Logos: The Power of Words to Bring the Past Back to Life

Yes, this is about words again, or rather, about the power they possess to, not only make something seem real to us again, but also elicit a reaction to past experiences that we'd forgotten, almost as though they were all happening again for the first time. Words give birth to more words until there are enough of them to propel us back to another time, another place, complete with all our reactions to whatever events transpired back then.

It's not that I ever forgot this experience. But I did, however, forget how that event, which lasted several years, had made me feel at the time. 

It all started with a single entry in a journal that I started and kept more than 20 years ago. Within the pages of all the subsequent entries, I was taken back through that experience, complete with all the sensations and sentiments it elicited from me at the time. I'm led to believe that remnants of emotions stay with us much like the information stays on a computer hard drive forever, until that drive is wiped clean. Only in the event of severe mental or emotional trauma can they be wiped clean from our memory banks, and even then, I believe the human mind possesses the ability to store vast and infinite amounts of sensory perceptions and reactionary emotions in us forever. Where it all goes after we die is anyone's guess. 

The word Logos is simply defined as a statement of fact used to prove a point or support an argument or opinion. It has different uses in different aspects of the human experience, from religion to politics to literature and philosophy. As we string words together with the intent of illustrating something or pointing out its authenticity, the words themselves can take on a life of their own. And in the case of the aforementioned journal entries, the logos brought the entire sequence of events to life for me again, complete with how they had made me feel at the time. I knew it was possible to go back and reread old diary or journal entries. But until the moment I finished reading those, I'd never realized just how capable those handwritten words still were of making me relive the entire experience, all twenty-plus years of it.

The gist of the story isn't what's important here. What matters is that now, I know that if I ever need to travel back there and relive what were some of the most confusing and heart-wrenching, yet some of the most exciting, times of my life, I can do it again as often as I want. I will even go so far as to say that I doubt they'll even lose their ability  to recreate all those old emotions in me, too. And somehow, reading the entries slowly and out loud only adds to their realness, as if my giving voice to them imbues them with even more life and an energy that had been confined in the pages of that journal for years and that I finally set free.

It was an awesome moment, bittersweet yet enlightening, when I felt myself being pulled back into those ancient heartaches and joys, thrills and disappointments, the kind that I never thought I'd experience again. Because, you see, there is absolutely no chance now that any of those things of which I kept track could or would ever happen to me again. My life has changed too much, and certain important characters in the narrative are no longer part of my world for whatever reason. 

It is an awesome thing when you realize something this profound. Merely reading accounts of events that happened more than 20 years ago had the power to bring every single detail and my reactions to those details back to life, but not outside of me. I felt every single shred of what I'd felt then...unutterable joy, crushing sadness, confusion, thrill, doubt, excitement, and anticipation. I'd forgotten how much detail I'd gone into in the writing of those entries, and it's easy to see how just the right amount of explication can mark the difference between good and evocative writing and prose that falls flat and takes the reader nowhere. 

These journal accounts might not elicit the same response in someone who didn't experience what I did. But then again, if the details brought it all back to a larger than life dimension for me, then it might have the same effect on a more objective reader. 

That's neither here nor there, for most people don't write journals for the purpose of letting someone else read them someday. We write them for our own use, our own comfort, as the very act of putting down the details of such experiences is a balm in itself. And if, by chance, someone else does read them someday, then they'll develop a new understanding of their authors that no direct interaction could have produced. 

From a literary perspective, there are three ways in which to approach any topic: ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos is based on the speaker's or writer's authority to convincingly expound on the topic; pathos takes the form of wordage intended to elicit emotion; and logos is a form of explication that proves a point. In my case, pathos comes into play a great deal, because compelling me to experience all those old emotions again was the direct result of reading those old journal entries.

So there it is, that old hard-cover notebook with the paisley design and a long narrow blue ribbon marking the place where I stopped in my second reading of those entries. I left it on the sofa next to other reading material, because I have a habit, which is more of a routine really, of reading a little bit of this and a little bit of that each evening when television ceases to hold my interest. 

I'll end this by saying that, in the process of discovering yet another function of the written word, I also am reminded again of how important and valuable journaling is. According to certain medical websites I've consulted, one of its benefits is that putting our thoughts and experiences down can also help us resolve personal conflicts, clear up doubts, or cast a new light on old experiences. 

Whatever their purpose, I've found they achieve their most value when we do take the time to go back to them. In some cases, this may stir up some very unpleasant memories, so each person has to decide for themselves just how far they are willing to go back in time and how much risk they're willing to take to relive difficult moments. It can evolve into almost a self-hypnosis session, as this type of personal and subjective writing has the power to take us right out of the moment and deposit us into another that is far removed by time, thus blurring our all sense of our immediate and present surroundings.

If someone is feeling melancholy and at odds with their past, then that trip down memory lane may be just be the thing that person needs. And they won't know this until they do it. If retracing their steps along that journey proves to be more than they want to deal with, they can always stop, put it down, and go back to it later, or not at all. It may also be that those old accounts will have lost much of their impact over time and may even prove to be more humorous or not nearly as gloomy. 

It's like any other journey. We can always turn back. 

As for me, I'm glad I didn't. I will be revisiting those old journal entries again, because it's all I have left of those times and those individuals who had once played such important roles in my life that I would never want to forget. 

Logos...words: rows of symbols on a page or a screen or in our minds that are the sum and total of who we are, all that we ever did, and that prevent our forgetting the past. If that's not power, then I don't know what is.

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

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

Behind a Tree

If I'm not careful, I will fall into the same rut with this blog that I have during the past 10 years or so with my handwritten journals--I'll simply forget to write in it, and after awhile, it will cease to matter. Actually, entire stretches of time can seem that way--as though they don't matter. But truth is, they do, and it is during those stretches of inactivity that I feel the guiltiest, because I am not doing what I feel I should be doing, and that is writing.


In all honesty, I don't know many writers. In fact, I know very few, and I've never been privileged enough to know any serious writer that intimately...the type of writer who writes no matter what, when writing is the last thing that he or she wants to do, the type who won't survive if he or she doesn't write, in both an economic and a spiritual sense. As with so much else in my life, I only have my own experiences to go by, so that I can't know if or when other writers come up against walls like this, and because they feel that it's not going anywhere, they simply stop. Am I behind a tree again, such as the one an old college professor of mine told me once that I have tendency to get stuck behind? "When you're behind that tree," he said, "you stop, and you look around it, but you don't go any further." Is that where I am right now, behind a tree, looking around but not daring to move past it for fear of what lies beyond it, again???
It's not really such a bad place to be...behind a tree. I love trees, and I feel safe when I'm near one, especially one of those giant ones that has been here for what seems like forever. And other than during a lightning storm, what better place IS there to be than behind a tree?


That, in itself, is an interesting concept. For how does one actually end up BEHIND a tree? Does a tree have sides, a front, a back? And how does one know which is which, which is the front, or the back, or the side? I've just always perceived trees as having bottoms and tops. I've never seen trees as having sides, fronts or backs. So in effect, whenever I seem to be behind one, I may very well be in front of it, or at least on the side, so that the way before me is clear and unobstructed. And no matter where I'm standing with regards to the tree, it really doesn't matter in the end, for no matter where I start moving away from it, I will be moving in a new and unexplored direction.


So once again, it's more of a case of simply taking that first step, as it has so often been in my life...that first step...often the hardest of all to take as I move away from my comforting and protective tree toward the unknown...


https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/

A Gray Day

Either my mood matches the day or the day matches my mood. I've never quite known which it is. Maybe it's neither, or maybe it's both. One thing I do know is that certain days seem to lend themselves more efficiently to the writing craft, and I spend far too much time deliberating this rather than actually setting words down. (I would once have said setting words "to paper," but in this technical age, that no longer applies, at least not in my case, and I feel that something's been lost there along the way.)


In any case, there aren't many days anymore when one of the first things I do is NOT to put something down SOMEWHERE...be it the fits and starts of a story, a bit of blogging, an email, or one of my nature columns. Whatever it is, I am always writing. And in the spurts between those attempts, some futile, some not so much, I am reading, which only adds to the confusion some days. Reading has an uncanny way of taking me in an entirely new direction from where I am presently at along some point in a composition, and that can be dangerous, especially if the story and the writing are engaging enough to take me that far away.


My reading tastes have always been pretty eclectic, and I have finally reached a point where many people were some 150 years or so ago when a book, ANY book, was a thrill to work through, if only for the simple joy in the act of reading itself. As time went on, literary tastes became more specialized and narrowed to the point where, nowadays, many people read, sadly, only one or two types of books. And I know a woman who, when asked what she reads, replies, "Oh, I read large-print books, because they're easier on my eyes." Duly noted.


But I digress. I rarely go to libraries anymore, which is, yes, quite sad, so I must do something about that. I usually don't have to, though, because I always have quite an assortment of "found" or "otherwise obtained" books kicking around that I slowly work my way through, and there is no rhyme or reason to it at all. Here's an example.


I just finished reading "Concubine," by Nora Lofts, concerning the partly fictionalized account of Anne Boleyn's treatment at the hand of Henry VIII. Now, I'm reading another oldie but goodie entitled "All the President's Men," by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, which is the historic account of the Watergate break-in. I was not closely attuned to that event while it was actually taking place, but as the old saying goes, "better late than never." And this aptly illustrates my point about how a book can take me far far away from the moment, as this one certainly has. I'm back in the 1970's, a time when I was first married and raising my first child, and it is a gross distraction from where my "writing mind" is at the moment.


But that's how a writer's (at least this writer's) mind works...it's in a thousand different places at any one time, and the trick is always to get back to square one, and the RIGHT square one, which is where I was at when I decided to take this latest little side trip.


Now where was that again?


https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/

Bragging Rights

All the writers' manuals and markets, as well as websites devoted to the writing craft, have one thing in common nowadays: they strongly advise writers to employ social media as a valuable tool to promote their work. So that's what I'm doing here now--adding a link to my Amazon profile and list, albeit short to date, of my work. Writing is like any other type of artistic endeavor, as there is no point to doing it if it's just all going to end up in a drawer or file cabinet or obscure desk-top folder.




I started writing when I was 16, and a sophomore in high school. I'd read a biography of Phyllis Wheatley, a black slave girl who happened to have been very well educated and who went on to write poetry. And in typical impressionable teenage fashion, I thought, "If she could do it, why can't I?" I still have the original copies of all those very bad poems I churned out that first year, and I won't ever attempt to polish them, for they're a chronicle of my first efforts at a time when life held precious little else to look forward to.




Later, as a young mother who lacked the self-confidence to go out into the world and forge a path for herself, I stayed home, took care of my children, and wrote, much of which ended up in the aforementioned drawer. And later still, during my years as a non-traditional college student pursuing an English degree, I wrote even more; and it was about that time when a local newspaper editor who had, in the past, noticed my frequent letters to the editor, called to offer me a correspondent's job. Those years allowed me to become comfortable producing copy for the public eye, and I eventually went to work for a small local newspaper company as a reporter, as well as a weekly columnist for the very paper for whom I'd served years before as a correspondent. I soon tired of reporting, though, as I'm just not the inquisitive type. I'd much prefer to work from imagination than with cold facts that can't be manipulated, and that's why I love fiction. It's not unreasonable to say that, once embarked on a fictional journey, it sometimes takes you in a whole different direction than you anticipated.




That said, here's my brag: https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS 

My Reality

Do you ever have one of those days when everything outside of yourself is so perfect that you can't help but wish that everything inside was just as perfect? Today is one of those days, at least for me. Outside, the weather is what you would call picture-perfect...cloudless blue sky...bright sunlight bathing the leaves that seem to have unfurled overnight this year...light breeze...70 degrees...Who could not love such a day? Certainly not I, but then, for one brief moment, I turn inwardly, and there it is--my reality--and it is nothing like the day.




Oh sure, I could make it like the day. I could sit here trying to convince myself that all of my many problems and issues have no power over this day, that no matter how much I rant and rave (inwardly), the sun will continue to shine, the clouds will stay away, and the day will glow. For nature, as has been said, really doesn't care much about me or my issues, and everything around me existed long before I got here, so I am but a blip on its radar screen. It will persevere with or without me.




But once again, that would take yet one more enormous effort of the will on my part to achieve, to pretend, for the remaining hours of this day, that all is as well within as it is without. So is that really what it's about, getting up each morning and facing each day with a renewed resolve not to allow reality to spoil the view? If nature, and all this beauty around me is indeed a balm to the soul, then all that means is that my soul needs a lot of balm, and that the underlying issues will never go away and will need perpetual tending.




I've come to the conclusion that everything I do is but a way to offset the inevitable, which is that someday, all this will end. When my mother died 12 years ago, I spent the next several years grasping at whatever I could that simply FELT good, or at least that felt better than facing the truth that she was gone. I bumbled about for a long long time dabbling in whatever eased the pain for a few hours or a few days, and it took as long, if not longer, to finally reach a plateau where that was no longer so immediate, and I found that I could get through a day without needing so much solace or comfort.




Which takes me to where I am now, once again grasping at those things that feel good, and that make ME feel good, though they now represent choices that are vastly different from those I made back then. Now they involve walking in the woods, taking photos of the things I see and love, watching old movies, losing myself in a good book or some good music, and, of course, writing.




Always always...writing!


https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS