The snow lays itself gently on branches like a Bob Ross painting, dabbed on with the gentlest knife-edge. My cheeks are hot and cold from walking down to the bus with Eleanor. We timed it perfectly again, just a hundred feet past the corner and in view of the stop sign as Ted pulled up in bus 43 to pick her up where Durham and Moody Road meet.
They've replaced the street sign again – a month or two back it disappeared. Gemma was the first to notice: “Where Moody Road?” And it was indeed gone as a loose tooth, with no money under the pillow next morning. They brought the stop sign back first, and a few weeks later, the street sign atop it “Moody Rd.” I suppose someone decided it would make a nice wall hanging: I'd say for a temperamental spouse, but there are enough Moodys around these parts that it may just be a vanity plate for someone's driveway.
Eleanor didn't want to wear her snowsuit again. It bunches up her pants too much, I think. It's uncomfortable. Damn is it heartbreakingly cute to see a five-year old all gussied up like that, though. Fruit-loop blue and red polar fleece scarf and her mom's green hat. Day-glo paisley backpack and pink boots with the white fur around the tops. That's gotta be how Santa's elves look on their way to school.
The delay in getting the suit on got us out the door five minutes late, eating up the five minute safety buffer I set aside. And we had to stop and talk to Ken for a minute. He pulled up in his buckskin-brown pickup, wished Eleanor well at school, said he wasn't sure if he ought to maybe put his plow on. That truck looks naked without the plow. He said the weatherman was asking for this to turn to rain later today – said it'd be in the 50's tomorrow. Ken plows our drive. We actually live in Ken's old house – he and Diane live just down the street. Ken was wearing his “Maine State Lottery” ball cap. They took an awful nice haul in the lottery last year. Sometimes good things do happen to the right people.
He slowed us down just a tad too much, though, and left us hurrying down that last dip and up around the corner. But there was Ted, and El could walk almost straight onto the bus. She waved. We blew kisses and the bus left me alone with the snow.
Not quite alone: two weaving trails, one big and dragging, one smaller and lighter. Here they cross the road to the outside of the curve and the little ones are on the edge. Back again, and the little ones dance for a minute near the middle. They're joined and shepherded back to side again. They meet and scuffle each other up for awhile. Maybe an Indian tracker could tell who led and who followed. Where one passed the other, where one stopped to scoop up a ready-made snowball to throw. Where they stopped to listen to the stream, and see the delicate glass latticework of a higher water frozen in place and hanging from naked brambles.
I replay this as I rewind the walk, retracing our sinusoidal loops and arcs with a dogged vector pointing home. To the top of the rise and the field where skulls of yellow apples still cling to calloused branches. Past the three mailboxes crooked as old fenceposts, wearing little white yarmulkes of snow. The power lines cut the sky with a long swooping slash, a drop-shadowed, black-and-white exclamation point, their clarity increasing as the snow piles, sharpening the black.
And as the snow piles, the two trails go soft. The edges rounding, blurring, fading. At the porch the footsteps are almost anonymous. Circumstantial evidence that, yes, someone passed this way, but nothing more. The symmetry itches. I know it's the kind that you can only make worse by scratching. Inside is a fire to tend. Maybe Marsey will have the kettle on.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Jud's Nov/Dec News
There's great arches of birch out in our woods. Eleanor and I stumbled through them last week, just tromping around. Makes me think of Robert Frost out there swinging on them. It's a funny picture, because I can't imagine him young. There he is, white combover blowing like a thunderhead as he pole-vaults them back and forth, back and forth. The trees grow down toward the ground now, all played out. I asked El if we should call it the Birch Cathedral and she, delighted, agreed, suggesting I could be Quasimodo. I hope the arches last at least a few more years. Birches around here don't seem to. There's a huge one close to the house that died last year. Good for the birds: we see a lot of Pileated Woodpeckers. They look like pterodactyls, bigger than you'd think, with that pointy, origami head.
But that big birch is just too dangerous to keep. It's started to shed widowmakers -- great big branches we find, usually after some wind, shattered on the grass below. Warning shots. So, in spite of the woodpeckers, it's been time to cut it for a while now. I got a chainsaw last week, managed to light it on fire while I was breaking it in. Yes, on fire. Just following instructions. All under warranty, so I guess I wasn't doing anything wrong. It's fixed, but would you feel comfortable pulling that cord again? I wasn't in any rush. Couldn't leave that birch another winter, though. Too easy to imagine great chunks of it coming down in an ice storm. It leans hard and heavy toward the corner of the house, close enough to hit. It's supposed to be harder to cut down trees that lean like that. They can surprise you. They know where they want to go and it's hard to convince them otherwise. This one wanted to go to Gemma's bedroom.
It fell with less terror than it could have, pruning a lilac I would've rather kept. But it missed the rose and, more importantly, the apple and, more importantly still the house and the shed. It felt a little bit like landing the Space Shuttle. But it's down. I went back and cut the stump good and flat a couple feet off the ground as a chair for the girls. They love it. I don't think they're going to let me split the logs I've cut, though -- they're arranged in a faerie ring already, and you know how bitchy faeries get when you mess with their crib.
I heard someone talking about the economy, saying people are turning their attention toward home and hearth now. I guess that's what this is. I look forward to splitting some wood and keeping the fire burning through the night on these cold ones. I look forward to curling up
with a guitar and a pen and letting some new songs come. And I look forward to seeing you, too. I've got some great shows coming up to end 2008, from my home town to Caffe Lena and back. I'll be playing a Holiday/Winter show in Damariscotta, ME, in December, which is a first
for me. And so it goes! As always, I love to hear from you -- feel free to drop me a line and let me know what's new. And please see if you can come out and support some of these venues -- you won't be sorry.
See you soon!
-Jud
But that big birch is just too dangerous to keep. It's started to shed widowmakers -- great big branches we find, usually after some wind, shattered on the grass below. Warning shots. So, in spite of the woodpeckers, it's been time to cut it for a while now. I got a chainsaw last week, managed to light it on fire while I was breaking it in. Yes, on fire. Just following instructions. All under warranty, so I guess I wasn't doing anything wrong. It's fixed, but would you feel comfortable pulling that cord again? I wasn't in any rush. Couldn't leave that birch another winter, though. Too easy to imagine great chunks of it coming down in an ice storm. It leans hard and heavy toward the corner of the house, close enough to hit. It's supposed to be harder to cut down trees that lean like that. They can surprise you. They know where they want to go and it's hard to convince them otherwise. This one wanted to go to Gemma's bedroom.
It fell with less terror than it could have, pruning a lilac I would've rather kept. But it missed the rose and, more importantly, the apple and, more importantly still the house and the shed. It felt a little bit like landing the Space Shuttle. But it's down. I went back and cut the stump good and flat a couple feet off the ground as a chair for the girls. They love it. I don't think they're going to let me split the logs I've cut, though -- they're arranged in a faerie ring already, and you know how bitchy faeries get when you mess with their crib.
I heard someone talking about the economy, saying people are turning their attention toward home and hearth now. I guess that's what this is. I look forward to splitting some wood and keeping the fire burning through the night on these cold ones. I look forward to curling up
with a guitar and a pen and letting some new songs come. And I look forward to seeing you, too. I've got some great shows coming up to end 2008, from my home town to Caffe Lena and back. I'll be playing a Holiday/Winter show in Damariscotta, ME, in December, which is a first
for me. And so it goes! As always, I love to hear from you -- feel free to drop me a line and let me know what's new. And please see if you can come out and support some of these venues -- you won't be sorry.
See you soon!
-Jud
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Discipline
I decided that most of what's wrong with my life is due to lack of discipline. And the word comes up all the time related to writing: all the experts say you need to write every day. Either first thing in the morning, or you make an appointment with yourself and commit to it. I've seen that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, my writing gets better when I write more often. I can write every day for two weeks, and at the end of the time, the material is always better. And yet, I've always resisted making the habit permanent. Maybe it's just my inherent lack of discipline. So what better way to jump-start on the path to a more disciplined life than by taking on this very simple, well-defined, highly-touted approach to writing? Okay. So yesterday I said I'd do it, and yesterday I did it. Great. That was easy. Today I'm home with the kids, and it's just that tiny bit harder to pick a time and make it happen, but still: pretty easy. 1pm was the time.
I decided that today I'll write for 15 minutes on some random topic, and I've got a nice little book ("The Writer's Block") in which every page is a writing assignment. Open it to a random page, take your assignment and go. So by 12:57 I've got Gemma in bed, and I'm running downstairs to the studio to get the book. Open the book to a random page, and there's a little photo and a "starter" word -- one word. The picture was ballerina feet, up on tiptoe, and the one word?
"Discipline."
Somebody trying to tell me something here?
I decided that today I'll write for 15 minutes on some random topic, and I've got a nice little book ("The Writer's Block") in which every page is a writing assignment. Open it to a random page, take your assignment and go. So by 12:57 I've got Gemma in bed, and I'm running downstairs to the studio to get the book. Open the book to a random page, and there's a little photo and a "starter" word -- one word. The picture was ballerina feet, up on tiptoe, and the one word?
"Discipline."
Somebody trying to tell me something here?
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Oh Shenandoah
I wandered down to the Shenandoah to say goodbye. Stupid to have not gotten down there sooner, but there was a lot going on up the hill. Smoked venison, Kentucky Bourbon, blues and folk and more blues and some hot pickin'. Chuck E Costa's haunting voice and heart-rending storytelling. The Biscuit Rollers: blues with smiles that are somehow bigger than their bellies. I had never been to Virginia before. I was driving through those wide open hills with rolls of hay out in the fields, thinking, "this is a little like where my Pappy is from." Rusted out water tanks abandoned in cow pastures, vans by the side of the road that look a little more permanent than just parked. A grandmother pushing her lawnmower around in the heat of noon with a tube-top and short shorts, leisurely two-handed grip on the handle and a cigarette balanced on the corner of her mouth. "McCain Country" billboarded on every other lawn. Really not so different from Maine. Parts of Maine, anyway. The "real" Maine. Like Jonathan Byrd said: "Maine is so far north it's south."
I couldn't help but think that the Shendandoah looked a little like a pond, though: reeds and maybe lillies, some kind of water plants just growing right out to the middle. Sleepy. Good fishing, I hear. Great, actually, if you believe the stories, and I do. The 20 hour stopover wasn't enough. Not enough to do any fishing, not enough to even learn everyone's names. I hate that. The nicest people you'd ever meet, and you get introduced all at once at the precise time that all you're thinking about is finding the portajohn and seeing if the "all lanes closed" on 95 Southbound has got you bumped out of your first set. It didn't.
I was just a stone's throw away from the river in the Winnebago where I bunked down (this is another story entirely, but very comfortable) but I didn't get down to it until just before I left. Foggy morning, everybody kicking around, not wanting to leave. A row of cars with open trunks, waiting for the packing to finish. A huge maple tree with four elephantine trunks. Ashes in the fire pit and styrofoam cups of weak black coffee. That drawl I always forget I'm missing until I hear it again. Good friends, all. Can't wait to get back.
I couldn't help but think that the Shendandoah looked a little like a pond, though: reeds and maybe lillies, some kind of water plants just growing right out to the middle. Sleepy. Good fishing, I hear. Great, actually, if you believe the stories, and I do. The 20 hour stopover wasn't enough. Not enough to do any fishing, not enough to even learn everyone's names. I hate that. The nicest people you'd ever meet, and you get introduced all at once at the precise time that all you're thinking about is finding the portajohn and seeing if the "all lanes closed" on 95 Southbound has got you bumped out of your first set. It didn't.
I was just a stone's throw away from the river in the Winnebago where I bunked down (this is another story entirely, but very comfortable) but I didn't get down to it until just before I left. Foggy morning, everybody kicking around, not wanting to leave. A row of cars with open trunks, waiting for the packing to finish. A huge maple tree with four elephantine trunks. Ashes in the fire pit and styrofoam cups of weak black coffee. That drawl I always forget I'm missing until I hear it again. Good friends, all. Can't wait to get back.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Einstein and the Woodpile
Just finished "Einstein's Dreams" by Alan Lightman. Haunting book. Short chapters, each exploring different theories of time. In one, we follow an old woman growing younger as time flows backwards. In another, a man pursues a lover while simultaneously (and divergently) choosing not to pursue her. Time fractures into infinite possibilities. In others time stops sporadically, or literally flits about as nightingales: catch them and time stops, but the moment goes stale. The birds die. In one, time is perceived faster or slower by different people, in another time varies with location, so that one city runs faster or slower than a neighbor. But the book is all about the human implications. People grow isolated by their perceptions of the past. People grow listless with their sense of inevitability of the future. Parents long for their grown children to come home, grandparents want to seize some inconsequential moment with their grandchild and make it last.
Myself, I tried to freeze time today by stacking wood. Didn't work. My head has been a snake eating its tail ever since I got home from the Boston Folk Festival two weeks ago. That was the end of a long run, a weekend in PA followed by a week in OR and a brief time at home followed by a long, treacherously stupid weekend of driving back to PA, bouncing off the Boston Folk Festival like a rock off a windshield on my way back to Maine.
I've repeated this bit of Robert Frost to myself on and off since high school. It's the last stanza from "Two Tramps in Mud Time:"
"But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes."
I always took this to mean that I should try to make music (my avocation) into my job (vocation.) But in the last two years, when my job has been more closely tied to my own original music than it ever has been in the past, my life has started to feel more fragmented that ever. My good friends on the road are strangers to my family. I drop out of my life in Maine on a Friday morning like the White Rabbit down the hole. And when I get back on Sunday, I'm the same anxious, hurried bunny. Always late for a very important date. I wonder how Einstein would explain that flow of time?
Myself, I tried to freeze time today by stacking wood. Didn't work. My head has been a snake eating its tail ever since I got home from the Boston Folk Festival two weeks ago. That was the end of a long run, a weekend in PA followed by a week in OR and a brief time at home followed by a long, treacherously stupid weekend of driving back to PA, bouncing off the Boston Folk Festival like a rock off a windshield on my way back to Maine.
I've repeated this bit of Robert Frost to myself on and off since high school. It's the last stanza from "Two Tramps in Mud Time:"
"But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes."
I always took this to mean that I should try to make music (my avocation) into my job (vocation.) But in the last two years, when my job has been more closely tied to my own original music than it ever has been in the past, my life has started to feel more fragmented that ever. My good friends on the road are strangers to my family. I drop out of my life in Maine on a Friday morning like the White Rabbit down the hole. And when I get back on Sunday, I'm the same anxious, hurried bunny. Always late for a very important date. I wonder how Einstein would explain that flow of time?
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Pick and Fingerstyle Techniques
I mentioned a couple days ago that I was revamping my flatpicking -- this was due to running into this article by Tuck Andress (of Tuck and Patti). Incredibly articulate and informative. I've been playing for years with his least-recommended wrist motion. Switching it up with his recommendations led to faster and more accurate picking after about 30 minutes of work. I've also been working on my ergonomics because I've had some shoulder and elbow pain -- this is a big part of why I'm now playing a Martin OM instead of a Lowden Jumbo -- and the new wrist motions have virtually eliminated my elbow issues.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Why I Don't Blog More
Jim Colbert's blog about last weekend has really inspired me to try to get off my duff a bit and do some travel writing. I always wish I had a camera. I always think of it right about... NOW. Yeah, it would've been great to take a picture of the fog burning off the hills in north central PA as country music bowls out of my radio and some of the worst gas station coffee I've ever had is congealing in the cup holder. Silos loomed out of the fog about 10 feet away from the car as my GPS led me down the backest of back ways. I hate this magellan GPS. I had a Mio before this, which got stolen out of my car in Baltimore. The Magellan only calculates shortest distance or fastest route. And the shortest distance is often faster than the fastest route. Makes no sense to me, but the benefit of it is that I get to see places I wouldn't otherwise see, and without a GPS I'd be spending hours planning and further hours worrying about every time I get in the car. As it is now, I wake up maybe 30 minutes before I have to go, throw some clothes in a bag, make sure I have my laptop that reminds me which state I'm going to, maybe print out an email with an address and a phone number on it and go. Live in the moment. People ask me where I'm playing next weekend. The answer is almost always, "I have no idea." Likewise about where I was last weekend. Which is why I really ought to be writing these things when they're still fresh. But when they're fresh, I'm usually jet lagged, and have just been dropped from West Coast musician time to East Coast "wake up with the kids in the morning" time, which leaves me about two free brain cells to write with, and one of them is making coffee while the other one is trying to figure out how to get PBS Kids turned on.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
July/August Newsletter
I suggest chocolate. Right now: go get a Hershey bar. Not the kind
with nuts, either. Just straight up milk chocolate. It's helping.
Helping what? What?! Haven't you been reading the news? It's all
going to Hell in a handbasket! Everything! Gas and banks and the
middle east and God knows what else... You don't dare turn on the
computer for fear of catching a sidelong glance at some new atrocity.
It's like Medusa: one look at the news and ping! you're stone.
Immobilized with anxiety. Which is what happened this morning, which
is why this email wasn't written two hours ago.
So. I suggest chocolate. We had a pack left over from camping, where
we didn't dare hit the kids with another night of s'mores. And really
it was only one slice into that first bar before I felt measurably
better. So: go get some and come back. I actually may go get more
myself...
There. Better, eh? I also recommend Byron. Really! But read the long
stuff, not the short poems. (It's all public domain, you can read it
on-line -- look up "Beppo.") Byron really hits his stride when he can
chase some tangent for a half dozen stanzas or so. Flamboyant,
irreverent, brilliant expatriate who laces his stories of sexual
impropriety with vicious attacks on his peers and mind-bendingly
hilarious rhymes. It's either the highest low culture, or the lowest
high culture around. Plus, it has nothing to do with current
(disastrous) events. Shoot... shouldn't have said that -- go get more
chocolate...
I will be doing some playing over the next couple months, some good
stuff coming up in the fall and winter as well (I'll get it up on the
website soon, I promise!) I seem to have some new songs, so you can
catch those as well!
As always, I love to hear from you, don't be a stranger! And if
you're interested in hosting a house concert, drop me a line: I've got
some coming up that I'm very excited about, where I'll be running a
songwriting workshop in the afternoon before the concert... so keep
that in mind as well!
Take care, and don't forget what I said about the chocolate.
-Jud
Shows:
Friday, July 18, 2008
North Star Cafe with Vanessa Torres
Portland, ME 8:00 PM
http://www.northstarmusiccafe.com/
Saturday, July 26, 2008
House Concert
Pinckney, MI 7:30 PM
email bill nedela @ nedelab@charter.net for more info!
Friday, August 01, 2008
White Crow Conservatory
Saginaw, MI 8:00 PM
$10
http://whitecrowconservatory.blogspot.com/
3736 Mackinaw Saginaw MI 989-790-2118
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Little Brown Church Concert
Round Pond, ME 7:30 PM
Rte 32
207-529-5438
Price: $10
Happy to be part of the 10th season of Little Brown Church concerts!
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Club Passim
Cambridge, MA 7:30 PM
In the round with Thea Hopkins, Susan Levine and Alastair
Moock.
$12/10 (members)
http://www.clubpassim.org
47 Palmer St
Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 492-7679
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Cindystock V
Wexford, PA 3:30 PM
Yates Fund for Cancer Hope presents "Cindystock V"
Cancer fundraising concert
Doors open 3:30 -- Music begins at 4
For information- myspace.com/yatescancerfund or
yatescancerfund@hotmail.com
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Americana Song Academy
Sisters, OR
http://www.sistersfolkfestival.org/american_song.html
Friday, September 05, 2008
Sisters Folk Festival
Sisters, OR
http://www.sistersfolkfestival.org
with nuts, either. Just straight up milk chocolate. It's helping.
Helping what? What?! Haven't you been reading the news? It's all
going to Hell in a handbasket! Everything! Gas and banks and the
middle east and God knows what else... You don't dare turn on the
computer for fear of catching a sidelong glance at some new atrocity.
It's like Medusa: one look at the news and ping! you're stone.
Immobilized with anxiety. Which is what happened this morning, which
is why this email wasn't written two hours ago.
So. I suggest chocolate. We had a pack left over from camping, where
we didn't dare hit the kids with another night of s'mores. And really
it was only one slice into that first bar before I felt measurably
better. So: go get some and come back. I actually may go get more
myself...
There. Better, eh? I also recommend Byron. Really! But read the long
stuff, not the short poems. (It's all public domain, you can read it
on-line -- look up "Beppo.") Byron really hits his stride when he can
chase some tangent for a half dozen stanzas or so. Flamboyant,
irreverent, brilliant expatriate who laces his stories of sexual
impropriety with vicious attacks on his peers and mind-bendingly
hilarious rhymes. It's either the highest low culture, or the lowest
high culture around. Plus, it has nothing to do with current
(disastrous) events. Shoot... shouldn't have said that -- go get more
chocolate...
I will be doing some playing over the next couple months, some good
stuff coming up in the fall and winter as well (I'll get it up on the
website soon, I promise!) I seem to have some new songs, so you can
catch those as well!
As always, I love to hear from you, don't be a stranger! And if
you're interested in hosting a house concert, drop me a line: I've got
some coming up that I'm very excited about, where I'll be running a
songwriting workshop in the afternoon before the concert... so keep
that in mind as well!
Take care, and don't forget what I said about the chocolate.
-Jud
Shows:
Friday, July 18, 2008
North Star Cafe with Vanessa Torres
Portland, ME 8:00 PM
http://www.northstarmusiccafe.com/
Saturday, July 26, 2008
House Concert
Pinckney, MI 7:30 PM
email bill nedela @ nedelab@charter.net for more info!
Friday, August 01, 2008
White Crow Conservatory
Saginaw, MI 8:00 PM
$10
http://whitecrowconservatory.blogspot.com/
3736 Mackinaw Saginaw MI 989-790-2118
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Little Brown Church Concert
Round Pond, ME 7:30 PM
Rte 32
207-529-5438
Price: $10
Happy to be part of the 10th season of Little Brown Church concerts!
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Club Passim
Cambridge, MA 7:30 PM
In the round with Thea Hopkins, Susan Levine and Alastair
Moock.
$12/10 (members)
http://www.clubpassim.org
47 Palmer St
Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 492-7679
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Cindystock V
Wexford, PA 3:30 PM
Yates Fund for Cancer Hope presents "Cindystock V"
Cancer fundraising concert
Doors open 3:30 -- Music begins at 4
For information- myspace.com/yatescancerfund or
yatescancerfund@hotmail.com
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Americana Song Academy
Sisters, OR
http://www.sistersfolkfestival.org/american_song.html
Friday, September 05, 2008
Sisters Folk Festival
Sisters, OR
http://www.sistersfolkfestival.org
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Lovermont
Plainfield, Sunday, Karl and Mary's place, "Occasional Concerts." White Mountains. Route 2. Ski country. Well... New England ski country.
Google maps said it would take me 4 hours and 35 minutes to get to Plainfield via Route 295, 95, 101, 93, 89 and into Vermont. It was 260-some odd miles. Odd's not the best word for it, off course. These are very plain miles. They said it would take 4 hours and 28 minutes to get there via Quaker Meeting-house road to 136 and 11 and 121 and 26 and then Route 2, through Bethel and Gorham, skirting Mt. Washington and sliding into Vermont way up north. 170-ish miles.
I never get this chance -- to drive to the end of the little half-mile dirt road I live on and turn right. Drive up through Auburn. Playing peek-a-boo with the Androscoggin river all the way up to NH. I'm always stuck on the Interstate, it seems. Always looking for the quickest way to and from somewhere, so I can be home with my family as much as possible. So what a treat to have a real excuse for getting off that tired old path. Getting away from the 74-mph rush. Saving some gas and driving up through Maine mineral country. Marsey loves rocks: gems, all kinds. Maine Tourmaline, especially. This is the tourmaline capital of Maine up here.
And driving into the yard at Karl and Mary's? I could've sat in their dooryard for hours, I think. That old-fashioned rose bush that reminded me of my great-aunt's house, for some reason (and yes, that's "Aunt" not "Ant"). Tall and wiry and proper, somehow. Understated. Then sitting out on the porch and talking to neighbors as they strolled by. Petting the dog. I almost didn't want to play the show. Just wanted to sit and visit, maybe go off and write.
Google maps said it would take me 4 hours and 35 minutes to get to Plainfield via Route 295, 95, 101, 93, 89 and into Vermont. It was 260-some odd miles. Odd's not the best word for it, off course. These are very plain miles. They said it would take 4 hours and 28 minutes to get there via Quaker Meeting-house road to 136 and 11 and 121 and 26 and then Route 2, through Bethel and Gorham, skirting Mt. Washington and sliding into Vermont way up north. 170-ish miles.
I never get this chance -- to drive to the end of the little half-mile dirt road I live on and turn right. Drive up through Auburn. Playing peek-a-boo with the Androscoggin river all the way up to NH. I'm always stuck on the Interstate, it seems. Always looking for the quickest way to and from somewhere, so I can be home with my family as much as possible. So what a treat to have a real excuse for getting off that tired old path. Getting away from the 74-mph rush. Saving some gas and driving up through Maine mineral country. Marsey loves rocks: gems, all kinds. Maine Tourmaline, especially. This is the tourmaline capital of Maine up here.
And driving into the yard at Karl and Mary's? I could've sat in their dooryard for hours, I think. That old-fashioned rose bush that reminded me of my great-aunt's house, for some reason (and yes, that's "Aunt" not "Ant"). Tall and wiry and proper, somehow. Understated. Then sitting out on the porch and talking to neighbors as they strolled by. Petting the dog. I almost didn't want to play the show. Just wanted to sit and visit, maybe go off and write.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Weirdly Affordable Brautigan
So I find myself in posession of a second copy of Richard Brautigan’s "Sombrero Fallout: A Japanese Novel" which I was very happy, I recall, to get ahold of the first time ’round. Now I feel weirdly queasy about my second copy, and I’m not sure why.
That’s not 100% true. I am sure why: I feel queasy because I spent exactly zero dollars and seventy-nine cents on it. The price marked on the cover, sitting there innocuously at Bookland, between a well-thumbed paperback "couples" book with smiling, tanned, well-steroided people on the cover, and perhaps a romance novel on the other side (or, certainly, the romance novel was two books to the right of it... I forget what was immediately to the right...) "$0.75." And the four extra cents appeared in tax when I got it up to the register. I paid with a dollar bill and got change back.
I wish I had checked the price of that "couples" book. I was too suprised, I think, to find Brautigan there at all, and doubly surprised at the price. I though it a misprint. I thought it a blemish of some sort on the pricetag. I wandered aimlessly through the store, looking at other random tabletops for other, similarly-priced items of similar worth, to no avail.
I’m sure it’s meaningless to you that I found Brautigan for this price. You don’t know Brautigan. You might not have paid seventy-nine cents for this book. Even if you did, you might not think it the best seventy-nine cents you ever spent.
But lately I’ve been hanging on about used book stores. And Brautigan has always been my go-to. Whenever there’s a pile of used books somewhere, I go to the "B’s" and see what’s there. Because he’s out of print, mostly. If you want to read him, you find him like this. And he’s worth finding. And he’s worth reading. There’s something impossible about him that you have to spend some time with, and you still won’t believe it, but you’ll smile a lot, and shake your head, and wish you had thought of it.
I read a little snipped by Robert Frost -- he was talking about style: "...style is the way the man takes himself, and to be at all charming or even bearable... if it is with outer seriousness, it must be with inner humor. If it is with outer humor, it must be with inner seriousness. Neither one alone without the other will do." Brautigan is neither and both of these. The humor and the seriousness are interwoven like colors on a tie-dye shirt -- neither is the foreground, neither the background. There’s a lot of charm to it. A lot of style.
I have a small (slightly larger, now) shelf, right next to me here, where I keep my Brautigan. I’ve had 4 or 5 copies of "Trout Fishing in America" -- I still have two copies of "In Watermelon Sugar" but I think I’ll pass one of them along to a friend who may need it. I’ve had a couple copies of "The Abortion" and there are four or five others, waiting for company there.
It effects me, somehow, that I picked up my latest extra copy, my latest somewhat-treasured addition to my collection, for seventy-nine cents.
I know singers who blush to find their own CDs in the "Used" section. I’ve blushed too. But I look at some of the other titles there. U2, for instance. Van Morrison. Good company to be in.
But there on that bargain table? Lost, out-of-category, and priced to give away? Priced, almost, to throw away. I also know a lot of music, I suppose, that sits on that table. Real quality stuff. Powerful and quirky and alive and crafted and real. Just like Brautigan. I think what aggravates me most is that, sitting there, someone who didn’t know better might come along and see it there, piled with more or less harmless crap, with a seventy-nine cent price tag and think that they know what that book is worth. I almost see Brautigan himself, knee crossed over knee and gripped between clasped hands, waiting. Embarassed. Looking in disbelief, side to side. Or maybe it’s resignation on his face. An understanding, hated but accepted, that this is the way things are.
Leaving the book store, the full moon squatted over the streetlights and fast-food neon signs like an altar to some tropical god of war and fertility. Huge and menacing, quiet and smug as a cat.
That’s not 100% true. I am sure why: I feel queasy because I spent exactly zero dollars and seventy-nine cents on it. The price marked on the cover, sitting there innocuously at Bookland, between a well-thumbed paperback "couples" book with smiling, tanned, well-steroided people on the cover, and perhaps a romance novel on the other side (or, certainly, the romance novel was two books to the right of it... I forget what was immediately to the right...) "$0.75." And the four extra cents appeared in tax when I got it up to the register. I paid with a dollar bill and got change back.
I wish I had checked the price of that "couples" book. I was too suprised, I think, to find Brautigan there at all, and doubly surprised at the price. I though it a misprint. I thought it a blemish of some sort on the pricetag. I wandered aimlessly through the store, looking at other random tabletops for other, similarly-priced items of similar worth, to no avail.
I’m sure it’s meaningless to you that I found Brautigan for this price. You don’t know Brautigan. You might not have paid seventy-nine cents for this book. Even if you did, you might not think it the best seventy-nine cents you ever spent.
But lately I’ve been hanging on about used book stores. And Brautigan has always been my go-to. Whenever there’s a pile of used books somewhere, I go to the "B’s" and see what’s there. Because he’s out of print, mostly. If you want to read him, you find him like this. And he’s worth finding. And he’s worth reading. There’s something impossible about him that you have to spend some time with, and you still won’t believe it, but you’ll smile a lot, and shake your head, and wish you had thought of it.
I read a little snipped by Robert Frost -- he was talking about style: "...style is the way the man takes himself, and to be at all charming or even bearable... if it is with outer seriousness, it must be with inner humor. If it is with outer humor, it must be with inner seriousness. Neither one alone without the other will do." Brautigan is neither and both of these. The humor and the seriousness are interwoven like colors on a tie-dye shirt -- neither is the foreground, neither the background. There’s a lot of charm to it. A lot of style.
I have a small (slightly larger, now) shelf, right next to me here, where I keep my Brautigan. I’ve had 4 or 5 copies of "Trout Fishing in America" -- I still have two copies of "In Watermelon Sugar" but I think I’ll pass one of them along to a friend who may need it. I’ve had a couple copies of "The Abortion" and there are four or five others, waiting for company there.
It effects me, somehow, that I picked up my latest extra copy, my latest somewhat-treasured addition to my collection, for seventy-nine cents.
I know singers who blush to find their own CDs in the "Used" section. I’ve blushed too. But I look at some of the other titles there. U2, for instance. Van Morrison. Good company to be in.
But there on that bargain table? Lost, out-of-category, and priced to give away? Priced, almost, to throw away. I also know a lot of music, I suppose, that sits on that table. Real quality stuff. Powerful and quirky and alive and crafted and real. Just like Brautigan. I think what aggravates me most is that, sitting there, someone who didn’t know better might come along and see it there, piled with more or less harmless crap, with a seventy-nine cent price tag and think that they know what that book is worth. I almost see Brautigan himself, knee crossed over knee and gripped between clasped hands, waiting. Embarassed. Looking in disbelief, side to side. Or maybe it’s resignation on his face. An understanding, hated but accepted, that this is the way things are.
Leaving the book store, the full moon squatted over the streetlights and fast-food neon signs like an altar to some tropical god of war and fertility. Huge and menacing, quiet and smug as a cat.
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