The Memory of Words Past

Mixed media painting after a Ute petroglyph
by Phillip Hoyle

This little story could be of interest only to writers or to students of aging. Here’s how it goes. 

So at age sixty-four I have just finished writing a novel, a book of over 50,000 words. I have been pondering the future of the manuscript and in so doing decided to ask several people to read it to see if it makes sense, holds together, bores, or entertains. While waiting for their responses, I’m trying to plan creative ways to reread it in an attempt to make sure I will not send a possible agent or publisher a work that seems unpromising. A tactic I learned from my daughter-in-law Heather is to mark all “to be” words, changing them into something active unless they present no alternative. My own idea is to check the use of all, uh, what’s the word? Uh, that kind of word I have sometimes had trouble with. This is awful. Not only do I have trouble selecting the right one of these words; I cannot even think of the name for the type of word. Am I losing my mind? That’s not beyond possibility given my age.

I recall after doing so well in freshman written composition 101 and sophomore and junior ancient Greek, I went for years without naming parts of speech or grammatical stuff even though I was writing on a regular basis. When I entered graduate school I was surprised that I didn’t have facility with that vocabulary anymore. When I heard my professors talking about word use, metaphor, participles, and the like, I realized I’d have to review things I learned in junior high. And now again, after years of writing daily, I cannot think of some simple grammatical concept I studied in Latin, Spanish, Greek, French, and English! 

Perhaps I can discover my lost word if I begin writing about words. So I have noun and verb, subject and predicate. I know objects, direct and indirect. There are past and present participles which are verbal adjectives and gerunds which are verbal nouns. Of course I know conjunctions: how could I ever forget PBS’s “Conjunction junction, what’s your function?” But I have forgotten the elusive word that started all this. What is the term for words such as over, under, above, through, and behind? What is the word sometimes connected with places, actions, characters, things, and so forth. I want it to begin with the letter c or p but don’t remember. I do recall how the selection of the correct word has sometimes seemed a challenge. I can misuse them, thus my impulse to have Heather check them in my manuscript, but I can’t ask her to since I don’t recall the word. It would be embarrassing since she teaches writing. I have to get it. Through, beyond, beside and so forth are examples, but I cannot recall the grammatical name. 

I had a problem with them in Greek; back then I believe it was because I couldn’t recall the right Greek word that in English often serves as a prefix, for example “meta.” Did it mean through or after? See, it still confuses me. I‘ll work at this and will probably go upstairs to read Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. Surely that old standby will instruct me. Pronouns, personal pronouns, articles, modifier, adjective, adverb…. Still the word I’m searching for doesn’t arise from the grammatical murk of my befuddled brain, but I’ll keep at my memory quest.

The words describe the relative position of things. There it is, finally: position; preposition. I never thought of this, but the word describes its function. It’s the word at the beginning of a phrase (of course, a prepositional phrase) that tells the relative position of the expression it modifies. I was pretty sure I could recall this word, my attempt stimulating the bank of grammatical words and giving synapses time to connect. I like that. Somehow the recollection of this word seems hopeful, as in: I still know what I know; I still have a functioning brain. 

A question of an old person: Could loops in the aging sensory and memory system be analogous with (is it ‘to’ or ‘with’?) the proliferation of capillaries in the aging circulatory system? It’s a thought, but I recall I was only twenty-seven years old when I first realized I couldn’t recall such grammatical terms. That really surprised me for I had been out of undergraduate school only four years and worked among college educated middle and upper-middle class folk. In four years, I neither heard nor made in conversation even one reference to grammar! This phenomenon of forgetting terms reminds me of my current need to say the name of a muscle at least once a week or I’ll be unable to find the word when I am trying to explain something to a client. Now that list of terms I memorized in my fifties. Should I find that consoling? But lists of words I memorized in junior high or even earlier and have used for decades? Why should they disappear? Oh well, I’m just happy they are still available, even if my search for them takes me into memories and the like. Someday (soon?) I’ll start forgetting what I’m searching my mind for but hopefully will enjoy tours of my past as I follow loop after loop through my tiring brain. I hope I find my past as entertaining to me as I hope my novel will be to others.

Denver, 2012

Farmer Mike

Acrylic washes on paper by Phillip Hoyle
after a Navajo petroglyph design

As a child I listened again and again to the story of the country mouse and the city mouse on the 78rpm recording Mom bought us kids. Neither city nor country mouse understood how the other could bear to live where it did. I dubbed myself a city mouse; actually I preferred the designation city slicker. Even though I’d had early childhood fantasies of farming with my grandpa, by high school I knew better about myself. I liked country scenes but not country life. I couldn’t imagine farming as a vocation; my early-formed citified sense of myself was too strong. I didn’t even want to live in the country, let alone farm the fields. I needed something else for myself, something visionary, urban, and arty.

In adult life I enjoyed living in ever-larger cities until we ended up in Mid-Missouri, a young family with two children living outside the city limits. The town wasn’t all that large (under forty thousand) and the country seemed lonely and deserted to me. Even though I was astounded with the views of ridges and hollows swathed in morning mists, sunrises and settings of amazing hues, and an abundance of multi-shaded green grasses and trees, I was nervous the whole time we lived out there. I locked doors and wondered who had just driven by on the road and why. My country-reared wife thought it was funny given that all the years we lived in cities I had rarely locked doors. I just felt uneasy in the country, like if I needed help, no one would hear my cries. And yard work seemed too much like farm work for the lawn was way too large.

As a parent I wanted the best for my kids; wanted them to have full, wonderful lives. I didn’t push them towards anything particular, but I did harbor distrust of some lifestyles and occupations. My daughter seemed to like living in Missouri. She has lived there most of her life and—like her dad—seems to prefer living right in town, close to work, close to schools, close to the library, close to her friends, and close to neighbors. My son Mike has lived most of his adult life between Colorado and Missouri. Well, listen, I’ll tell his story from my parental point-of-view.

The artist and musician emerged early in my son Mike’s life. He had a beautiful singing voice, loved to dance, and drew and painted with exceptional talent for a youngster. I was pleased he might become an artist, something my father had cautioned against. I could easily imagine a life in the arts as being a fine choice for my son.

But Mike liked outdoors activities as well as music and art. Unlike his sister and his parents, Mike became a country mouse. I wasn’t surprised. I’d known for years the little boy who adored his farmer grandpa Vance, who was even built and looked like him. I’d known the kid who backpacked, canoed, and explored caves. I’d known the teenager who in his old Chevy van went off to the farm to help his uncle plant corn and then returned for the harvest. I’d known the young man who later returned to the farm with his growing family to work for his uncle. I’d known the young man who moved to a commune where he raised organic carrots to sell in the commune store. Of course, he did lots more there: taught art in the commune school, fixed things around the place’s several houses, but he also repaired fences, helped with livestock, planted, weeded, and harvested. You know, farm stuff. Still, I’d persisted in thinking of Mike as a husband and dad, an artist and musician, and of course, my son.

After a year at the commune the family returned to Missouri where they lived in the country adjacent to a national forest. There they raised chickens and goats and a garden. Michael found a job at a native plants nursery some thirty miles away, down near Brazito. There he kept machines running, helped harvest prairies, sorted seed, assisted customers, and eventually planted and transplanted the great variety of flora, and coordinated the work of the other employees. His family moved into town to cut down on the commute. Then, about four years ago, the firm’s beautifully-illustrated, full-color catalog listed my son as the nursery’s Farm Manager. Heather, his wife, told me Mike was terribly embarrassed. She was proud of him and entertained by his modesty. I still enjoyed his music making and his painting, still thought of him in those terms. 

Last fall Mike told me that the past couple of years he’d been taking trailer loads of native plants and seed to a farmers market in St. Louis. Then he and his family started searching for a country house to buy. With the generous help of a family friend, they bought one on twenty acres—a steal of a deal—and prepared to move back to the country.

I planned a trip to celebrate the graduation ceremony of two grandsons. During the last phone call before I left on my trip, Mike told me how busy he was and how elated he felt living again in the country. I looked forward to seeing their farmhouse, barn, orchard, and pasture.

“Will you get goats?” I asked.

Michael said, “Probably not.”

I saw the beautiful old house when I went there for the graduation party. Two evenings later I returned and Mike gave me the grand tour. Walking past the garden, he realized no one had gathered the asparagus that morning. After we took a nice basketful back to the kitchen, we put the chickens and ducks into the hen house. In the corral I met the new cow and her calf. By then it was pretty dark; we returned to the house.

The next morning we went back outdoors and walked the pastures. Mike had rented part of his land to a neighbor for a bean field. Mike wanted it farmed for a couple of years to get rid of all the European grasses. His plan is then to seed it in native plants to return it to its old state. He can make more money by harvesting it as native prairie. In fact, he could make a lot more money off it and graze the cow there as well. When we stopped by the corral, Mike showed me his new tractor pointing out its advantages and disadvantages. He spoke of it like my Denver friends talk about their new cars—with pride and great satisfaction although, also like them, saying he paid more than he’d intended.

When we walked through the orchard of pears and apples, peaches and plums, something in his information and in his enthusiasm brought into focus what I’d been hearing for years. Mike was becoming a farmer—a real one who loved to plant and harvest, to feed himself and others with the fruit of his labor, to become the husbandman of his own Garden of Eden, and to drive his tractor. He had his own acreage, his own place, an image that had also surfaced at times over the years. This man, who as a child had wanted his parents buried so he would have a place to visit them, now had the place, a farm where he could feel secure on the face of the huge and abundant earth and eventually spread his parents’ ashes. The farmer in him was now connected to the soil.

Heather told me how they had felt so wrought up at the realization they were becoming landowners, something they had never really dreamed. Their conceptual solace came in the notion that they were now caretakers of a bit of the earth put in trust to them. And they are both caretakers: she of the animals, he of the land and plants. With this in mind, they’ve become farmers as well as musicians, dancers, painters, and writers. Now I am a farmer’s dad.

I talked again with Mike on the phone the other day. He told me more about the farm, about pears, nectarines, plums, apples, and peaches. He mentioned several goats and bees too. The garden is producing. They haven’t been able to sell much yet, but thankfully, there is no waste. With five people and all the animals, everything gets eaten. Mike now farms four days at the nursery and three days at home. Heather cares for the cow that produces milk for the table and for making butter and cheese. The orchard is ready to burst even though it is just a fraction of what it had been years ago. The bees are making honey. The hens and ducks are about ready to start laying eggs. And to my deep joy and his, farmer Mike, my son, continues to paint and to play his guitar, sometimes even to his goats.

Denver, 2011

Self-Taught

As I wrote last week, I have been making prints of a new
lino-cut I made. I hung two mixed media pieces in the
Colorado Mountain Art Gallery in Georgetown and am
still messing around with more of the prints. I don't know
how much the messing has to do with being an
"under educated artist!"

In so many ways I feel like a self-taught artist. I say this not to excuse or over-praise myself. It’s just that way. Here’s one instance of the situation that sometimes is a problem. 

A few years ago when in my writing I realized I was working on a novel and not simply the collection of short stories I had imagined, I came to the awful realization that although I had read hundreds of novels and recalled from them plenty of characters, scenes, and situations, I had never seriously studied the novel as literature, had never read one under the tutelage of a professor, and had never analyzed the plot, character, or even writing style that makes some stories work so well. So with M.H. Abrams' Glossary of Literary Terms in hand, I set out to learn about these things. Using his articles on various story-related concepts, I began analyzing short stories; then I turned my attentions to the novel. I would read a novel and if I liked it enough would select one aspect of it to further study. For example, in one novel I compared and contrasted the opening sentences of each chapter. In another book I found and compared the contents of each place the author changed from present tense to past. In yet another novel I searched to find the dramatic turning points in the main character’s transformation. I went on to analyze how secondary or even one-dimensional characters entered and left novels. I was serious in my pursuit of this knowledge.

Then I turned to books I’d read in the past that seemed somewhat like the book I was writing. I analyzed The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin, Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, and House Made of Dawn by M. Scott Momaday. Somewhere along the way realized I had mostly read novels to enjoy exotic and unusual experiences and to find out what happened. This proclivity was bolstered by my habit of reading murder mysteries in which the big task is to figure out ‘who dun it’ as if that were the whole point of reading stories. That seemed my dominant approach. Finally I turned to Ethan Mordden and reread and analyzed several of his Buddies cycle that opened with what seemed to me appropriately titled I’ve a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore. I liked novels that told the stories of many different people. My novel search for understanding was moving me far away from how I had read them before and, like Mordden’s title far away from all my home state represented. And then there was the really big question: why was I trying to write a novel and how could I do it without making a big fool of myself?

I kept at it subjecting my writers group to my chapters. I read and re-read the manuscript to understand what I had done and what I had yet to do. It’s still in that phase a couple of years beyond asking a few folk to read it and critique it. Perhaps this coming summer would be a good time to finish it up. The action of the novel took place one summer. I guess this summer is as good as any other and better than most. Then I’ll find out if I made a fool of myself or not! If I have, I'd better sign up to work with a teacher. 

Images Revisited

Snake Dance, acrylic washes on paper
by Phillip Hoyle

The exuberant dancing bear from the Lewis and Clark journals, an ink drawing by William Clark of a petroglyph he saw June 7, 1804 at a now long-gone site in mid-Missouri on the Missouri River near big Moniteau Creek, caught my interest when I first saw it and others in a study of Missouri petroglyphs. The journal told the site's location describing the artwork, and Clark drew at least five designs of what he saw there. The petroglyphs have been missing for decades probably destroyed by blasting to make the Katy Rail Road as it made its way west across the state. 

Whether my assessment of the mood is accurate or not, I liked the enthusiasm I sensed in the design. The journal didn't describe it as a dance or a bear but did mention rattlesnakes killed at the site. Responding to the description of the rocks and the denizens there, I painted what I called "Snake Dance" that used the dancing bear and another Missouri petroglyph of a rattler. Then I painted several other pieces with the bear image. In preparation for a black and white open show in a Denver gallery I reworked the design in a very graphic way creating a pinwheel with the figure. The painting was selected for the show. That interest led me to do more such pieces with the enthusiastic design. There were a couple of partner dances, then a trio (inspired by a 1937 oil painting "Trio" by American artist Walt Kuhn) I called "Pas de Trois" (on display at Colorado Mountain Art Gallery in Georgetown) and eventually "Chorus Line Bears." 

Chorus Line Bears, Acrylic on paper by Phillip Hoyle

A few weeks ago the bear again got my attention. The design is back, now as a print and the graphic manipulation has taken a new turn. The bear has four legs and four arms outstretched imitating the famous DaVinci anatomical proportional study. My medium is mixed media with a linoblock print of the transmogrified bear. Two of these I am adding to my display of paintings at Colorado Mountain Art Gallery in Georgetown, CO, that quaint old mining town just east of the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70.

Proportional Studies: Intertribal
Renaissance
Mixed media by Phillip Hoyle

I joined the co-op gallery last November and have enjoyed the wide variety of fine artwork there, all done by Colorado artists. And I've found more in Georgetown: good food in bakeries, cafes, and restaurants, good coffee, good shopping for a wide vareity of wares including gifts and used books. I recall how much my mother loved the town; I am growing to appreciate it as well. Since I now sound like a promoter I'll go on to mention the summertime rides on the narrow-gauge train there and summer tours of the very nice museum in the historical Hotel de Paris. 

The gallery sits directly across the street from the museum and is open seven days a week (11-4 through April, then 10-5 for the summer). Check on line for more information on the Gallery and other area art programs.