This morning as I walked slowly in a light drizzle to a meeting point with my walking partner, I noticed a squirrel making strange movements. It was running partway out into the road and then quickly back to a nearby tree. It scrambled around the tree trunk about three feet above the ground and then stopped to raise its front paws to its mouth. We have a lot of squirrels in our neighborhood. This one caught my attention. As it scampered again into the street and back, I noticed that another squirrel, more unfortunate than this one, had been crushed by a vehicle in the morning traffic just a few feet into the road beside the tree. “Was this your mate?” I queried. What would I make of a suddenly silent, suddenly still, and suddenly flattened companion if I were a squirrel on an ordinary Friday morning in September? It appeared to me that the living squirrel was checking on the status of the recently dead animal and then running back to a safe place to think about what this means, what to do next. The squirrel repeated the pattern several times during lulls in the stream of cars. Finally, the living animal sprinted entirely across the street and was gone.
It strikes me, once again, that walking around the block is nearly as fruitful for a writer as circumnavigating the globe. There is a wise saying that goes something like this: you will learn more by climbing one mountain 500 times than by climbing 500 mountains. A walk around the block might be our local version of this.
This morning on my walk around the block, my thoughts turned to many authors who have put their characters in animal personas to be taught lessons we should be able to learn in our own skin, but don’t. T.H. White (in The Once and Future King) has Merlin transform the young King Arthur into a fish to learn about perspectives other than his own. I’m reading Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra, which is told by a consciousness in the body of a monkey. Is it ultimately empathy that we need to learn, and why can’t we learn it in our own skin?
This morning’s walk around the block also reminds me of W.H. Auden’s great poem, “Musee des Beaux Arts.” In the poem, Auden describes a painting called “The Fall of Icarus” by Peter Breughel. Within this painting, observers see Icarus fall into the sea, but [they] “had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.” Emily Dickinson makes a similar point in a short poem, “Apparently, with no surprise/ To any happy flower/ The frost beheads it at its play/ In accidental power. The blond assassin passes on/ The sun proceeds unmoved/ To measure off another day/ For an approving God.” And Robert Frost depicts the tragic accidental death of a young farm boy. The poem ends with a comment about the witnesses to the tragedy: “And they, since they/ Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.” Many of us lost a good man and dear friend to cancer this week, and even as we linger as long as possible to memorialize him, it is sad, but inevitable, that we, too, will return to mundane affairs—like crossing the street—in the days to come. Will the squirrel I observed this morning hear a lingering echo of the unique sounds of its companion? Will it return to this place and feel an inexplicable twinge?
My little granddaughters, Anna(5) and Teah(3½), humored me in taking a walk around the block during their recent visit. Here is what we wrote about that excursion in our journal. “After breakfast, Anna and Teah and Grandma Jo went for a walk around the block with their binoculars to see what they could see. They saw a squirrel, a centipede, flowers, and a recycling truck. Teah saw a rabbit ! They found feathers, leaves, and flowers to bring home. Anna and Teah learned to stop and stand still before putting the binoculars up to their eyes.”
Annie Dillard inspires me to say that if we raised our binoculars more often when we walk around the block (and also when we stand still) we would be exercising and strengthening our eyeballs gradually to see more and more deeply into life’s revealing details and not risk our eyeballs bursting into flames with the shocking brilliance, vivacity, and plenitude of extravagant life on my block and on yours.
For your writing:
Of course . . . walk around your block or your neighborhood. Notice something that you haven’t noticed before. Describe your observation, and then keep writing. What does this remind you of? What does it cause you to wonder about? Can you link this observation to something else that has happened in your life recently?
Quotation for percolation:
“The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” . . . - Marcel Proust
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
"L" is for Line
I can’t even recall what I was searching for in my new used thesaurus, but when I came upon the entries for “line,” I was hooked.
Anyone can come up with a handful of expressions without even trying, “My job is on the line.” “Sign on the dotted line.” “Because you’re mine, I walk the line.” “She crossed the line.” “Follow this line of argument.” . ..the thin line, the bottom line, the party line and so on.
Suddenly, I realize I’ve always been in love with lines. On the tip of my tongue are these classic lines:
Virginia Woolf used the metaphor of dropping a line in the water to evoke the inception of a thought process: “Thought . . . had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it, until—you know the little tug—the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one’s line . . .” (A Room of One’s Own 5).
Annie Dillard uses the image of a line throughout her small book, The Writing Life: “When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner’s pick, a woodcarver’s gouge, a surgeon’s probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. . . . The line of words is a fiber optic, flexible as wire; it illuminates the path just before its fragile tip. You probe with it, delicate as a worm. . . . The line of words fingers your own heart.” (3, 7, 20).
Tim Ingold contrasts living a life assembled by connecting static dots versus living a continuous, vibrant line of a life: creative, dynamic, and generative. Ingold quotes Paul Klee on “the line that develops freely, and in its own time, ‘goes out for a walk’ [in contrast to] the line that connects adjacent points in series . . . ‘the quintessence of the static.’”(Klee: Notebooks, Volume 1: The thinking eye, Ingold: “Up, Across, and Along”)
In the short fable, The Dot and the Line: A Romance of Lower Mathematics, by Norton Juster, a line (male) is in love with a dot (female). The dot is in love with a chaotic squiggle, but the line learns to create one angle and then transforms himself into geometric figures of increasing complexity until he successfully woos his love. Juster apparently was inspired by Edwin A. Abbott’s 1884 fable, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, where “women are straight lines [and] Professional Men and Gentlemen are Squares . . . and . . . Pentagons” (7).
It seems that each of us has an important decision to make when it comes right down to the “line.” Where do you stand on the line? I’m going to take just one meaning to heart today: Ingold’s line that “goes out for a walk.” This is the kind of walk that “wends hither and thither, and may even pause here and there before moving on. But it has no beginning or end . . . every somewhere is on the way to somewhere else.” Ingold makes clear that his metaphor extends to how we know and narrate our experience of the world. “As with the line that goes out for a walk, in the story as in life there is always somewhere further one can go . . . it is in the movement from place to place—or from topic to topic—that knowledge is integrated.”
A line of words often does not proceed directly from point A to point B, but may meander and diverge, flowing like water that some would call aimless, but which can also be viewed as a complex and meaningful pattern. You may choose, on a familiar walk, to take alternative routes that add time and variety to your walk. Similarly, in writing, we may follow lines of words that do not immediately announce their purpose or meaning. Freewriting is based on this principle, as are some guided writing activities. For example, I begin by writing about the arrangement of books on my shelves and meander into meanings about deferring important conversations. A walk (or a piece of writing) can begin almost anywhere and, yet, pass by and accumulate breathtaking vistas, new insights, threads of connections, and ambiguity rich enough to feed you for many, many days and nights.
For your writing:
First take a walk (preferably) or a drive and choose a new route. Allow yourself to meander a little bit and then maybe a little bit further. Observe what you see and what you think about. Write about how this differs from the usual rush of getting from one destination to another without awareness of the experience between destinations. Another writing activity might be to take a common object and after describing it, let it lead you in different directions. “Take a walk” with the idea of this object. For example, choose a shoe in your closet. (Or your car, bike, briefcase, watch, etc.) Describe it first. Where has it been with you? What kind of support does it give you? What is your relationship with this object? What about the history of this category in your life? What thoughts does it elicit? Let your mind go off in tangents. You might begin with a shoe or watch and end up in Venice, your grandmother’s kitchen, or underwater.
Quotation for Percolation:“The straight line leads to the downfall of humanity.”
Friedensreich Hundertwasser (brainyquote.com)
Anyone can come up with a handful of expressions without even trying, “My job is on the line.” “Sign on the dotted line.” “Because you’re mine, I walk the line.” “She crossed the line.” “Follow this line of argument.” . ..the thin line, the bottom line, the party line and so on.
Suddenly, I realize I’ve always been in love with lines. On the tip of my tongue are these classic lines:
Virginia Woolf used the metaphor of dropping a line in the water to evoke the inception of a thought process: “Thought . . . had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it, until—you know the little tug—the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one’s line . . .” (A Room of One’s Own 5).
Annie Dillard uses the image of a line throughout her small book, The Writing Life: “When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner’s pick, a woodcarver’s gouge, a surgeon’s probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. . . . The line of words is a fiber optic, flexible as wire; it illuminates the path just before its fragile tip. You probe with it, delicate as a worm. . . . The line of words fingers your own heart.” (3, 7, 20).
Tim Ingold contrasts living a life assembled by connecting static dots versus living a continuous, vibrant line of a life: creative, dynamic, and generative. Ingold quotes Paul Klee on “the line that develops freely, and in its own time, ‘goes out for a walk’ [in contrast to] the line that connects adjacent points in series . . . ‘the quintessence of the static.’”(Klee: Notebooks, Volume 1: The thinking eye, Ingold: “Up, Across, and Along”)
In the short fable, The Dot and the Line: A Romance of Lower Mathematics, by Norton Juster, a line (male) is in love with a dot (female). The dot is in love with a chaotic squiggle, but the line learns to create one angle and then transforms himself into geometric figures of increasing complexity until he successfully woos his love. Juster apparently was inspired by Edwin A. Abbott’s 1884 fable, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, where “women are straight lines [and] Professional Men and Gentlemen are Squares . . . and . . . Pentagons” (7).
It seems that each of us has an important decision to make when it comes right down to the “line.” Where do you stand on the line? I’m going to take just one meaning to heart today: Ingold’s line that “goes out for a walk.” This is the kind of walk that “wends hither and thither, and may even pause here and there before moving on. But it has no beginning or end . . . every somewhere is on the way to somewhere else.” Ingold makes clear that his metaphor extends to how we know and narrate our experience of the world. “As with the line that goes out for a walk, in the story as in life there is always somewhere further one can go . . . it is in the movement from place to place—or from topic to topic—that knowledge is integrated.”
A line of words often does not proceed directly from point A to point B, but may meander and diverge, flowing like water that some would call aimless, but which can also be viewed as a complex and meaningful pattern. You may choose, on a familiar walk, to take alternative routes that add time and variety to your walk. Similarly, in writing, we may follow lines of words that do not immediately announce their purpose or meaning. Freewriting is based on this principle, as are some guided writing activities. For example, I begin by writing about the arrangement of books on my shelves and meander into meanings about deferring important conversations. A walk (or a piece of writing) can begin almost anywhere and, yet, pass by and accumulate breathtaking vistas, new insights, threads of connections, and ambiguity rich enough to feed you for many, many days and nights.
For your writing:
First take a walk (preferably) or a drive and choose a new route. Allow yourself to meander a little bit and then maybe a little bit further. Observe what you see and what you think about. Write about how this differs from the usual rush of getting from one destination to another without awareness of the experience between destinations. Another writing activity might be to take a common object and after describing it, let it lead you in different directions. “Take a walk” with the idea of this object. For example, choose a shoe in your closet. (Or your car, bike, briefcase, watch, etc.) Describe it first. Where has it been with you? What kind of support does it give you? What is your relationship with this object? What about the history of this category in your life? What thoughts does it elicit? Let your mind go off in tangents. You might begin with a shoe or watch and end up in Venice, your grandmother’s kitchen, or underwater.
Quotation for Percolation:“The straight line leads to the downfall of humanity.”
Friedensreich Hundertwasser (brainyquote.com)
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Role Models, Mentors, and Catalysts
I am a slow learner. Even after earning a Ph.D. I still had a difficult time identifying who had been my mentors. Was I ungrateful or did I not have any mentors at all?
In one of my roles at the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State, I organized and managed several mentoring programs. I finally had to confront the question: “What is a mentor?” Marion Wright Edelman’s wonderful book, Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors, was an important resource for the programs and for my own understanding. Edelman redefines the concept of mentor away from a narrow, career-focused instrument, to a notion of the “critical influences of the natural daily mentors [who] . . . all stressed how to make a life and find a purpose worth living for and to leave the world better than I found it” (xiv – xv). Edelman revealed the concept to me by identifying her parents and the women of her community as early mentors. Mentors, according to Edelman, “expressed no sense of limits on my potential or who they thought I could become, and they engaged me as a fellow wayfarer and struggler. What they all had in common was their respectful treatment of me as an important, thinking individual human being” (xvii).
OK! Now I see! My inability to identify my own mentors was based on two conditions. First, I was thinking too narrowly. Secondly, I had few opportunities in my small world to find guidance of the sort typically called a mentor. Instead, I had an array something like Edelman’s lanterns. They could all, potentially, be grouped under the title of mentor, but I can better express my gratitude by thinking of these varied inflences as role models, mentors, and catalysts.
Role Models: Those we are attracted to because we see ourselves heading in the same direction or life path. They provide an embodied vision of our own future that we can aim towards.
Personal Mentors: Those we seek out for advice and discussion of life dreams and goals, more personal than professional, and the strategies we can use to get there.
Career Mentors: Those who engage with us for career development and decisions.
Catalysts: By their words or actions, catalysts motivate us to shift course, rethink commitments, break a habit or make some other dramatic change.
Any of these may never know the power of their influence, and often we don’t even know how influential someone has been until years later.
Anna McGuiness may have been my first mentor, although I didn’t realize this until I read Edelman’s book. She was old when I knew her, and I was just a kid, maybe ten or twelve years old. I was already a voracious reader and she was a retired teacher two houses away with a wonderful library dispersed through every room of her stone house. My mother wisely sent me often to Mrs. McGuiness on neighborly errands which would stretch to hours as I browsed among the books, plunked at the piano, and had a cup of tea or cocoa at her kitchen table. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I felt like her equal, like we really connected. She loaned me Frank Baum’s Oz books, all of them, one at a time. She encouraged my mind to follow its inclination in many directions and not to limit myself. After Mrs. McGuiness moved away, I don’t know if I had a mentor again for many, many years. I made many important decisions alone and by default, like choosing a college by finding the catalog a classmate abandoned on the windowsill in math class.
Mary Bartolone was a role model. She was herself an Italian-American with a traditional family, like me. She still lived at home with her parents when she first came into my life as a young English teacher when I was in seventh grade. To the dismay of my siblings, I brought her home to dinner to meet our parents. I could see myself following in her footsteps—here is how an Italian girl can go to college and become a teacher. The women in my family had worked in the garment industry in New York. Miss Bartolone was similar enough, but different, too. I could imagine my future by learning about her life.
Joette Warren was a factor in many life changes as my therapist, but I still recall four words she said that catapulted me into immediate action. I had applied and been accepted into graduate school at Fordham University. I was thinking of delaying matriculation for another year; the obstacles just felt so overwhelming for a married woman with two children living in upstate New York. One day she said to me, “It is too late,” meaning that I could not, even if I wanted to, matriculate that fall. “Too late!!??” I remember the shouting inside my head at those words! I mobilized all my skills and friends and, within days, managed to activate my matriculation, secure a leave of absence from my teaching job, and make feasible travel arrangements. It surprised me that all fell into place once I over came inertia because of the right catalyst.
I was very fortunate during my career to have the opportunity to be mentored by Darrell G. Kirch, M.D. during a fellowship year at the Penn State College of Medicine and Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. A good mentor, like Dr. Kirch, invites participation in his or her thought processes, includes you at meetings where strategy is debated among equals, and nudges you out of the protégé “nest” into real responsibility. He would say, “Go and meet all these people and then let’s talk about your sense of what we can do in this situation.” I learned the most when he turned problems back to stakeholders for a solution.
Marion Wright Edelman reminded me also to count friends and family in my list of “natural daily mentors.” Mother, Father, siblings, cousins, dear friends who get wiser year after year, and my husband, Vincent, who taught me (among many other things) to consider whether “better is the enemy of the good,” and even better than this, to enjoy a “both/and” approach to life.
As I sit writing this in the public library, I glance up to my right and see a poster for a mentoring program sponsored by the American Association of University Women. Sometimes it is crystal clear when we are entering a mentoring relationship as the mentor or as the protégé. The rest of the time, we may search for the seeds of our achieved dreams and know, that in those moments, we were in the presence of influential role models, catalysts, and mentors.
For your writing:
Identify a mentor, a role model, and a catalyst in your life and write about how each one influenced you.
Quotation for Percolation:
“Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us-and those around us - more effectively. Look for the learning.”
Louisa May Alcott
In one of my roles at the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State, I organized and managed several mentoring programs. I finally had to confront the question: “What is a mentor?” Marion Wright Edelman’s wonderful book, Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors, was an important resource for the programs and for my own understanding. Edelman redefines the concept of mentor away from a narrow, career-focused instrument, to a notion of the “critical influences of the natural daily mentors [who] . . . all stressed how to make a life and find a purpose worth living for and to leave the world better than I found it” (xiv – xv). Edelman revealed the concept to me by identifying her parents and the women of her community as early mentors. Mentors, according to Edelman, “expressed no sense of limits on my potential or who they thought I could become, and they engaged me as a fellow wayfarer and struggler. What they all had in common was their respectful treatment of me as an important, thinking individual human being” (xvii).
OK! Now I see! My inability to identify my own mentors was based on two conditions. First, I was thinking too narrowly. Secondly, I had few opportunities in my small world to find guidance of the sort typically called a mentor. Instead, I had an array something like Edelman’s lanterns. They could all, potentially, be grouped under the title of mentor, but I can better express my gratitude by thinking of these varied inflences as role models, mentors, and catalysts.
Role Models: Those we are attracted to because we see ourselves heading in the same direction or life path. They provide an embodied vision of our own future that we can aim towards.
Personal Mentors: Those we seek out for advice and discussion of life dreams and goals, more personal than professional, and the strategies we can use to get there.
Career Mentors: Those who engage with us for career development and decisions.
Catalysts: By their words or actions, catalysts motivate us to shift course, rethink commitments, break a habit or make some other dramatic change.
Any of these may never know the power of their influence, and often we don’t even know how influential someone has been until years later.
Anna McGuiness may have been my first mentor, although I didn’t realize this until I read Edelman’s book. She was old when I knew her, and I was just a kid, maybe ten or twelve years old. I was already a voracious reader and she was a retired teacher two houses away with a wonderful library dispersed through every room of her stone house. My mother wisely sent me often to Mrs. McGuiness on neighborly errands which would stretch to hours as I browsed among the books, plunked at the piano, and had a cup of tea or cocoa at her kitchen table. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I felt like her equal, like we really connected. She loaned me Frank Baum’s Oz books, all of them, one at a time. She encouraged my mind to follow its inclination in many directions and not to limit myself. After Mrs. McGuiness moved away, I don’t know if I had a mentor again for many, many years. I made many important decisions alone and by default, like choosing a college by finding the catalog a classmate abandoned on the windowsill in math class.
Mary Bartolone was a role model. She was herself an Italian-American with a traditional family, like me. She still lived at home with her parents when she first came into my life as a young English teacher when I was in seventh grade. To the dismay of my siblings, I brought her home to dinner to meet our parents. I could see myself following in her footsteps—here is how an Italian girl can go to college and become a teacher. The women in my family had worked in the garment industry in New York. Miss Bartolone was similar enough, but different, too. I could imagine my future by learning about her life.
Joette Warren was a factor in many life changes as my therapist, but I still recall four words she said that catapulted me into immediate action. I had applied and been accepted into graduate school at Fordham University. I was thinking of delaying matriculation for another year; the obstacles just felt so overwhelming for a married woman with two children living in upstate New York. One day she said to me, “It is too late,” meaning that I could not, even if I wanted to, matriculate that fall. “Too late!!??” I remember the shouting inside my head at those words! I mobilized all my skills and friends and, within days, managed to activate my matriculation, secure a leave of absence from my teaching job, and make feasible travel arrangements. It surprised me that all fell into place once I over came inertia because of the right catalyst.
I was very fortunate during my career to have the opportunity to be mentored by Darrell G. Kirch, M.D. during a fellowship year at the Penn State College of Medicine and Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. A good mentor, like Dr. Kirch, invites participation in his or her thought processes, includes you at meetings where strategy is debated among equals, and nudges you out of the protégé “nest” into real responsibility. He would say, “Go and meet all these people and then let’s talk about your sense of what we can do in this situation.” I learned the most when he turned problems back to stakeholders for a solution.
Marion Wright Edelman reminded me also to count friends and family in my list of “natural daily mentors.” Mother, Father, siblings, cousins, dear friends who get wiser year after year, and my husband, Vincent, who taught me (among many other things) to consider whether “better is the enemy of the good,” and even better than this, to enjoy a “both/and” approach to life.
As I sit writing this in the public library, I glance up to my right and see a poster for a mentoring program sponsored by the American Association of University Women. Sometimes it is crystal clear when we are entering a mentoring relationship as the mentor or as the protégé. The rest of the time, we may search for the seeds of our achieved dreams and know, that in those moments, we were in the presence of influential role models, catalysts, and mentors.
For your writing:
Identify a mentor, a role model, and a catalyst in your life and write about how each one influenced you.
Quotation for Percolation:
“Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us-and those around us - more effectively. Look for the learning.”
Louisa May Alcott
Thursday, March 27, 2008
A Distributed Notion of "Home"
Over the past several weeks, I’ve been feeling bothered and sad by the thought of dismantling the home where my sister and three brothers and I grew up. The home where prom evenings and hunting expeditions were launched, where we grumbled over chores on Saturday mornings and marveled at surprises on Christmas mornings. The house where seven people shared one bathroom and three bedrooms, and where Dad’s one glass of beer at dinnertime suffered a round of children’s sips before he could enjoy it.
My father and mother were able to save some modest certificates of deposit when the five of us were finally out of the house. Each time one of the certificates matured, my father would cash it and “make a distribution,” his term for sharing the funds equally among his children and their families. Over the years, we had quite a few “distributions” of between $500 and $5,000. They were always welcome, and often trickled down to our own children. Now, we are in the process of receiving our final distribution of the assets of our parents’ life; our family home and its contents.
We met recently to talk over what treasures we each wanted from the house. My sister, Nina, claimed a special mirror for her daughter; and the coffee table and end tables will move to Connecticut with Gabe. Andy recalled that the coffee table once had a fitted piece of glass on top. He remembered it by the sound of its shattering. Mike reclaimed the paintings his young bride made for Mom. Pasta bowls will be dispersed among five families to spread the bounty of heaping memories as far as possible. An ancient box camera, walking sticks, the espresso pot we filled after dinner for every holiday, and Mom’s bundt pan will all have new homes. A small cabinet, two upholstered chairs, a cedar chest and Dad’s desk will migrate near and far.
As the oldest child, I have perhaps the longest memory of the austere upright desk standing in our parents’ bedroom. The key was placed far out of our reach. We could see the sets of dark books through glass doors, and it was a momentous day when I finally received permission to open those doors and select a book to read. Only recently have we examined this sanctuary of documents, photos, and war memorabilia from top to bottom. I emptied the desk myself, and slowly realized that there were no deep secrets preserved there, no cryptic map to buried treasure. There were the crumbling immigration documents of two families, decades-old pairs of glasses, photographs from “the old country” and from distant branches of the family tree. But there were also paper clips, a collection of pins from political campaigns, some pennies, and autograph books from my mother’s junior high school graduation class and my father’s high school graduating class. Are you finally finished growing up when you empty ALL the drawers under lock and key and find out that there may not have been much mystery after all in your father’s life or your mother’s life? Even though I’ve touched the wooden bottom of the drawers with my own hands, I still believe that they each had locked places in their hearts that we’ll never know.
After this weekend, our childhood home will be in the hands of a realtor. This is less disturbing than I had anticipated. I’ve begun to focus on the continuity in our process of distribution; after all, I’ve been making sauce in my mother’s sauce pot for years. My sister has been wearing Mom’s marcasite pendant, and the smaller espresso pot migrated to my brother’s kitchen long ago. Our family home has evolved and is dispersed across five or six states and perhaps ten or twelve homes. A tea cup here, a shovel there, a bracelet, a walking stick, a special shark’s tooth, troves of photographs in many desk drawers: home has come closer and more deeply into our lives through this process of distribution. And we are more firmly knit together as a family by these distributed mementos of home.
For your writing:
How do you define “Home”? Is it a place or a set of belongings? Is it the shared habits and traditions of your family? What does “home” feel like? When you are “Homesick,” what are you missing?
Quotation for Percolation:
The most important work you and I will every do will be within the walls of our own homes. Harold B. Lee (1899 - 1973)
My father and mother were able to save some modest certificates of deposit when the five of us were finally out of the house. Each time one of the certificates matured, my father would cash it and “make a distribution,” his term for sharing the funds equally among his children and their families. Over the years, we had quite a few “distributions” of between $500 and $5,000. They were always welcome, and often trickled down to our own children. Now, we are in the process of receiving our final distribution of the assets of our parents’ life; our family home and its contents.
We met recently to talk over what treasures we each wanted from the house. My sister, Nina, claimed a special mirror for her daughter; and the coffee table and end tables will move to Connecticut with Gabe. Andy recalled that the coffee table once had a fitted piece of glass on top. He remembered it by the sound of its shattering. Mike reclaimed the paintings his young bride made for Mom. Pasta bowls will be dispersed among five families to spread the bounty of heaping memories as far as possible. An ancient box camera, walking sticks, the espresso pot we filled after dinner for every holiday, and Mom’s bundt pan will all have new homes. A small cabinet, two upholstered chairs, a cedar chest and Dad’s desk will migrate near and far.
As the oldest child, I have perhaps the longest memory of the austere upright desk standing in our parents’ bedroom. The key was placed far out of our reach. We could see the sets of dark books through glass doors, and it was a momentous day when I finally received permission to open those doors and select a book to read. Only recently have we examined this sanctuary of documents, photos, and war memorabilia from top to bottom. I emptied the desk myself, and slowly realized that there were no deep secrets preserved there, no cryptic map to buried treasure. There were the crumbling immigration documents of two families, decades-old pairs of glasses, photographs from “the old country” and from distant branches of the family tree. But there were also paper clips, a collection of pins from political campaigns, some pennies, and autograph books from my mother’s junior high school graduation class and my father’s high school graduating class. Are you finally finished growing up when you empty ALL the drawers under lock and key and find out that there may not have been much mystery after all in your father’s life or your mother’s life? Even though I’ve touched the wooden bottom of the drawers with my own hands, I still believe that they each had locked places in their hearts that we’ll never know.
After this weekend, our childhood home will be in the hands of a realtor. This is less disturbing than I had anticipated. I’ve begun to focus on the continuity in our process of distribution; after all, I’ve been making sauce in my mother’s sauce pot for years. My sister has been wearing Mom’s marcasite pendant, and the smaller espresso pot migrated to my brother’s kitchen long ago. Our family home has evolved and is dispersed across five or six states and perhaps ten or twelve homes. A tea cup here, a shovel there, a bracelet, a walking stick, a special shark’s tooth, troves of photographs in many desk drawers: home has come closer and more deeply into our lives through this process of distribution. And we are more firmly knit together as a family by these distributed mementos of home.
For your writing:
How do you define “Home”? Is it a place or a set of belongings? Is it the shared habits and traditions of your family? What does “home” feel like? When you are “Homesick,” what are you missing?
Quotation for Percolation:
The most important work you and I will every do will be within the walls of our own homes. Harold B. Lee (1899 - 1973)
Thursday, February 21, 2008
My Wandering Chi
I recently switched from a yoga class to a Tai Chi class, and this could make all the difference. This could be the one that sticks. I loved my yoga teacher, but the class didn’t stick. There were a number of reasons why it didn’t stick, such as the extra time of driving to and fro, driving after dark in winter weather, and the early evening time of day. I loved the circle of protection movements and the inspirational quotations by Cheri Huber. I loved the idea of warrior poses and I loved goddess pose and almost all the twisting and balancing poses, but downward dog was always the tipping point for me. I tried to love downward dog, but could not, not, not reach this level of comfortable flexibility. So, now I’m taking Tai Chi. This is my second attempt to learn and practice Tai Chi. I walk to this class and thus get aerobic conditioning to and fro instead of driving. It is in the morning, not evening, and I’m enjoying the fluid movements and meditative quality of the form. I’m already thinking beyond this series of classes and asking the instructor about what she offers next. I’m also inquiring among my friends about their Tai Chi instructors for times, locations, and prices. This could be the one that sticks!
Or not. I think back to classes I’ve taken that never really led to anything much. You can’t really count one piano recital as the only adult among eight-year olds as much of an accomplishment. I’ll make a list and see if it adds up to anything: What self-improvement activities have I taken up as an adult outside of academic courses ? Ballet, classical guitar, folk guitar, piano, Tai Chi (2), yoga (2), calligraphy, cooking, swimming, Beginning German, Conversational Italian, drawing with pastels, ballroom dancing, papermaking, weaving, Investing for Women and . . . I’m leaving this open ended as I may recall more. Does my one year membership in Curves count? How about my experiment with past life regression? I’m definitely not counting my years of individual and group therapy, although that was truly transformative!
My list doesn’t really add up, but I have this feeling that there are at least two ways of counting. I never became an expert at any of these, but, on the other hand, I have certainly been a willing novice all my life! Starting over with an open mind and enthusiasm, I believe, is an underrated life skill. I might be a certified expert if anyone valued a degree called “Disciple of Beginning Anew (DBA).” If we conceive of life as a straight line, things need to add up continuously, but if we view life as a series of repeating cycles, we can enjoy the continuity of some threads AND also pick up new colors along the way to weave into our beautiful patterns.
For Your Writing:
Make a list of self-improvement activities in your adult life. What does your list add up to? Remember that you can “count” the value of your experiences in a number of different ways, such as: What led to your pleasure and enjoyment? What did you take from each activity that is now part of you? What activities are in your future? Why have you chosen each activity? What are your continuing threads and the threads you picked up (and put down) along the way?
Quotation for Percolation:
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
Albert Einstein
Or not. I think back to classes I’ve taken that never really led to anything much. You can’t really count one piano recital as the only adult among eight-year olds as much of an accomplishment. I’ll make a list and see if it adds up to anything: What self-improvement activities have I taken up as an adult outside of academic courses ? Ballet, classical guitar, folk guitar, piano, Tai Chi (2), yoga (2), calligraphy, cooking, swimming, Beginning German, Conversational Italian, drawing with pastels, ballroom dancing, papermaking, weaving, Investing for Women and . . . I’m leaving this open ended as I may recall more. Does my one year membership in Curves count? How about my experiment with past life regression? I’m definitely not counting my years of individual and group therapy, although that was truly transformative!
My list doesn’t really add up, but I have this feeling that there are at least two ways of counting. I never became an expert at any of these, but, on the other hand, I have certainly been a willing novice all my life! Starting over with an open mind and enthusiasm, I believe, is an underrated life skill. I might be a certified expert if anyone valued a degree called “Disciple of Beginning Anew (DBA).” If we conceive of life as a straight line, things need to add up continuously, but if we view life as a series of repeating cycles, we can enjoy the continuity of some threads AND also pick up new colors along the way to weave into our beautiful patterns.
For Your Writing:
Make a list of self-improvement activities in your adult life. What does your list add up to? Remember that you can “count” the value of your experiences in a number of different ways, such as: What led to your pleasure and enjoyment? What did you take from each activity that is now part of you? What activities are in your future? Why have you chosen each activity? What are your continuing threads and the threads you picked up (and put down) along the way?
Quotation for Percolation:
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
Albert Einstein
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Writing Wellness 101: "One Question; Six Answers"
Is this a session about good writing? Or is it about writing well? Or perhaps about a career writing articles about health? No, no, and no! None of the above! This session is about the process of writing as a proactive strategy toward your improved health and wellness.
Today I want to reflect on the many times—and ways—in a given day we may be asked “How are you?” In different circumstances, and from different people, this simple question can mean many different things AND you will be motivated to respond differently. I can think of at least six different circumstances where the basic question is the same. (You may be able to think of more.) Even though the question is the same, you will respond differently each time.
1. You meet an acquaintance in the post office and she asks “How are you?”
2. Before or after a meeting, a colleague asks, “So how is everything going for you?
3. On a phone call from a parent or sibling, after five or ten minutes of catching up on recent events, your mother/father/sister/brother/aunt/cousin asks “And how are you doing?”
4. After dinner and a discussion about sharing household chores, your partner may ask, “How are you doing with all that’s going on these days?”
5. Your best friend in another city emails you about some tough times with a parent and then asks, “Now tell me what’s going on in your life!”
6. You are wide awake—again—between 2 a.m and 3 a.m. You tip-toe out to the kitchen for a cup of chamomile tea and pull out your journal. “So,” you say to yourself, “What’s going on that I can’t sleep?”
“How are you?” is a question with many meanings! We all know that sometimes it is just a simple greeting, more like a statement of “It’s good to see you!” than a real question inviting a real answer. People saying “How are you?” in the post office rarely expect an answer that describes how you are in any more detail than one or two words, “Fine,” “Not bad,” “Very well, thank you,” or “Great!” followed by a reciprocal question asking, “and how are you?” But beyond this superficial type of “How are you?” there is an opportunity in every other question for a wellness comment. And your journal is a terrific place to practice this kind of honesty about how you really, really are. At least three levels of writing wellness apply here. One is that writing honestly about emotionally difficult topics has proven to be good for your health. And the second is that this kind of writing may help you speak up (in a constructive way) about issues that are troubling you, small or large. A third benefit is that you may come up with solutions, alternatives, options, resolutions, new perspectives, and or forgiveness during your writing process, and any one of these also contributes to your overall wellness. For research summaries and bibliography on this topic, please access my website at www.metaphorical-ink.com and select the “Research on Writing” button.
For your writing:
For each “How are you?” in situations numbers two through six above write a one page answer that mentions some real and true answers to the question and real and true reasons why you are doing well or not doing well. For each situation, your wellness statements may be different because different issues will seem appropriate for discussion with a colleague, family member, friend, partner, or in the privacy of your journal. If situations two through six do not fit your lifestyle, first come up with five situations where someone might ask you a version of “How are you?” and then continue with writing a one-page answer for each.
Quotation for Percolation:
The world can only be as sane and healthy as the individuals living in it. If we want to live in a balanced environment, we must find and heal what is out of balance with ourselves.
Mahatma Gandhi
Today I want to reflect on the many times—and ways—in a given day we may be asked “How are you?” In different circumstances, and from different people, this simple question can mean many different things AND you will be motivated to respond differently. I can think of at least six different circumstances where the basic question is the same. (You may be able to think of more.) Even though the question is the same, you will respond differently each time.
1. You meet an acquaintance in the post office and she asks “How are you?”
2. Before or after a meeting, a colleague asks, “So how is everything going for you?
3. On a phone call from a parent or sibling, after five or ten minutes of catching up on recent events, your mother/father/sister/brother/aunt/cousin asks “And how are you doing?”
4. After dinner and a discussion about sharing household chores, your partner may ask, “How are you doing with all that’s going on these days?”
5. Your best friend in another city emails you about some tough times with a parent and then asks, “Now tell me what’s going on in your life!”
6. You are wide awake—again—between 2 a.m and 3 a.m. You tip-toe out to the kitchen for a cup of chamomile tea and pull out your journal. “So,” you say to yourself, “What’s going on that I can’t sleep?”
“How are you?” is a question with many meanings! We all know that sometimes it is just a simple greeting, more like a statement of “It’s good to see you!” than a real question inviting a real answer. People saying “How are you?” in the post office rarely expect an answer that describes how you are in any more detail than one or two words, “Fine,” “Not bad,” “Very well, thank you,” or “Great!” followed by a reciprocal question asking, “and how are you?” But beyond this superficial type of “How are you?” there is an opportunity in every other question for a wellness comment. And your journal is a terrific place to practice this kind of honesty about how you really, really are. At least three levels of writing wellness apply here. One is that writing honestly about emotionally difficult topics has proven to be good for your health. And the second is that this kind of writing may help you speak up (in a constructive way) about issues that are troubling you, small or large. A third benefit is that you may come up with solutions, alternatives, options, resolutions, new perspectives, and or forgiveness during your writing process, and any one of these also contributes to your overall wellness. For research summaries and bibliography on this topic, please access my website at www.metaphorical-ink.com and select the “Research on Writing” button.
For your writing:
For each “How are you?” in situations numbers two through six above write a one page answer that mentions some real and true answers to the question and real and true reasons why you are doing well or not doing well. For each situation, your wellness statements may be different because different issues will seem appropriate for discussion with a colleague, family member, friend, partner, or in the privacy of your journal. If situations two through six do not fit your lifestyle, first come up with five situations where someone might ask you a version of “How are you?” and then continue with writing a one-page answer for each.
Quotation for Percolation:
The world can only be as sane and healthy as the individuals living in it. If we want to live in a balanced environment, we must find and heal what is out of balance with ourselves.
Mahatma Gandhi
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Reflection Excursions ™
Let’s take a trip. Let’s set off on a journey. Let’s pack lighter this time, set out earlier, and travel longer. My husband gave me two new travel journals for Christmas and I long to select a pen and direction and begin moving and writing. For me the journey and the journal begin at the first hint of the road. When the car is packed, the door is locked, the mail and newspaper suspended, our feet leave the ground and the journey begins. If the first setting isn’t Route 80 East or West, and it isn’t the bus station on North Atherton, it must be the University Park airport. Our airport is so small and easily accessible that I hope to achieve my lifetime quota of courtesy airport pick-ups and drop-offs right here. We can arrive with less than an hour before a flight and have time to check-in, browse the tiny café/convenience shop, pass through security, and read half of the latest Newsweek in the isolation ward, i.e. boarding lounge. AND I can begin my journal. Why not? Airports, bus stations even more so, and even Route 80 are rich experiences. If we had a train station here it would rank near the top for me in terms of experiential wealth! Just recalling the lives I’ve lived in and through Grand Central Station would fill a dozen notebooks! And the narratives, fortunately short, of being lost in Penn Station would resonate far and wide. These are all liminal spaces where lives are in flux. The outward signs of dramatic transitions, momentous change, minute developments, slight shifts, sorrowful partings, joyous reunions, palpable doubt, painful hesitation, determined courses, and heavy-footed routine flow through these spaces. And that’s not to mention undercurrents. The workers in these spaces are often invisible vectors just slightly below consciousness, even when we approach on the opposite sides of the glass at the ticket window. And even deeper beneath or behind yet another scrim are those who take refuge in the corners, stairwells, hallways, and empty platforms. They inhabit the shadowy places in the stations and in our consciousness, even when they approach us.
My travel journal will begin in this liminal space between here and there, a place that is a destination only to those employed on the premises. I’ve written about the seating in airports in Italy, about dignified garbage collection in Philadelphia, about waiting and waiting and waiting in Rome. I was fascinated by the staccato of metal cards clicking on the huge, old fashioned departure boards at the Keleti Station in Budapest on a very hot day in July. Our misadventures at Heathrow airport in London and at Guarulhos (GRU) in São Paulo have been duly noted for after-the-fact amusement. No, I lied; Grand Central Station IS a destination space for me. I try to visit this monumental space when I’m in NYC to feel all of the kinetic energy on at least three levels and in four or five dimensions. I feel more alive there, vibrating at a different frequency, alert and poised for action.
For Your Writing:
Why not? Go to a station or airport in your city or town. Pack light: just a pen and notebook. What do you see, hear, smell, feel? Write about the surface first and then observe the same scene looking at what’s not obvious the first time. It’s ok to imagine why someone is lingering at the café or why someone is running through the terminal. Pick one facet from your observation of this space and ask yourself what it means. For example, what does it mean that many airports have become like shopping malls? What does that say about our lives? How do you feel about shopping in airports? OR observe people waiting. What occupies them while waiting? What occupies you? What is “good” waiting vs. “not-so-good” waiting? Do people change when they travel? Do you?
Quotation for Percolation :
“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves.” Pico Iyer
My travel journal will begin in this liminal space between here and there, a place that is a destination only to those employed on the premises. I’ve written about the seating in airports in Italy, about dignified garbage collection in Philadelphia, about waiting and waiting and waiting in Rome. I was fascinated by the staccato of metal cards clicking on the huge, old fashioned departure boards at the Keleti Station in Budapest on a very hot day in July. Our misadventures at Heathrow airport in London and at Guarulhos (GRU) in São Paulo have been duly noted for after-the-fact amusement. No, I lied; Grand Central Station IS a destination space for me. I try to visit this monumental space when I’m in NYC to feel all of the kinetic energy on at least three levels and in four or five dimensions. I feel more alive there, vibrating at a different frequency, alert and poised for action.
For Your Writing:
Why not? Go to a station or airport in your city or town. Pack light: just a pen and notebook. What do you see, hear, smell, feel? Write about the surface first and then observe the same scene looking at what’s not obvious the first time. It’s ok to imagine why someone is lingering at the café or why someone is running through the terminal. Pick one facet from your observation of this space and ask yourself what it means. For example, what does it mean that many airports have become like shopping malls? What does that say about our lives? How do you feel about shopping in airports? OR observe people waiting. What occupies them while waiting? What occupies you? What is “good” waiting vs. “not-so-good” waiting? Do people change when they travel? Do you?
Quotation for Percolation :
“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves.” Pico Iyer
Monday, January 14, 2008
Writing and passion
January 14, 2008
“Move in the direction of your passion” is one of my themes for 2008. It is a personal theme as well as a theme for Metaphorical Ink. Metaphorical Ink is my passion taking the form of a small business dedicated to writing--all writing all the time. I am a writing magnet (or magnate, depending on your perspective and pronunciation!). I am evidence; I seek evidence; I produce evidence that writing is a protean force that can literally change your mind and your world. Writing is thinking and discovery; writing is strategic planning and leadership; writing is slow food for the brain. Writing is fission and fusion, locomotion and magnification. Writing is agony and bliss.
I’ve noticed a pattern in my writing habits: I write more when I am distressed or when someone I love is distressed. At these times, I am likely to write poetry. When we travel, I want to write in my journal almost constantly to capture all the thoughts and feelings aroused by new sights as simple as vegetables in a market or as complex as being solicited by persons begging for money or food. When life is good and everyone is happy, my writing might be limited to grocery lists, thank you notes, networking emails to arrange lunch or dinner with friends and colleagues, and "work product." Work product for me can be a proposal, a conference paper, a curriculum, a presentation outline, website text, promotional pieces, or summaries of various kinds. On email, just today, I’ve had to write a proposal, lots of logistical messages arranging flights and meetings, a list of “starter questions” for a memoir client, a description for a cookbook project, and right now I’m avoiding writing a summary of recent sibling discussions about the settling of my father’s estate. Writing brings shape to the chaotic flux of ordinary life. An issue may threaten on the horizon like a dark tornado funnel until I can wrestle it to the ground in paragraphs, or maybe even lists, or sometimes in a four column table.
For Your Writing
What are your writing habits? When do you write and why? What do you write or avoid writing? Is it all painful, or does it bring along some benefit, some gain with the pain? (1)Make a list of all the kinds of writing you have done in the past month: letters, lists, filling out forms, work documents of various kinds, absence notes or permission notes for children’s school, want ads, eulogies, obituaries, blogs, and so on. (2) For each one, write one of three phrases: red light, green light, yellow light. Red light is for “STOP torturing me!” Green light is for “I can keep GOING on this route!” and Yellow light is for “I will continue but slowly and with CAUTION.” (3) Write a short paragraph describing yourself when you approach Red light writing, a separate paragraph about yourself when you approach Green light writing, and the same for when you approach Yellow light writing. For example, are you stressed or relaxed, what is your attitude, is it voluntary or mandatory, do you procrastinate or are you eager, are you typing or handwriting, etc.? (4) Try to add one more sentence to each paragraph about WHY each group is Red or Green or Yellow for you.
Quotation for Percolation
"The writer is an instrument of transformation." -Jeanette Winterson
“Move in the direction of your passion” is one of my themes for 2008. It is a personal theme as well as a theme for Metaphorical Ink. Metaphorical Ink is my passion taking the form of a small business dedicated to writing--all writing all the time. I am a writing magnet (or magnate, depending on your perspective and pronunciation!). I am evidence; I seek evidence; I produce evidence that writing is a protean force that can literally change your mind and your world. Writing is thinking and discovery; writing is strategic planning and leadership; writing is slow food for the brain. Writing is fission and fusion, locomotion and magnification. Writing is agony and bliss.
I’ve noticed a pattern in my writing habits: I write more when I am distressed or when someone I love is distressed. At these times, I am likely to write poetry. When we travel, I want to write in my journal almost constantly to capture all the thoughts and feelings aroused by new sights as simple as vegetables in a market or as complex as being solicited by persons begging for money or food. When life is good and everyone is happy, my writing might be limited to grocery lists, thank you notes, networking emails to arrange lunch or dinner with friends and colleagues, and "work product." Work product for me can be a proposal, a conference paper, a curriculum, a presentation outline, website text, promotional pieces, or summaries of various kinds. On email, just today, I’ve had to write a proposal, lots of logistical messages arranging flights and meetings, a list of “starter questions” for a memoir client, a description for a cookbook project, and right now I’m avoiding writing a summary of recent sibling discussions about the settling of my father’s estate. Writing brings shape to the chaotic flux of ordinary life. An issue may threaten on the horizon like a dark tornado funnel until I can wrestle it to the ground in paragraphs, or maybe even lists, or sometimes in a four column table.
For Your Writing
What are your writing habits? When do you write and why? What do you write or avoid writing? Is it all painful, or does it bring along some benefit, some gain with the pain? (1)Make a list of all the kinds of writing you have done in the past month: letters, lists, filling out forms, work documents of various kinds, absence notes or permission notes for children’s school, want ads, eulogies, obituaries, blogs, and so on. (2) For each one, write one of three phrases: red light, green light, yellow light. Red light is for “STOP torturing me!” Green light is for “I can keep GOING on this route!” and Yellow light is for “I will continue but slowly and with CAUTION.” (3) Write a short paragraph describing yourself when you approach Red light writing, a separate paragraph about yourself when you approach Green light writing, and the same for when you approach Yellow light writing. For example, are you stressed or relaxed, what is your attitude, is it voluntary or mandatory, do you procrastinate or are you eager, are you typing or handwriting, etc.? (4) Try to add one more sentence to each paragraph about WHY each group is Red or Green or Yellow for you.
Quotation for Percolation
"The writer is an instrument of transformation." -Jeanette Winterson
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