Weekly Journal 2024-03-31

It is difficult to grasp that one fourth of the year is gone. Days gallop by and run into each other. It is an acceleration I neither prompted nor enjoy. This week’s journal is a bit of hodge-podge. Sometimes that’s how the words fall.

Chapters

One of my early autobiography readers recommended breaking the narrative into chapters. This has been the single most useful piece of advice I received. With chapters, the stream of consciousness style – emulating Jack Kerouac – is parceled into understandable bits suitable for people with shorter attention spans. Likewise, it enables me to consolidate writing about specific topics in one place as appropriate. With chapters I have a better understanding of where the narrative is and is going. It will enable me to determine what’s missing and what needs cutting. Part I stands at 67,271 words, Part II at 60,950.

With that in mind, I plan to push through spring and summer to finish Part I, the story leading to 1982. If all goes well, I’ll self-published that part in early 2025.

Reading more, retaining less

I am reading more yet retaining less of what I read. I don’t like it. I have a shelf of recently read books and only a few scenes in a small number of them stand out. Not sure what, if anything, to do about that.

Reading 25 pages per day is a first priority. I make coffee, tend to chores and then read. My reading habits go way back. Here is an excerpt from my autobiography.

When I was an altar boy at Holy Family Church, Monsignor Barnes influenced me, although I didn’t realize it at the time. He taught me to structure things, with the most memorable advice being about reading. He said, set aside a goal in reading. Read 50 pages each day and stick to your goal. I have not followed that advice religiously, and lapsed in my reading, yet it became part of me, continuing into my seventies.

Unpublished autobiography.

There may be a self-improvement project in this. Unlike many, I won’t give up on reading.

The Jacob’s Ladder

In my quest to read one more book in March, I headed to my poetry shelves and picked Denise Levertov’s The Jacob’s Ladder. I wrote a brief review: “These poems are rooted in a post-war ecosystem of ideas, images, and language. As such, they are a snapshot of that period, and less relevant to the sensibilities of the third decade of the 21st Century. I don’t regret reading them. Some images stand out, especially in the namesake poem. Returning to them seems unlikely.” So it goes. Seven books read in March.

Disposing of Old Medicine

I took some old medicine to the United Methodist Church where pharmacy students from university would dispose of it. As I opened the door, about 15 sets of eyes greeted me, saying I was their first person. I felt obligated to sit down and talk about vitamins and medicine I am taking. It would have been rude to just drop my pills and leave.

The discussion went on to nutrition, dietary practices, sweet corn in the area, gardening, grocery shopping, everything a gardener would have to say about life. They offered choice of gifts and I picked a pill splitter over the multiple pill planning devices. They asked permission to use a photograph with me in it. I said okay.

Green Up

Leaves are budding on lilacs, fruit trees, and all around. Spring flowers pushed through the surface of the soil and flower buds have formed on some of them. This is a period of hope and promise. A cyclical explosion of greenery for which I’m ready.

The first time I heard the phrase “green up” was in the motion picture The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, based on the book of the same name, written by John Fox Jr. It is set near Big Stone Gap, Virginia, about 17 miles from Glamorgan where Father was born.

“I’ve been talking to your pappy,” Dave Tolliver said. “We’s going to get married.”

“When?” queried his cousin June Tolliver.

“Hog killing time. Your pappy has invited all the Tollivers. The whole kit and boodle of them.”

“I ain’t marrying till green up,” June Tolliver said. “Spring’s always the time to do them things. Then it’ll be next green up and the next. I don’t feel nothing.”

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, Paramount Pictures, March 13, 1936.

Despite the speed with which time flies, I am leading a decent life. Decent enough to write about it a while longer. Thanks for reading.