NM/TX/IL More Notes

Click &c.In D, NPR stops telling us about the weather at 10am. Because, there isn’t much. In Mound City, NPR tell us about the weather every hour, all day long. Because, there’s much. Before I left for Texas and New Mexico, we had a day when the wind changed directions four times. Today, there’s mist, and the surface of the pond looks oily because the water is very cold. There’s an edge to the air that convinces me that predictions of some snow tonight are right on. SNOW! Wheee! (I say because I don’t have to commute in morning, poor folks, slush is not fun.) Last snow I saw was a couple of years ago, and I didn’t see it fall. Fun project for tonight: introduce the cats to snow. They keep pushing to go outside, while the dogs are out, and I keep crushing their will by not letting them out. The plan there is to get a harness and walk around with them until I’m sure they know the house, the land. Why? Why that overly maternal concern for small and able predators? Coyotes. That’s why.

In NM, I found a dead rhinoceros beetle in Mary’s driveway. That was where it just stopped living. It’s completely intact, and Mary suggested that I get it cased in resin and make an amulet out of it. Sterling idea. Surprising that a raven or a cat didn’t eat it. Would have been a juicy morsel.

I was thinking of starting up the chapter on Stein, but I’ve found that the approach I wanted to take needs some reconsideration. Sooooo, Graham instead. There’s two lovely books out on her work, which is a nice excuse to sit and read. I think sending the Graham chapter with the proposal will be a better move – since the Bonnefoy chapter is dauntingly long for an editor to consider with a proposal.

The MacKinnon review is done, but needs one more tinker before I’m sure. And JP will work his usual magic. The Khasnabish review is formulating. Carrie sent CFPs for two really spot-on conferences. Heather sent a handful of jobs for NY. And Silver City on the whole has conspired to clean me up on the inside.

I read Allende’s Zorro while in NM. The fun in that: Allende writes a gentle and humorous kind of magical realism. So here she takes after Zorro, and writes his biography. She wrote it in such a completely plausible way that she’s created a new kind of realism – a realism of fable. Zorro was just the avatar to engage now. Justice, real justice, courage, compassion, humor, verve, and certainty of skill that comes from deep practice. And a character who has his trials, his losses, who grows a heart in addition to his skill. It’s a completely instructive distraction.