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."

Old

We’d been exploring one of my favorite parts of North Carolina, the Pamlico coast: Washington, Bath (the state's oldest town, with its oldest church), and, up the Pungo River, Belhaven, where we ate flounder for lunch and toured the museum. Now we were heading home, with me driving, Anthony riding up front, Kelly and Mike in back. At first we were all talking. Gradually, as lunch settled, Anthony and Mike fell asleep and the car went quiet. That was okay. It was a nice drive, a golden day, sun stretching out long across the cotton fields. I've always loved late November. I've always loved this landscape. Miles and miles of nothing.

When I checked the rearview, Kelly was wide awake, fidgeting like she does when she's just figured something out. "This is what old people do," she said. "They all get in the car and go riding around in the country and don’t talk."

Even an animal couldn't save it.

This week I tried to read a novel that’s coming up for discussion at the library, a bestseller. I don't often read bestsellers, but I like discussing books at the library, and this one had an unusual premise involving an animal, and I like animals. I couldn’t get to page fifty. The sentences were soggy, and every chapter ended with something or someone "glowing palely in the growing dark," "silhouetted by the falling dusk," etc. There was a time when I would have finished the book anyway, if only to complain during the library discussion, but that was last year.

photo: Anthony Ulinski

Blue parrot, or the perils of nonfiction

Lately I've been writing personal essays, a new form for me, and twice last week I let worries over the feelings of others creep into my editing decisions. It's hard enough to edit when your motives are purely literary. In an odd sort of punctuation to these episodes, I happened on an essay by David Sedaris, "Repeat After Me," in which he repeats a story his sister has told him in confidence. The particulars of the story aren't important; the point is that Sedaris is telling it. The essay is about betrayal, and the guilt that often goes along with writing personal stories. In the last scene, Sedaris imagines himself in his sister’s kitchen, chanting while his sister's parrot listens, teaching the parrot to say, "Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me."

blue parrot photo: JT Reby / jtdc.files.wordpress.com.