Indiana Oh Indiana

I was going to write about the importance of books but decided instead to consider the broader value of the printed word.

My favorite reading chair:

Periodicals (magazines and newspapers) often help to inform us about current events, and political pamphlets usually provide us with material suitable for making paper airplanes. Then there are business and personal letters, including those charming, if somewhat archaic, communications called thank-you notes. I remember vaguely a chapter from our grammar and composition textbook my freshman year in high school, a chapter that explained how to write “bread & butter notes.” We’d need a time machine to see those things again. Of course, almost all of the above are now available as e-mails or eBooks, but as I’m probably a bit behind technologically, I still refuse to include text messaging as actual reading or writing material, as it remains for me only the merest abbreviation of conveying thoughts and ideas. It is the polyester of communication and the Esperanto of language itself, as artificial as a plastic turkey on Thanksgiving Day.

East wall of my library:

The joy of reading books, for most of us, goes back to childhood. For me that joy began when I was three years old with the gift from my maternal grandparents in 1949 of The Young Folks Shelf of Books, a ten-volume set, beautifully bound and illustrated “Junior Classics,” which were read to me over time and became the early basis for my love of literature, distilled at last in my favorite book from those early years, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham. I still have all those books, and in case of fire, I would take them from the house only after saving the cat and dog first. The books’ pages have yellowed over time and retain the smells of old cedar chests, wooden bookshelves, and dusty attics, sensory bonuses I can never have in the many eBooks I also enjoy reading. Having those added sensory experiences from paper books is already an old defense. I do like the convenience of eBooks but still love the nostalgic bliss of holding a book bound in leather, or even paper. I even like the sound of pages turning, which I understand is now an electronic feature in some new eBooks. Our world is becoming more virtual every year.

People can derive pleasure and knowledge through reading everything from The Old Testament of the Bible to stories by Stephen King (both these examples of literature often being strangely alike).  Reading is generally a personal experience in a kind of temporary retreat from the hustle and bustle of the outside world (even if perusing the newspaper on a crowded subway). Curling up with something to read is perhaps timeless in some ways, going back to little stone tablets that were the first books, to the parchments and handwritten illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages before Gutenberg’s printing press. I’ve seen teenagers “curled up” with their laptops, engrossed in reading. This gives me hope for books and literature in general, whatever forms they may take. Reading can enlighten, entertain, and inspire, and one of my greatest hopes is that schools, along with parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, can keep the love of reading vigorous in young people everywhere. Our young people, after all, are our future authors.   JB

Pets often have schedules that come from their personal inclinations, urges, and habits, especially as they age. It’s interesting to observe the regularity of actions on their parts that can be clocked with frightening dependability.

Riggs is a rescue cat we’ve had for at least ten years, a feline whose vocal abilities as rather a bad singer were probably what prompted his original owners to abandon him. He’s a gentle creature with a  geriatric disposition revolving around his carefully planned schedule each day, a schedule that he alone determines. As Riggs was about five when he was rescued, we estimate his present age to be about fifteen or sixteen.

At six in the morning he begins singing downstairs in order to let everyone know that the day  is supposed to begin, whether or not others in the house are quite yet able even to open their eyes without effort. He expects to be petted immediately and spoken to in a cooing, quiet tone that reassures him that he is still loved. He then scampers down to the sun room, where on an old desk we keep his food and water, above a level the dog is capable of invading. After his breakfast, Riggs greets Dudley, our dog, in a nuzzle with the side of his face (or maybe just using Dudley as a napkin), as Duds stands there patiently, hoping that Riggs has completed his vocal exercises for the day. Next stop for our cat is the camel back sofa in the master bedroom, where Riggs curls up for the rest of the morning, knowing that Dudley won’t bother him, as our dog will never venture upstairs unless there is a thunderstorm, requiring assurance that the world is not about to end.

Around four o’clock, Riggs comes downstairs again for some lap time  while I’m watching Judge Judy on television, possibly rendering him a cat who has been exposed to more legal data than has any other cat in the united States. He’s now broken the record of my sister’s cat, Atticus, who used to watch Perry Mason.

The most active part of Riggs’ day is at almost exactly five o’clock, when he provokes Dudley into chasing him around our open stairway, through the dining room, hallway, and library. This is how the two get most of their exercise, running in that circle every afternoon until Riggs sneaks up three of four stairs to rest quietly, one paw crossed over the other in a decadent display of quietude and to enjoy Dudley’s continuing to run in circles below him. Riggs will usually look at me if I’m nearby and give me a look of profound wisdom and superiority over what he undoubtedly believes is hopeless canine stupidity on the part of poor Duds, who eventually figures out that he has been duped once again by Riggs, who continues to look down on him while Dudley barks his extreme displeasure.

Early evening is the time for Riggs to go to his favorite wing chair in our little library, where he curls up for the night before his next singing performance the following morning.

Dudley’s schedule seems intertwined with that of Riggs, though Dudley feels a deep sense of responsibility in going out to the dog run several times a day to let the world know that he’s on guard duty. Both Dudley and Riggs have magnet sensors on their collars, which allow them to activate the electric pet door in the sun room, which leads out to the dog run and fenced garden. Occasionally both pets can be seen together sunning themselves beside our big blue spruce tree. When one pet is at the vet being groomed or otherwise not around when he’s expected to be, the other will fret. Even when Dudley was a puppy, Riggs was patient with him, never biting or using his claws. It was as though he knew Dudley was really no threat, and that they were both a part of this household, a place that both of these wonderful animals make a home, not just for themselves, but for us humans as well.   JB

I’ve taught enough writing classes to know that we all have writer’s block from time to time. It’s a frustrating experience to have ideas that have been flowing nicely suddenly come to an abrupt halt for no apparent reason. Of course, every writer is different, and there may be individual remedies to bring back the magic,  like standing on one’s head for two minutes, drinking a cup of coffee, looking at old family photos, staring into a lit candle,or banging one’s head against a soft wall. The solutions are probably as varied as writers themselves, but I’d like to share some of the methods that have worked for me in kick-starting my brain to restore some kind of productivity.

When I feel the ideas shrinking, I usually just stop writing. My method of writing is quite old-fashioned and involves spiral-ringed notebooks, dozens of pencils, and a ball point pen before using the word processor on my laptop. There’s something about ideas bubbling in my brain and then flowing physically down my right arm through my fingers and pen or pencil onto the paper that works best for me. There’s an immediacy that I just don’t feel at the keyboard, the sensation that, like blood flowing through my veins, the ideas will reach the paper in an organic way.

The computer screen never feels part of me. There is no emotional connection as there is with pen and paper. I know there are writers who feel the opposite and would be bogged down by using an ink pen. That’s fine. Whatever produces results is what one has to use. I wouldn’t dream of criticizing any method that works for another writer.

Sometimes I brew a cup of hot peppermint tea as a break from any writing that seems to be growing stale. Other times, I may walk around the block with the dog, put on a piece of music to take my mind elsewhere, phone a friend to chat for a few minutes, do a crossword puzzle, or even take a nap. When I return to face the blank page, I may ask myself what I’m actually trying to do and how a reader might see what that is. I pretend to be the reader and wonder if I’m including what is needed to keep interest or to inform. Am I trying to be humorous, informative, objectively descriptive, or all of the above? If I’m writing fiction, I may focus on characters to try making them seem real with a host of details. 

Looking at pictures, smelling scented candles, going on the treadmill for ten minutes, imagining a conversation between two portraits or paintings and always asking “What if…?” can recharge the writing batteries too. A lot depends upon mood and the level of energy at any given moment. There are also times when I simply hurl the notebook across the room and go back to it later. There are marks on the wall in my study to serve as memories of those times.

Maybe the most important thing is to remember that writer’s block comes to every writer once in a while, and the more he worries about it, the stronger that block becomes. Try not to take it too seriously, unless of course, you are in the middle of a timed, college essay in one of those notorious blue books, in which case the most expedient solution, if you are on at least the third floor, is to leap out the nearest window. Otherwise, chill a bit and create an alternative activity to get your mind away from the clog until you can find something that acts as a plumber’s plunger for the brain. Always try to see writing as a pleasure and an opportunity to blow your horn and show your skill and creativity.  When you see it merely as another task, it will become just that.  I like the idea of creating the Pavlovian effect of eventually being happy when I see a notebook or a word processor. No need to salivate. Just write.
JB

The British, Victorian prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, considered himself to be a serious traveler. He said, “I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen.” That statement is  a most cogent one in terms of life itself being a kind of journey, and I think it applies very well to how writers see the world, the one in which they travel physically, and the ones which they create through their authorship of stories, essays, poems, and books.

Life is a kind of time machine, but which travels in only one direction, at its own pace from birth to the grave, taking most of us through a series of visits to childhood, phases of other periods, like adolescence, marriage, careers, raising children, retirement, old age, and death. Along the way,  we make mental notes of people, places, sounds, smells, tastes, and other sensations, happy and sad, that we store away in those caverns of memory that become not only the sources of what we think, feel, and write, but of who we are.

The writer perhaps remembers (at least consciously) more detail from his experiences, but beyond that, he arranges them in patterns that express genuine human emotions through fears, hopes, and dreams that we all somehow share as a species. Also, the details in the writer’s mind may be rearranged, accommodating needs of plot, emotional catharsis,  and general design of the composition. Such recollection of detail comes from real life, but it is often put into new combinations and different orders, as in dreams. Writers also tend to create details, though they are not the only people to do this. Children are quite good at it too.

Everyone has a story to tell, and if we all had the chance to tell our stories (from the highest Nobel laureate to the vilest criminal), the world would probably be a much more peaceful place, because it would be based upon mutual understanding. In that sense, we are all writers, each with a tome of experience internalized over however many years he or she has lived, even though that tome may never become an actual printed book. Sometimes, walking down a street, riding in a plane, train, or buying groceries, I will look at another person briefly, wondering what his or her story might be, and I have the deep feeling that there would be no story that could be uninteresting if I could know all its connections and details.  Each of us is a combination of all the experiences he has ever had, every sensation, every encounter, every recollection, every heartache, and every joy. Imagine how different the world would be if everyone could share his complete story with everyone else. Perhaps that may be at least a part of what heaven is.  JB

I do believe that we can fall in love with places and seasons. Often we remember places that were summer idylls, or we can recall snowy, winter vistas from holidays gone-by, or the melancholy beauty of autumns. Seasons appeal in different ways to the senses, and we can be carried away by the rich colors of a maple tree turning scarlet or amber.  My favorite season is fall, that lovely reminder of the impermanent quality of life for us all.

I remember autumns in New England, and Indiana as being among the most magnificent (like Brown County). I now spend my winters in Pompano Beach, Florida, and even though Colorado has had some terrible flooding in its northern parts the past couple of weeks, I have acquired a deep love of the terrain here with views that are as majestic and breathtaking as any others I have ever seen. Perhaps the reader can remember his own times and places of great beauty, ones that he can summon by closing his eyes to bring them back, if only through yearning recollection. This blog entry will be, once again, a series of photos I’ve taken of some of my favorite autumn views of Colorado. Each will be labeled.

A Favorite Vista

A Silhouette of Pines

Green Velvet

My Granite Seat

Elk

September Aspens

Mountain Lake

Water Fall

Dusk on my street

Clear Creek

Through the trees

Echo Lake

Echo Lake 2

Nature’s Path

Aspens of Gold

Me at Clear Creek

Majestic Autumn

Perfect Autumn Day

Autumn at its best

Pathway Home

JB

I know that body tattoos have been around for hundreds or perhaps even thousands of years and that they are part of what we in the modern world like haughtily to call “primitive” decoration.

When I was growing up in Northwest Indiana in the 1950’s, the only guys who had tattoos were the ones who had served in the United States Navy or were members of motor cycle gangs. Our next-door neighbor, Mr. M, had a tattoo on his left arm that was an elaborate depiction of the girl with whom he had fallen in love during the late 1930’s but with whom he never ultimately even had a date. In those days, there was no such thing as laser removal of tattoos the messages of which turned out to be temporary. The images remained, for better or worse.

Now tattoos are quite common. Many, perhaps most, are small insignias placed tastefully in areas that are not always on display but intended to be shared only with intimates.  Less common are the very large and obvious tattoos that cover foreheads, faces, necks, hands, backs, legs, and everything in between that make me think the circus is in town. These are the people, who want or need to advertise that they are in love with someone, hate someone, hate the world in general, or simply crave attention. In the same category, at least in my thinking, are the steel inserts, not just in ears, but also in tongues, lips, eyebrows, noses, and anywhere else that might make an electrical storm more exciting.

Steel inserts can be removed or relocated without too much trouble, but tattoos require expensive laser treatments, when removal is even possible. It’s supposedly a free country when it comes to such things, but I continue to wonder why such dramatic gestures are chosen in such relatively permanent ways. The more bizarre or arresting the tattoos, the more likely it seems the wearers would tire of them. It’s like buying a suit of clothes in one’s twenties so that the same outfit can be worn into old age. Maybe the tastes of some people remain static, as though their identities are incapable of development over the years. It’s probably true that what we wear and how we cut our hair say something about who we are, at least at the moment. I like the idea that I don’t have to wear swim trunks all the time, or a suit all the time either. I appreciate change and the choice I have to blend in different ways according to where I am. I wouldn’t dream of wearing now the outfits I wore in the 1970’s. How static that would be! I’d feel trapped…but isn’t that what someone does with a permanent tattoo, especially one that screams out its message?

I’m guessing that someone in his or her twenties, who chooses a huge and extreme tattoo is unlikely to see it the same way in his or her fifties, sixties, or seventies, when skin wrinkles and sags to alter the effects of images previously thought to have been “cool.”  Here’s a young lady whose neck tattoo looks more like a cancer skin graft.

There are many ways to say who we are through our appearance, but often those ways develop and change as we mature. It’s regrettable that what we wanted to be permanent at age twenty might become a liability and sideshow joke at age sixty when it comes to tattoos or metal hardware that make us believe that we may be loved, admired, or just noticed more than if we didn’t use neon light methods, methods that may prove sadly to be very short lived. I wonder how many elaborately tattooed people wake up one morning, look into the mirror, and say, “Oh, my God!  What was I thinking?” Here is a man with more than the usual number of decorations from tattoos and metal inserts.

This, to me, represents much too great a commitment, especially one devoted to no more than personal vanity.  JB

Yesterday on the evening news there was an item about a man named Fred, who at the age of ninety-six was writing a song about his departed wife Lorraine, to whom he had been married for seventy-three years. Though Fred doesn’t sing or play an instrument, he found some musicians, who used his lyrics to create a recording as a tribute. The song is called “Sweet Lorraine” and has been put on YouTube with photos of Fred and Lorraine through the years. The song has already become a hit on iTunes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTpXI30KLLM

The touching narrative of these two people, so devoted to each other for all those years, is not a new story, but is no less powerful when I think of it in terms of others I’ve known who were together for most of their lives before suffering the loss of a partner through his or her death. The most recent personal example for me was the death of my Uncle John, whose surviving wife is one of my mother’s younger sisters. My Aunt Connie and Uncle John were married for sixty-three years in a loving relationship that was almost symbiotic in the way the two depended one upon the other. Their lives were so intertwined through music, values, and being the patriarch and matriarch of a large family of grown children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, that John’s death created a kind of void, that my aunt is trying desperately to overcome. Her husband’s absence continues to be so potent a force, that my aunt can sometimes hardly accept the fact that John is gone. She even forgets occasionally and picks up the phone to call him at the hospital.

I can only begin to imagine the remnants of their life together crowding in upon my aunt on a daily basis, sometimes bringing with them tears of joy, and other times bringing a crushing sense of grief. Sleeping next to his pillow, playing old recordings of his voice speaking or singing songs they had so often sung together, seeing his clothes still hanging in the closet, smelling his aftershave lotion lingering in the air, and seeing photographs everywhere of their life together since before 1950. These things make me wonder how many widows and widowers must be in emotional distress through grief the rest of us can hardly realize. In physical terms, such grief must be like having one’s legs or arms removed so that life would feel so restricted, that even the motivation to breathe would be impaired.  I think also of my own parents, who would this year have been married for sixty-nine years.

I remember too, my maternal grandfather’s death in 1985, and the photos of my grandmother afterward, her face having lost forever the vitality and gaiety it had always shown before she lost the dearest person in her life. So many are never the same again after such a terrible loss. There is even a physical transformation.

Anyone, who knows a man or woman whose life partner has recently been taken, should have a deep sympathy and a readiness to be available to help the survivor get through this toughest of emotional perplexities that life can present to the human psyche.  JB

I’ve written other blog entries about Molly, one of my neighbors on the second floor of the condo, where I spend my winters in Pompano Beach, Florida.

Molly, in her seventies, continues to use a walker for an astonishing level of mobility that I would still love to measure in terms of horsepower. The sound of the walker is the only means besides Molly’s untempered, Teamster voice, to let the rest of us on the second floor know that she is in the vicinity. Molly’s grand sense of entitlement has erased any obligation she may once have had to show courtesy to her neighbors, or anyone else. When she wants something, she wants it NOW, whether it means fixing her phone, helping her find her hairnet, or borrowing a cup of whiskey. She can be quite rude in her demands, often using language that would make a sailor blush, but one of her least sensitive practices has been that of taking her empty, glass, gallon wine jugs and throwing them down the garbage chute (daily) at the end of the second-floor walkway, where my condo is. As Molly never cushions the heavy glass jugs in paper, or bothers to walk downstairs (or by the elevator) to dispose of the jug in the recycling bin, the sound reverberates when it hits the steel bin. The first time I heard this noise, I honestly thought a bomb had gone off until another neighbor informed  me that it was only Molly throwing away her empty, gallon, wine jug.

That neighbor, up to her chin in Molly’s shenanigans, finally had enough and threatened her with either a police report or bodily harm if Molly ever again disturbed the peace by hurling  another wine jug down that chute. Apparently, Donna’s threats managed to penetrate Molly’s hairnet, because now Molly drinks only boxed wines, which when empty and thrown down the garbage chute, then making impact with the steel bin, create only the gentle thud of consideration (or is it really the muffled nudge of fear from Donna’s threat?).

Once again I return to a theme that haunts me almost daily, the place of technology in people’s lives.  The strides we’ve made through electronics have been considerable in making life “easier,” or at least faster. Of course, speed means everything to us in the modern world. Everything from fast food to fast vehicles is affected by our desire for expedition and what we think makes life “easier.”

As someone who is aging, I’ll be the first to applaud things that make life less arduous. I appreciate the electric washing machine and clothes dryer. I enjoy the electric coffee maker (though I still often use the French press for brewing coffee). Automobiles, telephones, television sets, radios, Blue Tooth devices, all continue to amaze and help me in one way or another. My criticism, however, isn’t as much with the technology itself, as it is with people, who seem forever to be abusing the very devices that are meant to aid us in our daily lives.

Yesterday morning, Jim and I went for our weekly session of four games of bowling (his scores generally in the 200-plus range, and mine usually around 140). Near the end of our session, a Japanese man arrived with his four lovely children and beautiful wife to bowl in the lane just to our left. Every one of them had his or her own cellphone, and while one member of the family would be bowling, the others remained on their individual phones talking away to God knows whom. There was not one attempt to engage in conversation of any kind one with the other in that family. Not one word was spoken, except on the cellphones. It was another in a series of scenarios, that are more and more common. The irony for me remains that in a world where we cling to the illusion of being “connected,” we seem to be more distant than ever from one another. Many seem to be desperate to keep in constant contact with someone “out there,” as though such contacts render the caller or “callee”  no longer alone. This sort of electronic prison keeps many shackled to virtual relationships. FaceBook has a bewildering array of expression hurled moment by moment into cyberspace, but statistics have shown that people are lonelier than ever, despite their being engaged more and more in texting and being on cellphones, which have become almost bionic extensions of the bodies of some users.

I’m left with a sense of sadness about such things. I miss handwritten thank-you notes. I miss seeing and hearing kids playing outside instead of their being indoors in front of  TV monitors or computer screens. I miss eye contact with people walking down the street, who now have cellphones attached to their ears while looking down at sidewalks, no more aware of their surroundings and no more capable of smiling or observing what’s around them than the trees and flowers they also fail to see. We seem to be on an enormous conveyor belt, hellbent on getting somewhere as quickly and impersonally as possible, but I don’t know where we’re going or why.

Instead of a verbal expression of my esteem for the state of Colorado, I’d like today to share some photos I’ve taken recently of views that have inspired me. I’ll simply label each without trying to describe what the eye can already see clearly. Let this blog entry be almost purely a sensory one. A feast for the eyes. JB

Sunset from our front lawn

Pines

Vista

Mountain Snow in July!

Mountain Elk

Mountain Road

Almost a postcard

Breathtaking

Centennial Sunset

Waterfall

Clouds

Mountain Lake

Sunset from our deck