Sam Shepard

I head to Scotia tomorrow and what luck, I found it. His house was in West Advocate at the entrance of Chignecto Park, on the northeastern shores of the Bay of Fundy. Not quite as close as I thought, two hours away from my old house, but still in stomping territory. He bought it in 1970 from the original family, a shipbuilder Captain Joshua Dewis, but he's long gone now. He abandoned the house around 1980, and sold it to another family in 1982. Vandals had trashed the place, bats, birds and little animals lived in the rooms. The new owners found his Obie awards amongst the rubbish and mailed them back to him and their son, months later, pulled these photographs out of garbage headed for the dump.

Restless Fool

Loved this song in high school. Used to play it, along with the whole Dougie Maclean 1988 "Real Estate" album, on full blast on the surround speakers in Andrew's living room, when Andrew's sister Kate and her boyfriend Brooke came back to live in the house after their mother died. That's the rub, you can finally listen to things at maximum decibel on Dad's expensive stereo- encompassed in a Phil Spector-worthy Wall of Sound- when your mother suddenly dies, your father freaks out and moves away with another woman, and your sister comes to take care of you.

It was a strange time. Andrew's mother had been my childhood psychologist, there were months I had to see her every day. The first week of our grade twelve year she collapsed during an appointment with child's parents and died of the brain aneurysm two days later. Her son was my best friend. We'd known each other since kindergarten, in the second grade he knocked out my two front teeth with swift hit from the hard plastic head of a Cabbage Patch doll. That was when Kate was still in high school, before she went to college to be an Anglican minister. They were Catholic, but women can't be priests and she wasn't interested in being a nun. She never became a minister, instead she listened to Sinead O'Connor, and found Brooke. Brooke was in the early stages of going 'back-to-the-land', except that the family house they came to occupy was a mid-70's suburban bungalow on the slope of Burnyeat Street, so his biosphere aquariums and heritage plants butted up against the sad memory of beige sliding and her Mom's old Volkswagen. He spent ten years as a sailor on the high seas before settling down with Kate; his ship travelled across the Atlantic, around Iceland, Scotland and the English channel, up to the North Sea and all of Scandinavia. He came with the treasures and the barrel chest of a man unaccustomed to dry land. Single malt scotch was his drink of choice, and both Andrew and I had our first sips of the elixir by his hand, after the funeral. They were ten years older than our barely eighteen, and their quiet worldliness influenced us in the wake of loud awkward teenage grief. They brought their long haired cat Daniel and a thin black mutt named Sarah, boxes of wildlife, gardening, and women's studies books, and they ordered a load of wood to burn in the unused fireplace. While they sorted through her stuff and settled in, Andrew and I hung out, watching Ed Wood movies and downing Cola, or guzzling beers until one of us cried or puked, usually in the backyard, beside one of Brooke's Highland Park bonsai. Andrew had a trundle bed and I'd sleep in the lower part, and when we'd wake up we'd perform the same hangover ritual every time. We'd make two cans of Campbells soup, Beef and Barley for him, Vegetable for me, drink one coffee and two Cokes in succession and do a chore to help out, like cleaning out the fridge. We listened to his Dougie Maclean, her Sinead, and our Zeppelin, at a volumes incongruous to the peace we were trying to make with growing up and the surprising amount of death and beauty that came with it. 

Call me a hypocrite, but I miss the farm. My bones ache for enslavement; to dawn rises, to wet caked soil felt up by frozen gloves, to the crumple into bed before the clock strikes ten. I look down and wonder where my real clothes went. How come my feet aren't shod in gumboots anymore, and are instead prancing around feather-foot in leopard print flats? Who do I think I am, the Prince of Persia? Where are my overalls, and long-johns and three inch thick sweaters? I found a blue long sleeve to wear yesterday, and remembered the forearms are stained with traces of iodine from cauterizing the lamb's tails, the blue once so nice against their tight cream curls.

Get back to work my body begs. Chicken claws breaking the thin skin of my hands in punishment for grabbing eggs. With my nose empty of its native hay perfume it hangs limb off my face, it's all citified  in want for rust. The snout calls out for the abandoned seeder, half-buried nails, the musky ice of the beaver pond; it needs to be filled with the smell of applewood smoke, and peat moss, and tractor diesel. My eyes graze a short horizon, I can't see past next week. Witnessing only the obscenities of spring like cheerful pointless tulips. Where are the visions of garlic tips forcing through the mulch, chicks with pasted-ons, the wild apple blossoms in nightgowns of blush?

How come I don't have use for a billhook anymore? A scythe, poultry staples, brooder lamps, a wheel hoe or an ax? These hands need a drill, a shovel, a knife to finesse and bend to the will. They need to fit a screen, or fill a feeder, or dig a harrow- they need jobs infinite and tiresome.

Why do my rings fit? My fingers would be sausages by now, my shoulders bent in constant tribute to the earth. Punish me with simple purpose. Life should be saying things like "Cover the back lots with compost. Get the wagon and drag up the pea trellis. Help me move this 500 pound rock with nothing but two iron rods and a piece of plywood." Why am I finding in the pockets of my coat empty packets whose labels ring out 'Watermelon Black Seeded Ice Cream- Very prolific, Matures Early" and "Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon, sustainably-grown"? The world is reminding me that I paid attention to it once, and felt small and good in wonderful things like spine-tingling coyote howls, and hopes for planted seed. Ambition existed for woven f-hedges, the growing rock pile, a baked pie. And evenings alone with wine, and a good book, and writing.

I can't go back to that farm exactly, I need the makings for another. If I was really ambitious I'd say- my own.

These are some of the last pictures I took at the farm.   
That little girl was my favorite, a darling Buff Orpington I wanted to bring home.

"Your cold mornings are filled with the heartache about the fact that although we are not at ease in this world, it is all we have, that it is ours but that it is full of strife, so that all we can call our own is strife; but even that is better than nothing at all, isn't it? And as you split frost-laced wood with numb hands, rejoice that your uncertainty is God's will and His grace toward you and that that is beautiful, and part of a greater certainty, as your own father always said in his sermons and to you at home. And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it. And when you resent the ache in your heart, remember: You will be dead and buried soon enough."

~Tinkers by Paul Harding.

When I read that passage last night tucked under covers, it rolled in my head and over my tongue and sank into dark recesses. I wish that I wrote it.

Harvest  Moon, 1892- Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Read me, Seymour!

Recently there has been some surprising attention paid to the readers of the world (or is it the lack there of? ) pitting 'serious' readers against fluff consumption, and response to men's fiction with that of women's. I'm curious to know what you think? Here's what I have to say...

Much hullabaloo was writ about the article in The Atlantic proclaiming a Slow Book Manifesto. The author pushes beyond the regular lamentation, that people aren't reading enough, into taste territory, towards "good" and against "bad". Targets include the consumption of YA literature by people over twenty, pulp, and blogs. She calls it fast entertainment, and I would agree. I trace this article's argument back to the Benjamin/Adorno debates on the merits of the avant-garde versus kitsch, and to Kant's Theory of Enlightenment, and frankly, I'm glad we are still hashing it out. Have we stopped pushing ourselves in what we read? Are we turning our adult brains into mush?

 Lots of people I respect loved Hunger Games and hit the blog rolls, a titch less read The Marriage Plot, and far fewer slug it through Anna Karenina, though I'm lucky to have a pretty erudite Karenina-reading crew of pals. Look, I read Twilight and by god, I liked it. But did it make me cry- more than once- like Elias Canetti, or gulp in the mystery of Jean Rhys? Did it make me want to be good, like Marilynne Robinson does, or cognizant of countrymen, like Steinbeck and Cather? Hell no.
Some of the most resonant books in my memory were ones I read as a child. YA is so important to the developing reader. But I was a child! I'm not against YA, or blogs, or pulp. I am against the complete infantilization of the adult brain, where everything remains twee and quick, appropriate for the attention span and rationale of teenagers. Puh-lease. The only thing you get with a soother is Milque.

Irony is not lost on some commenters (or a commentator like myself) that this Slow Book manifesto is making its readership primarily via "likes" on Facebook, blogs, and other social media, or that as a magazine article, even in The Atlantic, it might be disparaged by the very movement it espouses. Or that some might think it a call for a return to the western cannon of literature, at the peril of less institutional voices. Good things to consider, but not at the expense of the heart of the article- which is encouragement to read weightier books, and feel their hard won resonation in life. So darlings, tuck yourselves into some big deal literature already, even if it's tough!

Which bring me to the other article that piqued my interest, an essay in the New York Times Sunday Book review on men's versus women's fiction, and how, even when we do read we pay WAY more attention to the fiction of men than women. How, "some people, especially some men, see most fiction by women as one soft undifferentiated mass that has little to do with them." She's not talking so-called Chick-Lit, just literature "that happens to  be written by women." Now in that aforementioned erudite crew of pal readers, women far outweigh the men. But it's not just in how much they read, but what. It's never a shock to see a lady friend reaching for the Franzen or even Moby Dick, but the smart dudes I know, when they do read, most often stick to their fellow "Man", and barely side a glance at Atwood, Didion or Murdock. Of course, there are exceptions- Ted read every volume of Anais Nin's journals, Evan liked Kingsolver, Zaheed pushed Jane Bowles, The Birdfox championed Elizabeth Smart and Jacob smartly felt the punch-up of Djuna Barnes- but the stats are truly grim. Why do you think that is? Do you think all we write about is PMS and baskets of kittens?

So there we have it. Barely anyone reads, barely any one of those reads serious stuff, and barely any one of that group reads women's lit. What encouragement for a would-be serious female writer like myself.

In a final twist of irony, here are some links to blogs that focus on the unread.
Writers No One Reads
(un)justly (un)read
Invisible Stories
Shelf Actualization

Photo of James Franco reading in between takes. I think it's Cormac McCarthy for the record, but one for two ain't bad.

Portrait

The Wardens Today did a profile on lil' old me and it's up today. Those Wardens sure know how to blow smoke up a gal's arse. Seriously, I'm quite flattered.

Oh Danny Kaye

Melancholy in spring.