"Show a little faith, there's magic in the night..."

When I was a college senior, I took a course titled “Fielding and Byron.” I remember telling my professor something along the lines of, “I just can’t get into Tom Jones.” She looked down at me and replied, “You’re not old enough, not ready. Read it when you’re thirty and we’ll talk.”

I was insulted. How condescending! A sophisticated 21-year-old English major like me – well versed in the ways of the world…I could write my own damn picaresque based on the last two years alone...if she only knew – was “old enough” for anything she could throw at me. I even wrote my major essay on “Tom’s Naiveté.” That'll show her…

…that I was the queen of Unintentional Irony. She was, as usual, right, even though I “got into it” quite well just three years later. That professor has been a colleague and is now a friend, and we had a big laugh about that exchange a few years ago when I reminded her of it. Sometimes you’re not ready for a book; it’s just that simple. And sometimes you’re ready again, and again, and again and it’s new every time.

While we may well be able to do dispassionate analyses of our favorite flavor of art (and – burn me as a heretic – sometimes I doubt that we can ever put ourselves outside our analyses), and while we may be ashamed to admit it, we do see ourselves in books, paintings, songs. As a writer, I struggle with taking myself out of the work so a reader can put himself into it. But this entry is getting away from me.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably old enough to remember records. The kind you played on a turntable. The kind you stacked on a spindle and let drop while you lay on your bed and thought about your life in all its miseries and triumphs. Maybe this is something only girls do, but I doubt it. I know enough audiophile men to suspect otherwise. Perhaps you’re back there in your head right now, thinking of a particular song.

If so, track it down soon and play it. Listen to it the way you did back then. Notice the differences in the places it touches you, in the messages it holds. Let go of the part of your intellect that says, “Well, this line doesn’t exactly capture my existential ennui” or “You think your heart is broken now, singer, wait until you express those feelings to the person in question and see how you feel then.” Close your eyes. Be patient. It’s going to be a very different song, but the experience of listening while open to reverie is liberating.

More, soon, on my playlist….

Ahhhhh......

I walked down the airplane stairs yesterday afternoon and there it was, even through the smell of jet fuel: the clear, crisp, green Oregon air. It’s hard not to write an adolescent, gushy post about how gorgeous and wonderful it is to be here, so I hope this isn’t too cloying. But I am indeed jubilant.

There’s fresh snow on the mountains, the fruit trees and flowers are burgeoning, and a bald eagle flew, at eye level, past my living room window last night. On my way into town this morning through a partially sunny snow flurry (for coffee and, equally important, wifi access), I saw a huge Canada goose standing on the center roofline of an old red barn. A living weathervane, and friends the wind is fresh and fair.

I have nothing substantive on which to muse this morning. I plan to run a couple of errands, enjoy coffee with my friends, and take a long afternoon nap. On to the coast tomorrow…

The Week Ahead...

On Wednesday, I'll be heading out of town, for about a week, to go to a wedding on the Oregon coast bracketed by too few days in my beloved former town. I doubt I'll have the peace and quiet I had in this photo from a couple of years ago, and Internet access may be dicey. So if I don't post for the next few days, know I'll be back when I'm back.

Westward bound...to "watch the ocean bend the edges of the sun."

Bad Explicatin' on Saturday Night....

Come to my world and witness
The way things have changed
'Cause I finally did it, baby
I got out of La Grange

Got in my Mercury and drove out west
Pedal to the metal and my luck to the test
Baby, sweet baby

...Lucinda Williams
“Fruits of My Labors”

This song has been running through my head for several days now, and the first two lines in particular seem relevant to my last substantive post.

That first word, the imperative “come,” the stronger-than-asking call to action…gets me every time. It’s ripe and lush with so much potential. Is the voice hopeful? Angry? Didactic? Think for a minute: to just how many people would you like to issue that strong invitation? Family? Friends? Old lovers?

And the next verb, “witness,” with its don’t-take-my word-for-it tone. How many times have you tried to explain? To justify? To plead? Did it make any difference? Of course not. And even “witnessing” isn’t a sure thing, as the observer may see another scene, through other eyes altogether.

The singer wants to show, to demonstrate, to share –somehow- being new.

And then the she claims it all, with that triumphant first person “I.” Come or don’t come, witness or don’t bother – doesn’t really matter, does it?

Getting "in [your] Mercury" is always a solitary endeavor, no matter how many people you have in your life or your work. Until you let the layers fall away, discard the excess crap, and head “out west” – wherever or whatever west is for you – you’ll be explaining, justifying, and pleading.

And if you’re lucky, when you finally make it from 0 to 60, you won’t be alone in the car.

Special note: I got rid of my Mercury, literally, in 1985; when I finally headed out west, in 1995, I bought a Subaru. And things have changed yet again.

Something Beautiful for the Weekend

At the end of a long week, as I wait for the arrival of rain, hail, and the chance to sleep in, I thought I'd spare you my ramblings and offer, instead, a preview of where I'm heading next week.

Peace.

Far Flung Nuts....

Just goes to show you. Tigers and stripes and such. Don’t count your chickens. I committed to a topic yesterday while ideas were swirling and before I’d started writing and then, when the time came, WHAM…nothing.

Lesson learned. I can’t give myself the gift of a “no pressure” situation and then start turning the vise. Won’t work. Never has. So I chucked the edifying and interesting morning activity I’d been planning for months, loaded up Large Dog (LD), and headed out to the ranch. It’s one of those good spring mornings, sunny and cool in the shade and the promise of warmth in the sun. I’m on the cabin deck, in the dappled shade of a huge live oak, and I just finished my coffee. LD is snoring. So let’s try again.

My friend over at “Do You Realize…” (we’ll call her DYR) wrote a wonderful entry this week about her childhood in a beautiful part of the rural Deep South and her adult realization that her parents did and still do live in ways that are in direct opposition to her eco-conscious belief system. Writers know that – no matter how much we want to – we can’t control the directions in which our readers take our words. DYR, I spun far afield from your words, but I’ll try to bring it home at the end, ok? I’ll spare everyone all the intermediate steps I went through and all the possible metaphors I tried to muscle into submission, and get you where I am now.

Acorns never fall far from the tree? Yeah, right.

What happens when you end up over with the elms?

DYR is lucky. She at least started out at home with and in her family and leafed out later. Me? Sorry, no big drama, but I was the elm in the oaks from the start. I just thought differently. I loved and respected the oak grove, but I didn’t want to live there forever. These are the kinds of feelings that lead 12-year-old girls to subscribe to The Atlantic Monthly even though they live in Reader’s Digest houses. College, graduate school, heartbreaks, marriage into a very different kind of family…. each of these things took me farther away. It’s not fun to be bi-arboreal (humor me on the term, ok?) but it does get easier when you stop trying to feed the squirrels.

And the folks I call my friends? Lots of them are noticing that their leaves this spring are different. It could be an age-group thing, although that’s an awfully facile explanation. Maybe it’s just the kind of people I like (could the universe have plopped me down into a peer group titled “People Shipped to the Wrong Address at Birth”?). And these shifts, these sproutings from seeds borne aloft, are not always related to birth families. Saplings are seeking the sun away from marriages, jobs, and geographies they were never meant to inhabit.

And I do believe that makes for a healthy eco-system for us all.

This one didn’t turn out quite like I’d planned - a bit short, a lot surface - but this is all about no pressure, right? RIGHT? She mutters to herself, “Be an elm, be an elm, be all the way elm…”

This one goes out to...

...no, no, no! Settle down! I'm not going to channel Michael Stipe (despite what I wrote on April 9) or confess true love!

This post (when I finish writing it) will be inspired by my eco-blogging friend over at "Do You Realize...It's Hard to Make the Good Things Last" and goes out to all those who find themselves on a different path, in a different patch of woods, than the one where they started. Stay tuned.