Double Helix

Back from a three-day respite at the beach – a check-in with my favorite spot on earth, water flowing at my feet, footprints made and washed away almost before I had time to turn around to watch them last briefly. As usual, there is so much to write, but not much time for the written word . . . and like cherry picking when the tree is full, I begin by nibbling . . .

I awoke to the words of an Eric Clapton song, “If I could change the world . . . “ – But why? I no longer want to change the world. I always saw writing as my personal way to change the world. A noble goal, I once thought – but finally, off the hook, relieved that I don’t have to do that. Those footprints in the sand don’t have to last forever – after all.

This new insight may come from age and reality, but also prompted from a book which I avidly read on the beach as the waves tumbled to my feet – The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner, a book about the happiest and least happy places on this planet. I especially enjoyed reading, and re-reading, the chapter on Iceland because I’ve always been fascinated by everything Icelandic – its history, landscape, personality, lore – especially the sagas from a thousand years ago. Iceland is – and this is no shock to me but is meant to surprise the readers of Weiner’s book – Iceland is the happiest nation of people on this planet. The author has traveled the globe and discounted out the most suspected reasons for happiness: good weather, personal success, financial security, political stability, religiosity, ritual, etc. – and the answer comes that Icelandic people are happiest because of an inherent creative spirit that is not reserved for a few so-called successful artists, but a way of life for everyone.  

Weiner writes: “In Iceland, being a writer is pretty much the best thing you can be. Successful, struggling, published in books or only in your mind, it matters not. Icelanders adore their writers. Partly, this represents a kind of narcissism, since just about everyone in Iceland is a writer or poet. Taxi drivers, college professors, hotel clerks, fishermen. Everyone. Icelanders joke that one day they will erect a statue in the center of Reykjavik to honor the one Icelander who never wrote a poem. They’re still waiting for that person to be born.”

Icelanders write, but they also love to read what others have written – whether in published format or by the guy next door. “Better to go barefoot than without a book,” is an Icelandic saying. Reading and writing and telling stories -- also, music compositon and visual art -- is the Icelandic way of occupying the winter hours, most of which are shrouded in complete darkness for months at a time. No one is expected to become famous from their art, or to change the world, or to make millions of krona, or even to be recognized. Art is fun, to be enjoyed – and to be shared around the hearth or in the mead halls.  I guess we Westerners would call that unambitious.

Another noteworthy quality of the Icelanders is their high level of tolerance for the idiosyncrasies of others – their ancient heroes are the likes of Ref the Sly, Gunnlaug Wormtongue, Sarcastic Halli, and Thorstein Staff-Struck. Women were no less independent, the most famous being Gudrid the Far Traveler who is said to have crossed the Atlantic eight times and dubiously lost two or three husbands. She gave birth to her first son, Snorri, in what was to become America 500 years later, that is once the European man named Christopher Columbus made his “discovery” official.  In old age, she summed up her life's accomplishments by saying that Karlsefni (one of her husbands) told the tale of these voyages better than anyone else.

Icelanders expect failure – even applaud it – because that means a person has challenged the impossible. Failure, they say, is living proof that the goal was a mammoth one, one that took on the brutality of existence. That’s what they admire – the attitude of challenge and all the endless creative ways to accomplish a goal – and then, best of all, the stories about what happened.  

There were times on the beach last week when I deliberately walked a weave-through pattern to the footprints of those who had walked earlier that morning:  a man with a very high arch – a child about two or three years old – a flat footed person of short, husky stature – a large dog – our prints became woven together like a grand helix – and, there, I had added my strand too – and all lasting no longer than the time it takes to turn around and watch them fade.

Between the Lines

A short article buried in section/page B-5 of our local newspaper caught my attention to a greater degree than any newspaper editor might have imagined. This was news out of Philadelphia – stating that one of only seven executives to know all three parts of the secret to making Thomas’ English muffins is leaving his post to take a lesser-paying job with Hostess, maker of Wonder Bread and Twinkies.

This is not bread – the English muffin – it is a product defined and given signature by its presence of nooks and crannies – those empty places within the structure of toasted gluten where butter and jam might be cradled and crunched.

I know about the English muffin – which is to say I have not succeeded in producing these hallmark repositories for butter and jam. The unobtrusive English muffin seems to me the pinnacle of bread baker’s art – not even sourdoughs have daunted me as much, for at least the sourdough is glad to be alive and will tell me what it needs. But the English muffin is stalwart and guarded of its clues. I have all the equipment and many recipes that promise to yield the authentic result – but this persistent baker/writer has met her match. The English muffin is the place where smooth texture and consistent crumb are not the advents of success. As they say in many forms of martial arts or Eastern practices, the true Master leaves behind all rules. During my very brief teaching career, when challenged by students who wanted to know why they had to follow the “five paragraph rule” of writing an essay, I would say, “So you can throw it out once you’ve mastered it.” So it is with the English muffin – one must know the rules of bread baking so well that one can break them and thus produce a superior product. Paradoxically, the rules do apply – only they are no longer written rules – they are unspoken, as those seven masters at Thomas’ know. The secret is transferred via one great mind to another.

The company that makes Thomas’ English muffins has successfully protected their secret for more than 75 years. According to the article, there are three parts to the winning formulae – and this is more than I’ve heretofore known about the English muffin. Every recipe I have admits there is a secret, and then proceeds to tell you the secret: use of carbonated water in the dough, a bit of baking soda to the yeast, a bit of baking powder to the yeast, baking soda to the carbonated water, a pinch of pure ascorbic acid to the water . . . definitely no milk . . . and none of those secrets is the real thing.

The owners of the Thomas’ English muffin brand are suing back-stabber Chris Botticella because they say they have “good reason” to believe he will expose the secrets to Hostess who doesn’t make an English muffin at this time. Botticella says that his confidentiality agreement is valid “only during his employment” – and does not bar him from working elsewhere. But there are only four biggies in the English muffin industry – and this possible fifth could have major impacts on profits, makers of Thomas’ brand say. Plus, there are other secrets – for new products – which he knows. That said, I think "Bays" brand makes a far superior English muffin to Thomas’ – those Bays’ repositories will accommodate a swallow of good tea along with butter and jam.

The nook and cranny is really just empty space. This reminds me of the pinnacle of writing in which the most important words are really those that exist between the lines – open space for the reader to say for himself. I think of all those great writers of literature who have devoted their lives to lining the bookshelves of libraries for generations to come so that silent parties might walk the aisles with their own thoughts – and that aisle is a cranny.

Author John Gardner has said that the best writing  leaves much un- said so that the reader has to come up with connections and conclusions that make him or her feel smarter than the writer. And when a reader feels smarter than the writer, it makes that reader want to sit down with the writer in order to share dialogue – sitting and talking together. The nook is an open space formed by two adjoining walls; a place larger, at least wider, than the cranny. It’s a place large enough for two people to sit and talk.

The hardest thing to put in writing is the thing you can’t put there at all. You have to create the structure – that is, glutenous strands – then provide temperature, time, and humidity – and a good dose of patience – till the reader sees between the lines.

Nooks and crannies must come of themselves, and in their own time – that’s what I’ve learned about writing – I mean, about English muffins . . .

Seeing Pasternak in February

February.  Take ink and weep,
write February as you're sobbing . . .

. . . while black Spring burns deep
through the slush and throbbing. ("February. Take Ink and Weep")

Rouse your soul!  Make the day, foaming.
It's noon in the world.  Where are your eyes?
See there, thoughts in the whiteness seething,
fir cones, woodpeckers, cloud, heat, pines.  ("Sparrow Hills")

And it's suddenly written again
here in first snow is the spider's
cursive script, runners of sleighs,
where ice on the page embroiders. ("Winter Nears")

Snow all through February,
and time again
the candle burned on the table,
the candle burned.  ("Winter Night")

Snow is falling: snow is falling,
not snowflakes stealing down,
Sky parachutes to earth instead,
in his worn dressing gown.  ("Snow is Falling")

How many sticky buds, candle ends
sprout from the branches! Steaming . . . ("Spring")

That's why in early spring
we meet, my friends and I,
and our evenings are -- farewell documents,
our gatherings are -- testaments,
so the secret stream of suffering
may warm the cold of life.  ("The Earth")

Thank you, Boris Pasternak, for the beautiful poetry that lets me see . . . before writing.