Rick Moody

. . . I start with characters, and I want to sort of invite them into the landscape, but then always be open to the possibility that the story could really go in a great number of directions, that the characters, you know, if they're being treated as though they were real people, have to be accorded the volition to behave spontaneously.

-Rick Moody, NYT

Little Things

Yesterday on my way to Turbesi Park I passed a green lampshade on the sidewalk. Today it was a crushed green lampshade in the same spot. I passed the house with the Husky and noticed they still have two Hawaiian shirts hanging on the line. They have hung out through a few rainstorms. It's funny the little things you notice going around the same streets repeatedly. The folks down at the corner harvested all of their tomato plants and in their place is a pile of firewood split and ready for burning. I saw one of their chickens out loose the other day - a white one poking in the bushes of the neighbor's yard.

Yesterday I saw Brady the chocolate Lab out of his yard, sleeping under a big red Lexus SUV parked on the street. I had never seen him out of his yard before, and I couldn't bear the thought of him getting hurt or accidentally run over by the Lexus. So I stood thinking for a few minutes and then turned back and went to the house and knocked on the door. There was no answer. I knocked on the window. Then I remembered the family next door was good friends with this family so I rang their bell. When the man came to the door, I told him I had noticed Brady sleeping under the big red car. The neighbor understood the concern and corralled Brady back into the yard, got his electric collar from the owner, and slipped it onto Brady's neck. I felt much better.

I love to look. Observing is its own poetry. When I was a child I would look at everything, but without comprehension. It was a game, like thinking my eyes could land on a spot that had never been seen before. Maybe that could be true after a snowfall, but now I see meaning, story, everywhere I look in my busy neighborhood.

Dog Place

Autumn chill is here and I want to huddle in front of a fire for warmth but since I don't own a fireplace I invite my 76 pound dog to sit on the couch with me and cuddle and perhaps that is even better. I lift her front legs onto my lap, I admire her big meaty paws, I hug her while sniffing her forehead which smells like the outdoors, I stroke her soft ears, I inhale the scent of her breath, I gaze into her soulful eyes. I love everything about her.

War News

One of the phenomena of the war is the news coverage. In a sense the American people are a bit overtrained on this strange concentrated diet. Body and mind adjust to almost any sort of stimulus; we compensate physically for the news, just as we do for the speed of a motor car in which we are riding, until at last it seems as though the car is not in motion at all, and as though there is no news, not really.

-E.B. White, One Man's Meat p187 (1941)

Family History

The first wife's husband was stolen by the first wife's friend. A third woman steals the husband from the second wife and becomes the third wife. The man dies leaving three wives, all of them hating each other. What a thief hates most is a more clever thief.

E. B. White

The elevator boy in my hotel, after he has shut the grilled gate and started the car, always slips his hand through the bars of the gate so that as he passes each floor the sill-plate will give him a dangerous little kiss on the end of his finger. It is the only record he keeps of his fabulous travels. A doctor could probably tell him why he does it; but for that matter a doctor could probably tell me why when I pass through a long corridor I always kick lightly sideways with one foot so that it ticks the baseboard. A doctor could, but a doctor isn't going to. There are things about my life I don't wish to pry into and this is one of them.

-E.B. White, One Man's Meat p130


The first sign of spring here is when the ice breaks up in the inkwell at the post office. A month later the ice leaves the lakes. And a month after that the first of the summer visitors shows up and the tax collector's wife removes the town records from her Frigidaire and plugs it in for the summer.

-E.B. White, One Man's Meat p135

The Fair

It's seven days since the Fair ended, but in my head I still keep hearing the enormous sound of the waltz that accompanied the swings. And every once in a while I hear too the the gigantic summons, that somebody is wanted at the main gate, or will the owner of license 3261 please move his car, it is blocking the highway. (And the hasty search through my pockets to see if my car bears that number.)
Anything can happen at a county agricultural fair. It is the perfect human occasion, the harvest of the fields and of the emotions. To the fair come the man and his cow, the boy and his girl, the wife and her green tomato pickle, each anticipating victory and the excitement of being separated from his money by familiar devices. It is at a fair that man can be drunk forever on liquor, love, or fights; at a fair that your front pocket can be picked by a trotting horse looking for sugar, and your hind pocket by a thief looking for his fortune.

-E. B. White, One Man's Meat p224

E. B. White

There's a lot of the cat in me and cats are not joiners.

-E.B. White, One Man's Meat p141

Take Care

Take care of your art, don't expect your art to take care of you.
Take care of your children, don't expect your children to take care of you.

Regina Brett

What other people think of you is none of your business.
-Regina Brett

All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
-Regina Brett

Colorful Distraction

I heard rain was coming so I set out early with Lily to catch a walk in the sunshine. I was running low on milk so I decided to walk to Wright's Dairy Farm, three miles from my house. When we got there I was able to tie Lily up to a post like a horse, run in and buy a gallon of milk, get her water, and have a pee stop. On the way back home the gallon of milk in my shoulder bag got pretty heavy, but the beauty of the rolling hills and orange trees kept my eyes and mind occupied.

Silence

Silence is a source of great strength.
-Lao Tzu

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music, and you provide the silence.
-Leopold Stokowski

After I'm Gone

I was in a cloudy state of mind this morning having woken up in the middle of the night, but once I started walking with Lily in the cool sunshine I wanted to keep going. We went all the way down Rathbun Street taking a few side streets in Blackstone and then on the way back we stopped at Turbesi Park. Lily found an empty plastic bottle in the grass just before we entered the ball field. She carried it in her mouth. I think she likes them better than sticks or balls because they are lightweight and satisfyingly noisy when she bites down on them. When we got inside the field I blocked the entrance and exit with the big white plastic trash barrels and unhooked her leash. She ran full throttle with exuberance. It was a joy to watch. I think she really wanted to run after the long walk. She raced in large circles and then she slowed to a prance all the while carrying the empty plastic bottle in her mouth. After a few minutes she was done and it was time to go. On our way back I saw two elderly men talking to each other. One man had two Yorkies in tow, one on a leash and the other orbiting. The man with the dogs was talking to a man who was leaning over his car engine, checking the oil. He pulled out the dipstick and wiped it with a rag, examining it as they talked. I was eavesdropping from the opposite side of the street as Lily and I walked by. Both men had French-Canadian accents. "I'll have to leave it to one of my daughters after I'm gone," the oil-checking man said. "That won't be for a long, long time," the other man said. "I hope so," said the oil-checking man. I crossed the street into the church parking lot and the two big dogs in the yard behind the church followed us along the fence, barking. When Lily and I walked past Precious Blood Cemetery I noticed a path of plywood planks leading to a grave site. I saw the big orange digging machine poised over a rectangular hole in the ground. Talk radio was blaring out of the digging machine's cab. The radio voices were talking and laughing, disturbing the normally quiet cemetery. I looked for the grave digger to say hello, but he was already fifteen yards away, walking up the hill toward the cemetery garage.

Fall

A fair is good at any hour of the twenty-four. I love it early on a rainy morning when the Ferris wheel is wearing its tarpaulins and the phrenologist is just brushing her teeth. You climb a wet ladder into the loft of the cattle barn for a forkful of hay and find a fellow asleep heavily, his shoes folded across his breast like a lily.

When a glass of wine is poured a wine fly appears promptly - but I never see him at any other time, and wonder where he keeps himself in the meanwhile and what he does for a drink.

- E. B. White, from his essay "Fall" One Man's Meat

E. B. White

I knew from the very start that some day there would be a cow here. One of the first things that turned up when we bought the place was a milking stool, an old one, handmade, smooth with the wax finish which only the seat of an honest man's breeches can give to wood. A piece of equipment like that kicking around the barn is impossible to put out of one's mind completely. I never mentioned the name "cow" in those early days, but I knew that the ownership of a milking stool was like any other infection - there would be the period of incubation and then the trouble itself. The stool made me feel almost wholly equipped - all I needed was the new plank for under the cow, the new stanchion, the platform, the curb, the gutter, the toprail, the litter alley, the sawdust, the manger, the barn broom, the halter, the watering pail, the milk pail, the milk cans, the brushes, the separator, the churn, the cow, and the ability to milk the cow.

-E. B. White, One Man's Meat p276

Have A Ball

This morning I walked through downtown and saw the parks and recreation crew setting up the Autumnfest Parade reviewing stand. The guys said hi to Lily and as usual she jumped into their arms. I told them to look for us in the parade. I continued on to Cold Spring Park in the North End, and decided to visit the baseball field. When I descended the hill I could see that all the fence gates were wide open and an old man was in the outfield practicing his golf swing. With Lily in tow I went around the field, closing each gate. When I got to the big gate near the golfer I asked him if he minded sharing the field with us. He volunteered to move his golf game just outside the fence, a few feet away. We had the park to ourselves, playing our respective ball games.

The sun was illuminating the field and the grass was still wet from dew. I threw the baseball for Lily to chase. When I tossed the ball in the direction of the sun, it would roll across the wet grass, spraying water lit up in the sunshine. Lily chased the ball, running and prancing in circles and then dropping it back at my feet. We played fetch for a few minutes and then I found a bottle of water in the outfield and poured some into my cupped hand for her. Then I tossed her the empty plastic bottle and she ran with it in her mouth, making crunchy noises and prancing around some more. When I was ready to leave I attached her green leash, shoved the empty bottle in my bag, and thanked the golfing man on our way out. We headed back home, walking in the striped shadows cast from the fence along Railroad Street. When we reached our neighborhood, I walked through the park where all the Autumnfest booths were being set up for the weekend.

Planet Comfort

I hear the big hydraulic hum of the trash truck and I race out to retrieve my bin. Each week there's the risk that my bin will get mixed in with the four other identical brown bins belonging to the multifamily house next door. When that happens my bin winds up living there for a while, and I have to use one of theirs. Why am I relieved to have my trash bin back? Why must I hunt down and use my favorite coffee mug every morning? Why do I cling to these little things? It is comforting to restore order. It gives me the momentary illusion that all is well on this spinning planet.

Raw Day

It's a raw day of drizzly mist. I needed to air out my brain. Lily and I walked to Turbesi Park and she went wild, running in big loops inside the fenced-in ball field. The whole park was empty except for three teen boys in baggy black clothes who came traipsing through. Lily and I passed through the cemetery on the way home. I think of the cemetery as little Ireland - it is very green, with rolling hills and few trees. Today it was real Irish weather. The long walk warmed us both up and calmed us down. Now my shoes are slowly drying out on a heater, and Lily is curled up asleep on her bed beside me.

Bobs and Dawdles

My solitary work requires me to create a kind of intense space to operate in. The space is a bubble beyond worry and time, where the imagination bobs and dawdles, opens and receives.

Between The Rungs

Between the rungs. That's where the poetry lives. That's where I live. I climb the ladder as in a dream, slip through between the rungs, floating in a white flannel nightgown. Birds and serpents in view on the hill below. I wake up. I want to return to the dream but the bed is cold and my elbows are digging into the mattress. I hold my hands over closed eyes.