Here's the first chapter to my new manuscript Sleep, Creep, Leap. Think I finally have the order set.
First Garden First
To be fair, this isn’t my first garden. Technically. And if I really get anal about it, perhaps my first garden was a green bean plant in a Styrofoam cup growing on the window ledge of my first grade classroom. I still remember the smell of that particular soil—very sweet, like sugary cigar smoke mixed with rose petals. Something like that. I remember sticking my finger in the dirt, probing for the bean seed underneath, the feathery give of that soil, the wonder—had the seed opened yet? Was it coming toward the surface? Then the two leaves. Then four. Every morning I’d check on the progress, along with my classmates, and during the day I’d glance over from my desk at the small cup with my name scribbled across the front, uncomfortably angled down the curve so it looked like a crazy person wrote it.
But if one is talking about several plants in the ground, my first garden was out the front patio of my townhome when I moved to Lincoln in 2003 to begin my PhD. The covenants said I could plant things, and that was all my green thumb mother needed to hear. “You need something out here, to give it some life, some character,” she said standing out front after helping me move boxes in with my dad. “You’ll be much happier for it,” she continued, her arms folded across her chest, surveying the grass and vinyl siding, then looking back over her shoulder. “Trust me. Let’s find a nursery.”
So we borrowed my dad’s SUV, picked up lavender, coneflowers, coreopsis, penstemon, a butterfly bush, a rose of sharon on a stick, some arborvitae and boxwood, some plastic edging. When we came back with a full truck my dad asked if we bought the whole store. It seemed like it to me.
Though I was looking forward to the plants, to a mini garden of about thirty square feet, I didn’t really understand what it meant—not to me, or my mother, who I grew up gardening with. Her garden was split in two: maybe two thousand or more square feet out back, and at least that much out front. I often went to nurseries with her early in the morning each summer, sometimes just to get out of the noisy house. I didn’t know hardly anything about growing plants.
My little patio garden in Nebraska was hard work. Thick, wet clay from a sprinkler system that overwatered and made the spade weigh an extra ten pounds. A full day of ripping up grass and planting on the south side in August made me question another proposed trip to the nursery. I had two dozen plants in the ground, raised a few inches in the clay, mulched, watered in. Plants. What now? My parents left me on my own a day later.
Over the years I taught myself how to deadhead by trial and error, never once consulting the internet, and maybe just a few times my mother. “How’s the garden going?” She’d ask on the phone, and I’d reply sheepishly, humbled by the thought that this small space might be called the “G” word. “Going good. Everything doubled in size this year. I even saw a big yellow butterfly on the butterfly bush today.” My mom’s voice jumped as she said, “Oh, I bet that’s a swallowtail. Aren’t they neat?” And I supposed they were. Slowly, ever so slowly, I was getting into my manageable space. An hors d’oeuvre, in many respects. Something that I never consciously connected to my childhood or my mother, and never, until I proposed to my girlfriend and we started house hunting, something I thought of taking much further.
The last summer in the townhome I carved out another ten square feet along the sidewalk and put in some liatris, snow-in-summer, a few more coneflowers, an aster. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but ripping up the sod I knew I’d caught a bug. Those ten feet were a watershed moment, a dam cracking and soon to break. As I babied the new plants with topsoil and mulch, and kneeled on the hard cement pushing my finger into the sweet soil—exploring their growing root zones and pulling out the smallest weeds—I emerged from nearly thirty years of a blurred life I didn’t recognize into a world that suddenly seemed more like home, something I’d always been a part of but never really knew.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Rapture
The juncos have been feasting at the feeders this winter, dozens at a time, stopping first in shrubs to make sure the coast is clear, then leapfrogging like checkers toward the open yard. Sometimes the entire flock will jolt into the air and run for cover, and for five minutes the space is empty and silent. Eventually, one junco will venture out, land on the ground, peck at the seed-covered snow. Then another. Then thirty—until they get spooked again.
I’m sitting on the couch, flipping between a television show on U.S. air tactics in the first Gulf War, and an episode of Airwolf. Out of the corner of my eye I see a swoop of a large bird, a streak of white and olive. A flicker?
I race to the sliding door and can’t see anything. Nothing at the feeder or birdbath, nothing at the suet. I scan the tops of trees. Nothing. I look between the skeletons of perennials and don’t see anything move, not until a stroke of dark brown tail feathers pulse from behind the base of the arborvitae. A small hawk quickly lifts from the ground, junco in its clutches, and vanishes into the tree line.
I slip on my shoes to inspect the battlefield, astonished that this happened right here, in my tranquil haven—that nature, in all its forms, has come here to roost so fully. I find only a few scattered grey feathers, some in the folds of dark green thuja, some in the snow, but not a trace of blood. It was a clean kill, something with skill and even honor. Such terror in a moment, it seems wrong to be here, out in the cold, painting a picture of awe and rapture.
[This happened today, and is about as true as I get, down to the detail. The mini garden memoir has over 40 pieces, is on the cusp of 100 pages, and almost 25,000 words. I will finish by February. I have a rough outline, and most pieces in preliminary order. Just a few more to write, fill in some holes (plant profiles, a little actual horticulture).]
I’m sitting on the couch, flipping between a television show on U.S. air tactics in the first Gulf War, and an episode of Airwolf. Out of the corner of my eye I see a swoop of a large bird, a streak of white and olive. A flicker?
I race to the sliding door and can’t see anything. Nothing at the feeder or birdbath, nothing at the suet. I scan the tops of trees. Nothing. I look between the skeletons of perennials and don’t see anything move, not until a stroke of dark brown tail feathers pulse from behind the base of the arborvitae. A small hawk quickly lifts from the ground, junco in its clutches, and vanishes into the tree line.
I slip on my shoes to inspect the battlefield, astonished that this happened right here, in my tranquil haven—that nature, in all its forms, has come here to roost so fully. I find only a few scattered grey feathers, some in the folds of dark green thuja, some in the snow, but not a trace of blood. It was a clean kill, something with skill and even honor. Such terror in a moment, it seems wrong to be here, out in the cold, painting a picture of awe and rapture.
[This happened today, and is about as true as I get, down to the detail. The mini garden memoir has over 40 pieces, is on the cusp of 100 pages, and almost 25,000 words. I will finish by February. I have a rough outline, and most pieces in preliminary order. Just a few more to write, fill in some holes (plant profiles, a little actual horticulture).]
Thursday, January 20, 2011
2011 Model Year
Gardens are like cars. Go with me on this. You’ve got your Cadillac gardens, massive beds, large scale parterres and fountains, prim and proper. There’s the Japanese or Zen style gardens, er, I mean Toyota Prius—never assuming, but quiet, peaceful, socially connected to the larger world and landscape around it. You’ve got you Fords and GMs, you know, foundation plantings from a bix box nursery, whatever came with the house. Then there’s those exotic plants you shouldn’t have, that have no business in that environment, that can’t even handle snow and need too much pampering and cost far too much in the first place, but they sure are nice to salivate over—Bugatti, Astin Martin.
You’ve got gardens that are like a 1985 Honda CRX or some other small, two door car that just won’t quit. It’s rusted, beat up, smells like every restaurant and air freshener imaginable, it doesn’t get you out of the city, but what it lacks in dependability and sex appeal it makes up for in decent gas mileage and readily-available parts on Ebay. This kind of garden comes from Home Depot, and usually looks like an under-watered, scraggly maple marooned in the front yard, with some boxwood hugging the house, and in the fall nasty orange geraniums in a pot or two (doped up with Miracle Gro).
Finally, you’ve got your minivan gardens. I’ll call them vegetable beds. Completely utilitarian and economical, practical. But there’s always a new scratch, a new ding, something spilled on the carpet. There’s always a head of lettuce missing, infested tomatoes, strawberries pecked to death by birds. But you’re not in it for the now, you’re in it for the long haul. The experience. The nurturing. The hope that what you provide will create a better future. Vegetable gardens seem more altruistic to me, maybe like that Toyota Prius.
Still, who doesn’t dream of that sexy something sitting next to you in the Maserati convertible, both of you perfect, complete because of your fortune 500 company or the sweet inheritance or the lawsuit against Monsanto that actually stuck once hell froze over. Look at you two, wind in your luscious hair, dressed in Armani, sipping champagne from the refrigerator glove box—like some modern day Louis XIV strolling down Versailles as groundskeepers rush ahead to turn on fountains just for you.
You’ve got gardens that are like a 1985 Honda CRX or some other small, two door car that just won’t quit. It’s rusted, beat up, smells like every restaurant and air freshener imaginable, it doesn’t get you out of the city, but what it lacks in dependability and sex appeal it makes up for in decent gas mileage and readily-available parts on Ebay. This kind of garden comes from Home Depot, and usually looks like an under-watered, scraggly maple marooned in the front yard, with some boxwood hugging the house, and in the fall nasty orange geraniums in a pot or two (doped up with Miracle Gro).
Finally, you’ve got your minivan gardens. I’ll call them vegetable beds. Completely utilitarian and economical, practical. But there’s always a new scratch, a new ding, something spilled on the carpet. There’s always a head of lettuce missing, infested tomatoes, strawberries pecked to death by birds. But you’re not in it for the now, you’re in it for the long haul. The experience. The nurturing. The hope that what you provide will create a better future. Vegetable gardens seem more altruistic to me, maybe like that Toyota Prius.
Still, who doesn’t dream of that sexy something sitting next to you in the Maserati convertible, both of you perfect, complete because of your fortune 500 company or the sweet inheritance or the lawsuit against Monsanto that actually stuck once hell froze over. Look at you two, wind in your luscious hair, dressed in Armani, sipping champagne from the refrigerator glove box—like some modern day Louis XIV strolling down Versailles as groundskeepers rush ahead to turn on fountains just for you.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Pasque Flower and Liatris -- More From The Book
Along with narrative chapters in my new mini garden memoir, I'm also incorporating prose poemy type entries on a few garden plants that stand out to me. They all stand out, so it's hard to pick and choose, but here are two:
Pulsatilla Vulgaris – Pasque Flower
In April fingered leaves reach up like praying hands, and from their centers an oval of dark magenta rises covered in peach fuzz. The stem too, thick and short, seems to be covered in a white halo, as if emerging from a bed of frost. The thin petals unfurl, dark purple, at the center a gumdrop of yellow stamens. And there, at the center of the center, a wild explosion of purple like a frozen mushroom cloud, the style, an echo of the flower’s rising, the petals unfurling. Everything about this is chilled, preserved, a bridge between the cold nights and suddenly warm days. Every new bud breaking ground seems awkward and unsure, even premature. They keep low to the ground, careful to not leave the safety of the warming soil. In the evening the only sign that there was a flower is the gathering together of soft tentacles to preserve the next day’s resurrection.
Liatris Ligulistylis -- Meadow Blazing Star
August is pouring down heat, is thick with humidity, is raining monarchs. On five foot spikes blooms zigzag, stagger, step up the long ladder of growth, each flower placed in such a way that it might accommodate dozens of butterflies at once. The bright purple petals spill from their centers, fifty or more, each licking the air with undetectable scents. One monarch erratically hovers then lands. Another. Another. Finally a half dozen at once until something shakes them, stirs them up into the air, each making a wide circle of the garden and slowly spiraling in back toward the blooms. This is the perfect time of year, the last of the monarchs emerging, readying for their exodus south. In two months puffs of seed will spill from the places where the blooms were. Blow on them like a dandelion. Each seed takes flight like a butterfly’s shadow, released from the earth to be sheltered by it again in some place that will echo this one.
I have 35 chapters, maybe around 80 pages. About time to see how they fit into a book, in one Word document (always a little apprehensive about this big step, is it too soon to move in together?).
Pulsatilla Vulgaris – Pasque Flower
In April fingered leaves reach up like praying hands, and from their centers an oval of dark magenta rises covered in peach fuzz. The stem too, thick and short, seems to be covered in a white halo, as if emerging from a bed of frost. The thin petals unfurl, dark purple, at the center a gumdrop of yellow stamens. And there, at the center of the center, a wild explosion of purple like a frozen mushroom cloud, the style, an echo of the flower’s rising, the petals unfurling. Everything about this is chilled, preserved, a bridge between the cold nights and suddenly warm days. Every new bud breaking ground seems awkward and unsure, even premature. They keep low to the ground, careful to not leave the safety of the warming soil. In the evening the only sign that there was a flower is the gathering together of soft tentacles to preserve the next day’s resurrection.
Liatris Ligulistylis -- Meadow Blazing Star
August is pouring down heat, is thick with humidity, is raining monarchs. On five foot spikes blooms zigzag, stagger, step up the long ladder of growth, each flower placed in such a way that it might accommodate dozens of butterflies at once. The bright purple petals spill from their centers, fifty or more, each licking the air with undetectable scents. One monarch erratically hovers then lands. Another. Another. Finally a half dozen at once until something shakes them, stirs them up into the air, each making a wide circle of the garden and slowly spiraling in back toward the blooms. This is the perfect time of year, the last of the monarchs emerging, readying for their exodus south. In two months puffs of seed will spill from the places where the blooms were. Blow on them like a dandelion. Each seed takes flight like a butterfly’s shadow, released from the earth to be sheltered by it again in some place that will echo this one.
I have 35 chapters, maybe around 80 pages. About time to see how they fit into a book, in one Word document (always a little apprehensive about this big step, is it too soon to move in together?).
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Four! -- More From the New Book
Another section, this one on our strange golfing neighbor, from the manuscript-in-progress Sleep, Creep, Leap: The First Three Years of a Garden. Keep in mind, hot off the press and very raw, but your thoughts are most welcome. I have nearly 20 rough draft pieces, so half done.
Four!
We’ve just come back from picking up sandwiches from our favorite local shop. There’s nothing I enjoy more than eating dinner on the covered deck in summer, looking out over the garden and birdfeeders. My wife and I sit in silence, voracious for Philly steak and cheese, fingers covered in wonderful grease, the foil wrap scraping our fingers as we reach for sour cream and onion chips.
Surveying all that we own—a "massive" quarter acre—we hear blue jays squawking and brown thrashers chasing each other through cedars. From right to left squirrels fly across the balance beam of the chain link fence, placed along the back property line so we could see through to our neighbor’s three acre field and pretend it was our own.
The empty lot next door has a small hill in the back that rises about ten feet to the sloping edge of our neighbor’s acreage. Late one night I heard men’s voices and trucks beeping, then mechanical sounds like dozens of bodies being secretly dumped into a hole. The next morning three new oak trees were scattered near the property line. Who plants trees late at night?
During dinner I lift my head from the onions and peppers and melted swiss to see our neighbor appear suddenly on the top of the hill taking chip shots at golf balls. He’s launching nearly invisible balls toward his house 80 yards away.
He looks over his shoulder at us. I can’t believe we make eye contact, but we do, and it feels like an eternity. He slowly looks down to his ball, lines up the club, and takes a good long, arcing swing.
Then he looks at us again, bends down, places another ball. I’m not even eating any more. I nudge my wife.
This swing doesn’t seem as graceful as the last—it is wide and sloppy, hasty. Is he trying to perform?
He turns his body a little toward us. Hello, I say to myself out loud, my wife laughs and says “Be quiet!” Then she says just as loudly, “What the heck is he doing?”
“Maybe he’s checking us out. Sizing us up.” My wife shrugs and takes a bite of her sandwich. The man chips at a ball, then leans on his club, looking out over his small field of goldenrod and immature wild cedars. A kid could get lost in that acreage playing hide-and-go-seek.
“Did you hear those trucks the other night?” I ask my wife. “What? No,” she replies.
“They planted some oaks out back at about 1.”
“At night?” she says, while out of the corner of her eye watching the man watching his landscape.
“Yeah. Kinda creapy.”
“He looks creepy,” she says. “With that moustache and all. Why does he keep looking over here?”
After a few minutes our neighbor tosses his golf club over his shoulder nonchalantly like a civil war rifle and waddles off toward his house. We lose sight of him behind the taller cedars along our fence and finish eating so I can go dig in a few more plants before sunset.
For years I find golf balls against our property line, some half buried in mud, perhaps rising from the depths through frost heaves and rain. One day, I’m sure, I’ll find one in a planting hole. A message, perhaps, like a horse head.
Four!
We’ve just come back from picking up sandwiches from our favorite local shop. There’s nothing I enjoy more than eating dinner on the covered deck in summer, looking out over the garden and birdfeeders. My wife and I sit in silence, voracious for Philly steak and cheese, fingers covered in wonderful grease, the foil wrap scraping our fingers as we reach for sour cream and onion chips.
Surveying all that we own—a "massive" quarter acre—we hear blue jays squawking and brown thrashers chasing each other through cedars. From right to left squirrels fly across the balance beam of the chain link fence, placed along the back property line so we could see through to our neighbor’s three acre field and pretend it was our own.
The empty lot next door has a small hill in the back that rises about ten feet to the sloping edge of our neighbor’s acreage. Late one night I heard men’s voices and trucks beeping, then mechanical sounds like dozens of bodies being secretly dumped into a hole. The next morning three new oak trees were scattered near the property line. Who plants trees late at night?
During dinner I lift my head from the onions and peppers and melted swiss to see our neighbor appear suddenly on the top of the hill taking chip shots at golf balls. He’s launching nearly invisible balls toward his house 80 yards away.
He looks over his shoulder at us. I can’t believe we make eye contact, but we do, and it feels like an eternity. He slowly looks down to his ball, lines up the club, and takes a good long, arcing swing.
Then he looks at us again, bends down, places another ball. I’m not even eating any more. I nudge my wife.
This swing doesn’t seem as graceful as the last—it is wide and sloppy, hasty. Is he trying to perform?
He turns his body a little toward us. Hello, I say to myself out loud, my wife laughs and says “Be quiet!” Then she says just as loudly, “What the heck is he doing?”
“Maybe he’s checking us out. Sizing us up.” My wife shrugs and takes a bite of her sandwich. The man chips at a ball, then leans on his club, looking out over his small field of goldenrod and immature wild cedars. A kid could get lost in that acreage playing hide-and-go-seek.
“Did you hear those trucks the other night?” I ask my wife. “What? No,” she replies.
“They planted some oaks out back at about 1.”
“At night?” she says, while out of the corner of her eye watching the man watching his landscape.
“Yeah. Kinda creapy.”
“He looks creepy,” she says. “With that moustache and all. Why does he keep looking over here?”
After a few minutes our neighbor tosses his golf club over his shoulder nonchalantly like a civil war rifle and waddles off toward his house. We lose sight of him behind the taller cedars along our fence and finish eating so I can go dig in a few more plants before sunset.
For years I find golf balls against our property line, some half buried in mud, perhaps rising from the depths through frost heaves and rain. One day, I’m sure, I’ll find one in a planting hole. A message, perhaps, like a horse head.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Hatchback Trees -- My New Book Project
I'm writing a new gardening book by Feb 1st. 40 short snapshot-esque chapters on the first years of my garden. Target length is 100 pages (a nice pocket book I hope). Below is one section of 15 I've written so far, and I'll likely post more over the coming weeks. I'd love your base, first, gut reaction on these pieces as they come along.
The book is tentatively titled Sleep, Creep, Leap: The First Three Years of a Newbie's Garden, and will be a mix of styles--humorous, lyrical, descriptive, narrative--most chapters only a few pages long. Some chapters will be posts taken directly from my blog, others, like the one below, are fresh off the press and quite raw.
Hatchback Trees
No one stares. No one even looks over at the stoplight. I suppose that’s fine, I don’t want to make a scene. I’m just trying to get from point A to point B without losing too many leaves or side-swiping another car when I blindly change lanes.
The tallest tree I’ve had in my hatchback was an eight foot maple. The widest was about four feet, a weeping white birch 50% off at a big box store (it was too sophisticated for their usual clientele, I’m convinced, and thus its sale price).
Once a young man helping me asked if the tree would fit in my car. I laughed, scoffed, rolled my eyes and moaned a “duh.” But there is a trick to it, and sometimes it does help to have someone up front threading branches through the seats, past headrests, on to the dash, and out the window. I don’t like coming home to find even one small twig has been torn off.
The pot is the biggest problem, like trying to lift a bag of shifting sand to your chest. Over the years I figure I’ve lost a good yard of planting medium, soil, mulch, and compost to my trunk.
I drive home at or below speed limit, taking the side roads, trying to reduce wind drag as the maple, birch, or crabapple needles its way out the passenger window. Often I’m poked and prodded along the way, twigs piercing my arm, my cheek, leaves tickling my ear, and once, a preying mantis taking the tree-bridge over into my hair and almost causing an accident. But I gave her a good home.
Maybe there's no art to hatchback tree hauling that makes me special. But I see kids in the backseat of a Ford pull up to a truck and whoop and holler at the black lab in the cargo bed, excitedly waving and barking, the dog wagging its tail like a windshield wiper on overdrive. I wish someone would pull up next to me, look over, smile, maybe even wink. Yes, I’d see them say in their eyes, yes, you are a man after my own heart.
The book is tentatively titled Sleep, Creep, Leap: The First Three Years of a Newbie's Garden, and will be a mix of styles--humorous, lyrical, descriptive, narrative--most chapters only a few pages long. Some chapters will be posts taken directly from my blog, others, like the one below, are fresh off the press and quite raw.
Hatchback Trees
No one stares. No one even looks over at the stoplight. I suppose that’s fine, I don’t want to make a scene. I’m just trying to get from point A to point B without losing too many leaves or side-swiping another car when I blindly change lanes.
The tallest tree I’ve had in my hatchback was an eight foot maple. The widest was about four feet, a weeping white birch 50% off at a big box store (it was too sophisticated for their usual clientele, I’m convinced, and thus its sale price).
Once a young man helping me asked if the tree would fit in my car. I laughed, scoffed, rolled my eyes and moaned a “duh.” But there is a trick to it, and sometimes it does help to have someone up front threading branches through the seats, past headrests, on to the dash, and out the window. I don’t like coming home to find even one small twig has been torn off.
The pot is the biggest problem, like trying to lift a bag of shifting sand to your chest. Over the years I figure I’ve lost a good yard of planting medium, soil, mulch, and compost to my trunk.
I drive home at or below speed limit, taking the side roads, trying to reduce wind drag as the maple, birch, or crabapple needles its way out the passenger window. Often I’m poked and prodded along the way, twigs piercing my arm, my cheek, leaves tickling my ear, and once, a preying mantis taking the tree-bridge over into my hair and almost causing an accident. But I gave her a good home.
Maybe there's no art to hatchback tree hauling that makes me special. But I see kids in the backseat of a Ford pull up to a truck and whoop and holler at the black lab in the cargo bed, excitedly waving and barking, the dog wagging its tail like a windshield wiper on overdrive. I wish someone would pull up next to me, look over, smile, maybe even wink. Yes, I’d see them say in their eyes, yes, you are a man after my own heart.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
On Lorrie Moore's Birds of America
I give you an oh yes moment, then some hearty laughs from Moore's short story collection (which is marvelous--beautiful and real life prose with lovely doses of subtle / clever / smart humor the likes of which I've never seen before).
"Staring out through the windshield, off into the horizon, Abby began to think that all the beauty and ugliness and turbulence one found scattered through nature, one could also find in people themselves, all collected there, all together in a single place. No matter what terror or loveliness the earth could produce--winds, seas--a person could produce the same, lived with the same, lived with all that mixed-up nature inside, every bit. There was nothing as complex in the world--no flower or stone--as a single hello from a human being."
Did you say OH YES? Makes me think about the food chain, a human eating a fish who ate a smaller fish who ate a fly who ate.... It all gathers and accrues and we become everything and each other. I almost wish I could write an essay for the story class I'm teaching.... tomorrow?! School starts tomorrow???
And now some Tom Swifties, as she calls them (though the way she uses them in a story makes them even better, even more clever and narratively acute):
I have to go to the hardware store, he said wrenchingly.
This hot dog's awful, he said frankly.
I like a good sled dog, she said huskily.
There's never been an accident, she said recklessly.
You're only average, he said meanly.
Take a bow, he said sternly.
"Staring out through the windshield, off into the horizon, Abby began to think that all the beauty and ugliness and turbulence one found scattered through nature, one could also find in people themselves, all collected there, all together in a single place. No matter what terror or loveliness the earth could produce--winds, seas--a person could produce the same, lived with the same, lived with all that mixed-up nature inside, every bit. There was nothing as complex in the world--no flower or stone--as a single hello from a human being."
Did you say OH YES? Makes me think about the food chain, a human eating a fish who ate a smaller fish who ate a fly who ate.... It all gathers and accrues and we become everything and each other. I almost wish I could write an essay for the story class I'm teaching.... tomorrow?! School starts tomorrow???
And now some Tom Swifties, as she calls them (though the way she uses them in a story makes them even better, even more clever and narratively acute):
I have to go to the hardware store, he said wrenchingly.
This hot dog's awful, he said frankly.
I like a good sled dog, she said huskily.
There's never been an accident, she said recklessly.
You're only average, he said meanly.
Take a bow, he said sternly.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Where I Write, How I Write
I might as well post a nude photo of myself. Showing my space is really an act of total exposure. And you know you feel voyeuristic about it, too; I do when others let me look in on their creative spaces.
Spurred on by Dee's post on writing tips at Red Dirt Ramblings, I give you my small 10x10' writing space that is far too warm any time of the year with the door shut (and shut it must be).
[The book shelf in the corner behind the red chair (the red chair I sat on as a kid in the living room) holds all the books I'm reading for my next memoir on Oklahoma, the Great Plains environment, Mennonite migration, and Native Americans in Oklahoma Territory. Anything on the floor is related to classes I'm teaching. That's my system.]
[Last summer's newest book shelf, which my wife and I stained in the garage (big mistake), and which was filled within 10 minutes of being moved into the office. I still have enough books to fill 1-2 more of these shelves. Someday--a library with two-story built ins and a fireplace, and a desk the size of a buffet table. Nota bene: this is about as clean as my office gets.]
I don't have any writing advice, other than don't do it. Unless you enjoy all manner of self torture. See, I'm a perfectionist. Not in the first draft stage (which is suicide), but in editing and research. Editing is where the real writing happens, and that's where all the joy and hope of the first draft crashes against the rocky shore of the inner critic, where rejoicing rises and dips into the deepest dispair, then ricochets to Mount Olympus, then down we go again.... I used to have a bad inner critic that simply said, "You are God, you rock." Now it says, "Push it, push it harder, go deeper, come on, don't settle for that, you know you can do it better, stop whimping out you patsy, good grief."
Dee says the inner critic can, most of the time, be a bad thing. I agree only when we're talking about beginnings. But that critic must be honed, sharpened, and tuned to a fine pitch so the writing really happens and works, and this means lots and lots and lots of second guessing, hopelessness, and head banging on the table. It means ecstatic, orgasmic excitement (best feeling in the world, can't even describe it to you). It also obviously means mood swings, which are necessary to finding the way out of the word maze and realizing potential.
Looky here, this post is turning into a bit of tyrade. There's the romantic, cliched idea of a writer or artist--and to a certain degree it's spot on. But like any profession, peserverance and raw passion (and raw talent to begin with) is the only thing that gets you through--and it does get you through, eventually, kind of like Exlax.
It's important to have your own writing space. I was recently reading another blog where the author said it's disirable, but not essential to have one, and yet if you don't have that space it's nearly impossible to work.
I need silence. I need complete silence within a 50 foot, three dimensional radius. I need hours of uninterrupted time. I "joke" with my wife that I need a red "On Air" light outside the door so she knows when I'm really in a groove and need as much distance and stillness as possible. (Does that make me a bad person? I've lived my life thinking my need for silence and solitude makes me bad, and I carry this guilt around, it festers, it makes me angry and leads me to feeling placeless and ungrounded, uncomfortable, on edge, out of my body. No one befriends a person like me.)
After I write I need 30-60 minutes to cool down alone before I can re-enter the world. Sometimes I surf the net, or stare out the window or at the ceiling. It's the same as in the garden, I think. Planting, inspecting, working, I need time to sit back and leave the garden while I'm still in it. I don't know what this all says about me, artists, or introverts, but there you go. We're all so immensley complex when we're alive, and then we die and are reduced to hardly an echo, open to other people's interpretations and memories and suppositions, all as fluid and dynamic as this moment here, writing and reading, alone but impossibly on display, on stage, dissected, probed, judged, and felt up (emotionally felt up, willingly violated).
Spurred on by Dee's post on writing tips at Red Dirt Ramblings, I give you my small 10x10' writing space that is far too warm any time of the year with the door shut (and shut it must be).
[The book shelf in the corner behind the red chair (the red chair I sat on as a kid in the living room) holds all the books I'm reading for my next memoir on Oklahoma, the Great Plains environment, Mennonite migration, and Native Americans in Oklahoma Territory. Anything on the floor is related to classes I'm teaching. That's my system.]
[Last summer's newest book shelf, which my wife and I stained in the garage (big mistake), and which was filled within 10 minutes of being moved into the office. I still have enough books to fill 1-2 more of these shelves. Someday--a library with two-story built ins and a fireplace, and a desk the size of a buffet table. Nota bene: this is about as clean as my office gets.]
I don't have any writing advice, other than don't do it. Unless you enjoy all manner of self torture. See, I'm a perfectionist. Not in the first draft stage (which is suicide), but in editing and research. Editing is where the real writing happens, and that's where all the joy and hope of the first draft crashes against the rocky shore of the inner critic, where rejoicing rises and dips into the deepest dispair, then ricochets to Mount Olympus, then down we go again.... I used to have a bad inner critic that simply said, "You are God, you rock." Now it says, "Push it, push it harder, go deeper, come on, don't settle for that, you know you can do it better, stop whimping out you patsy, good grief."
Dee says the inner critic can, most of the time, be a bad thing. I agree only when we're talking about beginnings. But that critic must be honed, sharpened, and tuned to a fine pitch so the writing really happens and works, and this means lots and lots and lots of second guessing, hopelessness, and head banging on the table. It means ecstatic, orgasmic excitement (best feeling in the world, can't even describe it to you). It also obviously means mood swings, which are necessary to finding the way out of the word maze and realizing potential.
Looky here, this post is turning into a bit of tyrade. There's the romantic, cliched idea of a writer or artist--and to a certain degree it's spot on. But like any profession, peserverance and raw passion (and raw talent to begin with) is the only thing that gets you through--and it does get you through, eventually, kind of like Exlax.
It's important to have your own writing space. I was recently reading another blog where the author said it's disirable, but not essential to have one, and yet if you don't have that space it's nearly impossible to work.
I need silence. I need complete silence within a 50 foot, three dimensional radius. I need hours of uninterrupted time. I "joke" with my wife that I need a red "On Air" light outside the door so she knows when I'm really in a groove and need as much distance and stillness as possible. (Does that make me a bad person? I've lived my life thinking my need for silence and solitude makes me bad, and I carry this guilt around, it festers, it makes me angry and leads me to feeling placeless and ungrounded, uncomfortable, on edge, out of my body. No one befriends a person like me.)
After I write I need 30-60 minutes to cool down alone before I can re-enter the world. Sometimes I surf the net, or stare out the window or at the ceiling. It's the same as in the garden, I think. Planting, inspecting, working, I need time to sit back and leave the garden while I'm still in it. I don't know what this all says about me, artists, or introverts, but there you go. We're all so immensley complex when we're alive, and then we die and are reduced to hardly an echo, open to other people's interpretations and memories and suppositions, all as fluid and dynamic as this moment here, writing and reading, alone but impossibly on display, on stage, dissected, probed, judged, and felt up (emotionally felt up, willingly violated).
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Mr. Renegade, You Make My Heart Sing
January perks up every year with the Renegade Gardener--a man who also installed the landscaping / gardens around my mom's new home in Minnesota. I'm still getting over losing my childhood home, but the new house sure is nice, too. I guess.
Anywho, check out Don's High Spot / Black Spot awards. If you like sarcasm and brutal ecological truth, you'll like Don. By extension, you may like me, too. There are always many literary gems with Don's awards, but I chose this more subtle one:
"Much of the joy in gardening comes from gaining expertise in growing a wide and disparate collection of plants the presence of which you enjoy. From its infancy in your garden, each plant exhibits different behaviors hinting at different needs, much like children. These differences range from subtle to stark. As parent, your job is to discover and adapt your skills at nurturing based on these differences.
This development of skills is usually fun, occasionally frustrating. You will grow some plants that help with the dishes, do their homework without prompting, and are eager to attend Sunday school. Other plants arrive home after curfew in the back of a patrol car. That the easy plants are often plain and the bad boys always gorgeous reflects a universal principle often adapted to literature and film."
And yes, Don, why do chewing gum packages now look like condom packages? Is the next step for seed packs to emulate this marketing strategy? I think it'd work.
Anywho, check out Don's High Spot / Black Spot awards. If you like sarcasm and brutal ecological truth, you'll like Don. By extension, you may like me, too. There are always many literary gems with Don's awards, but I chose this more subtle one:
"Much of the joy in gardening comes from gaining expertise in growing a wide and disparate collection of plants the presence of which you enjoy. From its infancy in your garden, each plant exhibits different behaviors hinting at different needs, much like children. These differences range from subtle to stark. As parent, your job is to discover and adapt your skills at nurturing based on these differences.
This development of skills is usually fun, occasionally frustrating. You will grow some plants that help with the dishes, do their homework without prompting, and are eager to attend Sunday school. Other plants arrive home after curfew in the back of a patrol car. That the easy plants are often plain and the bad boys always gorgeous reflects a universal principle often adapted to literature and film."
And yes, Don, why do chewing gum packages now look like condom packages? Is the next step for seed packs to emulate this marketing strategy? I think it'd work.
Friday, December 31, 2010
2010 -- Don't Let The Door Hit You On the Way Out
I'm not too sad to see 2010 go. It was a very frustrating year for me outside the garden, in the writing world. Maybe it wasn't frustrating, maybe it was organizing / storing up / mobilizing and I can't see it yet. But in this profession--and in the hopes of attaining a teaching job, fellowships, publishers, etc--there are no points for second place or nice thoughts, just feelings of "what might have been." Looking back teaches us how to look forward, and it is always something that motivates me to try harder (by making me angry) even though it seems like I'm not getting anywhere, or that moving 2 inches isn't really progress even though it might be.
1) My poetry collection Afterimage was 1 of 6 finalists for the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press. There were also 6 fiction finalists, for a total of 12 finalists.
2) Also 1 of 4 finalists for the C&R Press DeNovo poetry book award. Both of the above presses publish outstanding work.
3) Several literary agents gave me complimentary long notes on my garden / family memoir, Morning Glory. For example:
"You are clearly a talented writer, there's much to be admired in these pages. I found this lyrical, moving and rich in both setting and detail. That said, after much deliberation I just can't see a way to market this successfully to a general trade publisher, nor can I see a way to revise it that won't compromise some of the elements I liked here. My instincts tell me this is something that's a better fit for a smaller/ independent publisher, and I'm afraid those circles are just lesser known to me. I'm sorry to disappoint you, and to pass on work by a writer who is clearly talented."
4) I was offered a full scholarship to attend the Ropewalk Writers Retreat in Indiana, but instead decided to stay home and completely redraft my memoir for the entire month of June. It is a much better book as a result.
5) I was offered a partial grant to attend the Vermont Studio Center for 2-4 weeks of writing time and space in 2011, but simply can't afford it (which may be ok).
6) The only works I had published this year were an article, Monarch Butterflies: The Last Migration, in a regional newspaper, Prairie Fire, and an essay on plant rights / invasive species / origin of flowers in ISLE entitled The Lion's Tooth.
6.5) I was the #6 top guest ranter on Garden Rant for my post on flag poles in the landscape, as in, do away with them.
7) On 12/31/09 I did have my second poetry chapbook, Without Such Absence, accepted for publication by Finishing Line Press, and it came out last month.
8) 2011 will see my garden featured on the Wachiska Audubon Society's Backyard Wildlife Habitat Garden Tour on Father's Day. No doubt I'll be busy this spring outside, excitedly so.
2011 -- Well, this post may be more for me now, record keeping so to speak. I have a pipe dream about writing a short / light 100 page garden book in the next week (or month, we'll see, I do have a new class to prep for by 1/10), then turning my attention back fully to the Oklahoma immigration memoir, eventually visiting Oklahoma again this summer. I've got a growing list of publishers to send Morning Glory to, but truth be told, 2011 needs to be about writing and not wasting time and money on $25 book contests and journals whose slush piles overwhelm even me. In the fall I'll apply for teaching jobs as my wife will be done with her PhD in 2012, and that will be a full time job in itself.
At least there is the garden, which in 2010 matured much more than me, and so gives me hope. It is an amazing space that fuels my writing, and vice versa. It is always a lesson in and of itself, and a constant reminder that chaos is ordered and is not chaos at all--or, that even order needs a little chaos so life is lived more fully.
Happy New Year everyone, even though in my book every day is the beginning of a new year. Oh, it's just so arbitrary, all these numbers, lists, reflections, ritual blog posts on 12/31.
1) My poetry collection Afterimage was 1 of 6 finalists for the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press. There were also 6 fiction finalists, for a total of 12 finalists.
2) Also 1 of 4 finalists for the C&R Press DeNovo poetry book award. Both of the above presses publish outstanding work.
3) Several literary agents gave me complimentary long notes on my garden / family memoir, Morning Glory. For example:
"You are clearly a talented writer, there's much to be admired in these pages. I found this lyrical, moving and rich in both setting and detail. That said, after much deliberation I just can't see a way to market this successfully to a general trade publisher, nor can I see a way to revise it that won't compromise some of the elements I liked here. My instincts tell me this is something that's a better fit for a smaller/ independent publisher, and I'm afraid those circles are just lesser known to me. I'm sorry to disappoint you, and to pass on work by a writer who is clearly talented."
4) I was offered a full scholarship to attend the Ropewalk Writers Retreat in Indiana, but instead decided to stay home and completely redraft my memoir for the entire month of June. It is a much better book as a result.
5) I was offered a partial grant to attend the Vermont Studio Center for 2-4 weeks of writing time and space in 2011, but simply can't afford it (which may be ok).
6) The only works I had published this year were an article, Monarch Butterflies: The Last Migration, in a regional newspaper, Prairie Fire, and an essay on plant rights / invasive species / origin of flowers in ISLE entitled The Lion's Tooth.
6.5) I was the #6 top guest ranter on Garden Rant for my post on flag poles in the landscape, as in, do away with them.
7) On 12/31/09 I did have my second poetry chapbook, Without Such Absence, accepted for publication by Finishing Line Press, and it came out last month.
8) 2011 will see my garden featured on the Wachiska Audubon Society's Backyard Wildlife Habitat Garden Tour on Father's Day. No doubt I'll be busy this spring outside, excitedly so.
2011 -- Well, this post may be more for me now, record keeping so to speak. I have a pipe dream about writing a short / light 100 page garden book in the next week (or month, we'll see, I do have a new class to prep for by 1/10), then turning my attention back fully to the Oklahoma immigration memoir, eventually visiting Oklahoma again this summer. I've got a growing list of publishers to send Morning Glory to, but truth be told, 2011 needs to be about writing and not wasting time and money on $25 book contests and journals whose slush piles overwhelm even me. In the fall I'll apply for teaching jobs as my wife will be done with her PhD in 2012, and that will be a full time job in itself.
At least there is the garden, which in 2010 matured much more than me, and so gives me hope. It is an amazing space that fuels my writing, and vice versa. It is always a lesson in and of itself, and a constant reminder that chaos is ordered and is not chaos at all--or, that even order needs a little chaos so life is lived more fully.
Happy New Year everyone, even though in my book every day is the beginning of a new year. Oh, it's just so arbitrary, all these numbers, lists, reflections, ritual blog posts on 12/31.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Facebook My Garden & See it From Day 1
Do so by going to my TDM Facebook page, "like" TDM, and you can see pics from the last 3.5 years, a video, and enjoy the plant orgy. That's right. Shimmy up to the plants as they sleep, skip creep, and go straight on into leap, leap, leap. Herbaceous perennial gardens blow me away--from nothing to 6, 10, and 14 feet high in one season. And native herbaceous perennial gardens, at that.
Link here, or down on the side bar to the right on this here blog.
Link here, or down on the side bar to the right on this here blog.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Walken in a Winter Wonderland
It looks EXACTLY like this outside as I gaze through the nearest window:
And how about SNL's "Carol of Intimacy"
"Leave me alone! Please go away!
I'm doing fine! Just get away!"
I'm doing fine! Just get away!"
Monday, December 20, 2010
Love, Absence, and the Thin Line of Existence
I've been reading for my new class next month, planning as much as I can, a class on the short story. I've chosen collections published in the last 20 years, some by first timers. Here are quotes from two debut books I've enjoyed immensely this weekend.
From Once the Shore, by Paul Yoon:
"He considered the possibility that there were many kinds of love and as you experienced one, you felt the absence of all the others. He thought of a city perpetually opening onto the sea."
From The Shell Collector, by Anthony Doerr (and a fitting quote for the winter solstice):
Context is a woman who can divine the life experiences of dead creatures (or people) by touching them and going into a trance / vision she can share with others.
"More clearly than ever she could see that there was a fine line between dreams and wakefulness, between living and dying, a line so tenuous it sometimes didn't exist. It was always clearest for her in winter. In winter, in that valley, life and death were not so different. The heart of a hibernating newt was frozen solid but she could warm and wake it in her palm. For the newt there was no line at all, no fence, no River Styx, only an area between living and dying, like a snowfield between two lakes: a place where lake denizens sometimes met each other on their way to the other side, where there was only one state of being, neither living nor dead, where death was only a possibility and visions rose shimmering to the stars like smoke. All that was needed was a hand, the heat of a palm, the touch of fingers."
From Once the Shore, by Paul Yoon:
"He considered the possibility that there were many kinds of love and as you experienced one, you felt the absence of all the others. He thought of a city perpetually opening onto the sea."
From The Shell Collector, by Anthony Doerr (and a fitting quote for the winter solstice):
Context is a woman who can divine the life experiences of dead creatures (or people) by touching them and going into a trance / vision she can share with others.
"More clearly than ever she could see that there was a fine line between dreams and wakefulness, between living and dying, a line so tenuous it sometimes didn't exist. It was always clearest for her in winter. In winter, in that valley, life and death were not so different. The heart of a hibernating newt was frozen solid but she could warm and wake it in her palm. For the newt there was no line at all, no fence, no River Styx, only an area between living and dying, like a snowfield between two lakes: a place where lake denizens sometimes met each other on their way to the other side, where there was only one state of being, neither living nor dead, where death was only a possibility and visions rose shimmering to the stars like smoke. All that was needed was a hand, the heat of a palm, the touch of fingers."
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Blooming Winter Foliage
This is a TRUE bloom day, one I've never participated in because everyone just posts flowers. Blah. My love of 6 to 12 foot tall perennials is finally beginning to pay off--and one can only orgasmically fanticize about what things will look like in exactly one year. Wow. Screw summer with its trite petals. This is where it's at. I think the upcoming June garden tour should happen right now.
And then we also had a few birds pass overhead:
The grading is done, the semester is over. The office floor can once again be seen. I even opened up my computer, messed with some wires, and fixed my 11-1 memory card reader. I can't tell you how such ambition is literally sucked away like low tide during the term. Over winter break I expect to read at least ten books, and, perhaps, begin writing one or two of my own. Four weeks "off"--clock starts when I started this blog post. See you on the flip side.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Listening to Neurons
Just cut off a cockroach leg, hook up the SpikerBox, and listen to the insect neurons firing away (don't worry, they say the leg grows back).
Order yours now! I know everyone in my family would love this, and that soon after I'd be covered in vomit and taken out of the will, divorced, et cetera.
But seriously, have you ever heard of such a thing? Would this work on frogs? Cats? Humans who use their lawnmowers too often when I'm trying to enjoy my garden?
Then again, the demented natural scientist in me thinks this would be neat. I wonder what flowers sound like, if they even have a sound. Which I bet they do.
Order yours now! I know everyone in my family would love this, and that soon after I'd be covered in vomit and taken out of the will, divorced, et cetera.
But seriously, have you ever heard of such a thing? Would this work on frogs? Cats? Humans who use their lawnmowers too often when I'm trying to enjoy my garden?
Then again, the demented natural scientist in me thinks this would be neat. I wonder what flowers sound like, if they even have a sound. Which I bet they do.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Book Proposal To You
I've been thinking how I could write a short book (100p) on my 3 years of gardening. I've been thinking about how gardening books are either about design /theory, practical advice, or narrative reflection. I've been thinking how all three could surely be hybridized (get it?) and juxtaposed against one another in a collection of short, yet linked, chapters--some lyrical, some humorous, some quasi practical, most about how much anal research I've done and how much time spent in my garden. How much obsessing. Late nights. Bad dreams. Et cetera. All the sordid details of my elicit affair (which it is, ask my wife). So below are some proposed chapter titles.
Finding a Big pink rock (I was so excited! Free rock!)
Skinning Me (on a sun burn and my wife's peeling me like an onion)
Is That a Pruner in Your Pocket Or Are You Now Half a Man (mechanical misshaps)
4 showers a day and it still doesn’t rain (in the first two years I took many showers in one day cuz I coldn't stay away from gardening, in July, when it was 95...)
Rabbit Pretzels (nutrional suggestion on what we can do with them)
Gnome on the Range
Monarchical Monarchs
The Garden Center Circuit (I once went to 6 nuseries in one day, and visited some of them twice)
1st Plant to Die, Last Plant to Live
Tree me to your leader
Take the Edge Off
Winter Flicker
Watch Your Step (as in, I want you to come visit my garden, but don't you dare break ANYTHING)
Fountain Planting
Twilight Zone
What’s eating you
The Geese at Sunset
Putting Around (on my neighbor who golfed while watching us eat dinner on the deck)
650 Light Bulbs (on planting crocus in 20 degree weather before Christmas)
To be a gardener or a potter--working with clay
Stick to your ribs
Wet Robin Contest
Pollinately?
Right Plant, Wrong Garden
Sneaking Around With a Hussy Perennial (my favorite plants)
Not a drop to drink
Nebraska Faultlines (who knew dirt could make pocket change vanish in a bottomless hole)
What would you want to see in such a book? What "gardening" books most grab you, or is it simply any depending on your mood? What bothers you about "gardening" books? Is voice, tone, and energy the most important aspect of a book? Do you prefer info over story, or how it feels / sounds? Do you like light reading, or heavy, or both at once?
Finding a Big pink rock (I was so excited! Free rock!)
Skinning Me (on a sun burn and my wife's peeling me like an onion)
Is That a Pruner in Your Pocket Or Are You Now Half a Man (mechanical misshaps)
4 showers a day and it still doesn’t rain (in the first two years I took many showers in one day cuz I coldn't stay away from gardening, in July, when it was 95...)
Rabbit Pretzels (nutrional suggestion on what we can do with them)
Gnome on the Range
Monarchical Monarchs
The Garden Center Circuit (I once went to 6 nuseries in one day, and visited some of them twice)
1st Plant to Die, Last Plant to Live
Tree me to your leader
Take the Edge Off
Winter Flicker
Watch Your Step (as in, I want you to come visit my garden, but don't you dare break ANYTHING)
Fountain Planting
Twilight Zone
What’s eating you
The Geese at Sunset
Putting Around (on my neighbor who golfed while watching us eat dinner on the deck)
650 Light Bulbs (on planting crocus in 20 degree weather before Christmas)
To be a gardener or a potter--working with clay
Stick to your ribs
Wet Robin Contest
Pollinately?
Right Plant, Wrong Garden
Sneaking Around With a Hussy Perennial (my favorite plants)
Not a drop to drink
Nebraska Faultlines (who knew dirt could make pocket change vanish in a bottomless hole)
What would you want to see in such a book? What "gardening" books most grab you, or is it simply any depending on your mood? What bothers you about "gardening" books? Is voice, tone, and energy the most important aspect of a book? Do you prefer info over story, or how it feels / sounds? Do you like light reading, or heavy, or both at once?
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Writing Life Update
Since I work in two genres, I'll do one, then the other:
POETRY
In October my full length collection, Afterimage, was one of four finalists for the C&R Press De Novo book award. This week, I was one of twelve finalists (out of 300+ total submissions) for the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press. I've been sending this book out for 4-5 years, and suddenly I was a finalist in two contests.
My second chapbook, Without Such Absence, was just released. You can get it on Amazon (and perhaps write a lovely review of it while you're there?):
NONFICTION
About two weeks ago I had a rejection from an agent who gushed about my memoir Morning Glory: A Story of Family & Culture in the Garden. They were into the lyricism, structure, stories, and what not, but the book wouldn't play with the trade publishers they mostly work with. So, as I'm suspecting, a smaller press may be a more appropriate home. Who knows. Some essays from the book have also been positively rejected this month--not positively as in, yes, of course they were rejected, emphatically so--but as in looks good, sorry.
What's the take home lesson? It's December and there's still no snow in Nebraska, but the squirrels are out at the bird feeders in full force. Up to you to be the writer and find the symbolism there. First person to wow me gets a free reply from me in the comments section!
POETRY
In October my full length collection, Afterimage, was one of four finalists for the C&R Press De Novo book award. This week, I was one of twelve finalists (out of 300+ total submissions) for the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press. I've been sending this book out for 4-5 years, and suddenly I was a finalist in two contests.
My second chapbook, Without Such Absence, was just released. You can get it on Amazon (and perhaps write a lovely review of it while you're there?):
NONFICTION
About two weeks ago I had a rejection from an agent who gushed about my memoir Morning Glory: A Story of Family & Culture in the Garden. They were into the lyricism, structure, stories, and what not, but the book wouldn't play with the trade publishers they mostly work with. So, as I'm suspecting, a smaller press may be a more appropriate home. Who knows. Some essays from the book have also been positively rejected this month--not positively as in, yes, of course they were rejected, emphatically so--but as in looks good, sorry.
What's the take home lesson? It's December and there's still no snow in Nebraska, but the squirrels are out at the bird feeders in full force. Up to you to be the writer and find the symbolism there. First person to wow me gets a free reply from me in the comments section!
Sunday, December 5, 2010
On Prairie, Literature, and Richard Manning
I've begun the ecological research phase of my next book, and just finished Richard Manning's book GRASSLAND, which is a cultural, historical, economic, flora and fauna look at the grasslands that once covered 40% of the country, from Illinois to California. I'm pasting in quotes, with some of my reflections and context clarifications in brackets. Someone should find this interesting, and perhaps go pick up this book. What will I hopefully be doing in May? Visiting some grasslands in Iowa, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
262 -- To date, our society has shown no special inclination to mature. We still consider progress to be stoking the very economic engine that already has consumed so much of the planet’s life as fuel. We are still able to rally most “progressive” forces of our nation around candidates who say “It’s the economy, stupid,” when the fundamental issue is not the economy, it is life.
263 -- …everything we know was taught us by nature, but nature gave us brains evolved to their niche, so they are limited in their understanding. All that we know we have learned from nature, but we do not know all that nature knows [and likely never will].
260 – on botanists: I have been afield with many of them, and they are different, almost invariably quiet, distant. Undeniably, they see something different from what I see, as if the knowledge of the plants lifts a veil. The whole of it is there in the plants to be read, the full soul of a place, its life and the abuses of its life, the creation’s intentions and the manifest violations of those intentions. Botanists are our shamans.
250 -- Discussing a biologist at Walnut creek in Iowa who is studying the intricate lay of the land, how species depend on one another, the hills and streams, the topography, and the need to gather local seed to reestablish a total grassland ecology because even bluestem from Kansas is far differently suited to its place than bluestem in Iowa: “Anything else would be just gardening.” [clearly the insinuation is that gardening is just plopping in plants without considering the regional source of those plants, the interdependent community of those plants as regards to co-evolution, and the topography of the land where they grow. I think I can be a much better nongardener, in this sense, though I do think about these things very much in my limited context--my 1/4 acre lot.]
247 -- …the culture of plants is the same as the culture of people.
245 – [part of his logic against vegetarianism] Why is it not ethical to kill and eat a single bison? A single bison does not stand alone, is not an individual. It is, rather, a manifestation of a place, the net result, the capstone of fie, wind, and grass—grass to the horizon—and the hundreds of plants that live in it, and of the fungi, insects, the birds, the wolves, the prairie dogs, ferrets, burrowing owls, compass plant, horned lark, sunflower, and cone flower, all of these things, and can only be understood as such. The return of our eating bison marks the return of all these things to our lives.
[I used to be against saving the mega fauna, the obvious animals. But if you save the largest, the capstone fauna, you must, by extension, be saving, preserving, recreating all that sustains them—which is an intricate web filled with co-evolved organisms designed for a specific place and time. For us to be taken outside this place and time is to be taken out of creation, something as stupid as placing your hand in a vat of liquid oxygen. Perhaps it does start with bison.]
229 – The solitude of the prairie is like no other, the feeling of being hidden and alone in a grassland as open as the sea. Walking toward the horizon through the hills, tawny and loose like the folds in a cougar’s skin, one has a sense that over the next ridge there will rise a brown cloud of bison and over the next, the Pleistocene, unspoiled. Unless one has walked pure prairie, it is difficult to imagine how such a sense of freedom can flow from a landscape that is the giver of harsh rules.
[All over in book – we have a 70% grain surplus, and we use it to fatten cows, and we eat those fat cows and get heart disease and what not. If we raise bison, roaming free across the plains, we would not have to spread fertilizer or pesticides, the bison would take care of themselves. Their grass-fed meat would be much leaner, and we’d be connected to place psychologically and physically.]
155 – Virtually all of agriculture is an attempt to artificially prolong a first or immature stage of succession. The grasses we have domesticated are seral species [annual 1st stage plants in a disturbed area] that grow well only in monoculture. They grow quickly and concentrate energy on producing seed [whereas later perennial grasses store energy in roots and rhizomes, and thus create prairie]. They store carbohydrates in these seeds, which is precisely why we value them as food. From an ecological sense, then, agriculture is a sustained catastrophe. It is the practice of plowing [and cattle overgrazing], then preventing nature from healing itself. It is imposition of a monoculture on a system that wants nothing so much as to diversify and stabilize.
ON WRITING
97 – Our science, our poetry, and our democracy fail because they lack specific information of the plants….
206 – We who inhabit the grassland need a new story, a sort of illiterature that rises from the land.
192 – The West is made of one long series of necessary and true fill-in-the-blank stories, and sometimes it seems we are doomed to love them cyclically and perpetually, simply because there is no such thin as The Story. as the colonial culture of the West, we have no culture, which is just the same problem as having no story that tells us how we fit in the place. This is not an original idea, and in fact there is a self-conscious and active movement among western writers to invent a literature for the place. We need stories that will settle us to the land, not more stories reacting to those who would and do destroy it, but as long as the destruction goes on, these accounts of our struggles will be our only story. They are necessary, but seem doomed, a new sort of colonialism.
MISC. FACTS
141 – 1 square yard of bluestem grass has 25 miles of roots
83-83 – 1870 over 2 million bison taken from one heard in NE and KS.
The plains slope 10 feet for every mile toward the MS River.
262 -- To date, our society has shown no special inclination to mature. We still consider progress to be stoking the very economic engine that already has consumed so much of the planet’s life as fuel. We are still able to rally most “progressive” forces of our nation around candidates who say “It’s the economy, stupid,” when the fundamental issue is not the economy, it is life.
263 -- …everything we know was taught us by nature, but nature gave us brains evolved to their niche, so they are limited in their understanding. All that we know we have learned from nature, but we do not know all that nature knows [and likely never will].
260 – on botanists: I have been afield with many of them, and they are different, almost invariably quiet, distant. Undeniably, they see something different from what I see, as if the knowledge of the plants lifts a veil. The whole of it is there in the plants to be read, the full soul of a place, its life and the abuses of its life, the creation’s intentions and the manifest violations of those intentions. Botanists are our shamans.
250 -- Discussing a biologist at Walnut creek in Iowa who is studying the intricate lay of the land, how species depend on one another, the hills and streams, the topography, and the need to gather local seed to reestablish a total grassland ecology because even bluestem from Kansas is far differently suited to its place than bluestem in Iowa: “Anything else would be just gardening.” [clearly the insinuation is that gardening is just plopping in plants without considering the regional source of those plants, the interdependent community of those plants as regards to co-evolution, and the topography of the land where they grow. I think I can be a much better nongardener, in this sense, though I do think about these things very much in my limited context--my 1/4 acre lot.]
247 -- …the culture of plants is the same as the culture of people.
245 – [part of his logic against vegetarianism] Why is it not ethical to kill and eat a single bison? A single bison does not stand alone, is not an individual. It is, rather, a manifestation of a place, the net result, the capstone of fie, wind, and grass—grass to the horizon—and the hundreds of plants that live in it, and of the fungi, insects, the birds, the wolves, the prairie dogs, ferrets, burrowing owls, compass plant, horned lark, sunflower, and cone flower, all of these things, and can only be understood as such. The return of our eating bison marks the return of all these things to our lives.
[I used to be against saving the mega fauna, the obvious animals. But if you save the largest, the capstone fauna, you must, by extension, be saving, preserving, recreating all that sustains them—which is an intricate web filled with co-evolved organisms designed for a specific place and time. For us to be taken outside this place and time is to be taken out of creation, something as stupid as placing your hand in a vat of liquid oxygen. Perhaps it does start with bison.]
229 – The solitude of the prairie is like no other, the feeling of being hidden and alone in a grassland as open as the sea. Walking toward the horizon through the hills, tawny and loose like the folds in a cougar’s skin, one has a sense that over the next ridge there will rise a brown cloud of bison and over the next, the Pleistocene, unspoiled. Unless one has walked pure prairie, it is difficult to imagine how such a sense of freedom can flow from a landscape that is the giver of harsh rules.
[All over in book – we have a 70% grain surplus, and we use it to fatten cows, and we eat those fat cows and get heart disease and what not. If we raise bison, roaming free across the plains, we would not have to spread fertilizer or pesticides, the bison would take care of themselves. Their grass-fed meat would be much leaner, and we’d be connected to place psychologically and physically.]
155 – Virtually all of agriculture is an attempt to artificially prolong a first or immature stage of succession. The grasses we have domesticated are seral species [annual 1st stage plants in a disturbed area] that grow well only in monoculture. They grow quickly and concentrate energy on producing seed [whereas later perennial grasses store energy in roots and rhizomes, and thus create prairie]. They store carbohydrates in these seeds, which is precisely why we value them as food. From an ecological sense, then, agriculture is a sustained catastrophe. It is the practice of plowing [and cattle overgrazing], then preventing nature from healing itself. It is imposition of a monoculture on a system that wants nothing so much as to diversify and stabilize.
ON WRITING
97 – Our science, our poetry, and our democracy fail because they lack specific information of the plants….
206 – We who inhabit the grassland need a new story, a sort of illiterature that rises from the land.
192 – The West is made of one long series of necessary and true fill-in-the-blank stories, and sometimes it seems we are doomed to love them cyclically and perpetually, simply because there is no such thin as The Story. as the colonial culture of the West, we have no culture, which is just the same problem as having no story that tells us how we fit in the place. This is not an original idea, and in fact there is a self-conscious and active movement among western writers to invent a literature for the place. We need stories that will settle us to the land, not more stories reacting to those who would and do destroy it, but as long as the destruction goes on, these accounts of our struggles will be our only story. They are necessary, but seem doomed, a new sort of colonialism.
MISC. FACTS
141 – 1 square yard of bluestem grass has 25 miles of roots
83-83 – 1870 over 2 million bison taken from one heard in NE and KS.
The plains slope 10 feet for every mile toward the MS River.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Before It Snows, Late Fall... & Merwin Poem
I doubt my photos stand out from the rest I see hurled up on the internet, but here they are. Ringing endorsement? Apathy? No. The garden is beautiful right now. If this lineup of brown looks monotone to you, click on and expand the images. You know what I'm talking about. The birds have been feasting. They know. But I'm ready for snow, excited to see what the plants do to it, and what it does to them--the highlighting, the sculpting, the reflection of one on the other.
Dew Light -- W.S. Merwin
Now in the blessed days of more and less
when the news about time is that each day
there is less of it I know none of that
as I walk out through the early garden
only the day and I are here with no
before or after and the dew looks up
without a number or a present age
 |
| Aster laevis seed, which I promptly shook off in the breeze |
 |
| Creepy coneflower seed |
 |
| 'Prairie Fire' Crabapple |
 |
| Black-Eyed Susan Ruby Something or Other |
 |
| Ahh sweet texture |
Dew Light -- W.S. Merwin
Now in the blessed days of more and less
when the news about time is that each day
there is less of it I know none of that
as I walk out through the early garden
only the day and I are here with no
before or after and the dew looks up
without a number or a present age
 |
| Rabbits ate the right side of the sumac last winter, will they balance it out this winter? |
 |
| Amsonia hubrichtii |
 |
| Lysimachia 'Firecracker' in foreground, bright orange, with a divine shaft of light shafting the fall garden. |
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Influential Writers Meme
On Facebook this meme is going around, and since I've never done one, I provide you with exhibit W--15 writers who have influenced me, or who I will never be able to get out of my head (for good reasons). In no particular order:
1) Henry D. Thoreau (nf) -- Walden
2) Rainer Maria Rilke (p) -- Lots of poems
3) Tim O'Brien (f) -- In the Lake of the Woods; The Things They Carried
4) James Wright (p) -- The Branch Will Not Break
5) W.S. Merwin (p) -- Travels; The River Sound
6) Walt Whitman (p, nf) -- Lots of poems
7) Louise Gluck (p) -- The Wild Iris
8) Robert Frost (p) -- Lots of poems
9) Linda Hogan (nf) -- Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World
10) Scott Russell Sanders (nf) -- Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World
11) Bill McKibben (nf) -- The End of Nature
12) Terry Tempest Williams (nf) -- Refuge: An Unnatural Hitsory of Family and Place
13) Michael Pollan (nf) -- Second Nature
14) N. Scott Momaday (nf) -- The Man Made of Words
15) Loren Eiseley (nf) -- The Star Thrower; and others
Boy, that was fast. I could've kept going for another 15 or 150. In truth, there are many books that linger with me or that were key to one period or another in my life. Perhaps the above are the obvious choices, some are more recent, some might seem cliched. I tried to be diverse yet not sensor msyelf, and include authors who have 2+ books I consider a big deal. There ya go. Feel free to meme yourself and post a link in my comments section.
Yesterday I got another fantastically-positive rejection from an agent for my memoir Morning Glory. I've had many this year--on the book, on essays from the book, and several near misses on my full-length poetry collection Afterimage (which was recently one of 4 finalists for a book prize). It's been a fuzz hard staying motivated to keep sending out work, because sending out work takes a good deal of time and thought; I'm not the kind of person who submits williy nilly, or who doesn't spend too much time being emotionally involved in pretty much anything, hence exhaustion. Anywho, I'm a whiner. Today is turkey, fresh bread, and chocolate cake, perhaps some James Bond. And maybe stuffing a few envelopes, too (but not with bread and seasonings, although...). Did I mention it's 15 degrees with a 0 wind chill?
1) Henry D. Thoreau (nf) -- Walden
2) Rainer Maria Rilke (p) -- Lots of poems
3) Tim O'Brien (f) -- In the Lake of the Woods; The Things They Carried
4) James Wright (p) -- The Branch Will Not Break
5) W.S. Merwin (p) -- Travels; The River Sound
6) Walt Whitman (p, nf) -- Lots of poems
7) Louise Gluck (p) -- The Wild Iris
8) Robert Frost (p) -- Lots of poems
9) Linda Hogan (nf) -- Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World
10) Scott Russell Sanders (nf) -- Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World
11) Bill McKibben (nf) -- The End of Nature
12) Terry Tempest Williams (nf) -- Refuge: An Unnatural Hitsory of Family and Place
13) Michael Pollan (nf) -- Second Nature
14) N. Scott Momaday (nf) -- The Man Made of Words
15) Loren Eiseley (nf) -- The Star Thrower; and others
Boy, that was fast. I could've kept going for another 15 or 150. In truth, there are many books that linger with me or that were key to one period or another in my life. Perhaps the above are the obvious choices, some are more recent, some might seem cliched. I tried to be diverse yet not sensor msyelf, and include authors who have 2+ books I consider a big deal. There ya go. Feel free to meme yourself and post a link in my comments section.
Yesterday I got another fantastically-positive rejection from an agent for my memoir Morning Glory. I've had many this year--on the book, on essays from the book, and several near misses on my full-length poetry collection Afterimage (which was recently one of 4 finalists for a book prize). It's been a fuzz hard staying motivated to keep sending out work, because sending out work takes a good deal of time and thought; I'm not the kind of person who submits williy nilly, or who doesn't spend too much time being emotionally involved in pretty much anything, hence exhaustion. Anywho, I'm a whiner. Today is turkey, fresh bread, and chocolate cake, perhaps some James Bond. And maybe stuffing a few envelopes, too (but not with bread and seasonings, although...). Did I mention it's 15 degrees with a 0 wind chill?
Monday, November 22, 2010
Wifi Wounds Trees -- Stop Internetting!
"Radiation from Wi-Fi networks is harmful to trees, causing significant variations in growth, as well as bleeding and fissures in the bark, according to a recent study in the Netherlands.
In the Netherlands, about 70 percent of all trees in urban areas show the same symptoms, compared with only 10 percent five years ago. Trees in densely forested areas are hardly affected."
And sad news for cornhuskers re corn:
"The study exposed 20 ash trees to various radiation sources for a period of three months. Trees placed closest to the Wi-Fi radio demonstrated a "lead-like shine" on their leaves that was caused by the dying of the upper and lower epidermis of the leaves. This would eventually result in the death of parts of the leaves. The study also found that Wi-Fi radiation could inhibit the growth of corn cobs."
Full (brief) article here.
See that maple outside your local coffee house where you go for the free internet? Every email you send wounds it. Guilt it up. If ever I needed a reason to get off the computer more, here's one.
In the Netherlands, about 70 percent of all trees in urban areas show the same symptoms, compared with only 10 percent five years ago. Trees in densely forested areas are hardly affected."
And sad news for cornhuskers re corn:
"The study exposed 20 ash trees to various radiation sources for a period of three months. Trees placed closest to the Wi-Fi radio demonstrated a "lead-like shine" on their leaves that was caused by the dying of the upper and lower epidermis of the leaves. This would eventually result in the death of parts of the leaves. The study also found that Wi-Fi radiation could inhibit the growth of corn cobs."
Full (brief) article here.
See that maple outside your local coffee house where you go for the free internet? Every email you send wounds it. Guilt it up. If ever I needed a reason to get off the computer more, here's one.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Snowblower Giveaway
Seems liks everyone has one, and the host blogger then gets a free snowblower. Hey, I'd like an electric snowblower (especially if it snows like it did last year). Here's my imaginary giveaway. Feel free to enter.
I'm also willing to "test" an electric wood chipper / mulcher, Audi A5 coupe, and a Frank Lloyd Wright inspired home on 100+ acres of Midwest prairie, lake, and woods.
Sincerely,
Getting Snarky At End of Semester Realizing I Spent Too Much Time Teaching and Not Enough Researching And Whoa It's Supposed to be 15 Degrees This Week
I'm also willing to "test" an electric wood chipper / mulcher, Audi A5 coupe, and a Frank Lloyd Wright inspired home on 100+ acres of Midwest prairie, lake, and woods.
Sincerely,
Getting Snarky At End of Semester Realizing I Spent Too Much Time Teaching and Not Enough Researching And Whoa It's Supposed to be 15 Degrees This Week
Friday, November 19, 2010
Veil -- Poem by Todd Davis
Been a while since I posted a poem (been in nonfiction mode), but this one blew me away. What do you think? Subtle, understated, complex, elegant--lyric with a juicy touch of mercurial narrative?
Veil
In this low place between mountains
fog settles with the dark of evening.
Every year it takes some of those
we love—a car full of teenagers
on the way home from a dance, or
a father on his way to the paper mill,
nightshift the only opening.
Each morning, up on the ridge,
the sun lifts this veil, sees what night
has accomplished. The water on our window-
screens disappears slowly, gradually,
like grief. The heat of the day carries water
from the river back up into the sky,
and where the fog is heaviest and stays
longest, you’ll see the lines it leaves
on trees, the flowers that grow
the fullest.
Veil
In this low place between mountains
fog settles with the dark of evening.
Every year it takes some of those
we love—a car full of teenagers
on the way home from a dance, or
a father on his way to the paper mill,
nightshift the only opening.
Each morning, up on the ridge,
the sun lifts this veil, sees what night
has accomplished. The water on our window-
screens disappears slowly, gradually,
like grief. The heat of the day carries water
from the river back up into the sky,
and where the fog is heaviest and stays
longest, you’ll see the lines it leaves
on trees, the flowers that grow
the fullest.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Fall, I Hardly Knew Ye
I've been sorta busy. Trip to Iowa City, grading essays like crazy, reading dozens of books for a new, upperclass short story lit class I'm teaching in the spring. We had our first snow two nights ago, just a dusting, which followed 3 inches of rain (the last rain we had was about a tenth of an inch in late September, and I've been dragging hoses all over the last week trying to de-crack my clay soil).
Below are pictures because, well, I'm tired. I hate in when bloggers confess / apologize for not posting in some time, and here I am doing it. I guess I hate myself. If anything, my trip to Iowa for the NonfictioNow conference made me realize a few things: 1) I can write, I should write, no matter how it kills me I must sacrifice my body (which is a very real thing--I tend to write not like a marathon runner, but a sprinter) and 2) there are some really amazing writers I'll never hear of (but I did discover some!). That's heartening and even a little comforting, but only in a dark way. Not all that tasty root beer fizz rises to the top--some of it eventually pops and becomes syrupy liquid or vapor, vanishing into thin air. I guess what I'm saying is I could really go for some A&W, Barqs, or IBC to get me through the rest of the semester. In fact, Barqs always reminds me of a winter school camp trip in 4th grade where I first learned to snow shoe and cross country ski in Minnesota. It was cold up there near the BWCA. Strange how the cold can warm you up.
Spring is only about 3 months away.... But does time really need to go any faster? Soak into me winter. Soak into me long, deep, and patiently. Dig in to me, and help me get my roots further out into the soil of my next book's research before the spring / summer of writing bursts forth. Make me ready. I am ready.
Below are pictures because, well, I'm tired. I hate in when bloggers confess / apologize for not posting in some time, and here I am doing it. I guess I hate myself. If anything, my trip to Iowa for the NonfictioNow conference made me realize a few things: 1) I can write, I should write, no matter how it kills me I must sacrifice my body (which is a very real thing--I tend to write not like a marathon runner, but a sprinter) and 2) there are some really amazing writers I'll never hear of (but I did discover some!). That's heartening and even a little comforting, but only in a dark way. Not all that tasty root beer fizz rises to the top--some of it eventually pops and becomes syrupy liquid or vapor, vanishing into thin air. I guess what I'm saying is I could really go for some A&W, Barqs, or IBC to get me through the rest of the semester. In fact, Barqs always reminds me of a winter school camp trip in 4th grade where I first learned to snow shoe and cross country ski in Minnesota. It was cold up there near the BWCA. Strange how the cold can warm you up.
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| Last cosmos |
 |
| (l-r) Bluestem, ninebark, spiraeas, buckthorn |
 |
| Don't you love a full-textured dead garden? |
 |
| Bald cypress = A+ color |
 |
| Bald cypress cone |
 |
| Golden smokebush color = A+++ |
 |
| Wild senna seeds |
 |
| Last serviceberry leaves |
 |
| Willow-leaved sunflower |
Spring is only about 3 months away.... But does time really need to go any faster? Soak into me winter. Soak into me long, deep, and patiently. Dig in to me, and help me get my roots further out into the soil of my next book's research before the spring / summer of writing bursts forth. Make me ready. I am ready.
 |
| Hotel curtain at dusk in Iowa |
Saturday, October 30, 2010
I Succumb to You, Autumn, Like a Memory
The morning glories have died. Their stems and leaves are wilted and limp this morning. The bright green of those heart-shaped leaves is a mass of forest green, nearly a rich black soil--of which they will now become.
It was not a hard freeze, but it was another 30 degree night. At 11pm I almost went outside to cover them, as I did two weeks ago, but I was tired. I wanted to give in to my body after a long day, a long week. I wanted sleep. It was time to let go.
I move my hand into the damp silk of foliage, no longer careful like I was yesterday when hidden bumble bees would emerge like smoke from the long throats of blooms. In the wind I let one leaf rest on the back of my hand until it lays flat. It is like my grandmother's hand. Clammy, limp, tired, and ready to say something final we don't need to say--the touch is a thousand words, a synapse that fires from neuron to neuron and passes on the memory. And the memory of memories.
Each spring it takes me longer than I'd expect to start morning glories. I plant unique varities after soaking the seeds overnight. I wait for 14 days. Nothing. I soak and plant again. I wait 14 days. A leaf, like a mushroom, here and there. I wait for the vines to wake slowly, as they always do, a millimeter a day. Then an inch. Then one day a foot or three. Which plant will it be?
But the only morning glories that bloom are self-seeded 'Grandpa Ott,' the same dark purple as last year. No chocolate or white, no blue. But they come. The vines come like an olfactory sense and cover the deck railing, then hide the deck, the window, shade a part of the wall. Butterflies pupate in the deep, thick shadows. Tree frogs shelter from afternoon sun. A preying mantis feasts on a skipper, its body parallel to a thin, curled shoot diving out into the negative space of air and sky.
The morning glories have died. The birch leaves are down. The amsonia is sunlight unto itself. The shadows of cedars cover half the garden. The asters are a week gone. Nothing is left, yet everything is here, still, dug in and waiting. Like the purple morning glory seeds I planted only once, years ago, and that will come again in May. I'll wait. I give myself to the winter now so that I might earn the spring and come into the balance of seasons, and if I'm lucky, myself. I remember my mother's morning glories. She remembers her grandmother's. And so the morning glories remember us all.
It was not a hard freeze, but it was another 30 degree night. At 11pm I almost went outside to cover them, as I did two weeks ago, but I was tired. I wanted to give in to my body after a long day, a long week. I wanted sleep. It was time to let go.
I move my hand into the damp silk of foliage, no longer careful like I was yesterday when hidden bumble bees would emerge like smoke from the long throats of blooms. In the wind I let one leaf rest on the back of my hand until it lays flat. It is like my grandmother's hand. Clammy, limp, tired, and ready to say something final we don't need to say--the touch is a thousand words, a synapse that fires from neuron to neuron and passes on the memory. And the memory of memories.
Each spring it takes me longer than I'd expect to start morning glories. I plant unique varities after soaking the seeds overnight. I wait for 14 days. Nothing. I soak and plant again. I wait 14 days. A leaf, like a mushroom, here and there. I wait for the vines to wake slowly, as they always do, a millimeter a day. Then an inch. Then one day a foot or three. Which plant will it be?
But the only morning glories that bloom are self-seeded 'Grandpa Ott,' the same dark purple as last year. No chocolate or white, no blue. But they come. The vines come like an olfactory sense and cover the deck railing, then hide the deck, the window, shade a part of the wall. Butterflies pupate in the deep, thick shadows. Tree frogs shelter from afternoon sun. A preying mantis feasts on a skipper, its body parallel to a thin, curled shoot diving out into the negative space of air and sky.
The morning glories have died. The birch leaves are down. The amsonia is sunlight unto itself. The shadows of cedars cover half the garden. The asters are a week gone. Nothing is left, yet everything is here, still, dug in and waiting. Like the purple morning glory seeds I planted only once, years ago, and that will come again in May. I'll wait. I give myself to the winter now so that I might earn the spring and come into the balance of seasons, and if I'm lucky, myself. I remember my mother's morning glories. She remembers her grandmother's. And so the morning glories remember us all.
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