One Wonders -- A Brief Touch of Blank Verse

One wonders how the sky e'er came to be

Or how the fishes ever found their place

in creek and ocean numbered with no end.

One wonders at the why or how of all.

Of verses plain that lilt in normal mete'

Of would-be poets countless here and there.

Of verse that's blank as five feet wander through

though assonance two times plays twinning hue.

Obscurity is poets' saving grace

The license shown to placate oft critique

And when there's nothing else to put in place

of writing, minds are prone to fall in line.

Prosody [100WW]

I read a bit about poetry, prosody to be exact. A new word for me, it refers to all involved in versification. I learned a bit more about blank verse, and other far more obscure and less accessible forms. I learned one must not force form that belies the music coming forth in a poem, though I suppose the greatest is to wed the two in holy matrimony. I enjoyed the study of meter, and like the possibilities blank verse allows.

I wonder if there is a poetic form of 100 words? If so, must it rhyme in proper time?

Shoestrings and Heartstrings [10'TU]

Two weeks ago I thought of shoestrings and the shoes that went with them. An old pair of canvas Nikes came to mind, bought on sale, bought during beloved church camp in Wichita, Kansas.

I mentioned I was an annoying teenager with a beloved Dad (and Mom). For some reason -- I can't remember why -- Dad and I were at cross-purposes. It was likely because I had been headstrong in doing my own thing. I can still feel the tension, a normal part of growing up.

This tension played over into this shoe business as I think my Dad thought I had spent too much. I remember being a bit hurt -- I was very (too!) sensitive after all. I had found a good deal and I thought I'd be kinda cool with that old Nike swoosh.

I miss my Dad so much it is hard to think clearly about this little incident from 43 years ago. But, having raised two sons myself I can know what my dear Dad must have been going through. There were 4 other kids, there was a job to fulfill daily (he was a Highway Patrolman), there was too much month at the end of the money, and his oldest son -- yours truly -- was wayward. Add to this the happy exhaustion of camp life -- long hours and the hot Kansas summer -- and problems are afoot.

But my soul feels happy tears today because while there may have been anger and bitterness at the time, there is none now. I know what my Dad meant, I know some of what he carried, and while those Nike shoes lasted a year at most before landing in the trash, my love for my Dad will grow more and more unto that perfect Day.

And that's where writing about shoestrings can take you.

Master Trooper Larry Lee Huff

Outrage (Ugh!)

I am done with outrage. I think.

I indulged my share and more in youth, railing about this or that, taking up various nouveau causes that seemed true enough. I remember once going on and on with a dear teacher about states' rights as they applied to freedom in commerce. The teacher listened patiently for far too long and then said, "Someday these things will matter far less to you because there will be many more important things for your attention."

The outrage in the political world, given voice by ubiquitous media options, is wearing, wearying, distressing. It engenders pained and strained and broken relationships. It goes without saying that both sides err. Whataboutism is an endless game. Ironically, the first example that comes to mind brings "what about" into full play.

I am thinking of the border crisis and the apoplexy of so many over "children in cages" back in the Trump administration. Yes, apoplexy, not literally but maybe worse. There's a line where the intensity of outrage ruins one's case, and this was certainly that for me. I wanted to care -- really did -- but the obvious, dripping disdain for Trump muddied clear-headed concern for whatever real-life problems there must have been on the ground.

Fast forward a few years and the same things happen with the Biden administration, only worse depending on metric and of course, bias. All but crickets. No tirades, no apoplexy from those same objectors. Of course many on both sides are distressed about the border, and the Right resists wherever they can. But the outrage is greatly dampened when compared to the Trump years, not least, I believe, because the side of President Biden has most of  mainstream media and the tech lords in its pocket.

This kind of double standard does trigger anger. One wishes we could all be better than that.

The other example rising in my mind across these months is shocking, an example of "Emperor has no clothes" if ever there was one. I am speaking of the mental decline of our sitting President. This really doesn't need citation and legal-level argument. Everyone knew the truth but those on the President's side refused to acknowledge it. Worse, they boldly claimed the opposite of reality.

It was claimed, before the summer debate, that the President was sharp, strong, good for the task, etc. I am wary of calling statements "lies" because there is often nuance and motive to be considered. But in this case it seems clear there were abundant lies from the mouths and pens of willing liars.

Outrage does little good but this comes close for me. It is distressing and makes one lose faith.

But I suppose the related problem is larger. Selective outrage is a thing, yes -- caring more about problem A than problem B based on varied personal metrics and biases. But worse is what I call displaced outrage, or to dial things back a bit I will call it "displaced concern."

This is a matter of priority of course, and also one's ability to do anything about the problem at hand. This comes to mind when one considers real tragedies like child sex trafficking, drug over-doses, literal demise of the nuclear family, and nation-wide health crises. If we spend all our outrage on lesser things, the larger things will overwhelm us.

I am encouraged on two fronts. One, I believe Good will win the day in time and, while I should do all I can in that cause, it is not ultimately up to me but to the Creator, who, in time, does all things well.

Second, I think the best way to heal the problem of outrage is to let it go and tend to one's own soul. Nothing is ever truly fixed but from the inside out. We are all tempted by the old lure of "changing the world while losing our own soul."

It's a game of folly, cutting off the limb upon which we sit, and the reminder quiets any outrage in my soul today. What is needed is for the man in the mirror to learn to "do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly" right in his sphere of influence. That challenge -- that calling we all share in particular -- is enough to displace all external matters. Not only would such practice greatly diminish those external matters, tending to the soul makes us better able to endure whatever may come our way.

This has turned in to an actual Monday Meandering, but I will try to finish with plain statement. Outrage is easy, feels good, but does little. Personal character is hard, painful, and does everything. 

The old spiritual gets it right: "It's me, it's me, it's me, O Lord, standin' in the need of prayer." No wonder they had to say it three times. None of us want to put the focus on ourselves but that, I think, is where the problem lies.

In any case, it is the place where we can make the most difference.

Lean Not On Your Own Understanding

What to do when the list is longer than the day?

When the dream is bigger than the reality?

When the hope loses wind before it can even breath?

Now it sounds pretty down and one knows the task is owning the time.

We can scarcely just be, else we talk about it, which is doing.

How does one shut off the mind?

How does one "lean not on my own understanding?"

It is a letting go, a living into the questions, even a remembering

that the effort to understand may be another enemy in disguise.

God understands and He holds me in His hands.

If that is true, maybe the small sign on the refrigerator says it all:

"If you listen closely you can hear an angel whisper, 

'God is taking care of everything.'"

I believe, I stop, and in a minute I will go, trusting, being, doing.

"Lean not on your own understanding."

Tinker Creek: What to Make of all this Life?

I've been writing this year about Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, the 1975 Pulitzer Prize Winner about life on a Creek in Roanoke. It's a tall order – not the book, but the writing about it.

All stories share in one another and this one more so than most. The author, Annie Dillard, sees the story of life right up "on the nose" one might say. She sees things most of us never think about or read about, nor would we ever imagine seeing them.

She speaks of “the mantis's abdomen dribbling out eggs in wet bubbles like tapioca pudding glued to a thorn.” See, I told you. No one sees this stuff. She tells of termites licking eggs to keep them from molding, of various insects producing countless eggs and eating them almost as fast as produced.

In her observation she tells us things beyond imagination. The microscopic root hairs of a rye plant within a single cubic inch of soil measure 6,000 miles.

Six thousand miles.

A lone aphid, breeding for a year could produce so many .10-inch long offspring they would stretch for 25 million light years.

One lightyear is 6 trillion miles.

We can be sure she didn't observe these infinite aphids, but her vast knowledge of such vast things relied on the work of scholars like Edwin Way Teale and his book, The Strange Lives of Familiar Insects. This book, says Annie, “I couldn't live without.”

The chapter for all of this Annie calls “Fecundity.” This word was new to me but I gathered its meaning soon enough, something like this: life and the making of it, the good, the bad, the ugly, the mind-boggling abundance. This fecundity, for example, means those who provide goldfish for the retail market, “Produce, measure, and sell our product by the ton.”

Tons of gold fish in everyday business? A cubic inch of root hairs measuring 6,000 miles? Aphids stretching a distance our mind can't imagine? Fecundity.

But Annie asks the questions observation brings forth. Why all this life in immediate proximity to death? Is my life worth more than the trillion aphids or barnacles or root hairs? How could breeding be such a mix of “utter spirituality and utter degradation?” And why does evolution breed death at colossal scale?

The finesse of her answers is brilliant, not least for the fact she doesn't belabor them. Annie asks if individual human life matters more, hints “yes,” and gives clue to the conundrum of death like this: “If you want to live you have to die.” Life is worth it, fecundity seems to say, in ways beyond comprehension. But death is ever there and we best make peace with that.

If you know the book you know the truth: just read it for yourself and find more, far more, than this review reveals. But if you read it you will know there is an unspoken answer in all of it, without evangelistic zeal. Such zeal would be redundant.

All stories share common ground and this could never be more true than when writing a story about the 'ground' as Annie has done. It is the ground of life and the ground of death. Grounding if you will. And I couldn't help see the story of Job, that timeless true drama in the Old Testament.

Citing Job here is no religious overlay. Job is a font of deepest wisdom, and Annie's story participates in it. It is the story of abundant life and abundant death, in Job's case real live people of his own loins. They all died at the hands of “nature and nature's God” and one wonders how on earth fecundity can be wedded to death and dearth and sorrow and loss.

Annie's answer was much like Job's. “That something is everywhere and always amiss is part of the very stuff of creation.” We could conceive it differently, but our “plan would never get off the drawing board.” She knows “this is the way the world is. And rage and shock at the pain and death...is the old, old mystery, as old as man, and completely unanswerable.”

Unanswerable. That was Job's conclusion in the face of God and while Annie says it far better than I convey, she lands in the same place. Life is marked by conundrum, and much of our natural emotions boil down to mere squeamishness. Returning to the Creek helps restore sanity and lets us know there must be something beyond that makes sense of it all. And if not, what were we going to do about it anyway?

Learning to Write

"Write, write, write," said Twain, advice on how to learn the craft. One wonders what matters in this thing, how readers are captured, or not. Is writing for the writer most of all? Perhaps.

Bacon, I think it was, said writing makes an exact man. Often when I hear a public commentator who seems especially articulate in a given subject I learn she gained that facility through writing a book. Immerse yourself in material for the length of a book and you will speak it well.

What of stream of consciousness, the sort of speaking on page thought after thought? Is there a place for this? Teachers call it free writing and it helps a writer get it down so he has something to work with. One of my better-ever pieces was more or less free writing, edited after the fact of course.

One can enjoy success with pieces written in a flash of insight. Similar to what another teacher taught: take that central insight, jot down several related ideas and segues, and put the thing together.

Learning to write means finding your voice and your most natural structure. Inspiration -- whatever that is -- helps, but as in all of life I am learning that 1) if you wait for inspiration your output will never be what it could be, and 2) working without inspiration leads to surprising quantity and the inspiration often comes in the plowing through.

I'm still learning this thing. Writing with little "want-to" is hard but I am slowly gaining that basic discipline. Toiling with an idea until I can say it well is no easy task for this impatient man. But I love the journey and someday I will write a book, if God is willing and I live long enough.

"God willing." 

I am learning to love that happy prayer in writing and in all of life. He does all things well.