9/29/2008
I have the Wastelanders all set for you. Since time is so tight now, I might go ahead a post them two at a time. Lots of reading for you, patient reader.
I've also asked for the Comments section to come back. So you can all get back to commenting.
I leave on Wed. for Cal Poly. I get home and then leave for the Ragdale Foundation dinners. Scott Turow will be there--I've met him at the Rock Bottom Remainders gigs and suppers, though he rarely says anything to me. But Richard Russo will be there! Oh yeah! And the beloved and wild Jane Hamilton. This week, I was at Texas Tech. I got to dig into the William Curry Holden archives while there, in between speaking engagements. I got loads of new Teresita materials. Like, $182 worth of Xeroxes. I think the staff was happy to see me leave. When I got home, I had to attend the ALA's banned books reading. I signed a book and left it for the goddess, Sara Paretsky. My stack of Hummingbirds was cleaned out fast, so Cinderella and I made our way back out of the city, attending to the mom'n'pop duties.
NEWS: I have mentioned before that my story, "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses," has had a good life on NPR's Selected Shorts radio broadcasts. Well, now there's a cd available of the readings. I hope you get it. My pal Sherman Alexie has a story on there, and there's an Ursula Le Guin story there, too. It's kind of an audio old home week for me. The cd is called For Better or Worse. It's available at their website. symphonyspace.org.
The Spanish translation of my new one, Into the Beautiful North, is 99 pages in. The Urrea Factory keeps cranking it out. But smoke is starting to come out of the top of my head.
See you in San Luis Obispo,
L
Yes, I Rule
I've also asked for the Comments section to come back. So you can all get back to commenting.
I leave on Wed. for Cal Poly. I get home and then leave for the Ragdale Foundation dinners. Scott Turow will be there--I've met him at the Rock Bottom Remainders gigs and suppers, though he rarely says anything to me. But Richard Russo will be there! Oh yeah! And the beloved and wild Jane Hamilton. This week, I was at Texas Tech. I got to dig into the William Curry Holden archives while there, in between speaking engagements. I got loads of new Teresita materials. Like, $182 worth of Xeroxes. I think the staff was happy to see me leave. When I got home, I had to attend the ALA's banned books reading. I signed a book and left it for the goddess, Sara Paretsky. My stack of Hummingbirds was cleaned out fast, so Cinderella and I made our way back out of the city, attending to the mom'n'pop duties.
NEWS: I have mentioned before that my story, "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses," has had a good life on NPR's Selected Shorts radio broadcasts. Well, now there's a cd available of the readings. I hope you get it. My pal Sherman Alexie has a story on there, and there's an Ursula Le Guin story there, too. It's kind of an audio old home week for me. The cd is called For Better or Worse. It's available at their website. symphonyspace.org.
The Spanish translation of my new one, Into the Beautiful North, is 99 pages in. The Urrea Factory keeps cranking it out. But smoke is starting to come out of the top of my head.
See you in San Luis Obispo,
L
9/20/2008
HEY! Don't read this--read The Wastelander III, immediately below. But here's a quickie from my visit to SMU last week:
http://blog.smu.edu/forum/2008/09/post_1.html
The Wastelander III
http://blog.smu.edu/forum/2008/09/post_1.html
Ruins, Craters and Cliff Dwellings
[The “Wastelander” writings are a form of prose-sketching I came up with on the road. They are not poems. Though, sometimes, they are poems. Go figure. They are my attempt to capture the fleeting impressions, ideas, inspirations, thoughts of a writer’s mind. Parts I and II can be found in the recent archives. There are IX in total. Other “Wastelanders” from other years, other tours, other countries, can be found all the way back in the blog.]
Sometimes I feel…
I feel like
A fist.
--Porcupine Tree
#
New Mexico.
Nothing to say.
Lightning. Rain. Wind. Sun.
Lightning. Sun. Rain. Wind.
Late in the day. Trying to find a motel.
Cinderella livid
because I manage to miss
the entire city of Tucumcari.
“What?” I say. Blind with exhaustion.
“There was a city there?”
We drag into Santa Rosa,
all of us ready to dissolve
the family and try again
elsewhere.
#
Alququerque: 8:30 am, ready to go.
But the kids are dead asleep.
They only got six or seven hours of sleep in the car
yesterday, so they need another eight or nine
to round it out.
But who am I to talk—Eric and Cinderella
apparently got up while I slept
and went to the work-out room.
Wind’s whining at the hotel window
like the three-headed dog.
#
Tense negotiations last night:
We finally convinced the teenagers
these 700 mile days
weren’t going to work out for us
just so they could get to Las Vegas
by Wednesday.
So we slow down
slow
down
like the sandwich lady
to see Abq, the land,
the desert & sleep
in Flagstaff untattered
uncrazy & not fighting.
#
Chayo
the Creative Writer
announces that
ghosts
ride the wind
like horses.
#
Gas: $86.33. Kill me now.
#
West of ‘Burque:
dead heart of gunslingerland.
The whole state’s
been pan-fried.
#
In and out of black tides
of heat-frozen lava.
Before us,
a Fed Ex double-rig
catches big desert wind
and tries to flip over.
#
I am using my top-secret
psychic powers to shove
drifting semis back
into their own lanes.
#
I’m Galloping to Gallup!
Every loser on this road
probably makes the same joke.
#
Freight train nine miles long.
#
12 abandoned tanker cars
on desert rail spur:
11 of them rusted to the color of scabs;
1 pale startling turquoise.
#
Continental Divide!
Now my pee
will end up in the
Pacific!
Best name:
SHUSH YAZ.
#
Dust-devil walking
along Old 66
looking for cars
to steal.
#
Mystical rocks up high,
ruined trailers down low.
#
Every UFO
is actually a tiny puffy
cloud.
#
Thank you, Jesus
For the Arizona
Welcome Toilet!
The Painted Cliffs
never looked
so lovely.
Every meal
since 1987.
#
AZ.
Soft-Serve cliffs glob
slither & blob
to the road.
#
100 yards
between 40 & 66: barrier of death:
forgotten signs sunburned blind, collapsed
houses, slaughtered
restaurants serving dust to phantoms: one piece
of a roadsign still standing:
TURN
½ MI.
Everybody in America
leaves history behind
at 80 mph.
#
In 200 sq. miles of dirt & burn
1 tree.
#
Oh mound of rock
The size of a VW
Were you once
A mighty Alp?
#
DEAD RIVER.
Boy, no kidding.
#
Weird delights: 6 foot lizard
made of welded pipes
peeking out
from the side of a hill.
#
More weirdness:
Cement dinosaurs, a plastic ostrich
& a yellow school bus
in a dirt lot.
Suddenly
2 T. rexes
running beside the road.
Clearly
anything could happen
to these poor children
waiting to go
to school
in this savage
landscape.
#
Yay!
Daddy’s Science Stop!
We pull in to Meteor Crater!
Everybody in the van highly suspicious
and vaguely embarrassed by Nerd Dad
enthusing about this big freakin’ hole.
“Did you see STARMAN???” I cry.
“Uh, no,” say the teens.
I am trying to move them to awe, when all they are is hot.
They ooh & ahh falsely to make me feel good, as we walk up, then
thunder thru the gift shop looking at expensive chunks
of meteorites & rubber fossils but mostly at
cold drinks and ice cream.
Dino hand-puppets.
But we get outside, and the stunning hole blows us away.
Meg is snapping a hundred pictures. Eric and I are in Big Mon
hiking mode, stomping around the crater in mighty manly strides.
Everybody freaks out because there is a plywood astronaut inside the crater
alleged to be six feet tall, and all the tourists bellow, “He’s TINY from here!”
We all feel fear when we see how really deep the hole is.
How can Flagstaff
of the tall pines and cool breezes
be only 35 miles from here?
We’re in a furnace.
Mountains?
Feels like they’re 2 states away.
Chayo gets in trouble for trying to climb the cliffs.
Megan identifies at least five dads and tourists who are “Creepers.”
You can feel the house-size boulders
falling back to earth.
But screw it.
We’re hot.
#
Flagstaff! The desert, as it always does
every time I drive this road,
gives way to oaks and pines and then
there we are.
We pile into the hotel like scrambling puppies.
Call for pizza.
#
Sunburned, wind-burned,
salty, climbed-out, hiked-out, drived-out,
dried lips, dry nose, when I stop
my poor head keeps whirling
driving
around
and around
the globe.
#
[CULTURAL NOTE of INTEREST:
A Mormon al in a desert gas station today told me that “East Coasters” from Chicago like myself just love southwestern junk like art and Kokopelli and cow skulls and cactuses and stuff, but she personally couldn’t give a darn for it. And she found out on her recent visit to Delaware that Easterners have hot dog stands right on the street, but do not allow you to put ketchup on the franks. I kept saying, “Wow!” and “Uh-huh!” All I was buying was stickers of southwestern junk like art and Kokopelli and cow skulls and cactuses. I felt like I should have bought some of the Mormon books she had on the counter. But…I didn’t.]
#
Watching the stunning flood damage on TV.
And the tornado damage in the Panhandle.
All things we somehow
escaped.
Our Little Brown van w/ its small dramas,
dreams, hopes, regrets, resentments, complaints
& hilarity,
its cooler and water bottles, its bags of cookies—
BBC Radio 1 on the satellite radio—
all around us, close behind us:
apocalypse.
#
Thursday, June 19
Without this notebook
I wouldn’t know where I was
or what day it is.
Dagoberto Gilb sent me
a hilarious e-mail scolding me
for blurbing a book he doesn’t like.
I swore I’d never blurb a book again—it’s just
that I’m trying to be a team player.
He replied: “You
ought to be a senator.”
And e-mail from our beloved Sheriff Ogden in Yuma.
So far from home, yet still in the circle
of my tribe.
#
WALNUT CANYON.
Cliff dwellings & ruins.
We sweat-hiked in the brutal light.
Awe
at the old Sinagua
cave homes.
Assaulted by sly lizards.
Chayo & I
were stalked by a flycatcher, who
flew from tree-top to tree-top
watching us
as if new were zoo animals
of a particularly curious mein,
and, well,
we were.
Yucca
Indian paintbrush
Juniper
Mormon tea
Cliffrose
The uplifting scent
of piñon.
We stood in the two-room ruins
of the pueblo—human hands 800 years ago
packed that mud, lifted these stones:
Human voices, coughs, laughter 800 years ago
washed across these walls with the cooking smoke:
rabbit, wild turkey. Talk.
Babies crying.
Ghostly feeling of the stones.
Who fought w/ her sister in this corner?
Who dreamed here on a rainy night?
Who leaned here, on this wall,
tired from a long good day
of work?
Chayo and I
caught a massive cicada.
In the parking lot,
Workers who have been hauling
landslide rocks out of the canyon
since dawn,
bent over, heaving,
doing the sunstroke dry barf,
guzzling water. And
what can you do?
What can you say?
“Thanks!” Cindy called.
“Great job!”
They waved.
They smiled.
They hung their heads
and lit smokes.
Sweat hitting the blacktop
like hot rain.
Megan laughed at us for saying
“Thank you.”
But how can she know
yet
what is required
by the spirits?
We thank the shadows and the dead.
We thank the echoes of the gone.
We thank the lizard and the cicada.
We thanks the heat and the silence
and the brittle little blossoms
of the cliffrose.
And we bend back to our task,
which is The Going.
9/11
[The “Wastelander” writings are a form of prose-sketching I came up with on the road. They are not poems. Though, sometimes, they are poems. Go figure. They are my attempt to capture the fleeting impressions, ideas, inspirations, thoughts of a writer’s mind. Parts I and II can be found in the recent archives. There are IX in total. Other “Wastelanders” from other years, other tours, other countries, can be found all the way back in the blog.]
Sometimes I feel…
I feel like
A fist.
--Porcupine Tree
#
New Mexico.
Nothing to say.
Lightning. Rain. Wind. Sun.
Lightning. Sun. Rain. Wind.
Late in the day. Trying to find a motel.
Cinderella livid
because I manage to miss
the entire city of Tucumcari.
“What?” I say. Blind with exhaustion.
“There was a city there?”
We drag into Santa Rosa,
all of us ready to dissolve
the family and try again
elsewhere.
#
Alququerque: 8:30 am, ready to go.
But the kids are dead asleep.
They only got six or seven hours of sleep in the car
yesterday, so they need another eight or nine
to round it out.
But who am I to talk—Eric and Cinderella
apparently got up while I slept
and went to the work-out room.
Wind’s whining at the hotel window
like the three-headed dog.
#
Tense negotiations last night:
We finally convinced the teenagers
these 700 mile days
weren’t going to work out for us
just so they could get to Las Vegas
by Wednesday.
So we slow down
slow
down
like the sandwich lady
to see Abq, the land,
the desert & sleep
in Flagstaff untattered
uncrazy & not fighting.
#
Chayo
the Creative Writer
announces that
ghosts
ride the wind
like horses.
#
Gas: $86.33. Kill me now.
#
West of ‘Burque:
dead heart of gunslingerland.
The whole state’s
been pan-fried.
#
In and out of black tides
of heat-frozen lava.
Before us,
a Fed Ex double-rig
catches big desert wind
and tries to flip over.
#
I am using my top-secret
psychic powers to shove
drifting semis back
into their own lanes.
#
I’m Galloping to Gallup!
Every loser on this road
probably makes the same joke.
#
Freight train nine miles long.
#
12 abandoned tanker cars
on desert rail spur:
11 of them rusted to the color of scabs;
1 pale startling turquoise.
#
Continental Divide!
Now my pee
will end up in the
Pacific!
Best name:
SHUSH YAZ.
#
Dust-devil walking
along Old 66
looking for cars
to steal.
#
Mystical rocks up high,
ruined trailers down low.
#
Every UFO
is actually a tiny puffy
cloud.
#
Thank you, Jesus
For the Arizona
Welcome Toilet!
The Painted Cliffs
never looked
so lovely.
Every meal
since 1987.
#
AZ.
Soft-Serve cliffs glob
slither & blob
to the road.
#
100 yards
between 40 & 66: barrier of death:
forgotten signs sunburned blind, collapsed
houses, slaughtered
restaurants serving dust to phantoms: one piece
of a roadsign still standing:
TURN
½ MI.
Everybody in America
leaves history behind
at 80 mph.
#
In 200 sq. miles of dirt & burn
1 tree.
#
Oh mound of rock
The size of a VW
Were you once
A mighty Alp?
#
DEAD RIVER.
Boy, no kidding.
#
Weird delights: 6 foot lizard
made of welded pipes
peeking out
from the side of a hill.
#
More weirdness:
Cement dinosaurs, a plastic ostrich
& a yellow school bus
in a dirt lot.
Suddenly
2 T. rexes
running beside the road.
Clearly
anything could happen
to these poor children
waiting to go
to school
in this savage
landscape.
#
Yay!
Daddy’s Science Stop!
We pull in to Meteor Crater!
Everybody in the van highly suspicious
and vaguely embarrassed by Nerd Dad
enthusing about this big freakin’ hole.
“Did you see STARMAN???” I cry.
“Uh, no,” say the teens.
I am trying to move them to awe, when all they are is hot.
They ooh & ahh falsely to make me feel good, as we walk up, then
thunder thru the gift shop looking at expensive chunks
of meteorites & rubber fossils but mostly at
cold drinks and ice cream.
Dino hand-puppets.
But we get outside, and the stunning hole blows us away.
Meg is snapping a hundred pictures. Eric and I are in Big Mon
hiking mode, stomping around the crater in mighty manly strides.
Everybody freaks out because there is a plywood astronaut inside the crater
alleged to be six feet tall, and all the tourists bellow, “He’s TINY from here!”
We all feel fear when we see how really deep the hole is.
How can Flagstaff
of the tall pines and cool breezes
be only 35 miles from here?
We’re in a furnace.
Mountains?
Feels like they’re 2 states away.
Chayo gets in trouble for trying to climb the cliffs.
Megan identifies at least five dads and tourists who are “Creepers.”
You can feel the house-size boulders
falling back to earth.
But screw it.
We’re hot.
#
Flagstaff! The desert, as it always does
every time I drive this road,
gives way to oaks and pines and then
there we are.
We pile into the hotel like scrambling puppies.
Call for pizza.
#
Sunburned, wind-burned,
salty, climbed-out, hiked-out, drived-out,
dried lips, dry nose, when I stop
my poor head keeps whirling
driving
around
and around
the globe.
#
[CULTURAL NOTE of INTEREST:
A Mormon al in a desert gas station today told me that “East Coasters” from Chicago like myself just love southwestern junk like art and Kokopelli and cow skulls and cactuses and stuff, but she personally couldn’t give a darn for it. And she found out on her recent visit to Delaware that Easterners have hot dog stands right on the street, but do not allow you to put ketchup on the franks. I kept saying, “Wow!” and “Uh-huh!” All I was buying was stickers of southwestern junk like art and Kokopelli and cow skulls and cactuses. I felt like I should have bought some of the Mormon books she had on the counter. But…I didn’t.]
#
Watching the stunning flood damage on TV.
And the tornado damage in the Panhandle.
All things we somehow
escaped.
Our Little Brown van w/ its small dramas,
dreams, hopes, regrets, resentments, complaints
& hilarity,
its cooler and water bottles, its bags of cookies—
BBC Radio 1 on the satellite radio—
all around us, close behind us:
apocalypse.
#
Thursday, June 19
Without this notebook
I wouldn’t know where I was
or what day it is.
Dagoberto Gilb sent me
a hilarious e-mail scolding me
for blurbing a book he doesn’t like.
I swore I’d never blurb a book again—it’s just
that I’m trying to be a team player.
He replied: “You
ought to be a senator.”
And e-mail from our beloved Sheriff Ogden in Yuma.
So far from home, yet still in the circle
of my tribe.
#
WALNUT CANYON.
Cliff dwellings & ruins.
We sweat-hiked in the brutal light.
Awe
at the old Sinagua
cave homes.
Assaulted by sly lizards.
Chayo & I
were stalked by a flycatcher, who
flew from tree-top to tree-top
watching us
as if new were zoo animals
of a particularly curious mein,
and, well,
we were.
Yucca
Indian paintbrush
Juniper
Mormon tea
Cliffrose
The uplifting scent
of piñon.
We stood in the two-room ruins
of the pueblo—human hands 800 years ago
packed that mud, lifted these stones:
Human voices, coughs, laughter 800 years ago
washed across these walls with the cooking smoke:
rabbit, wild turkey. Talk.
Babies crying.
Ghostly feeling of the stones.
Who fought w/ her sister in this corner?
Who dreamed here on a rainy night?
Who leaned here, on this wall,
tired from a long good day
of work?
Chayo and I
caught a massive cicada.
In the parking lot,
Workers who have been hauling
landslide rocks out of the canyon
since dawn,
bent over, heaving,
doing the sunstroke dry barf,
guzzling water. And
what can you do?
What can you say?
“Thanks!” Cindy called.
“Great job!”
They waved.
They smiled.
They hung their heads
and lit smokes.
Sweat hitting the blacktop
like hot rain.
Megan laughed at us for saying
“Thank you.”
But how can she know
yet
what is required
by the spirits?
We thank the shadows and the dead.
We thank the echoes of the gone.
We thank the lizard and the cicada.
We thanks the heat and the silence
and the brittle little blossoms
of the cliffrose.
And we bend back to our task,
which is The Going.
9/11/2008
Where were you?
I was on my way to work that morning, driving to Chicago on the Eisenhower Expressway. My kids were at school, and I had left Cinderella to nap on the couch after her early morning. I was listening to the Mancow show on FM--dirty jokes and insane phone pranks. I probably had a go-cup of coffee. And Mancow said that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. I couldn't believe he'd have the gall to make such a sick show, but you know how those "MOrning Madhouse" shows are.
But he kept saying, "I'm not kidding. I swear to God--it loooks like a Schwarzenneger movie." I called Cinderella on the cell and said, "Turn on the TV." Just then, the radio crew started screaming as they watched the second plane hit.
She begged me to head home. "Just turn around." Idon't know what I was thinking. I was convinced I had to get to class. But I said I'd come home early.
By the time I got to campus, it was already bizarre. Fighter planes were in the air over Chicago--you could see them going past the Sears Tower. There were only about six students in class, and they had no idea what had just happened. I sent them home. "Attend to this day," I told them. "This is your Pearl Harbor. You must go attend to it." No doubt, a few of them went home and crawled back in bed.
When I got out, the campus was eerily empty. The A-V department had set up TVs in one lobby. Students with gray faces were watching the towers burn. And on another monitor, the Pentagon was in flames. Several Middle Eastern students were glued to the sets--the women in head scarves. And people were looking at them, and someone said, "You guys need to get inside somewhere." They left.
I headed for the car, and found black SUVs parked at building entrances. FBI? I don't know. Feds on campus, though. Jets above. On the radio, Mancow in fear--they were evacuating downtown, and he didn't know if he should leave the radio station.
By the time I got home, the first building had fallen.
And now, with The Today Show rebroadcasting the old coverage, I am going to go to work again, down the same road. Just another Thursday. And, like everyone else on the road, I will be wondering what, exactly, happened to my country--and the world--that day. Many of us stare at the distant towers of dntn Chi and wonder if the fire is coming here someday.
In sorrow, embracing daylight....
Dallas Uber Alles
I was on my way to work that morning, driving to Chicago on the Eisenhower Expressway. My kids were at school, and I had left Cinderella to nap on the couch after her early morning. I was listening to the Mancow show on FM--dirty jokes and insane phone pranks. I probably had a go-cup of coffee. And Mancow said that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. I couldn't believe he'd have the gall to make such a sick show, but you know how those "MOrning Madhouse" shows are.
But he kept saying, "I'm not kidding. I swear to God--it loooks like a Schwarzenneger movie." I called Cinderella on the cell and said, "Turn on the TV." Just then, the radio crew started screaming as they watched the second plane hit.
She begged me to head home. "Just turn around." Idon't know what I was thinking. I was convinced I had to get to class. But I said I'd come home early.
By the time I got to campus, it was already bizarre. Fighter planes were in the air over Chicago--you could see them going past the Sears Tower. There were only about six students in class, and they had no idea what had just happened. I sent them home. "Attend to this day," I told them. "This is your Pearl Harbor. You must go attend to it." No doubt, a few of them went home and crawled back in bed.
When I got out, the campus was eerily empty. The A-V department had set up TVs in one lobby. Students with gray faces were watching the towers burn. And on another monitor, the Pentagon was in flames. Several Middle Eastern students were glued to the sets--the women in head scarves. And people were looking at them, and someone said, "You guys need to get inside somewhere." They left.
I headed for the car, and found black SUVs parked at building entrances. FBI? I don't know. Feds on campus, though. Jets above. On the radio, Mancow in fear--they were evacuating downtown, and he didn't know if he should leave the radio station.
By the time I got home, the first building had fallen.
And now, with The Today Show rebroadcasting the old coverage, I am going to go to work again, down the same road. Just another Thursday. And, like everyone else on the road, I will be wondering what, exactly, happened to my country--and the world--that day. Many of us stare at the distant towers of dntn Chi and wonder if the fire is coming here someday.
In sorrow, embracing daylight....
9/10/2008
I went again. Just got back last night from Dallas. The week before, I was in Clinton, South Carolina, at Presbyterian College. This week I was at Southern Methodist. On Friday, I'll be at the First United Church of Christ in Champaign/Urbana. I guess the good Baptist types from my ol' Tijuana mission days who sent me e-mails that I was in league with Satan because of Teresita will be vexed that I'm this season's Big Bogus Bono for the Believers.
This is what it's like: I taught on Thursday. Went to U of I to see the football game (Eric, of course, is in drumline). Sunday, fly to Dallas. Two strangers pick me up at the airport and drive me to a very nice and semi-swanky hotel I've never heard of and couldn't find again if you paid me. They dropped me off and I went to my cushy room and fell upon the king size bed (awesome mattress, y'all) and called for room service. I'ze hongry. Watched cable. Up at 7:00. Shower. Was going to iron my clothes--oops! No iron! Ben Johnson, only a semi-stranger, picked me up for breakfast. There, we met two strangers. After that, Ben and I went across town to the NPR station, where I met a bunch of other strangers. Then we did a live call-in show where strangers sent messages and made comments. I shook hands with all the stranger there and Ben took me down to SMU where he handed me off to a new collection of strangers. These strangers had a nice lunch set up in a room packed with young strangers who watched me chew and asked me questions. I stopped eating after 1/8 sandwich because I felt like a freak. The students were extremely nice, however.
I was dropped off at the campus coffee shop for 45 minutes of reading and iPod abuse. A small crowd of students spied me through the window and came in for autographs. It was a highlight of the day. Megan, Amrita--I remember you! And your pals. Then, strangers collected me and dropped me off at the big theater for my talk. Pat, my former sister-in-law, was there. Along with her were 900 students and faculty. The joint filled up all the way, and the overflow crowd spilled into a room next door with video monitors. I wrote to my publisher that I'm starting to feel like Hugo Chavez. There were so many people there that my cuz, the Mexican Consul General, Enriqeu Hubbard Urrea, and his delightful wife, my beloved Mariana, couldn't get in! They had to watch me on the TV sets--my face, no doubt, swollen to the size of a boiled hamhock. But they forgave me.
After the event, I signed books for a bit, but had to rush off to--supper with strangers. I dragged the Hubbard clan along. We sat in a room with folks we didn't know, and all I could eat was a styrofoam bowl of salad and garbanzo beans tossed on top. Gack. But, again, everybody's asking you all kinds of inisgthful questions, and it won't do to burp, snort, spill, or get stuff stuck between your teeth. After supper--a lecture to: strangers! And: questions from strangers. Wow. I live my life in places I do not know, on schedules I do not make, with people I have never met and will never see again. I never know when a Mexi-hater Immigration Warrior will appear and pop off like a roman candle.
After this event, the Hubbard clan and I got lost, wandering from parking building to parking building in the dark, Enrique saying, "I parked on a flat level, and this level's not flat!" Finally finding the consular scary black monster-wagon, we made off like gangsters to the massive consul's manse. Yee-haw! Their dog, a poodle named Mr. Anderson, after Neo in the Matrix (you are learning amazing secret details about the Mexican gov't here, Minutemen!) is a real lover and licked the terror sweat off my forearms from the day's events.
Mariana heated me up some yummy food and we gossipped and laughed and I went to bed under the blessed AC and had strange dreams. In the morning, it was shower, pack, b'fast, into the black death-mobile, back to the airport, back on the plane, back to O'Hare listening to the Pod and reading the astonishing new book coming soon from Little, Brown [this is an unpaid endorsement], The Horse Boy by Rupert Isaacson. You must read this book, no shite. If you at all enjoyed Hummingbird, watch for this (and the concurrent movie) and snap it up. I'm reading it in galleys because I have to write a blurb for it. It's a mind-warping true story about a dad, an autistic son, and a horse journey across Mongolia to meet shamans to see if they can heal the boy.
Suddenly, I was home, and Cinderella and I were rushing off to get lunch, talking about school and grades and O'Bama vs Palin and the in-laws. The current in-laws, I mean. I was looking around thinking: Where am I? Who am I? I was a Talking Head for a second: This is not my beautiful house! I was already struggling to hold on to memories of South Carolina, and the whole wildness of the American University gig in D.C. seemingly nine years ago was fading fast. All I can tell you for sure is that people at all three gigs were saying, "Rock star" behind my back. And what about Bread Loaf?
Ha. Rock star. I wish. I'd have shiatsu, a bus driver, and mo' money. Wait--I'm getting the mo' money part. I forgot. I'd be skinnier, though.
I don't know what to do about the strangers, though. In Dallas, I went to pee, and about six young guys started saying, "That's the dude!" At least nobody at the next urinal turned around to see and peed down my leg.
What a wonderful, vexing, nerve-wracking, utterly pedestrian, blessed, irritating, confusing, delightful, exhausting phase of life. I have stumbled into a dream. Playing the Big Game, seeing how much we can score before time out.
I went to getChayo at dance class. Gonna eat cereal for supper because I can't stand food no mo! Up for class in the morning, then, you know, on the road again. Going to preach it at the Church of Christ.
See ya--L
Zydeco Apocalypse
This is what it's like: I taught on Thursday. Went to U of I to see the football game (Eric, of course, is in drumline). Sunday, fly to Dallas. Two strangers pick me up at the airport and drive me to a very nice and semi-swanky hotel I've never heard of and couldn't find again if you paid me. They dropped me off and I went to my cushy room and fell upon the king size bed (awesome mattress, y'all) and called for room service. I'ze hongry. Watched cable. Up at 7:00. Shower. Was going to iron my clothes--oops! No iron! Ben Johnson, only a semi-stranger, picked me up for breakfast. There, we met two strangers. After that, Ben and I went across town to the NPR station, where I met a bunch of other strangers. Then we did a live call-in show where strangers sent messages and made comments. I shook hands with all the stranger there and Ben took me down to SMU where he handed me off to a new collection of strangers. These strangers had a nice lunch set up in a room packed with young strangers who watched me chew and asked me questions. I stopped eating after 1/8 sandwich because I felt like a freak. The students were extremely nice, however.
I was dropped off at the campus coffee shop for 45 minutes of reading and iPod abuse. A small crowd of students spied me through the window and came in for autographs. It was a highlight of the day. Megan, Amrita--I remember you! And your pals. Then, strangers collected me and dropped me off at the big theater for my talk. Pat, my former sister-in-law, was there. Along with her were 900 students and faculty. The joint filled up all the way, and the overflow crowd spilled into a room next door with video monitors. I wrote to my publisher that I'm starting to feel like Hugo Chavez. There were so many people there that my cuz, the Mexican Consul General, Enriqeu Hubbard Urrea, and his delightful wife, my beloved Mariana, couldn't get in! They had to watch me on the TV sets--my face, no doubt, swollen to the size of a boiled hamhock. But they forgave me.
After the event, I signed books for a bit, but had to rush off to--supper with strangers. I dragged the Hubbard clan along. We sat in a room with folks we didn't know, and all I could eat was a styrofoam bowl of salad and garbanzo beans tossed on top. Gack. But, again, everybody's asking you all kinds of inisgthful questions, and it won't do to burp, snort, spill, or get stuff stuck between your teeth. After supper--a lecture to: strangers! And: questions from strangers. Wow. I live my life in places I do not know, on schedules I do not make, with people I have never met and will never see again. I never know when a Mexi-hater Immigration Warrior will appear and pop off like a roman candle.
After this event, the Hubbard clan and I got lost, wandering from parking building to parking building in the dark, Enrique saying, "I parked on a flat level, and this level's not flat!" Finally finding the consular scary black monster-wagon, we made off like gangsters to the massive consul's manse. Yee-haw! Their dog, a poodle named Mr. Anderson, after Neo in the Matrix (you are learning amazing secret details about the Mexican gov't here, Minutemen!) is a real lover and licked the terror sweat off my forearms from the day's events.
Mariana heated me up some yummy food and we gossipped and laughed and I went to bed under the blessed AC and had strange dreams. In the morning, it was shower, pack, b'fast, into the black death-mobile, back to the airport, back on the plane, back to O'Hare listening to the Pod and reading the astonishing new book coming soon from Little, Brown [this is an unpaid endorsement], The Horse Boy by Rupert Isaacson. You must read this book, no shite. If you at all enjoyed Hummingbird, watch for this (and the concurrent movie) and snap it up. I'm reading it in galleys because I have to write a blurb for it. It's a mind-warping true story about a dad, an autistic son, and a horse journey across Mongolia to meet shamans to see if they can heal the boy.
Suddenly, I was home, and Cinderella and I were rushing off to get lunch, talking about school and grades and O'Bama vs Palin and the in-laws. The current in-laws, I mean. I was looking around thinking: Where am I? Who am I? I was a Talking Head for a second: This is not my beautiful house! I was already struggling to hold on to memories of South Carolina, and the whole wildness of the American University gig in D.C. seemingly nine years ago was fading fast. All I can tell you for sure is that people at all three gigs were saying, "Rock star" behind my back. And what about Bread Loaf?
Ha. Rock star. I wish. I'd have shiatsu, a bus driver, and mo' money. Wait--I'm getting the mo' money part. I forgot. I'd be skinnier, though.
I don't know what to do about the strangers, though. In Dallas, I went to pee, and about six young guys started saying, "That's the dude!" At least nobody at the next urinal turned around to see and peed down my leg.
What a wonderful, vexing, nerve-wracking, utterly pedestrian, blessed, irritating, confusing, delightful, exhausting phase of life. I have stumbled into a dream. Playing the Big Game, seeing how much we can score before time out.
I went to getChayo at dance class. Gonna eat cereal for supper because I can't stand food no mo! Up for class in the morning, then, you know, on the road again. Going to preach it at the Church of Christ.
See ya--L
9/01/2008
Oh, my beloved Louisiana.
We left Lafayette in 1999 to come here, to the land of bratwursts and architecture. A move to Chicagoland (as opposed to Acadiana) seemed like the best thing at a major juncture in our family--and my career--history. But we have lamented the gone world of zydeco and Spanish moss, Creole accents and andouille sausage, jambalaya and Beausoleil, swamps and gators and fratois and big storms....cane and turtles and nutria rats and spoonbills and egrets and herons. Is it a sign that a great blue heron came to our Naperville pond yesterday, and the fish started jumping just like sac-a-lait in Bayou Teche? Oh, Lord--the eye of Gustav is passing right over Lafayette.
New Orleans--the storm skirted it. But we watch the Mississippi running backwards, and the floods sneaking in the north end. Maybe the levees will hold. Maybe not. But most people have evacuated. Many of them have gone to...Lafayette.
My dear friend Darrell Bourque, poet laureate of Louisiana, is hunkered down on his family place in Church Point, across I-10 from Lafayette. They've got water and food and axes. Family has joined them. I wish I were with them now. My friend, the poet Lana Wiggins, survived Katrina in the heart of NO, and now she's back in Lafayette, teaching in my old English department. Pursued all over the south by furies.
The CNN reports are now suggesteing "devastation" all along the Highway 90 corridor. For anyone who loves Southwest Louisiana, this is a terrible day. Terrible. New Iberia, Abbeville, Butte La Rose, Lafayette. All in danger. Those who love Tabasco sauce--your beautiful island is in the apth of ruin. All those James Lee Burke books we all love and read: set in the hurrican'es path. If you don't know the strange surreal gem that is Cajun country, I can only suggest here the mysteries and beauty at risk today. Oaks so old, their branches have grown whole gardens of ferns and smaller trees. Can you imagine? The vast Achafalaya swamp with its ancient cedars, poisoned by salt water. Beloved and isolate Cameron Parish, wiped out by Katrina--nothing but beach. What will happen now? Who knows?
Imagine the floods in Acadiana. The water's already rising. We just watched a reporter standing at one of our romantic spots, overlooking the river. Floods are rising. Imagine the alligators in the streets. The snapping turtles and the fire ants. Imagine the water mocassins in your yard.
I'm watching. Are you? Hold a good thought for the bayous. I leave for yet another speaking engagement in a few hours. South Carolina. I'll be in my hotel tonight, glued to CNN. Watch it with me. It'll almost be like we're all together for one more night.
Say a prayer for the Bourques.
L
We left Lafayette in 1999 to come here, to the land of bratwursts and architecture. A move to Chicagoland (as opposed to Acadiana) seemed like the best thing at a major juncture in our family--and my career--history. But we have lamented the gone world of zydeco and Spanish moss, Creole accents and andouille sausage, jambalaya and Beausoleil, swamps and gators and fratois and big storms....cane and turtles and nutria rats and spoonbills and egrets and herons. Is it a sign that a great blue heron came to our Naperville pond yesterday, and the fish started jumping just like sac-a-lait in Bayou Teche? Oh, Lord--the eye of Gustav is passing right over Lafayette.
New Orleans--the storm skirted it. But we watch the Mississippi running backwards, and the floods sneaking in the north end. Maybe the levees will hold. Maybe not. But most people have evacuated. Many of them have gone to...Lafayette.
My dear friend Darrell Bourque, poet laureate of Louisiana, is hunkered down on his family place in Church Point, across I-10 from Lafayette. They've got water and food and axes. Family has joined them. I wish I were with them now. My friend, the poet Lana Wiggins, survived Katrina in the heart of NO, and now she's back in Lafayette, teaching in my old English department. Pursued all over the south by furies.
The CNN reports are now suggesteing "devastation" all along the Highway 90 corridor. For anyone who loves Southwest Louisiana, this is a terrible day. Terrible. New Iberia, Abbeville, Butte La Rose, Lafayette. All in danger. Those who love Tabasco sauce--your beautiful island is in the apth of ruin. All those James Lee Burke books we all love and read: set in the hurrican'es path. If you don't know the strange surreal gem that is Cajun country, I can only suggest here the mysteries and beauty at risk today. Oaks so old, their branches have grown whole gardens of ferns and smaller trees. Can you imagine? The vast Achafalaya swamp with its ancient cedars, poisoned by salt water. Beloved and isolate Cameron Parish, wiped out by Katrina--nothing but beach. What will happen now? Who knows?
Imagine the floods in Acadiana. The water's already rising. We just watched a reporter standing at one of our romantic spots, overlooking the river. Floods are rising. Imagine the alligators in the streets. The snapping turtles and the fire ants. Imagine the water mocassins in your yard.
I'm watching. Are you? Hold a good thought for the bayous. I leave for yet another speaking engagement in a few hours. South Carolina. I'll be in my hotel tonight, glued to CNN. Watch it with me. It'll almost be like we're all together for one more night.
Say a prayer for the Bourques.
L
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