Merry Christmas book lovers!

I stole this from Amy's blog and though it's a time suck to load up, it's a great tool. See my widget lower left though I've only just begun to add books. The process made even more enjoyable as I scan by listening to new downloads by Angela Desveaux, Summer Hymns, Joseph Arthur, The Be Good Tanyas, Ray LaMontagne, A Girl Called Eddy, the Weepies, Sufjan Stephens, and the Decemberists. Merry Christmas from Merry Rocheport! See you next year.

Same curtain, different peek

I suppose I am allowed to quote an excerpt from an essay of mine, “Double or Nothing” appearing in the current Gettysburg Review (and hopefully you’ll order one and read the rest):

--I began to feel a distinct deja vu. Suddenly I was transported back to Boston where I lived fifteen years or so earlier. At that time in my life, I practiced a fervent faith that led to serendipitous encounters on a regular basis. God sometimes seemed to lift a curtain on His infinite, overlapping plot lines and let me in on the act. It kept life lively and expectations of the unexpected high. Uncanny occurrences, or “divine appointments,”, as the group I was associated with called them, served to increase the belief that we were participating in a grand tale on a cosmic scale. The “supernatural” intersected the “natural,” which was a totally reasonable occurrence to people in thrall to God.--

A week ago, someone named Stacy posted a comment to my blog. She had just read the above mentioned essay and took the time to google me, find my blog and post her reaction. Nothing pleases a writer more, or this writer anyway, than having someone other than your husband, mother or best friend not only read but give feedback on something you’ve written (not to diminish the responses of spouses, parents and friends but they’re liable to be just a wee bit biased.)

Anyway, that night Anthony (my good friend from my Houston writing group and the one who pioneered our moves to Columbia) and his wife Dyan were over. Anthony had been one of the first readers and critiquers of that essay so I mentioned Stacy’s comments. Come to find out, he knew Stacy. He’d not only met her at the Calvin Conference in Michigan last April but he’d bought her new book there and she’d signed it! Stacy and I have been emailing back and forth ever since.

Then, this morning, I got a new post from Amy, a long lost friend of mine from my Boston days (which are the context for much of my essay). Amy had been at a blog, seen a link to Stacy’s site and gone to check it out. The current post at Stacy’s site linked her to my blog! Amy’s subsequent post was entitled, “Divine Connections or Coincidences...” which, unbeknownst to her, was the subject of my essay. Did you follow all that?

December 21, 1996 (posted a day early)

If you waited a long time, if you waited all your life for the love of your life to come along, then December 21st, being the longest night of the year, is the best possible date to marry the one you love. So I did and I did and I do.

Happy 10th Anniversary, my one and only double you.

Oh, Santa, one more update

Hayley's
LATEST List:
moon sand
gift srtifercit
candy baskit
stuff animal
two gowld fishes
supriys!
mayc up cit
a wener dog with clos (real)

Oldest ______ West of the Mississippi

A refrain we've heard repeated almost everywhere we've stopped in Missouri. Seems every little town in this state has its claim on something being the oldest of its kind "west of the Mississippi," whether it's the oldest "continously running" hotel, bar, plank road, school, or restaurant (which leaves you wondering where the oldest non-continously running versions are scattered and what the heck all the other western states were doing in the meantime besides watching now extinct prairie grasses grow). On Friday morning, in anticipation of our upcoming tenth anniversary, I shoved a cup of the freshest coffee west of the Mississippi under my husband's sleeping nose and shouted, "Pack yer bags! We're off to the oldest town west of the Mississippi!"

And so we rambled down the road to St. Louis where we took a hard right and ended up in St. Gennevieve which was, by US of A standards west of the Mississippi, very old (1740's). Almost a hundred years older than our own little old Rocheport. We stayed in the cozy and romantic carriage house of the Inn St. Gemme Beauvais (circa 1848) and from there wandered historic streets settled by the French. Although the town was/is? French, the restaurant offerings were reminiscent of Boston diners I've declined so we resorted to bread, cheese and fruit in front the glow of our little fireplace and, as the town shut down at 5, an assortment of videos from the authentically antique front desk.

The shops (apart from the lovely one pictured above) held more promise, mostly "antique" shops that we poked and scavenged for usable junk. I have started a collection of what I've learned are "Frozen Charlottes" which I picked up for 2 to 10 bucks when I was lucky. I passed on them in other places that charged 15 or 20.



Also of interest was the museum, where all information was hand written or hand typed and attributed to this citizen or that, so that the articles described felt like they had actually been used by real people as opposed to having been made for museum exhibits. One of the things I found strangely fascinating were the intricate "hair wreaths" and "hair jewelry", (yes, items made from human hair though you would not guess it) which are now, sadly, a lost art form. The town was surprisingly devoid of Christmas (or any, for that matter) shoppers which made for pleasant browsing and strolling about.

On our way back to Rocheport, we spent another day in St. Charles (left of St. Louis) which was settled by the British and is also old, but not as old, and tres charming. There were plently of shops here and we walked the brick streets till I got shin splints. It was all lit for Christmas, carollers strolled, costumed Christmas characters (the Town Crier, the Sugar Plum Fairy, Father Christmas, etc.) spread good cheer. A lovely winter weekend away, west of the Mississippi.

These are their Those Were The Days

My neighbor (her child is in the middle) took this on Thursday before our foot of snow accumulated. With a day off school, how could anxious kids with a new sleds wait any longer? I hope you lived somewhere that offered you this thrill as a kid. Memories of my own childhood winters in New Jersey before we moved to Texas were part of the reason I wanted to move somewhere that had seasons. Enjoy, my lovelies!

Biggest Snow in a Decade

No school today!

It's like Houston before a hurricane--people out buying snow shovels, propane, salt, etc. in preparation for the big snow expected later today (20 inches!) Old hat to Midwesterners but an adventure to us city slickers. I'm about to go out for supplies which probably should include a snow shovel but how are we going to shovel .2 mile of drive? I just hope our power doesn't go out which is a not uncommon occurance in a storm. Without a storm, it went out on Thanksgiving Day. Maybe too many turkeys in too many ovens? Candlelight is always fun but it could get a mite chilly in here. Stay tuned for snowfall photos! Unless the power goes out...

Incubation Station

Ever since The Glen conference last August, when I was taken with the stunning assemblages created by the visual arts workshoppers, I have been collecting bits and pieces with vague ideas of how I wanted to use them. That, and having recently read A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit which set me spinning over the idea that parts of ancient maps labeled "terra incognito" are where I now sit and type. How that mapmaker would long to see what we have seen, how nearly or not things resemble his wildest imaginings. And that centuries from now my descendants will have intimate understanding of time and space in ways we now only inkle at. So I am gathering copies of ancient maps, birds and bird cages, old wooden boxes, dolls, and other assorted bits to grapple with all this visually. It's been fun combing old junk shops and antique stores, stumbling on things that you know will be the perfect whatever for whatever. I love the chain reactions all forms of art create and how no one can predict what their song or painting or poem will inspire in another. Nor can the one who will be creating it.

The Joy of a Dirty House

The Thanksgiving week has ended. The last visitors (my parents) disappeared around the bend in the drive this morning, headed back to Texas as we waved a final goodbye. We wandered slowly back inside and the state of the house gradually registered: there were dirty sheets on every bed, dirty towels in every bathroom, trash in every bin, the 100th round of clean dishes awaiting removal from the dishwasher, there were crumbs where no crumbs have been before, leftovers towering in the fridge, left behind items amassing on the dining room table. In a word, a glorious mess. Glorious because that mess represented a week chock full of laughter, squeals, meals, bonfires, gifts, journeys, hikes, neighbors, friends, chatter, burst frozen cokes, skinned knees, door slammed fingers, pumpkin bread, movies, recitals, country roads and sunsets. My sister and her family returned to Baton Rouge, my 101 yr. old grandfather returned to Florida. Our house is relatively quiet once again and in the morning we’ll return to work. We’ll slowly work on restoring the house and remember as we change the sheets who recently nursed a dream there. I can only hope, as you gear up for demands of the week ahead, that your house is half as dirty as mine is.

Self Portrait as a Bovine

I can only attribute that last post to the fact that my computer went down and after not having it for 4 days, had to reload all software and thus lost all my email, addresses, calendar, etc. which, theoretically, if backed up, should not happen but did, and then I got strep throat. So there.

4 legged solidarity

I can only attribute this to the opening of deer hunting season.

Relief coming soon

Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression is a new literary journal set to debut in mid-November. My literary amigos Karen Miedrich-Luo and Mark Bertrand serve as creative nonfiction and fiction editors, respectively. The first issue of Relief will feature poetry by Scott Cairns, fiction by Al Haley and Michael Snyder and nonfiction by Luci Shaw and Anthony Connolly, as well as many others, including poetry by yours truly (though I'd submitted my work before Karen or Mark were twinkles in the editor's (Kimberly Culbertson) eyes--promise!) I have it on good authority that the first issue rocks. Full disclosure: due to the referral of a certain newly appointed Relief editor of the nonfiction variety, Relief approached me about designing their first cover. (Lest you think I traded services for publication, it happened after my work was accepted! I swear! I knew this would look bad!) Nevertheless, you may judge the quality for yourself...so, order now! (This was NOT a paid political announcement...)

The forest sans the trees

For the last two months I’ve experienced the sensation of living within a Polaroid. We arrived here the first of June when to describe this place as green and verdant would be to expose a severe deficiency of superlatives in one’s vocabulary. Our property, unattended for a mere two weeks, was shoulder high in grass and weeds and hay and whatever else grows green and sky high. A machete, had we had one, would have been the garden tool of choice just to clear our front walk. There had been a big hill rolling up toward the western horizon, we’d even walked it in February, but it was nowhere to be seen. Instead, in every direction, thick peninsulas of trees enclosed us like a walled city. Lush underbrush filled in any chinks in the solid walls of green, a haven for the wildlife that regularly ventured from their protective cover: deer, fox, rabbit, turkey, snake, birds and owls, Bigfoot.

But for the last two months it’s been as if the woods are melting. Little by little, as the leaves fall, more comes into view. There’s that hill! Oh, we have neighbors! Look, a creek! In the night I look out the window at low slung stars that turn out to be lights on a nearby home. We’re not as isolated as it seemed. Day by day new vistas appear, a gift still being unwrapped.

Get Your Gettysburg Review

Although I have not yet seen the issue, the Winter 2006 issue of The Gettysburg Review is about to hit shelves and mailboxes. It contains an essay I wrote, my first, and I'd be grateful if you supported the journal by ordering an issue (and reading it!) The Gettysburg Review

Autumnal Landscape

If you do not consider yourself a poet, hang out in landscapes like this and you'll soon become broody enough to put Dylan Thomas to shame. Seriously. We're talking moooody blues here. Apparently the sun left for Florida some weeks ago.

Like a Pair of Old Shoes

We drove out of Rocheport at an hour so early on Friday we saw the other end of night for the first time since we arrived in Missouri. Headed straight into the first rays of sunrise topping I-70 east towards St. Louis. Along the roadside, in blue gray fields, thick mist steamed from warm ponds into air not yet warmed to above freezing. A nonstop 2 hr. flight later, we landed at Bush Airport, disembarking in Terminal B where waiting passengers filled every chair and lined every wall, all the way up the concourse. We had expected a bit of big city re-entry shock but this was extreme even for Houston. And then the further strangeness of catching the rental bus, picking up a car and heading to our downtown hotel. After a four month absence, Houston seemed changed in one of those vague and unidentifiable ways, like it had shaved its beard or gotten its braces off or colored its hair.

But an hour later we were sitting at our old table at Khyber Pass, enjoying Chicken Tiki Marsala, and the world had untilted and it was if we’d never left.



Friday night friends who’d come for the reading joined us at Last Concert Cafe. We walked the couple of blocks to the warehouse district to a restaurant I had not been to in years (not since the days when the Galactic Cowboys had rented a rehearsal space in a warehouse opposite), one in which you had to know to look for the red door and knock three times for entry. What could be more comfortable and comforting, more stimulating and gratifying, than sitting around a table laden with bottomless bowls of just hot enough salsa, still warm tortilla chips and familiar laughter of friends with whom you have trekked through the myriad ups and downs, the joys and the idiocy, the twists and turns and inevitable dramas of your one and only little life. Your friends/cast mates in the story you were plopped into, a story bigger than the sum of its actors. You become each other’s biggest fans, severest critics, most accurate mirrors. True friends are one of life’s most inadvertent gifts, and most necessary. We left there warmed and filled.

Saturday allowed us ample time to revisit places we’d taken for granted for years as just around the corner including the CAM, Harris Gallery, Brazos Bookstore, etc. as well as a bit of shopping at Rice Village and a nice long visit over coffee with Maleah at Solento. Maleah has been beside me, literally, at some of the most pivotal moments of my life: her desk was feet from mine as we worked on the 7th floor of the Worthem Tower on Allen Parkway, overlooking the bayou through floor to ceiling windows. She was there when I “met” Wayne; she was there when I got the phone call telling me I’d lost my brother. She was there, too, when our boss dropped his drawers and mooned the window washers. Now there’s some mileage for you.

Saturday night all our former neighbors/friends from Branard came downtown for a festive dinner at Mia Bella, only a block’s walk from our hotel. Through the years we’ve shared our lives, our kids, our porches and backyards. Fed each other’s pets, picked up mail, babysat kids, blown out candles. Had a lot of laughs, a lot of hugs. A great night.

Sunday, after getting in half a service at ecclesia and coffee and bagels at Brasil, it was time to head back home. A place we are making our own—softening the leather, acquiring scuff marks, achieving just the right patina for a still quite new pair of shoes.

Houston Poetry Fest

This weekend I'll be heading back to Houston for the first time since we moved in June, this time as a visitor. I'm reading Friday night at the Houston Poetry Fest, along with Tonya Foster, visiting poet from UH-D, and this year's juried poets at Willow Street Pump Station, 811 N. San Jacinto.

When I read last year, I had no idea that when the next Fest rolled around I'd be flying to it from a new home almost 1000 miles away. It will be strange to arrive as a visitor to a place I called home for 17 years. We have big plans for hitting old favs like Brazos Bookstore, Texas Art, Texas Junk and Brasil, some good Mexican restaurants and especially hanging out with friends. I must say I'm looking forward to conversations with people I've known longer than 4 months. A young cowboy who'd lead us on a trialride in the Grand Canyon years ago told my friend Sherry and I in attempt to flatter us, "it's not the years, it's the mileage". I say it's the years and the mileage. There's no substiture for an old friend.

Get Lost

Whenever I travel I like to find a good book to bring home as a souvenir. In that way I have a memento of my journey as recorded on its inside cover and can justify yet another expenditure in books to that category's over inflated bottom line. I bought the book I’ve just finished in Santa Fe this summer. Karen and I took the free day from the week long conference we attended to escape to nearby Taos, as well as the tiny villages along the way, all of which boasted some form or other of art gallery. We investigated an assortment of them including one that wound from the front patio of a small abode home and on through the kitchen, living room, hallways, bedrooms and bathrooms, every square inch of which held an oil painting created by the proprietor’s gray pony-tailed husband. It was a delicious day of wandering, lingering, chatting with locals and borrowing their restrooms, browsing and sampling New Mexican tamales on a brightly sunshined, tiled patio engorged with flowers and vines. We meandered about the historic square in Taos, drinking local coffee and perusing the local bookstore. I picked up a volume, initially drawn by its cover: melancholy blue grays of what could be conceived as skies over a texture of canvas or cloth or paper as backdrop to a shadowy image running along the bottom of the cover suggesting a mysteriously dark, fuzzy, landscape. The edges blur between light and dark. Is the light area absorbing the black into itself like a paper towel absorbs liquid or is the light area staving off encroaching darkness? Are the boundaries fixed?

Appropriate questions for a book entitled, “A Field Guide to Getting Lost” by Rebecca Solnit. I bought the book and stuck it in my bag until it was time for us to head back to Santa Fe. There was a party that night I wanted to attend. We had come out on the high road and as sun set we made our way back, curving around mountains and alongside a river on the low road, and tried to figure out which route we’d liked best. And then somehow as we approached Santa Fe we got lost and found ourselves approaching Santa Fe again, passing the same exit for Santa Fe Opera we had passed some minutes before, now in total darkness. It seemed we circled the town forever without being able to figure out how to get into it, at least the section we were looking for. When we finally got back I had all but missed the party. This happened repeatedly for the next couple of days, constant disorientation and wrong turns in what is really a small and manageable city, especially for one that had recently navigated Houston on a daily basis. I remembered then the book was still in my bag and I blamed it like a bad luck charm. I read only a couple of pages before it was time to pack up and fly back to a town that was not the one I had returned to after every previous flight for 17 years, itself a disorienting reality.

So it was only in the last week or two that I dug the book out again and really started to read it, finding it tremendously gratifying. Solnit writes extensively of New Mexico and of lostness, of wilderness, displacement, transformation, Terra Incognito, of how geography is so much a part of our interior landscapes, all things I have recently been exquisitely made aware of. A favorite motif is “the blue of distance” which Solnit, an art critic as well, tracks from 15th century European painters to contemporary Yves Klein. I made sure I had a pencil in hand any time I picked the book back up.

Solnit's writing is full of poetic leaps and metaphors such as this:

Movies are made out of darkness as well as light; it is the surpassingly brief intervals of darkness between each luminous still image that makes it possible to assemble the many images into one moving picture. Without that darkness, there would only be a blur....It is the terra incognita of film, the dark continent on every map. In a similar way, a runner’s every step is a leap, so that for a moment he or she is entirely off the ground. For those brief instants, shadows no longer spill out from their feet, like leaks, but hover below them like doubles, as they do with birds, whose shadows crawl below them, caressing the surface of the earth....We fly; we dream in darkness; we devour heaven in bites too small to be measured.

I recommend Solnit’s book and whether driving or not, plan on getting exquisitely lost.

Black is beautiful

I never thought I’d find myself, at any time or in any place, singing the praises of asphalt. On Friday, the chalky white gravel road I’ve tasted for months was steam rolled with black oily goo in preparation for some kind of hard surface. How my heart praised pavement! After four months of trying to orient myself toward the charms of dust, I confess total and absolute defeat. Perhaps I spent too many years dwelling in versions of Sonny and Cher’s paved paradise, perhaps I’ve regressed to my childhood Tony Randall-ish prissiness which spurred many a mud stained friend’s irritated mother to demand of mine how she kept me so clean, perhaps I fear a diagnosis of dust lung disease. But whatever the reasons, I have lost patience with drought induced road dust of Biblical proportions. Now I know why there are so many DUST references in the Bible and now I UNDERSTAND them. You could write the Gettsyburg address on our dashboard. You could plant ivy in the dust that falls on my counters when I unload the grocery bags from inside the car. You could achieve instantaneous gray hair for your Halloween costume by opening the air vent on the way to the General Store. This is not the dust born of human skin that lingers in curtains and carpets causing asthma, allergies and cute little dustbunnies under the bed. The Sisyphusian battle to conquer such dust explains perfectly how a band from neighboring Kansas could pen the lyrics, “all we are is dust in the wind” and “nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky”. I would argue that nothing lasts forever but the earth IN the sky. But fortunately for me, just before I succumbed to certain dust ridden existential despair, the department of road paving stepped in to save my dusty soul. Sorry Sonny and Cher.