Wayne County
Fog Advisory:
Issued at: 10:02 AM EDT 9/28/08,
expires at: 11:15 AM EDT 9/28/08
dense fog advisory has expired
The dense fog advisory is no longer in effect.
Visibilities have improved over the region.
what is a back
spine, muscles, nerves
the highway between brain
and arms and hands,
fingers, legs, feet –
this highway of mine
has — after fifty years –
developed potholes,
crumbling edges,
cracks down the middle
now, just now –
someone has placed
warning flares
that sputter and flame
in fretful bursts
along the length
of my road
they will not
be ignored
Okay, so, if you know me you know I think the notion of “writer’s block” is bunk. No such thing. Procrastination, avoidance, a dearth of good ideas, laziness, a dry spell — sure. But writer’s block? Nope. To write requires applying seat to chair, pen to paper, or fingers to key board. And just getting the words out. I realize there are those of you who believe that writer’s block does exist. I used to think so too. But then a stint in the world of journalism — albeit a small, small world — convinced me otherwise. When you write to a deadline, there is no such thing as writer’s block. You have a job to do, you focus on the job (getting and writing the story) and you get the job done. This notion was reinforced for me this summer when I met a very high profile journalist at Yaddo. She, who shall go unnamed, writes for the New York Times, Atlantic, and other smart demanding publications. A poet or a fiction writer or maybe it was even (gasp) a nonfiction writer was sighing to her this summer about suffering from writer’s block. The unnameable journalist just gazed wearily at this writer and said: In my world, there is no such thing as writer’s block.
Agreed.
There is, however, writer’s back. Or more accurately, rider’s back. Somehow this weekend I threw out my back while riding — okay, it was an extended session of sitting trot — and now sitting, writing or not, is very very painful. I am plagued by back spasms. Holy crap these suckers are nasty. It’s like getting zapped by an electric prod. I sit for a few minutes and all of a sudden OW…AUGH…UHHHHH.
Fortunately, the ever helpful Poets and Writers Magazine has an article in the most recent issue about standing desks. And how to make them. Big shelf, attach to the wall, stand up and write. Hemingway wrote that way, so apparently did Virginia Woolf.
Guess who’s next.
I was going to write a post about how the wind storms that swept through Richmond and Wayne County Indiana were not, as several neighbors said to me today, “terrible.” They were not terrible. Not here. The hurricane named Ike in Texas was pretty terrible. The deaths of a father and son in northern Indiana as they tried to save some kids from drowing? That was terrible. The Birmingham bombings of 45 years ago, those were terrible. What has been happening in Darfur, terrible. In Wayne County, Indiana, the storm of yesterday did not rank as terrible. Messy, yes. Inconvenient, annoying, damaging, yes. Terrible? It was not. However. I am not going to write that post.
I was also going to write a post about how I am beginning to understand the effects of aging. Ten years ago, when I had just turned 40 (which, by the way, is YOUNG) I was thinner, had more energy, did not get injured as readily as I do now (when I ride), got by on less sleep, and in general could do more stuff than I can now without feeling worn out. Did I mention I was thinner? I was. Right. I’m not going to write that post either.
Nor am I going to write a post about the drooping stock market, the phraseology and reality of “global climate change,” the frustrating rhetoric emanating from the two main presidential candidates, the tedium of meetings, the wrongheadedness of pantyhose, the shock and sadness of David Foster Wallace’s suicide (whether you like his writing or not, he was a human being and died too young at 46), the serious grossness of flax seed oil, Owen’s thoughts on Penn vs. Wilson tennis balls, the fragrance of IcyHot wafting through my study, or how much a big bottle of Advil costs at Kroger’s as of 7 p.m. tonight.
I am going to write this: summer is waning. Get outdoors and enjoy this lovely clear air while it lasts. Take a walk. Pick up some sticks along the way. Your neighbors will comment on the terrible nature of the storm that produced the sticks. Just smile. You know better.
No need to repeat. Read this.
Owen approves.
More miscellaneous Saturday moments:
At the downtown Richmond street fair today, I bought three books: Goodnight Moon, The Runaway Bunny, and Learn Horseback Riding in a Weekend.
The last book, which I find amusing even in its title, will appear in a photograph by Jim Hair. Jim was puttering about downtown, photographing people who had come out to the street fair. I got in his line of sight, and before I knew it I was commanded to climb into the wooden bucket of Mark Strosberg’s bike, Mark who had also happened by at that very moment. I then commanded Jim (a counter command) to make sure the title of my book was in focus and visible. I do hope he complied.
Down the street a block or two, I later bought a great little print of a dog, pointy-nosed and intent just like Owen, going after a ball. For a buck, I got it. Two blocks after that, I got a new used pocketbook — as we say in the East — for seven bucks. Leather, too. I did not buy the white plastic bracelet that said, in big black print, STAR. Nor did I buy the basket with dozens of flowers stuck to it. Or the print of the red shoes, which I liked very very much. But I know the artist. So…someday…
Later, in the afternoon while on horseback in a field of alfalfa, I looked out over a hundred rolling acres of soybeans. “Look,” I said to the friend riding with me. The fields of soybeans below us were deep green, with patches turning golden yellow. A light breeze rippled over the leaves. “It’s so beautiful,” I said, pointing out the scattered carpets of yellow leaves. My friend nodded slightly, not agreeing, but acknowledging my comment. “It’s the drought,” she said. It is, she went on, too early for soybeans to start turning; the yellow leaves were in higher patches of ground, more likely to dry out. The green plants were in lower ground, still with enough water. After she explained what I saw, the beauty of things shifted. There it was, right before me, as I tell my students in nonfiction classes: what you know informs how you see.
Now the sun is slowly sinking behind the high tension wires just past my house, causing them to glow in a way that makes them, however I look at them, beautiful. Gilded, luminescent, shimmering in midair. That’s what I see. From next door, a line of saxophone scales, someone practicing up and down, up and down, drifts out a second story window. Soundtrack of a Saturday evening in Richmond, Indiana.
I remember just enough from my high school Russian class, and the year in college to be able to haltingly decipher the spam I received this morning. If I chose to, I could have followed links to Home Telephone Service and Photographs of Pornography.
I chose not to.
But it was rather an interesting challenge to read the messages.