July 4th: (Momentary) Freedom from Self-Consciousness

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So there’s this new writerly-blogging trend — not really a dangerous one, but it sure feels like one to a cautious soul like Yours Truly. Which is: throw caution to the winds. Post online something you’ve written, and… ask for feedback.

I think I’m going to try that, and I’ll get to that in a moment. [Whoops — too late!] I’ve tried that, briefly, over the last couple days, and depending on how that works out I may post about the experience later.

But first I want to lay the groundwork. I want to tell you about a sort of breakthrough I had last week, in working on Seems to Fit. (That’s the WIP’s new title — coming up with a final (?) title not the breakthrough I speak of now, although it was a huge weight off my mental shoulders then, and still.)

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Sudden, Radiant Magic

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From whiskey river:

In the morning I mused
It won’t return, the magic of life
it won’t return

Suddenly in my house the sun
became alive for me
and the table with bread on it
gold
and the flower on the table
and the glasses
gold
And what happened to the sadness
In the sadness too, radiance.

(“Zelda” (Zelda Schneersohn Mishkovsky), from The Spectacular Difference)

….and:

Gazing at the Cascade on Lu Mountain

Where crowns a purple haze
A shimmer in sunlight rays
The hill called Incense-Burner Peak,
from far

To see, hung over the torrent’s wall,
That waterfall
Vault sheer three thousand feet, you’d say
The Milky Way
was tumbling from the heavens, star on star.

(Li Bai, a/k/a Li Po)

…and:

Stuff your eyes with wonder… Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.

(Ray Bradbury)

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Breaking WIP News: We Have a Title

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A couple weeks ago, I posted on the importance of selecting a good title for your work. Here’s what I said then, in part:

I’ve struggled for years, off and on, with the title of the WIP. When I tell you I’ve been calling it Grail, I know that instantly summons up certain… certain somethings in your head. Those somethings may or may not in fact apply to my story…
…
So no, it’s not going to be Grail in the long run. I don’t know what it’s going to be.

Well, I think I’ve found what I was looking for. Below, the story behind the new (and, I think, forever) title.

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Sublime

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From whiskey river (last two stanzas):

The American Sublime

How does one stand
To behold the sublime,
To confront the mockers,
The mickey mockers
And plated pairs?

When General Jackson
Posed for his statue
He knew how one feels.
Shall a man go barefoot
blinking and blank?

But how does one feel?
One grows used to the weather,
The landscape and that;
And the sublime comes down
To the spirit itself,

The spirit and space,
The empty spirit
In vacant space.
What wine does one drink?
What bread does one eat?

(Wallace Stevens)

Not from whiskey river, a reading of the above poem by Ken Worsley of Trans-Pacific Radio (over Ball and Biscuit by the White Stripes, as a background track):

(You might also be interested in reading Worsley’s account of how he came to read the poem this way, over this background music. That page is where I found the above podcast.)

Over the past week, whiskey river also cited a poem called, there, “Changing Places.” But, well, there isn’t any such poem in Rilke’s work*; it’s actually an excerpt from the start of his Ninth Elegy. In one translator’s version, from 1977 (and regardless of the title or the translation, yes, sublime):

Why, when this short span of being could be spent
like the laurel, a little darker than all
the other green, the edge of each leaf fluted
with small waves (like the wind’s smile) — why,
then, do we have to be human and, avoiding fate,
long for fate?

Oh, not because happiness,
that quick profit of impending loss, really exists.
Not out of curiosity, not just to exercise the heart
— that could be in the laurel, too…

But because being here means so much, and because all
that’s here, vanishing so quickly, seems to need us
and strangely concerns us. Us, to the first to vanish.
Once each, only once. Once and no more. And us too,
once. Never again. But to have been
once, even if only once,
to have been on earth just once — that’s irrevocable.

(Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by A. Poulin [source])

Now, something not from whiskey river…

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Gratuitous Sunday Poem

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(I love the word “gratuitous” — one of those ambiguous words, like “cleave,”
which hold multiple contradictory meanings until you put them in context.
In this post’s title, of course, gratuitous isn’t wearing its uncalled for or
unjustified persona; it’s meant to connote something like unasked for or
freely offered, since I seldom post on Sundays anymore.)

Just encountered this lovely bit in today’s edition of the Writer’s Almanac e-newsletter. It seems to fit, on a June Sunday on which the temperature threatens to go into triple digits for, like, the fifth or sixth straight day.

Rendezvous

Let’s meet in Santa Fe
where we can stroll holding hands
along the acequia madre [1]
then sip espresso
at the bookstore on Garcia Street.

Let’s meet in Santa Fe
and bask like lizards
on the rocks at Bandelier [2]
or explore the secrets
of remote creek beds.

Let’s meet in Santa Fe
to share our stories and let
the whisper of cottonwood leaves
fill the silences between.

Let’s meet in Santa Fe
and eat posole with our eggs
and laugh, and love, and turn
the calendar to the wall
for a few brief days.

(Ted McMahon, from The Uses of Imperfection)

________________________________

[1] The acequia madre — literally “mother ditch” — is an old Spanish-era irrigation canal in Santa Fe’s east side. See desert11sailor’s excellent Flickr photo gallery, from which the photo at the top of this post comes, for a walking tour to put you in the mood. (If you need help, I mean.) The Writer’s Almanac misspells the first word as acequina, which as far as I know doesn’t mean anything at all. (No idea how McMahon spelled it in the original — can’t find it anywhere online out of its Almanac context.)

[2] “Bandelier” is Bandelier National Monument.

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Review: Michael Perry: COOP

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My review at The Book Book is up (as promised, weeks ago).

I think most of you are probably familiar with E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web and (with Will Strunk) The Elements of Style, maybe Stuart Little and so on. If you’ve read his book of essays, though — particularly the ones written once he left the city to live on a farm in rural Maine — you’ll be familiar with some of the themes which Coop explores, both the light-hearted and the profoundly moving.

Michael Perry is not E.B. White. And thank heavens for that (in both directions).

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Writing and Silence

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From whiskey river:

Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train.

(Thomas Merton, Illusory Flowers in an Empty Sky)

Not from whiskey river:

Silence

I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence of the sick
When their eyes roam about the room.
And I ask: For the depths,
Of what use is language?
A beast of the field moans a few times
When death takes its young.
And we are voiceless in the presence of realities —
We cannot speak.

A curious boy asks an old soldier
Sitting in front of the grocery store,
“How did you lose your leg?”
And the old soldier is struck with silence,
Or his mind flies away
Because he cannot concentrate it on Gettysburg.
It comes back jocosely
And he says, “A bear bit it off.”
And the boy wonders, while the old soldier
Dumbly, feebly lives over
The flashes of guns, the thunder of cannon,
The shrieks of the slain,
And himself lying on the ground,
And the hospital surgeons, the knives,
And the long days in bed.
But if he could describe it all
He would be an artist.
But if he were an artist there would be deeper wounds
Which he could not describe.

There is the silence of a great hatred,
And the silence of a great love,
And the silence of an embittered friendship.
There is the silence of a spiritual crisis,
Through which your soul, exquisitely tortured,
Comes with visions not to be uttered
Into a realm of higher life.
There is the silence of defeat.
There is the silence of those unjustly punished;
And the silence of the dying whose hand
Suddenly grips yours.
There is the silence between father and son,
When the father cannot explain his life,
Even though he be misunderstood for it.

There is the silence that comes between husband and wife.
There is the silence of those who have failed;
And the vast silence that covers
Broken nations and vanquished leaders.
There is the silence of Lincoln,
Thinking of the poverty of his youth.
And the silence of Napoleon
After Waterloo.
And the silence of Jeanne d’Arc
Saying amid the flames, “Blesséd Jesus” —
Revealing in two words all sorrows, all hope.
And there is the silence of age,
Too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it
In words intelligible to those who have not lived
The great range of life.

And there is the silence of the dead.
If we who are in life cannot speak
Of profound experiences,
Why do you marvel that the dead
Do not tell you of death?
Their silence shall be interpreted
As we approach them.

(by Edgar Lee Masters, about whom I first wrote not quite a year ago)

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Breaking It Down

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From whiskey river:

The states of mind or feelings that art can excite have been helpfully distinguished in Sanskrit aesthetics, where they are called rasas, from a word meaning “juice” or “essence”. A fully achieved work of art should flow with all nine of them: their names might be transposed into English as wonder, joy, sexual pleasure, pity, anguish, anger, terror, disgust and laughter.

(Marina Warner, Monsters of Our Own Making [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Naming of Parts

To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And to-day we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and
forwards,
For to-day we have naming of parts.

(Henry Reed, from Lessons of the War [source]; see an excellent film interpretation of the poem here.)

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Wild

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[Image above, “Where the Wild Things Are,” a tribute to Maurice Sendak
by elmicro of the deviantArt site. Click the image to see the original.]

Today marks Maurice Sendak’s 81st birthday.

This year also marks the 45th anniversary of the publication of Where the Wild Things Are.  From 100 Best Books for Children:

After creating art for almost fifty books by other authors, Sendak took up a project of his own begun in November 1955, a saga called “Where the Wild Horses Are.” But since he couldn’t draw horses very well, he tried to think of another character he might use — eventually focusing on “Wild Things.” That idea brought back childhood memories of his Brooklyn relatives — aunts, uncles, cousins — who would come visiting and eat his family food. They pinched his cheeks and cooed over him, saying, “You’re so cute, I could eat you up.” Sendak brought these relatives and the movie King Kong together in his story caldron. As Sendak drew and redrew the Wild Things — at first quite skinny and under-nourished — they gained weight and density.

…

The writer’s favorite fan letter reads: “How much does it cost to get to where the Wild Things are? If it is not expensive, my sister and I would like to spend the summer there.”

The book’s grip on the popular imagination — at least in the US, among the generations which have grown up since 1964 — boggles the mind. And among artists and illustrators? Pfft: words don’t suffice.

(For example, just check out, the deviantArt site where thousands of indie/professional artists display their work online. Do a search on “wild things” and you get over 12,000  hits, among them the illustration which tops this post: Max giving a Wild Thing as good as he gets.  Not all of those hits refer to the book, but a lot — I mean, a lot — of them do.)

Here’s a video of Sendak talking about “his work, childhood, [and] inspirations”:

Finally, if you follow such things you probably already know about the forthcoming film version of Where the Wild Things Are, from director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Dave Eggers. Here’s the trailer for it:

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WIP Excerpt: Al Castle Meets… Someone Important

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Background: This passage’s action takes place in 1959. The “Al” here is Al Castle, who owns a metalworking company in southeast Pennsylvania, in a small town named Caerleon. His company has been acquired by a big multi-national corporation named Sarras, which also owns a Welsh firm which brews a particularly elegant, powerful, and pricey ale. Sarras has asked Al to arrange the manufacture of a one-of-a-kind corporate emblem for the brewer: a mug, or a tankard — something like that — which they plan to feature in a series of TV commercials and print ads, at ceremonial corporate functions and the like.

One problem: Al’s company is a manufacturing firm, geared to mass production. He’s terrified that he’s taken on a job that he can’t perform, has promised more than he can deliver. He needs to impress his new board of directors. What can he do?

He’s pondering all this while he finishes up a cup of coffee in a local luncheonette, called Mr. Bill’s. And he’s pretty much decided he’s going to have to admit failure to the people at Sarras. He gets up from his table and leaves Mr. Bill’s.

—-

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