Taking Emerson's Advice

In this fast-paced world, the comforts are few and far between. But despite that, I still take great solace from Nature and the intimate relationship I have long had with her, one that started when I was a child. It deepened much later when I spent several nearly two decades living in the woods of southern Maine, and with the help of a friend, I've created a video of those years.

I hope you enjoy it and that it inspires you to adopt the mantra of the great naturalist write, Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGXFLf6KSwU

A Legacy of Sorts

During a conversation I had recently with a friend, she commented on how much she used to like my newspaper articles. When she asked what I'd been doing since I stopped writing them, I told her that I'd gathered about a year's worth of those essays and had them published in book form. It was, I explained, my way of leaving something more tangible for posterity's sake, something more lasting than a trail of newspaper articles that would eventually get lost in some virtual and dusty archive.

This fits right in with why people write books in the first place: they either have an important story to tell, a lesson to teach, or a vital message to get across. And while a newspaper article can be pleasant to read, it doesn't, in my opinion, offer the same lasting value as do words preserved forever between two covers. It's no secret that some books are written purely for their entertainment value. The stories they tell lack substance and are designed merely to help pass the time on a rainy afternoon. Then, there are those books that teach and from which we stand to learn something new or be reminded of something we might have forgotten. As for poetry, they are paintings that use words rather than pigments to tell a story or to share the author's thoughts in a unique, lyrical and often highly memorable way, condensing often complex ideas into neat packages of symbols and mental images.

Essay writing, on the other hand, differs in that it generally conveys important truths or information either individually or collectively. A single essay can tell a small piece of the story, while a collection of them based on a specific theme expand and extend into all sorts of possible directions that theme might be taken in. Based on fact, essays not only share knowledge but broaden perspectives, and the themes of many are timeless and never lose their meaning no matter how faded their pages.

Writing is hard work, and the competition is stiff, given how the internet has opened venues up to everyone and anyone who can type a legible word. Bad writing abounds, but don't tell its authors that. For many delude themselves into thinking that contributing to micro-blogs at a penny-per-view makes them bonafide writers. Anyone can nail a few boards together into something that vaguely resembles a book shelf. But only an artisan can make that book shelf into something you'd want to preserve for all time. And therein lies the difference between writing and good writing, only there are exponentially lots more words to wade through than there are poorly-nailed-together boards before one reaches that conclusion.

So back to my own attempts at writing, humble as they are. I knew going in that there was a very good chance that I'd die before ever getting rich off them. And on that note, I take great comfort in the fact that many of the world's best and classic authors were long gone before their work made an impact. Names like Dickinson, Poe, Kafka, Hurston, Keats and Lovecraft are hardly to be scoffed at. But in truth, they all left bodies of work that would be appreciated only after their demises. That's a sobering truth indeed, and it leaves a writer, any writer, with a choice to make between hoping for some sort of tangible remuneration or writing simply to keep one's spirit alive long after the clock has stopped ticking.

Because writing, like any art, is an extension of the author's spirit. And writing, like any art, requires imagination that generates ideas, and when enough of those ideas have accumulated, they need somewhere to go, releasing bits and pieces of the creator's psyche in the process. This is easy to see in van Gogh's "Starry Night," where those twirling star vortexes adequately depict the painter's inner state at the time. It's not so easy to decipher in Toni Morrison's complex narration, but it's there in how she makes us dig to find its meaning.

So I hold in my hand a purple book that contains a year's worth of impressions garnered when I lived in the woods or some place that wasn't far from them. Hopefully others will hold their own copies, too, and I am going to try very hard to see that that happens. Not because I seek fame and fortune but because I'm in that book sharing what I've done, where I've been, what I've seen, and what I've learned, and I hope that readers are listening.


https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876

The Path Not Taken

The decision to share my writing in a different format did not come easily. It meant weeks of soul-searching and wondering if it was indeed the right choice to make. For almost six years, I wandered the woods and fields in this part of the world or took long roundabout drives that led me farther and farther and more deeply into the world of nature, beyond her external trappings, beyond what she chooses to show those who only cast casual glances about them but don't invite, for whatever reasons, their other senses, or their souls, into the process.

There was a time when I myself could be in a lovely place and not see it for what it was. I might have been lost in conversation with someone or focused on some other activity or event that minimized my surroundings. But then, I moved to the woods, and it was there that I finally learned not only to see, but to feel, to let nature wash over me and impart her own unique sort of wisdom, one which is often not possible to even put into words.

During those years, I went through periods in my life when nature and her beauty receded from my view to allow other things in, things that had to be dealt with, sadnesses that had to be borne, problems that needed working out, losses that had to be shouldered, and changes beyond my control that had to be faced. When I think back, I remember it occurring to me following any of those experiences that, had it not been for nature and her solace, lurking ever in the background and on their fringes, I might not have come through it all as unscathed as I did.

Now, my hope is that those snippets of time of which this book is made, these sights, sounds and impressions, will continue to float out there in the universe like milkweed or dandelion seeds, alighting wherever they will and taking root in the minds of others, where it will hopefully spark the same sort of curiosity, the same level of passion, that nature has instilled in me.

I'm grateful to all who go on that walk with me, as it is one we cannot take often enough.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876

After a Journey

That title also happens to head one of my favorite poems written by Thomas Hardy. In it, he reminisces about, and immortalizes, his final years with his wife before her death and laments that he could have cherished their moments together more while they were taking place.


My title sums up the end of a different type of journey, however, namely, the finishing of another book. And now I am enjoying the calm but richly full feeling of fulfilment and that accompanies the completion of any accomplishment. It strikes me, though, that no journey, be it literal or metaphorical, ever really ends, for there is never an ultimate destination beyond which we can no longer move. All roads lead somewhere, but they also all lead back to where they started, opening up even more possibilities on all sides.


So now, I stand here at the end of this long walk, seeing lots more road ahead of me, as well as all the different other directions I might have headed off in. For writing, like roads, is never final. There is never a "last word," or a true "The End." Words are audible and visual forms of energy. And if words should ever fail us, like the energy that enables the flower or the tree to mesmerize us, they won't die but simply lie in wait for the next traveler upon which to attach themselves.


Like a cat moving along through underbrush unwittingly gathering seeds and other bits of potential new plants, I move along gathering ideas. For now, I will pause and take stock, assess and reevaluate. And then, before too much more time elapses, I will pick up my walking stick and set out anew to see what awaits me there along the many secret paths which are, as long as I am able to travel them, all mine and mine alone.


https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876

Unhappy Endings

Sometimes, I go back and reread some of my writing, and I come away thinking that my themes might be construed as sad or even depressing. While I am fully aware of it this, and many cases, it's not actually intentional. But as most writers know, a piece of writing can start out in one tone and quickly veer off into another, with no help whatsoever from the writer other than what his or her unconsciousness contributes along the way.


Water flows downhill and always seeks those egresses that are below it. That doesn't mean that some of kind of deterioration happens along the way. In actuality, the water may even become enriched by whatever it picks up along its downward fall across rapids or as it snakes its way through woods that crest a hillside. Story plots often behave in much the same way, quickly taking a plunge at the first sign of a low spot, and then rushing on toward the sea, which, in this case, is represented by a stack of pages or a computer file that constitutes the whole body of thought gathered finally in one place.


Here's the thing: writers are constantly advised to "write what they know." And in my case, there haven't been all that many happy endings in my life to draw experience from. So how can I write about something that I'm not all that familiar with? Sadness, on the other hand, in the form of suffering, death, disruption, abandonment, rejection, tragedy, and any other manifestation of loss in between...yeah, THOSE I know a lot about, so it's not surprising to me that my stories would assume an aura of loss, sadness, or misfortune.


For a writer, the actual act of writing is an exercise in exploration. For as we type or write, we discover new things about the world, about other people, and about ourselves. Sometimes, too, we remember things that we might have thought long buried and forgotten. But the act of writing requires an expenditure of energy, and energy, as we all know, is everywhere at once, filling the large and the smaller spaces equally, and in this case, insinuating itself into the tiniest crevices between our buried thoughts and impressions, often bringing them back into the light without warning.


How often  have I sat here writing when, all of a sudden, a sentence or a phrase pops out at me in full print that I didn't consciously compose but that seemed to materialize out of nowhere, small shards of memories I'd suppressed or that were crowded out by more immediate concerns. And if they happen to be sad, then that's where the catalyst of that phrase lived for a very long time before it decided to become part once again of a greater whole.


While writers expound often upon events of the past, the actual act of writing is happening now, in real time, giving new life to old impressions and bits of tales generated from experience and perception. I envy anyone who is able to tack a happy ending on to his or her stories. But I suspect that, more often than not, loss and sadness, which seem to leave much deeper and more indelible tracks on the human soul, are much more familiar to a much larger audience.


https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876

Cell Division

I admit it: science was one of my favorite subjects in school. And yes, I even liked dissecting dead animals. SMALL dead animals, you understand. Nothing bigger than a fish or a frog. I drew the line at a bird. Even then, I loved birds too much to want to see inside a dead one. Besides, my cat had shared that privilege with me himself on more than one occasion, so I needed no extra help in that department. That said, another aspect of science that I loved was biology, learning how things came to be, how they grew, evolved, developed. And once again, I can liken the craft of writing to a very basic biological function: cell division.

All writing starts with an idea or a small piece of an idea, genetic material, if you will. And slowly,  over time, that idea starts to grow, with each bit of material dividing and subdividing again and again until the whole mass reaches a tangible identifiable form that comes to be known as A Story. Then, the process of accretion, as Isak Dinesen called it, begins, and the story starts pulling in what it needs to survive. Detail, background information, explication, narration, dialogue, reference materials, etc. etc. etc. And not unlike those blob-like creatures sent here from outer space in those wonderfully sappy 1950's sci-fi movies, The Story's mass enlarges, continues to grow and move about inside the writer's head and within his or her own experience, pulling in as much new material as it can which enables it to get even larger, until...until...

It hits the page or the screen with a loud SPLAT! And there, the writer's job is to tame it, to bring it in line, trap it within some predefined boundaries that transform it into something that readers won't run madly from.

I've nurtured three such creatures during the last few months, while a fourth is growing and feeding as I write.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00JJ259DS

Release the River

Working at an assisted living facility awhile back provided me with the opportunity to view life and its intricacies through the eyes of elderly people who were simply living out their final years as comfortably as possible. One man, who wasn't as old as the typical assisted living resident is but who had issues that warranted round-the-clock monitoring, told me something interesting not long before we parted ways. He said, "You see far, and you feel deeply." Later, when I thought about it, I realized that he had never had very much to go on to be able to form that opinion of me. And I was, needless to say, touched by his spot assessment of me.


I don't think there is a writer alive who could do what we do if he or she did not "see far and feel deeply." Writing is as public a display of emotion as is standing on a street corner screaming or crying or on a building ledge getting ready to jump. While it certainly is a more quiet and a less overtly violent endeavor, it is no less deep and no less sincere.


I will go out on a limb here as far as to say that pulling words from our brains is sometimes, if not usually, physically painful. It certainly can be draining, as is evidenced by anyone who has seen a writer push himself or herself back from a desk in sheer exhaustion. Writing is risky business, especially once the dam breaks and the words come tumbling out, not to be contained. We have no choice but to allow them to cascade down, as there is no hope of damming them up again until they've spent themselves and are nothing more than a trickle. And then, even if we do manage to block its path with a rock or a branch, whatever seeps into the ground is lost forever.


Or is it?


https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876