Spent the better part of the day painting the porch. Close to a hundred balusters. Haven't spend that much time behind bars since I don't know when. Should've been a Leadbelly song playing in the background, but there wasn't. That's just the way it goes, sometimes.
Sunday morning coming down...
Sky looks like hammered tin for the third day in a row. Was hoping the weather might clear enough that I could get some work done around the yard, but no dice. Rain’ll be rolling in off the mountains by early afternoon.
Banged out a few hundred words this morning while listening to the neighbor's dog bark a sad little arpeggio. Revisions weren't feeling as sharp as they should have, so I moved on, composing something new. Got a lot of stuff in the hopper at the moment. Some with potential. But you can only push so hard, you know? It comes when it comes.
Same old, same old...
Thumbed through the current issue of [REDACTED] yesterday. All five of the prose pieces were first person narratives, and the similarities (for better or worse) didn’t end there. I don’t know. Maybe I’m missing a trend. Or, then again, maybe I’m setting one. Guess I’ll just have to keep plugging away and wait to find out.
A landmark day...
Copies of the Hawai’i Review arrived late yesterday. Two separate packages taped up in manila envelopes, marked Priority Mail. Issue 80, themed: Voyages.
The editors’ note in the front matter asks, “Where does the desire for voyage begin, burn, and end? What do we have left after we have gone?”
I tried to answer those questions in my story “Wagon Mound” (page 111) which, coincidentally, came to me as I was driving the isolated stretch of New Mexico Interstate that skirts the curious landmark.
The particulars of the story have a footing in real-life events, though I’m not inclined to divulge which ones. Leave it at this: If I ever find myself needful of a cat wrangler, I’ll know exactly where to look.
Three out of three ain't bad...
A friend stopped by today, and our conversation drifted to John Dos Passos and his U.S.A. trilogy. We were both English majors in college, but neither of us had been obliged to do much more than sample Dos Passos while in school, so we agreed it was something of a surprise to discover, late in life, what a skillful (not to mention entertaining) writer he was.
Yeah, the politics in U.S.A. feels a little quaint. But preachy or not, you can’t deny the story’s passion. The narrative rolls along like a freight train, and those “Camera Eye” stream-of-consciousness fragments feel as fresh and immediate as anything on the table today. The Newsreels? They're like the stuff Joyce was doing in Ulysses.
A Class act...
I mentioned Tobias Wolff in yesterday’s journal entry. As coincidence had it, I happened to hear David Sedaris read from his works just a few weeks after I’d seen Wolff.
Wolff, as I’d noted, appeared at a local college, where admission was free, the event open to the public. Sedaris, on the other hand, performed at the Pikes Peak Center—a large venue, home to the Colorado Springs Philharmonic—with tickets averaging a hefty $45.
Wolff’s performance had attracted a tidy crowd of perhaps 150 people—academics, mostly, and literary types—while Sedaris’s reading drew a packed house (an astonishing 2000 listeners) composed not only of book bums like myself, but jewelry-rattling socialites from The Broadmoor.
Both performances were remarkable. But what made Sedaris’s performance more remarkable than Wolff’s (bear with me here), was that, near the end of the reading, after thanking the audience for their interest, the young humorist raised Wolff’s name—out of nowhere—proclaiming him the truer master of the short story form, and a writer whose books deserved their attention.
I’ve often wondered if Wolff ever got world of Sedaris’s generosity.
Story mechanics...
I heard Tobias Wolff read his famous story, “Bullet in the Brain,” at a local college not long ago. Only it wasn’t the old familiar version that’s been collected and anthologized. Wolff abridged the piece—presumably, so his lecture wouldn’t run long—and presented it without making mention of the edits.
I knew the work had been tinkered with, and I’m sure there were others in the audience who recognized the cuts as well and were no doubt as surprised as I was with the omissions.
It's been said a well-made short story is a vehicle composed of many moving parts. A machine whose tolerances are so precisely calibrated that no word or mark of punctuation can be added or subtracted without detracting from its performance.
Which is true.
But even so, you know. There he was in his dark suit and gray turtleneck, the master mechanic—the chop-shop genius—turning a Ferrari into a Bugatti. Right before our eyes. He never broke a sweat, never lost step, never took his foot off the gas. It was cool beans, as a friend used to say. Very cool beans.
It's the little differences...
Sun, blue skies. Temps approaching 80 degrees.
Fish and game department sent a notice in the mail saying I can renew my license online. Gotta do it. This week. Summer might not be here officially, but you can’t tell that to the river. Water levels are cresting, so it won’t be long before the runoff subsides, the current stabilizes, and the hatches begin. Time to toss the fly gear in the truck and leave it there—ready for the quick escape.
Years back, when I lived in the Midwest, I used to fish the Mississippi. Nowadays, it’s the Platte, Arkansas, Yampa, Tarryall, Conejos, and others.
Things I’ve caught while fishing the Mississippi: Small mouth and bigmouth bass, bluegill, a seat cushion off a pontoon boat, yellow perch, old tires, walleye, sturgeon, catfish, tennis shoes, stripers, snapping turtles, a window awning, gar, eels, a bicycle frame, crayfish, a steering wheel, carp, other guys’ fishing gear, clams, northern, crappie, sheephead, rock rollers...
Things I’ve caught while fishing the Platte: Trout
A new day...
Small hailstorm yesterday. Today the sky came on like, What? You got a problem? The morning was blue and clear, patched-over with clouds that didn’t have the smallest bit of bully in them. Which was nice. Spent the early hours in front of the window, finishing a new story. A draft, anyway. Fifteen revisions into it, I’d like to believe I’m close.
Another one bites the dust...
Read yesterday that Anderbo has given up the ghost. Shame. It was a nice magazine.
We used to have a killer bookstore here, years ago, in downtown Colorado Springs. An indy that went by the name of Chinook. It was a wonderful old place staffed by charming people who knew everything under the sun, and when its beloved owners, Dick and Judy Noyes, saw fit to close the doors after 45 years in business, everyone—even folks who didn’t read—lamented its passing.
R.I.P. Anderbo. You were loved and admired by many.
Groovin' to the Oldies...
Sheet rock crew showed up early and loud this morning. Diesel engines muttering. Doors banging. Men laughing and scaffold clanking. An oldies station was playing away on somebody’s truck radio.
Read Dan Chaon’s story, “What Happened to Us?” in the new issue of Ploughshares before going off to work. It brought back memories of the terrific stuff he’d done in his novel, You Remind Me of Me.
Sometimes, the way things were is the way things are.
Awakenings...
Had one of those nights when I couldn’t sleep. Something I’ve put up with for years. My doctor once asked me what it was I thought about when I lay there, awake at night, and I said, “Same as most people, I guess. God and the universe.”
She gave me a strange look and stood there, clicking her pen. Then she turned back to her clipboard. While I was getting dressed she informed me that I was way off the mark. That most people thought about their kids, or their spouses, or their finances. Not about God. And especially not about the universe.
I was reading “On the Nature of Things” at the time this examination took place. Which accounted—in part, I’m sure—for my answer. But after the initial look she shot my way, I figured it wasn’t worth explaining. Tossing out a name like Lucretius would've only made things worse.
A lesson in salesmanship...
Got a rejection slip this morning after one year, one month, and three days. It was a form rejection. No problem there—folks are busy and, hey, who’s got time to write, anyway?—but it arrived, as they sometimes do, with a special offer attached. A one-year subscription to the magazine, billed at a “Writer’s Discount.” Tell you what friend, I couldn’t reach for my wallet fast enough.
Count on it...
Some day I'll write about the things I didn't write about today.
In remembrance...
Memorial Day.
I have a faded black and white photo of my paternal grandfather, posing, quite seriously, in his petty officer’s uniform, circa 1917. The portrait is a formal one. It was taken in France during the first world war, and printed as a souvenir postcard—something the young sailor probably intended to send stateside, though there is no message, or address, written on the back.
More than one of these postcards was undoubtedly printed, but this is the sole survivor. My grandfather’s troop transport, the USS America, sank in New Jersey harbor, was raised and repaired, and following its decommissioning some years later, scuttled. Or so I've been led to believe.
My grandfather survived the Great War, living well into his eighties. But the uniform he wore found its way to the bottom of a dry cistern in Sioux City, Iowa one summer when my grandmother decided to clean the attic.
Spanning time...
Took the train from Cañon City to Parkdale today, down through the Royal Gorge. The runoff was heavy and the Arkansas River was fast and high and muddy. Damage from the fire last summer was only visible on the canyon rim in the form of a few twisted, blackened trees.
I met a man once, a pilot, who flew a small plane under the suspension bridge that spans the narrow granite canyon some 900 feet overhead. He did this while stationed at Camp Carson, during World War II. The man is gone now (he passed away in a veteran’s hospital in Denver some years back) but his memory, like his story, is still with me.
A writing ritual...
I do most of my writing on a MacBook Pro, in a big leather easy chair. Often with a cat or two in my lap. Owing to this frivolous practice—and the bone-dry Colorado air—I’m frequently packing a heavy jolt of static. Enough, I suspect, to fry my hard drive and destroy my work.
Last winter, I decided to ease the risk of self-immolation by dipping my finger over the top of the lampshade and touching its metal ribs whenever I shuffled into the room. It worked, raising a spark and neutralizing the charge, and now it’s become a habit. A ritual, really. Like dipping your fingers in holy water.
The dawning...
Breakfast. Apple slices slathered in peanut butter. Kitchen won’t be serviceable for a while, so ate them on the front porch while watching a quilt of gray clouds gather over the peak. Took a whetstone to my axe last night. Have to remove the last of the tree stumps from the yard before reseeding the lawn. Shade mix to sun mix. One in, one out, as the man said. Chatted with the construction boss about his not-so-close-at-hand-retirement, and he mentioned, glumly, he was concerned about outliving his savings. This, to a writer.
Weathering the storm...
Big hailstorm blew in yesterday afternoon. Trees denuded, flowers crushed, windows broken throughout the neighborhood. At the same time, a construction crew with whining sawzalls was ripping apart the kitchen, prep-work for a long-overdue renovation.
I don’t mind writing through distractions. It’s good discipline. I wouldn’t want to do it all the time, thank you, but the occasional calamity sometimes forces the mind to focus in an unfamiliar way, making for stories with a strange and unexpected tenor.
women, whisky, and bootjacks...
In the old matinee westerns, a good-looking girl with a pretty bottom would straddle the cowboy's leg, farrier-wise, and tug off his boots while he sat sipping whisky. In real life—where women and whisky were invariably more scarce than they were in the movies—that same cowboy would use a bootjack like the one pictured at the top of the page (beneath the author’s name) to get the job done.
A lot of bootjacks are fashioned out of wood. But the old beauty you see in the photo—which once lived on the Bob Meigh ranch in Moneta, Wyoming—is made of cast iron and has a murderous heft to it. I don’t know that it doubled as a doorstop, but it was certainly possible. One thing’s for sure. If he ever clobbered a man with it, the story got buried along with the corpse.