Eons ago when I was a college sophomore, I dutifully copied down a definition of masterful writing, i.e., of literature: It is, my professor intoned, “the enduring expression of significant human experience in words well chosen and well arranged.”
Three necessary elements, then: human experience that is profound; the artful choice of language for expression; and the test of time. The last is essential: Will what has been judged significant and then carefully expressed have captured a universal? Will it speak to readers in one, five, or ten centuries hence?
This column is meant to enshrine a piece of masterful writing. It came to me as part of a letter, and I think it meets all the above criteria, including having a universality that will speak as long as there are humans.
The writer was a woman who’s read my recent book, “Wobbling Home.” She has Parkinsonism; and, as I hoped in writing, the book has proved very useful to her. I haven’t said much to you lately about my dealing with a disease still not closely defined in my case.
The best judgment I’ve had remains the one from that grand Hungarian specialist down at Johns Hopkins: “We must patiently wait as the symptoms mature. Then we can make a definitive judgment.” Well, the symptoms have been maturing — not enough yet, perhaps, to make the final diagnosis, but certainly enough to confirm a condition in progress.
As you know, I’m falling down more these days; cf. my last column called “Tail over Tin Cup.” Tremors, day and night, have increased. And, though my mind remains clear enough to write and to speak publicly, there’s no question that I’m losing someground in cognitive functions.
But I’m certainly still clearheaded enough to drive and to joke with friends, and even to win an occasional thrustand- parry with the Fly Creek General Store’s Tom Bouton, that master of verbal dueling. And, thank God, I can still correspond with you.
But let me quote now from that letter recently sent to me. (A mutual friend, knowing of the writer’s Parkinsonism, had sent my book to her; and she responded by sending me a letter via that mutual friend.) She says this:
“The first thing I did was to turn to the back cover blurb, and my eyes lit on the words, ‘he sees the disease as emanating from the same loving Source that gives him life.’ Right there in the front hall where mail is delivered, I choked up and started to cry.
I haven’t allowed myself to do much weeping since I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in February of ’07, because once I start to cry I tend to live on the edge of tears for several days. But [the cover’s words] touched me deeply, for where God is, there is hope.
“I don’t mean hope for a cure from Parkinson’s. I had only lately realized that my PD was a gift. It happened one night. . . when I . . . asked myself what I would do if my PD were suddenly cured. I found myself protesting that I didn’t want it cured. With PD, I was starting down a new path.”
(And here, friends, begins the passage so rich with meaning, so beautifully couched in language, that I call it great writing): “With PD I was learning so much about many things that I would never hope to know otherwise — about values, about coping, about pain, about hopelessness, about kindness, about loss of control, about strategies to get around new disabilities, about humor, about the physiology of emotion, about denial, about creativity in the presence of disintegration, about rejection and acceptance, about much more; but perhaps most of all, about the loss of self on the one hand while on the other, the growth of one’s closeness to the allencompassing Love which makes all things possible.”
The intensity and cumulative effect of that cascade of words, every one so perfectly apt, must move one deeply; certainly anyone with enough age and life’s experience to grasp what this woman is saying.
I may be biased in judgment; this friend speaks my own mind. What she says about the richness that has come to her, and from a source both unexpected and unchosen, rings true to my very soul. My disease has enriched me, and in exactly the ways this woman has cataloged.
These last four years I’ve tried to share with you the richness Parkinson’s has brought me. Hence the occasional columns about Parkinson’s as experienced, and the support group that has helped a lot of participants, and the many talks I’ve given on the subject. And hence “Wobbling Home.”
Of course I don’t understand the mazelike pattern that, if we will only let it, leads us on in our growth and deepening.
But I do know that humbleness, perhaps the most elemental form of wisdom, comes intensely through direct experience of physical and mental decline and a clear sense of where it is leading us.
Aeschylus said it well, twenty-five centuries ago: “We who learn must suffer, even in our sleep, as pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart. And in our desolation, without our will, comes wisdom to us by the awesome grace of God.”
One can draw this wisdom closer by embracing it, by saying, so let it be. Or, more simply, amen.
Columns
From Fly Creek: Words from the heart
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In These Otsego Hills: Continuing on from 1986 ...
We continue this week by answering the question we asked if anyone remembers the old Cooperstown National Bank? On May 13, we wrote: “Martha Dickison, Delaware Street, called to tell us about the Cooperstown National Bank where she worked at her first ‘real job’ after her graduation from school.
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Up On Hawthorn Hill: Spring inventions
The second line of Lawrence Durrell’s novel “Justine” reads as follows: “In the midst of winter you can feel the inventions of Spring.” I first read all four novels of his magnificent Alexandria Quartet during the year I traveled from Saigon to Paris after working in Vietnam for a refugee organization for several years.
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From Fly Creek: Revving up for spring
Time to bring you up to date on Fly Creek’s happy clambering into Spring. First, the eatery scene. “Is Jerry’s open yet?” The answer is, “Oh, yes!” The porches are freshly stained; the lawns a uniform green, and the hop vines are already climbing the posts on the covered side deck. Blue and I went up there to lunch earlier this week, and I celebrated spring with my traditional bacon, onion and Swiss cheese hamburger. We two sat on the deck, enjoying the broad view and some spectacular clouds marching across, up toward Schuyler Lake.
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In These Otsego Hills: More from 1986 ...
This week we continue with the discussion of telephone service from the pre-dial days. On March 12 we noted that: “No one has yet produced a telephone directory from pre-dial days, but Doug Preston of New Hartford recalls that some business (which one?) in the village had the phone number 7.”
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Home Notes: Celebrations abound at the Thanksgiving Home
April was a month of celebrations and much to appreciate. We had a 90th birthday celebration for Wanda Noyes on April 4 including her family and friends. Personal care staff Dee Bouck worked with residents to hand paint Easter eggs for the tree in the activity room.
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In These Otsego Hills: 1986 continues ...
This week we continue our journey through the columns of 1986 with the answer to the question “for whom, according to tradition, was Hannah’s Hill named?”
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Book Notes: Baseball book features local contributors
Baseball is part of the nation’s fabric. Most kids have a memory of the game either from playing Little League, attending a major league contest or meeting a favorite player. In Cooperstown that feeling is magnified since we are the official home of baseball. We get to see firsthand what has made the sport the national pastime.
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From Fly Creek: Ya really wanna know?
SETTING: Fly Creek General Store. CAST: Assorted seated geezers, drinking coffee. [Door opens, enter heavy-set geezer; walking slowly with wide stance, maybe prostatitis.]
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In These Otsego Hills: Returning to 1986 ...
For the past several years now we have undertaken sharing some of the area’s oral history we have collected over the years that we have written this column. Therefore, this year, we would like to go back to 1986 to share that rather unusual year. Those who were here then no doubt remember that it was that year that the village celebrated the bicentennial of its founding.
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From Fly Creek: For reasons unknowable
[Jim’s reached back to 2002 to share one of his favorite columns.] My father was born as the last century began into a river village in tidewater Maryland. He told me once of a man there in his boyhood who, like so many, made a thin living tonging for oysters in the cold months and, in the hot and humid ones, crabbing and raising vegetables.
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In These Otsego Hills: CCS balancing act ... side two
Last week we shared a number of activities in which students at CCS can participate. We thought it was an impressive, if not overwhelming, list. And we are indeed pleased that the young people of our area have these opportunities. However, we think it is also important to keep in mind that these undertakings do have a cost associated with them. They are not free. In fact there are, no doubt, those who would say they do not come cheap.
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From Fly Creek: A graceful crowd
Make of this what you will, friends. I feel I’m really meant to share it with you. Despite good medication for my Parkinsonism, every four or five weeks I can sensethe symptoms building up on me, giving me more than ordinary trouble. Lately it’s been falls, and last week brought a typical one. I’d gone out to get the paper, moving along with penguin steps on the snowcoved ice patches, and usingmy spike-tipped cane the waya climber uses an ice axe. But circumstances overcame me. Parkinson’s wipes out the possibility of multi-tasking.
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In These Otsego Hills: This and that and the other side ...
We note that the CCS Class of 2012 is presenting its senior class play, “Snow White” by Tim Kelly, this week with performances 7:30 p.m Thursday and Friday, March 29 and 30, and at 11 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 31. All performances will be at the Nicolas J. Sterling Auditorium at the Middle/High School.
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In These Otsego Hills: That green thing ...
Of late we have noticed that our email inbox has been much busier than usual. In fact, we find ourselves hard pressed to keep up with all the various messages we receive. As a result we suspect we have not answered some in as timely a fashion as might be thought appropriate.
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From Fly Creek: What you need to know
In their last Sunday’s bulletins, all 84 churches of Otsego County were to have carried announcements of an important meeting; most of them did. But because the announcement is so important, and not just to the churched, here it is again.
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Book Notes: Living the magic of ‘Hoosier’
A lot of people consider “Hoosiers” the best sports film of all time. The 1986 classic follows the exploits of a fictional small town Indiana high school basketball team in 1952 as it attempts to achieve the impossible dream of a state championship. The story is inspired by the true life achievement of the 1954 Milan team, who with an enrollment of only 161 students shocked big city power Muncie Central on a last second shot to win the state title. It’s the kind of sports story that represents something that is hard to grasp unless you live in a small town.
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In These Otsego Hills: The most perfect village... home to heavy industry?
We suspect we would get a whole lot more accomplished if we spent less time thinking, pondering and musing about things. In fact, there is a good possibility we might actually have completed our goal of cleaning the basement if we only focused on the task at hand, instead of trying to figure out the world around us. It almost makes us wonder if it is possible to think too much about things. We certainly hope not because should that be the case, we are in deep trouble.
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Up On Hawthorn Hill: The past in the present
Clichés abound about the value of photographs. Most are probably true at least to a certain extent. What I do know about an image is that it represents something of the past that is not the pastitself. But that is the power of any image. It represents something that once was. The beauty of an image, revisited, is that it functions as a catalystfor reliving in the present a past experience. My own view, one that I thank the Spanish writer Jorge Luis Borges for, is that all we ever can experience is the present.
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Home Notes: Workshops held for Thanksgiving Home residents
We welcomed Linda Keller, Ph.D. of the Bassett Research Institute and Ida Baker of NYCAMH who presented a six-week workshop for residents and staff.
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From Fly Creek: Late-winter hamlet news
Well, at least I’m “guessing” it’s late winter now — in the winter that wasn’t. But, if not snow, I can provide a flurry of Fly Creek news to share with you, scooping Associated Press, Reuter’s, and United Press International, not to mention all local news services except our General Store.
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In These Otsego Hills: Continuing on from 1986 ...
