A Temple in Turkey Older than Civilization

"Standing on a hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins." Patrick Symmes's article in the March 1, 2010 issue of Newsweek tells of a find in southeastern Turkey that suggests that 11,500 years ago hunters-gatherers in the last Stone Age built and used temples on a potbellied hill (in Turkish, Göbekli Tepe) before humans turned to farming, then utilitarian pottery, cities, kings, and much later, writing and art.

One of the most influential books that I read when I was just discovering the excitement of books was an ancient cloth-bound book on Greek gods and goddesses illustrated with black-and-white photographs of statues culled from Europe's art and archeological museums. I was fascinated by stories of the origin of things I was learning then through the lenses of science and history, even more fascinated with how people before my time thought about themselves, their lives and the forces that created and shaped both. My interest turned to the culture beyond the native one I saw around me and forty years later turned me into a tourist in Europe.

Our theories about the past will keep changing as we add knowledge to what media and the Internet have transformed into a truly communal store. Long after I am gone people like me will continue to wonder how the commonplace articles surrounding us came to be. More than these solid shapes and manipulable objects I am intrigued by what women and men thought and felt in centuries before mine. Artifacts dug up from the past thrill me with the magnificent possibility that people long dead, most forgotten, were essentially not unlike me. They elaborated theories about how the world operated, why this, what that, and while hiking the wilds of speculation built monuments memorializing their insight, allowing them to enter other aspects of human experience: the sense of the sublime, beauty, and awe.

"Religion now appears so early in civilized life that some think it may be less a product of culture than a cause of it," writes Symmes. In our modern (some say, post-modern) world we cut up the universe into manageable pieces, calling this piece religion, that piece history, this art, that philosophy. Post Aristotle and the classical Athenians we speak of the many "-logies"—mythology, theology, archeology, biology etc. They all fascinate me. 

I have few original insights but they are mine so constitute the composite self that is my ultimate obsession. Teachers of writing say: write about what you know. Few may agree with me but whatever we speak or write about is ultimately self. I enjoy reading what someone else adds to my words and images but writing for me is first of all self-archeology. It is archeology and rocket science. Putting thoughts and feelings into words is exploring the last frontier: my world. 

In Duende Culture I want to write about those aspects of my world we call culture and history, our stories about where we've come from, about the origin and evolution of self.

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Khaled Hosseini describes writing Kite Runner

Street Scene, Downtown Iloilo

Khaled Hosseini describes his first novel, Kite Runner, as a "slowstarter." Sales were small initially but by word of mouth they grew to make the book an international bestseller -1.25 million copies two years later in 2005. Even before the manuscript was published by Riverhead, NY, it had already been optioned by Dreamworks and the producers who with Mark Foster created what Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called "...a magnificent film."

I want to write a fictionalized account of life in the Philippines when I was growing up and Kite Runner is an obvious model of what can be done.

In an interview done for Amazon Wire to solicit pre-orders for his second book. A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled described the writing of both books. He went back to Afghanistan in March 2003, 27 years after he left it as an eleven-year-old boy. This was three months before his book, Kite Runner, was published by Riverhead. He had written the novel based on his memories and book and online research. His editor at Riverhead asked him if he was in Kabul to research his next book. Khaled said at the time he was there just to experience the country he had not seen in all that time. When he did start to write his second book, what he saw and heard on that trip did serve as inspiration.

Khaled tells the interviewer he doesn't structure his novels consciously. He does not plan his novels beforehand. He has a starting point and takes it from there. He does not write for an audience nor write to educate non-Afghans of Afghan history and culture:

"It's a very self-centered act, the act of writing. I write for myself; I'm the audience. I tell myself stories and hope other people would love it as well. But in terms of culture and history of Afghanistan, those things, I try to use just what I need for the purposes of the narrative... It's never been my intention to explain or translate or be an ambassador for Afghan culture or things Afghan... That's too big of a burden for someone who writes novels to be an ambassador for a whole culture. I want  to tell a story and since my story necessitates cultural, historical, and other aspects, I'll use those but that's the main reason for writing.

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Amazon's Book Video Preview

Adam Haslett's Union Atlantic, published last February 9, is available on Amazon. How it is listed brought on this meditation on books and publishing.

Amazon offers the book for 42% of its hardcover price. The listing makes note the book is bound with "deckle edge" paper and explains what this means: the pages are bound to resemble handmade paper by fraying the edges so they appear uneven. Amazon, with Wal-Mart, the most successful merchandising gambit of recent times, sells its products at a sharp discount and with free shipping. Not even Wal-Mart can beat that, especially since for the 49 states, sales don't include sales tax. With its very modern stocking, listing and distribution system, Amazon emphasizes how the publisher (Nan A. Talese) produced the book with a touch of the handmade craftsmanship of a bygone era.

I was struck the most by one element on Amazon's list page for the book. I clicked on a video icon and was treated to what I presume was the author reading from the book against a background that suggested its setting. Amazon, always on the cutting edge to keep its merchandising dominance, may be pioneering another merchandising tool. There really is no question that videos have arrived. With the ease with which video producers today create videos the format should inundate the media even more.

To someone like me fascinated by both words and moving images, the future is thrilling.

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Writing Tips for Success

Store Sign in Oviedo, Spain

Dan Fante, author of the novel, 86'd, spoke with Terry Gross after the novel last year. They spoke about Fante's books, his writing style, and his relationship with his father, Hollywood screenwriter and author of Bukowski's discovery, Ask the Dust. Fante told the Fresh Air host how he started writing when he lost everything again following an alcohol binge. "... I didn't know what to do. So I started to write."

After writing 31 pages of a novel in two years, he realized that he couldn't write a novel. But he could write a page at a time. He didn't care for the alcoholic's 12 Steps but this much he learned from it. A sponsor had suggested to him a format for writing a "fourth step" inventory. He was "to write the story of his life an hour each day for 12 consecutive days at exactly the same time." The sponsor ended up suggesting he work with another sponsor but Fante discovered his modus operandi for writing big works: structure and one page at a time.

I did go to sleep at midnight last night and got up at eight this morning. I wrote the whole morning. I still fantasize working would be easier at night when my mind's censors are soporific and not totally on the job but I turned out better work this morning. It was certainly better than yesterday. I'll go for a third morning tomorrow although it is premature to say I've learned structure and discipline. I think this will come only after I've done enough work to convince myself I am truly working. Nothing, as show biz people love to say, succeeds better than success.

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Art and Art

Rias Gull

I made myself go to sleep last night at 12:30 instead of working on video or short story. I wanted to see if I can be just as productive working during the day. I may end up going back to working after nine at night when the mind censors are partially silenced and I am more likely to take risks in the creative choices I make. But I still feel guilty when I get up in late morning or early afternoon. A tiny voice tells me I should work as everybody is supposed to work: eight to five. Ludicrous when you think about: this is why I am "retired" is so I can find more creative ways to discover and develop skills in text, visual and sound media.

On a lark I called Art Silva last night. I stopped calling him last year when it appeared he was not as interested as I was in hooking up again. I remembered the kind of vision and work ethic he applied to shooting video and creating photographic images. I told him how he was genuinely an artist whereas I was trying to develop that part of the psyche in me. 

Is that possible? Now I know it is. How good an artist one makes oneself into may be arguable. Can something come from nothing? I think an artistic streak was present in me as a child. April reminds me often enough how I was creative back when we were children. I would gather the other kids outside the bedroom window to stage a play with bedsheets and improvised elements. I would tell them stories. I drew pictures.

Last night Art was receptive. He even sounded glad that I called. He has not done much in the way of creative work since we worked together. He is now completing his sixth year teaching in public school. All his free time he spends helping to raise his kids, the ones here in town and the older ones in Chicago. He really tries to be a good dad despite not being such a good provider. He still thinks of himself as an artist. "It's not something that goes away."

Increasingly, being an artist to me means one has to create. There's no sense in "being" one and not externalizing this into works (a telling word if there is one) that other people can experience. To be an artist is to create art.

He told me he'll look at my videos on YouTube and get back with me. He said he would like to get together. I keep looking for colleagues to work with. This is another area that I may be forcing just because this is how it is supposed to be. I am not completely convinced that I can be productive and creative working on my own. This would mean total reliance on just my own skills and resources, and this is scary.

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Audrey the Writer

Thawing Ice

The snow is melting but not with rain. The clouds that hover motionless above the city are exuding tiny drops that little by little are uncovering bits of grass by the side of the road, at the foundations of buildings, and around the trunks of trees.

I started reading Bishop Spong's Liberating the Gospels when I woke up this morning at nine. I thought of calling Frank and asking them not to come. I wanted to stay in bed and read. Well I roused myself from the compulsion and almost as soon as I started moving around saw my mood change. Movement in the body affects the contents of mind just as movement in the mind affects the body.

Audrey was excited about putting on the Estonian national costume last night at the Estonian Independence Day gathering. For the first time she talked about writing down her memoirs—how she and her mother fled the war into Germany then the U.S. She even talked about writing her memories of when Frank was serving in Vietnam and she was raising their sons alone in Oklahoma. Retirement can bring out sides to a person that the constant attention required by working keeps us from entertaining. She left saying she had the first sentence with which she wants to begin her memoirs: I lead a good life.

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Snow Today, Gone Tomorrow

Frozen Lake

Everybody is talking about how this is our snowiest, coldest winter in years. We had three snow storms the first fifteen days in February putting this month among the top 10 of all time. Fox59 meteorologist Brian Wilkes said that if the pattern continued this month could break all records. Last year this time we saw 50s and 60s of mercury.

In December when the onslaught began I battled with the cold. I wore a hooded sweatshirt under a padded jacket and still felt cold. Now I go around in sandals again, wearing just a tee shirt under my regular winter jacket. No more hats. And the snow-covered landscape makes me catch my breath with its beauty. Undisturbed snow carpeting everything including the lake turns disparate elements of a summer landscape into one whole.

As I've settled into winter my work habits too have settled into more productive days. I am slowly relearning Final Cut Pro after uploading 12 videos on YouTube, all done in just the last six weeks. I have also began reworking a short story that I wrote in 1987. The characters are surprisingly strong. I think they're strong enough for a novel. And I am coming around to the idea I really do need to script my video shoots. I am wasting so much storage on the camera hard drive and worse editing takes more time. I am doing much of the work at night, spend mornings in bed reading and going back to bed to sleep at four or five in the morning. When given lemons, we make lemon meringue pies.

The snow they predicted for the weekend is going to be rain. We'll have this gorgeous snow scenes for a couple more days. We always seem to value something just when we're about to lose it or have just lost it. Change whets our appreciation. Without it we lose our capacity to see, to hear, to feel and take it all for granted.

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