Scarred for life...

Woke to the sound of the neighbor’s weed whacker after a long deep sleep. A beautiful, sunny morning. Had coffee on the porch swing, then went off to do a bit of reading and writing. Made more progress revising a story that’s bedeviled me for weeks, then called it quits in favor of a movie.

Highs in the 90s with lots of big cumulus clouds. A clear sky despite the new fire down in Canon City. The scar on the mountain is so green it’s hard to believe it’s almost July. Looks lush, compared to the foothills.

I remember moving here decades ago and wondering about that scar. Couldn’t believe it when I was told it was a gravel quarry. Not gold, not uranium, but ordinary gravel used by landscapers. A great big gash, right there on the face of the city.

I’m used to the scar now. But only in the way you get used to looking at yourself in the mirror. Eyes learning not to linger too long on the bad parts. Like Cormac McCarthy says, “Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”

Things are looking up...

Two days painting the kitchen ceiling. Haven’t had my eyes fixed in a heavenward direction in a while, and was made to pay for it.

Michelangelo complained of growing a goiter while working his gig in the Sistine. My ailments are relegated to the neck and back, but I can sympathize.

A good buddy sent me a recording of Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas’s “The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower.” That lovely poem did what a bottle of Advil couldn’t.

Paintin sucks. It sucks powerful...

Where did the day go? Up early to answer mail and write a few lines, then down to what used to be the kitchen to do some work with the paintbrush. Two gallons of primer and six hours later it’s still not finished. Worst part is, the ceiling hasn’t had a single coat.

Remember Tom Sawyer?

“Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit.”

That pretty much says it all.

Time for the giant Heineken that’s stashed in the fridge.

 

Writ in water...

Breakfast on the porch swing. Front-page headline in the paper reported the Garden of the Gods as the number one park in the country. Page two carried a less happy story about the body of a sixty-two year old kayaker found in the Arkansas River near Wellsville yesterday. According to the dispatch, the man was wearing protective gear and navigating an inflatable craft he’d launched in Salida. He was the fifth person to drown in the river in two weeks.

Here in the west, people have a powerful fascination with water (ostensibly, because there isn’t enough of it to go around), so a dynamic tension exists among sporting folks, ranchers, and ecologists, each group laying claim (legal and otherwise) to the state’s most precious natural resource. 

“Whisky is for drinking...” Mark Twain is supposed to have said, “...water is for fighting.” But it’s difficult to appreciate just how deep the conflicts run until one group crosses oars, or pistols, or subpoenas with the other. I finished a novel last spring that touches on the (true) story of a young girl—an experienced rafting guide—who drowned in the Arkansas one spring, whose body lay trapped in an underwater sieve for months while various groups and agencies bickered over the legal “stewardship” of water in which she’d been entombed.

Naturally, the book hasn’t sold. But it isn’t the cruelty of the story, I think, that’s kept it from being picked up. (The publishing industry perfected cruelty if they didn’t invent it.) Instead, I’ve come to believe it’s because no one living east of the Missouri believes such a thing could happen. Water, when you have it, is the easiest thing in the world to take for granted. 

William Kittredge and me...

Week six of the kitchen renovation. Highlight of the day was seeing the giant roll-off hauled away to the dump. No, wait. Rewind. The highlight of the day was the William Kittredge essay I read, “Drinking & Driving” in this week’s edition of Narrative. A fine piece about the author’s early years in Missoula.

I’ve had my stuff published in the same magazines as Kittredge twice now. Maybe more, I don’t know. The first time was in the Talking River Review. The second was Narrative. Meditations on those sorts of things make for powerful longings. They also serve as a gentle nod, letting you know you’re on the right track. 

Word wrangling...

Lazy day. Worked on a story this morning, did some long-overdue cleanup of my files this afternoon. Had the occasion (I’m speaking necessity here) to look up a few of my old pieces—including two posted on this sight—and thought, wow, that’s odd. Ranching and writing don’t seem all that dissimilar. They’re both a hard, lonely existence, beset with incessant frustration and intolerable BS. The only difference is, ranching occasionally pays a living wage.

 

Saturday night special...

First day in a long time I haven’t put a word on paper. Stayed up all night, restlessly awaiting a thief who never came, then rose early in a bleary attempt to sell all the things on the lawn he didn’t bother to steal. No time to write.

Spent the day saying goodbye to things that had outlived their usefulness. Some that had outlived their grip on the heart. Farewell to all! Bon chance! Arrivaderla! Tomorrow, as Mr. Milton said, “…to fresh woods and pastures new."

TGif...

Late. Late, late, late. Furniture all over the lawn. Even the dirt that used to be lawn. Feels like Raymond Carver’s “Why Don’t You Dance.” Big North End Garage Sale tomorrow. A chance to knock down the kitchen remodeling debt. Got word of something cool this morning, but can’t yet say what it is. Except to say it has something to do with work. 

Virgil never had it so good...

It’s one of those perfect, late-spring days. The kind that inspires you to pick up your tools and create while at the same time proffering a gentle admonishment to lay aside ambition and take your rest.

What an easy paradox to love.

Afraid of missing nature’s point (if she, indeed, had one in mind) and bungling on blindly in one direction or the other, I heeded both calls. This morning I wrote, this afternoon I put away my tools and took a long nap with the cats.

It was time well spent on both accounts. 

Out of the blue...

Warm temps today, with punchy little gusts of wind. A fire down in Gallup blew smoke this way, but the air isn’t bad—yet. Knocking wood, hoping it stays that way. Used to be summer here was just summer. Now you flinch whenever you see something unusual in the sky, and think, oh no, not again.

 The Yellowstone was the first. Then came the Hayman, Waldo Canyon, and the Black Forest. The big burns in the Jemez and the forests of Arizona. Waldo Canyon was the worst up close. The whole mountainside was afire, and you could stand out on the porch and watch the slurry planes and helicopters drop their loads. Sky was brown for days. The color of tea. Somebody even claimed to have a picture of a waterfall in the mountains pouring pure black into a pool below.

Got some good story material out of those times, but would trade it right now for the promise of no more burns. Ever. Anywhere. Here’s praying it’s a wet summer. The kind that used to come with the cooling afternoon showers, and sweet, smokeless starlit nights. Writing weather. Dreaming weather. 

Early to bed, early to rise...

Early to bed last night. 8:30 pm. Woke at 1:25 am to find an acceptance slip in my email. Couldn’t go back to sleep, so put in some time on another story. Things seem to be moving in slow motion these days, though I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the weather. Temps have been in the high 80s that last two days. More of the same to come.

There goes the neighborhood...

Cafe al fresco this morning.

In addition to the industrial dumper at the curb (teaming with the wretched-refuse of five weeks kitchen remodeling), the view from the front porch was reduced to a plastic gray port-a-potty on the front walk...the dry-waller’s pickup, parked in the middle of the street...and a massive green cherry picker lumbering down the alley in search of some disaster behind the Lutheran church.

You don’t expect to see those sorts of things in an historic neighborhood of century-old Victorian houses. Read about them, maybe—in stories by Edgar Allen Poe—but you don’t expect to see them.

The weekend’s HazMat crew? Please, don’t ask.

Look what the cats dragged in...

Father’s Day.

Cats got up before the crack of dawn and started high-tailing it around the house, chasing one another up and down the stairs, knocking each other off the bed. Must’ve been the cool weather that blew in that got them going. Good morning for writing once things settled down. Overhauled a short piece that’s been bugging me for some time, though until this weekend I hadn’t quite been able to put my finger on the problem. Think I got it now. Anyway, the revision went well and with any luck I’ll be able to get the piece back in circulation and see it published soon.

 In other news, exchanged a few nice words with friends and family.

Airborne toxic event...

Dodged the agrarian hordes of the Farmer’s Market on the way into the office where, despite an honest effort, I typed many fewer words than I’d hoped. Left the house early, looking to escape the hubbub of the previous night’s doings, but returned home in the early afternoon to find hazmat men in white jumpsuits and respirators stalking the property with industrial vacuum cleaners. Probably take a few days to see what sort of neighbor-on-neighbor ugliness the roofing boondoggle ultimately generates, but I’m laying bets it’ll be worth at least one good short story. 

A quiet Friday Evening at home...

Okay. So the neighbors demo their roof, the fire department shows up with a five-alarm hook and ladder, and two police black and whites follow. Whispers of mesothelioma permeate the neighborhood. There will be no forgiveness for those who ratted! I keep telling myself not to worry. It's all story material.

A Good Summer Read...

Coming to the close of a fascinating volume, gifted to me by a lovely woman of high style and impeccable taste. The book’s called Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience, and it’s a terrific read in ways that are difficult to explain.

Poignant, funny, infuriating, thought-provoking, Letters contains an impressive list of personal missives composed by ordinary people of all walks--from ex-slaves and rock stars to movie legends and heads of state--regarding subjects both serious and slight. The book’s editor is Shaun Usher, who runs “Lists of Note” and “Letterheady.”

Wolf Skin...

A copy of Mary McMyne’s chapbook, Wolf Skin, was sent to me few days ago. Poems resurrecting the uneasy ghosts of Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood. I read the pieces with a wary eye, waiting for something to give. But every word held its own--each a stone in the castle wall.