Elizabeth Adams's Blog, page 104

28. The weight of words

Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words
Then labor heavily so that they may seem light.

   -- Wislawa Szymborska, "Under One Small Star" from Could Have, 1972

Onward and Upward with E-Books

It's a momentous day here at Phoenicia Publishing: we just released our first e-books!

I've been reading books on my laptop and Android phone for quite a while now.

And here's the verdict: I've decided I like it, even though I'm not a 100% convert.

I like the ability to take my reading -- lots of reading, in fact -- with me wherever I go, on one nearly weightless device that fits in my pocket. And I like being able to buy, for less, books that I don't particularly want to keep as physical objects in a physical library. I like being able to search them, make bookmarks, look up words: all those interactive features.

If I can get a book I want to read at the local library, that's often the option I choose - it's free. But I live in a French-speaking province and can't always get what I want, which has been a problem ever since we moved here. And, like most people now, I like the instant gratification of being able to download a book and start reading right away. It's clear to me that the future of publishing lies, at the very least, with a mix of e-books and print books, and more likely with forms of electronic publishing that we can't even imagine yet, but which include a lot of multimedia content impossible with the printed page.

Most people don't have to think about all this, well, beyond their own pockets, but the problem is...I'm also running a publishing company. A small company, yes, but it's a furry little entity dedicated to being a fast and adaptable hare rather than a ponderous tortoise. At Phoenicia we publish mostly poetry -- one of the most challenging formats for e-books, which are still pretty hobbled when it comes to complex typography. The other thing we will be publishing are art and photography books: also a type of book that needs careful, beautiful design.

I've spent the past couple of weeks thinking and exploring and learning, and today we released our first two e-books at Phoenicia: Dave Bonta's Odes to Tools and Ken Pobo's Ice and Gaywings, winner of this year's qarrtsiluni chapbook contest. Both are available in the Kindle/.MOBI format, and as EPUBs for the iPad or other EPUB readers, like the Nook or Sony, for a cost of only $2.99. Full-length e-books will be priced similarly to most commercial ones: around $10.00.

It was fun learning the new technology and I'm proud of the finished products. And it feels like a pretty big deal - a big step into the future.

(Dave Bonta has another book, a collection of his wryly funny and sometimes poignant "Words on the Street" cartoons that's just come out in multiple formats, through Bauble Tree Books in London. Check it out!)

I've been pretty low-key about Phoenicia here on the blog, but will be talking a bit more about it in the coming months - we've got several exciting projects in the works that I think will be interesting to Cassandra's readers, and, as always, the authors and I really appreciate your support! Nobody's getting rich - or even making any money to speak of - but I'm trying to develop a model that at least gets excellent, deserving work into print -- and now, e-ink -- which is a whole lot better than having it languish forever in a virtual folder in a virtual desk drawer!

26. Watch

Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

        --unknown

 

The Espadrille Store

New to me...on Blvd St-Denis, south of Laurier. It seems that they make them to order for you; your choice of different styles of soles (flats, wedges), colors, with ankle ribbon ties or without. I'll be back there in the spring -- somehow it's not quite espadrille weather yet! I also noted the nice selection of Portuguese baking dishes below the shoe counter.

25. On poetry

Poetry is an incessant hovering between sound and meaning.

            --Paul Valéry

(via wood s lot, merci mw)

24. Enlightenment is Un-knowing

Enlightenment is not about knowing as much as it is about unknowing; it is not so much learning as unlearning. It is more about entering a vast mystery than arriving at a mental certitude. Enlightenment knows that grace is everywhere, and the only reasonable response is gratitude and the acknowledgment that there is more depth and meaning to everything.

Fr. Richard Rohr

23. In Spring by Li Bai

IN SPRING

Your grasses up north are as blue as jade,
Our mulberries here curve green-threaded branches;
And at last you think of returning home,
Now when my heart is almost broken....
O breeze of the spring, since I dare not know you,
Why part the silk curtains by my bed?

Li Bai (701 – 762)

22. Aesthetic and Religious Experience

 "His kind of faith is a gift. It's like an ear for music or the talent to draw"
Crimes and Misdemeanors, Woody Allen

Profound aesthetic experiences, no less than the religious experiences of which James wrote, deserve to be thought of as gifts to the spirit. They may engender a sense of awe and mystery, and of the sublime; they may provoke a feeling of being privileged and so of gratitude. The experience may be at once elevating and humbling. These represent important points of contact with religious moments.

The points of contact are not limited to such reactions. Artistic and religious virtuosity both involve, even begin with, natural aptitude, as noted in the quotation from Crimes and Misdemeanors. Some are more given to these things than others. And in both domains, hard work, genuine focus!at times single-minded!is essential if one is to approach one's potential. We are less apt to think this way about the religious domain than the artistic. But a religious giant, a Mozart of the spirit, is a rare find; she is (certainly typically) one who has labored strenuously in pursuit of excellence.  And just as one who is tone-deaf can appreciate the musically gifted as responding to something of substance, one who is less able than another in matters of the spirit can recognize the latter's accomplishment. Needless to say, being tonedeaf is a rare condition in either domain. Ordinarily people occupy an intermediate position within a wide spectrum of which being tone-deaf is at one extreme.

from "The Significance of Religious Experience" by Howard Wettstein, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Riverside.

What do you think?

 

 

20. Trusting the Process

Fiona and Kaspa invited me to contribute a short essay about writing for their website during this month's "River of Stones." Here's what I sent them, and it's to be posted on "Writing Our Way Home" today. There've been some excellent, inspiring, and helpful essays this month - hope you'll read all of them!

TRUSTING THE PROCESS

January brings a new River of Stones to the literary and spiritual blogsphere, right at a time when our attention to the world around us might be flagging, along with our spirits. This challenge -- to write one small observation each day -- inspired large numbers of us last year and I have no doubts that it will be the same in 2012. For some, this is the beginning, or renewal, of a daily writing practice. For others, it's the first taste of what that might be like. But the real challenge for all of us, no matter how long we've been doing this, is how to keep going.

There are lots of reasons why we find it hard to continue writing every day, and I'm only going to talk about one of them here, but it's a big one. Somehow, as we read what others have done, and re-read our own efforts, a little voice in our head starts making comparisons and judgments, almost always at our own expense. Maybe we hoped for more comments, more support, more encouragement. Maybe what we've done falls short of our own expectations. Maybe we think other people's writing always tends to be more___________ -- fill in the blank -- creative, interesting, unusual, perceptive, clever, intelligent, poetic. Most of us, I think, have been in this kind of negative, paralyzing place whose sole purpose seems to be to tell us, "You aren't good enough, this is too painful, this is pointless...just stop."

Of course, all the arts can be problematic in this way: it doesn't matter whether we're writing small stones or a blog or a novel, or trying to practice the piano, or make a drawing every day. My worst crisis over my own work came in my mid-thirties, when I was mostly working in the fine arts. I had had some conventional "success" but was convinced I was missing something significant; that something inside me was holding me back. I became so discouraged and frustrated about art that I gave up painting and drawing for five years, but I was equally determined to find answers.

During that time I learned to meditate, and studied the writings and teachings of masters of Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, and the contemplatives and mystics of my own Christian tradition. There were common threads, one of which was mindfulness and attentiveness to the present moment. With the experience of meditation as a practice, I gradually found a new way, which still continues to deepen twenty-five years later. The point of making art, I gradually realized, is not the finished piece of writing or art and the praise we hope to receive for it, but the process of creation and what it teaches us.

Shunryu Suzuki helped me a great deal. I still remember the first time I read his essay, "The Marrow of Zen," in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, in which he wrote:

...almost all of us want to be the best horse. if it is impossible to be the best one, we want to be second best. This, I think, is the usual understanding of this story, and of Zen. You may think that when you sit in zazen you will find out whether you are one of the best horses or one of the worst ones. Here, however, there is a misunderstanding of Zen. If you think the aim of Zen practice is to train you to become one of the best horses, you will have a big problem. This is not the right understanding. If you practice Zen in the right way it does not matter whether you are the best horse or the worst one...

--

If you study calligraphy you will find that those who are not so clever usually become the best calligraphers. Those who are very clever with their hands often encounter great difficulty after they have reached a certain stage. This is also true in art and in Zen. It is true in life.

--

The awareness that you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact...In continuous practice, under a series of agreeable and disagreeable situations, you will realize the marrow of Zen and acquire its true strength.

Eventually, I began again. I learned not to judge my work, or continually compare it to others: just to do it, and let it go, moving on to the next piece of art or writing. It's one thing to be inspired, and to study work we admire, and quite another to allow our expectations and fragile ego to rule us. In meditation we follow our breath, noticing thoughts as they arise but not judging them, and then we let them go. We try to do this, we fail over and over, but we continue practicing anyway. Likewise, a daily writing practice is an opportunity to observe, think, and write to the best of our best ability right now, and then let that work go without judging, simply moving on to the next day, the next small stone. It's important to have faith in the process and its ability to teach us. That's difficult at the beginning, but -- please trust me -- it gets easier.

We are all meant to be creative beings; I firmly believe this is a big part of why we are here. Eventually, changes are wrought within us as we practice being observant, mindful, and creative. These changes have almost nothing to do with "success" in the eyes of the world, and everything to do with the contentment and peace and quiet wisdom that come from feeling our deep connection to everything around us. There is no hierarchy or limit to this potential; it is within each and every one of us. Even in the face of great difficulties, knowledge of our deeper selves -- including our own inherent creativity which is one with the inexhaustible creativity of the universe -- sustains us, and is a great gift which we both receive and give.

Writing for the World,or Within a Culture?

I wanted to suggest this thought-provoking article by Tim Parks, "Writing Adrift in the World," which speaks about problems and choices faced by contemporary young novelists. Parks addresses both the issue of writing fiction set in the world at large, for a world audience vs. writing from within one's own cultural and language tradition, and the question of how we are being affected by technology and the reading of media like blogs. I wonder what readers here may have to say about his comments, since so many of you are avid, lifelong writers and readers who move easily in and out of the worlds he describes. I'd love to hear from you after you read it.