Capturing those Quotes that Stimulate further Reflection and...

What I have learned from about twenty-years of serious reading is this: It is sentences that change my life, not books. What changes my life is some new glimpse of truth, some powerful challenge, some resolution to a long-standing dilemma, and these usually come concentrated in a sentence or two. I do not remember 99% of what I read, but if the 1% of each book or article I do remember is a life-changing insight, then I don’t begrudge the 99%. ~John Piper 

I have not read the book this quote is from nor anything from the author, but when I encountered this quote,  I recognized an experience I too have had.   As one ages, forgetting 99% of what you have read becomes an ever stronger possibility. 

And of course much of what one reads over the years is forgettable, some of it best forgotten...but words that are life changing, have life in them can be, to paraphrase an instruction in The Book of Common Prayer, read, marked and inwardly digested.  You are what you eat...

I  am currently reading a book on short story writing that has some great insights. It's valuable on many levels and yet due to the tone and perspective of the author I find myself unwilling to broadcast her gems. I may not begrudge the 99 %  I forget, but when work as a whole is marbled with mixed influence that requires significant work to sluice the gold from the dross, I am reminded how much matrix matters.  And it is what we draw into the very matrix of our own beings that matters the most.  

What will I do with Write Purpose and Bread on the Water this year?  There are a few  posts I have put up and then taken down... It is again the issue of  influence.

Recently I looked over entries that I began and never finished or chose not to post and found several that I began on boundaries.  Sometimes, seeing others' personal revelations on line, I  scurry off.  I remember a mandated group process class years ago, where one member offered herself up and others lured her  deeper into the woods of self revelation where wolves snarled and as a pack devoured her.  She completed the coursework, but did not become a psychotherapist. Perhaps it was ultimately a service to her.  She didn't belong, standing alone out in that field of work, but I couldn't reconcile the willingness of other up-and-comers to use her vulnerability against her.  And of course I learned that good Samaritans were next on the menu.

So what sort of reticent goop did I find trekking around in my unposted archives? 

2-11-11 The idea of making a true journal entry here is really beyond me.  Boundaries prohibit some revelations that would be completely central to the fluid stream of consciousness and dot connecting that are the benefits and delights of private writing.  Some boundaries are natural, true to my identity and are worthy  of observation, but others, though I may feel  their strong mandate may be external and unnecessarily restricting...

Okay, I am good with this...I don't want to do an on-line journal per se.  Journal and memoir writing, as rich and wonderful as it is, best not be confused with the art of literary fiction.  I may be both too otherwise occupied and too lazy to ever do the work fiction requires. 

7-2-11 As regards boundaries, the demands of work, profession, and identity are powerful. People ask,  "What do you do?"  Some people answer that question all the time with their neckline, from  collared priests to those sporting plunging cleavage on dark streets.  Others don't find identity in the doings of life.  Identity transcends what we do and yet we struggle with what how what we do  might be shaping, defining  or redefining us. 

Who can avoid asking "What am I doing?"  "What  have I done? "  " What can I do?"   "What  must I do? "

"What do you do?"  as a question is often just an honest attempt to get to know another, but sometimes,  it is asked just to size another up and compare how one fits into their personal hierarchy of importance.  Sometimes people are just asking how you put bread in your mouth, how do you get bread? Some want to know, if by their standards,  you can justify your existence.

Well themes such as these two unfinished, un-posted examples, apparently important to me, but thus far, hard for me to write about as they bring me up against my reticence, may have to come into clearer focus.  

Monterey, California the art of historical recreation...A Book Review

No More a Stranger  A Story of Robert Louis Stevenson  written in 1946  by Anne B. Fisher  is what she liked to call a "re-creation." She researched for six years to write this story of the four months in 1879 that Robert Louis Stevenson spent in Monterey, California.

I was almost put off by the romantic cover and already knew the basics and was not further interested in Stevenson's personal life, so I wasn't sure the book would hold me. 

 But ultimately this book is  a story of old Monterey, a town that is in many ways the belly button of  California history.   While this story is told in the third person and is a subjective narrative of  204 pages, the rest of the volume is sixty pages of chapter notes with photographs and sources, a bibliography, acknowledgements and an extensive index.

 I began looking at  the sources first and  saw  that the author  had worked hard to diligently unearth her chronicle and that she had faithfully annotated it with her written and oral sources and included contemporary photographs of many of the characters in the book.  It is a mark of scholarship standards of old to go to original source material and to truly show your source and I began to trust that a definitive picture of  cultural and historical significance was to be found in this story.

As the author says in her biographical notes:

Many readers of this book will wonder how much of the story is true.  It is all based on fact.  No character is imaginary-not even the horse.  Incidents happened as described, and anecdotes related were those actually told.  The only fictional episodes which enter into the story are some conversations which had to be filled in to retain the continuity. 

The people who encountered and helped RLS on his way were all hard working immigrant pioneers and the variety of people groups is well represented in this story.  In some ways this tale is about how much story itself is valued for quite a community had to rally around the twenty-nine year old "ink-slinger"  to keep him alive.  Even his $2.00 a week salary  at the local paper was from a secret hat passing  at the restaurant where RSL  found food, warmth and a friend in French proprietor Jules Simoneau.

No More a Stranger was first published in 1946 by Stanford University Press.
                                                                         ~

You'd generally get to somewhere Else if you ran very fast for a long time...

 as it was told to Alice in the Wonderland she encountered:

'Now! Now!' cried the Queen. 'Faster! Faster!' And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy.

The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, 'You may rest a little now.'

Alice looked round her in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe we've been under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!'

'Of course it is,' said the Queen, 'what would you have it?'

'Well, in our country,' said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.'

'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!' 

Words Escape Me but DNA Prevails

They do...words escape...but butterflies, Monarchs in particular, have captured my imagination of late.

 My only net is  my camera and my desire to understand them a little better.  I am fascinated that every fourth generation of Monarchs is like Methuselah, they live longer.  Most Monarch butterflies live for about two to six weeks, but every fourth generation, the ones born in the fall, live for several months.  They migrate to hibernate in warmer climes through the winter.   I marvel at these little wings and how many miles, they fly; 1000 to 2500 miles in some cases... to come back home.   Even the butterflies who have never been "home" before know how to get there....it is DNA as a relay race organizer. 


Well, you know if you really want to know about butterflies you can google them and read a proper entomological and scientific explanation of what I just garbled out.  As I said, words have been escaping me.    Here is my self portrait that I drew this morn...a bird in a nest of letters, nary a word in sight.



D N A must be in there somewhere...


I haven't written much of late.  I haven't even written to my daughter  because I miss her and knowing she is, off and on, a little homesick, out on her adventure...well  if I say how much I miss her ...
But this blog is for her, isn't it?   Of course.

Okay, here is the truth....I missed her so much that I even played a hand of on-line scrabble with her kitty...
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  
Today I am going to a garage sale of a sweet lady who is returning to her home-land.    The other day I was helping her with a simple task and suddenly she took a phone call...rapid fire she chattered away in her native tongue. I did not understand a word...except I could hear how deep a resonance the mother tongue has in her heart.   She ( my friend's  request to keep her departure a bit quiet on the web has me being impersonal here) has lived in the United States for thirteen years.  This land gave her shelter  from the kidnappings and dangers of her native Columbia.  Many of her friends and much of her family have moved away...but not her parents... and now, like a butterfly, she returns.   She has reduced the accumulation of the years down to four boxes to ship home; that and a heart full of memories and hopes and an awareness of  the truth  that her path did not fully open up here.   She described the dreams she has and that she returns to her land with her dreams still asking.  She says she has created a situation where it is hard to leave but knows she must not stay...
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  
Did you ever  play connect the dots?  You follow the numbers and draw the lines between each numbered dot and then maybe the picture will be a bird in a nest sitting on letters that won't quite make the words she wants.... to express her love and hope for those she loves....

The day calls, I look out the window and see what I see?  There is a little sailboat on the blue. As my dear runaway- to- the-circus daughter says....onward.  I guess if she can write about being homesick, it is okay for me to admit that I miss her proximity here mightily... and this doesn't even get into the much closer but still not quite nearby other "story."  This post is for you too.  

Framing One's Perspective

     There's a dead tree in the view.  It's just as tall as its living neighbor, but green no more.  How one looks at a dead tree, feels about it, may be important.  That tree has held that spot for many years and for now there is a dead tree in a very lovely view.

It has reminded me that life cycles are not neat, the comings and goings are unexpected and then the view is changed.

   

It's important not to consider the view imperfect.  

There are so many young trees striving to get established...

A favorite way of writing.

I was oblivious to and yet comforted by the surrounds...a dear friend took this picture of me.
Away for a few days at a mountain retreat I found myself free to be writing.
Where do you like to write?

September 11, 2011 ~ Rest in Peace