozen water, still pouring on us here.

The interior here, the monastery rooms and church have become more welcoming, our shelter in the face of this quiet storm.  My interior, too, rejoices at the calm the snowfall brings.  It is a time for listening, for being with those I care about, a time for retreat.

Ah, there’s the bell for 8:45.  I have to go.  The herd gathers again.

Woolly Mammoths, Writing

Transformation

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Imbolc                                    Waxing Bridgit Moon

On occasion the Woolly retreats have transformed me, given me energy for a project I had not imagined or that I had set aside.  When I talked about Missing tonight (my novel underway since sometime last year), I got feedback, positive feedback about my idea.

As it played in my head, a conviction grew, as it had in other years, before the Pilgrimage work, for example, that I had to get back to the writing, to Missing, to finish it and send it out.  Perhaps, too, I will  unbox those others, long dormant, spruce them up and send them out into the world again.

Here I was seen as myself, but also as writer, as fiction creator and that reflection back has warmed the heart and the hearth, both the precincts of Bridgit.  So the Goddess has come here, in this her holy week, to inflame and inspire me.  I will return to a new resolve.  Finish Missing and market the others.

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Myth and Story, Poetry, Woolly Mammoths

Old Stories, Old Poems, Old Men

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Imbolc                                             Waxing Bridgit Moon

Jacob and Esau and Rebekah and Isaac came to life tonight as we felt our way into this peculiar, even troubling story of deception, betrayal, theophany and a redemptive moment followed by a warm hearted, unexpected ending.  These stories still resonate, still have the power to grab the attention, hold the heart and propose new perspectives.  These are stories by and for men, archetypal moments held close to the heart for thousands of years.

After the reading of these stories and a conversation that followed many paths, a few left for bed:  Mark, Scott and Tom while Paul, Stefan, Charlie H., Jimmy, Warren and I sat up reading poems or, in Paul and Jimmy’s case, reciting poems from memory.  Poetry comes alive when one poem sparks another and books come out, dogeared and ragged from much use.  Rilke, Frost, Oliver, Pauly, Sarton, Rumi all visited us, speaking across the centuries or the decades, speaking directly into the heart.

A magic, spontaneous moment, the stuff of which retreat memories are made.