Keep a Calendar Journal – Part 1

Posted on January 6, 2012 by literarylee

Listen up!  This idea is a winner, a very doable and fun way to add a few thoughtful words to your life.  It’s easy.  I’m adding this to all the other word things I am already doing in 2012.  You could try this yourself.  Really!  Here’s how.

First, go buy a 2012 wall calendar if you don’t already have one.  They usually go on sale early in January.  Find one with pictures you like, anything that will brighten your day.  Maybe your doctor or dentist is giving them out for free.  Even better.  If you would rather use a cyber calendar, open a new one in Google, Outlook, or whatever program you use.

Now, set your goal.  How many days out of a week could you write one sentence?  I mean just one simple sentence.  One day?  Three?  All seven?  I set four days as my goal.

O.K. so far?  Now write one sentence describing something you did today.  Don’t worry about  being fancy or brilliant.  Just write a sentence, possibly in a notebook or journal.  (Inside joke for Braveheart fans: You don’t keep a journal, do you?  We’ll have to remedy that.)

The next step: Read the sentence you just wrote.  For example, let’s say you wrote: Bought a calendar.  Maybe you should add a specific subject: I bought a calendar.  Try adding a little at the end: I bought a calendar at the stationery store.

Finally, after you are happy with the sentence, write it on the square with today’s date.  Or, if you are using a cyber calendar, type the sentence in the cell for today’s date.  On Google calendar, I am filling in the space allotted for 9 am (I’m doing this calendar thing with a paper and an online calendar).  I’m also tweeting my sentences.  Follow them on The Life Literary on Twitter.

And you’re done!  If you set a goal of one sentence per week, at the end of the year you will have a 52 sentence account of your year.  If you intend to write three per week, then next New Year’s Eve you’ll be able to reminisce about 165 things you did over the year.  Also, you will have added some deliberate, thoughtful writing to your life, just a tad, true, but enough.  Give it a try and let me know how it goes.

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Words Feed the Quiet

Posted on January 5, 2012 by literarylee

The article “The Joy of Quiet,” published recently in the New York Times, expresses at least a part of why I write, why I promote an active and thoughtful involvement with words, and why I collect ideas for how anybody can incorporate words into life.  The article discusses the crush of information people get via video monitors and screens and the growing need to try “to escape the constant stream of too much information.”  Here is a quote:

A series of tests in recent years has shown that after spending time in quiet rural settings, subjects “exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition.  Their brains become both calmer and sharper.”  More than that, empathy, as well as deep thought, depends (as neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio have found) on neural processes that are “inherently slow.”  The very ones our high-speed lives have little time for.

Writing words, thoughtfully interacting with them, is a slow process that requires open eyes, an open mind and an open heart.  As I write, I am more aware of myself and the world around me.  Being bombarded by a heavy stream of information, a torrent of words, some deep, most shallow, can inundate victims in a raging word (and image) river pouring from a myriad of monitors and screens.

It seems as if the New York Times is publishing a series on the need for quiet, reflection and peace.  In another recent article, A Time to Tune Out, the author, discussing how more and more people are becoming unable to switch off the devices that connect them to email and the Internet, makes this poetically written point:

Inhabiting one place — that is to be fully absorbed by and focused on one’s surroundings rather than living in some diffuse cyberlocation composed of the different strands of a device-driven existence — is a fast-dwindling ability.

Writing a word, a sentence, a paragraph or more requires the person holding the pen, or tapping the keyboard to be aware of her or his thoughts and feelings as well as the piece of the world she or he is writing about.  Writing even a very small amount in a journal or a blog can be a powerful and healthful antidote for the engulfing information flood.

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On the Bus (A Text-Messaged Rhyme)

Posted on January 4, 2012 by literarylee

On the bus
headed home.
See you soon,
you like my pome?

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Words For The Fun Of It in 2012

Posted on January 2, 2012 by literarylee

Been making plans for me and words for this new year.  Looking forward to another word-esque, word-filled, wordified 12 months.  I’m writing these down in this public place to give them more oomph.  It’s why I’m trying to make them realistic.  I suggest to anyone setting a goal or making a plan to share it with someone else.  Adds accountability to the process.

My Word Plans for 2012

1. Finish the first and then a second draft of Marigold Man, share with three or four friends to read and critique, and then learn how to get a book published.
2. Read: The Human Comedy by William Saroyan, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, a book on Robert Burns, and one play by Shakespeare.  I might read more, but for sure these four.
3. Finish writing “Among the Liberators: A Walk Along Virginia Avenue.”
4.  Post at least three new essays per week in this blog (This is less than last year.  I want to make sure I have time for Marigold Man.)
5. Memorize four new poems.
6. Learn the list of poems I’ve already memorized and review the ones I don’t completely remember.
7. Be the Chairman of Burns Supper IV (…but of course this almost goes without saying…we’ve already set the date…January 28…you gonna be in the neighborhood ’round then?…please join us…!).
8. Set up two new galleries of photos (and captions, of course…the words are what it’s all about, right?) on the Life Literary’s Smugmug site.

Here are some things I might do but am not sure I’ll have time: Continue reading →

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Maybe Literary Isn’t Quite the Word I’m Looking For

Posted on December 30, 2011 by literarylee

I’ve been thinking about this blog lately and am wondering if I named it usefully.  Sure, it’s a sweet piece of alliteration, The Life Literary.  It’s also convoluted or backwards in a slightly poetic way.  You would expect to find the adjective before the noun (The Literary Life) instead of the reverse as I have written it.

I worry and wonder if the title is too elite-sounding, too high-falutin’, too New Yorker magazine or New York Review of Books.  I want to be writing things that a wide range of people can enjoy and get ideas from.  To be sure, I sometimes wish I had become a literary professional, was well versed in both classic and modern books, and earned my bread teaching and writing literature.  Living the life I have lived, I have at least found ways to make the joy of good words, with all their power to deepen, to heal, to entertain, an important part of my life.

My goals for this blog are the same:

  • The first goal is to share ideas for adding words to life, making the joy, the fun, the deepening and healing power of words available and accessible to anyone, from non-literary professionals like me to the pros: editors, teachers, writers.  I have loved words all my life and am compiling the many things I have done to simply enjoy them.  From writing in a journal, to collecting words, from making puns to writing essays, from memorizing poems to writing my own, and many more word things to do, my first goal with this blog is to compile them here in one place.
  • The other goal is to provide a forum for my own writing: essays, puns, memoir, description, poetry and more.

I think I’m going to start saying it differently.  I’m not going to change the title of the blog, for now, but here are some ideas of how I’ll talk about it: Continue reading →

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Duck 23

Posted on December 29, 2011 by literarylee

Winging it

Duck Series Gallery

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Oh Little Town of Bethlehem

Posted on December 25, 2011 by literarylee

(December 2004)

Hello from Jerusalem,

Oh little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie,

Actually the whole adventure started with me.  Early in December I was chatting with the number-two person in our office here, lamenting that we couldn’t go to Bethlehem anytime but especially now as Christmas approached.  My employer, for security reasons, prohibits its employees from traveling in the West Bank except for business reasons and then only accompanied by security staff.  I was surprised and pleased to see her transform my suggestion into a plan and finally, on the Saturday before Christmas, a reality.

Our journey began as the convoy pulled out of our compound.  These massive, armored vehicles are impressive pieces of machinery.  Though they are Suburbans, they look and feel heavy.  They have larger wheels.  The doors are like ponderous pieces of metal.  They are equipped with obnoxious sirens.  I don’t even want to know all their secrets.  Oh Lord, forgive us as we travel to the place of Thy humble nativity in the vehicles of the mighty and the proud.

I felt an electric thrill as we approached the checkpoint beyond which I mustn’t travel on my own.  Here we go, I thought, tensing slightly.  As we entered Bethlehem, the quality and repair of the houses deteriorated noticeably and quickly.  I was reminded of years ago when we lived in the Deep South and driving from the pretty white neighborhood where we lived into the Quarters, the black side of town.  Instantly upon crossing that invisible line the streets narrowed, sidewalks disappeared, and the houses were small, shabby, ramshackle affairs.

Sadly, Bethlehem is lying far too still these days.  The Intifada (the Palestinian “uprising”), the Israeli response to it, plus the drastically reduced numbers of tourists have made Bethlehem, which formerly depended on tourists and pilgrims, a virtual ghost town, barely surviving.    I looked out the windows and saw souvenir shops and restaurants almost all empty.  Few people were on the streets; the place seemed almost deserted.

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by Continue reading →

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Three Things (plus 1) I Read Every Christmas

Posted on December 21, 2011 by literarylee

Every year around Christmas I read at least three things, each year revisiting works that are among my favorites.

A Christmas Carol – This isn’t a novel but just a longish story.   I only say this to encourage everyone to pick it up.  The book is not only a quick and easy thing to read, but few works read year after year so consistently edify and entertain each time.  Besides the familiar story of redemption, the book is filled with Dickens’ humor, puns, clever word plays, and the use of imagery that make him a great author.  Here’s an example from the first page: External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge.  No warmth could warm, nor wintry weather chill him.  No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty.  Foul weather didn’t know where to have him.  The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect.  The often “came down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

A Child’s Christmas In Wales – I shouldn’t be jealous of this but I am.  Continue reading →

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Before Christmas this Year I Loved You Once Again

Posted on December 19, 2011 by literarylee

I walked into the house
This day, ten days before Christmas.
You, your friends, Handel-ing the season at the Concert Hall
Me, starting to pack our van,
the holiday mobile we will drive to this year’s Noel near the Hudson.
“Vacation.”
I stepped through the doorway and looked and loved you yet again.
I met the scattered detritus of this year’s Christmas card which
though I helped write,
a little,
was your brainchild,
a cleverly thought out,
beautifully executed paper gift
to mail to friends and relatives.
I saw individually wrapped and labeled sachets full
of rose petals,
dried herbs
and your love,
gifts for our loves.
I saw stacks of paper
a box of wrapped gifts,
bits of ribbon and the other refuse of the season.
But I loved you again,
fell in love once more,
that dizzying, tear-pulling, heart-aching yearning,
another in a long line of loves,
when I saw your hand-drawn map on the floor,
the tracings of our walks in town
your eccentric,
efficient,
elegant,
paths up, down and across always different streets
to methodically make sure we see all the lights.
You found time today,
energy somehow,
forward momentum
today of all days,
to chart it out
on top of everything else.
And I loved you afresh
When I saw your drawing
On the floor amidst the rest of it all.

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Novel Cover Post Script

Posted on December 18, 2011 by literarylee

Click on the link below to take a look at a collage of all 30 covers created during the month of November based on 30 National Novel Writing Month synopses, one of which was mine.  I’m still amazed and reeling that, if nothing else, my idea for the book I am writing was recognized by people who have read thousands of novel titles and ideas.  I’m still writing it, still on track to finish the first draft by January 1.  Click the NaNoWriMo category on the right-hand side of this blog’s page to read all the posts connected with my writing 50,000 words in one month.

30 covers in 30 days collage and follow-up article

Today I reached 60,000 words.  I am three chapters, about 10-12,000 words, from being finished.  I’m looking forward to reading it.

 

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