Someone commented on their smart phone’s capabilities. I responded, “I have a dumb phone.” Which is true. Or maybe it’s my phone that has the dumb one. But, perspective, it’s all a matter of.

Anyway. I don’t text or applicate. What I have done, forever (hm, as I grow longer in years that’s less an exaggeration), is appreciate and be nurtured by books, those texts which are somewhat longer lived. This has become my new thought for the current year, a very old and lovely thought, that still rings in my self like music (and magic): Which book shall I read today?

Here is a taste of my findings, relating to artful stuff, from C.S. Lewis’s wonderful Surprised by Joy:

To compare and to prefer [is] an operation that does little good even when dealing with works of art and endless harm when dealing with nature. Total surrender is the first step toward the fruition of either. Shut your mouth; open your eyes and ears. Take in what is there and give no thought to what might have been there or what is somewhere else. That can come later, if it must come at all. (And notice here how the true training for anything whatever that is good always prefigures and, if submitted to, will always help us in, the true training for the Christian life. That is a school where they can always use your previous work whatever subject it was on.)

A little later in the same volume is a smidge that inspires me with desire to start a whole new blog. (In fact, I did):

What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing. You may take any number of wrong turnings; but keep your eyes open and you will not be allowed to go very far before the warning signs appear. You may have deceived yourself, but experience is not trying to deceive you. The universe rings true wherever you fairly test it.

I sat up, awake, not sure where I was. There was some urgency, something wrong, but I couldn’t think what. Maisa’s white bedclothes rose and fell slightly with her breathing. Only a dream. I slipped out of bed and found my socks. It was daylight out. The bedroom felt dim and stale. Maisa had pulled the curtain shut against the sun, though the window had been bare all night to the Ramadan moon. Yes, my friend was still breathing. It wasn’t too late. I didn’t have to be tormented by my dreams like Maisa was by hers.

My summer reading included Lisa Ohlen Harris’s book, Through the Veil, from which I snipped the above quote. I had read a few of her essays in their original form in journals, such as “The Pied Piper of Damascus” (Eclectica and Rosebud) and “Torn Veil” (Relief Journal). Separately, they wowed me. Together, they have brought me inside Lisa’s memories of people who are like me and yet who view life through different cultural lenses.

Her first trip to Damascus, Syria was with a group of ethnographic researchers, and in that group was Todd, her future husband. The two of them were only friends until after they returned to the U.S., but later, married and with one child, they returned to live in Amman, Jordan and set up housekeeping and have two more daughters.

Ever since I read James Herriot’s books in grade school, I have loved a story told in snapshots, in smaller stories. This is how we relate our adventures to friends and family, whether relaxed on warm evenings or aching for news in cold waiting rooms. Lisa’s book travels well. It has accompanied me to the dentist’s office, the blood bank, my work breaks, and our easy chair. Even after finishing it, I’ve returned to her stories as I’ve followed up on thoughts I didn’t have to think first time through (such as, what do ethnographers do, anyway? and, was Miriam from Chapter 7 Sunni or Shia?).

The best part has been getting to know Lisa, whom I had so far experienced in her editor and writer aspects, but whose heart and thoughts I recommend getting into through these essays. As she mentioned on her blog a while ago, “When you hold my book in your hands, you’ll be holding the blue and the dim and the dark cloths of my life. You’ll trace your fingers across pages that reveal my struggles and my dreams.” Her skill makes doing so very worthwhile.

One’s a loaner, the Scientific American issue from 2005 about consciousness. Thanks to my friend Laura I can browse some of science’s surmises on the brain, since I have an idea in my brain to write a piece about decision-making and belief.

Three are brand new. The book I’m holding, Downstream from Trout Fishing in America, if you don’t know by the picture, is about Richard Brautigan. It arrived yesterday, and although I’m well into rereading On Writing Well, by William Zinsser, I scanned the first sentence of Fishing and was hooked. My great thanks go to Keith Abbott, good friend of Brautigan’s throughout the late sixties and seventies, for putting into words his knowledge of the man and of the times they shared in Haight-Ashbury and beyond. (Also thanks for updating this biography and including lots of pictures.)

For some time I’ve wanted to read Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola. I’ve only begun the introduction, but it looks greatly worthwhile.

And while I’m not a book review person, I will probably post about my friend Linda Clare’s novel, The Fence My Father Built, after I finish it. Linda was one of the frozen writers I visited in December who looked joyful despite her circumstances signing books at the fairgrounds. (Another of them, Dorcas Smucker, had her latest book for sale then, too. I’ve already finished and recommend Downstairs the Queen is Knitting as a great follow-up to her others.)

My treat to myself a few months ago was subscribing to Poets and Writers, and I hope to make time to finish each brimming edition as it arrives.

I haven’t even mentioned that in November I finished Dracula, and I really do recommend it. Not for nothing a classic. You’ll see where much of our vampire lore comes from. I learned that Buffy the Vampire Slayer got it right in her “dusting” method of killing vamps, mostly. The sinister creatures crumble to dust, if they are really old when you stake them (and cut off their heads, by the way, just to be sure).

One more book I’ll bring up, because I’ve dubbed it my favorite for 2009. While tending my dying dog, I plucked from the shelf a book I’d found months ago at Goodwill but never yet started. Stephen King recommended it as his favorite memoir, so I wasn’t sure if this was a good thing. But the title, A Three Dog Life, drew me. It’s a wonderful story, not really about the dogs, although they are critical characters. Abigail Thomas, you’re my current creative nonfiction hero.

In those days going around with Brautigan was like traveling inside one of his novels.
~Keith Abbott, Downstream from Trout Fishing in America, Astrophil Press, 2009~

Just when everybody else revs up in excitement over NaNoWriMo, NaBloPoMo, and all the other greatest things to do in and around cyberland, I start to chill out.

Or maybe it’s cozy up. Today our fire burned clear, strong, blithely, and glowingly throughout the hours, while chili simmered in the slow cooker. I’ve been reading through old journals, something I typically get a yen for this season. And I’ve got a novel going, but not one I or anyone penned recently. It’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Perfect for the yellowing light reflected by maple leaves nearly drifted off the front tree. Fun for Friday the thirteenth tomorrow. A tale about evil, but from the points of view of “innocents,” those wanting to do good. At least that’s how the story looks so far.

I wish each of you contentment in your pursuits this month. I think I’ll be around, but then again, maybe not. I’ll keep crafting an essay, reading journals and books, and seeing what blows by with the leaves, what skitters past in the shadows.

Last Friday I spent nearly eight hours preparing two submissions and toddling them off. Then I felt accomplished. Also, looking back, I think either of those attempts might, at some point, produce pages one could turn or click on with a sense of, “Nice. That gave me a break.” Many things in print exist to help us in such a way, I’m guessing.

It’s been, well, forever since I picked up a magazine in a waiting room with thoughts of escape as my only motivation. Well, that’s likely not true. I’ve been lured by celebrity photos and captions containing promised secrets of his/her battle with and ultimate success over weight/love/parent failure. But nearly always I’m scoping books and periodicals, imagining my written efforts and the publisher’s needs meeting in a satisfactory fashion.

So I’d love to know why other people pick up and start a magazine article, an anthology chapter, or a book. If you’re not always thinking about writing them, what context usually brings on your need to read, out in the real world?

I’m working on another guest blog, wherein I’ll reveal ways blogging itself has helped me write. Last night, in bed early even for me after a day out and away, I pondered the teacherly ways of silence.

Three years ago I published my first posts to thrumming quiet. Many times I decided, because no one read my words, I should quit. But I continued. The amazing words of others inspired me. In a language-fed universe, I felt I belonged. And, some days, people mentioned they were reading my stuff. The silence fell away in those moments, and all felt golden, like the serenity at a trail’s end where a distant waterfall hugs the mountain’s knee.

I often still flounder about in a wilderness inside myself. But writers’ stories on my shelf this summer encourage me. One is by Frank McCourt, who died in July at 79. He saw his first book, Angela’s Ashes, published when he was 65. Before this, he taught in public high schools. I’m nearly done reading his third memoir, Teacher Man, in which McCourt describes flailing about inside fairly often. Yet his wilderness was leading him to give his best.

Yesterday reminded me there’s beauty amid toil, heat, buzzing flies, and mucky-bottomed lakes. In fact, the loveliness surmounts those annoyances with ease. It’s why, long as I can, I’ll return for more.

Tell me, if you’d like, about the amazing and beautiful spaces always calling, challenging you to give your best.

This week, home again is a nice place. The path by the river feels like an extension of my rooms.

I’d never seen a black mallard before, until my walk the other day.

He joined this lady and a friend to dawdle beneath the path’s bridge. I’m sure they were ready for crumbs if I’d happened to have brought them some.

I’ve put up two new quotes on my site’s home page. I hope to share different ones more often from now on. The one from Annie Dillard sort of fits the pattern I find while working on essays. The quote by Wendell Berry is from my favorite poem right now. In it, Berry reflects on his project of being a poet, which involves crouching beside a creek in April rain, remembering stories his grandmother told him of a crazy lady. He says, “…I too am perhaps a little mad,/ standing here wet in the drizzle, listening/ to the clashing syllables of the water…”

I’m learning, I think, that the more I work to become a writer, the more I see I’m a student of writing. Sort of like the more I read (the Bible, especially, but poetry and essays, too), the more I find myself a student of the written word. And then the more I seek to live well, naturally, the more I’m reminded I am a student of life.

My favorite aspects of the book have to do with Gary’s humility. Reflective and honest, he doesn’t assign blame on a whim, and yet he comes across as genuine. So yeah, I like the book. I’ve corresponded a bit with Gary and find him very approachable. Today I got to see him in action. A reading is up that he did of his first, short chapter, so if you’d like to hear it, straight from the author’s mouth, here you go.

My daughter fasts, anticipating an Orthodox nativity observance in January. She leaves many items off her already-limited menu, but effectively it just makes her a gluten-free vegan. Lots of folks do that all the time. At least around this collegiate/middle-age-hippie region.

I’m on a bit of a blog fast. Slightly blocked, I think. But for my own purposes I’m writing. As always words come at their glacial rate. Still they arrive, given time and thoughtful energy.

Some days they’re pretty as snowflakes.

Other times I exist in aching despair, as I did after reading The Memory of Old Jack. Wendall Berry, a tobacco farmer my father’s age, living across the universe from my town, flawlessly describes aspects of my inner landscape. My heart opens at his words; I understand more; I’m softened to God though the Creator is never mentioned. I’m awash, in love, despondent, and grateful.

Kind of the right emotions for Christmas.

But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while still they endure for eyes to see, are their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken forever do they pass into song.

~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion