From October 15, 2006
Insights from a State of Mind

   In the coincidental reading of several different sources, I ran into some unusual, and rather complex, accounts about the human  experience.  I don’t pretend to have any answers, but I found them very thought-provoking.

>  [from “Shakespeare Wars” by Rosenbaum, ch. 1, “Sept. 19, 1970: Arrive at Winchester, the hill where [John] Keats stood, inspiration for ode “To Summer.”]  “I arrive and found the landscape had not been altered: that one could still see exactly what Keats saw.  I could understand for the first time the line ‘white barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, /And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue.  I saw those stubble fields’.  I felt the ‘soft-dying’ end-of-summer melancholy Keats evoked with its intimations of immortality, of the autumnal harvest and the more final harvest of death to come.’”

>  [Re: Sonnet 44 or 45, on themes of absence and presence] “I read standing at the blackboard in the seminar room.  I had written out one of the sonnets on the blackboard and was leading the class through its flickering ambiguities.  I think it could have been Sonnet 44 or 45, both of which play upon the themes of absence and presence: how two unified as one in love can both be, and not be, apart (can both “two be” and not “to be”).  In Sonnet 45 the speaker tells an absent one how his thought and desire are ‘present-absent.’ How he’s there, one with the distant lover and be absent from himself, but to be absent from himself is to be two selves, one there and one not there, although the one not there is there with the absent lover, so really it’s one self at two different places… He’s not split so much as flickering in and out of being one and two selves.  Not just back and forth from being at one with- to being - the loved one, but ‘with swift motion, sliding,’ shifting back to being himself.  He’s not just being in two places at once, he’s two beings in alternation.  Two be and not two be. … this shifting, this flickering - back-and-forth effect, this dual prospect…involves embracing something more than a shift in meaning… but a shift in … understanding.  In effect, you are not merely reading alternative meanings into the poem [art, experience], the poem [art, experience] is reading alternative meanings, alternative identities, into you.” … “I recall banging the chalk in my hand on the blackboard, back and forth from ‘present’ to ‘absent’ in the phrase ‘These present absent wit swift motion slide’, and suddenly experiencing something strange.  In some peculiar but pronounced and dramatic way, my self, my identity seemed to be shifting, sliding back and forth from presence to absence, from being there in that classroom to being somewhere absent, looking back on my presence, and then with swift motion sliding back to where I was standing again. I was no longer reading alternative meanings into the Sonnet.  I felt like the Sonnet was shifting me back and forth between alternative selves, almost physically.  I was standing inside and outside myself.”

>  [from “A Summer All Her Own,” Rosanne Keller]
[p. 173]  “It’s the process that is important…Lose yourself in the process.  If you are constantly striving for perfection, it will always escape you… If the constant desire for perfection obstructed the artist’s process, … then striving for flawlessness in life would be counter-productive as well.”
[p. 178]  “Anna felt as though she were both in and out of her body.”
[p. 279]  “Happiness does not depend on interior circumstances.  It is a state of mind.  There is also true of loneliness.  It too is a state of mind.”
[

From September 30, 2006

Today’s Chuckle

   This anecdote comes via a friend who used to work with the summer theater in Westport, CN, every year when she was younger.  At the time Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman owned a house there.  Paul wanted to support the theater, so he opened a restaurant by the theater, proceeds to go to the theater.

   So one day, Paul Newman and his pal, Robert Redford, are in the local ice cream parlor, sitting in the back having an ice cream cone.  Two ladies came in for ice cream, one a visitor to Westport, to have ice cream.  They see Newman and Redford, but they keep cool and dignified, though the visitor is thrilled to death.  They order cones, pay for them, and leave.  When they get outside, the visitor says, “Where is my ice cream?  She forgot to give it to me.”  So they go back in and explain to the server.  The server says, I gave you the ice cream.”  The visitor says, “Well, I know I paid you, but where’s my ice cream?”  So Paul Newman calls out from the back, “You put it in your purse!”   

From October 1, 2006
The Context of Things Vanished

I was born in 1939, just before World War II.  Until she died when I was 16, I lived with my great-grandmother.  One early memory was a big double-sided, Victorian house. Where we lived until I was about three years old.  One of my daughters still lives in a suburb of he city.  A while back when I visited her we drove around to show her some of these places I remember from my own childhood.

I know that this house, this place, no longer exists, except in my memory.  And the context of that experience is gone forever, cemented under the concrete lanes of what is now referred to as “the Inner Loop.”

The roots of that context which I knew as a child have disappeared, and what it meant to me and to the people who lived there no longer has a basis in reality.  We can’t go home again.  So today we live in a world which is largely without context, without the rudder of where we came from, where we were.

Now there is only our present, and our memory.

   And that is why we treasure old photographs and write journals.  They are the  repository of the long-lost context of our lives.  They have a value beyond measure.

From March 30, 2006
The Saga of the Pesky Raccoon!

Awakened about 3:30 am and got up to get a glass of milk.  I saw the raccoon on the back patio, so I flipped on the patio light.  I thought that might scare him off, not so.  He just looked at me and then slowly turned away and proceeded to climb the shepherds crook in a search for food.  I rapped on the window.  He reluctantly scrambled away.  It is true the raccoon is cute and intelligent, but it can also be deadly, with no natural predators. “And they have four thumbs!” said my neighbor. in a voice that boded no good.  This one must be about 30 lbs and it is getting close to breeding season.  Since there are also families with children in the area, I call the Pest Control officer to bring a cage to capture and re-locate the beast.  

From April 3, 2006
Bandit Raccoon Behind Bars!

This morning our resident raccoon was caught in the cage and Pest Control came and took it promptly away. They left the cage, just in case, on the theory “where there is one raccoon in mating season, there might be a tribe in the vicinity.”

   In the evening Pest Control called to say the raccoon they picked up had been tested by the Animal Control Center because it was “sick.”  Results of the test indicated that the animal had distemper and was put down.  They suggest that there may be more sick animals in the area and to warm the neighbors about animals acting strangely, not to touch them.   

From April 4, 2006
That’s not a Raccoon - but -

This morning I looked out and there is another animal in the cage - NOT a raccoon.  It was confirmed to be an opossum, but was hard to see in the dawn light.  It was calm about its cage experience, and was again removed during the morning.  We are getting to know our Pest Control friends pretty well now.

From April 8, 2006
The Last Raccoon Bandit
  … and another raccoon this morning.  This one, we think, is the big one we’ve been waiting for.  It was duly removed during the morning, and was the last I heard of our Spring visitors.

September 1, 2005
Windfall Friendships

It’s fall, bringing such beautiful weather.  Today I passed by an old apple tree which no one seemed to care much for.  There were some windfalls on the ground, so I picked up a few and put them in my pockets.  Some sample nibbling on the way home told me that they were delicious (the taste, not the variety!).  

So the next day I took a small tote bag along to pick up a few more.  I saw on arrival that the lawn had bee recently mowed - right over all the apples - so it’s clear that the owner doesn’t want them.  As I started to pick some freshly freshly-fallen apples, an old lady walking by stopped.  She said that she had also been wondering about the fruit - maybe for applesauce.  I agreed  She then took about four (filled her hands) and we walked on together.  She showed me her house and said her name was “Marjorie,” and that she knew the “Mary Kay” lady, who surprisingly, was my own friend, Karen.  

September 5, 2005

Today on my walk I met “Peter” and his wife “Terry,” who are the owners of the apple tree.  I explained about my collecting windfalls and asked, and received permission to take any apples I wanted.  His neighbor, Marjorie, is also his tenant, he said, was from New Jersey, so we were all “fellow Easterners,” he said.  Today I got another 15 apples, some with Peter’s help.  

As I came home, I thought about how, in a sense, we are all members of concentric circles, endlessly meeting and parting with each other.

August 11, 2005
Building Blocks toward a Story

One way to open up a narrative…

> Draw a map of the neighborhood

(either fictional or non-fictional)

> Write about an event that happened there

> Create a character who lives there

> Draw of make a paper doll of this character

> Make a second character

> Intro them to each other:

  What do they say?

  How do they say it?

  What are they doing?

  Make a conversation.

  See where it goes.

> Write up the scene as a little story.

> What has been accomplished by doing this?

  You have created a short narrative.

  You have learned to tell a short story.

  Include a quote, a question, state a problem, etc.

  It’s a moment in time, but it can be expended.

> It’s a start - carry on…..

Entry from July 6, 2005
Reading: “The Year of Pleasures” by Elizabeth Berg

Things to share and think about:

> “Don’t let your habits become handcuffs.”  (p. 62)

> “What makes for friendships, draws people together?

  - What do you have in common?

  - What are our differences?

  - What are our ideas of a good time?” (p. 97)

> “Key phrases from Erik Satie’s music scores:

  - Light as an egg

  - Here comes the lantern

  - Work it out yourself” (107)

> “It feels really good to take care of someone.  It really lifts you up.  When I go to work, I’m going to church.” (p. 115)

> “Buy a parakeet.” (p. 117)

> [The] “Japanese Tea Ceremony is a way of honoring oneself by putting another’s needs first, the joy that could be found in intimate service.” (p. 141)

> “I’m not talking about things that happen to you.  I’m talking about things you make happen.  I’m talking about purposefully doing one thing that brings you happiness every single day, in a very conscious way.” (p. 158)

> “…deep sorrow can make for a kind of unloosening.” (p. 159)

> “There is love in holding, and there is love in letting go.” (p. 215)