Daily Archives: March 4, 2011

Writing

The Writer’s Table

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Imbolc                         New (Bloodroot) Moon

My table at lunch had more monks.  Word had got around that I was working on a novel.

Brother Benet listed other writers who came from time to time to write, “John Hassler used to come here frequently, especially for his first 6 novels.”

Brother Sebastian, stone and wood sculptor and the Abbey’s tailor, said, “Yes, he’d have readings. ”

Great, I thought.

“Bill Holm came here, too,”  Brother Benet said.  “And Kathleen Norris.  She’s back in Honlulu, now.”

Father Michael added another, a guy who’s name they couldn’t remember, but “He’s an junior high English teacher and also works in a funeral home.”

The lively and the dead.  Sounds like a good title.

“Oh, yes,” Brother Benet said, “He got an MFA.  He wrote a book of short stories, all set in the funeral home.”

We all got a chuckle out of that.  Must be a quiet place to write, that sort of thing.

I admit I felt intimidated.  Bill Holm.  John Hassler.  Kathleen Norris.  Big names in serious literature and here I am writing a fantasy novel.

Father Michael, it turns out, reads fantasy.

I’m 25,000 words further along than when I got here and I think they’re pretty good pages.  Not great, but pretty good.  Having a long quiet time in isolation from the world is a great thing.  Wouldn’t want to stay from Kate and the dogs and the house like this too often, but it seems to be effective.  I might do it again.  Maybe when I’m finished and need to start revising.  Maybe then.

Oh, yeah.  Then there’s the fact that both Hassler and Holm are dead.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Humanities, Weather +Climate

Hail, La Nina

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Imbolc                                New (Bloodroot) Moon

A while back I asked John Harstad, then the naturalist at Cedar Creek Nature Center, a wonderful place run by the University of Minnesota and only about 15 miles from home, about first signs of spring.  His answer coincided with a local master gardener, “Bloodroot blooms.”  Since that should happen within the waxing and waning of this moon,  I’m choosing Bloodroot Moon for its name.

The snow began to come down this morning and has some legs.  The sky has turned sheet metal gray and the wind blows in from the northeast.  If I recall correctly, such wind direction can foretell deep snow.  Not predicted though.

This is the half-way point in my stay here at Blue Cloud.  I’m feeling it, too.  I’ve been working almost twice as long each day as I usually do when I write at home.  Though I love it, I’m getting tired.  Might be another 10 am nap coming on, too.

Conspirata, a novel about Cicero’s life, has been my casual reading.  I’ve finished 60% of it; I know this because the Kindle gives you a percent read number for each page since you don’t have the sense of the book’s length but its heft.

The other reading I’ve been doing is Livia Kohn’s introductory text on Taoism.  As with most things that interest me, I find as I get deeper into it that my opinion begins to change, split along certain lines where my own sensibilities face challenges.  In the instance of Taoism I find myself drawn more and more into the mystical, physical aspects:  the Dao, the exercises, meditation practices and pushed further away from the political implications, or wuwei (inaction) applied to political affairs.

This doesn’t bother me as I’ve learned, quite a while ago, that I don’t have to swallow the whole message to be enlightened by a school of thought.  Part of the creation of dogma comes as an institutional base emerges around any school of thought.  The dogma supports the creation of certain organizational structures, then the structures become a conservative force clinging to the original dogma, thoughts most often far removed from what Max Weber called the original “charisma.”

Thus, by the time most of us enter into a body of religious or philosophical thought the original genius behind it is hidden by layers of defensive structure and dogma hardened over time, often hardened against the danger of the original charism.

And so forth. Time to pick up the tablet and get to work.  Bye for snowy now.