Reflecting on Plotkin’s Book —
Susan Holland — -looking Yondro
Lyrics to He’s Gone Away
I’m goin’ away for to stay a little while,
But I’m comin’ back if I go ten thousand miles.
Oh, who will tie your shoes ?And who will glove your hands?
And who will kiss your ruby lips when I am gone?Oh, it’s pappy’ll tie my shoes,
And mammy’ll glove my hands,
And you will kiss mg ruby lips when you come back!Oh, he’s gone, he’s gone away,
For to stay a little while;
But he’s comin’ back if he goes ten thousand miles.Look away, look away, look away over Yandro,
On Yandro’s high hill, where them white doves are flyin’
From bough to bough and a-matin’ with their mates,
So why not me with mine?For he’s gone, oh he’s gone away
For to stay a little while,
But he’s comin’ back if he goes ten thousand miles.I’ll go build me a desrick on Yandro’s high hill,
Where the wild beasts won’t bother me nor hear my sad cry
For he’s gone, he’s gone away for to stay a little while,
But he’s comin’ back if he goes ten thousand miles
I remember singing along with this in the late 50’s at the Gilded Cage Coffee House in Philadelphia, PA.
Last I was in Liberal Arts Classes was in late 1959. Things have changed!
I was the cat that licked the cream! It was Temple University (not my mother’s dream, the Ivy League college that had offered me a scholarship ) It was the marvelous campus at Elkins Park north of Philadelphia where the Stella Elkins Tyler School of Fine Art held forth in those days.
I loved it all. Not the least, I loved the liberal arts program they required for four year students. Truly a gift to have the classes brought to us by the Humanities departments — Creative Writing, Philosophy of Art, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Educational Psych, Art History, World History, as well as the Old School hands on Arts: Drawing, Painting, Sculpture and Casting, Etching and Lithography, Wood and Stone Carving, Ceramic Arts. And “sides” of Music, Dance, and even Fencing! I loved it.
My way-too-long CV would tell you the circuitous route I took from then to today. It had to do with many things other than art. Yes I had jobs in designing and teaching arts. But I also had a lot of other big and little ways of making money and supporting my kids.
My callouses were earned fair and square with art making — through raising a family, later going it alone with three kids, and all along the way my mind and hand would not stop making art. I learned to mat and frame art. I learned to construct displays, and began to show at art fairs. It was successful — surprisingly so. But it is clear that I am not cut out to be a merchant.
It’s the process! It’s the hands-on of making art. Never mind sales — let me make stuff!
At the other end of my life, now I am still immersed in new ideas, and fresh paint. I dream up ideas in my sleep and get up to get to work on them.
And now I‘ve read this book written by a person, clearly an academic, who has studied enough about human minds to have multiple degrees and books that are acclaimed as masterworks! A guy named Bill Plotkin.
What Bill has to say in this book is exactly on the subject of the same puzzles that have occupied my curious mind all my life.
But I came at this book from the end of my life that is a bit tainted with experiences — not all sweet — that have equipped my brain with a screening system that pops up now and again with warning flags. Is this man a radical liberal? Is this man an atheist? Is this man a Jim Jones with Jonestown like charisma and propaganda? Or is he the seeker of truth that I kind of hope he is — but I don’t want to be taken in.
I was never this picky at school. But that was because I was young, and had a healthy exposure to the honorable ethics of Quakerism and the background of respect for hard work and study. What was there to be afraid of?
I became a Christian when my second child came along. It was at a time when my life was so unbearable I was ready to try anything. Even the kind where you hand your heart and soul over to Jesus Christ and the teachings of Christianity. It was big. It was truly an epiphany. It was the culmination of a search I had conducted since my pre-teen years when I underlined “faith” whenever it appeared in the old Bible I found in the attic and began to read. What was faith? I became one of those “born again Christians” that my greater family scoffed at. The next ten or so years brought me up within a Scriptural framework in a church with a spectacular Bible Scholar who could teach (without ranting.)
But there is a lot of other stuff that goes with becoming a genuine“born again” Christian. You learn of all kinds of things that are “not for you”. The list. One of them is the business about authority. Rules. Submission. Our church was not one of the strictest, but it was pretty clear about certain liberalities. It frowned on many of the things that had made my life rich, like art, and dance, and films, and music, and modern literature. Playing cards, of all things!
Not all of that straight-laced approach has stuck to me — I am no longer a regular church-going person or a Sunday School teacher.
Now, even as a “lone ranger” I am what I consider a very involved Christian, in touch with and aware of the presence of God in all the comings and goings of my life.. We have a close connection, God and I. But He and I are not “into rites and rules” so much as will and intention and the finding truth in the course of everyday life. I find it beautiful to find the “yes” in things, and letting those things that I sense are “no’s” fall away. This is somewhat like Plotkin’s Orchard, isn’t it? He describes a developing soul’s investigations of the greater world, and learning of skills in the wider field than the safety of supervised home turf.
A strange dichotomy between my grandmother’s Quakerism and my Fundamentalist experience — many facets of the same subject matter in focus!
Plotkin has brought new awareness of the reasons for my “pagan” beginnings, as a child of the woods, summer and winter, — the child who sneaked out the bedroom window and explored the world of our somewhat rural neighborhood by day and by night, in bare feet and a nightgown, or in a stack of jackets and winter boots. Plotkins’ description of the effects of nature ring true loudly for me. And so I continue to poke into things I am curious about, trusting that the God of my intuition will steer me through the valleys.
All these influences have created a rich tapestry of life for me — including the very hard stretches — heartbreaks — illness — unwise choices. It’s a tale of a creature with a will. That creature is who I am now. I am grateful for all of it, and am curious about what is ahead, and whether I will remember these rich days when I go “Over Yondro”. Always loved this American Folk Song. (see link at beginning of this essay.)
