Saving Mr. Val

 

The sense of presence slid gently across the cluttered desktop, palpable as sunlight. Nudging past my elbow, it rippled up my spine and chilled my shoulders, staking its claim to my consciousness like a squatter moving into a deserted house.

Suddenly attentive though not yet uneasy I turned, expecting to see my calico scowl of a cat peering at me across the dining table, irritated with my absorption in my work, intent on drawing me away for a bit of play. But the cat was nowhere to be seen.  When her name and a gentle, trilling call brought no response, I stretched and looked, unwilling to move from my chair.  She wasn’t under the table, not hidden in the plumpness of sofa cushions.  No sleeping cat lay draped across the wooden chair, her paws kneading at the air where they rested between turned spindles.  

Perplexed by her absence as much as by the vague promptings that had unfocused my attention, I turned back to the computer, ready to dismiss my unease and settle back into my work.

Virginia Throws Open the Window

 

It began quietly enough, with a certain restlessness, a reluctance to re-establish routine, an inability to focus on the tasks at hand.  

I’d been traveling, wheeling across the Mississippi Delta for days, peripatetic as a dream, imbibing the sheer movement, the joys of impulsivity and intense expectation like some heady, intoxicating brew.  Eventually, the party ended and it was time to sober up.  Home again at my desk, I barely could turn to look out the window at the familiar view I love so much.  During our separation it had transformed itself from placid scenery into a token of my discontent, a nagging reminder of how many paths remained to be traveled. 

The Art of Re-Working Reality

 

No book – more precisely, no series of books – has embedded itself more deeply into my life than Lawrence Durrell’s  The Alexandria Quartet. The four companion volumes, Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive and Clea, are remarkable on several counts. Their portrayal of the story’s protagonist, the city of Alexandria herself, is vibrant and evocative. Against the background of her corniche, brothels and souks, the author sets himself the unusual and difficult task of examining the complexity of human relationships, emotions and events in the context of the space/time continuum.  To the degree that he succeeds in reaching that goal, he succeeds as well in making the Quartet a bit of a structural tour de force.

Durrell’s dialogue occasionally creaks and groans like a recalcitrant ox-cart, but his descriptive powers are unrivaled. Whether tracing the outlines of Alexandrian society, plumbing the depths of traditional Egyptian culture or capturing the incomparable beauties of Mediterranean sea and sky, his language is variously lush, languid and spare.  As Justine opens with the insistent force of a natural process, the narrator is living on an island with a companion we know only as “the child”.  Her identity, suggested, is not confirmed. What is clear is the setting, an exquisite  prologue to what will come:

In the great quietness of these winter evenings there is one clock: the sea. Its dim momentum in the mind is the fugue upon which this writing is made. Empty cadences of seawater, licking its own wounds, sulking along the mouths of the delta, boiling upon those deserted beaches – empty, forever empty under the gulls: white scribble on the grey, munched by clouds.  If ever there are sails here they die before the land shadows them.  Wreckage washed up on the pediments of islands, the last crust, eroded by the weather, stuck in the blue maw of water…gone!

Beyond the elegant structure of Durrell’s story and the  extravagant beauty of his language, there is another reason for artists of every sort to plumb the depths of his narrative.  Few writers provide more clues to their own artistic process or their personal convictions about the nature of art than does Durrell. Painter or poet, novelist, sculptor or photographer – all can find guidance for their craft and the beginnings of wisdom for their art in words which have become as well-known as their author:

I spoke of the uselessness of art, but added nothing truthful about its consolations.  The solace of such work as I do with brain and heart lies with this ~  that only there, in the silence of the painter or writer can reality be re-ordered, re-worked and made to show its significant side.

Sitting in silence at my desk , I often enjoy little more than a hunch, a suspicion, a tentative sense of direction in which to travel with my words.  Still, I  understand the process by which words can be “re-ordered and re-worked”  to reveal that deeper significance Durrell so rightly prizes, and no one seems inclined to argue the appropriateness of such re-working.

However, as I’ve become more appreciative of  the possibilities offered by photography, I’ve been intrigued and puzzled by arguments between those I privately think of as “purists” and “innovators” – that is, between those who insist photographs never should be retouched in any way, and those who assume tweeks and tricks of every sort will be a natural part of the creative process. 

In simplest terms, the argument seems to boil down to “pure perception is good, manipulation is bad.”  Manipulation most often seems to mean “messing about with a computer”.  But “manipulation” of an image doesn’t begin when someone opens Photoshop or Picnik. It begins at the beginning, when the photographer makes a first decision about what will, or won’t, be in the viewfinder.

 Michael Smith,  member of the North American Nature Photographers and former member of the National Press Photographers Association, ponders these issues in a recent discussion on his fine blog, Dissent Decree.

As he says,  “…I have heard most of the arguments about how far photographic “truth” may be stretched. What it comes down to is context and intent. A photojournalist with ethics will not alter, stage or otherwise contrive a photograph. However, that same photographer must and will decide what to photograph, from what vantage point, and (at which) exact moment.”

“Likewise, he or she will decide what focal length lens to use, what to focus upon, what to frame in the viewfinder (“in-camera cropping”) and what aperture setting and ISO to use. All of these decisions shape and shade the final image – (which becomes) in some degree… editorializing and self-expression as much as reporting. Photojournalism, in spite of what the purists may argue, is in part a form of Art.”

As a writer, I understand the need for constant choice. I spend hours choosing between this word or that, reordering paragraphs, eliminating sentences or adding the necessary phrase.  Photography, it seems, is no less a process of continual decision making. Should I photograph this flower, or that? Would the building be better shot in morning light or evening? Shall I focus here, or there? Will I choose black and white, or color? It intrigues me that some consider these decisions inherently artistic, even as they describe what happens at the computer as undesirable manipulation.

It seems obvious we can’t have it both ways. If deciding to include a cloud or exclude a tree in a photograph is an “artistic decision”, then cropping, framing and applying effects can be artistic decisions, too.  On the other hand, if choosing to transform an image with the special effects available through computer programs is “manipulation”, then choosing a subject, a vantage point, a condition of light is just as surely a manipulation of what viewers will see in the final image.

In fact, whether a photographer chooses to rely on camera settings alone or prefers to crop, tint or otherwise modify an image after its upload to a computer, the goal is the same: to choose a subject and then to “rework” that reality, to frame this bit of landscape or that bit of life in such a way that its emotional depth and temporal significance become accessible.  Like a painter selecting a favorite brush or a writer uncoiling great loops of words, the photographer softens and tints, focuses and frames in such a way that  quite ordinary bits of daily life  become transformed, evoking a sense of unutterable mystery and delight.  Inexplicably, they become living moments, available to serve artists of every sort in a way Durrell understood to his depth:

These are moments which possess the writer, not the lover, and which live on perpetually. One can return to them time and time again in memory, or use them as a fund upon which to build the part of one’s life that is writing. One can debauch them with words, but one can never spoil them. In this context too, I recover another such moment, lying beside a sleeping woman in a cheap room near the mosque.  In that early spring dawn, with its dense dew, sketched upon the silence which engulfs a whole city before the birds awaken it, I caught the sweet voice of the blind muezzin from the mosque reciting the ebed – a voice hanging like a hair in the palm cooled airs of Alexandria…

The great prayer wound its way into my sleepy consciousness like a serpent, coil after shining coil of words, the voice of muezzin sinking from register to register of gravity ~ until the whole world seemed dense with its marvelous healing powers, the intimations of a grace undeserved and unexpected, impregnating that shabby room where Melissa lay, breathing lightly as  a gull, rocked upon the oceanic splendors of a language she would never know.

 

 

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The “I”s Have It…

 

Like many new bloggers, I was consumed with anxiety when I posted my first, tentative essays on WordPress.   “Will people like them?”, I wondered.   “Will anyone take time to read them?”   “How will I ever know?”

As time passed and I grew more assured, I began to think less about others’ response to my words and  more about the writing itself.  Georgia O’Keefe once reflected on a book of photographs and text published to mark her 90th birthday by saying,  “Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant.  It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest”.  Reading her words, I felt an immediate kinship.  Over the months, I’d begun to make similar comments when discussing my own work. “This is how I understand things.” ” This is the way I experience the world.”  ” This is what I would like you to see.”

To be frank, that’s a lot of “I”. At one time, it would have made me uncomfortable to say such things.  During my formative years, ”I” was a bad word.  No one ever said so explicitly, but if any of us began to use it just a little too often, we knew we needed to stop.  ”I” was a  selfish word.  “I” was self-centered,  vain and egotistical, prideful, frivolous and perhaps even a little smart-alecky, like the inevitable kid in the back of the classroom who loved to wave his arms and yell, “Teacher! Teacher!  I know! I know!”  It was impossible to stop using “I”, of course, but we weren’t supposed to celebrate its necesssity.

Life being what it is, someone was bound to challenge that view of things.  My challenge appeared in the form of a rumpled and utterly distracted professor who bore a vague resemblance to Quentin Compson.  Tie pulled loosely to one side, occasionally missing a button, shedding files and paper like autumn trees, he was a natural actor whose classes could be pure theatre.  He didn’t precisely teach but rolled through our lives like a force of nature, tacking signs above his desk that proclaimed  Creato, Ergo Sum  and asking questions like,  “If you had to wear a scarlet letter, which one would it be?”   His lectures were filled with a mix of literary classics, myth and religious texts.   We got Genesis, Gilgamesh and the Gospels filtered through Melville, Eliot, Faulkner and Greene.    

Paper and Pixels and Ink, O, My!

 

Even if you’ve never strapped on a set of skis, think Sundance is something that needs a choreographer and really don’t have a taste for the kind of choral music associated with the Mormon Tabernacle,  Salt Lake City has a lot to commend it.   I lived in Salt Lake for a year, and enjoyed it tremendously.  There was art, the Film Festival and good music everywhere.   At the time, bluegrass and newgrass were particularly popular, and if  David Grisman, Vassar Clements and Tony Rice weren’t in Salt Lake, you could find them playing the circuit in Telluride or Greeley with groups like Hot Rize and the Seldom Scene.

We didn’t need the pros to make us happy, of course.  On Sunday afternoons, I’d travel with friends up one of the canyons into the heart of the Wasatch range and kick back  in a cozy little corner where music, cheeseburgers and beer were available and everyone was welcome to play.  If you were even mildly proficient there always was an extra guitar or two around, or a bass player who’d take time for a burger and let you sit in. For the rest of us, there were spoons and washboards and tabletops to drum on – some days, it sounded for all the world like the kindergarten rhythm band had been set loose with Bill Monroe or the Foggy Mountain Boys.

Team Muse

 

Years ago, before the advent of computers and electronic organizers, I kept a manila file folder filled with clippings.  I tucked away poems I found especially moving.  I kept funny cartoons, interesting speeches reprinted in the newspaper, book reviews and critical essays torn from magazines.  As years of reading and re-reading passed, I unfolded those fragile pages ever more carefully, watching the paper brown with age and begin to grow fragile. The file became a touchstone of sorts, and it always was close at hand.

Eventually, I lost the file.  Where or when it happened is a mystery.  I simply reached for it, and it was gone.  Since that day, I’ve spent years searching for a half-remembered poem about a dog, a poinsettia, and loss, not to mention a commencement speech about climbing a mountain.  I’ve not much hope of finding either, because I remember only a few words from each and have no idea of their original source.

On the other hand, I do remember some of the cartoons. One of my favorites showed a disheveled Graeco-Roman woman standing outside a cafe filled with patrons engrossed in books or bent over coffee cups, writing in notebooks.  Barefooted, dressed in a flowing robe and sporting a laurel wreath in her hair, she clutched  a sign that said, “Will inspire for residuals”.

I didn’t do a lick of writing at the time, but I knew enough to laugh.  The thought  of a down-on-her-luck Muse soliciting business outside a cafe is humorous because it’s so absurd. 

No Mo’ WriMo

  

As November 15 approaches, we’re nearly halfway through National Novel Writing Month.  I’d never heard of the event (NaNoWriMo to the cognoscenti) until it was mentioned by Becca, of Write on Wednesday.  Initially I paid it little mind, even when I realized several Write on Wednesday contributors were going to participate.  But NaNoWriMo began popping up everywhere on the Web, as though it suddenly had found a new and better PR firm.  Even the WordPress Forums weren’t immune.  Promoters there sounded a bit like Ron Burgundy.  NaNoWriMo, it seemed, was “sort of a big deal”.  I decided I should pay attention.

First, I read about the program.  (Its goal: for each participant to produce a 50,000 word novel within the month of November.)   I read and considered discussions about the program.  I read reflections from people who had participated in the program in the past.  And then, I decided not to participate. 

The first reason is that I’m not a fiction writer at heart, and I know that.   Becca’s original question about NaNoWriMo  – “Do you have a novel inside you waiting to get out?” - did send me off to have a look around my mental premises.  I reached back into the crannies of my mind, opened up drawers filled with preconceptions and sorted through piles of prejudices.  I pulled out my passions and interests from under the bed, rearranged the stacks of leftover sentences and paragraphs in the back closet and even checked behind my little stash of preferences and neuroses.  There’s no novel in there, anywhere.  I’m not surprised.  I read very little fiction by choice, generally being led to an author’s fiction by their essays or letters.  So, there’s no particular reason to believe the desire to write fiction would be lurking around the edges of my life.

Helping to Weave the Web

When I began posting on WordPress in April, friends from another site held a blog-warming.  There were virtual covered dishes, cyber-cinnamon rolls and coffee, a bottle of wine.  It was charming – an adaptation of an old tradition for a new time.

I’d never thought of transferring the concept of housewarming to a blog, but I liked it.   After all the solitary hours I’d spent at my computer designing a site, revising entries and trying to create something pleasing, it was wonderful to have someone stop by to visit and offer good wishes.

Shortly after I’d begun posting, my mother, who doesn’t care one bit for computers but who tries to be polite, asked, ”What’s happening with whatever it is you’re doing with that machine of yours?”   And that’s where the fun began.  “Oh!” I said.  “We had a blog-warming.”  She gave me the look she reserves for certain children and people she suspects of being not quite compos mentis.  “A what?  A blog-warming?  What’s that?”  “Well,” I said, “it’s like a housewarming, only it’s for my blog.”

The silence was deafening.  “You mean people came?”   Knowing I was headed for trouble, I tried to make it sound reasonable.  ”Well, sort of.  They stopped by and read what I wrote.”  It was good, just not good enough.  Peering at me over her knitting, Mom reminded me, “But you said it was like a housewarming.  People at least bring food to a housewarming.  Did they bring food?”  “Sure they did,” I replied, throwing caution to the winds.  “They brought cinnamon rolls and coffee, a covered dish, some wine…”

At that point, my mother gave me her other look, the one that says she thinks I’ve been holding out on her. “Are there any cinnamon rolls left? ” 

Now, there was no escaping.  “There aren’t any real cinnamon rolls.  They were just pictures on the computer.”  “Then why,” demanded the most tenacious parent in the world, “are you talking about them? Are they real, or not?  And what good is a pretend cinnamon roll?”

The Haves, and the Have-Nots

 

Most people who live near the Gulf of Mexico, or in Florida, or along the coast of the Southeastern US understand they’re at risk for hurricanes.   When one finally appears that’s big enough or damaging enough, it imprints itself on the collective memory for generations.  I’ve listened to people talk about Carla, Camille, Alicia and Hugo as though they rolled through yesterday, and I’ve heard young people who weren’t alive for some of those storms tell stories as though they were the ones boarding up the house.  Years from now, Ivan, Katrina, Rita, and Ike will continue to be remembered and rehearsed as living events by people who experienced them, or heard the tales so many times they slowly became their own.

One mark of these powerful storms is how quickly they turn the “haves” of the world into “have-nots”.  It doesn’t matter whether your home is a two-room beach shack or an expensive bayfront beauty.  It doesn’t matter whether the vehicle parked out front is a gorgeous Mercedes, a trusty old truck or a rusted-out Chevy.  The storm doesn’t care.  The storm is a magician, with cheap tricks up his sleeve: ”Now you have it – and now you don’t.”  The storm can dump a car into a marina or bury it in the sand as easily as it can wash away an entire community.  The storm can make your second story disappear and leave your neighbor’s pearl necklace hanging on a tree.  The storm doesn’t care.

The Death of Freecell

 

I’ve never been much of a game player.  When I was younger, I did enjoy Scrabble and Monopoly.  I played Mancala in Africa and dominos in south Texas, and in the late 90’s I flirted briefly with the sailing version of Trivial Pursuit.  But I don’t make pilgrimage to Louisiana for the “gaming” found in casinos, and I don’t do video games.  There’s no Guitar Hero or Grand Theft Auto tucked into my bookshelf, and you won’t find Mahjong, chess or checkers.  The cribbage board is stored away in a box because my Dad and I used to play and it has sentimental value, but everything else – the decks of cards,  the assorted boards, the mismatched dice – simply have disappeared. 

The advent of cyber-gaming passed me by as well.  I have friends who spend hours on the computer playing games with people around the world, and they seem to enjoy it.  I’ve tried to become interested, but  it’s never happened.  I’d rather take a walk, go to a gallery or read a book.

The only exception has been Freecell.  When my first computer arrived in 1999, I discovered the folks at the factory had added a few games for my amusement.  I looked them over but didn’t play until one of my friends said, “You really ought to give Freecell a try”.  She’d become a fan when she purchased a computer with Windows95, the first operating system to include the game.  She seemed so enthusiastic I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, so I set out to learn.

I played one game, and then two.  Then, I played a few more.  It wasn’t long before I’d play two or three games every night before bed.  One day I realized I’d played a hundred games, and then a thousand.   By the time I traded in my old Win98 clunker for a spiffy new duocore, I’d logged 6,754 games.  That’s not much in the shadowy world of Freecell addiction, but for a dedicated non-gamer, it’s enough.

As much a puzzle as a game, Freecell has a lot to recommend it.  The game can be as mindless or challenging as you want to make it, and it fits easily into those few minutes before bed or with a cup of coffee in the morning. Not only that, it has one of the highest win rates of any solitaire, which contributes to the fun and the addictive quality of the game.  

There are claims on the internet that almost every Freecell deal can be won.  When Dave Ring started The Internet Freecell Project, he attempted to solve all the deals using human beings.  The project was finished in October 1995, and only one game defied every human player’s attempt to be successful: game  #11,982, which has been shown to be unsolvable by several software solvers.

When I stopped playing Freecell on the Windows98 computer, my winning percentage was 71%,.  Now, on my lovely new computer with the zippy cards, sound effects and neat new graphics, I have a winning percentage of 75%.  But that increased winning percentage can be misleading.   Since my new computer arrived on January 16, I’ve played precisely four games of Freecell.

I played those four games during my first week with my new ”infernal persnickity timesucker”.  Then, Freecell was set aside as I learned a new operating system, installed new software programs and peripherals and generally got accustomed to a radically new world.  Moving from Windows98 with dialup to Vista with broadband left me a bit breathless, amazed at the possibilities.  I watched YouTube for the first time, and found the time required to list an Ebay auction reduced from thirty minutes to ten.  While drinking one cup of coffee I could process a batch of photos, google my way into a topic and out again, answer my emails and tidy up my desktop, downloading a few files in the process.  There would have been great chunks of extra time for Freecell, except for this: I had decided to write.

I’d been doing a little light blogging on the WeatherUnderground website since October, 2007, and enjoyed it tremendously.  But I had a friend who kept whispering, “You need to do more.  Get on a real blog site.  Spread your wings.  Push the limits.  Expand your audience….’   After looking at assorted sites and  experimenting a bit,  I made a commitment.   I was going to write, and I was going to do it by maintaining two blogs.  At WeatherUnderground, I would continue with my more-or-less weekly posting, and on WordPress, I would try to update at least every three days.  It seemed a wonderful plan.  I had ideas galore, and energy to spare.

Now, two months and about twenty-five blogs down the road, I can’t help but think of my favorite quotation from Woody Allen: The longest journey begins with a single step.  The best journeys begin with a moment of temporary insanity.  In some ways, the writing has been the least of the craziness.  As I learn the vocabulary of “real” blogging (trackbacks? pingbacks? authority? tags? domain mapping?), struggle with html, keep a wary eye on the CSS project still waiting in the wings and keep adding to the list of drafts to be outlined and researched, I wouldn’t change a thing, and yet everything has changed.

Freecell was only the first casualty.   Television viewing was next.   I haven’t been to Ebay since January, and I’ve seen 2 a.m. so many times I think I’m back in college.  My mother rolls her eyes; my cat sits and gives me the evil eye.  No matter which one is around, when I head toward the computer, they sigh.   Neither is especially happy with my new enthusiasm. 

Nevertheless, for good or for ill, I keep writing, reading and learning.  Slowly, I’m developing a new routine.  The technical tasks are becoming easier, the site soon will look the way I see it in my mind, and the delight of sharing my vision and words with others is increasing exponentially.  Writing, I’m beginning to understand, can be something you do, or it can define who you are.  When I first saw one of my blogs republished on another site, with my name attached and the description, “writer and blogger” included,  I was amazed.  And yet, with every word, every paragraph, every entry, I’m filling up that description with a new and vibrant reality.  It may be a crazy journey, but it’s one of the best I’ve taken.

As for freecell, I suspect I’m not going to increase my winning percentage by much no matter how many games I play.  I believe I’ll let it rest, and just keep writing.  That way, I’ll be sure to stay ahead of the game.

 

 

 

 

COMMENTS are welcome.  To read previous comments or post one of your own, please click on the tiny “Comments” link below.  Eventually, I’ll learn CSS and revise the template, but this note will have to do for the time being.

© Text Copyright Linda Leinen, 2008