Monday, March 12, 2012

My Vacation in Hell: Interview with Gene Twaronite



You deserve a much-needed vacation from the jellyfish and sundogs of my mind, dear reader. Please welcome Gene Twaronite, author of two YA novels, The Family That Wasnt (a fable updated in 2023)  and My Vacation in Hell.


KR: Gene, what’s your favorite writing quote, and why?


GT: My favorite quote is from Albert Camus: “The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.” A framed copy hangs over my writing desk. When I first read this quote, there was a eureka moment when all became clear to me. It defined my basic view of existence since earliest childhood when I first looked at a giraffe and wondered: How and why could just a creature exist in a sane and ordered world? And as I look back on both my writing and reading choices, woven throughout is a love of the absurd. The absurd is where I live.


KR: Ah, that ones a gem, and perfect for a fantasy writer as well as a humorist - and youre both . . . Your bio indicates that you’re a dedicated children’s writer. Writing YA in particular is both rewarding and challenging, as it’s a flourishing yet highly competitive genre. Did you make a conscious choice to write YA books, or did your imagination simply lead you in that direction? 


GT: I think it started with my first short story sale in 1987 to Highlights for Children, which was then and still is one of the top paying markets for short fiction. A former junior high school science teacher, I was experimenting with trying to write a funny story that would appeal to young readers but would also whet their appetites for science. The result was “The Glacier That Almost Ate Main Street,” which despite its absurd premise—a glacier that starts in a refrigerator—actually introduces a little real science about the last Ice Age.

So immediately, I started imitating this early success with other absurd stories, some of which were eventually published by Highlights, Read and other juvenile markets. So I guess you could say that the die was cast. When I first started writing a novel in 1990, I did not have to think at all about who my audience would be. Having already achieved some measure of success in this genre, I decided to write in the manner I knew. I have always loved children’s books, and still read them to this day. Many of my favorite authors of adult works, such as E.B. White and James Thurber, also wrote charming and funny children’s books—more aptly described as books for children of all ages. This brings me to my final point—that I’m just a Peter Pan kind of guy who refuses to grow up.


KR: Hear hear! My Vacation in Hell is both a unique spin-off of Dante’s Inferno and an unusual take on the theme of sexual abuse. You reveal a bit about the research for the book on your Amazon sales page. Did you plan to put John Boggle in the predicament of being sexually abused in your debut novel, or did that theme evolve naturally? Is there any reason that you don’t completely resolve the issue in the first novel?


GT: I never planned to write about sexual abuse—it just happened. Our best writing is always a process of discovering, and as the nature of my character John unfolded in my first novel The Family That Wasn’t, I began asking myself: Why does John hate his “Uncle” Vinnie so much? Sure, Vinnie was an ugly character in many ways, but there was something else. What is John’s dark secret that he tries to suppress, as so many sexual abuse victims do? So yes, the theme evolved naturally from there. But since this first novel was a middle grade reader aimed at ages 8-12, I didn’t feel it appropriate to more than hint at this theme. And I neatly got rid of Vinnie (spoiler alert!) by having John using his imagination to edit him out of his life.


But life is never that neat, of course. While many sexual abuse victims do try to “edit” their memories in a similar manner, I felt that I just couldn’t leave my character hanging there with this unresolved issue. So I began thinking about how John, two years later, is dealing with this. I also did a little research about how victims learn to deal with their sexual abuse and the different stages they go through in the healing process. Listening ad nauseam to the ever-increasing litany of media reports on sexual abuse, I also found myself thinking about how, if there really were a hell, then a special place must be reserved for these destroyers of innocence.


From there it was a short leap to Dante. And yes, I actually did read the Inferno, in fifth grade. I especially remember how as a young boy, flipping ahead to all the gory parts, I was fascinated by Dante’s vivid descriptions of souls in various states of torment. This gave me the idea for a satire: How would a 15-year-old young man, especially one who was sexually abused, create his own hierarchy of evil? Who would he put down there? And just as there may be future readers who might quibble about why this or that kind of evildoer wasn’t consigned to some deeper part of hell, I must remind them that this is all seen through the eyes of a young man who is still finding his own answers in the world. One of the hardest things I found in writing the novel was to keep my adult moral views out of it, though I must confess that at least a couple of things found their way in. I would also point out that not everyone agrees with Dante’s hierarchy. Defining levels of evil is a very personal thing, you know.


KR: Very. . . So as this surprise molestation theme in your first novel emerged, and you felt compelled to solve John Boggle's dilemma with a second novel, was it also your intended goal to assist kids who have been sexually abused, or did that goal emerge along with the story?


GT: This emerged from the story. I tried to imagine as best I could part of the horror experienced by a sexual abuse victim and how he or she might deal with it. While some consider this a vain presumption on my part, having never been sexually abused (at least as far as I know), I think the task of a fiction writer is to imagine the unimaginable.Fantasy can be a powerful tool, not only in writing but in the way it helps us shape our lives. Writing about John, I could feel his pain as he attempted to deal with his memories. At times I cringed at the awful scenes I found myself creating, but I knew he would get somehow get through it. For he had two important survival skills, a sense of humor and a robust imagination, which would help him forge a future life for himself in the dawn of a new world. Though my primary goal was to write an entertaining humorous fantasy, I hope that at least one sexually abused reader finds here a measure of hope and inspiration.


KR: Ah, I do feel that if a book transforms at least one person's life, then its worth the effort . . . You had at least a partial plan in mind when you wrote The Vacation in Hell. Do you sometimes write to “discover” your stories? How did your first novel, The Family That Wasn’t, evolve?


GT: I often start with What if?—two of the most magical words in the English language. And since my mind naturally gravitates toward the absurd, this usually ends up being something wacky or bizarre. What if a glacier actually started in a refrigerator? A major influence at the time were the writings of James Thurber, especially his book My Life and Hard Times, in which he uses a memoir style to describe his life growing up in Ohio and his truly weird family members. His sketches were so funny and the characters so absurd that I wondered how much of it was real and how much was made up. Since I was doing a lot of juvenile fiction at the time, I started thinking about a certain teenage boy. What if his family was so impossibly crazy that … what? From there I started sketching out characters and, when I felt that I knew them sufficiently, began letting them loose to see where they might go. The first draft took me about six months, but it took twenty years of revisions, editing and polishing before the final work was published.


KR: *Laughs* I know the struggle and the time frame! Your MVIH website mentions that you have a project in progress – tell us about that.


GT: My next book will be a collection of my juvenile short stories. The working title is The Dragon Daily News: Stories of Wonder for Children of All Ages. The title comes from a story about two cub dragon reporters for a great metropolitan dragon newspaper. An artist friend of mine designed a beautiful color drawing showing the two young dragons sitting at their desk as they attempt to come up with a story; I plan on using this for the cover. I also plan on hiring an artist to draw six or eight additional illustrations to be used throughout the text. Some of the stories, like this one, were never published; others were published by Read, Heinemann, and various online literary magazines. The stories range in age group from 6-8 up through middle grade and young adult, and will also appeal to adults who have not lost their love for fables and fairy tales. I plan to have it out by early next year.


I am also planning a collection of my essays entitled The Absurd Naturalist. This will be a collection of my humorous nature and gardening essays. My first forays into writing were essays, and I have been writing them ever since. Many have been published in weekly and monthly newspaper columns I wrote as well as in various magazines and literary journals. I am thinking of illustrating this with some humorous black and white line drawings.


KR: Wowee, these sound fascinating! Now that John Boggle has appeared in two novels, will we hear from him again?


GT: You’re not the first person to ask me this, Kate. This is what happens when an author writes more than one novel featuring the same main character. Now you have to do a series, or at the very least finish the third novel so you can have a trilogy. At this point, I haven’t decided. After taking John through the middle grades into young adulthood, however, I am tempted to follow him into his twenties to see how he turns out. I mean this guy’s got one hyper-imagination, and I wonder how he will deal with it in the future. Will he trip out on his imaginary journeys to such an extent that he can no longer separate reality from fantasy? Does the fantasy finally become so real that he can no longer find his way back? And back to what? What is real? And what becomes of him now? OK, you can see my mind is already spinning. So yes, there is the possibility of at least one more book. I think I owe it to John.


KR: I think your readers will be thrilled! One last question - two in one, really (many thanks to CAB!) . . . My Vacation in Hell handles John Boggle’s dilemma through the lens of Christian mythology – a framework for the story, yet you subvert this to make the framework palatable for modern kids. How or why did you choose this path? And is it possible to frame a plot based on Dantes “Divine Comedy,” which has sections on “Inferno,Purgatorio, and Paradiso – hell, purgatory, and heaven?


GT: Interesting question. Here goes: Having grown up Catholic and having been thoroughly indoctrinated with Christian mythology, it seemed natural to use this as part of the framework for the story. I had also read Dantes Inferno with grim fascination. Like John at fifteen, I was still questioning and probing my beliefs; unlike John, I did not have the advantage of being exposed to other religions at the time. For me this came later in college when I studied not only the Bible as literature but also comparative religion and philosophy. I came to better understand the human need to explain reality and the power of our myths. Though today I consider myself a scientific rationalist, I also consider myself a spiritual person and often explore this dimension in my writing. In my novel, I tried not to allow my adult beliefs to intrude into the narrative. Rather I tried to show a young man, armed with a strong sense of humor and imagination, searching for his own answers. And no, I do not intend to follow this up with trips to purgatory or heaven. Hell is much more fascinating.


KR: Indeed. And in case anyone
s interested in my take on reading My Vacation in Hell, heres my review, which is also posted at Amazon:and Barnes & Noble:


Gene Twaronites YA fantasy novels - The Family that Wasnt and My Vacation in Hell - follow John Bazukas-OReilly-Geronimo-Giovanni-Li Choy-Echeverria (aka John Boggle) through his angst-ridden but reflective teenage trials and tribulations.

Twaronite aptly describes his protagonist in his excellent MVIH book description:
A troubled nerdy misfit and a frequent flyer of his imagination, John is inspired by a book report reading of Dante AlighierisInferno. In the eternity of the five minutes before summer vacation, he embarks on a pilgrimage based upon his own free-wheeling interpretation of the work.

Boggle
s narrative is an inventive, fast-paced adventure delivered in a strong, appealing voice that should captivate both adult and young adult readers:


My first vision of hell, I must confess, was better than it had to be. I wondered for a moment if there had been some mistake. Had I gone to heaven instead? There parked right in front of us was a bright red 1965 Harley-Davidson FL Electra Glide motorcycle with a sidecar.

Just what I ordered, said Virgil. Hop in the sidecar. Ill drive.

Hold everything! I said. How come you get to drive? You dont even have a license. At least Ive got my learners permit.


At the outset of the story, I wondered why a fifteen-year-old who just had to wade through a fourteenth-century classic and who grapples with innumerable insecurities would want to take a personal journey through hell. Kids usually want to push the pleasure bar and avoid serious mental work, especially on the cusp of summer vacation. I found that understandably, John relishes a little guilty enjoyment while he witnesses some hellish retribution for bullies who have wronged him. He also happens to have a personal demon - the shame and confusion caused by his Uncle Vinnie
s abuse.

Fortunately, John, unlike many victims of sexual abuse, is not alone. His friend Virgil helps him negotiate the various levels of hell, and has a handle on the demons and obstacles they encounter in their shared imagination. It turns out that Virgil, coincidentally, has problems of his own, and John can
t leave hell until he fully confronts his deepest despair. Just in the nick of time, Johns metaphorical true love appears at the darkest hour to help recover his inner child and illuminate the healing that can manifest from a difficult journey.

As a freelance editor and proofreader, I was tempted to correct and rewrite a few minor bits of this self-published novel. John Boggle seems almost too composed and articulate for his age at times. But most readers will be far less picky than this crotchety old editor, and overall, Twaronite has produced a high-quality book. Although I haven
t yet read his debut novel (in 2012 ) perusing the sequel convinced me to place The Family That Wasnt on my to-read list, and I also highly recommend the entertaining and education fable! 


 Available in paperback and e-book at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Read more about Gene's prose and poetry at his website!

Friday, February 17, 2012

Making All Things New, Part II: Writing with Heart


Look at what’s happening in this world. Every day there’s something exciting or disturbing to write about. With all that going on, how could I stop?
  


I’m often asked how I can spend so much time writing or attending to the business end of writing. I could call myself a workaholic, but I think the answer is more complex. I feel a passion for writing and everything related to the pastime. Im also fortunate to be able to integrate my passion with making a living. I even enjoy the marketing and PR aspects of a writing career that many authors loathe.

In other words, I am committed with a capital C and engaged with a capital E, and can barely pull myself away from my laptop at the end of the day. Sometimes I dont pull myself away from my laptop at the end of the day . . . I fall asleep with it near my side.

The act of writing itself, especially from the heart, is a state of grace made manifest when we live in the moment with our senses wide open. This creative state is meditative, perhaps even meditation in motion. This makes writing sound easy enough – as poet Gwendolyn Brooks suggests, there’s an endless flow of inspiration all around us. We can explore anything from the flavor of the day’s weather to the flavor of the day’s politics and never, ever run out of topics to write about.

Brooks, the first black author to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first black woman to hold the position of Poetry Consultant to the U.S. Library of Congress, also suggests in her work and her observations about life that because we exist is reason enough to write. The English word exist is derived from the Latin term existere, which means “to emerge” or “to stand forth” – and the prefix ex- equals element,  meaning “out of” or “from,”  as well as “appear” or “be.” 

We exist, and the meaning of our existence manifests from that which appears around us, therefore we write!

So, when we writers sit and tap our pencils over a blank page or sit and stare at a blank page on our screens wondering what to write, it’s simply a matter of tapping into the heart, that impassioned space from which we must extract our freshest and most sincere work. Ultimately, we scribes write what begs to be written, what our psyches must either define or celebrate.

We live in interesting times, an era of great social and political ferment marked by increasing disruption in our social fabric, a time of transition, but at great peril. Of course, these divisions and flaws have always been present, even though illusory in the bigger cosmic picture. There really is no separation between races, religions, fair weather or foul, disappearing or thriving species, or anything else – we are all part and parcel of this ever-changing, impermanent, kaleidoscopic production we call reality. But the illusion of all these divisions and categories is what gives us a plethora of contrasts and conflicts to explore in our prose and poetry.

Lately – for the past couple of years, really, I’ve been  more captivated by the dramas unfolding around me in real life than in reading fiction. I find myself reading scores of articles and essays relating to the great issues of our day and find that my conversations (and sometimes arguments) with others, writers and non-writers alike, are mostly about these issues. I am astounded by the recent reappearance of virulent racist and misogynist rhetoric that seems to have festered underground, and emerged in more subtle, devious, and pervasive ways in the U.S. since our Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s addressed these blights upon our common humanity.

We can maybe take comfort in the idea that these attitudes are surfacing as they are cleansed away forever. But what astounds me most is that these negative attitudes are not only expressed by older generations whom you might expect would cling to old ways, but are instead embraced and repeated by younger people who have not directly experienced our nation’s historical struggles with constitutional, civil rights, and yet should have learned these lessons from their elders and through their reading, and know better than to embrace poisonous rhetoric.

Ah, but that may be the problem – many are not reading – they, no, we  live in the bubble world of mainstream media and social media. Many are not engaging with the great novelists and journalists of the past or the present, preferring instead to socialize only with peers who have similar views, emulating the memes and tropes of the group. Limited engagement with the arts equals limited engagement with the real world, and vice versa. More and more, people live in these bubbles of selective understanding. Even Google gauges what we want to see and gives us an incomplete overview of any search.

My fascination with these disturbing political and social trends (and many others) has apparently driven me to delve more deeply into creative nonfiction and to blog, something uncharacteristic for me as a long-time poet and fiction writer. I preferred up until lately to explore my life and my interests through the lens of make-believe, which is no less powerful and sometimes even more so. What reader hasn't been challenged and transformed by a powerful novel? Fiction also allows authors the safe haven of anonymity, since readers has no idea what part of a story is derived from personal life experience or what is fabricated. Revealing events and feelings as nonfiction requires taking the risk of condemnation by revealing oneself.

The writing process in  dissimilar genres is still the same, though. We can lure the realities of life into our art, and lure our art back into real life. What we offer to readers completes a cycle, this circumnabulation of mirroring back and forth the meaning of life that we explore by writing and our audience by reading.

Whether we transform current issues into compelling fiction and poetry or creative nonfiction or straight journalism, we have a responsibility to do this in a moving way. Literature of all sorts must engage the reader fully in the author’s mental journey, or why bother to write about these journeys?

Whether we choose to reflect upon the pressing issues that face a small planet with seven billion people, or choose instead to explore profound pleasantries about the two sun-yellow African daisies that just bloomed in a chipped clay pot on our front patio, it’s the heart stuff that makes our writing come alive. It’s the passion we channel into our writing that matters.

When we become confused about what to write, we need only to look into our hearts to find the passion that cries out to be shared. When we don’t know what to read, the same thing applies – what cries out for comprehension?

What do we really want to understand, to “stand under?” These are the things worth reading and writing about!

Engaged Concentration: Holyhead, Wales
Kate Robinson ©2010

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

STRIKE AGAINST the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA)

Many websites are blacked out today to protest proposed U.S. legislation that threatens internet freedom: the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). From personal blogs to giants like WordPress and Wikipedia, sites all over the web — including this one — are asking you to help stop this dangerous legislation from being passed.

I didn't get the process figured out in time to black my website and blog out because I'm a writing fool, and worked the day and night away . . . but I do support this action and hope you will too!

If you're in the USA, there are many links available online to sign petitions or to help you contact your Congresscritters and Representatives. If you are outside the USA. you can petition the US State Department at American Censorship.org 

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Making All Things New


Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.
                                  
                                                ~ Jean Cocteau, author and painter (1889-1963)


Turning a calendar page to the New Year is often a relief. Crossing this artificial boundary allows us the psychological space to put the past behind us, to let go of old, tired, unpleasant jellyfish stuff and embrace the happy, forward-looking, inspiring sundog stuff.

On that note, my personal emergence into 2012 feels much different than in 2011. Humanity seems less mired down in the phantasmagoria of the rabbit hole, having grappled greatly over the past year with the complexities and paradoxes of life in a Wonderland filled with political snarls and crises. People everywhere seem to agree that the Red Queen, the churlish and capricious authority who keeps us under her political and economic thumb, is just someone impressive but inept that we’ve given our power away to. Now we’re taking our power back, discovering or negotiating our role as creators, as grassroots decision makers in our individual and collective lives.

This psychological fresh start at the New Year also allows us breathing room to make things new again, to polish and illuminate our writing with originality and spontaneity, as Cocteau suggests.

I don’t mean to imply that I have anything in common with the brilliant chameleon Cocteau . . . I’m just pointing out that he’s inspiring and seems pretty right on, in my limited experience. It doesn’t hurt that he was a major nonconformist, born a rich kid who got expelled from school and ran away to live in a red-light district in Marseilles, and who eventually rubbed shoulders with some of the world’s greatest writers, musicians, actors, filmmakers and artists of his time. He intuited at a young age that the stuffy status quo wasn’t going to get him anywhere he wanted to be.

I think we have to grab at our chance to run away from conformity and any old, tired patterns in our writing  every time we sit down to paper or keyboard. We have to take chances with our work or be condemned to producing possibly competent but conventional work that may be publishable, entertaining, or informative, but is ultimately forgettable. And perhaps soul draining, in the long run.

There is certainly a market for competent and not particularly illuminating work –
E-bookstores and brick and mortar stores everywhere are full of such books. If you make your living through this endeavor, I’m not maligning you – my hat’s off to you because you’ve mastered the key elements of writing and revision, plus have the great pleasure of making your living engaged in a craft you enjoy. That’s heads above toiling at non-creative jobs that we often come to loathe.

I’m intuiting and suggesting that if you have already mastered these basics of character, plot, dialogue, story arc, and all the toolish details of grammar and syntax, then it’s high time to take a step forward – or a plunge – into the creative fire of story that emanates from the artistic heart and soul.

Whether you write fiction or non, poetry or prose, feature stories, catalog copy, or press releases, there is a level of competence, and then there is stellar work. Depending upon the level of that creative fire burning within, writing at the break-out level may flow from you like magic, if you’re lucky, or take even more blood, sweat, and tears than usual, or more likely, some combination of the two if my experience means anything in a typical evolution of a creative writer.

Don’t be afraid to experiment. Experimentation leads to failure at times, of course, but it also produces brilliant work that changes the hearts and minds of readers, that leaves an imprint on the world. This is the stuff of the Newberry Awards, of the Nobel Prize, or of an Oscar for screenwriting. That implausible plot that an editor wants you to change for the sake of her vision of the story, to also meld perhaps the mission statement of a particular publishing house, just may be the plot that fires up the next award-winner under an editor or publisher willing to take more risks.

The universe sometimes tests us, tempts us with a “sure thing” versus the risk of a masterpiece. Sometimes creativity equals risk.

I’m not saying that you should rebel unnecessarily and never listen to agents or publishing house editors. They have important guidance to share with writers about what works and what doesn’t, what sells and what doesn’t. But at the bottom line, opinions are opinions. Art is subjective, and writers and artists of all types have the ability to plumb the depths of their hearts and know when their guides are no longer guiding them where they want to go.

It’s a matter of faith – trusting your own abilities, trusting the muse that led you to write what you did in the first place. Sometimes it just makes sense to turn away from an “expert” and go with your own heart.

I’ve backed out of some publishing deals because the editors’ vision for my work conflicted with my own. I’ve ignored critique partners’ opinions when those opinions didn’t feel right.  This is sometimes painful and made me feel temporarily foolish. But in all cases, I listened to my heart, which spoke true about my original vision. I may not have satisfied a particular audience, but I did satisfy MY audience by remaining true to the path I’d forged into uncharted creative territory. I’d had a creative journey that no one really understood until I’d traveled the length of it.

Finding a niche for your work is sort of like applying for a job. Most of us are in no position to turn a job offer down, and we really, really want that publication contract (with conditions) dangling in front of us. We feel foolish if we turn down either, even when we can see that the shoe clearly doesn’t fit. I’m sure anyone with a couple of decades of career experience can attest to a nightmare position they took of necessity that didn’t work out. Or one that they stuck with that made them miserable for years until they either retired or found a way to extricate themselves.

Many writers can speak to the regret of having published something perhaps tweaked too much by a well-meaning editor who didn’t really understand or see into the heart of their work. Sometimes this is just a given and part of the job, as in news journalism; sometimes outside that field it’s  more of a liability and yet a  temporary pain, because if we hold the rights to the work, we may go on and publish it in yet another, more satisfying form. There are times to acquiesce to the editor’s blue pencil for many different reasons –  the practicality of gaining an important publication credit, getting work of a time-sensitive nature out, being included in a special anthology, lucking onto a first book publication, and so forth.

I think we writers just have to weigh all these considerations, and use our wisdom and discernment, as they say in Buddhist philosophy, to shape and publish our work. Yes, we all have this innate wisdom! It’s acting upon it that is sometimes as difficult as the initial creation . . .

I suppose, in another vein, you could say that the approach of accepting the status quo of some sure market is somewhat more ego-driven and practical; the other path of heart and risk, a more authentic expression. While writers can certainly engage in a lot of attention-getting, egomaniacal blather to satisfy a desire for attention (Cocteau was sometimes guilty of this), there is a deep authenticity implicit in forging work within the fire of true creative passion. There is something that rings true, that captivates readers, and that changes lives when work is allowed to flow from the heart and is not forced into a particular mold to satisfy a particular market.

We’ve all heard the stories about the fifty rejections of some best-selling, award-winning novels or nonfiction narratives that catapulted an unknown author to fame and sometimes even riches. It’s not that we should aim at the material benefits as our final goal – the fame and riches are dubious, transitory, and a side effect of the creative work.

Creative expression in itself is truly magnificent. We feel satisfaction deep down in the heart and soul when we craft a manuscript, or a poem or essay that has the potential for greatness because it is fresh with power, truth, wisdom, a unique character or viewpoint, and a truly compelling narrative.

I think the ability to write from one’s heart is aided by being a bit of a renegade or a rugged individualist like Cocteau. It’s also enhanced by casting aside the fear of the unknown, taking our own skills and potential seriously, and revealing our true selves, however flawed.

What comes from the heart, satisfies the heart.

So turn over your new leaf –  take a deep breath, kick up your heels, and go write where no other writer has gone before . . .  you’ll be glad you did!



Green Man
Kate Robinson  ©2010



Thursday, December 1, 2011

Loss and More Loss

Needless to say, another month has passed without my whipping up a blog post.


My loss, really, because blogging is a great way to prod my mind into gear and practice the craft of creative nonfiction writing.


Otherwise, this is not a loss for you, dear reader, because November has only just today metamorphosed into December. Plus, unless you’ve been unconscious the past decade, you’re already drowning in tree books and e-books, online and print magazines, email and that other type that seems to keep mysteriously filling my USPS mailbox no matter how hard I try to get it to stop.


So if you're one of my regular readers, then you’re probably just as happy I messed up. You have enough to read and one thing less is no great loss!


Loss is kind of like time. It never stops arriving. Have you noticed how life seems to be not just a process of accumulating knowledge, experience, and wisdom, but also a process of stripping away everything else?


Birth, old age, sickness and death. Now there’s a jellyfish progression if I ever saw one.


There are Buddhist teaching stories about how living is rather like peeling away the layers of an onion until there’s nothing left. But the nothing that remains isn’t a nothing nothing.


Nope, not at all. It’s more of an emptiness nothing. Emptiness of the “not empty” category is actually the realization that, in the most famous Buddhist paradox of all, that “form is emptiness and emptiness is form.”


Meaning that this loss of everything we live for isn’t exactly what it seems. Emptiness in this sense refers to the condition of giving up all sensory conditions and awakening to enlightenment. In one sense, this is like saying – in the words of songwriter Kris Kristofferson and memorably expressed by the immortal Janis Joplin – that “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose . . .”


Well, naturally the world’s greatest Buddhist masters can expound for hours on the complexity of this unempty emptiness. I’m just giving you a quick nutshell, layman-impaired version.


Why? Well, to make myself feel better about all my losses.


How come? Because I like to vent about the unpleasantries of my life. All this philosophical stuff about writing is an acceptable outlet for my complaints and lets me blog about why I missed my blog appointment again. In the process, I can obfuscate my laziness and procrastination!


Still, I can blame birtholdagesicknessandeath.Without getting into sordid detail, let’s just say I had a long-term problem with my ears that seemed to crop up about the time I had five immunizations one day before my trip to Kenya last December. It might have actually started when I lived for a year in Wales and brought home something from that water-blessed climate that my immune system couldn’t handle after the immunizations weeks later. I did spend some hours scrubbing away some black mold that appeared on a wall during the infamous floods of November 2009. Annoying, but this itchy-itch didn’t keep me from my work despite the fact that I stuck my fingers in my ears to scratch so often that I wished I had four hands like many Asian deities. This problem eventually affected my calves as well, a sort of dermatitis.


About the time that this problem calmed down considerably and I thanked the universe, I had a for-reals bacterial / fungal ear infection in one ear, perhaps brought on by all that scratching, even though the itching had abated due to the miracle of modern pharmaceuticals. I don’t recall ever having a childhood earache of this explosive caliber, but as experienced by many kids, my  right eardrum ruptured and I spent lots of time in an ENT doctor’s office getting my ear suctioned. And lots of time going to the pharmacy to pick up various concoctions that didn’t vanquish the infection because the ENT was perhaps overconfident of what type of infections were brewing beyond my broken eardrum and didn’t culture them from the get-go.


Okay, so that slowed me down a bit more. About the time the blasted ear infection cleared up (only because I went online in desperation and made a home-made concoction that cleared in three days what the pharmaceutical companies couldn’t clear up in weeks). But this was okay too. Ya gotta keep moving, after all.


But thennnnn . . . an antibiotic-resistant skin infection suddenly reared its ugly head. It didn’t help that my ENT had me indiscriminately taking some antibiotics before the aforementioned culture from my ear determined what was in it. He twice had me on an antibiotic once thought not very long ago to be the king of all antibiotics and is now famous for spawning monster bacteria. But this was okay, because although I’d spent many days in bed with high fevers and chills and many better days exhausted and in pain, this condition passed too. I’d just recovered when went away to spend Halloween week with my grandsons.


You know how kids catch every known cold / flu virus in the universe. No problema. I’d worked for years as a K-12 substitute teacher and probably have had or been exposed to every known cold / flu virus in the universe, nyah-nyah. Besides, they’d had it a few days the week before and . . .


Boom. My daughter came down with the crud and was out of commission for the remainder of my visit. By the time I went home, that achey, creeping, doomster feeling had a grip on me. The worst cold /flu /bronchial infection I’ve ever had in my life (and maybe several past lives) kept me in bed for a week and coughing up my lungs for a second week. I’m lucky I didn’t go into p-neu-mon-i-a.


What does any of this have to do with writing? Well, the advantage of freelancing and telecommuting  is that you can take your laptop to bed. Although I lost a significant amount of writing time, circumstance allowed me to press forward. I didn’t miss my most important paid hours and still received full paychecks – I  would have run out of sick pay in most conventional jobs or drug myself to work and exposed my co-workers to my nasty ailments.


Plus, I managed to do some fun unpaid, speculative writing tasks such starting a story, polishing old pieces and submitting them to publishers, as well as tooting my horn about recent publications on social media sites and in e-mails. I also managed to do a few of the not-fun tasks like the dreaded nosing around and sending out CVs for new freelance writing jobs. Not to mention gaining some forced but necessary time off. Despite my resistance, downtime allows the subconscious mind the creative vacation we discussed a few blog posts back.


In spite of all my losses and frustrations (there are others, too many to write about without boring you to tears and making me sound like a perpetual victim), 2011 has been a pretty darn good year for writing and editing. I’ve had more publications and churned out more edits for clients this year than any other single year since I began to embrace the full-time writing life.


I hope I’ve managed to disguise my rant as another post about perseverance. Everything changes. Handle loss and change like any other writerly delay / rejection / failure. Embrace it. Own it. Shift gears and go around it, over it, or under it. Let this emptying out, this letting go of acquisitions and desires become another step toward enlightenment, that is to say, wisdom, acceptance, emotional equanimity, and transformation.


Turn those jellyfish into sundogs. After all, isn’t transformation everything?

"Transformation"
Illuminated Tibetan Iconographic Calligraphy by Tashi Mannox http://www.tashimannox.com