Malcolm R. Campbell's Blog, page 116
December 21, 2019
Gathering Power At the Winter Solstice
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“Solstice” comes from two Latin words: sol meaning “sun” and sistere meaning “to stand still” because it appeared as though the sun and moon had stopped moving across the sky. This longest night of the year, followed by a renewal of the sun, demonstrates the cyclical order of the cosmos. In this way, celebrating the solstice can be a beautiful remembrance that our lives are part of a larger order, always changing, always renewing. – Deena Wade in Winter Solstice Traditions: Rituals for a Simple Celebration
Without spending time in the darkness of Earth’s soil, seeds would have no power to meet the Spring. Seeds, shoots, leaves, roots, and flowers naturally attune themselves to the energies of the seasons following what’s often called “the great wheel of the year.” Farmers and ranchers and others whose vocations or avocations depend on nature, are better than most of us at following the wheel of the year–out of necessity if not also for spiritual reasons.
Wade says that “In Celebrate the Solstice, [Richard] Heinberg writes that ‘wisdom consists in knowing one’s place in any given cycle, and what kinds of action (or restraint of action) are appropriate for that phase.’ Attuning our senses to the subtle changes and cycles of the seasons might help us attune more lovingly to the subtle changes and cycles in ourselves. By performing simple rituals with personal meaning to celebrate the solstice, these rituals will serve as touchstones to help us cultivate an attitude of receptiveness and appreciation that will carry us through the holiday season with more ease.”
Needless to say, our lives in a science and technology world take us away from nature and the lessons of nature and the literal and spiritual truth found in Ecclesiastes 3: To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
If you follow a Traditional Craft or pagan approach to life, or to some parts of life, then you have the tools, insights, and practices that will help you align, or re-align, yourselves with the seasons, especially Winter and Yule. If you don’t, all is not lost for you can imagine yourself on this day and in this season as a seed–or, if you like, as a person figuratively plugged into a huge battery charger like a cellphone waiting for use.
Wade’s site has a wealth of suggestions. Even reading it brings us power, the power to remember who we are and to act accordingly.
December 20, 2019
Why our outdoor decorations go up on or near the solstice
We’re always the last people in our neighborhood to put up Christmas and the last to take them down.
[image error] We always had a Yule log then I was growing up. Sad to say, the practice has become rather rare now. – Wikipedia photo.
This began when I was in grade school and became a habit. The schools were always looking for families who would lend them Christmas lights. Once we started doing that, the teachers came to us first every year. We didn’t get the lights back until the last school day before Christmas, usually, somewhere around December 20th.
Needless to say, we waited until the lights came back to decorate the house.
After that, perhaps it was laziness to some extent. As for putting up the decorations, we rebel every year against the practice of decorating the house for Christmas on or before Thanksgiving. As for taking them down, we strongly dislike the people who throw out their Christmas trees as soon as they finish opening their gifts.
For years, we went up to my wife’s folks’ house on Christmas day. It was always disheartening to return to our neighborhood and find dozens of trees already out next to the curb for the trash truck. We leave our decorations up until Twelfth Night. That’s a rather old tradition with the twelve days of Christmas beginning on December 25 in spite of the fact that a lot of merchants try to drum up sales by claiming the twelfth day of Christmas is the 25th. (More commercialism by people who don’t do any fact-checking.)
It’s supposedly bad luck to leave any greenery, and I include modern-day decorations, up after January 5th. So we don’t.
Over the years, others in our neighborhoods have asked why our decorations go up so late and stay up so long. We’re always tempted to ask, “Why do your decoration go up so early and don’t even stay up until New Year’s Eve.” But we don’t.
Whatever you do with your decorations, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season.
December 19, 2019
Was there ever an age of innocence?
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I often use this old Victorian Christmas card as a cover picture on my Facebook profile because I like the fiction of it, that there was once a time when children were innocent and approached holidays with a sense of untroubled joy.
Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize-Winning The Age of Innocence while on the surface purporting to be set in a more glorified time of wonder, portrays no innocence. Whatton considered the title to be ironic.
Even if we go back in time no farther than Charles Dickens work, we see that childhood, in general, wasn’t a sheltered time of grace. We hope, of course, that our children and grandchildren will remain innocent even into grade school. And depending on their circumstances, they may truly have no knowledge of the worst the world–or even their neighborhood–has to offer.
I’m glad that my two granddaughters don’t know what I know. Yet, assuming no catastrophe alters their lives, they don’t yet know anything about many evil things. Sadly, we must begin chipping away at their innocence to keep them safe: “Don’t get in a stranger’s car,” “Don’t wander away from your group on a school field trip,” etc.
Novelist Robertson Davies wrote that ““One learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.” Long term, that is true. Personally, I favor my own mystery over innocence, but I want children in general and my two granddaughters in particular, to have a few years of wonder and magic before they learn the harsh realities of the world.
These old Christmas cards make me believe that might be possible.
December 17, 2019
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December 15, 2019
High Country Euphoria
In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty. – Robert M. Pirsig, in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”
There are two kinds of high country: mountains and meditation. When you climb a mountain, you experience euphoria at the summit even though your dead dog tired and may only have very little time to spend a few precious moments there. This is physical and mental transcendence.
[image error] What a wonderful climb. – Wikipedia photo
When you meditate and slow your brainwaves to an alpha level, you reach mental heights that are often inaccessible when you’re working, commuting, and cleaning up the house. You are in an altered state without the physical danger of physical mountains, exhaustion, or high altitude sickness. Nonetheless, the euphoria is just as real as what you experience on a mountaintop.
While within this euphoric state, we know many things and understand deep in our souls that we are without limits. What powerful moments. The challenge, whether you have climbed a physical mountain or taken a transcendent mental trip is to avoid relapsing to mundane goals and fears when you return to level ground.
The euphoria is like a drug that slowly wears off; the feeling vanishes day by day as the slings and arrows of the temporal world slink back into your thining. The best medicine is climbing another mountain or meditating into the places where the air is thinner and facts and images become less certain.
You can stand upon mountain tops in your meditating, whether you imagine yourself to be there or take a shamanic journey higher and higher into the thin air of dreams. When you return, your friends may think you’re on drugs when, in fact, you’ve had an experience with no equal.
The euphoria is not, however, like being high on drugs. It’s more of a realization of who you truly are and what is truly within yourself. As we used to say years ago, you are at one with the universe. That’s better than fame or money or even your favorite wine.
Before my knees and ankles turned to dust, I loved Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks. Now, I’m exhausted climbing the flimsy drop-down stairway into the attic. I prefer mountains over meditation, so age has cramped my style. And yet, meditation still takes me to these summits where I see heaven and earth combined.
Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Mountain Song,” set in Glacier Park Mountana.
December 14, 2019
Perhaps I’ll Write Today
You don’t stop brushing your teeth during the holidays, so don’t stop putting a few words on paper. It’s your habit. It’s your mission. Unless it’s a hobby, which in that case you only write when you feel like it. Only you know the difference. – Hope Clark
So, what do you think about this quote?
Hope Clark tries for a thousand words a day. But if something gets in the way, she tries to put as many words down as possible. Maybe it’s a hundred, maybe it’s a thousand. It’s something, though, because she’s a professional novelist and that means putting words on the page is just as important as an otherwise employed worker showing up at the office every day.
She’s the author of “The Edisto Island Mysteries” and the “Carolina Slade Mysteries.” They read well and she’s developing a platform and a lot of satisfied readers. I mention all this, not to promote Hope Clark, but to note that while many of you may not have heard of her, she’s a successful novelist.
[image error]Many of us are not successful novelists, as the industry views the phrase, because we don’t write every day. We may have a few published books out there via small presses or self-publishing, yet we write more from the perspective of hobbyists than professionals. I suppose that if a writer’s books have never made money, then s/he finds it hard to see himself/herself as a professional. If you’re not making money or slowly gaining a list of satisfied readers, there’s no incentive for writing 200 words or a thousand words a day.
So, we rely on bursts of creativity and sooner or later we finish a book or a collection of short stories and then it gets published and appears on various online bookseller sites. Sure, we wish either that Oprah would call and tell us our latest is her next book club selection or that a Hollywood studio found our latest and has put down the cash for an option on the material. But, the chances of that are slim to none, so there’s no reason to try and turn out as many novels per year as James Patterson.
Perhaps writing when we feel like it is an expensive hobby, but more exciting than collecting stamps and coins, taking photographs of every national park, or joining a quilting club. Early on, we decided we are who we are and so that’s the way we’re going to write. If you’re young, maybe you want to keep pushing. If you’re not young, maybe you don’t.
I have no regrets about being who I am. I hope you feel the same about yourself and the number of words you write per day. We need to follow our hears when it comes to who were are and how often we write.
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Hardcover, paperback, and e-book
December 13, 2019
Co-ordinating Christmas Gifts, Or Else
When we were kids, my brothers and I–and to some extent, our parents–posted Christmas wish lists on the refrigerator door. These not only let people know what we were interested in, but also were a promise that when records and books were concerned, we wouldn’t buy them for ourselves until the new year.
My wife and I make Christmas lists for the same reason. With online purchases so easy to make, we don’t want to find out on Christmas Day that the books we though each other might want have already been bought.
[image error]We exchange Christmas lists with my brothers for the same reason. And, we circulate a larger Christmas list for my granddaughters. For one thing, people our age have no idea what children a thousand miles away might want for books and hobbies and games. And, since we don’t want duplications, my daughter creates the list and sends it to my wife who shares it with my sister-in-law. Whoever sees it first, erases the things we buy so that there can’t be any duplications.
I suppose the alternative is sending the same darn thing every year: a box of favorite booze, maple syrup or candies, and other edible holiday treats where duplication doesn’t matter. After all, if every one of my relatives sent me a bottle of single malt Scotch, it’s not like it will go bad waiting for me to get to it!
(I seldom send copies of my own novels to family members. They’ve been so supportive of my career, that they usually order their own copies as soon as each book is released.)
As usual, it often costs more to ship Christmas gifts than it takes to purchase them. Fortunately, my wife is very good at wrapping gifts. I package them up and take them to the post office. Sure, we could buy them online, include gift wrapping, and have them sent directly to family members, but that just seems kind of crass. we also avoid sending checks because that seems to be just too easy a way to let non-involvement take over the holidays.
So, how do y’all approach gifts to family and friends far away? Same thing every year (the Scotch route), edibles you know they like, buy it and hope for the best, a circulating wish list, or have you just said “to heck with it” and stopped exchanging gifts altogether?
One thing is certain, now that I’m adult and having to co-ordinate gifts to the four corners of the galaxy, I appreciate what my folks, grandparents, aunts, and uncles did when I was a kid and Christmas looked so easy.
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“A riveting great read from first page to last, “Special Investigative Reporter” showcases author Malcom R. Campbell’s impressive narrative storytelling talents. Certain to be an immediate and enduringly popular addition to community library Contemporary General Fiction collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that “Special Investigative Reporter” is also available in a paperback edition (9781950750221, $12.99) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $3.99).” – Midwest Book Review
December 12, 2019
Random and Unrelated Thoughts
[image error]I saw another ad on a writers’ newsletter this morning that basically said, “Dear writer, You’ve poured your heart and soul into writing a novel, shouldn’t you take the next step and hire a professional editor?” Sure, this could help. The thing is, if a BIG NEW YORK PUBLISHER has bought the MS, they’ll edit it. If not, your editing will cost more than my self-published book can earn. How do I make up the difference?
If you have a job and take a vacation to go on the TV show “Survivor,” what are odds that job will still be there if female contestants accuse you on the air of being too touchy-feely, you get warned, and then later you’re removed from the program for an off-camera incident that involved (apparently) a “Survivor” staff member? I’m not sure why I still watch this show because it’s rather like a soap opera and, like other reality shows, isn’t as real as it appears.
Regardless of one’s political beliefs, it’s really hard to watch the online coverage of the impeachment hearings without a heavy dose of heroin. I suppose it’s possible that those participating have an opioid IV hooked up to themselves to make sure they get through it all without going nuts.
Near the end of the year, every nonprofit that I’ve ever cared about sends me an e-mail that says. “Hey Malcolm, an anonymous donor has agreed to triple match every dollar you give before the deadline of December 18th. I want to ask, “Why is there a deadline?” and “Where the hell am I suppose to get the money to donate $25 to several dozen charities?” I usually send each charity a copy of one of my books so they can sell it (ten years down the road) for $1000000 on eBay.
The two books on my Christmas list are Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea and Dora Goss’ The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl. I hope Santa has me on the “nice list.”
We’re having beef stew for supper tonight. I dislike Port wine, but it really works well in the stew.
I have a feeling that once I upload this post, I won’t have a hundred visitors in the next 24 hours.
[image error]Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the magical realism novel “Conjure Woman’s Cat,” available in audiobook, e-book, paperback, and hardcover editions.
December 11, 2019
Rebel in English Class
I never understood why I was forced to take English courses since I was fluent in the language. Consequently, the rules made no sense to me because they seemed to be applied after the fact to something I did naturally. Also, I associated the rules with drill which was tedious and boring and seemed to have no practical application to speaking or writing.
Think of something you do naturally–like walking. Suppose you were forced to take a class in walking which was based on all the scientific things known about a person’s body and how it walks. Quite likely, you might think–unless you wanted to become a doctor–that the science of walking had little to do with your ability to walk. Yet, your school system mandated a course in walking because, after all, people need to be able to walk.
[image error]In today’s world, immersion-style approaches to learning a language seem to get the best results. Languages, such as Scots Gaelic, Blackfeet, and Hawaiian that were on the verge of extinction are being rescued through an immersion approach. I often wonder whether I would have been less at war with my English teachers if they had focused on immersion rather than atomistic drill.
Being a rebel had some unfortunate consequences when it came to learning other languages. When I took courses in Spanish and German, those courses were based on formal grammar rules. So, when the teacher said, “Today we’re going to talk about the XYZ rule,” I had no idea what that referred to because I hadn’t retained any rules by name from my English classes. So, I was behind the eightball since I had to figure out what kinds of phrases those rules applied to in English before I knew what the Spanish teach or German teacher was talking about.
It seemed to me that everyone who wasn’t a rebel in English class and who went to the trouble to learning all the rules had a much easier time when they showed up in a German, Spanish, or French class. When the teacher said, “Today, we’re going to look at the future perfect conditional,” everyone but me seemed to know what that was.
When I was taking German and Spanish in high school and college, I think an immersion-style course or study abroad approach would have helped me rather than approaching the languages in courses based on rules and drill. The rules make no sense to me in English, so I have no jumping-off point for learning new languages in a rules-based approach.
With a Scots ancestry, I’ve always wanted to learn Scots Gaelic (Gàidhlig), a language that I think might be coming back after years of being banned and slandered by the English. I also wished I was capable of learning Blackfeet because I began my writing career with a focus on Montana and also Hawaiian because I love the Islands. Knowing the language is the key to many things because it’s tied directly to the soul of the people who speak it. No wonder the U.S. banned Hawaiian and Blackfeet for years.
But, I digress. When the Blackfeet Nation started a school in Browning, MT that would help people recover their own language, they corresponded with experts in Hawaii who were using immersion techniques to save the Islands’ language from extinction. I corresponded with educators in both groups about 20-30 years ago. I felt bad because my country tried to destroy those languages just as the English tried to destroy my ancestors’ language. But I was stuck: I couldn’t learn any of these languages by going to the places they were taught/spoken and I couldn’t learn them based on language structure drills.
My view is that we need to find ways of saving dying languages and better ways of teaching our own. I have no clue what those ways are, but as an author, I know I’d be lost if my own language suddenly became illegal due to the edict of one conqueror or another. The theft/destruction of a people’s language is about as low as one can go; it’s unconscionable. Goodness knows I can’t help fix the problem because being a rebel in English class had more far-reaching ramifications than I knew.
My view is that we should spend time and resources restoring all the American Indian languages we tried to destroy.
[image error]My ignorant love of languages has led to the use of Hawaiian, Blackfeet, Tagalog, and Gàidhlig in my books with a lot of help from native speakers. I appreciate the help of an instructor from the University of Hawaii for the translations in this novel.
December 10, 2019
An author’s tenderness
In 2018, she won the Man Booker International Prize for her novel Flights (translated by Jennifer Croft). In 2019, she was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature – Wikipedia
“Tenderness is spontaneous and disinterested; it goes far beyond empathetic fellow feeling. Instead it is the conscious, though perhaps slightly melancholy, common sharing of fate. Tenderness is deep emotional concern about another being, its fragility, its unique nature, and its lack of immunity to suffering and the effects of time. Tenderness perceives the bonds that connect us, the similarities and sameness between us. It is a way of looking that shows the world as being alive, living, interconnected, cooperating with, and codependent on itself.” Olga Tokarczuk, from her Nobel Lecture
If you’re an author, reading Olga Tokarczuk’s entire speech will be, IMHO, time well spent.
An atomistic approach to everything has split the world and ourselves into bits and pieces that tend to compete with each other, and become so polarized they obscure any hope of inclusiveness and oneness. While acknowledging that first-person narratives are/were a miracle in storytelling and seeing the world, Tokarczuk acknowledges that they do not allow for the importance of others and others’ views. When it comes to the world as a whole, this is rather like the lefthand having no idea or concept that it’s part of the same entity that brings forth the right hand or the feet or the heart.
“Literature,” said Tokarczuk, “is built on tenderness toward any being other than ourselves. It is the basic psychological mechanism of the novel. Thanks to this miraculous tool, the most sophisticated means of human communication, our experience can travel through time, reaching those who have not yet been born, but who will one day turn to what we have written, the stories we told about ourselves and our world.”
Seeing all our stories throughout our own first lens is natural, but we cannot stop there if we want our books to carry meaningful messages that get past the illusion of the world as a collection disparate objects and events into the oneness that is really there.
