On suffering

There is nothing more important for a person to learn—and no lesson suffering is more suited to teach him—than his own nothingness. Suffering does not make us stronger, but neither does it sap our strength until we are ready to find convenient consolation in God. Rather, suffering reveals that we have been weak all along, that our strength is an illusion and our sense of permanence and invulnerability has always been a façade. Suffering shows us that we are powerless to secure what we are most eager to possess, that everything the world has given can be swept away in the blink of an eye.

—Timothy Dalrymple, in Hope for Hitchens?: Finding the Way in the Land of Malady at Patheos.

Triptych

   I am an admirer of the triptych. A work of art (usually a painting, etching or bas relief sculpture), I appreciate it for its flexibility. It consists of  three separate works, presented as a whole. They may be unrelated to one another (although that is hard to do well), related in some thematic way (color, shape, size, subject), or even contiguous works (a panorama, or a progression of some sort).

   An example of the latter which recently wowed me was Monet's Water Lilies, which I saw at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. A panorama, it measures an astounding 6' 6 3/4" x 41' 10 3/8".

(Click to enlarge)

 What is most moving about Monet's Water Lilies is this scale. Most paintings illustrate large objects (a landscape, a building) in a much smaller frame of reference. Here Monet has done the opposite: he has made a common pond much, much larger than life. Unlike real life, we must look up—and step back—to see it.

  I think this is true, too, of the triptych that is God. He is three distinct parts, but together He forms the panorama of grace. And we must look up—and step back—to even begin to grasp Him. However, it seems we cannot back up far enough. The canvas is infinite in all directions.

  And most impressive of all, He painted it himself.

—Wayne S.

Pat Conroy on Writing, Reading and Story

"Safety is a crime writers should never commit unless they are after tenure or praise. A novelist must wrestle with all mysteries and strangeness of life itself, and anyone who does not wish to accept that grand, bone-chilling commission should write book reviews, editorials, or health-insurance policies instead. The idea of a novel should stir your blood, and you should rise to it like a lion lifting up at the smell of impala. It should be instinctual, incurable, unanswerable, and a calling, not a choice."

"My mother promised that reading would make me smart, and I found myself recruited in Mom’s battle over her own lack of a higher education. She distributed books to me as though they were communion wafers or the tongues of fire that lit up the souls of the disciples with Pentecostal clairvoyance. Mom would point her finger to a wall of books and tell me she was showing me the way out of a shame that was unutterable. I took whatever book she put into my hand and made it part of me. I made it the life of me, the essence of my own tree of knowledge. With each book, I built a city out of what my heart loved, my soul yearned for, and my eyes desired."

"The most powerful words in English are 'tell me a story,' words that are intimately related to the complexity of history, the origins of language, the continuity of the species, the taproot of our humanity, our singularity, and art itself."

—from My Reading Life, by Pat Conroy

Prayer

You have 

wisdom and knowledge 

that is beyond 

our ability, 

insight and understanding 

beyond our grasp, 

love and mercy 

greater than our possibility 

of even refusing it. 

You see far

into a future 

that will outlast us all. 

So we cannot ask 

what You are doing. 

Nor would it do 

any good, really, 

to ask why, 

or what if... . 

All we can say, really... is 

please.

My Writing Bucket List

Writers of the world, if you’ve got a story, I want to hear it. I promise it will follow me to my last breath. My soul will dance with pleasure, and it’ll change the quality of all my waking hours. You will hearten me and brace me up for the hard days as they enter my life on the prowl. I reach for a story to save my own life. Always. It clears the way for me and makes me resistant to all the false promises signified by the ring of power. In every great story, I encounter a head-on collision with self and imagination. --Pat  Conroy, My Reading Life.

   Thanks, Pat. I will do my best. Although I don't think it will be a novel.

   That was (and still mostly is) always my wish. Much of that desire I do owe to Mr. Conroy, whose novels always inspire me, despite his being, in his own words, "showy with adjectives" and "overreliant on adverbs." Though I sometimes feel his lengthy and florid novels are death by a thousand paper cuts, it is nevertheless a sweet death. I can appreciate them all the more because I have been trying to write a novel for over six years. I have close to 80,000 words towards a story that is going nowhere currently, even in my mind. My characters are thoroughly unruly and disobedient, and the story arc has bent so tight I fear that like an overtorqued steel spring it may break and kill me.

   So, I have decided to look at other venues for writing. I have crafted a bucket list of writing goals I want to accomplish before I die (or my novel slays my ambition). My goal in each case is to have them published in some reputable (and perhaps even financially renumerative) fashion. Here they are:

   1. Write a short story. I do believe I can write a 5,000 to 10,000 word story that would be worth reading, although a shorter one would be harder. In fact, I like the notion of a story collection, where all the stories have a connection, probably implicit (five people who picked up a pack of hotel matches in 1968 Scottsdale, Arizona, for example).

   2. Publish a poem. It is true that "prose is words in their best order, poetry is the best words in the best order." While Eliot's The Wasteland doesn't bring to mind economy, it most certainly is. Of all the written arts, poetry comes closest to both painting and music, where in both you can be as realistic or as impressionist as you dare. Poetry slams sometimes have the same effect as strolling through a museum. Reading poetry aloud is just like listening to live music—there is joy in the silence between notes, and the decaying echo from the back wall. My poetry (two examples here and here) tends to be on the realistic side, but who knows? I would love to see my words in The Atlantic, or The New Yorker, but I must realistically think more towards regional poetry magazines and reviews.

   3.Publish an essay. I love researching. I love interviewing. I simply love observing. Put those three passions to pen and paper and I think an essay would probably be my best shot for my first publication. I have in mind a story from my home town about a supposedly true story of a grave that may, or may not, contain the person named on the tombstone. It's full of politics, family love and hillbilly justice.

   4. Write a song. In my late teens and early twenties I played guitar constantly, and wrote a few songs that I would perform at weddings or just for friends. I still remember a couple of them, and they were decent enough. And while I am becoming accustomed again to the guitar after a three decade estrangement, I think I could write a meaningful, appealing lyric and place it in a competent piece of music. My personal tastes lean towards singer-songwriters, like James Taylor and Jackson Browne, or contemporary songsmiths such as Pierce Pettis, Jason Mraz or Patty Griffin. I fear some of my production may even fall into the "country" category, but it's a hot market. I prefer the term "Americana," the songs of people and places and hopes and dreams. If I can ship off two or three songs a year to publishers, maybe one will find an ear.

   5. Write a screenplay. This fascinates me. And the only thing that encourages me in this venture is that I have seen many TV episodes and movies where I have been able to anticipate the next line, or the next scene, with uncanny accuracy. And there are times when I have obviously had an idea that I am sure would have worked better that what ended up in the script. I would probably feel most comfortable with drama; maybe some short morality tale, that ties up in the end with a few threads still loose.

   6. Write a novel. Again, it's a wish more than an obsession at present. I feel like the fellow who has sketched his dream home on the back of a napkin, and who knows how to use a hammer and a saw. The rest seems daunting to me.

   7. Write my obituary. I can almost assure myself that this might actually find itself published, if there are any local newspapers left.
—Wayne S.

In Vino Veritas, redux.

On August 15 of last year, I wrote about a visit to a old high-school friend who has a vineyard and bottles wine near Crossville, Tennessee. I was fascinated by the process of making wine and, although the descriptions and processes came fast and were clouded by my almost constant enjoyment of the finished product, I wanted to write about it.

My friend, Tim, recently got high-speed internet (he lives waaaay out on the Cumberland Plateau, not near any cable or DSL service). Finally able to load large sites in less than a half-hour, he checked out Words of Wayne (my blog at the time) and my comments on my visit to his home. Being the consummate professional in all things wine-related, he felt he should correct some of my previous comments. I am passing some of his email comments along to redeem myself and further show his pride of work. My original comments are in italics.

I did not know that red wine gets its color from those seeds and skin, since all grape juice is white. Most red grapes have white juice so the red wine produced from these grapes extracts its color from the skins. However there are some red grapes that also have red juice. The Marquette I have in the vineyard is an example of that. It would make a rose’ colored wine if fermented off of the skins, but fermenting on the skins gives the wine a much deeper color and extracts many goodies like tannins that give the wine a bigger body. 

Then it is strained and put into oaken casks, where it ages. My red wines are in barrels, not casks. Casks are much larger than traditional wine barrels. 

Tim is a winemaker, and a vintner. A vintner is a winemaker. 

And every one of his wines has won awards—many firsts, many blue ribbons. The only prize to elude him is Best of Show. But it is only a matter of time. I have received three Best of Shows for my wines. Two in the Florida International Competition and one here in Tennessee. The one that has eluded me is the Indiana (Indy) International Amateur Wine Competition. Wines are scored on their on merits such as clarity, aroma, taste, mouth feel, varietal character, etc. You can make a great wine that scores very high, receiving a gold medal from all judges (usually five), as can several other competitors. The Best of Show compares all the best to determine the best of the best. So since Indy is the largest amateur competition (outside of CA) it is the most competitive and the most coveted of the awards. Regarding California: all the competitions out there only seem to be open to CA residents. Snobby bastards! 

White grapes are pressed immediately and the juice is left to ferment in large bins. Red grapes are crushed along with their seeds, skin and stems, and go through primary fermentation as a mush. The concoction of juice, seeds, and skins during fermentation is “mushy” but it is referred to as “must.” This is made in reference to the grapes from the time they are crushed until they are pressed, separating the liquid from the solids. For a white wine this is usually a matter of hours and for a red, it could be weeks depending on the desires of the winemaker. 

Tim continues with these general comments:

Reading books on grape growing over the last several years has been interesting, as it seems they all are about the way things are done in the great wine regions of the world. Well, TN is not one of those regions. I was told long ago by a TN grape grower that you need to take it all with a grain of salt. The books all seemed to indicate that the fruit flowers should be cut from the vine until the 4th season when you would allow your first crop to mature. Here in TN (and probably most of the US) we allow the crop to mature in the 3rd season. What I have found on my own, that I had never read, was the importance of the training in the second season. I didn’t do a very good job in 2010 with the vines planted the previous year so I will pay for it in 2011. 

I am truly looking forward to the upcoming season as every year I get a little smarter and a little more familiar with what it is that I am supposed to do. 2011 will bring fruit from the entire vineyard, and the varietals I have coming in for the first time have got me excited about the potential for some really good wine… Lord willing. I have left about 6-8 weeks before I need to start pruning. At that point my days will be centered on producing some award winning wines. 

Thanks, Tim, for the clarifications. Like a great cookbook, just reading about it makes my mouth water. See you soon!

—W. S.

Kin-tsugi

KIN-TSUGI is a Japanese word which means, in literal English translation, "golden joinery." It refers to the craft of repairing broken pottery with a compound of ki-urushi (raw lacquer) and pure gold powder. The result, while obviously highlighting the former damage, is always unique, and almost always beautiful. Blake Gopnik explains the history of the craft in a Washington Post article: 

The story of kintsugi may have begun in the late 15th century, when the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent a damaged Chinese tea bowl back to China to be fixed. It returned held together with ugly metal staples, launching Japanese craftsmen on a quest for a new form of repair that could make a broken piece look as good as new, or better. Japanese collectors developed such a taste for kintsugi that some were accused of deliberately breaking prized ceramics, just to have them mended in gold.

How fascinating that it is considered art—and indeed beautiful, desired art—to repair something in such a way that the repair is what draws the eye. This is so unlike our way of thinking (my mind turns to Mr. Bean's "repair" of Whistler's Mother). We want our repairs, be they rhinoplasty or fender work, to appear as if nothing has been changed or damaged. 

Yet could there be value in our scars? I love the way Leonard Cohen put it:

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh. It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat.

Jesus was not ashamed of His scars, freely extending His hands to the disciple who doubted He had risen from the dead. I should be willing to show my scars as well. They do not tell anyone anything they wouldn't or shouldn't know. They tell others I am a flawed, broken individual. Yet I have been—and am being—repaired. And my scars are glorious.

—W.S.