BARE

Frogs, shit & a coyote

2010-07-19T03:39:00Z

Came home in the dusk from tonight's walk and saw a wood frog hopping across the driveway. By the garage, a small toad crossed my path. And as I was tanking up the hummingbird feeders so everyone has something to eat for breakfast tomorrow morning, I happened to look up -- and saw a tree frog on the edge of the rain gutter above the front door!

I absolutely wasn't expecting to see a frog there. I know they are called tree frogs for a reason, and we do have a tree right beside our door with branches that reach out over the roof, but it still startled me to see the little head of a tree frog peeking out over the gutter.

The frog was distinctly watching me, probably trying to figure out when I was going to leave.

I'm sure it's one of the tree frogs who come regularly to the kitchen window to hunt moths at night. Usually they only show up at night, but a week ago, one tree frog stayed perched on the window sill all day long. I shot a little movie of him (see below) but made a point not to bother him. A couple of times when I checked on him, he seemed to be sleeping, or at least his golden eyes were narrowed.

In other nature news:

I've only seen one turkey poult out following his mother. Poults are the color of cocoa puffs.
Friday morning I found a pile of bear scat on the deck right in front of the door to my studio. It was filled with seeds from berries.
Saw a coyote in our neighbor's field Friday night. The guy had just hayed his field, so the coyote had no cover.

The only thing moving in this "movie" is the tree frog's throat. You can hear a phoebe in the background.

Huffington Post

2010-07-14T17:11:00Z

My article about the different reactions to Thief is now up on The Huffington Post.

I had more to say about the concept of the demon lover, but I wanted to keep the article under 1,000 words. The gist of what I wanted to say was this: though I didn't know the term demon lover when I was 13, I did understand the concept.

Why? Because I listened to Heart's song "Magic Man."

In 8th grade I sat with a friend of mine talking about a boy we both knew, and I told her that song was how the boy made me feel.

It seems funny now -- the boy was another 8th grader and not a man at all. But he was daring in a way other boys weren't, and when he touched me, I felt as though I was in the presence of something larger and stranger than anything I had ever known.

I've said often that I believe sex is a life force, and I think that was what I meant even then. I could feel that force in the boy, and it compelled me and he compelled me. He kissed me even more hungrily than I kissed him. It scared me a little, but I knew I wanted to get close to whatever the power was between us.

You don't have to love me,
Let's get high awhile.

It's interesting to me that even at that stage I knew I didn't love the boy and understood that he didn't love me -- that wasn't the thing that united us. We tried to "go together" for a while, but it didn't work. And yet I still had that powerful sense of him, even at 13.

Devil & ravens

2010-07-10T23:13:00Z

Yesterday morning when I was sitting outside having my coffee, I saw three ravens fly overhead. Shortly after, they started raising a real ruckus north of the house. I dashed inside to get my camera and made the movies below.

There's nothing much to see - I only caught sight of one of the ravens once, and he isn't visible at all on my sad little movie. But you can hear the incredible sounds the birds made -- plaintive cries as well as a throaty croak. Turn up your volume to get the full effect.

I made the movies traipsing around in my nightgown. I should have put on real clothing, but I kept thinking the ravens would stop their calling, and I didn't want to waste time.

So. All this got me thinking about sound and music and writing.

I kept literary talismans around me as I wrote Swimming Sweet Arrow, but I also had one musical talisman: Steve Earle's "Devil's Right Hand." I didn't play it from the start, but once I found the song I played it often, over and over in my car. I especially liked these lines from the start:

I saw my first pistol in the general store, general store
I was thirteen
I thought it was the finest thing I ever had seen

The song helped me think through and understand the characters of Del Pardee and Ray and Luke Sparrow.

Right now I'm listening to one CD whenever I get into my car or Jeff's Ford Ranger. I can't say what it is -- I don't want to jinx myself. I don't know if it's just an obsession or if it has something to do with the new novel. I think the music is somehow leading me toward understanding something about the narrator. Which is all I can say for now.

Ok -- here are the raven movies. The first one is along the driveway. Listen for the throaty chuckle at 42 seconds.

This one was taken behind my studio. I spotted one raven on a snag, but you can't make him out in the movie. It was the closest I got to the birds.

Pee of a toad

2010-07-09T05:49:00Z

American toads have been showing up around the house the last couple days. Tonight I spotted a tiny one, a little over an inch long, hopping through the tall grass and weeds of the yard. He hopped so quickly I didn't try to catch him, but two nights ago, I did nab and photograph a larger toad that was hanging around the garden hose.

I cupped the toad in my hand and brought him inside so I could grab my camera. Just as I got to my desk where the camera was sitting, the toad peed in my hand. Most of the pee stayed in my palm, but a couple drops fell to the floor. After I carted the toad back outside, took my photos, and let him hop away, I came back inside and cleaned up the droplets.

I actually know something about toad pee. Oldfield and Moriarty's book Amphibians and Reptiles Native to Minnesota states very plainly that in addition to puffing themselves up to appear larger and to avoid getting swallowed, "[American] toads may also urinate on their attacker. This action seems to be the best defense when picked up by humans!"

I have to say, though, that in all my years of nabbing toads, I've never before been peed on. It felt like a tiny rush of cool water over my skin, and the whole experience was very moving.

If all this doesn't sound strange enough already, let me also say that one of my favorite books of all time, Lars Gustafsson's The Death of a Beekeeper, begins with a frog peeing on the narrator. Here's the opening of the novel:

When I came to the path to the Sundblads', which runs along the lake, smelled the scent of the water and heard the waves beating without seeing them in the darkness, I clearly felt a small frog hopping over my shoe.

Then I did something I am sure I hadn't done since the fifites. I bent down quickly and moved my cupped hands through the wet grass just in front of the spot where it had to be.

This old trick always worked. It hopped straight into my hands, and I could hold it captive in my right hand as if in a cage, it was that small.

For a moment it sat there as if paralyzed, and I put both my hands together to make a larger cage.

There I stood now listening to the wind, a frog in my hands as if locked in a cage, and the same warm wind was continuously moving through the trees. A sour smell came from the swamps on the wooded shore. I clearly felt the frog trembling in my hands.

And then suddenly it peed right on my hand.

I believe that is an experience not many people have had.

The pee of a frog is ice-cold. I was so surprised that I opened my hands and let it hop away. Thus I stood there, deeply moved, above me the wind passing through the treetops, and my hand cold from the pee of a frog.

We begin again. We never give up.

I think that is one of the truest passages I've ever read in a book. And when I've felt troubled or temporarily defeated by something, I've often recalled the final lines and found them to be both calming and sustaining.

Just a taste

2010-07-08T18:44:00Z

I'm proud of myself - I'm cooking today. I just put a pan of pigs-in-the-blanket into the oven.

I've blogged before about my shortcut recipe for pigs, and today I made another small change: in addition substituting buffalo meat for the ground beef, I used a mixture of brown and wild rice in place of white rice. I still think my Slovak grandmother would be proud of me.

My other news is also about how good some things taste.

Wild raspberries are starting to ripen. I forage for them along the driveway when I come home from my morning and evening walks. I nab the berries as soon as they're ripe because I figure I'm in competition with the black bear that showed up here at the house a couple weeks ago.

A couple of tree frogs cling to the kitchen window almost every night so they can eat the bugs and moths drawn to the kitchen light. I like to watch them hunt. The frogs creep very slowly across the window toward their prey, and when they're close enough, they dart forward with open mouths. Sometimes they have to use a front foot to stuff the moths into their mouths.

All of which makes me wonder: what do moths taste like to a tree frog? Do different moths have different flavors? What kinds of taste buds do frogs have?

I know my gray cat likes to eat June bugs and dragonflies, and I can only guess that she likes the taste or perhaps the feeling of crunchiness in her mouth. Maybe dragonflies are like Doritos to a cat.

Not for keeps

2010-07-03T04:50:00Z

I think Thief delves into the idea that not all valuable relationships last. But just because something is passing or transitory doesn't mean it's unsuccessful or a mistake.

When I was in my late 20s I had a relationship that went on too long and never withstood any test; I was glad when it was finally over. But I'm not sorry I loved the man or opened myself to his world, at least for a time.

I suppose a relationship like that might represent failure or a foolish choice -- you know, it's contrary to pop songs like "Put a Ring On It" and even to the idea of true love. I loved any number of people, but either I didn't stay with them or they didn't stay with me. But I don't discount those relationships. They were real and true.

I'm not sure which of William Dickey's books contains this poem, but it's anthologized in Robert Mezey's Poems of the American West. I know I've had a typed version of it in my poetry files for the past 30 years.

~~~~

On His Way Home to Wyoming

We were too brief to expect to keep in touch.
The traffic stream has carried you past my stop.
I am no time you should remember much:
the moment of tenderness your mind lets drop
the way a cigarette drops from the hand
of a lover who is drunk or half-asleep
and harmlessly burns out. I understand
the pleasure of having what we need not keep.

And when you leave, I understand the pleasure
of silence, of keeping my body to myself,
of washing your glass and putting it on the shelf,
of measuring out the day to my own measure,
at ease, not glad, not sorry that you have gone,
the bed stripped bare, the clean sheets not yet on.

--William Dickey

Iowa City

2010-07-01T18:51:00Z

I read at Prairie Lights in Iowa City on Monday and a good crowd showed up, including some old and new friends. I also had a chance to stop by the new Writers' Workshop offices at the Dey House. Pretty impressive and nothing like the old warren at the English-Philosophy Building.

After my reading, I went for a drink at the Deadwood. While the place oddly seemed pretty much the same, the red-haired waitress with the interesting scars wasn't waiting tables anymore, and that's when I understood that none of my memories of the town existed anywhere but in my head.

Which is as it should be.

ANYWAY, I used to walk to the Deadwood right after I got off work at a church just around the corner. (Most places in downtown Iowa City are right around the corner from a bar.)

If I don't sound like the kind of person to be a church secretary, I agree -- but I took the job one summer when my work study money ran out. It was a perfect job because I could walk to work -- and from work right into a bar. It was a perverse kind of thing to do so that made me like it, but I know I also felt like I had to get the religion off me as soon as I could.

One of my duties at the church (in addition to mimeographing the Sunday bulletin and straightening out hymnals in the pews) was changing the white letters advertising that week's sermon on the sign outside the building. I always did that as quickly as I could so no one would see me. I had my reputation to protect.

Tuesday morning before I flew out, I thought about walking down to my old apartment, but I decided to let 706 E. College Street stay as I left it 20 years ago, and as it still is in my mind.

Demon lovers

2010-06-25T04:16:00Z

In an article in The Independent called "Summer of Tainted Love: A Season of Strictly Adult Stories About the Shadow Side of Love and Sex," writer Boyd Tonkin connected my character Alpha Breville to Emily Brontë's Heathcliff, stating that, "The demon lover has stepped back over fiction's threshold."

Tonkin goes on to write about several books that explore "potentially deadly desire," including Mud by Michèle Roberts, True Things About Me by Deborah Kay Davies, and The Shape of Her by Rowan Somerville.

Maybe that's why Thief is getting more (and better) press in the U.K. than it is here in the U.S. Maybe they have a longer tradition of acknowledging the attraction of the demon lover. Here in the U.S. my characters get called "willfully stupid" and "dum-dum."

The same reviewer who used the word (words?) "dum-dum" about one of my characters also objected to my frequent use of the word cock. To boot, she wrote that she kept envisioning Tori Spelling playing Suzanne in "a bad Lifetime made-for-TV movie."

You can read that review here.

While I'm at it, let me throw in the review I got in Publishers Weekly that called my writing "abysmal" and concluded with this statement: "Suzanne is less a character than a phoned-in grotesque thrown together to serve the requirements of an ill-considered story of petty self-enlightenment." You can read the whole thing here on Amazon.com.

Writing = Soccer

2010-06-22T05:55:00Z

I was catching up on the New Yorker the other day and read the article about soccer by Hampton Sides, "National Defense ." The article is about the entire U.S. team but focuses on goalkeeper Tim Howard.

Howard has Tourette's and believes that the syndrome helps him in the game. Soccer also provides a focus for his intensity. But Howard told writer Hampton Sides something I found even more fascinating: he hasn't ever had "fun" during a soccer match.

There's too much tension and Howard can only (literally) let down his guard at the end of match when the "danger" of the other team scoring is finally over. And yet it is clear through the article that Tim Howard is doing what he absolutely loves.

That might seem like a riddle or paradox: Howard loves something but he never enjoys it. But I think it makes perfect sense. Soccer is for Tim Howard what writing is for many writers -- including Colm Toíbín.

I read an interview in The Manchester Review in which Colm Toíbín told M. J. Hyland that he hadn’t enjoyed writing any of his books, saying there was "no pleasure" in it. When M. J. Hyland asked Toíbín why, then, he didn’t stop writing, Toíbín replied, “Because I have things that will not go away.”

This spring when I told students in my fiction writing class that I didn't like to write but I liked when I was done writing (something Dorothy Parker said, if I have it right), they seemed surprised and maybe disappointed. But I meant it, and for similar reasons to the ones Tim Howard gives for why he doesn't enjoy soccer matches.

Writing is filled with tension for me -- trying to figure out how to tell a story and then trying get what's in my mind onto the page. But there isn't anything else I'd rather think about than my characters and how to tell their stories. No matter how much anxiety writing brings, it's what I want to do.

Rough enough for love

2010-06-20T16:37:00Z

So the other night Jeff and I were in the bar that I write about in Thief (page 33) at 8 pm. and the place was deserted. It was a nice night, and the drink-after-work people had gone home, and the drinkers of the evening hadn't yet arrived.

In fact, we weren't even there for a drink -- we went to town to get dinner, but a couple of places stop serving food by 8 at night, (including the A&W), so we decided to get a burger at the bar. They've always had great burgers, and now that there's no smoking, it's even more enjoyable, at least for the two of us. In the old days the bar was the kind of place that would even make your bra smell smoky if you sat there too long.

Anyway, this only matters because I want to be clear that the insight I got wasn't alcohol-induced. But sitting in the bar it became very clear to me that at least part of what I was trying to do when I wrote Thief was to create a portrait of specific people (Suzanne & her cowboy, as well as Breville) in a place (the north woods). Lots of the talk surrounding the book focuses on the relationships in the novel, and that's certainly the heart of the book, but there's a whole context for those relationships that I was trying to evoke.

I had certain images in mind as I wrote, and those images were my companions during the writing. Smoke-filled bars. Driving alone on gravel roads up here in the north woods. Jack pines and cold lakes. Coming home at dawn after I spent the night with someone, my feet bare inside my Dan Post cowboy boots. And the song "Tougher Than the Rest."

It's a Bruce Springsteen song from 1987's "Tunnel of Love," but the version I kept playing in my head was Emmylou Harris's cover from her 1990 "Brand New Dance." The song changed meaning entirely when Emmylou sang it because it was a woman declaring that "If you're rough enough for love / Honey I'm tougher than the rest."

I love everything about the song as Emmylou sings it, but what resonated so much with me while I was writing Thief was the idea that you have to be tough if you want to love some people, if you want to become entangled with them. Love isn't all sweetness. But I also don't mean that it has to be "dark" or "dysfunctional," which are the terms people are always trying to apply to Thief. I mean that when people have lived long enough and are no longer innocent, there's some ground to cover with them that isn't easy or straightforward because they carry a lifetime of experiences.

"It ain't no secret
I've been around a time or two..."

All that ground to cover only increases in size and complexity if you choose to become involved with someone who's difficult in any way. But don't many of us have difficult people in our lives? People we go on choosing to love because they're valuable or cherished in some way in spite of their flaws?

ANYWAY -- that was the backdrop of Thief. That was the world and the way of looking at things that I tried to put on the page.

PC desire?

2010-06-17T16:28:00Z

Desire is not always politically correct.

We aren't always drawn to "good" people or the "right" people, and we aren't always drawn to people for admirable reasons. That seems pretty basic to me.

But this Boston Globe critic nailed me for not creating an admirable character, or one whose choices would allow her to feel empathy. According to her, Thief's Suzanne displays "willful stupidity" in her choice of lovers and in her decision to get involved with the rapist Alpha Breville.

I get it -- she disapproves of Suzanne. I guess she wanted me to write a different story than the one I did. It also sounds as though she had absolutely no patience with the book.

Over the years I've wanted to wring the necks of a few fictional characters. I got so caught up in their stories that I wanted to shake them and say, hey, can't you see what's going on? Can't you see what I see?

I felt that way about Wharton's Lily Bart in The House of Mirth. Wouldn't a life like Gerty Farish's be better than death? Or how about Anna Karenina? Why can't she just let herself be happy with Vronsky? Why does she have to torture herself as she does?

Yet those are the fates the authors gave to their heroines, and how the characters handled those fates was the focus of the novels: Lily can't live as Gerty does, just as Anna can not forget her son.

My personal frustration with the characters became part of the stories, at least in a way, but it always was (and still is) my own frustration.

Suzanne comes to her own decision about her life in her own time -- and before the end of the book. She bore the weight of things that happened to her, and of her own decisions, and in the end she has clarity about her guilt and her innocence.

At least that's the book I think I wrote. It has to speak on its own now, and I get that.

But truthfully -- and throwing diplomacy aside! -- I think some people have trouble with Suzanne because she doesn't behave the way they think a rape "victim" is supposed to behave.

And tomorrow I'll write about the insight that came to me last night as I was sitting in the bar -- the same bar that I write about in Thief.

More promiscuity

2010-06-07T14:28:00Z

In an interview last week, I got a question about whether or not Suzanne, the main character in Thief, is promiscuous.

I've blogged about this word, and in replying to the interviewer, I managed to say my piece about how I preferred to think Suzanne saw the promise in people -- but I don't think I hid my impatience very well. I'm not even sure what the interviewer meant by the word (or what most people mean), and I didn't have the presence of mind to ask. At what point does someone become promiscuous? After 5 lovers? Ten? One for each year of your age? What's the magic number?

If you'd write back -- I think you can do it anonymously, I think I set up that option on the blog -- I'd love to know what you think.

All I know is that now that I'm in NYC, walking down the street makes clear what I mean when I say Suzanne sees the promise in people. Just now I went out to get a bagel, and I was taken with any number of people I saw: the wary, long-haired young girl looking sidelong at passersby; the slim-hipped young man in striped, skinny trousers talking on a cell; the trying-too-hard guy in a PVC kilt or skirt wheeling a sky-blue suitcase. Just on my way to get a bagel! I don't mean I want to sleep with them, but I see them and I wonder what their stories are --

And if you see the world that way, and if you find a way to forge a bond with someone and open yourself to him or to her, and if you take pleasure in doing that -- or if you're open-hearted and open-legged and go around tasting different things -- or if you live through your cunt and your cock and you take in the world and nations that way -- is that what makes you promiscuous?

I'm reading and talking tonight at 7pm at Barnes & Noble on 86th & Lexington. See you there?

Pleasing the work: perfume & writing

2010-06-06T14:36:00Z

On my way home from London yesterday, I was rereading Chandler Burr's A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York. In chapter 8 Burr quotes something the perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena tells his daughter Céline about creating a scent: Ne pas faire plaisir à son ego et faire plaisir à la formule, which he translates as "Don't please your ego; please the formula."

I think the exact same thing is true of writing: you have to write what a story needs and wants, and not just the thing that you want.

It's not to say that the two things aren't the same sometimes. But when I feel a narrative going astray, I have to look at what I'm doing and remind myself that the thing needs what it needs. I have to give that thing as best I can to be true to the story.

Said another way, I have to be faithful to my characters. I have to render what they would say and do, and I have to show who they are. It dictates what happens in my books.

I don't think it's unusual that a principle or a guideline for creating one thing can be useful in creating something else -- I think it happens all the time in art forms. And Burr's portrait of perfumers like Ellena makes it clear they are creators.

London calling

2010-06-04T16:15:00Z

My last day in London and it's hot & sunny. People are wearing lots of skirts, shorts and skin. And I keep catching strong whiffs of body odor, which is always reassuring to me.

I meant to write before, but I found myself using up my words in interviews -- many interviews, I'm happy to say, because of Rina Gill, my publicist. It's been emotional at times to talk about my novel Thief and the intersection between my fiction and my own life story. I have to talk about my teenage self and my work as a writer, so it's like being two ages at once, sixteen and 40-something. (I'm not reluctant to admit my age, but I have to have some secrets.)

But I've also had moments of pure happiness here. Everyone at Atlantic made me feel like a million bucks, and more importantly, like a welcome friend. But I have felt championed by Atlantic from day one. And I loved the launch dinner they held for me the other night.

After our meal we headed out on the town in the company of Frances of The Frantastics , a wonderful person and brilliant performer whose act is described as "Elvis and Johnny Cash in frocks." I didn't know all the songs Frances played on the ukelele, but I was able to sing along with "Ring of Fire." I just wish I had asked to hear "Rock Island Line."

Little tidbits I've loved about London: all the men wearing pointy-toed shoes, which look so sexy I can hardly stand it; the old trees in Bedford Square; roses in bloom around Heathrow; every voice I hear -- also so sexy I can hardly stand it.

The book I meant to write

2010-05-29T16:53:00Z

Last night I sat outside in the evening and read my own book, Thief. It's the first time I've really been able to look at it since I received the bound galleys early in the year, or the final, finished book this spring.

When Swimming Sweet Arrow came out, it was years before I could hold it and read it entire and be glad. When it was published, good friends were supportive and so were many strangers, and the book got good reviews, but I also offended a whole raft of people because I wrote so blatantly about sex.

Looking over Thief, I saw it was the book I meant to write. It says what I want it to say.

I leave for London tomorrow to promote the book there with Atlantic, my U.K. publisher. I'm curious to see how people respond.

But today is a lovely, hot spring day in the meadow. I'll probably spend most of the day in a nightgown, alternately packing and wandering outside to watch birds. A couple minutes ago, a bluebird came to sit on top of one of the shepherd's hook holding a hummingbird feeder, and I loved seeing its periwinkle? azure? sky? coloring. And everything smells so good, especially the resinous evergreens.

Ruby-throats

2010-05-26T03:37:46Z

Sunday and Monday's warm weather brought more ruby-throated hummingbirds to the meadow -- I think at least a dozen are hanging around the three feeders I have out in the yard.

At dusk they all show up, trying to get a snack before sleep. Sometimes they'll manage to share the feeder peacefully with one bird to a perch, but most of the time each hummingbird will try to drive the others away. Even during breeding season, hummingbirds don't pair up -- after they mate, that's it. The only hummmingbirds that get along are mothers and children and, at least for a short time, siblings.

One male in particular guards the feeders vigilantly. We call him Bossy Boots.

In the background of the video, you can see one of the fluorescent orange Baltimore oriole feeders (which the hummers also use), as well as a jack pine that's leaning at a crazy angle.

May 24, 2010

Ball lightning

2010-05-25T03:03:00Z

This weekend the first of the "severe weather" for the season hit around 1:30 a.m. Saturday morning when frenetic lightning (if lightning can be frenetic) woke me up.

When I turned on the weather radio I heard the National Weather Service had issued a severe thunderstorm warning with possible winds of up to 70 mph. Those winds never came through, but I still spent the storm sitting on the floor of the bathroom, which is the only interior room in this basement-less house.

My usual storm routine is to unplug anything I can and sit in the bathroom with a quilt, the weather radio and any cats that I can con into sitting with me. On Saturday only Ruby sat with me -- Giizis spent the storm hiding under the bed. I also keep my flashlight and candles (left over from Y2K) in one spot so I can find them in the dark if the power goes out, and it often does when trees go down on the lines.

This might all sound nutty, but I've been in three straight line windstorms up here, and they are pretty scary. Straight line windstorms are called derechos, and they sometimes have winds of up to 100 mph. I went through two in 1995 and another in 1999. In 1999, the 4th of July derecho that blew down thousands of trees in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area sent a birch snag through the back window of my car, totalling it.

During one of those '95 derechos, lightning struck so close to the cabin where I was staying that I saw lighting and heard the crack of thunder simultaneously, followed immediately by a sizzling sound; that hit blew out all the circuitry in my phone.

However, far stranger is what happened to my neighbor. The same lightning strike that blew out my phone sent a ball of lighting through her house. She was awake during the storm and saw the ball lightning enter through a closed window, travel horizontally across her living room, and then exit through another closed window.

!!!

The only other time I've heard anyone talk about ball lightning was when my friend Barb told me about how fire balls came up out of the ground during the burial of someone who practiced Grand Medicine (Midewiwin) up on the Leech Lake Reservation.

Motley

2010-05-22T00:10:00Z

Back home after the reading in the Cities. I haven't made that drive for a while, and I forgot how much I like going through Motley (population 585). I know it's just a typical small town in Minnesota, but I love the name of the town and some of the business names: Mr. Ed's Restaurant and the Y-Knot Liquor Store, for example.

I think my favorite part of the drive is seeing all the lowland north of Motley along highway 64. Miles of land where there are no signs, no development -- nothing except reeds, sedges, hummocky places and water in the road ditches. And lots of red-winged blackbirds.

The Minnesota writer Bill Holm said* he had a "prairie eye," adding that "dense woods or mountain valleys make me nervous." I agree and think I understand what he meant. When I'm in woods with towering trees, I sometimes feel claustrophopic.

I think I like lowlands because they really are nothing kind of places. A high water table means it's hard to build. But I also like them because of their appearance: old vegetation is bleached out, and the ground is pocked and dimpled. Water pools in the dimples, between tussocks. There's nothing really remarkable to see, but that's the point. Some of the days I like best are spring and summer days when I'm here in the meadow and nothing -- no thing -- happens.

At the complete opposite end of the spectrum is the brief time Jeff and I
spent at the Mall of America on Thursday. In order to go from Macy's to Torrid , I crossed the amusement park in the middle of the mall. (It used to be called Camp Snoopy, but I think it's something else now.) Anyway, they have a walk-through exhibit there called Butterfly Bay where you can enter into a screened tent with lots of tropical butterflies flitting about. I was tempted for about 5 seconds to go inside, but the shrieking of all the kids in park made me pass by. Can butterflies hear?

* If you want to reaad all of Bill Holm's essay "Horizontal Grandeur," click here.

Minneapolis Reading 5/19

2010-05-18T23:46:00Z

Tomorrow night I'll be reading at The Loft in Minneapolis with Steven Polansky, author of The Bradbury Report .

The reading starts at 7 PM and will be held in the Target Performance Center in the Open Book, located at 1011 Washington Avenue South.

I'm still debating about what section of Thief to read, but it's likely I'll read from the beginning:

Before I met Alpha Breville, all I knew about Stillwater, Minnesota was that antique shops and a cloying quaintness filled its downtown. I'd gone there once on a Prozac-induced spending spree and come home with an ink-stained quilt, a book of Jesse Stuart short stories, and about thirty old photographs I'd stolen from various stores and shoved past my jeans into my underwear....

Hope to see you there.

Dusk in the meadow

2010-05-18T03:08:00Z

Chorus frogs, spring peepers, American toads, tree frogs, and a whip-poor-will around 23 seconds in -- all under a crescent moon. There was also a wild turkey gobbling, but he didn't come through.