10-6-16

The Perfect Pen

Someone who does quantities of writing might have had the same dilemma I have experienced. All of the documentation required of me in my professional life was done by hand. I suppose that now such documentation for most jobs is recorded into a computer. I, too, have experimented with a keyboard in my own writing and have become almost paralyzed at times trying to decide how best to do it: should I drag a pen along a piece of paper or should I sit before a screen and watch all the words flow silently onto the blank page? Should I use a computer (we still refer to keyboarding as writing) to divulge to my secret journals all the longings and disappointments of my heart or should I hover over the page with pen in hand and let the tears drip and warp? If I am convinced that what I write should last for a very long time, then what pen should I pick to do that? If the paper is too thick and the pen point too fine, then the words will fade or appear anemic. If the paper is thin and the ink in the fountain pen is too copious, then every word on the page will spread and the backside of the paper will become a palimpsest of sorts and useless for recording additional thoughts.

So it is that a dedicated writer finds many excuses for not actually sitting down and beginning the process of writing. All the same, there are some considerations about writing and the tools that make that happen that reflect how one views writing in general. A pen is simply a tool that, like all tools, allows us to produce something else. And, like all tools, there isn't a single tool that does everything we want to do. So, it makes good sense to match the right pen with the paper, to pick the ink that suits the pen, to pick the nib that matches how the pen slides over the surface of the paper, and to have a pen that fits into one's hand like the handshake one hopes to get from an old friend.

In some cases, the pen selected is the one that forms the crispest letters and allows words to be compacted or spread out along the line. Ball point pens ask for a firmer grip and heavier leaning onto the paper. Ball point pens are easily rotated or held unconventionally by the hand with a uniform line emerging from the tip. Fountain pens, on the other hand, are notoriously finicky about their loyalty to their original master, having been formed by an individual's hand pressure and angle of writing. The nibs on fountain pens inherited by sons from their fathers (or daughters from their mothers) are sharpened in a way that may tear at the paper in the next generation and (who knows?) revive resentments of a difficult childhood. Managing such a great burden may mean that perfectly good tools may get discarded along with fond memories of an otherwise demanding dad.

The choice of ink may also be how one expresses the deepest thoughts and the most felicitous sentiments. What do brown or green ink connote? Should one take a chance on "cocoa" or "indigo" or "sage"? Writing snobs say that a bottle of ink should be discarded after a year so as not to clog the point of the pen. On the other hand, ball point refills never seem to run out, leaving one with the difficult decision about whether to replace early (how do you know?) when a writing project requires consistency. And, if one is conservation minded, should refills be thrown out before they have run out, just because one now wants black instead of blue?

I don't suppose it needs to be a matter of either/or but could be both/and when it comes to choosing a writing tool. One could prefer a fountain pen for those rare thank-you notes or for the letter that sails from the heart and binds one soul to another. The ball point pen might be the best tool for a father when writing his homesick daughter away from home for the first time, hoping that his nearly illegible writing will comfort her and not deepen her loneliness. The keyboard might serve better for the note that says you don't want to talk about it. In these rushed and frantic times, the fountain pen is the best reminder to slow down thinking and reacting and to foster slower responses. Writing in general is the antidote to prolonged screen times that so many of us now indulge. Writing one another forms bridges and useful connections. Handwriting implies slower and deeper reading. There are more lines to read between and greater space for it. Writing carries intention and thoughtful writing pulls from us our better selves as we make gestures of connection with others.

Perhaps these considerations are more than necessary when all we are trying to do is communicate. I would suggest, however, that the thoughts we put into when and how we write are important to a communication that supersedes the present trends toward clipped and compressed writing. Who are we when we write? Where do we find our inspirations? How does what we choose to write affect our relationships with the recipients? How are we changed by our writing? How does our writing allow for creativity in ourselves and how does it coax creativity from others? If we can stand back and in a detached way observe ourselves writing, how do we appear? Are we hunched or open? Do we pause often to think our way into our writing? Do we edit or cross out? How many other ways do we bring ourselves to our writing? And how do we invite writing companions?

I think of how daunting other writers have found the blank page. It is less a potential space with limitless possibilities than it is a millstone. Perhaps one has selected the wrong tool for this writing. Perhaps the writer hasn't considered how we can be completed by what we write. Marrying intention with acceptance of one's own small efforts can often lead to a process of growth and maturation. Perhaps we are too afraid of trusting ourselves to create new and lasting ideas. Yes, mindfulness can center us in our deepest and most noble thoughts.

It is worth considering all of these things when writing. One needn't become paralyzed attempting to make writing a perfect effort. One only needs to want to connect the inner life with ordinary life. And it is possible that the most perfect pen for you is actually a pencil.

9-25-16

Infrastructure

I believe in infrastructure. I believe that almost anything one could name could be considered infrastructure, as everything depends on something else. In some cases, there is building and in other cases there is borrowing and sharing. But almost every process one could name refers back to a dependence on infrastructure. Most of the time we think of infrastructure as hard metal and wiring or stonework used in the construction of bridges and buildings. Indeed, these objects are what we think of when we talk about the invisibility of that which sustains our way of life. We take for granted that there always has been and always will be an interstate highway system and railroads, semi-trucks and trains to haul all the other objects we take for granted, as well as the buildings in which we are treated for disease and into which we go to worship or take refuge from storms. There are the bridges that connect us to land out of reach of our swimming capacities and landing strips that catch us when we come back to earth from our flights. 

Books and ideas are also infrastructure, as is the educational system that allows us access to them. Teachers are part of our infrastructure and so are our lineages of ancestors. In a special way, we humans are the infrastructure for the next generation of humans and our own DNA is an infrastructure for the growth and development of who we are and who we become. We are the substrates for viruses and bacteria. Our gut linings (our microbiome) harbor and entertain billions of microbes that are doing things for and to us that we are just now beginning to uncover. The science that is being enlisted for this new frontier is the latest iteration of scientific concepts and sophisticated technology that are themselves infrastructure for future discoveries. Infrastructure implies process and change and growth, even though our first-pass thoughts consider it fixed and finished. 

When my hiking partner and I were trudging along the crest of the hill behind the house, we were attracted by the beautiful lichen structures inhabiting the stones tossed up by the millennial-long heaving of the earth. It had rained very recently and that made the lichen colors much more vibrant and beautiful. In researching lichens, I found out that the world of lichens, a symbiotic cluster of algae and fungi, is a very complex world indeed. Even the taxonomic classification of the 20,000 species is complicated and packed with names that won't ever enter the common lexicon. It is believed that lichen cover about 6% of the surface of the planet and species are found in all ecological systems from alpine to hot lava beds. Some species never land and reproduce but travel around the world on air currents. While lichens are not our preferred food, they are the food source for some animals in harsh climates. They, too, are infrastructure, just as the stones and other surfaces onto which they cling. 

It is humbling to think that a lowly lichen plant has a longer life-span than I do. It is so common to think of humans as the center of the universe and to think of our own infrastructures as permanent and precious that we don't consider how impermanent we really are. Perhaps, thinking of humans as dispensable is threatening. Perhaps, the thought depresses us. It is not easy to think that sometime in the future (the future begins tomorrow or the next moment) we will no longer be here to take our lives for granted. We live our lives under the illusion that we will live forever. The truth is that we won't live forever, but we will last forever. If one accepts the idea that matter is neither created nor destroyed, then what becomes of us when we die? It is an age-old question that bedevils us even today. 

One needn't subscribe to a religious tradition or philosophical dogma to participate in the conversation about what death means to us humans. From the perspective of lichen infrastructure, it may be that some of our atoms will be incorporated into one of those species that floats in and out of clouds and circles the world, much as we once dreamt when we were young and wondered what it would be like to fly so high. Perhaps, we will become part of a smaller community attached to a rock somewhere on a hillside, only to be discovered and admired by some hikers out for a Sunday walk on a beautiful fall day. Who knows? 

The idea of becoming something other than what we see in other humans around us is a mentally challenging exercise. But if we take the challenge and think more broadly and deeply about what life means and what interdependence means, then perhaps the idea might become one of freedom rather than one in which we are imprisoned by our limited concepts of birth and death. Perhaps we will be able to see how beautiful the present moment is and how beautiful the world is from the perspective of a bipedal and upright being. Perhaps we will begin to comprehend how beautiful it is that the world is changing with us in it in all our forms. I believe in infrastructure. I am infrastructure.

8-28-16

Crop Rotation

The last post mentioned how Anne Lamott's brother became paralyzed by the extent of a postponed project in school, generating the bird-by-bird philosophy and giving the name to her book on life observations. This was on my mind this week when I harvested field tomatoes for seed and faced this crate of fruit.

It was a hot day in the field but I was able to sit in the shade of a building and begin the work of seeding all the tomatoes. As I sat there, it occurred to me that I was privileged to see this miracle of harvest. As I began to take each tomato, slice it open, and scoop out its seeds into a bucket, I knew that each of the tomatoes was having its own moment in my hands and that each of those moments was a metaphor for impermanence as well as the connections we shared as living beings. Now, lest one say how improbable this is, let me say that my intention was to move through the task as quickly as possible but it was only when I slowed down for each tomato that a more nuanced meaning emerged.

Certainly, not every task in our lives can be afforded the individual attention this tomato task required. Some tasks call forth greater energy and speed and that is appropriate to them. Persistent and consistent  hard work are innate to the profession of farming.  Few other professions offer as much metaphorical material to work with. In farming, Mother Nature is fully present. She is the metaphor for fertility and abundance. What she creates from the soil is nourishment. What is created demands the work of human hands for cultivation and eventual harvest. The seeds in every tomato are the beginning of a wave of abundance in years to come. The colors of the farm wash over us as we tend them and they tinge our dreams and our storytelling. Who hasn't heard the story of Jack and the Beanstalk?

The metaphorical way of farming is intrinsic to the reality of the work. Hand tools are the technology of choice for small-scale farming. Hands-and-knees weeding is the task of tender care for the limited crops. Small is beautiful, to borrow a phrase from E. F. Schumacher. Hard work is beautiful, too. Hard work is the heart of growing food for the hundreds who rarely consider how it has all come about. I sing the praises of the farmer, just as Walt Whitman did of all things and beings.

"These are the thoughts of all men of all ages and lands, they are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing or next to nothing,
If they do not enclose everything they are next to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This is the common air that bathes the globe."

Yes, being close to the earth is a privilege for one who has grown up on concrete and blacktop. It is soul work to be as intimate with the earth as the farmer is with his land. Seeding tomatoes for several hours made real how hard it is to be grateful for what the earth provides us. Yet, tomato-by-tomato, the song is sung. There is gladness in a farmer's hard life. Crops and the cycles of the seasons are a measure of our own mindfulness and commitment. Let us look closely at the mighty tomato. What can the tomato teach us?

8-21-16

Whither Wisdom?

Wisdom is where you find it. We have the idea that there is something fixed about wisdom and, to be sure, there are some universally accepted components of it. Those components are shared over time and space, in many cultural contexts, and among those who subscribe to them. Having said that about the solid nature of wisdom, there is something to be said for those same cultural contexts and the people whose lives include versions of wisdom that make us think that wisdom is fluid. To the same extent, truth is fluid. I am not talking here about "truthiness," that concept hatched by politicians to explain dark motives. I am talking about components essential to personal and civic wholeness.

Because my concept of wisdom is fluid, I read and study and act with the intent to find wisdom wherever it may be found. Even the mouths of babes may be sources of wisdom. My reading this past week brought to my attention several aspects of wisdom. Gary Snyder's The Practice of the Wild: Essays by Gary Snyder mentions one source of wisdom.

"So the people of civilization read books. For some centuries the 'library' and the 'university' have been our repository of lore. In this huge old occidental culture our teaching elders are books. Books are our grandparents!
"Philosophy is thus a place-based exercise. It comes from the body and the heart and is checked against shared experience. ... We make a full circle in acknowledging that it is necessary to pay attention to the village elders and also to the wise elders of the Occident who have been miraculously preserved through the somewhat fragile institution of the library."

Anne Lamott picks up the theme in this passage from Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

"Because for some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. They are full of all the things that you don't get in real life--wonderful, lyrical language, for instance, right off the bat. And quality of attention: we may notice amazing details during the course of a day but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention. An author makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift. My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I'm grateful for it the way I'm grateful for the ocean. Aren't you? I ask."

 It goes without saying that one era's "wisdom" is another era's junk thought. I'm not sure that there is a thing we could call common wisdom. If there were, wouldn't we all be kind and loving and compassionate? Wisdom doesn't seem to be commonly recognized, but there is wisdom for all of us to find. Books may be one repository and deep relationships may be another. In a time of loud language noise and bombast, we seek the wisdom that conforms to what Gary Snyder and Anne Lamott describe--in books as one source.

Thich Nhat Hanh, the well known Vietnamese monk, has spent most of his life promoting the wisdom we can find in each one of us. He has been teaching about mindfulness as the practice that uncovers our innate wisdom. He says that we are all related to one another because we are human beings. He calls this Interbeing. The mindfulness trainings he teaches include one for nourishment and healing. In part it says:

"Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I am committed to cultivating good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming. I will practice looking deeply into how I consume the Four Kinds of Nutriments, namely edible foods, sense impressions, volition, and consciousness. I am determined not to gamble, or to use alcohol, drugs, or any other products which contain toxins, such as certain websites, electronic games, TV programs, films, magazines, books, and conversations."

His wisdom is a path open to all of us. We are all able to enlist our intention, attention, and mindfulness in ways that open up the path to wisdom, to the universal elements of life that make us healthy and whole. In the long run, most paths of wisdom lead to the relief of suffering--ours and others'. The threads of wisdom we can pick up can be used to patch the fabric of a life shattered or a frayed civic conversation. Books are certainly a durable source of wisdom, but our experiences with other human beings and with all the beings and things of the earth can also be sources of wisdom for us. Books are a metaphor for wisdom sources, but experiences are the basic lifeblood of our loving concern for one another. Being and doing are the poles of our daily lives.

The Short List

One of the most interesting aspects of blogging for me is writing with the scary knowledge that others will be reading what I write from a personal perspective that is very different from mine. I like to think of this as other people "holding my feet to the fire", making me more accountable not only to myself but to them. I am aware that I need to scrutinize what I write with more care, being more certain that the words I choose are appropriate and that the they all come together in some sensible way. Even though we are in an age of massively overwhelming amounts of data, much of it is not really information, if by that we mean useful to the purposes of living a meaningful life. There is definitely pressure in all of our lives to consume information on a scale that, were it food, we would find ourselves massively obese and fundamentally disabled.

In light of this tendency for information consumption, for building a steady diet of new bytes and bites of data, it is counterintuitive to consider reading something we have already read and put aside. However, when one thinks back to the books that have made an impact on one's life, it is probably true that all of us could name at least one book that we would like to revisit. Maybe it was E. B. White's Charlottes' Web or (could this be true?) Melville's Moby Dick. I have caught myself saying "There is so much to read that rereading doesn't make much sense". I have a fondness for saying that "Life is short" and that serves as some sort of rationale for plowing ahead with the newly issued New York Times "bestseller". But these expressions don't ring true when it comes to rediscovering an old friend on the library shelf. Life is not so short that we can't welcome a new reading of a personal classic. Do we reject our old friends because they aren't young? Books from long ago are our elders. They contain some wisdom that has embedded itself in us and we honor their permanence by opening their covers. Wisdom is ever new and, in the case of what we glean from books, required reading.

All of us are amalgamations of influences we have accumulated over a lifetime and some of the most important are what we have gleaned from the books we have read. Even if we are ensconced in a livelihood that doesn't depend on reading, all of us have been formed by something we have read. An ongoing habit of reading brings us in touch with the minds of others whose life experiences overlap with ours in surprising and interesting ways. Of course, we won't be able to read everything on our lists of books, but we will be able to identify the books we have loved. It will be a much shorter list than the ones we have yet to crack open. It would be worth a few minutes of our time to compile our own short list of books that we might wish to reread.

 The old favorites will look very new and different in the light of where we now find ourselves moving through the thickets and paths of our daily lives. The fresh look we will get is just another good reason for starting over with them. Perhaps they have more to teach us, more to tell us about our memories and expectations for the future. Many well-thumbed books will now find us in different life circumstances, perhaps with children or partners or even grandchildren. We will read them silently or, better yet, aloud to a new audience that is evolving. The magic they held for us will be passed along to someone else and so it will go in the life of a good book. There won't be any winners or losers on our short lists. What books are on your short list?

8-7-16

Our dog Rosie and I (and dog Lucky for many years before this) go for a walk up beyond the house on the county road as often as weather and inclination allow. The land around us is packed with rocks and nature periodically thrusts them up through her skin and they protrude at all angles. Some around here charge money for others to come and gather just certain ones for sale to landscapers and home developers in distant places, as far away as California we are told. Sometimes the county scrapes the old road and lays up stones along the way, some bigger than 4-wheelers. When the road is scraped down and widened, the stones are shoved to the side and piled up in new places.

It has been my weakness to fall in love with stonescaping. I am not one of those purchasing rocks for clients in California. I am someone who uses them to build walls and rock gardens, all of which are designed to be small and inviting. I make stone paths to and from the gardens and around the old farmhouse that is our refuge. I have helped build cairns along the side of the county road where the stones are obvious. When I am building I am thinking about how each stone has a better face and a better edge and how that stone will fit in with all the others. No stone is left behind. There is no discard pile of rocks. The walls and gardens are nature's things and she does not discriminate in the beauty of each rock. Every rock has a place in the wall somewhere. Who am I to favor one over another?

Many of my walls were being built when something else was on my mind. When my dad was sick and I worried about him dying, I was building a wall and I dedicated the work to him. When I developed a space in the front of the house for a garden and was beginning the wall around it, the planes crashed into the World Trade Center. I had my portable radio on those days and as the tragic scene unfolded and the nation reeled I dedicated the wall to the victims and their families. I wished into every stone of the wall memories and commitment and healing. Somehow I knew that my hard work to construct something that had heft and stability was what I had to do. I knew that my wall was a small effort at counteracting encroaching death and immeasurable suffering. It was all I could do at the time.

Now, as time has passed and my walls remain much as they were when I first built them, I have taken them for granted. They continue to serve as they did when I laid them in along the garden's edge. But I have forgotten how they came to be metaphors for aspects of the human condition. When I read about someone in the Middle East being stoned, I don't think of my walls. When I hear that someone is "stoned" from drugs, I don't think of them. I am reminded to begin again with the things I take for granted. I am reminded to awaken to those things that have shaped me and which I have shaped. When I do this, I am in a dialogue with the earth. I am once more a resident of this place in our solar system amidst the multiplying galaxies that lie far beyond our measly comprehension. I could be swallowed by the incomprehensibility of it all, were it not for the stones stacked in the walls outside the door of my house. What else can I do but embrace each stone as a marker of this life all of us are leading?

So, one day, Rosie and I were on our walk and the cairn we had helped construct on the county road from all the stones cast up by the grader had been pushed over. In my earlier life, I might have lamented the loss. I might have been angry at the scattering of a precious thing. Stones are precious because of what we make of them. They have our memories and our intentions and dedication. This was a new and different day and the new cairn we began that day was fresh and common, as rocks are common and taken for granted. But we handle each one as though the whole wall could not be built without it. And in truth it would not be the same wall without it. So rocks are like minutes in our lives and like our intentions, too. They are like our commitments and our compassion. They are all the versions of love. They are elemental but we often take them for granted.

What happened?

8-4-16

So much has happened in the six years since I began this blog. It isn't necessary to catalog the details except to say that my journey has taken some twists and turns, like life for all of us. More importantly, what has happened to cause this blog to resurface is a realization that I needed to learn more about the technology of communication in the 21st Century. I am of a geezer age and instinctively inhibited when it comes to accepting change. Of course, I favor progress and have only lately come to understand how change is part of progress. Changing hearts and minds is a very difficult challenge and not always obvious but I am of the mind that progress is being made all the time. How do we notice it? Can it even be measured? Where is progress taking us?

I am reviving this blog at a time in our lives when so much is uncertain about the seaworthiness of our ship of State and the direction in which she is headed. I don't plan to advocate for any partisan causes here except for the causes that brought very different individuals together several hundred years ago to create the ship on which all of us are now passengers. As we are all passengers on this mighty ship of State, so are all people around the world passengers on this ship Earth. My intention is to advocate for all of us in a way that is relatively comfortable for me, as I am not by nature an "activist". All of us are activists in small ways that we might not notice. We are activists if we are members of a family and recognize the need to share a common lineage. We are activists if we buy organic produce and are willing to pay a slightly higher price for the safety it offers in this age of chemically treated mono-culture crops. We are activists if we volunteer for a local food bank or blood donation drive. We are activists in an almost infinite number of ways because activism implies an intention to engage one another for the good of all.

In addition, community and its varied iterations has come to represent a model for bringing diversity and tolerance into our lives when we are faced with troublesome dualities of us/them, black/white, for/against, good/evil, when we know deep inside ourselves that what brings us together as fellow human beings is greater than what separates us. Blogs, properly and respectfully constituted, serve to strengthen one's sense of community. Blogs are a forum for conversations among those who might otherwise disagree with one another. Ideally, a blog would gather together ideas about many truths and about beauty. It would be a pathway and not a destination. It would be a place where trust could be tested.

Perhaps my notion of what a blog is and can do is naive. I am willing to be taught and willing to be vulnerable, two aspects of my life that were not always prominent. Perhaps aging has had the effect of making my ego more pliable and permeable. I only hope so. In the spirit of community and sharing resources, I welcome your contributions to this conversation. In any case, I will periodically and in a more timely way add to this blog as ideas come to me or I am moved to share something with my community of readers.