Decanting a Summer Day
My journals are not neat and precise, though I greatly admire such documents. Instead, my journals are a messy collection of impressions, words, overheard conversations and explosions. Opening one of my notebooks can be dangerous, like picking at a scab or skating out on ice that is too thin. Journals are compressed swear words and rants. They contain long lists that were important only in the moment. Journal entries are snapshots not portraits. Their pages record wisps of smoke and bitter sips of coffee. Hence, they are invaluable.
Breakup Ephemera
Breakup in Alaska occurs when the temperatures rise and ice-bound rivers and lakes began to break apart. Water begins to flow. When we lived along the Yentna River I recall standing outside listening to the sounds of breakup: icicles dripping from eaves, soft snow sloughing from spruce boughs, slabs of ice groaning and grinding, and the sound of ice crashing against ice. The entire river carried the sound of spring in its cold current. That sound of ice breaking free always reminded me of a vast dinner party – of china cups settling onto china saucers, of ice sloshing in tall glasses, and of thousands of pieces of silverware striking cup rims and dinner plates.
X Marks the Tale
As I work on revisions of WHERE THE RIVER IS A ROAD I find myself thinking of the origins of stories. I consider the maps embedded in those narratives. The short memory piece that follows refers back to some of the early collective stories I experienced. It is the visceral sketching out of a house in the cold sand, the rendering of a scary story map, that compels me.
The Unexpected Within
The character of Lou Keats started with a short story. There was a very particular memory that triggered a vignette about the realities of a small rural Alaskan town juxtaposed against the perceptions of two city dwellers coming off a bender. During the writing of that short story, Truman and Lou, I found myself laughing aloud. As soon as Lou trotted out of the forest onto the dusty dirt road grandly called Main Street it was love at first sight. Other work kept me from delving deeper into that story, but I continued collecting artifacts and jotting down ideas.
In the Slow Wake of the Story
The earliest memories I possess have to do with words. Whispered. Sung. Spoken. It was serendipity to be born to two adventurers who also happened to be ardent storytellers. The images, sounds, scents that accompanied the earliest of these stories still transport me to a damp forest, a wood smoke smudge, the slow wake of a boat traversing Kachemak Bay. I heard somewhere that early memories are vivid
Of Memory and Place
Fireweed Crossing is a fictional town. But it is so much more than that. To me, it is an amalgam of a dozen small towns and villages that were a part of my early life. Indelible impressions persist from each recalled encounter. And so a new place is born from an olio of memory. Olio is a lovely word: a medley, a hodgepodge, a miscellaneous collection.
The delight of unpacking a box of books.
“Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand!” from E.B. White's The Elements of Style found on page 65 of a well loved paperback.
Viewmasters and earthquakes
Fellow Travelers: I wake up from the semi-hibernation of late December and realize January is well underway. On Friday the 4th, nearing midnight, a 7.5 earth shake rolls under the floorboards and sharpens childhood memories of the 1964 earthquake. Only my brother and I are still here, so I call him and we talk for two hours. I spend the rest of the next night writing.