The wisdom of Alan Watts

·        The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

·        This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

·        Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them. Faith in life, in other people, and in oneself, is the attitude of allowing the spontaneous to be spontaneous, in its own way and in its own time.

·        There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied.

·        Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself.

·        Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.

·        The only Zen you’ll find on mountain tops is the Zen you bring up there with you.

·        If you really understand Zen… you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because… the sound of the rain needs no translation.

·        But I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.

·        To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it.

·        Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.

·        Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

·        There will always be suffering. But we must not suffer over the suffering.

 

Bumblebee nest?

A couple of years ago, I bought a hedgehog house online and placed it under the huge rose bush in the garden. As it turned out, it was never used for hedgehogs because the garden board would not allow us to take in hedgehogs since there are badgers in the vicinity of the community garden, and they are known to kill hedgehogs. So the hedgehog house has been standing empty ever since, until recently. Last week I was cleaning up all of the dead leaves and refuse under the rose bush, and my eye happened to light upon something of interest inside the hedgehog house. It looked like a symmetrically-shaped ornament with a hole in the top. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was a nest of some sort. My first thought was that it was a bumblebee nest, since bumblebees do make their homes on the ground under protective coverings, e.g. an upside-down flower pot or a compost bin (as I have also witnessed this summer). I took a few photos of it in order to search online afterward. I am fairly sure it is a bumblebee nest. But if any of you have other suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Inspiration for these trying times

Both quotes give me food for thought, but it is the last one that got under my skin. After a lifetime of worrying about 'productivity' and 'efficiency', I realize that the 'degree of presence' in your own life and in the lives of others are what matter most. Eckhart Tolle writes about this all the time. We are often so worried about the future, or about what happened in the past. We are powerless to change the events of the past, and we simply cannot map out our futures to the smallest detail since it is the great unknown. So we are left with the present. Accepting where we are, where we stand, in the present time, leads to peace. And it leads us away from the idea that our personal lives must be lived the way our work lives have been lived--by measuring all things in terms of productivity and efficiency. Perhaps this is something one figures out as one gets older. I don't know. I only know that I have begun to think differently about how I want to live my daily life. Perhaps the pandemic has given me the chance to reflect on this. When I stop worrying about how much I need to get done in one day, I am more relaxed and life flows better. I am better able to keep the negative influences at bay because I am 'aware' of where I am in the present. I am aware of whether I am content or not. I am better able to establish the necessary boundaries between me and the rest of the world. I am aware of the uninvited infringements on my peace of soul and the criticisms of others and how that affects me. Society and other (well-meaning) people are always trying to tell us what to do, how to live, what to buy, how to think, and how to react to different events. It's exhausting to have to consider what others think we should do all the time. I simply don't want to. I've done it long enough in the work world.

Mid-July garden update

Despite the incessant rain and unstable weather, despite the fluctuations in temperature, my garden is doing/has done a good job of producing zucchinis, strawberries, raspberries, and black currants. We won't get red currants this year, but we will get gooseberries. The pumpkin plants are starting to grow pumpkins, and we'll see how far they come along by the end of August. We will need more sun and warmth for them to grow and thrive. My potato and carrot plants will also yield potatoes and carrots, but they're not ready yet. Ditto for the tomato plants; I planted cherry tomato and full-size tomato plants. I'm unsure how well the string bean plants will produce; the slugs seem to like the leaves and chew them up so that the plants themselves become stressed and eventually die. The three corn plants are growing, but I don't hold out much hope for their producing full ears of corn before the summer warmth is over.

I post these garden updates for myself as much as for my readers. It helps me to keep track of my garden's progress each season. I definitely had beginner's luck with my fifteen corn plants during the first garden season; they grew well and produced at least twelve good ears of corn. It's been downhill ever since for success with corn. With each new gardening season, you learn something new and what not to focus on. The past two years have seen a lot of rain during the summer months here in Oslo, which is something that may force me to re-evaluate what I plant in the coming years.

One of the more interesting things that happened this year--I empty the compost bin at the end of the gardening season and spread the new earth onto the raised beds in preparation for the following year's plantings. Then I begin to fill the compost bin with the dead plants and refuse from the current season. I did that last autumn with the dead marigolds and cornflowers; amazingly enough, they began to grow and blossom on one side of the compost bin this year, as you can see from the second to last picture when you scroll down. So they must have seeded and been quite happy during the winter months, covered with new compost and kept warm until the spring. I also planted my giant sunflower plants (grown from seed in the greenhouse) behind the compost bin; I use the bin to support them and it is working out well so far.

Here are some photos of how the garden looks right now:

Astilbe plant--red goat's beard

the pumpkin patch

behind the greenhouse

tomato plants

zucchinis growing

more zucchinis

raspberry bushes

gooseberry bush

flower garden 

close-up of flower garden

strawberry patches (harvest is pretty much over for this year)

rose mallows growing

Veronica spicata plant (the bees love it)

a rare sunny day in the garden this year

lots of raspberries this year

a type of marigold 

sunflower plants behind the compost bin, and marigolds and cornflowers to the left

black currants

Brilliant poem--The Journey by Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver is fast becoming one of my favorite poets. She speaks to me in nearly every poem of hers I read. 


“The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.”

― Mary Oliver

The language of conformity

How does society pressure us to conform to specific ways of doing things? It starts when we are young, when our creative ideas are often stifled or when we are distracted by others from pursuing them. The latter is a common device used by some teachers, parents, and politicians to try and distract students, children, and constituents from following their creative bents, in case those creative bents result in people who end up thinking for themselves, using their brains and their talents to define their lives rather than relying on society to define their lives for them. For example, how many young adults have been told to pursue a college education when they were clearly more suited for creative or vocational pursuits? The idea that college is for everyone has been oversold in our modern society. A college degree is useful for many types of jobs, but not necessary for all types of jobs. The pressure to conform to ‘going to college’ is strong, and in many cases, very costly, as college education (at least in the USA) costs quite a bit of money.

The language of conformity uses the following words/expressions:

• Should, as in You should do this or that
• Should have, as in You should have done this or that
• Don’t, as in Don’t waste your time on that endeavor
• Wouldn’t, as in I wouldn’t do that if I was you
• I told you so (self-explanatory)
• Good/bad, as in This is good for you, whereas that is bad for you
• Success/failure, as in You either succeed in life, or you fail
• Ambitious/lazy, as in You are either ambitious about achieving this or that goal, or you are not (lazy)
• Effective/inefficient, as in This way of doing things is effective, whereas this way is inefficient
• Black/white, as in This is a black and white situation (what happened to grey?)

There are probably many more examples, but these are good examples of words that pressure people to conform to a certain way of doing things. They are negative words that squash creativity and the ability to think for oneself. They are words that feed the inner voice of shame, embarrassment, low self-esteem, and anxiety. They are not words designed to make you feel good about yourself, your actions, or your ideas. They are not words designed to empower you or to encourage you to take the risks in life that are necessary in order for you to grow as a person. The language of conformity does not allow for a ‘middle ground’ way of thinking.

We all have had experience with people who are lukewarm in their support of our creative endeavors. They are not bad people, they may just be fearful people, who would never think of taking major creative risks themselves. So they fear for others they care about who are taking those risks. There are also people who frown upon anything other than the prescribed way of doing things. They are quick to tell you I told you so when something you’ve attempted doesn’t go the way you’ve hoped. They know best, even though they have never done what you are doing. They are quick to remind you that the ‘tried and true’ approach to life and work is the best approach. And maybe it is for most people, but not for all. They are quick to tell you not to give up your day job, or to give you the statistics about how most artists can’t support themselves on their creative endeavors alone. It is probably all true, but if everyone followed that path, there would be little art, books, plays, poetry, photography, etc.

Even when other people are supportive and encouraging, our inner voices may be our own worst enemies. Where do those voices come from? You’d probably have to go back to early adulthood to find that out. I can say from experience that it wasn’t until I started working full-time that the negative voices began to pop up. Perhaps once one starts to work in the work world, where you must play by others’ rules, you learn to ignore or squash that inner voice that tells you that your ideas are good and worth listening to. Or perhaps your colleagues are not very interested in your ideas or feel threatened by them, so they ignore them. It hurts, and you learn not to open your mouth as much. Or you meet the ‘besserwisser’, the know-it-all, the been there and done that person in the office, who will gladly share his or her experiences with you so that you don’t have to repeat his or her ‘mistakes’. The end result is that you learn to conform, to say what you think those around you want to hear, to speak the party line and be happy with that. But what if your ideas did not lead to ‘mistakes’? And what if the word ‘mistake’ is merely another word to add to the list of the language of conformity? The word mis-take could just mean that your ‘take’ on a situation was off the beaten path, one alternative of many.

The language of non-conformity is a more pleasant language. It includes words and expressions like do, could, possibly, options, choice, free will, middle ground, room for growth, self-esteem. These words don’t weigh so heavily on the soul. They create light, breathing room, expansion, and freedom. They are words with which our inner voices can work. There are those who would exploit this language for their own gain (those who push the idea of ‘the necessity of thinking positive in order to succeed’). The latter sounds like it is supportive of non-conformity, but it’s not. It’s pushing conformity to a way of behaving that includes a prescribed definition of success, usually financial. It is an either/or proposition once again. You either think positively and that leads to financial success, or you are financially unsuccessful because you think negatively. There’s not much room for light and expansion there.

Georgia O’Keefe wrote: “Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing--and keeping the unknown always beyond you.” There are many roads that can help us on that path. One of them is letting our inner voice have more of a say in how we live and create our daily lives. In these pandemic times, I’m guessing that more people will start to listen to their inner voices for guidance about how to live and create their daily lives. 

Wall clouds over the Oslo fjord

Oslo has experienced a fair amount of unstable weather for the past month or so. We have had days that start out sunny and warm, then the clouds roll in and darken the sky. Sometimes it rains, other times it doesn't. Sometimes we experience a brief rain shower, other times the rainfall is torrential. When we were sailing back to the harbor on Saturday after a pleasant boat trip on the Oslo fjord, I captured some of the really weird cloud formations that appeared around 6 pm local time. I say weird, because I've never seen anything like these formations before in Oslo. Perhaps they have occurred before and I just haven't seen them. I commented to my husband that one of the formations looked like the clouds you see in the Midwest (USA) when tornadoes form. And then I googled these types of cloud formations (square clouds) and found out that these types of clouds are called 'wall clouds', and sure enough, can be associated with the formation of tornadoes. I often wonder why we don't get more tornadoes in our part of the world. But we have experienced waterspouts; the Oslo fjord experienced a waterspout some years ago (https://norwaytoday.info/news/waterspout-oslo-saturday/) and in 2014 southern Norway experienced the same (https://www.thelocal.no/20140624/mini-tornadoes-stun-southern-norway).

Here are some photos of these weird cloud formations: 

never seen anything like this before

almost looks like a tornado is forming

To regret or not to regret--the choice is yours

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”
― Mary Oliver


I have in previous years written many posts about choice and that we choose our own lives to a greater or lesser degree. The pressure to conform to the modern life around us and to choose against our inner desires to live life more on our own terms is enormous. The pressure to be a workaholic, to prioritize work at all costs, to want all the material things money can buy, to always choose what is better than what we have now (to never be satisfied with what one has), to be constantly busy and active--all these things are driving forces that society supports and even adulates. If you do not want to be a workaholic, if you want to slow your life down, if you don't want a bigger house or a bigger car, if you want time to reflect on life, you risk being labeled as unmotivated or unambitious. And that may be the case, at least in the context of wanting those particular things. But there are some of us who do not want bigger, better, and more all of the time; some of us are content with the material blessings that we have attained/been given and want more time to reflect on life, especially now as we get older. Some of us want, and have wanted all our lives, as Mary Oliver so aptly writes, to follow the 'call to creative work', for no other reason than to follow that call. Not because it will make us rich or give us more material things, but because it gives us the chance to express ourselves in the unique way that only each of us can do. Yes, we need money to live and to function in society. But we don't need to drive ourselves to an early grave in a futile attempt to 'have bigger, better, more', because once we reach one material goal, there is always more to want, in other words, a new goal.

Each of us is unique and gifted with talents that others do not have, and others have talents that we do not have. And that is what makes the world a wondrous place to live in. We each share what is uniquely ours with others. It doesn't matter if the world judges one harshly or if one is unsuccessful at what one creates. The definition of success in our society is a bit boring, because it is always equated to how much money one can make. Georgia O'Keefe wrote “Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing--and keeping the unknown always beyond you.” She understood the call to creative work and the importance of ridding our minds of terminology that keeps us prisoners of conformity--successful/unsuccessful; ambitious/lazy; efficient/ineffective. Rigid 'either/or' thinking does not help us to find a middle ground, and that is what most creative people need. It may not be possible to quit our jobs and pursue our creative leanings full-time; but a middle ground might be working at a less stressful job in order to have the time to pursue creative hobbies in our free time. Many writers and artists worked full-time at other jobs and pursued their crafts alongside their jobs. However, very few of us will reach the point where our creativity (e.g. our writing, painting, photography) can support us and/or families financially. But the middle ground allows for both. Still, we can live with the nagging feeling that we should have conformed to society's definition of success--that we should have made more money, had a fancy job title, had a bigger house, or a newer car. Some people will never be happy until they have attained (their view of) material success, but once they earn what they think is enough money, they will set themselves a new financial goal. The amount of money that equates to success will always be a moving target. It seems obvious to me that personal happiness is not based on having a specific amount of money, but this is not obvious to some people.

To choose our own path in life is to move out against an ocean that pushes us back to shore, no matter how often we try to head out onto the water, to brave the waves. You might think that the pressure to conform is greatest when one is a teenager or young adult. It probably is if you look at the statistical data, but the pressure to conform doesn't lessen when one is older. If you want to retire earlier than age sixty-seven, for example, there are people who will try to talk you out of it by telling you that you will be bored, that you will miss the workplace, or that you need the social interactions that the workplace provides. Many societal and political leaders are now pushing for people to work longer, into their seventies. That's fine for those who want to do that, but it should never become the norm. These types of people have little idea of how to live their lives without a company to define their lives for them, to give them their identities. They don't understand that the reason you might want to retire early is to have the time to pursue your creative activities after a lifetime of dedicating your time and energy to realizing the goals and visions of others. So the pressure to conform to the 'new norm' is strong; striking out against the new norm is guaranteed to get people talking about you and to you about how you will regret retiring early. Interesting that they talk about regret when it comes to retiring early, but not when it comes to not fulfilling your personal goals and dreams. I applaud one of my colleagues who retired last year to devote his free time to painting. He was honest about his desire to paint and had no desire to continue to work as a consultant for his workplace, to which he had devoted many years. He was retired from the work world and had plans to do other things that he had put on hold for many years.

Very few people are willing to talk about the regrets they may have for choosing against their creativity throughout their lives. Choosing against your creativity is as simple as having an idea that one doesn't write down or reflect upon; it is as simple as saying to oneself that this idea or vision is not worth exploring further. Or as simple as saying that I don't have the time to pursue this. But what one is really saying is that one doesn't have the will to pursue it. That is the biggest problem for most of us--the will to choose for our creativity. Because what if that idea or vision that you toss away is the only one of its kind, the one unique idea or vision that never sees the light of day because you tossed it into the waste bin? I know that I get irritated with myself when I don't write down an idea or thought that I know would make a good blog post or an interesting poem or short story. The ideas get lost forever; it's hard to remember them a day or a week later. I tell people that if you have a creative thought, write it down somewhere, and come back to develop it at a later time. It's worth it.

There are many ways to be creative and creativity is not limited to writing, painting or the arts. We are called each day to be creative where we are--at home, in the kitchen, in our sewing and hobby rooms, in our gardens, among other places. We should give ourselves a pat on the back every time we choose for creativity and against conformity. Maybe as simple as preparing a new recipe from scratch rather than buying frozen prepared food. If there are creative pursuits you wish to follow, the time is now. As I have written in many posts on this blog over the years; "If not now, when?"

Embracing all of life, sadness and all

Dan Rather posted this quote from writer Louise Erdrich on his Facebook page today, and I wanted to share it with you.

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

I am adding a few more quotes today, written by Mary Oliver, one of my favorite writers.

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”

She also wrote this:

to live in this world

"you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go”

And last but not least, she offers her take on the gift of darkness in a life:

The Uses Of Sorrow

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

"Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.”

Cluttering up life with apps

If I get one more message telling me that in order to do something, I have to download this or that app, I think I will explode. I wish to inform most companies with this blog post that I just don't care about their new apps, at all. I don't care. I don't want them clogging up my phone and cluttering up my life. I don't want to download apps to my phone for each supermarket I shop at (I'm not loyal to any particular supermarket), I don't need an app to pay for street parking, I'll use an automat, thank you very much. I don't want an app that allows me to use charging stations to charge my electric car, or that allows me to convert HEIC photo files to .jpg file format. Why can't I just transfer photos from my new iPhone to my PC with no problems like I could with my iPhone 6? Why can't I use paper coupons (still possible, but for how much longer?) rather than having to download a supermarket app to use coupons? If you want to use electric scooters here in Oslo (I don't want to at all since I think they're the latest piece of garbage to litter city streets), you have to download an app for each company that provides the scooters. I mean really, you can't make this crap up. At least there is only one app for using Oslo City Bikes, and they are well-controlled, have specific parking areas, and don't litter the city streets and sidewalks the way electric scooters do. The latter make it impossible for handicapped and blind people to navigate the sidewalks.

Apps are the future. I know it, but I don't plan on using many apps. I don't need an app from my electric company telling me how much current we used last month and how much we are using this month compared to last month. I don't care. I pay the electric company and that's all the contact I want with them. I don't need an app for every little thing that daily life consists of, since most of what daily life consists of is unimportant and forgettable. All these apps are just new ways of tracking us, our movements, preferences, purchases, likes, dislikes, etc. and making us focus on unimportant things. I hate the idea that everything I do in life is being controlled and measured, all for marketing purposes. But the reality is that we will be forced to download apps in order to use most things in the future. My husband and I were recently on vacation for a few days in a city in south Norway, and when we parked our car in one of the city parking lots, it was nearly impossible to pay when it was time to leave. We asked some people about how to pay, and they told us to download an app that would make payment possible. Why? If we are visitors to a city, why would we need that city's app? Why would we care? We're not planning on returning there anytime soon. The whole app and phone thing is out of control--a mania, an obsession. Anything to keep us glued to our phones. Instead of making life simpler, all of this pressure to conform is making life more complicated. I suppose the next thing is that we will need to download an app to our phones in order to use the toilets at bus and train stations and airports. I mean, why not? Or an app to activate lights, faucets, soap dispensers, coffee machines, and vending machines in public places. What about apps to start our cars (perhaps they exist already)? Remembering which app should be used when will continually occupy our brains, so that we don't have to reflect on what is really going on. Because if we understood that this is about controlling our every move, we'd be much more circumspect about what we downloaded to our phones, and much more careful about the amount of time we spent on our phones.

Cheating on someone and real love

A smart piece of advice and a good perspective for couples of any age to have and live by, but especially those starting out. Wish I had read and incorporated such advice when I was younger; it would have made a world of sense and might have made me look at some people quite differently. In other words, I would have wasted less time and expended less energy on the wrong people. Because if people cheat on you, they're the wrong people for you. They don't deserve your time, your love, or your loyalty.

Monday morning reflections

The feeling that things will never be the same is a feeling that is occurring more frequently with each passing day. The pandemic is the cause, yes, but the sense that the 'known' is becoming the unknown is prevalent within me, and I cannot say that I like the feeling. We are moving toward a new epoch in mankind's history, in the planet's history. I dread reading or hearing the news, I am aware of the anarchy around me, in every country on this earth. Some countries give the appearance of having more control than others, but scratch the surface and you will find unrest and dissatisfaction present. You will find people who only care about themselves, and who will do what they want to do, will not listen to medical and scientific authorities, will not listen to reason, will not abide by the rules. What matters to them is their freedom and their 'rights'. One thing has become very clear to me, and that is that it doesn't matter how rich you are or how much power you have--you are nothing in the face of a virus, a pandemic, an apocalypse. Money doesn't matter. Money won't save you when the institutions that use your money no longer exist. I fear the future at times. It doesn't look like anything I picture as a happy place. I look at major cities around the world, but especially in the USA, and see the discordance, the unrest, the violent behavior--all arising really out of a pandemic that laid bare the inequities and unrest in my country. It breaks my heart because I fear that it will only get worse before it gets better. Defunding the police is a terrible idea; it will only lead to more chaos. The country is led by a nihilist, someone who 'believes that life is meaningless and rejects all religious and moral principles'. He doesn't know he is one, but he is. He believes in nothing and stands for nothing, except for himself and enriching himself. 'Make America Great Again' is just a slogan to him, he has no idea what it means or what he really wants for the country, because he has no idea what it means to truly serve his country. The word 'service' is not in his vocabulary and never has been. You can watch the documentaries about him from the 1980s; he's the same nasty person he always was. Make America Great Again are empty words, uttered by an empty person, who fills his heart with rage and hatred against what, I am not sure. But he plays on the emotions of a particular type of person, and those people will follow him off a cliff if need be. Perhaps he is unhappy about being old, because he is old, and one day he will die, like everyone else. I have no idea about his soul or personal relationship with God, but at present, there is nothing that indicates to me that he is interested in preserving the Christian values on which our country was founded. The USA is an imperfect country, yes, but one that offered hope to so many people who wanted to start a new life and strive for something better. Hope seems to have died, at least from where I stand.

And if you take hope away from people, you destroy them and a country from within. You contribute to the rise in depression and suicide, to the increase in bad behavior and lawlessness. Because when there is nothing to hope for, there is no point in living or for striving for a better life. And that is nihilism. If that's what people want, that's what people will get. Nihilism will kill more people than a virus ever will. 

The creepy and engrossing stories of H.P. Lovecraft

It’s been well over twenty years since I purchased The Best of H.P. Lovecraft (Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre). At that time, I read perhaps one of the short stories in this collection, The Rats in the Walls, but that is the only one I can recall reading. I recently picked up the book again following the recent release of the movie Color Out of Space, which is based on Lovecraft’s short story The Colour Out of Space. I have not seen the movie, but decided to read the short story instead, and am now reading the entire collection of short stories and enjoying them.

Lovecraft is a master horror writer. Born in 1890, he wrote prodigiously until his death in 1937; he didn’t live a long life, but he left behind a literary legacy that endures to this day. It’s hard to describe what it is that captures and draws you into his stories, but it only takes a page or two and I’m hooked into yet another short story. I don’t know if I would describe his tales as bloodcurdling; I would rather describe them as creeping terror, or as a gradual build-up to what you know are going to be fear- and anxiety-inducing events. Stephen King has stated that “H.P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale”. High praise coming from a master horror writer himself. King grew up reading Lovecraft’s tales, and Lovecraft himself was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849). We read a fair amount of Poe in school as children/young teenagers, but not Lovecraft.

I know from my reading and searching online that readers either like Lovecraft’s classic prose and phrasings, or they don’t. I happen to be one of the readers who do like his style. He is wordy, but he chooses his words carefully (some would say he is old-fashioned and that’s fine with me), and there aren’t many wasted sentences. He doesn’t write or present details like a journalist, and is excellent at crafting his tales. Each tale deals with a different kind of horror, and the protagonists, educated and logical men, are sceptical at first to what they find themselves dealing with, only to understand (in the nick of time) that what they were sceptical of is in fact real (or surreal) and life-threatening. My favorite stories are not necessarily the ones that his diehard fans would hold up as their favorites. In the collection that I am almost finished reading, I would say my favorite stories are the following:

·        The Picture in the House  (the build-up to the suggestion of a grim end for the protagonist is nerve-wracking)

·        In the Vault  (just plain creepy, something you might find in Tales from the Crypt)

·        The Whisperer in Darkness  (cosmic horror = fear of the unknown, of the cosmos, of all things alien)

·        The Colour Out of Space  (cosmic horror about a meteor that crashes to earth and the after-effects)

·        The Haunter of the Dark  (the unwitting unleashing of a satanic-like monster)

·        The Thing on the Doorstep  (wizardry, mental telepathy, mind transfer—plain creepy)

·        The Shadow Over Innsmouth  (part of the Cthulhu mythos)

The Call of Cthulhu is also part of this collection of short stories. After digging into Lovecraft’s background, I found out that there is an entire cult mythos built up around the monster Cthulhu, and that the book The Necronomicon that is mentioned in several of his stories, while fictional, is thought to be real by some people. The Shadow Over Innsmouth is part of this mythos, and I found it to be much more terrifying than The Call of Cthulhu because of the pursuit of the protagonist by the townspeople (monsters) and how the realization of his strange ancestry slowly dawns on the protagonist. Lovecraft writes in an exceptionally visual way; his descriptions of the fictional town Innsmouth (in Massachusetts) allowed me to imagine it, such that when I saw it depicted in artists’ pictures online, I thought, yes, that’s how I would have seen it too. He is not big on dialog between his characters, but for some reason that is not a problem for me. He explains the motives and thoughts of his characters in great detail, and that suffices. 

Lovecraft has inspired many writers and filmmakers to this day—among them the writer Stephen King and director Guillermo Del Toro. HR Giger’s monster in the Alien movies was inspired by Lovecraft’s writings, likewise John Carpenter’s creation The Thing, according to online searches. I would add that some of the X-Files episodes bear a Lovecraftian influence, especially those episodes that deal with insular townspeople, xenophobia, and strange goings-on. Those are the episodes where Mulder and Scully visit such towns and out-of-the-way places, and all the while you sit and watch and are anxious for them, wanting them to leave as soon as possible. The X-Files remains one of my favorite shows, precisely because the show took the same kinds of bold risks in its storytelling as Lovecraft did with his.

I am nearing the end of this collection of short stories/novellas, and I really don’t want them to end. Lovecraft has created a universe that you are very glad you don’t live in, but that fascinates you nonetheless. You can ‘visit’ it safely via his tales. He is an excellent writer; I’m surprised that it took me over twenty years to appreciate him, but thankfully, I can do so now.

Beautiful iris from my garden

My garden makes me aware that there is beauty in everything, from a tiny earthworm wriggling its way through the earth, to a honeybee drinking water from the birdbath, to the lovely flowers that are blooming en masse now. I have become aware of colors--all shades and hues of colors--because they are in abundance in a garden. The different greens in the leaves of different plants and how they reflect the sun's light shining through them, the varying shades of blues and violets, the brown color of the earth and what that tells you about the quality of the soil. The list is long. I could post many photos of the different flowers that are blooming or have bloomed this year, but I've settled on posting one today, because suddenly this year, my iris plants produced many flowers, and they are beautiful. So here is one photo of a lovely iris bloom.....it's just a pity that they don't last very long.

Surreal times and the reset button

Since the pandemic started, a reset button has been pushed for my life. I follow the same routines, get up at the same time, shower, have breakfast, and then start my work day. But it’s not the same as leaving the house to go to my office. Forcing us to stay home forced a retuning of the way I live my daily life. I start my work day at the same time as I did before. But I live my work day much differently than I did before. I’ve grown to like and enjoy the freedom of being my own master, and luckily, I won’t have to return to the old way of doing things, even when we are asked to return to our offices. I’ve made some important decisions that I will share with you over the coming months. Suffice it to say that my life will be very different at this time next year, God willing.

These are surreal times. Who would have thought one year ago that we would be here—talking about a virus that has become front and center in our lives? It’s the main topic in all the news and social media, and in conversation with family and friends. None of us knows what to expect or when it will be safe again to do the things we have taken for granted for most of our lives. Wearing masks will become part of our lives, using disinfectant on our hands likewise. We will think twice before we go to events where a lot of people will be attending. We will think twice about going to concerts, to sporting events, even to church. We will perhaps be more reserved about hugging and touching others. I don’t know how I feel about it all; I alternate between feeling numb and feeling a bit melancholy. And when I don’t feel numb or melancholy, I am actually content. Because there is nothing we can do with the situation that has come upon us except to adjust to it as best we can. I’d love to travel to NY in August, but that won’t happen. Even if I wanted to, SAS cancelled the flight I had booked. And anyway, it’s not safe to travel to the USA right now. The EU has decided against letting Americans travel to Europe at present due to the high number of Covid19 cases in the USA. Regardless of whose fault it is or isn’t, the fact remains that the virus has hit the USA very hard. Questionable leadership has not made the situation any better.

I needed the reset. I needed the abruptness of the sudden stop to make me take a good long look around me, to see what is important and what isn’t. Much of my poetry during the past five years has hinted at the changes to come in my life, but I never considered that an outside player—a virus-- would be calling the shots. I no longer need the work world the way I did before, neither for intellectual stimulation nor for social interaction. There is very little of either nowadays, and it took being at home full-time to realize that. The ever-replenishing fountain of motivation that work used to be for me is gone—dried-up. I still have ideas for projects, but funding and personnel to realize them are non-existent. I have become a paper pusher, and even though much of what I do for my department is actually useful and I’m glad to be of service, I’m a paper pusher nonetheless and it’s not what I signed up for. In the long run it won’t be enough for me. If I had wanted to become an administrator, I would have pursued a business degree and not a doctorate in science. But it’s ok, because I’ve made specific decisions about how to deal with all of it. The pandemic gave me the time to figure it out and to make the decision. There are silver linings to every cloud; there is always something positive to take away from a negative situation. And as long as we have our health, we will continue to cope and to eventually get past this. Being at home is a good time to learn more about ourselves and the people with whom we share our lives. It is possible to be content in the midst of the chaos and unrest, sickness and death that exist around us and globally. It is possible to be realistically optimistic that life will be good again. Global society has had its reset button pushed, and hopefully most people are retuning their lives in order to meet the new world order.