Category Archives: Ruminations

… personal reflections …

What bears repeating…

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Whenever I’ve been away from this blog for a while, something about the return always gets me pondering the nature of the whole writing enterprise.

Long abandoned has been my early aim of posting here weekly. Over the years, extended gaps between date headings usually pointed to background turbulence, in the form of personal difficulties I sometimes told you about later. 

More recently, it was the elongated Rivers project that kept me away. 

In both scenarios, as I debated whether to share with readers something of my coping or composing processes, I asked myself why you’d be interested at all. A familiar trope about writers labels them arrogant – it may apply to personal essayists above all. For my taste, those who lean too heavily into advice-giving or who obsess over minutiae tend to lose me. (An old favorite quip: “Is it solipsistic in here or is it just me?”) 

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Coming ashore…

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The artistic endeavor is contemplation twice rewarded.

I wrote that line in a long-ago post about exploration and discovery. So often our creative impulse springs up from an emotion or idea – and then our attempt to express it leads to others that surprise us.

In a discussion with fellow creatives a while back, one advice-giver urged that we talk about our projects with everyone we encounter, even in line at the grocery store. Her point was that it feeds our own energies and may find us a few interested “followers.” The suggestion didn’t ring helpful for me, maybe because imagining myself on the receiving end in that checkout line makes me feel sort of put upon. 

It’s true, though, that in my everyday interactions, if others ask what I’ve been up to, I’m only too eager to tell about it. This post is an iteration of that, because if you are a follower of this blog, you have, by implication, already asked. And if you’ve been here long, you’re aware my creative energies have been diverted for some time to a separate longform project.

In other words, I’ve been out exploring.

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Remembering…

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“Music is…the most reliable engine of nostalgia. But as I get older, I’ve come to see that nostalgia is not just about looking back at good times. It can also be a remembering of the exquisite pleasure of longing, of anticipation of the life you want so badly, of the self you will make of the materials you collect along the way.“

Lydia Polgreen

(photo by Rula Sibai)

Stay curious…

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“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.” (Einstein)

Also, try not to demand things of yourself which are out of your control.  🙂 

The second part of the quote sounds slightly more doable than the first. 

In my previous essay, I cited an uncontrollable circumstance when I gave an explanation for posting less frequently (ok, way less frequently). I pointed as well to a couple of positive milestones since then that led to my return to the blog. 

With respect to one of them, the completion of an initial book draft, I was less than forthcoming with you. I neglected to explain that it’s a manuscript in two sections; it is only the first part that’s finished, the shorter of the two at that. I will be at this a good while yet. Long enough, that is, that I’m choosing not to elaborate on its contents here for the time being. When it’s closer to ready, you’ll be among the first to know.

Unlike some stretches between posts in the past, it feels fantastic, if a little unfamiliar, to be able to account for the absence because of writing, instead of lamenting factors keeping me from writing.

The larger project I’ve involved myself in has to do with the past – which I always say I don’t want to live in. But I do want to learn from it, interpret it, celebrate it (the joys and the survivings). The process can be exhausting as well as energizing; I always want to wrest more. 

I think this field of curiosity – reflecting on one’s past to mine wisdom for one’s future – fits well with Einstein’s exhortation. Maybe it’s one way to refuse to grow old in defiance of the gathering years. That’s my plan anyway.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a train of thought to catch.

What has become clear?…

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When I started this blog several years ago, among my aims was to get some practice with writing essays. 

I’ve posted fewer of them in the past year for two main reasons – at nearly opposing ends of the sad/happy spectrum: a life-threatening accident of a close family member, and later being able to return to working on a book manuscript. 

Now that positive milestones have been reached with both (a full recovery and a completed first draft), it seems like a good time to ask – as Emerson is said to have posed when greeting friends  – “What has become clear to you since we last met?” 

Thinking about how I would answer this reminded me of an essay I posted all the way back in 2015, taking off on the maxim, “Write what you know.” Turns out seven years is a nice round time period for taking a look at what has crystallized in the interim. Herewith, a few fresh observations…

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a Handwritten essay…

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I could hardly believe, after all these years, that we were back in touch. Yet there it was, that cherished name from years past, on the glowing monitor before me. Jon and I had become friends lifetimes earlier. Nothing in particular had changed – other than the circumstances under which we had met. After a brief and bright few years at the same college, our association didn’t survive the normal relocations for other schools and jobs. 

An observation of his back then was that friendship is largely a function of time and place. I bristled at the sentiment at the time, still of the mind that a true connection will outlast them. Occasionally it does, but far more commonly, even deeply resonant attachments dissipate when conditions shift. Long experience has me now agreeing with my old friend.

Look there, I called him “my old friend.” That remains true regardless of whether we’d have reconnected. Now that we have, it’s even sweeter to think of him that way. As for his assertion about friendship, as I’ve come to echo it I’m all the more thankful for the exceptions. It’s become clear too that it’s hard to tell at the outset; I’ve been mistaken more than once in speculating which ones will last and which might fade away.

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The authentic facade…

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(from meadpl.org)
(from meadpl.org)

The public library in my hometown was among my favorite buildings to visit as a little girl. Leading up to its grand entryway were smooth steps from either sidewalk direction; I can still hear the soft tss-tss-tss of my little soles landing and sliding a smidge at each rise. The opposing sets of stairs met at a platform facing the enormous doors, and the imposing limestone edifice welcomed me into its world of literary delights like a stern grandfather with a playful heart. 

When I was in my teens, it was razed in favor of a new structure a few blocks away. But the destroyers left standing the great limestone facade which still adorns that block forty-plus years since, now surrounded by rejuvenated green space. 

An old friend once opined that leaving the fragment behind seemed silly to him. I could not see it more differently. To me, it is a brilliant gesture of admiration for an architectural exemplar of that era, as well as a connection to childhood. The sun is always shining in my memories of those library visits, and a glimpse of the gray face still warms the little girl in me. 

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Am I asking a question?…

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That thinker doesn’t look very comfortable. 
Leaning back in a rocker — now that’s my preferred contemplation pose, knitting needles clacking or netbook keys tapping.

Thinking about thinking, writing about writing, posing quandaries, positing solutions. 
That’s some of what i had in mind when i conceived of this site years ago, in particular with the Ruminations tab. 
To me the term has always had an agreeable association with “a reflective thinker characterized by quiet contemplation” [Free Dictionary].

For obvious linguistic reasons, i recently wondered if there could be a relationship to the thirteenth century Persian poet Rumi. As fitting as that might be, the theory apparently has the lamentable disadvantage of not being rooted in fact. 

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