Yard-Pal

SIP: Abalone Memory

The Light Here

The light here

The light there

Captain, resting.


Lady, waiting patiently while I work:

What's-the-Story?

Story: characters in action in a setting through time.

That's how I process everything.

Give me a poem, any poem, and I look for the story in the lines, behind the lines, and/or after the lines. Give me a photo, and where some see a static tablieau, I see dynamism, before-and-after, presence-and-absence. Give me a problem, personal or societal, and I look for the story in the same way.

On the upside, I look for motivation and context and nuance. On the downside, some people think I am wasting my--or their--time with this approach, with my concern for accuracy and understanding of plot, POV, and narrative shading.

I'll be 59 soon, but that mostly means I've had a lot of practice with stories and story-telling; I think I am (still) in tune most of the time. Yet I know I may be wrong in my emphasis in certain circumstances and with certain texts, and that encourages me to be humble, which is always good.

Still, what's the story is my favorite question.

Repose: Lady and Captain

I always feel a little more rested, a bit more at ease, when I watch my cats sleeping.  Or, as I should say, resting.  If you look closely, you can see that Lady's eyes are open and watching me take yet another picture, and Captain is resettling here atop my laptop, which I need to work . . . .

Shelf-Love: The Aquatic and the Nautical

Further Reflections Upon Connell's "Notes . . ."

Evan S. Connell's "Notes From a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel" is the strangest book I have read in 20 or so years. Epic, but in a modern or post-modern sense; fragmented, yet cohesive; deeply allusive and lateral-minded. (I felt quite at home, though I don't quite know what it adds up to or if addition is the proper sequencing. A record, an indictment, of humanity, at the least.)

Imagine if Melville's Ishmael had written Marlowe's Doctor Faustus? Imagine if Cervantes had written Pound's Personae or The Cantos? Imagine if the Archpoet of Cologne and an astrophysicist teamed up to write Eliot's The Waste Land in 243 pages? Would Joyce describe -- and delineate -- Connell as an amateur, imitator, or brother?

I felt narrative tension, a pressing forward, so much so that I don't want to quote out of context, and yet Connell gives us 243 pages of accretion undivided by parts or chapters. Amazing. Did Connell create that (my default) or am I such a perfect reader here that I imposed order and momentum upon chaos?

If chaos is the point, then how I answer that last question truly matters.