The Life of the Mind...what we dream of, that we are...

I spent a few minutes with our friend's old horse barn this week, and have been fiddling around with photos, these are a few of my favorites, I'm still "playing", I really love the brown tint I managed to create in this first one...

This one has a real "Boo Radley" look to it...

Haunted...
Seeing the trees grown up in front of the stall door reminds me how long it's been since Eli and Bill passed through to spend a day in the paddock. The horses are long gone, the kitten that was born in that barn is now a fat little old tabby.

I love how I was able to keep the pale blue color in the glass.

Life really beats the crap out of these old places, but this one lingers on, a sturdy testament to how well it was built... but it won't stand forever without attention...

Old paint, old boards...

Hard as nails.

I finally turned over my new changes that I want made to The Fractured Hues of White Light, I sat on them for several days, reading through them, making certain that they were sensible so when my Fred and I go into it, there's no question where they are in the manuscript proof and what I want done. I will need to read through the whole book one more time before I publish it, so I suspect we'll be well into April before I can even think of publishing...but that's fine, I want it to be right.

There are times I'm so glad to be self-published, I can take my time, there's no stress allowed. I've read enough about authors who have nightmare experiences when they lose their editor at the publisher before publication, and being assigned a new one who is not an advocate for the book, who doesn't return phone calls...I'm sure this doesn't happen all the time, but with my luck it would...it's a cluster-fuck I don't need...

I take my writing very seriously, I'm creating a book that will endure, it's not a product that will satisfy the latest craving saturating the market...I don't anticipate making a quick buck. Dear god, what's wrong with me, right? I'm an artist, I'm a writer, that's what's wrong with me. It lights up my soul to read a book that is well crafted, reading words that a writer has spend time putting together, a story that is timeless (not necessarily timely).

Today's blog title comes from an article that I recently read about Joyce Carol Oates in Smithsonian Magazine...

"—I was mesmerized by books and by what might be called “the life of the mind”: the life that was not manual labor, or housework, but seemed in its specialness to transcend these activities."

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Joyce-Carol-Oates-Goes-Home-Again.html#ixzz0ip1fyCEp

She always has such interesting things to say, follow the link if you're interested in reading more.

The life of the mind...yes. That's what I wanted to do when I grew up...my time spent in libraries, museums, art studios, theaters, wandering around in woods and meadows, the associated smells that would excite me, chasing the elusive dream ("What we dream of, that we are" - JCO) The pictures in my mind that I wanted to paint, the stories that I longed to tell...

The life of the mind. Yes. That sums up my two disciplines, art and writing...I'm always looking and digesting what I've seen, I'm always listening and absorbing what I've heard...it's an existence dependent on the senses...I feel so alive while I'm working on the latest thing... heart breaking at the same time as profound happiness...it's so beautiful.

Homecoming...

Wanting to meet the author because you like his work is like meeting a duck because you like pâté...Margaret Atwood.

I laugh at this quote every time...

I always find it so flustering to meet a person I admire...have never found it too fulfilling because it winds up being this weird thing, unsatisfying...I don't know, like a bad aftertaste. It's always so awkward meeting the famous anyway, they're inundated with everyone else who's with you in line waiting for the autograph and after my book signing experience, I know it's just...tiring. Today, I met my inspiration, Joyce Carol Oates. I found her exactly as I imagined...not at all disappointed...why, blow me down, she rocked!

I normally do not like being in crowds, so I was very brave going alone without any moral support...I also braved the chilly gray day...found my way into the auditorium, settled in and waited for the show to start. The place filled up...and as usual, I always get the person who doesn't have space issues sitting next to me...a very large elder man kept bumping my arm...and then midway through...he fell asleep. Which...I think...can't be sure...JCO looked in our direction and I felt like saying..."No, I'm not with this dude..." And I kept saying to myself (just like I always do when I'm in this situation), why me? Damn it.

Anyway...JCO read poems...talked about the poems...told stories, went on tangents...made fun of Syracuse weather (an easy target)...was amused because people kept laughing whenever she mentioned Donald Trump (so she'd just say his name again just because)...and the New Jersey Turnpike...(you had to be there.)

There was the one person during the Q&A who had to say something about her work being "so dark and depressing"...she again joked about the Upstate New York weather possibly being the cause...I giggled quite a bit (quietly, I didn't want to wake the man next to me of course). I do believe that the Upstate New York weather adds something special to the writers who have experienced it...

I thought JCO was gracious throughout the event, very funny and natural, down to earth. I got in line, bought a copy of her latest...and got in the line for the signing...


Yes, it's official...I'm a nerd...I'm awkward to begin with...being small, light weight, sickly, juggling myself, my belongings that consisted of my purse, long flowing raincoat, oversize scarf, my funky hat, my mocha cappuccino, and I had extra big hair today because of the weather...reading glasses, then add a precious book to the equation and stick me in front of a woman who I have admired since I was 14 when I read Wonderland (during that impressionable time when I found out that I can write about ANYTHING I wanted to...I didn't have to write something "nice"...) Okay, you get the picture...so she asked for my name, I sputtered it out...and she asked, "What do you do?" Ummm...I'm a writer, an artist, and I work here in the art collection. She signed the book, handed it back..."Well, looks like you really got the artist thing going with what you've got on..." I think that's what she said, and she kind of laughed...maybe she smirked just a teeny bit. Ugh..thanks...thank you for Bellefleur, it's my favorite book. I don't think she replied, I left the line, nearly running, trying to find my way out of the building, to familiar ground, back in the bowels of the art collection, back to my office that I fondly refer to as "the cave", back to my work that I abandoned to go dallying on Homecoming/Reunion weekend...25 years ago I graduated from SU (JCO graduated in 1960, two years before I was born.) Then I started to laugh at myself...You nerd. It occurred to me that I kept crouching down while I stood in front of her...she was sitting, and it made me feel odd being so excessively taller (I'm almost never taller than anyone, except wee children)...so it must've looked like I was bowing and scraping...I wasn't, I just felt the physical need to be at her level...

I'll bet she was thinking..."Okay, who brought the weird girl?"

I don't know...but...it's funny...did I leave an impression? Probably she'll get a story out of it for her next reading...(oh god, there was this weird girl...why me? Damn it.) I know I would...I just did...a story that I'll remember.

Maybe she knows...she has an inkling what I go through on a day to day basis, as a creatively driven person...a mind that is running a million miles of thoughts at light speed...I can't write it down fast enough...I muddle along trying to go above and beyond stuck on survive...writing and painting...working a full time job to support my "habit" as I call it...that creative vice that requires certain tools and devices to make inspiration come into being...

Since I've been reading the Journal of Joyce Carol Oates I've felt this kinship with her...I feel less "nuts" knowing that she feels exactly like I do about writing...it's been like looking in a mirror at times. I would love to sit and chat with her...maybe someday...

And so...that's my story...

It's Friday night, raining and dark...welcome back to Upstate New York JCO...

On Flowers in the garden and "Gritty Realism"

This is the "Granny" of lilacs...she's a big ole girl and lives happily in my yard, she's so tall, I can look out my bedroom window and see these gorgeous blooms when I open my eyes in the morning...the season for lilacs does not last long enough! They're beginning to fade...usually, since we're cooler here in the 'upper elevations', my lady outlasts the lilacs in the city below, but this year has been so peculiar, they bloomed earlier...usually I would have her lingering into June...on her shady side, I found a few blooms that have not yet started to turn brown, they break my heart they're so beautiful!


But now, just in time for Memorial Day, the spirea has started to bloom by my porch (don't they look like a shower of fireworks?), this one on the corner has overwhelmed my variegated hosta below! I'll trim it back after she finishes blooming so the hosta can breathe!

Next week the Irises will be in bloom...the stalks with the buds have come up these last few warm days, and there are little yellow points at the top...soon, very soon!

The little chipmunk mommy has been visiting for 'eats' at the hand pump in the morning, I got lucky with the camera and snapped a quick shot of her before she ran off...

I've been on vacation, and spending much of my time in the garden, I have made some new artwork (I will post later at Follow Your Bliss), and made progress with some of my writing...weeding always helps with working out the plot knots in the brain...unfortunately, my back hasn't been too pleased with my being in the garden, I take frequent breaks, rest, read, write, make art, then go back, do a little more...and repeat the process...Max has been loving the time outside...
He often finds a shady and weedy place just like this one and "vanishes" from sight, which often sends me searching for him, calling his name (becoming frantic) and I'll finally catch site of those ears perking above the tall grass...and then the wagging tail ("I'm right here, can't you see me wagging my tail?")...eventually, he tips over and shows me his "stuff"...but you don't need to see his stuff...and I think he'd be very embarrassed if I photographed his exposed belly (he is very camera shy) and then posted it on my blog for the world to see!

I've been spending lots of porch time with the laptop doing edits on my novel The Fractured Hues of White Light, which I'm hoping to have published this summer...I was tweaking a paragraph in Chapter 7 today and then something hit me and I started writing fresh new lines...this paragraph I have dismembered and put back together several times over the course of two weeks, and now this! Oh I was joyfully writing, and then after I was done I couldn't believe I did this! What the hell am I doing? This book is done, why am I adding new work? But no, it isn't new, Samantha and Guthrie are still walking on the beach, they're still having the same discussion...the memory from a long time ago is there, only left unsaid between them, and I reminded them of it, and it just came together beautifully. (Deep sigh) I love when that happens! This work that I do...writing...I'm still trying to get a handle on it...even ten years after I started really doing it...it's still a mystery to me, the "how come" of it. (I can still hear that voice in my head saying "Why can't you write something nice?", it's usually said in my mother's voice...you know the one, that nagging vicious critic.)

Last night, while reading The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973-1982, I found a passage from 1975 that she wrote about her writing process...I have read dozens of her books, have admired her work since I was a teenager when I first read Wonderland, and now I'm finally reading the things that I've needed to "hear" as a writer...this is a small part that I read last night...

"Gritty realism" and that sort of thing. "Uncompromising." "Lifts the lid off." Etc. One does want that - but more, far more. ... The challenge is to wed the naturalistic and the symbolic, the realistic and the abstract, the utterly convincing story and the parable...that is, to bring together the psychological and the mythic in one character at all moments...and to wed time and eternity in a seamless whole. So it is rather like walking a tightrope. One does want surface realism, but one wants just as much an allegorical or mythic universality, relating not to surfaces but to the inner experience, the life of the soul itself. Those who do not believe in the "soul" will hate this kind of writing, not knowing what it attempts; those who do not believe in the "world" (because they are very religious, or politically conservative, or neurotic) will detest the naturalism, the feel of "gritty reality" even when it isn't gritty but is rather attractive. Only those readers who are, somehow, in the center...as I am...who share my vision, however unclear it is...necessarily unclear...will be able to respond to my work without distorting or misreading or rejecting it. This is a risk I take gladly. Though perhaps I have no choice. (Joyce Carol Oates, January 12, 1975)

I couldn't have said it better myself! She wrote this when I was just beginning to think of this stuff (12 going on 13) , I knew then that I wanted to write books, and there were stories inside my head, but I didn't have the words yet...and my penmanship was crappy. Now the words have arrived (thank goodness for laptops), and are in print. (Some of them.) I know what it is that I'm trying to do with my books...and just reading this section of her journal last night made me feel 'right' about what I've done with Dusty Waters and the others...these prickly little novels of mine...they are mine, I take ownership of them, the words, and I love my characters to pieces...I'm just so happy to have finally made them, to commit my time and energy toward the effort of making them...

I have no choice. This is what comes. It hasn't been easy writing them, the immersion is so complete while writing...making a drawing or a painting feels so fantastic, it's more immediate, I get my hands dirty, and then I'm done...writing is a whole different beast...more demanding...time consuming, all consuming...exhausting...terrible and beautiful. I love it. I'm addicted to it...it's like waking from a dream, a sleep with no rest...

Very strange. It is very strange indeed.

Spring ponderings...

Crocus and a honey bee...


and then more snow...

Pussy Willows...this bush was once a twig that my father rooted for me from the pussy willow bush at my childhood home...they're like kitty toes...

Speaking of kitty...

A handsome little pussy cat...Charlie...the good little naughty boy...we were napping together today...he made me mad early this morning because he got into my bag of seeds and ate the plastic bag that contained the brussel sprout seeds that my friend had given to me (of course he got sick and left a "present" on the floor to go along with the scatter of seeds all over the floor)...but how can anyone stay mad at that sweet little face...why are the little devils so angelic while they sleep?


The World of Pooh...a comfort book that has soothed me to sleep these last couple of weeks because of my back pain...


A hard cover full of Inspiration...a different kind of comfort...

A journal as an experiment in consciousness. An attempt to record not just the external world, and not just the vagrant, fugitive, ephemeral "thoughts" that brush against us like gnats, but the refractory and inviolable authenticity of daily life: daily-ness, day-ness, day-lightness, the day's eye of experience. -- Joyce Carol Oates, January 1, 1973

Comfort for the mind...