Exercise in Courage

Got the t-shirt, or in this case, my 2012 NaNoWriMo winners certificate. I wasn’t as excited to collect this “goodie” as my first time around the NaNoWriMo block, in 2010. Nothing rivals first times.

If I picked feelings like daisies growing in a grassy field, I would pick these: satisfaction that I persevered and have a new story to continue to shape; relief that the exercise is over; and wonder over how much I have learned since my first experience writing 50,000 words in 30 days.

In The Forest for the Trees, Betsy Lerner quotes Michael Cunningham:

Fearlessness in the face of your own ineptitude is a useful tool.

I love that novel writing is such an exercise in courage. Writing builds character –the writer’s character as well as fictional characters. To persevere in the face of distraction (I dropped my blogs for a month), rejection (a friend dropped me for being unavailable) and demanding fictional characters who hijack your story and take you places you may not want to go, demonstrates you are willing to pay the high cost of a creative life.

It’s the difference between standing on a riverbank, wondering what life is like on the other side, and jumping into the water to experience the pull of the current, never mind what’s on the other side.

Congratulations to all those who put a toe in the river this year.

Cloud Atlas Shrugged

Clouds over Crater Lake

Movie reviews set us up to believe that Cloud Atlas is unique in the way it zips us back and forth through time and shows us how people and events connect from era to era, but Jim Broadbent’s character, sitting at his typewriter, gives us a clue—this movie is the equivalent of literary fiction in structure; it uses “tricksy” devices, flashbacks, foreshadows, repetition and such to make a point that, in the end, is not all that profound: everything is connected.

Most interesting is the question the movie poses: How much leeway do we have to change the natural order of things? What can and should be changed and what should be left alone?

Food for Thought

The argument between science and spirit is an old one. In writers’ group we analyzed E.M.Forster’s short story The Other Side of the Hedge where a man strides a dusty road toward an unknown goal. He tires of the effort and monotony of his journey, sits down, and feels the breath of fresh air blowing gently through a hedge alongside the road. Curious, he crawls through the hedge and discovers what we might call a parallel universe (and some would call Eden or heaven) on the other side where time stands still and people live joyfully in the moment. Perplexed, he says:

Give me life with its struggles and victories, with its failures and hatreds, with its deep moral meaning and its unknown goal.

Our conversation focused on the degree to which striving makes us human. We acknowledged that an unknown end discourages us; I would add especially as we get closer to it.

Take Heart, Take Courage, Take Tylenol

Take heart! Little things in life give you courage

Our first Tuolumne Writer’s Retreat was a huge success! On Friday night, a full moon hung low in the trees over the gold rush town of Columbia, CA where we gathered among the gravestones on cemetery hill for a poetry reading. A vacationing writer who lives in Alaska opened a window on life in that wondrous landscape with her poem about a marauding bear. On Saturday Wendy Brown-Barry introduced us to the gut busting humor and touching pathos of cowboy poetry while we ate lunch in the Douglas Saloon dressed in different versions of Victorian garb.

It wasn’t all rhyme and rose water. I walked to my next seminar with Suzanne, who is on hiatus from her life in Tanzania where she works with the courts to bring human rights violators to justice. She has stories to tell.

Facing the hills, a novelist’s journey

The first Tuolumne Writer’s Retreat is September 28- 30 in historic Columbia State Park, California. I’m giving a presentation on my experience completing my first manuscript.

Keeping Focus

Ragne Kabanova|dreamstime.com

Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella (adapted by Bill Rauch and Tracy Young) might be a stretch for those who view theatre as entertainment; however, I come to praise the effort, not to bury it. Acknowledging that it is a two-Tylenol experience, it’s worth the headache.

Sorting out three stories played simultaneously on one stage challenges an audience composed of people who are still digesting their dinner. Characters in one play cross plot intersections and join the action in another play. Medea wails in grief for the loss of Jason’s affection and then waltzes off to the ball with Cinderella and her Prince.

Legacy or Baggage?

ancestral booty

Shortly after my sister retired she ran herself into the ground with joy. A celebratory road trip through the hottest part of the eastern U.S. coupled with raising her hand to babysit her tribe of grandkids while their parents took a time out landed her in the ICU with severe dehydration.

In our retirement dreams we pursue passions put on hold during our working years with all the enthusiasm of a twenty-something.  Sadly, our sixty-something bodies lacks the elasticity of our ageless imaginations. We are soon felled by any number of chronic conditions. It’s the relaxation release syndrome; relax enough to begin to enjoy yourself and a parade of ailments show up for the party. Organs lose their rhythm, joints lose their blue book value and if we aren’t sending get well cards to our friends, we are receiving them.

To get ahead of this curve, I’m trying to lose baggage that weighs me down. I figure a lighter load has got to be good for my health. My baggage is a large house full of stuff – my stuff and stuff I’ve inherited from generations that go back to when the Israelites wandered the desert.   Remember, they plundered the Egyptians before they took off for the Promised Land?  I think I have some of that stuff.

Here is a short list of stuff that makes my house look like a museum.

Predation

Gokhan Okur | http://www.dreamstime.com

My mother-in-law called us, in tears. “I’m scared,” she said. “D____ is in trouble.” As she described the phone call she had received from her grandson asking for money and pleading with her not to tell anyone about his desperate situation, we knew immediately that she was being scammed.

In a town several states away from us she walked from her apartment to her bank to check her balance, to see what she could afford to send to the man who kept phoning, asking her to send as much as she could. But before she took the next critical step, withdrawing funds from her bank, she did what she’d been instructed to do by her family. She called her son.

It took us awhile to calm her down. First, we listened as she poured out her story.  It took some time to convince her that her grandson was just fine; had not made that call; never would make such a call.

It’s difficult for elders unacquainted with communications technology to understand how someone in Jamaica (where the local police said these calls initiate) could get her phone number. Apparently predators can check random phone numbers against social security numbers to determine the age, and therefore the vulnerability, of a mark. Our call to her local police department turned up that information and a policewoman followed up with her to dispel her fright.

“She was laughing when I got off the phone with her,” the deputy reported back to my husband. Good to know that local police still perform these types of services in small rural towns across America.

Relics of faith

Mucha window in Prague

More precious than any stained glass windows were the few people I saw in Poland who entered a church to pray. Early in the morning a father leads his young son across the threshold of one of many cathedrals. As tourist swarm the altar like bees drawn to gold inlay a local woman kneels, contemplating her prayer book. In the evening a working woman pops into a church on her way home from work.

The Poles have kept their faith. Many visit their church on their way to work to ask for strength for the coming day; on their way home they stop in to thank God for His provision and blessings.

Sadly though, most cathedrals in Central Europe are preserved as history. No mention is made of God’s activity in the world; instead they testify to man’s striving for significance in the world. Christianity is presented as a relic.

A church devoid of worshippers is a museum; I can appreciate the beauty of the construction but I wonder—where is God if He is not in the hearts of people? If the faithful no longer gather in the church, where are they?

At St. Stephen’s Basilica in Budapest, the patron saint replaces the figure of Christ except at Christmas and Easter. It’s interesting to note that although religion is often blamed for devastating wars it is nationalism that is most often the culprit. Christ, the mediator between people and God is shoved aside for a host of saints who advocate for special interest groups.

Plitvice Park in Croatia

On a meditative walk through magnificent Plitvice Park in Croatia, I had a thought.  It is man’s perspective that is relative, not God’s truth. Our challenge is to examine our perspectives (“know thyself”), challenge our thinking (active listening) and seek God’s truth (“be still and know”).  How many of us are willing to do that soul work?

Dispatch from Hungary

King Matthias

Crossing the border from Slovakia into Hungary our guide began our orientation by listing Hungary’s enemies and recounting the wars they mostly lost. The late 19th and early 20th century years were bright – a burst of economic and artistic growth; then two devastating wars, after which they were shoved behind the iron curtain. Recently there has been some growth mixed with much uncertainty.

It is impossible for me to imagine what my mindset would be if I hadn’t been born in a country that has always been free. What if I looked back on a history that dated to the ninth century and could only point to 50 good years?