Birthday books!

The Book of Small / Emily Carr
Memory Wall / Anthony Doerr
The Thieves of Manhattan / Adam Langer

Bear

He has been awake all night, ever since the bear took the lid off the can of bird seed, peeked in, shrugged, then stood down and stared at him through the porch door. (He thinks bear; he doesn’t know the word raccoon.) The curious black eyes fascinated him, the mask, the delicate fingers and toes, the way the bear stood on his hind legs, the striped tail big as his own. He whimpered through the screen door. The bear didn’t answer but went lumping up the hill, into the night. He tried to follow, ran from window to window, whimpering.

Now the sun is up and so are the people, wanting to play with him, but he’s sleepy and frustrated and hot. It’s summer; his fur is thick. The man brushes him. He does not want to be brushed. He does not want to be thick and orange. He wants to be gray like the bear, with small round ears. He wants delicate fingers and toes, not big tufted feet. He wants to be wild, to disappear into the night. He wants a mask. The man keeps stroking him with the stupid plastic brush.

He hisses.

Picture window

(Another new song, a blues in A minor.
One of these days I'll add audio.)

girl at her picture window
watching the clouds blow by
the sun and the stars, the boys in the cars
the road and the prairie sky

the prairie’s a place for leaving
here’s how you say goodbye
pack up your hopes and tune your guitar and kiss your mother
pick up your feet and fly

to the city, the blazing nights
the crowds, the crazy colored lights
that’s where she’s gonna go

girl wants a man to hold her
she won’t let him hold her long
she’s got a suitcase full of dreams and desperation
come morning she’ll be gone

somewhere a lover is lonesome
somewhere a baby cries
somewhere she’s singing her blue blue love songs
her sorrowful lullabies

in the city, her famous nights
the crowds, her name up in lights
she did what she had to do

girl in a dark motel room
radio turned down low
one of these nights she’ll be famously forgotten
someone you used to know

girl at a picture window
call her the prairie queen
no matter how sweetly she promises to love you
love isn’t everything
love isn’t everything
love isn't everything

photo: Max Church

Mockingbird

here here
Peter Peter
free free
per-fect
whit whit whit
dooey ooey
never never chick chick
wheat wheat wheat wheat
somewhere, somewhere
four more now horrit horrit
hunt hunt hunt hunt LuCILLE, LuCILLE
wee wee tiny baby
okay
cigarette, cigarette?

New song

Michael Timmins on Townes Van Zandt: “What he taught me was that no matter how lyrical or poetic a song is, it should always be grounded in a place or an event.”

– A Deeper Blue: The Life and Music of Townes Van Zandt, Robert Earl Hardy


This April I was working in an arts colony in the mountains of Virginia. Everything was fresh and green, coming back to life; all you had to do was set foot outside and you felt full of possibility. One morning I woke up thinking about the spring my father died, nineteen years ago, and how my mother wasn't much older then than I am now. I tried to imagine how she might feel on a day like this.

Tender Green

in the hills it’s early spring
morning opens tender green
bluest sky, wish you could see it

with my hands I count the days
old men bring me tired bouquets
small talk, comfort when I need it

young and reckless for too long
we thought love would make us strong
why’d you leave me here alone
I still love you anyhow

you were the sleekest boy I’d seen
I said you were my own James Dean
and I the country girl who’d hold you

your dark car blazing in the sun
I saw the man you might become
a gentle man, I wish I’d told you

all the nights and all the days
all the miles that rolled away
all the things I did not say
I would say them to you now

robins sing, the mountains rise
I think of you and close my eyes
where did they go, our by-and-bys
I would cry if I knew how

headlong days and wasted nights
we lost our chance to make things right
I'm tired of being broken

all the hills are tender green
can you hear the robins sing
sad and bright the morning opens

John Steinbeck, world's greatest breakfast writer

"He shoveled the bacon out on a plate and broke the eggs and they jumped and fluttered their edges to brown lace and made clucking sounds."

"The hot cakes rose like little hassocks, and small volcanoes formed and erupted on them until they were ready to be turned."

-- East of Eden

Twin towers, Chatham County

James Salter opening sentences

"Barcelona at dawn."

"This happened near Carbondale to a woman named Jane."

"It's hard now to think of all the places and nights, Nicola's like a railway car, deep and gleaming, the crowd at the Un, Deux, Trois, Billy's."

"Mrs. Pence and her white shoes were gone."

"At ten-thirty then, she arrived."

"All afternoon the cars, many with out-of-state plates, were coming along the road."

"It was late August."

"Mrs. Chandler stood alone near the window in a tailored suit, almost in front of the neon sign that said in small, red letters PRIME MEATS."

"There is a kind of minor writer who is found in a room of the library signing his novel."

"In the garden, standing alone, he found the young woman who was a friend of the writer William Hedges, then unknown but even Kafka had lived in obscurity, she said, and so moreover had Mendel, perhaps she meant Mendeleev."

"Billy was under the house."