3/30/2007
Denise Levertov said:
Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.
Your Writing Meditation, 3/29
Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.
3/29/2007
What I'm Reading: Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers At Last; Gilbert Sorrentino, The Orangery.
What I'm Listening To: Type O Negative, Dead Again (yeah!); The Arcade Fire, The Neon Bible (yeah!); Explosions in the Sky, Suddenly I Miss Everybody (yeah!).
***
William Stafford said:
So, the world happens twice--
once what we see it as;
second it legends itself
deep, the way it is.
Virginia Wastelander's Notebook
What I'm Listening To: Type O Negative, Dead Again (yeah!); The Arcade Fire, The Neon Bible (yeah!); Explosions in the Sky, Suddenly I Miss Everybody (yeah!).
***
William Stafford said:
So, the world happens twice--
once what we see it as;
second it legends itself
deep, the way it is.
3/28/2007
The Virginia Festival of the Book
Charlottesville, Virginia
March 23-25, 2007
FRIDAY
Some trips start out stupid.
Get to O’Hare early, feeling prepared
unlike many trips—some free time,
not hours, but some. Kiss
Cinderella & hop out of the car
at United. Can’t get
the machine to spit out my tickets.
A United employee wanders by &
discovers I’m not flying
United—I’m flying US Airways!
Doh!
It’s at the next terminal!
Doh!
I have to hurry
and take the train!
Doh!
Hustle
To the airport train.
Over to
Terminal 2.
Encounter
LINES
of bodies
stretching across
the entire building!
Doh!
My flight leaves at 10:40, &
it’s already 9:45.
½ of the US Airways machines are
broken.
The line
c-r-a-w-l-s.
I finally jump
out of line at 10:00 to cries
of dismay and hatred
from fellow travelers
and tell the US Airwoman
I need to get on a ticket kiosk
right now!
I hustle to Security
and:
LINES!
Almost out the door!
Doh!
I get thru
Around 10:20.
Rush
to gate
F8.
There’s no flight
At F8!
Doh!
I go to the monitor,
and it says the flight’s
on-time at F8.
The monitor down the hall says
the flight is out of F10!
Doh!
I rush to F10.
10:35.
There’s nobody at F10!
Doh!
I go back to F8.
Now it says the flight is delayed
Till 11:20
at F10.
Fellow sufferers collect
at F10, when suddenly
we are told to hurry to F8.
We stampede to F8.
When it’s time to board,
they tell us the plane’s at
F10!
Doh!
We scramble to F10,
but there’s no agent at the gate!
There’s no plane!
Doh!
We dawdle.
We fret.
At noon,
there is a plane.
But the captain tells us
the ground crew has
accidentally
put the luggage in the
wrong plane!
Doh!
Finally,
we board.
We’re all missing
our connections in Charlotte.
They tell us they will have
information for us in a
moment.
In a moment, they tell us
sorry—there is no information.
Doh!
Plane lands at the exact moment
my flight to Virginia is
scheduled to take off.
But we’re in
a different terminal!
Doh!
Tear thru
hordes of molasses-slow
crowds for about
97 miles and arrive
at an empty
gate!
Doh!
The flight has boarded, and the
position is closed,
and I’m told to go find
a service desk
when
a cranky-ass woman
comes in from the tarmac
and yells, “What are you
doing here!”
I tell her
I’m trying to get to Charlottesville,
and she snaps, “Well you better get out on the
runway before the plane takes off!”
and throws open the door.
There are two planes to choose from
and I choose one and scramble
up the steps as they
slam the door and plop in a seat
hoping I’m not going to
Philadelphia.
We puddle-jump across
the Great American Southeast.
Me, and the world’s sweetest Navy wife
rushing to see her hubby
for the first time in two months,
and a happy grandpa coming home from a
cruise who tells me how
he rode the zip-line in Costa Rica
and crashed into the tree
and shattered his ribs and
had to be flown by
emergency Learjet to Miami
and paid $65,000
for the privilege, but that
wasn’t going to stop him
from cruising!
“I tell you—when they see your drink
is empty, they’re right there
with a bottle!”
At the Omni, my key cards
won’t open my door.
Doh!
Maids take pity on me
and unlock the door for me.
I try to order room service,
but can’t find the menu!
Doh!
I have to call the kitchen,
and they realize the hotel has put
brand new room directories
in all the rooms, but somehow
forgot to put menus in them!
Omni Doh!
I watch NCAA basketball on the tube
and talk scores and free-throws
w/ Cinderella on the cell phone.
Impossible to sleep.
i-Pod till
3:30.
SATURDAY
The CSPAN “Book TV” guy
calls at 9:00 to make sure
I’ll make it to my interview.
Good thing, too—I could sleep the day away
and miss my events.
Up. Grunt. Bad hotel
bathroom-sink counter Wolfgang Puck
and chemical white powder creamer coffee.
Iron my shirt.
Ride the glass elevator
into the rabble and yawp
of the book fair sale tables
at full pitch in the big lobby.
I find the festival sign-in table. I ask
the very un-Southern woman there
if I need to sign in with her or get
a badge or a welcome basket or
an info packet, or…?
“You need a ticket for this event,” she snaps. “Where’s
your ticket!”
“Excuse me?”
“You can’t attend events
without a ticket.”
“Uh.
But.
I’m an author.”
“Author, eh?”
“One of
your
authors.”
“What’s your name?”
“U-
R-
R-
E-
A.”
She checks the color Sharpie-
drawn map of the sales tables
adorned with names
of mystery and romance
bookstore owners
and local writing clubs
and local authors
with weird-history and
Civil War ghost books
and says, “I don’t see you
here!”
“I’m not there!” I say,
knowing for sure I’m being Punk’d.
“I’m not selling books. I’m a presenter.”
“Presenter, huh. Which one?”
“U-
R-
R-
E-
A.”
I have a flash of brilliance
And point to myself on the
poster. Right by
Charles Bowden.
“That’s me, see?” I say.
She peers at it,
Then looks back at me, unimpressed.
“That doesn’t look
like you,” she says.
Doh!
I sneak away for breakfast,
then slink to my room to
put on my ironed shirt and jacket
so I’ll look sharp
for my execution—
I mean—my TV
interview, followed by my
10,000th frigging immigration
panel.
At City Hall, the CSPAN interview
is on automatic pilot: Boilerplate Urrea
Border Expert Bullshit Data Program
B-17c, Index X. Later,
Good ol’ Bowden will say,
“Somebody has to watch TV
at 3:00 in the morning.”
Can’t find lunch.
The sandwich place I choose
Closes as I walk in the door!
Doh!
Back to City Hall.
There’s Chuck Bowden,
inhaling cigs and sprawling
on a bench taking the sun,
and he spies me and gets up
and resumes a conversation
we apparently dropped out of
a year ago. I think
he actually starts by saying,
“Anyway—“
I settle in beside him and join
the perpetual Chuck info stream.
A woman comes out and says, “Do either of you
mind of I smoke?”
“Oh Hell!” Chuck rumbles.
“What do you think I’m doing
out here? I can take
all the smoke I can get. Hey,
do me a favor and blow
all your smoke on me!”
He pulls out his own cig.
He says, “Let’s go all the way
with this.
Got any cocaine?”
A woman recognizes him. And then
another woman recognizes me.
We stand in the sun,
Official Famous Authors,
addressing
Our Public.
200 people come
into the City Council chambers.
Chuck, Hiroshi Matamura, the last gentleman,
and me. People
right in front of us
prying open our books
and putting their fingers in them.
Grace and Clarke, posters to my blog,
share a minute
before we are called upon
to save the world again.
And we’re off! To the President’s
Residence at the U. Yet another
tent at another Prez Rez where writers
ogle writers. FANBOY THWARTED:
Urrea Searches for Lee Child and George
Pellecanos, But Doesn’t See Them
Anywhere—Hundreds Mourn.
Earl Hamner tries to get thru
the matrons to get some poached fish
in lemon sauce.
Off again! To the reading
with Lee Smith and Howard
Norman. Lots
of nice people in nice cars
taking me to places I have never been
in cities I don’t know.
Trust.
I’m scribbling this onstage
as the audience files in
and fills the auditorium
with voices.
The room fills, and folks go
up to the balcony. I know
they’re here to see Miss Lee,
who is the rock star.
She was a go-go dancer
with a rock band called The Virginia Wolfs.
She’s so delightful and funny, you get drunk
just shaking her hand. Howard Norman
and I trade happy hugs. A good night.
We make a good team—though I think Howard
is more serious than we are. Miss Lee and I
seem to have the giggles. Bad, bad writers.
And somehow, the perversity of the draw
comes upon us and they decide to make
the reading-order alphabetical! What!
Howard and Lee open for me? Not right.
Yet,
you know,
ahem,
I’ll take the spotlight
IF I HAVE TO.
Definitely a Jimi Hendrix at Monterrey
situation for me. If I hope to make
any impression at all on the audience
after Howard wows ‘em and Lee slays’em…
Well, I have to burn the guitar.
So I light it on up.
Good signing line: all Hummingbirds sell out.
Miss Lee and her pal
take me back to the Omni.
There’s a huge party in the lobby—
foxy Virginia ladies in tight slick satin
and a house band honking thru
“Play that Fonky Muzak, White Boah!”
Miss Lee’s going to have a drink.
We part with an amazing announcement
from the Smith camp: “I have
n aluminum wrist!” she says.
I’m going back to room 617
to have a party in the bathroom
and go to bed.
SUNDAY
Fashion-model
Russian room service gal
brings a tray of eggs
and asks, “May I come in
your room?”
Puh-leeze come on in! I holler!
She smells much better
than the eggs, and places the tray
on the desk and stands exactly
eight feet closer to the door
as I sign the check.
“Is hot outside,” she warns.
“I come to work at four-thirty.
Is already sixty-five degrees!”
I tip her $5
just for her
accent.
A nice man in a nice truck
takes me to the nice airport
in a direction I do not know
on roads I will never see again.
We have an uproarious time
in the truck.
The tiny airport is friendly
as hell. In the book store,
the woman behind the counter marvels:
“You found you a book!”
“Why yes I did!” I enthuse.
Kill Me, by Stephen White. I should have been
reading that on Friday!
Doh!
Later, waiting at O’Hare for my bride to collect me,
I watch a sad couple in love. Cars and trucks and buses
roar past as they sit on the curb, big wheels missing their toes
by inches. The elevated train rattles above the cars, all
a noisy scene from Blade Runner. He’s got on a blue
O’Hare smock and a name-tag, and she
looks 24 from a distance—tight low-rider hip-huggers,
a little black top that’s almost a tank-top, blonde hair.
But you get close and see she has no teeth. Deep lines
in her face, that rough sandpaper cough and
skeleton-arms and legs. Chain-smoking.
Hair’s like greased straw. She has a white ball of flesh
sticking out of her bony arm, right at the vein.
She gets up and does odd deep-knee bends,
actually smacking her tiny butt
on the sidewalk. She stands and blinks slowly as she
looks at the trucks. She
leans forward at the slightest
angle off-plumb and starts shuffle-dancing.
Tweaker-love. Dying
of Chicago Concrete-Poisoning
on a glorious afternoon.
He puts his arm around her—it goes all the way
around her shoulders and rests on her veiny wrist
as they sit together and watch the cars
drive away.
Somewhere inside her, the angel
still singing.
My wife comes at last.
I am going home—
the most popular writer
in my own kitchen.
Meditation 3/27
Charlottesville, Virginia
March 23-25, 2007
FRIDAY
Some trips start out stupid.
Get to O’Hare early, feeling prepared
unlike many trips—some free time,
not hours, but some. Kiss
Cinderella & hop out of the car
at United. Can’t get
the machine to spit out my tickets.
A United employee wanders by &
discovers I’m not flying
United—I’m flying US Airways!
Doh!
It’s at the next terminal!
Doh!
I have to hurry
and take the train!
Doh!
Hustle
To the airport train.
Over to
Terminal 2.
Encounter
LINES
of bodies
stretching across
the entire building!
Doh!
My flight leaves at 10:40, &
it’s already 9:45.
½ of the US Airways machines are
broken.
The line
c-r-a-w-l-s.
I finally jump
out of line at 10:00 to cries
of dismay and hatred
from fellow travelers
and tell the US Airwoman
I need to get on a ticket kiosk
right now!
I hustle to Security
and:
LINES!
Almost out the door!
Doh!
I get thru
Around 10:20.
Rush
to gate
F8.
There’s no flight
At F8!
Doh!
I go to the monitor,
and it says the flight’s
on-time at F8.
The monitor down the hall says
the flight is out of F10!
Doh!
I rush to F10.
10:35.
There’s nobody at F10!
Doh!
I go back to F8.
Now it says the flight is delayed
Till 11:20
at F10.
Fellow sufferers collect
at F10, when suddenly
we are told to hurry to F8.
We stampede to F8.
When it’s time to board,
they tell us the plane’s at
F10!
Doh!
We scramble to F10,
but there’s no agent at the gate!
There’s no plane!
Doh!
We dawdle.
We fret.
At noon,
there is a plane.
But the captain tells us
the ground crew has
accidentally
put the luggage in the
wrong plane!
Doh!
Finally,
we board.
We’re all missing
our connections in Charlotte.
They tell us they will have
information for us in a
moment.
In a moment, they tell us
sorry—there is no information.
Doh!
Plane lands at the exact moment
my flight to Virginia is
scheduled to take off.
But we’re in
a different terminal!
Doh!
Tear thru
hordes of molasses-slow
crowds for about
97 miles and arrive
at an empty
gate!
Doh!
The flight has boarded, and the
position is closed,
and I’m told to go find
a service desk
when
a cranky-ass woman
comes in from the tarmac
and yells, “What are you
doing here!”
I tell her
I’m trying to get to Charlottesville,
and she snaps, “Well you better get out on the
runway before the plane takes off!”
and throws open the door.
There are two planes to choose from
and I choose one and scramble
up the steps as they
slam the door and plop in a seat
hoping I’m not going to
Philadelphia.
We puddle-jump across
the Great American Southeast.
Me, and the world’s sweetest Navy wife
rushing to see her hubby
for the first time in two months,
and a happy grandpa coming home from a
cruise who tells me how
he rode the zip-line in Costa Rica
and crashed into the tree
and shattered his ribs and
had to be flown by
emergency Learjet to Miami
and paid $65,000
for the privilege, but that
wasn’t going to stop him
from cruising!
“I tell you—when they see your drink
is empty, they’re right there
with a bottle!”
At the Omni, my key cards
won’t open my door.
Doh!
Maids take pity on me
and unlock the door for me.
I try to order room service,
but can’t find the menu!
Doh!
I have to call the kitchen,
and they realize the hotel has put
brand new room directories
in all the rooms, but somehow
forgot to put menus in them!
Omni Doh!
I watch NCAA basketball on the tube
and talk scores and free-throws
w/ Cinderella on the cell phone.
Impossible to sleep.
i-Pod till
3:30.
SATURDAY
The CSPAN “Book TV” guy
calls at 9:00 to make sure
I’ll make it to my interview.
Good thing, too—I could sleep the day away
and miss my events.
Up. Grunt. Bad hotel
bathroom-sink counter Wolfgang Puck
and chemical white powder creamer coffee.
Iron my shirt.
Ride the glass elevator
into the rabble and yawp
of the book fair sale tables
at full pitch in the big lobby.
I find the festival sign-in table. I ask
the very un-Southern woman there
if I need to sign in with her or get
a badge or a welcome basket or
an info packet, or…?
“You need a ticket for this event,” she snaps. “Where’s
your ticket!”
“Excuse me?”
“You can’t attend events
without a ticket.”
“Uh.
But.
I’m an author.”
“Author, eh?”
“One of
your
authors.”
“What’s your name?”
“U-
R-
R-
E-
A.”
She checks the color Sharpie-
drawn map of the sales tables
adorned with names
of mystery and romance
bookstore owners
and local writing clubs
and local authors
with weird-history and
Civil War ghost books
and says, “I don’t see you
here!”
“I’m not there!” I say,
knowing for sure I’m being Punk’d.
“I’m not selling books. I’m a presenter.”
“Presenter, huh. Which one?”
“U-
R-
R-
E-
A.”
I have a flash of brilliance
And point to myself on the
poster. Right by
Charles Bowden.
“That’s me, see?” I say.
She peers at it,
Then looks back at me, unimpressed.
“That doesn’t look
like you,” she says.
Doh!
I sneak away for breakfast,
then slink to my room to
put on my ironed shirt and jacket
so I’ll look sharp
for my execution—
I mean—my TV
interview, followed by my
10,000th frigging immigration
panel.
At City Hall, the CSPAN interview
is on automatic pilot: Boilerplate Urrea
Border Expert Bullshit Data Program
B-17c, Index X. Later,
Good ol’ Bowden will say,
“Somebody has to watch TV
at 3:00 in the morning.”
Can’t find lunch.
The sandwich place I choose
Closes as I walk in the door!
Doh!
Back to City Hall.
There’s Chuck Bowden,
inhaling cigs and sprawling
on a bench taking the sun,
and he spies me and gets up
and resumes a conversation
we apparently dropped out of
a year ago. I think
he actually starts by saying,
“Anyway—“
I settle in beside him and join
the perpetual Chuck info stream.
A woman comes out and says, “Do either of you
mind of I smoke?”
“Oh Hell!” Chuck rumbles.
“What do you think I’m doing
out here? I can take
all the smoke I can get. Hey,
do me a favor and blow
all your smoke on me!”
He pulls out his own cig.
He says, “Let’s go all the way
with this.
Got any cocaine?”
A woman recognizes him. And then
another woman recognizes me.
We stand in the sun,
Official Famous Authors,
addressing
Our Public.
200 people come
into the City Council chambers.
Chuck, Hiroshi Matamura, the last gentleman,
and me. People
right in front of us
prying open our books
and putting their fingers in them.
Grace and Clarke, posters to my blog,
share a minute
before we are called upon
to save the world again.
And we’re off! To the President’s
Residence at the U. Yet another
tent at another Prez Rez where writers
ogle writers. FANBOY THWARTED:
Urrea Searches for Lee Child and George
Pellecanos, But Doesn’t See Them
Anywhere—Hundreds Mourn.
Earl Hamner tries to get thru
the matrons to get some poached fish
in lemon sauce.
Off again! To the reading
with Lee Smith and Howard
Norman. Lots
of nice people in nice cars
taking me to places I have never been
in cities I don’t know.
Trust.
I’m scribbling this onstage
as the audience files in
and fills the auditorium
with voices.
The room fills, and folks go
up to the balcony. I know
they’re here to see Miss Lee,
who is the rock star.
She was a go-go dancer
with a rock band called The Virginia Wolfs.
She’s so delightful and funny, you get drunk
just shaking her hand. Howard Norman
and I trade happy hugs. A good night.
We make a good team—though I think Howard
is more serious than we are. Miss Lee and I
seem to have the giggles. Bad, bad writers.
And somehow, the perversity of the draw
comes upon us and they decide to make
the reading-order alphabetical! What!
Howard and Lee open for me? Not right.
Yet,
you know,
ahem,
I’ll take the spotlight
IF I HAVE TO.
Definitely a Jimi Hendrix at Monterrey
situation for me. If I hope to make
any impression at all on the audience
after Howard wows ‘em and Lee slays’em…
Well, I have to burn the guitar.
So I light it on up.
Good signing line: all Hummingbirds sell out.
Miss Lee and her pal
take me back to the Omni.
There’s a huge party in the lobby—
foxy Virginia ladies in tight slick satin
and a house band honking thru
“Play that Fonky Muzak, White Boah!”
Miss Lee’s going to have a drink.
We part with an amazing announcement
from the Smith camp: “I have
n aluminum wrist!” she says.
I’m going back to room 617
to have a party in the bathroom
and go to bed.
SUNDAY
Fashion-model
Russian room service gal
brings a tray of eggs
and asks, “May I come in
your room?”
Puh-leeze come on in! I holler!
She smells much better
than the eggs, and places the tray
on the desk and stands exactly
eight feet closer to the door
as I sign the check.
“Is hot outside,” she warns.
“I come to work at four-thirty.
Is already sixty-five degrees!”
I tip her $5
just for her
accent.
A nice man in a nice truck
takes me to the nice airport
in a direction I do not know
on roads I will never see again.
We have an uproarious time
in the truck.
The tiny airport is friendly
as hell. In the book store,
the woman behind the counter marvels:
“You found you a book!”
“Why yes I did!” I enthuse.
Kill Me, by Stephen White. I should have been
reading that on Friday!
Doh!
Later, waiting at O’Hare for my bride to collect me,
I watch a sad couple in love. Cars and trucks and buses
roar past as they sit on the curb, big wheels missing their toes
by inches. The elevated train rattles above the cars, all
a noisy scene from Blade Runner. He’s got on a blue
O’Hare smock and a name-tag, and she
looks 24 from a distance—tight low-rider hip-huggers,
a little black top that’s almost a tank-top, blonde hair.
But you get close and see she has no teeth. Deep lines
in her face, that rough sandpaper cough and
skeleton-arms and legs. Chain-smoking.
Hair’s like greased straw. She has a white ball of flesh
sticking out of her bony arm, right at the vein.
She gets up and does odd deep-knee bends,
actually smacking her tiny butt
on the sidewalk. She stands and blinks slowly as she
looks at the trucks. She
leans forward at the slightest
angle off-plumb and starts shuffle-dancing.
Tweaker-love. Dying
of Chicago Concrete-Poisoning
on a glorious afternoon.
He puts his arm around her—it goes all the way
around her shoulders and rests on her veiny wrist
as they sit together and watch the cars
drive away.
Somewhere inside her, the angel
still singing.
My wife comes at last.
I am going home—
the most popular writer
in my own kitchen.
3/27/2007
People ask me why I always go back to God in my writing. How could I not? You can't try to go into the mysterious regions like me and not feel God there. Even when others hoped to silence the feeling of the Divine in me, that Divine spark would not be silenced. They say faith is a gift. I think faith is also a choice.
I can't even begin to explain or display my true feelings about The Eternal, what my Lakota bros call The Grandfather. Why? Because all I can do is write. I can't play music. I think music would approach the ecstacy of God. The pain and laughter of the Maker.
Want proof? Go to Youtube and find Steve Vai playing "For the love of God" on guitar. Go on. I dare ya. It is pure ecstacy, pure power, and real devotion. Go on. It's a metallic prayer if I ever heard one. That's how I feel.
Mary Oliver said:
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
XXXOOO, Luige
PS Wastelander tomorrow.
Writing Meditation(s) 3/26
I can't even begin to explain or display my true feelings about The Eternal, what my Lakota bros call The Grandfather. Why? Because all I can do is write. I can't play music. I think music would approach the ecstacy of God. The pain and laughter of the Maker.
Want proof? Go to Youtube and find Steve Vai playing "For the love of God" on guitar. Go on. I dare ya. It is pure ecstacy, pure power, and real devotion. Go on. It's a metallic prayer if I ever heard one. That's how I feel.
Mary Oliver said:
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
XXXOOO, Luige
PS Wastelander tomorrow.
3/26/2007
But what do I know? (See yesterday's posting.) Not everybody's a mystic writing-adept like me. Which is why I am the greatest writer in the world! Ahem. Sorry.
I once had a UIC student come see me in my office. She was suffering from the Chi South Loop plague of Extreme Concrete Poisoning. She said she had just read Wandering Times [sic] and hated it. What didn't you like? I chirped. "It's so I went to the mountains and rekindled my soul," she sneered. Or my grad student who said, "I hate nature. Reeds. Deer. Nature is where you pee when you're driving between cities." So, like I said, what do I know?
You know, of course, that the city is also full of epiphanies, smells, light, revelations and delight. Horror, too. I like horror, as anyone who has read my Mexico/border books knows. (I always remember the nice woman who bought one of my fire-spitting border death tomes for her eighty year old mother, who opened the book and said, "Oh, dear!" and quietly put it back down, never to open it again. I love her!)
So, we need to see the city as clearly as I like to see trout streams. (No, I don't fish. I fish with my peepers.)
You will forgive me for sounding flippant (I am not being flippant at all) when I say this:
Writing is prayer, and writing is also a satisfying bowel movement.
Is crap holy? Let us ask the master, Issa:
even
crapping
the
nightingale
sings
a
prayer
I got Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy,
Deep in my heart!
Sing it, brethren.
XXX, Luigi
PS--here's that fine little poem on clarity I alluded to in the "Basho Bashing" post from last night. (You get two meditations today for the price of one.)
let a poem be
like a crystal bowl
full of ice
delightfully transparent
leaving nothing invisible
--Mori Ogai
Bashing Basho
I once had a UIC student come see me in my office. She was suffering from the Chi South Loop plague of Extreme Concrete Poisoning. She said she had just read Wandering Times [sic] and hated it. What didn't you like? I chirped. "It's so I went to the mountains and rekindled my soul," she sneered. Or my grad student who said, "I hate nature. Reeds. Deer. Nature is where you pee when you're driving between cities." So, like I said, what do I know?
You know, of course, that the city is also full of epiphanies, smells, light, revelations and delight. Horror, too. I like horror, as anyone who has read my Mexico/border books knows. (I always remember the nice woman who bought one of my fire-spitting border death tomes for her eighty year old mother, who opened the book and said, "Oh, dear!" and quietly put it back down, never to open it again. I love her!)
So, we need to see the city as clearly as I like to see trout streams. (No, I don't fish. I fish with my peepers.)
You will forgive me for sounding flippant (I am not being flippant at all) when I say this:
Writing is prayer, and writing is also a satisfying bowel movement.
Is crap holy? Let us ask the master, Issa:
even
crapping
the
nightingale
sings
a
prayer
I got Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy,
Deep in my heart!
Sing it, brethren.
XXX, Luigi
PS--here's that fine little poem on clarity I alluded to in the "Basho Bashing" post from last night. (You get two meditations today for the price of one.)
let a poem be
like a crystal bowl
full of ice
delightfully transparent
leaving nothing invisible
--Mori Ogai
3/25/2007
Just walked in from Virginia Festival of the Book. It was hot there and it's hot here. There's a new Wastelander coming this week about the Virginia trip--slight and comic, nothing profound.
My ol' blog-pal Esteban wrote in about the Basho writing meditation I gave you. He feels it's shallow somehow, and does not apply to deeper writing. But here's how I see it (the quote is about a style he seeks that is as clear as a shallow river moving over its bed): Basho said he wanted it to be as clear as a shallow river; he did not say he wanted to be shallow!
I'm not shallow, either. I wish I could be more shallow. I see impressively shallow books at #1 every week.
I know what he means intimately and deeply. (No put intended.) Ever see tropical waters? Or. closer to my heart: Boulder Creek, as the seven fans of my Wandering Time know, was my faithful muse and girlfriend. I walked up the creek over and over again, and truly, the water was a different being every day. Same creek, different personality. The water was clear--so clear I could see the multi-hued rocks in its bed, the fool's gold, the sand. All of it wobbling in curling light. All of it agleam in the sun as if there were lights inside the earth shining OUT instead of sun sinking IN. I would dawdle upon one of the old bridges on my thousand hikes and watch, from above, as trout lazed in the water. Trout, who would ride the current downstream for a few feet, then swim back up and stop and ride the stream again--backwards. Occasionally--and more frequently as fall approached--aspen leaves would drop on the water like yellow coins. And you would feel like you'd fallen into an MC Escher print. 3-D all the way! Bright coinage of leaves on the surface, among chips and fireworks of sunlight. Trout on the middle-depth. Wiggles and writhings of light on the bottom, among the shadows of fish and leaves. And those amazing vibrant round stones that, if you pulled them out of the water, would seem dull and ordinary.
How about stained glass windows?
How about the light in your lover's eye? There's nothing as crystalline or deep as that 1/8 of an inch of clear lens. It may not be thick, but it is not in any way shallow. (All my sweeties know I'm a sucker for eyes.)
Writing is a Martial Art! Writing is a Daily Spiritual Discipline! Writing is a Shamanic Way of Seeing! I wish it could be different, but for me, it cannot. Damn it. I want a big Mercedes, not a Honda! It's hard to get rich practicing Writing-Fu. (You Fishtrappers know all about Lu Chi's Wen-Fu, so you know what I'm talking about.) Clarity!
This, to me, is what Basho is talking about. It is one of the guiding principals of my spiritual/religious beliefs, and of my hard-learned love relationships, and of my long apprenticeship as a writer. A clarity of soul, and openness of vision. One of the other Asian poets wrote that he wanted his words to be like pure ice in a crystal bowl! I'll put the meditation up after the Wastelander. Wouldn't clear ice in a crystal bowl be invisible? Aha! What is the sound of one hand clapping? What is the sound of one hand writing!
It might be Zen.
Even my Boulder Creek had cutbanks and deep swimming holes where the bottom was more mysterious and strange. Dark. I lived in Louisiana for a good long time. That water aint clear, brothers and sisters. You don't see a frigging thing--but whatever's in there SEES YOU. I'm all for the mysterious depths. Those of you who have studied writing with me know my chosen and beloved Mode of Narration is the dreaded Indirect Means of Telling A Story. I can talk more about that one day. Not now. I'm tired. And the kid has a bladder infection. And "The Amazing Race" is on.
I say this: if you're murky, if you're clouded, if you're polluted or so deep everyone including you will drown in your profundity, you can't ever hope to steer us into that strange shadowed depth. No way. Muddled presidents can't lead. Bad military commanders can't lead. Evil gurus give you poisoned Kool-Ade. As I learned from my tracker friends in the Border Patrol, a confused guide can't show you the way through the wilderness.
So what I, and I believe Basho, seek is a clarity of vision. For me, that's physical vision, but also soul-vision. I'm fishin' with my vision. I try to bring 'em back alive. That's what you'll see me wrestling with in every damn word.
As for Basho...ah, well. We'll have to go to the Elysian Fields. He'll be hanging out with Jimi Hendrix and Stephen Crane. We'll have to ask him. Yo, Bash-dawg--what up wi' dat clear water haiku vision joint you were bustin'?
Your Writing Meditation 3/23
My ol' blog-pal Esteban wrote in about the Basho writing meditation I gave you. He feels it's shallow somehow, and does not apply to deeper writing. But here's how I see it (the quote is about a style he seeks that is as clear as a shallow river moving over its bed): Basho said he wanted it to be as clear as a shallow river; he did not say he wanted to be shallow!
I'm not shallow, either. I wish I could be more shallow. I see impressively shallow books at #1 every week.
I know what he means intimately and deeply. (No put intended.) Ever see tropical waters? Or. closer to my heart: Boulder Creek, as the seven fans of my Wandering Time know, was my faithful muse and girlfriend. I walked up the creek over and over again, and truly, the water was a different being every day. Same creek, different personality. The water was clear--so clear I could see the multi-hued rocks in its bed, the fool's gold, the sand. All of it wobbling in curling light. All of it agleam in the sun as if there were lights inside the earth shining OUT instead of sun sinking IN. I would dawdle upon one of the old bridges on my thousand hikes and watch, from above, as trout lazed in the water. Trout, who would ride the current downstream for a few feet, then swim back up and stop and ride the stream again--backwards. Occasionally--and more frequently as fall approached--aspen leaves would drop on the water like yellow coins. And you would feel like you'd fallen into an MC Escher print. 3-D all the way! Bright coinage of leaves on the surface, among chips and fireworks of sunlight. Trout on the middle-depth. Wiggles and writhings of light on the bottom, among the shadows of fish and leaves. And those amazing vibrant round stones that, if you pulled them out of the water, would seem dull and ordinary.
How about stained glass windows?
How about the light in your lover's eye? There's nothing as crystalline or deep as that 1/8 of an inch of clear lens. It may not be thick, but it is not in any way shallow. (All my sweeties know I'm a sucker for eyes.)
Writing is a Martial Art! Writing is a Daily Spiritual Discipline! Writing is a Shamanic Way of Seeing! I wish it could be different, but for me, it cannot. Damn it. I want a big Mercedes, not a Honda! It's hard to get rich practicing Writing-Fu. (You Fishtrappers know all about Lu Chi's Wen-Fu, so you know what I'm talking about.) Clarity!
This, to me, is what Basho is talking about. It is one of the guiding principals of my spiritual/religious beliefs, and of my hard-learned love relationships, and of my long apprenticeship as a writer. A clarity of soul, and openness of vision. One of the other Asian poets wrote that he wanted his words to be like pure ice in a crystal bowl! I'll put the meditation up after the Wastelander. Wouldn't clear ice in a crystal bowl be invisible? Aha! What is the sound of one hand clapping? What is the sound of one hand writing!
It might be Zen.
Even my Boulder Creek had cutbanks and deep swimming holes where the bottom was more mysterious and strange. Dark. I lived in Louisiana for a good long time. That water aint clear, brothers and sisters. You don't see a frigging thing--but whatever's in there SEES YOU. I'm all for the mysterious depths. Those of you who have studied writing with me know my chosen and beloved Mode of Narration is the dreaded Indirect Means of Telling A Story. I can talk more about that one day. Not now. I'm tired. And the kid has a bladder infection. And "The Amazing Race" is on.
I say this: if you're murky, if you're clouded, if you're polluted or so deep everyone including you will drown in your profundity, you can't ever hope to steer us into that strange shadowed depth. No way. Muddled presidents can't lead. Bad military commanders can't lead. Evil gurus give you poisoned Kool-Ade. As I learned from my tracker friends in the Border Patrol, a confused guide can't show you the way through the wilderness.
So what I, and I believe Basho, seek is a clarity of vision. For me, that's physical vision, but also soul-vision. I'm fishin' with my vision. I try to bring 'em back alive. That's what you'll see me wrestling with in every damn word.
As for Basho...ah, well. We'll have to go to the Elysian Fields. He'll be hanging out with Jimi Hendrix and Stephen Crane. We'll have to ask him. Yo, Bash-dawg--what up wi' dat clear water haiku vision joint you were bustin'?
3/22/2007
On my way to Virginia. See you when I get back, if I don't see you there.
Buson wrote:
I grasp
in the darkness of the heart
a firefly.
Your Writing Meditation, 3/22
Buson wrote:
I grasp
in the darkness of the heart
a firefly.
Basho said:
The style I have in mind is a light one both in form and in structure, like the impression of looking at the sandy bed of a shallow river.
***
I agree with the master. I'd like the clarity to not only flow from my pen, but to inhabit my soul and my being and my going through the world. But right now, I have to go to work.
Perhaps my classroom could become clear, as well!
Your Writing Meditation for the Day
The style I have in mind is a light one both in form and in structure, like the impression of looking at the sandy bed of a shallow river.
***
I agree with the master. I'd like the clarity to not only flow from my pen, but to inhabit my soul and my being and my going through the world. But right now, I have to go to work.
Perhaps my classroom could become clear, as well!
3/21/2007
We don't need an institute! We don't need a rancho or a mountain retreat! (See below, the last couple of posts.) We can start the Hummingbird's Workshop here, now. The internet is our aspen glade, and we can come here to think and write. I used to provide my grad students at UIC with a daily meditation on writing, until the Teresita/Devil's Highway matrix went haywire and I didn't have the time or focus to do it anymore.
Here's a thought for you, and I'll post them on a regular--not daily, since I'm too often gone or just LAZY--basis. Writing Church is in Session.
***
Mikhail Prishvin, Russia's great literary secret, said:
"Sorrow, accumulating in one's heart, may one fine day burst into flames like a haystack, and everything will burn away in the fire of extraordinary joy."
May your writing strike the match.
See you in Virginia
Here's a thought for you, and I'll post them on a regular--not daily, since I'm too often gone or just LAZY--basis. Writing Church is in Session.
***
Mikhail Prishvin, Russia's great literary secret, said:
"Sorrow, accumulating in one's heart, may one fine day burst into flames like a haystack, and everything will burn away in the fire of extraordinary joy."
May your writing strike the match.
3/19/2007
Hey! Check out "Esteban's" response to my last post on the Comments page of "The Hummingbird's Workshop." It's very cool, and very thoughtful after my jolly rant. Don't worry, Esteban--I have been a dedicated academic, too. We change lives and open the world, and my own world was definitely opened by the academy. I'm just having fun--gadfly hour at the Urrea ranch. If you sit on too many PhD committees, you start to think you need some Hells Angels to ride through just lo liven things up. Especially if you teach where your general modus operandi is The Theoretical Theory of Theory. What are we teaching when we teach Writing? Are we making writing teachers, or writers? I just don't know. I know Kim Stafford, or the wood sprites at Fishtrap, make writers. The pustules throbbing at the heart of someplace like, oh, CU Boulder's "writing" program--they have that nose-to-bung thing in full force. Too bad, too, because I lucked out and stumbled into a golden age before evil-hearted medicrities took over. Any grad student from my days there can tell you what it was starting to promise to become...and did not. So, Esteban, brother, you can come free to my writing institue! But all the others pay double! Oh, and I finished the edits on House of Broken Angels. It will begin its long journeys through the publication--or rejection--wilderness this week. Let's see what my mentors at Little, Brown think. And, finally, I'll be heading for the Virginia Festival of the Book this weekend. I get to do a panel with Chuck Bowden on everybody's favorite topic--immigration! And I get the opportunity to read with Howard Norman and Lee Smith. Saturday looks like one of those long literary days. Then, Spring Break! Maybe I can write a book that week. XXX, L
The Hummingbird's Workshop
3/18/2007
I'm so sick of scholars, critics, theoreticians, universities. I'm sick of faculty gatherings where mediocre "experts" insert their noses in the bungs of the "experts" in front of them until they have formed a tight circle of nose-to-ass connections and begin walking in analytical circles. I'm sick of careerists and gray-faced gray-blooded tenure-mongering mugwumps! And I have tenure!
I want madmen! I want wild-women with twigs in their hair! I want zen monks and mountain men. I want anchorites. I want tree-huggers, medicine women, warriors, rafters, lion tamers, pistoleros, rock stars, drunk poets, saints, blues singers! I want Joe Gearhead driving a '69 Dodge Charger. I want prison inmates and trout fishers, visionaries and vegans, Lakotas and Apaches, hippies, rednecks, loggers and street people! I want writing that matters. Writing that shouts its intent and damn the torpedoes! Don't you?
If I had a writing institute, I'd put it in the boondocks. I'd have lodges and cabins. I'd have magnetic poetry sets on every refrigerator door. I'd have no phones. I'd have a fire every night, and a reading every night. Like Fishtrap, I'd have a beer'n'burger joint down in the woods where writers could walk a mile among deer and darkness, tempting ghosts and Manitous, to gather for midnight bullshit. I'd have room for bullshit! I'd have certain books in every cabin! I'd have a copy of Issa's poems, and a copy of Basho's poems. I'd have Joe Ely's awesome new book in every cabin! I'd have William Stafford's writing books. I'd have Flannery O'Connor's letters, and Eudora Welty's The Eye of the Story.
I'd have workshops, sure. Writers have to write. But I'd have walking hour, too. Mindful walking in the surrounding woods, every day. I'd have workshops in things that don't, on the surface of things, seem like "writing." Zen brush-writing. Birding. Tracking. Song-writing. Tai chi. Drumline. Gardening. Rock climbing.
Water. There would have to be water nearby. And every participant would plant a tree--either an evergreen, or an addition to our orchard.
And I would make sure there was a cemetery nearby, as well. And we would attend to the old graves. We would take care of the fallen and forgotten.
And, across the vally from the institute, I'd maintain The Widow's House. A house filled with evocative objects. Objects, human objects, are incredible writing prompts. And, before each participant left for home, she or he would be asked to investigate the widow's house and write about what they discovered there.
And I would publish books from the barn.
What do you think? Would you go? I'd go. I'd even allow academics to attend. But I would charge them double.
Oh man, you can tell Spring is here and I'm feeling wild. Hey--I finished House of Broken Angels. I think...I think it's good. Though I keep thinking fans of Hummingbird will keel over dead when they read this. Onward! Onward, dear friends! To my book of poems, followed by the Wastelander book, followed by HUMMINGBIRD II! Got a big year ahead.
Come with me.
L
Wastelander Redux -- Book Tour Part III
I want madmen! I want wild-women with twigs in their hair! I want zen monks and mountain men. I want anchorites. I want tree-huggers, medicine women, warriors, rafters, lion tamers, pistoleros, rock stars, drunk poets, saints, blues singers! I want Joe Gearhead driving a '69 Dodge Charger. I want prison inmates and trout fishers, visionaries and vegans, Lakotas and Apaches, hippies, rednecks, loggers and street people! I want writing that matters. Writing that shouts its intent and damn the torpedoes! Don't you?
If I had a writing institute, I'd put it in the boondocks. I'd have lodges and cabins. I'd have magnetic poetry sets on every refrigerator door. I'd have no phones. I'd have a fire every night, and a reading every night. Like Fishtrap, I'd have a beer'n'burger joint down in the woods where writers could walk a mile among deer and darkness, tempting ghosts and Manitous, to gather for midnight bullshit. I'd have room for bullshit! I'd have certain books in every cabin! I'd have a copy of Issa's poems, and a copy of Basho's poems. I'd have Joe Ely's awesome new book in every cabin! I'd have William Stafford's writing books. I'd have Flannery O'Connor's letters, and Eudora Welty's The Eye of the Story.
I'd have workshops, sure. Writers have to write. But I'd have walking hour, too. Mindful walking in the surrounding woods, every day. I'd have workshops in things that don't, on the surface of things, seem like "writing." Zen brush-writing. Birding. Tracking. Song-writing. Tai chi. Drumline. Gardening. Rock climbing.
Water. There would have to be water nearby. And every participant would plant a tree--either an evergreen, or an addition to our orchard.
And I would make sure there was a cemetery nearby, as well. And we would attend to the old graves. We would take care of the fallen and forgotten.
And, across the vally from the institute, I'd maintain The Widow's House. A house filled with evocative objects. Objects, human objects, are incredible writing prompts. And, before each participant left for home, she or he would be asked to investigate the widow's house and write about what they discovered there.
And I would publish books from the barn.
What do you think? Would you go? I'd go. I'd even allow academics to attend. But I would charge them double.
Oh man, you can tell Spring is here and I'm feeling wild. Hey--I finished House of Broken Angels. I think...I think it's good. Though I keep thinking fans of Hummingbird will keel over dead when they read this. Onward! Onward, dear friends! To my book of poems, followed by the Wastelander book, followed by HUMMINGBIRD II! Got a big year ahead.
Come with me.
L
3/12/2007
This section rounds out the three Wastelander’s Notebooks I had planned for now. I’ve gotten so many great emails about them—I’m glad my sketches bring you some pleasure. If you go back in the blog archive a bit, you’ll find the Wastelander train-blog, sketching my trip to Missouri at the start of the tour. That makes four, and they seem to make a really friendly small book.
Later, That Same Day
To Duke University.
“…I was born rolling.” Wallace Stegner.
Ah. American Eagle
mini-jet terror flight
thru storm cells
heading East.
In the air,
it’s like riding in a
flying Chevette
banging down
a bumpy road.
#
I love
how this sketching
eats up notebooks—
makes me feel like
I’m really productive, really
gettin’ the work done,
baby, cranking it out.
Some kinda bebop runs,
some kinda haibun/boogie
thing—jam-session—
raga-Kerouac-Basho-
Tao Jones Average
bull market
word-sling. I want
to be supple. I seek
to catch it in 3 words,
a paragraph’s worth of vision:
want it fresh
& fragrant.
Crunchy.
#
Long, hot, boring.
Feels like we’re flying to China.
I fell asleep: weird dreams:
naked people I didn’t know
in a building I’d never seen
talking about things
I couldn’t understand.
Perhaps the pure definition of book tour.
#
We drove the rental car all over
the city looking for the hotel—rushed in,
no time for anything, changed, back out,
got lost looking for the President’s Residence.
Writers, writers
everywhere. You go from being God-toad
in one little pond
to being invisible tadpole in the next. Don’t
drink whiskey, or you’ll
believe it matters. Had fun
spying on Tom Wolfe. That suit.
Those spats.
Tom Wolfe was like
an exceptionally perceptive caricature
of Tom Wolfe!
Talked with Camille Dungy. My new pal.
Met the grand Samuel Delaney
whom everyone was calling “Chip,” but
that would be like calling Moses “Moe.”
Jayne Anne Phillips:
all hair! If I had Jayne’s hair
I could be Robert Plant.
Then Cindy snagged
Tom Perrotta.
We were amused to find out that
we were both Harvard Expos vets.
My general anguish over Perrotta’s
huge success made me go look for
my drug of choice: food.
To Hell with Little Children!
Gimme some canapés!
I went to the food line, but Tom Wolfe,
the apparently inescapable icon,
wouldn’t get out of the way.
Various literary limpets and
lampreys had attached to him and were
snorting thru their noses and
slurping cocktails, hoping somebody
would snap a picture for the alumni
news.
The chef had apparently had enough
of the Celebrated Ice Cream Suit.
She LAID HANDS on
TOM WOLFE
And shoved him OUT OF THE WAY!
She leaned over the table and said,
“I don’t care WHO you are, SIR,
but GET OUT OF THE WAY
of my
SHRIMP EMPANADAS!”
I almost fell over.
Tom Wolfe,
In a scene from a
Tom Wolfe book!
It was all too meta.
Back at the hotel, I was startled
to find myself standing beside
C.K. Williams
in the elevator.
He wasn’t startled at all,
since he no doubt took me for
an assistant football coach from a jr.
high school, attending some sort of
Kiwanis convention w/ my wife,
Beulah.
I was too shy to say anything.
I did manage to say hello
to his wife and shake
her hand. He was ten feet tall.
As he got off, I blurted,
“You’re one of the finest poets
in the world, sir!”
He seemed very happy.
And
to bed.
Day Ten
Cinderella has a cold.
I dreamed I was peeing red wine.
Slumped, exhausted shower.
Out of touch with the world.
Met a book club for breakfast, and we discussed Hummingbird.
I think.
Lost in America.
#
Roy Blount, Jr.
was wearing overalls.
The last time I saw him was at
The Rock Bottom Remainders gig in 1994—
he was gamely withstanding the
attentions of a drunk and adoring
young woman
but the rest of us were
too busy watching Bruce Springsteen
drink beer with Stephen King
to rescue him.
#
Our host, Aaron Greenwald
introduced me to his mom.
She loved Hummingbird. But Aaron
confided that Devil’s Highway
is a much better book. I have no
opinion, just feelings.
It’s a strange book-
battle-royale. All my previous books
have melted into these two
and they slug it out at every step.
People tell me one is only reportage, not art,
while other people tell me the fantastic stuff is
cute, but only the reportage is important.
All I could say was:
“They’re utterly
totally
different from each other.”
It sounded precious, no doubt.
But how do you compare
such radically different narratives
with such different agendas?
It’s beyond me. No, wait—it is me. Duh.
I’m the denominator. I’m the decider!
(And then
you meet someone who tells you that
Across the Wire is really the great book
and the others don’t much matter after
that masterpiece.) You think—
Which book was that? Did I write that?
Maybe my cousin wrote that one.
Now, blessings all around
The Atlantic has waxed (and buffed
with a shammy) poetic about By the Lake
Of Sleeping Childremn, a book I don’t
even like, and sweet people are
telling me that one’s the Urrea classic!
Wow. Or, like they say in
Mexico City: Guáu! Give thanks
for all of it. And keep rolling.
All you can do is show up for work;
try to bring good tools with you
and, every day, set to
building a solid chair.
#
Big laffs and hugs w/ Kaye Gibbons.
Chatted w/ Peter Guralnick for a second.
This is more fun than
A Boy Scout camporee.
Breeze:
Flowers:
Trees.
We met up with Thulani Davis, my
book session partner. It was big love
as her family and my family
basked in the Duke sun.
We adjourned to the Walt Whitman
Collection room—good company, I thought.
Walt’s dusty ghost smiling in the corner.
It was a zenlike talk. We felt related.
Friendly little crowd.
Except the woman who asked the
inevitable immigrant-invasion
unwelcome alien question.
I muttered that
the Carolinas had become a
targeted zone for the undocumented,
and she yelled: “:We noticed!”
The little accountant in
my head jots a note:
One less book sale for the day.
Outside, our signing line
though jaunty and warm
was beside Pat Conroy’s.
His line was
¼ mile long.
I signed my six fans’ books
and took my wife’s hand
and sped away to
Washington D.C.
#
85 North—
wildflowers
scattered
like small mounds
of confetti.
Roadside Ruby Tuesday’s:
I order a buffalo burger
and it is becoming evident
they sent riders all the way to Wyoming to try to
shoot one and drag
it back.
Sideways sun
flings lonesome streams
of celebratory light
thru gaps in
Virginia’s pines.
VA rest area.
Everybody here
is a bad mo-fo.
Even the guy
on crutches
wants to kick
somebody’s
butt.
I lock in
my wife and
run the gauntlet
to drive the
porcelain
trolley.
Oh my God.
I am suddenly that
awful grunting old
freak in the toilet stall
that grossed me out and inspired
my derision and
my kids’ derision
for the first 49 years
of my life!
#
Dinwiddie, VA!
Squirrel Level Road!
#
Into the unearthly glow
of Washington D.C.
City not quite
on a hill: city
in a swamp.
The great Masonic
cipher of a city.
The monuments seem to be
made of light
and hope.
They cry out
in their glowing—they
shout out whatever is in our own
hearts about America.
You can’t even see
the ghetto or the
slums.
Just eerie god-light.
Zeus is living in this ‘hood,
along with Zarathustra.
The Great Architect
is having a tea party
with the Eternals.
No wonder Al Qaeda
wants it to tumble.
In the dark,
you can’t see the eye in the pyramid
floating above us all,
scanning.
The gorgeous fantasy story of the USA.
Our perfect myth.
Our American novel: America itself
is the Great American novel.
We’re more than a country, aren’t we.
We’re e text.
Not yet in final draft.
How can you not be a patriot
When you see so much
Glowing, levitating
Light?
I’ll admit, I feel like a hero of the republic
when the publisher installs me in
the snazziest hotel I’ve ever seen,
and the bathroom is bigger than my bedroom.
I’m doing my part as a True American.
I tip the room service guy
like Frank Sinatra.
Tomorrow, 3,000,000 immigrants will march, & I
will try to bumble through my commentary
on CNN. I should get drunk.
#
[Poem on the road, thinking about the past.]
The Rules
You had to pack Ferlinghetti
In your lunch pail. You had
To know the guitar player
In Quicksilver Messenger Service
You had to burn candles
And incense and know
A 17 year old revolutionary hippie girl
Who smoked pot and had a plank
In her bedroom some stoner
Mailed her with 49 stamps
Glued to the wood
That said: RIGHT ON, SISTER
TO THE REVOLT!
You had to hide
A Polaroid of a naked blonde
With her hands raised over her belly
As if she had just patted herself fondly
Standing there in the open air,
Blue sky/one cloud
Over her shoulder, and her thatch
Of secret hair the same color
As her head, that relic found
Cutting class and sneaking down the alley
To 7-11, only you never got there
Once you found the Polaroid angel.
You had to hide her
From your mother.
You had to listen to It’s
A Beautiful Day because
The prettiest girls you knew thought they
Were all white birds in golden cages
Just like the song
Or wanted you to believe it. You had to
Believe it.
You had to look cool
When the Bishops street boys jumped you
On your way home after school and slugged you
13 times while you thought: aint
That bad, what was I afraid of?
You had to hide a Brautigan book in your back pocket.
You had to never let the white birds know
You would give anything for a picture of them
Dressed in sky and standing before you
In forbidden midnights, and when they did,
Naked as little clouds,
You had to
Never tell.
Later, That Same Day
To Duke University.
“…I was born rolling.” Wallace Stegner.
Ah. American Eagle
mini-jet terror flight
thru storm cells
heading East.
In the air,
it’s like riding in a
flying Chevette
banging down
a bumpy road.
#
I love
how this sketching
eats up notebooks—
makes me feel like
I’m really productive, really
gettin’ the work done,
baby, cranking it out.
Some kinda bebop runs,
some kinda haibun/boogie
thing—jam-session—
raga-Kerouac-Basho-
Tao Jones Average
bull market
word-sling. I want
to be supple. I seek
to catch it in 3 words,
a paragraph’s worth of vision:
want it fresh
& fragrant.
Crunchy.
#
Long, hot, boring.
Feels like we’re flying to China.
I fell asleep: weird dreams:
naked people I didn’t know
in a building I’d never seen
talking about things
I couldn’t understand.
Perhaps the pure definition of book tour.
#
We drove the rental car all over
the city looking for the hotel—rushed in,
no time for anything, changed, back out,
got lost looking for the President’s Residence.
Writers, writers
everywhere. You go from being God-toad
in one little pond
to being invisible tadpole in the next. Don’t
drink whiskey, or you’ll
believe it matters. Had fun
spying on Tom Wolfe. That suit.
Those spats.
Tom Wolfe was like
an exceptionally perceptive caricature
of Tom Wolfe!
Talked with Camille Dungy. My new pal.
Met the grand Samuel Delaney
whom everyone was calling “Chip,” but
that would be like calling Moses “Moe.”
Jayne Anne Phillips:
all hair! If I had Jayne’s hair
I could be Robert Plant.
Then Cindy snagged
Tom Perrotta.
We were amused to find out that
we were both Harvard Expos vets.
My general anguish over Perrotta’s
huge success made me go look for
my drug of choice: food.
To Hell with Little Children!
Gimme some canapés!
I went to the food line, but Tom Wolfe,
the apparently inescapable icon,
wouldn’t get out of the way.
Various literary limpets and
lampreys had attached to him and were
snorting thru their noses and
slurping cocktails, hoping somebody
would snap a picture for the alumni
news.
The chef had apparently had enough
of the Celebrated Ice Cream Suit.
She LAID HANDS on
TOM WOLFE
And shoved him OUT OF THE WAY!
She leaned over the table and said,
“I don’t care WHO you are, SIR,
but GET OUT OF THE WAY
of my
SHRIMP EMPANADAS!”
I almost fell over.
Tom Wolfe,
In a scene from a
Tom Wolfe book!
It was all too meta.
Back at the hotel, I was startled
to find myself standing beside
C.K. Williams
in the elevator.
He wasn’t startled at all,
since he no doubt took me for
an assistant football coach from a jr.
high school, attending some sort of
Kiwanis convention w/ my wife,
Beulah.
I was too shy to say anything.
I did manage to say hello
to his wife and shake
her hand. He was ten feet tall.
As he got off, I blurted,
“You’re one of the finest poets
in the world, sir!”
He seemed very happy.
And
to bed.
Day Ten
Cinderella has a cold.
I dreamed I was peeing red wine.
Slumped, exhausted shower.
Out of touch with the world.
Met a book club for breakfast, and we discussed Hummingbird.
I think.
Lost in America.
#
Roy Blount, Jr.
was wearing overalls.
The last time I saw him was at
The Rock Bottom Remainders gig in 1994—
he was gamely withstanding the
attentions of a drunk and adoring
young woman
but the rest of us were
too busy watching Bruce Springsteen
drink beer with Stephen King
to rescue him.
#
Our host, Aaron Greenwald
introduced me to his mom.
She loved Hummingbird. But Aaron
confided that Devil’s Highway
is a much better book. I have no
opinion, just feelings.
It’s a strange book-
battle-royale. All my previous books
have melted into these two
and they slug it out at every step.
People tell me one is only reportage, not art,
while other people tell me the fantastic stuff is
cute, but only the reportage is important.
All I could say was:
“They’re utterly
totally
different from each other.”
It sounded precious, no doubt.
But how do you compare
such radically different narratives
with such different agendas?
It’s beyond me. No, wait—it is me. Duh.
I’m the denominator. I’m the decider!
(And then
you meet someone who tells you that
Across the Wire is really the great book
and the others don’t much matter after
that masterpiece.) You think—
Which book was that? Did I write that?
Maybe my cousin wrote that one.
Now, blessings all around
The Atlantic has waxed (and buffed
with a shammy) poetic about By the Lake
Of Sleeping Childremn, a book I don’t
even like, and sweet people are
telling me that one’s the Urrea classic!
Wow. Or, like they say in
Mexico City: Guáu! Give thanks
for all of it. And keep rolling.
All you can do is show up for work;
try to bring good tools with you
and, every day, set to
building a solid chair.
#
Big laffs and hugs w/ Kaye Gibbons.
Chatted w/ Peter Guralnick for a second.
This is more fun than
A Boy Scout camporee.
Breeze:
Flowers:
Trees.
We met up with Thulani Davis, my
book session partner. It was big love
as her family and my family
basked in the Duke sun.
We adjourned to the Walt Whitman
Collection room—good company, I thought.
Walt’s dusty ghost smiling in the corner.
It was a zenlike talk. We felt related.
Friendly little crowd.
Except the woman who asked the
inevitable immigrant-invasion
unwelcome alien question.
I muttered that
the Carolinas had become a
targeted zone for the undocumented,
and she yelled: “:We noticed!”
The little accountant in
my head jots a note:
One less book sale for the day.
Outside, our signing line
though jaunty and warm
was beside Pat Conroy’s.
His line was
¼ mile long.
I signed my six fans’ books
and took my wife’s hand
and sped away to
Washington D.C.
#
85 North—
wildflowers
scattered
like small mounds
of confetti.
Roadside Ruby Tuesday’s:
I order a buffalo burger
and it is becoming evident
they sent riders all the way to Wyoming to try to
shoot one and drag
it back.
Sideways sun
flings lonesome streams
of celebratory light
thru gaps in
Virginia’s pines.
VA rest area.
Everybody here
is a bad mo-fo.
Even the guy
on crutches
wants to kick
somebody’s
butt.
I lock in
my wife and
run the gauntlet
to drive the
porcelain
trolley.
Oh my God.
I am suddenly that
awful grunting old
freak in the toilet stall
that grossed me out and inspired
my derision and
my kids’ derision
for the first 49 years
of my life!
#
Dinwiddie, VA!
Squirrel Level Road!
#
Into the unearthly glow
of Washington D.C.
City not quite
on a hill: city
in a swamp.
The great Masonic
cipher of a city.
The monuments seem to be
made of light
and hope.
They cry out
in their glowing—they
shout out whatever is in our own
hearts about America.
You can’t even see
the ghetto or the
slums.
Just eerie god-light.
Zeus is living in this ‘hood,
along with Zarathustra.
The Great Architect
is having a tea party
with the Eternals.
No wonder Al Qaeda
wants it to tumble.
In the dark,
you can’t see the eye in the pyramid
floating above us all,
scanning.
The gorgeous fantasy story of the USA.
Our perfect myth.
Our American novel: America itself
is the Great American novel.
We’re more than a country, aren’t we.
We’re e text.
Not yet in final draft.
How can you not be a patriot
When you see so much
Glowing, levitating
Light?
I’ll admit, I feel like a hero of the republic
when the publisher installs me in
the snazziest hotel I’ve ever seen,
and the bathroom is bigger than my bedroom.
I’m doing my part as a True American.
I tip the room service guy
like Frank Sinatra.
Tomorrow, 3,000,000 immigrants will march, & I
will try to bumble through my commentary
on CNN. I should get drunk.
#
[Poem on the road, thinking about the past.]
The Rules
You had to pack Ferlinghetti
In your lunch pail. You had
To know the guitar player
In Quicksilver Messenger Service
You had to burn candles
And incense and know
A 17 year old revolutionary hippie girl
Who smoked pot and had a plank
In her bedroom some stoner
Mailed her with 49 stamps
Glued to the wood
That said: RIGHT ON, SISTER
TO THE REVOLT!
You had to hide
A Polaroid of a naked blonde
With her hands raised over her belly
As if she had just patted herself fondly
Standing there in the open air,
Blue sky/one cloud
Over her shoulder, and her thatch
Of secret hair the same color
As her head, that relic found
Cutting class and sneaking down the alley
To 7-11, only you never got there
Once you found the Polaroid angel.
You had to hide her
From your mother.
You had to listen to It’s
A Beautiful Day because
The prettiest girls you knew thought they
Were all white birds in golden cages
Just like the song
Or wanted you to believe it. You had to
Believe it.
You had to look cool
When the Bishops street boys jumped you
On your way home after school and slugged you
13 times while you thought: aint
That bad, what was I afraid of?
You had to hide a Brautigan book in your back pocket.
You had to never let the white birds know
You would give anything for a picture of them
Dressed in sky and standing before you
In forbidden midnights, and when they did,
Naked as little clouds,
You had to
Never tell.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]