Blackwing

The new Palomino Blackwing pencils which became available in October of this year are amazing – a rendition of the defunct original Blackwing 602 by Eberhardt-Faber which was made famous by John Steinbeck when he wrote East of Eden in the early 1950s. Whoever devised these pencils – copycat or new, they are the thing, and I know Steinbeck would approve.

Steinbeck spent two months in preparation and research for the writing of East of Eden – and a good bit of that research went into the pencil he would use. He declared the Blackwing 602 to be "the perfect pencil." He was said to sharpen 60 Blackwing pencils each morning so he didn’t have to stop writing in order to sharpen one over the ambitious six-hour workday. And he had an eccentric rule about how long they would last: “When the metal of the pencil eraser touches my hand, I retire that pencil.” He called the electric pencil sharpener a needless expense, but one he was willing to indulge because it saved his hands for writing.

The slogan on the original pencil is, “Half the Pressure, Twice the Speed.”  I miss seeing that slogan on the new Palomino pencil, though it otherwise feels and acts the same as the original which went out of production in 1998. Steinbeck has much to say about the Blackwing in his book, Journal of a Novel, which is a sort of diary of his daily life and thoughts behind the writing of the Eden book. He talks freely about the daily interruptions from friendly callers, carpet cleaners, carpenters, an ex-wife, etc. And he has a lot to say about Blackwings – the speed, the glide, the precision, the hexagonal barrel, the extra length, the no-break points – all praiseworthy and practical reasons to use them. But as I sit to write with my few remaining Blackwing 602s – and now a full box of the new Palomino Blackwings from http://www.pencils.com/ – I wonder if Steinbeck ever brought the pencil to his upper lip, as I do, between paragraphs, to inhale the fragrant California cedar . . .

. . . transporting me to river banks where freshly caught salmon is smoked over embers of cedar and ash – bronzed skin toting planks for the smouldering pile – the rush of freshly fallen water, cascading white over rocks worn smooth by centuries of never ending sound – echoes of the source of all sound – a rhythm of dance, the beat of drums, the hum of cicadas at night . . . that is where my Blackwings take me . . . to that place where sound begins. Was Steinbeck ever there? Is he there now?

But I am brought back too quickly . . . the phone rings . . . the Bradford pear trees need trimming and here is the estimate and the prognosis . . . my phone caller sparks numbers at me, the time he will arrive, the cost . . . the heat pump clicks on, that noisome smell of burnt dust on electric coil . . . I should call to get those cleaned . . . I boil filtered water for tea, thinking about all these things . . . inhaling cedar once again, longing to take flight to that place where writing can begin . . .

Angel's Share

I always like to punctuate my annual trip to Gethsemani monastery with a tour of a bourbon distillery. There are seven major distillers of Kentucky bourbon, America’s only native spirit, all within a 30-mile radius of the monastery and the Kentucky River’s limestone water source – and I have now visited five of those houses of alchemy. I never tire of the story of fermentation and the 235-year-old struggle to perfect and lifeguard a purely local art that is now cherished around the world.

Real bourbon can be made only in Kentucky – the secrets being local limestone-rich water and charred white oak barrels. The whole story of bourbon came about by accident:  Daniel Boone-style moonshiners in the 1700’s who eventually got good enough at their trade to ship corn whiskey to New Orleans via the Kentucky River – but one batch went bad because of the barrels’ previous contents (probably fish or vinegar which had been shipped in the barrels before being filled with whiskey). In the interest of economy, distillers began to torch the inside of their shipping barrels before filling in order to kill whatever prior flavors (ergo, bacteria) had been left there. This torching, unbeknownst to them, brought out the oak’s natural sugars which would in turn impart a toasty/oaky flavor as well as a deep amber-red color to the whiskey. The immediate message from New Orleans was, “Send us more of that charred whiskey!” The charred whiskey was eventually called Bourbon because of the town’s name near the shipping dock on the Kentucky River where the barrels were loaded for transport. As every tour guide will say, “All bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon.”

A visit to a bourbon distillery is a revival of the senses. Before one even emerges from the car, the heady smell of fermented grain and torched oak infuses the nostrils and lungs. In past years, I have attended Maker’s Mark, Buffalo Trace, and Woodford Reserve; this year I attended two distilleries – Jim Beam and Heaven Hill, the two oldest and largest of the lot. I have two more to go, maybe next year – Turkey Hill and Four Roses.

Tours usually begin near the silos where mostly corn, but also rye, barley, and sometimes wheat are ground and made into a mash, then placed in room-sized fermentation vats made of copper or wood; they are infused with special yeasts and left to ferment and bubble for months at a time before distillation; torched barrels are filled and taken to a warehouse where they will stay in a climate controlled environment for four to 20 years – or more. "Tasters" are a special breed, born and bred in Kentucky as far as I’ve heard – and nothing is bottled before their discriminating approval.

Much like bread baking or any home fermentation process, the life of the bourbon is in the yeasts that convert plant starch into sugar and alcohol. Each distillery touts its own strain of living yeasts that flavor its product just so. There was tragedy just 14 years ago when the Heaven Hill Distillery burned to the ground. Our tour guide, a young man barely over drinking age, said he lived about 20 miles from the distillery at the time; walking home from school that afternoon, he could see billows of smoke and smell the burnt oak and yeasty bourbon. The distillery was producing bourbon only a few years later – and only because the precious yeasts had been saved.

He talked about Jim Beam, a fourth generation distiller (there are now seven, and an eighth is trying to decide what to do with his life) who saw the family distillery through the hell of Prohibition – that’s how they refer to it in Kentucky – and Mr. Beam was back mixing corn with limestone water at the cost of $1,190.48 only two or three days after Prohibition ended – because he had kept the vitality of the bourbon yeasts in a jar at home. Our tour guide said Mr. Beam was known for a lifetime of carrying his jar of living yeasts to work each morning – in case the house burned down – and carrying his jar of living yeasts home each night – in case the distillery burned down.

 A small screen with the pattern of many four-leaf clovers without the stems was placed at the opening of one oak barrel on our tour, allowing precious 10-year-old vapors to waft through the screen. “Now where have you seen a screen like this?” our tour guide asked. One small pious woman with a tall red-faced husband nearby piped up, “In a confessional!” Her husband seemed surprised to hear such a large voice emit from his tiny wife.

Each of us filed solemnly past the “confessional screen,” taking in celestial vapors to the deepest recesses our lungs would allow. Eyes began to roll, heads to swoon – and we many strangers from foreign lands began to speak in one tongue, each to each.

“Angel's share,” our tour guide explained, referring to the 30 percent volume which is lost to evaporation from each barrel. "We give 60 percent of our profits to the tax man . . . 30 percent in vapors to the angels . . . and what’s left, we drink . . . “

The tasting room is where the real fun begins. Strangers become friends seemingly for life, except that we forget to exchange addresses once the tour is complete. I have photos of people from Australia, London, Scotland, Mississippi, California . . . a section of Atlanta where I used to live, and even from around the corner in Louisville, Kentucky. You see, we are given generous portions of pricey stock – 10-year single barrel, 18-year single barrel, 9-year small batch, 12-year 'very special' batch, an unfiltered, uncut variety that is 125 proof . . . A process of the senses begins – comparing color though sunlit windows; sniffing with the lips slightly parted to give angel vapors an entranceway through the olfactory gates; finally, tasting and comparison before question and group discussion time. Very happy now, we are each given a chocolate bourbon ball and led into the glimmering gift shop . . .

I drove carefully back to the monastery in time for Vespers that evening – thinking about the Life that is 'caretaked' so lovingly in all manner of ways on this earth – and I do believe the monks’ voices were never more angelic.

Removing Shoes

Gethsemani – This Trappist monastery in tiny Bardstown, Kentucky was made world-known because of the writer/monk Thomas Merton who wrote many forward-thinking spiritual books while cloistered here in the 1950’s and 60’s. My first visit here three years ago came about from a writer’s curiosity to see the place where a favorite writer had worked and lived, and was now buried – not to mention the promise of silence and 2,000 acres of walking trails for the contemplation of my own fledgling writer. “Retreatants,” as we weeklong guests are called, take a vow of silence for the week – that’s all. About half the retreatants are Catholic, the rest are something else or nothing at all or undecided.

This place draws me. I’m drawn to it. Just when I was thinking this will be my last year here – after all, it’s too far to travel, there are other ways to find a week of silence, etc. – I realize I must come here every year just at this time, the third week in October. Trees-full of birds greeted me when I got out of the car. Come every year, they said. Others must think the same, for there are so many familiar faces from last year – about 10 of the 30 retreatants I recognize from last year, this same week. I see license plates from all over the country, people who have driven more than my mere 600 miles.

There’s a reason I was drawn to read all of Thomas Merton’s books as a teenager, using babysitting money for each new purchase. But why? I’ve been told (by monks) that was very unusual, but my life has become very usual, nothing spectacular, nothing extraordinary. I always wanted to write as a child – then went to college, worked, got married, stayed home with children, and now wonder what to do with the rest of my life. Writing, in the bit of time I steal from the daily routine, holds little promise of the extraordinary . . .

Father Damien is our talking Guestmaster here at the monastery. He just got back from a three-month visit to Indonesia, the place where Merton ultimately died from a tragic accident in 1968. Fr. Damien is 77 years old, and he says he is not the same person he was five years ago – or five years before that. He struggled throughout his middle age to find what he was “meant to do” – though he knew since fourth grade that he wanted to be a priest and was at the time a successful pastor. “The clock was ticking in me every day,” he said, and it was in his mind that the clock was ticking: “What was I meant to do?” Strangely, he said, the clock stopped ticking when he drove up the Gethsemani driveway for a week of reflection about 20 years ago.

“So this is it – to make cheese the rest of my life?” Everyone laughed when he said that because even the monks, most of all the monks, make light of the daily, ordinary tasks of making cheese and fruitcakes to feed the masses. (Actually, they also say it’s the most radical, alternative lifestyle imaginable.) But it was true, he said, that he felt he had “arrived” – and it wasn’t glamorous as he thought his life’s work would be. He chose the name Damien as a young priest because he wanted to do great works, be a great missionary, be famous and renowned as the leper Saint from whom he chose his name. He said this with no face or voice of that former self – just a fact, as though saying he used to eat peanut butter sandwiches as a youth. He finally has the sense of being who he really is, he said – still a priest, but now a monk, and in a place where he grows and learns so much every day that he is “not the same person” he was five years ago. His days, he said, are like a kaleidoscope that is moved ever so slightly each day, so that the entire image is changed and a new perspective is always emerging from such small shifts – and it’s not over yet, he said.

While in Indonesia, he said he went into the mosques five times a day to pray as the Muslims pray – which must have seemed like a vacation because the Trappist monks pray/chant seven times a day beginning at 3:00 a.m. He entered the mosques wearing his cleric collar, and was asked only to remove his shoes as is the tradition. That kind of broadmindedness and inclusiveness – from both sides – is most likely why I was drawn to read Merton as a young adult. He talked about the profound respect implied in the small act of removing one’s shoes, and related something from the Bible about when Moses was at the burning bush and God told him to remove his shoes – “You’re on Holy ground now.”

I think of my decades-long Buddhist practice, and of how the shoes are always removed and left at the door of a meeting place; I think of my habitual tendency to remove my shoes when coming into my own house; of gladly discarding shoes the minute I see a beach before me; and of my curious preference for writing without shoes. Even when my feet are cold on the kitchen floor, I always write without shoes. Maybe that means something.

It’s an ordinary life for Fr. Damien, but one that he was meant to live – and he knows that – and that’s the kind of thing I take my shoes off to.

Selling Candy

Many women turn to sales as a means of making money and gaining some independence once the children are grown. This takes many forms – real estate, makeup, nutritional products, retail sales, and policies of all varieties . . .

I ate my breakfast at a Cracker Barrel in Mount Sterling, Kentucky, and saw from a few tables over a woman in her mid-sixties who had taken on such a role – she spoke to a like-aged couple across the table over a hearty breakfast of ham, sausage, coffee, eggs, grits and sawmill gravy. Great stacks of papers and brochures were spread out before her as she approached this couple with her goods – “The cost will be right at 6,000 dollars for the two of you,” was the first thing I heard her say, and it was the way she said do-oll-ars, with more syllables that it really has, that caught my attention and made me think about the importance of selling once a woman gets older and it’s too late to go back to school. I thought she might be peddling a trip overseas, because of the brochures, and I listened up to hear what exciting place they were going for such a grand fee. But I could never hear more than an essential word or key phrase during our breakfast because of the commotion of coffee cups and busboys and children eating pancakes, demanding more syrup and such.

The saleswoman wore a zebra patterned topper/knit jacket sort of thing, striped yardage that generously covered her solid black pants and a black top beneath. There were many chains of gold around her thick neck and her hair was coiffed up big atop her large head, frosted blonde and streaked with other stripes of varying shades. She had large gold hoop earrings and a big powdery jowl that jiggled when she proposed her point or changed pages for the couple to see differing views. She wore those half moon kind of glasses that fell down low on her nose so she never had to actually look the couple directly in the eyes but rather dodged them repeatedly from either below or above her glasses. Her arms were spread out wide on the table because of all the girth between, and her fingers were fat and waxy looking, strangled by big star-shaped rings that flaunted colored jewels and maybe diamonds. The finger nails were thick like horses’ hooves, painted bright pink and trimmed to a squarish angle. I thought of the limestone imbued Kentucky water that is attributed for strong bones in both horses and people in the Kentucky region – limestone, the same reason, by the way, that grass is blue and real bourbon can be brewed only in Kentucky. Those thick jousting fingernails pointed to clauses in the papers, lines that were to be signed, and they made a scratchy noise on the paper . . .

“But if you buy in the summer . . . “ I heard her say when the couple flinched and tightened their lips on hearing the first figure of 6,000 dollars. I began to wonder, what destination might cost less in the summer months? But I could think of nothing reasonable.

I heard the word Medicare come up in between children yelling, and later the word deductible, so I began to doubt the couple’s travel plans and instead thought they were planning for some kind of nursing care – or an insurance policy – or maybe cemetery plots? But why were the summer months cheaper?

The saleswoman was patient and “on their side,” because at one point she said, “Oh no, you shouldn’t have to pay for that . . . my package includes . . . ” and she shook her jowl definitively. She had the art of being serious and trusty about certain points, but she could punctuate her seriousness with friendly laughter when appropriate. The wife leaned over to confide something to the saleswoman, and the saleswoman leaned closer too, and the husband backed his chair away to gain the attention of a waitress with a coffee pot. The two women were becoming friends it appeared.

“Well, tell me then, how much are you willing to pay? I can write this up any way you like,“ the saleswoman said in a voice that grew suddenly loud and businesslike.

Someone in the kitchen dropped a full tray of dirty coffee cups and our entire non-smoking section voiced, “Ohhh . . . “ -- and so I never heard the couple’s reply.

The man rocked back on his chair and entwined his fingers behind his head, letting his elbows branch out to either side of his head – like a man who has been arrested and told not to move. But in this case, he rocked back and forth in the chair, removing himself from the interaction but at the same time giving in to it.

After rocking a few minutes, he excused himself to go pay the check for the table of three. I had already lingered long enough to imbibe a third cup of coffee when really one is plenty for me, so I figured it was my time to go as well. I made a point of walking past the table of business, just to see what the woman was selling – but spread across the papers was an open checkbook which the wife had pulled out of her purse. I saw those fat waxy fingers, pink lacquered nails, and glittering rings – they thrust forth a pen. Perfume wafted over the smell of sausage and bacon. I wanted to chase after the husband, “No, go back, don’t let her do it!”

It wasn’t intentional, but I found myself standing behind the man as he paid the check. I wanted him to hurry so he could get back before his wife finished writing the check. But the woman behind the counter wouldn’t leave well enough alone. “Would you like some candy bars, sir, we’re having a two-for-two sale today,” she said. (If you buy two you get two for free? I think that’s what it means.) He shook his head demurely as he folded his wallet to hide it away from one last intrusion – and this is where someone might suspect, but not really know as I knew, that something was on the man’s mind – he said, “I don’t know how you women do it. I couldn’t sell a thing if my life depended on it.”

She said kindly, “Sir, I’m not selling candy, I’m just offering it to you.”

Going to Gethsemani

Hawk Eyes

I ask myself every so often – usually while in the throes of a headache or in a routine with little time for writing – whether I should give up on this project that creeps slower than I thought. That’s a serious question when so many more immediate or important needs loom over each day. Yesterday was that weighty kind of day when I sat at the morning table rather than writing at the morning table, not unusual of late . . .

I noticed a large hawk perched in the tree outside the window, at first just his tightly folded back side looming in my range – a foreboding figure cloaked in a dark spread of cape. Its head began to turn nearly 300 degrees from one side to the other, as I thought only owls could do; its head would turn to the right and continue over that right shoulder until its head faced over the left shoulder; and having done that, it would turn its head to the left and continue round until it was looking over the right shoulder – and after I had seen its beak and features from all these many angles, and it had sort of proven to me all that it could do with its limber neck, that is when it carefully turned its body around, as a tightrope walker might do, upon the branch to face me so that I could observe it front wise too – and there it remained for more than an hour. Its mode was not hunting but observation, sometimes directly at me in the window, sometimes at a squirrel obliviously eating nuts on the ground eight feet beneath the hawk’s talons, sometimes at a thing in the distance or nearby. I took many pictures, and His Majesty was not bothered in the least by my clicking and flashing and occasional bumps on the window pane – eyes like a hawk, as the saying goes – and so I knew this hawk was not oblivious to me, but somehow even wanted me to see it perched there on the branch like an answer to a prayer – for that’s what answers do, I thought, they just sit there, present themselves, don’t ask or deliberate or shift or fly away – they present themselves, as is, as are, as am. Take it or leave it. That’s how the hawk sat there.

I got up with trepidation and quiet to fetch my book, Animal Speak by Ted Andrews, which is about the meaning of various animal totems and sightings, the spiritual meaning for ourselves as we sight these creatures and interpret them in context of the circumstances or questions in our lives – and yes, the hawk waited for me; almost, I would say awaited my return, for I saw its eyes fix upon the window till I got there and sat down again – they are messengers, the book says, and they represent creative energy and a long range view of creative projects. They are also great protectors of that energy – certainly I saw its aspect of protection in that great dark cape it presented to me at the first sighting, as though showing me what massive wraps were at its disposal – that – and then of course the circular eye watch, like a beam of light from a lighthouse, to show me what kind of range it took to guard me. Then I thought about the stance it took – patience in observation – I kept thinking of that word, stance . . . was that it’s message?  And what about patience?

In this case, there really is a full circle (300 degrees, anyway) happy ending to the dark morning, as it began, because I started to write something I had been putting off for a long time, and finished more than I would have thought – through the clatter of other needs and voices at my side – a stance.  In the end, it was that hour long stance of patient observation that moved me . . .

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.