Views and Interviews - Online Journal

Good Literature

We had lunch with a friend last week - and our conversation came around to my lack of interest in so-called good literature.  I do like to read, and our house is filled with books, but the fiction portion is mostly mysteries and science fiction.  I even feel mildly guilty about this imbalance. 

We spoke of Thomas Hardy - who is a very depressing read.  And then Jane Austin - I said, well I like happy endings.  Our friend replied that Austin's books do all end happily.  With that, what I really dislike suddenly became clear - it's that the characters in most good literature are not in control of their destinies. Where the endings are happy, as in Jane Austin's works, happiness is achieved by manipulation and wile - and luck.  This reflects society in the author's time.  True individual self-determination is something quite new, in fact, and often is as much ideal as real.  The truth about it is that, though considered and labeled a right, at least here in America, it is really a rare treasure which very few people have.  Eventually, hard events reveal the extent to which most of us are controlled by others.  But when this is made plain in childhood, the effect is profound, coloring everything that follows.

There is a heart-breaking poem by Rudyard Kipling, "Gentlemen Rankers", that contains the verses,

We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,

      We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung,

And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.

    God help us, for we knew the worst too young!

Even when the ending is happy, the situation itself is tragic.  I know this tragedy too well to want to read more about it.

Spring and Small Mysteries

A light rain is falling - the first in over a week.  After a February and March that brought the worst flooding in decades, to say nothing of the snow and ice, April has been dry.  Even so, all the trees are out, dogwoods in full bloom, maples in leaf, and our lilacs are just about to open.  The new house behind us to the right has disappeared in the opening foliage.  But nothing can help the maple tree in the front yard across the street.  It was dying when we moved here a few years ago, and this spring it is just plain dead: not a bud or blossom or leaf showing anywhere; only bark peeling from the upper limbs.  We have wondered why the owner has not had it cut down, since he is trying to sell his house, and the tree really detracts from its looks and value.  Strangely, it is one of the few trees on our street that the local utility did not bother to trim in its recent pass through - even though a number of the now-dead branches embrace the power lines. 

Another Loss

My mother was one of four sisters.  One, Shirl, died many years ago, but my mother and Elizabeth and Helen died just in the past two years.  The youngest, Elizabeth, had owned several paintings that Mom had done - she'd liked them well enough to frame them and hang them in her home.  Upon her passing, her daughter asked me if I would like them back, and I said yes.  I had been aware of Mom's painting but just as a hobby though one I knew that she enjoyed deeply until her failing eyesight made it impossible. 

When the paintings arrived, we hung them - and I have been enjoying them quite a lot.  One is a watercolor of a great oak tree in Granby Connecticut, and the painting is hung at the end of our kitchen where I see it as I drink my morning coffee.  A couple of days ago I was looking at it and thinking of the woman who painted it.  Suddenly she was not simply Mother but rather, a woman who had loved creative work, had loved the countryside around her, and had wanted to capture it through her art.   Almost like a blow, I had a sense of this woman whom I had not known at all, missing her behind the mask of "Mother."

Years ago I had recognized the importance of the moment when Mother suddenly saw me as a person in my own right - I could tell you the very moment when it happened.  And even so I never saw that I had not made the equivalent shift in my understanding of her.  As I sat there drinking my coffee, there was a moment of regret - I had missed something - but in all the complexities of our relationship, that particular aspect, the friendship of equals, was probably not possible.  Another part of grieving - what could never be.

Drowning in Rabbits

No - I'm not actually trying to keep my head above the surface of a vast pool of bunnies - the expression refers to a joke I heard a week or so ago: "It's not that I really have ADD, it's just that - OH - look!  A bunny rabbit!"  In my case, the pool is the internet - day by day the information available - rabbits - gets deeper and deeper.  This morning I've been reading nuns' blogs, my high-school list of recent alumnae in the news; I've searched for a copy of my college yearbook, read Google's summary of news stories, looked up one Buddhist on-line instruction site, and watched hair-mousse burn.  That's just the rabbits I can remember. 

Not only has my once-linear train of thought been hijacked, the very tracks have been torn up and re-laid in a strange pattern that combines dizzying horizontal and vertical movement.  The very worst aspect of this - at least I think it's the worst - is that simple linear thinking is becoming repellent.  This morning as I read one of those nuns' blogs, I found it harder and harder to read steadily.  Every few words, I was seized by an impulse to click on some other link, go off to some other site, perhaps more interesting.  Now, I'll grant you that the blog I was reading was a bit slow-moving - nevertheless, it's something I'm interested in (how contemplatives live, think, pray.)  But every page has it's links - rabbits tearing off out of the frame and drawing me after them.  I follow. 

Spring

Yesterday morning I heard three or four geese calling as they flew over - the first I've heard this year.  We've had clear indications of the changing season for several weeks now - robins (!) and house finches singing, squirrels chasing each other with vigor, and skunks out on their late-night prowls.  One night last week I was kept awake by their intense scent.  The buds on our maple are thickening and show a lovely red. 

But at the same time, the ground is still covered by the snow that fell last week.  Twice we had to have our driveway and walks cleared. 

Postcards

Well - it's clear that NaBloPoMo was about all that was keeping me blogging here - I need to get the process moving again.  Today I've really been helped by a postcard received yesterday from my friend Phoebe.  Not sure if she's actually traveling in Iceland, or if she just liked the card - but it's of Hallgrim's Church in Reykjavik.  Now, from the front at least, that is one scary church. 

There are more images of the church, including a beautiful interior at this weblog.  You have to scroll around a bit to see them all, but the other images are fun too. 

Last Day

Whew - this is it - the last day of NaBloPoMo.  I'm glad it is over.  If I participate again next year, I'll do it via my other blog, which, it turns out, is much easier to write daily entries for. 

Small Thoughts

Last year when I was also participating in NaBloPoMo, I found it hard to write something each day, but I managed.  In part this was because I was writing in a different blog, a topical one, and the topic itself was a help.  This year, I'm finding it a lot harder.  A small factor in this is that we're no longer getting the local newspaper.  I used to begin every day with it - I live in a small town, so the paper is about breakfast-size.  It always gave me at least a fall-back topic.

So - I have to confess to choosing the wrong blog for the challenge this year. 

One small thought tonight is that I shouldn't be impatient at all the Christmas carols already to be heard on TV shows and commercials.  At least they are explicit Christmas songs.  Last year I noticed nearly at the end of the season that there was little such music to be heard.  Even though I'm a Buddhist, I kind of missed it.  Many people had gotten themselves tangled up in the political correctness that requires keeping mum about divinities and such.  So instead of a Silent Night it was a silent season.  Comparatively.  Wonder what will happen this year?

Bright Lamps

My aunt Ella died back in 1998, I think it was.  She was the last member of my family in the town where they had lived for nearly three hundred years.  Though in fact neither I nor my parents were born there and we never lived there ourselves, we visited often during my childhood. My dad kept a boat there at one point, and many weekends were spent there - in town getting food and provisions for the boat, on the docks, playing with other children or fishing, and out on the water. 

I spent vacations with various aunts and uncles, and eventually I knew every street as though I'd been there all my life.  My grandmother moved back in her last years, and I spent a lot of time with her, even lived with her for six months when I was in my 20's.  It is a beautiful New England river town, and I felt so connected between my immediate family and my ancestors (some in every cemetery, as it were,) and my own experience.  But in fact, all the younger generations moved away.  Then a decade later Grandma died, followed one after the other by the aunts and uncles.  My Aunt Ella was one of the dearest to me, and the last.  When she died a light went out.  The whole town which had been a living place in my mind, went dark, became flat and two dimensional - map-like, unmoving. 

I had noticed this reaction before but never so clearly.  I wonder if this is peculiar to me or is it an aspect of loss for everyone?  Each person I know and care for is like a lamp, lighting up the world around them.

Prayers

Tonight was the monthly Monlam Choga - a group of us get together and say a lot of prayers - a complex so-called seven limbed prayer intermixed with aspiration prayers.  Tonight I found it easy to focus - and I was very aware of the special relationship involved in praying-with people.  It's a connection that can completely bypass dislikes and differences of opinion - at least on good days.