Splitting A Branch Of James Monroe

The autumnal equinox is just a few days away and I’m preparing for winter here on Windsong. You know the drill; get storm windows ready to install, sweep the chimney with a wire brush, clean and condition lawn furniture for storage, keep ahead of the falling leaves, finally, start splitting wood; enough for a three month supply, about three cords. I have a high efficiency fire place that keeps the place warm, and if it gets really cold – below zero – I  have a wood burning Elvira kitchen stove from Canada.

By the way, the wood comes from dead-fall trees on Windsong. Except this year my son Alfred lost to a storm, a behemoth oak tree that fronted his commercial building in Dunlap, in the Sequatchie Valley, Tennessee. He transported some of the larger limbs, already bucked, up the mountain and piled them by my woodpile. The trunk of the tree was taken by some folks that apparently needed the wood more than the owner, bless their little hearts. 

A SHAGGY DOG STORY

There is a sea in the sky, and the earthbound forests wave in the currents like the kelp beds to the lee of Anacapa Island. Almost daily, gusting winds lay the golden wattle grass flat on the windward side of the island where several goats, sure footed on the steep cliffs, munch their way through the vegetation. Rare golden eagles languidly bum rides with the off shore air currents, hungrily watching to see what fauna the goats flush from the flora below. The immense fetch of the Pacific endlessly rolls grinder waves past the Channel Islands towards the California mainland.

Assimilation of Literary Characters Not Recommended

I suppose I’m influenced, to some degree, by whatever current author I’m reading. I recall at the age of ten, when I first read Sir Conan Doyle’s “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” I tried to effect a Professor Moriarty like, British accent, and wear a monocle; an old chipped watch crystal, which kept falling from my untrained eye. When I finally returned the long overdue Collected Works of Sherlock Holmes, the school librarian didn’t fine me; instead, she glued a shoe string to my monocle and sent me to see Mother Superior. The good Sister laughed, but insisted on calling my mother, telling her that her son was possessed and couldn’t return to class until he, meaning me, was cleansed of the malevolence. My mother cleansed me that evening with a hairbrush and confiscated the monocle. I was back to normal, for me, the next morning … sans accent.

"Eyeless In Luminary" Preview

Eyeless in Luminary presents both reality and magical realism “- allowing them to pass through each other with that special moment when they blend undifferentiated, becoming inseparable, suspending disbelief, and then – when  exhausted – separating again,” leaving in their wake their signs and symbols to be pondered.

Dr. Sark Saint John, a present day Southern university professor of archeology and paleontology, and his autistic savant assistant, Davio Gonzales Garcia, set out on a quest to find the existence of a hidden Slav settlement of retro villagers, rumored but never proven to exist. The quest began over ten years ago, but came to a sudden halt eight years later when disaster struck the researchers’ efforts, causing Sark’s motivation for further research to bottom out completely. The university’s new president quickly tired of Sark’s reclusive, non-productive behavior, and was just about to ask for his resignation when Sark decided to re-open the quest . . . one more time.

Miss Long-belle

Possibly I had been out in the sun too long picking some fruit from the orchard at Windsong. Needing a break I came back to the house and with a cool drink set up in a lounge chair on my shaded deck. Almost immediately an old pal made her appearance. Over the years of our association of me observing her forays onto the stage of my deck, her antics always seemed to spool before my eye(s) without pause, no breaks for commercials, or final scene stage adjustments, no prima donna this gal. And so in that vein I’ll share what I observed; and how I know this … her thoughts ... I do not have a clue. So here in run-on format:

She, the lizard Long-belle, after traversing the narrow rope supporting the hammock, next traveled down onto the bundle it held suspended, and darted over onto the cool upper epidermis, dodging the stalks of black fiber erupting from the surface, curiosity satisfied she scampered back onto the comfrey leaves, applied earlier to an abrasion of the bundle’s epidermis, there she paused and sniffed the poultice’s natural composting gases, instantly she became giddy from the residual ethylene oxide absorbed by those healing fibers covering the bundle, after which she chased her tail for awhile and darted in pirouettes, and imagined herself a haughty, imperial Gila in a tutu, but abruptly she tired and curled up immobile, resting her head on what humans would recognize as a button, from her vantage she could see the other hammock bundle across the room beginning to erupt and shake, but soon lost interest when instinct instructed a frozen pause; her ogles stopped darting, and a cold eye-lock-on stare at where a hussy female mantis stood with her fat haunches on a canvas backpack a half mile away in lizard distance, then a slow bending of Long-belle’s tail, followed immediately by the two gun metal gray right legs pulled forward in conjunction with the two left legs pushing backwards; this locomotion cycle could be maintained at two-hundred and fifty-sixty repetitions a minute for up to four minutes, all the while she would maintain her sight on the hussy’s yet unchallenged presence in her domain, calculating that the challenge free status of a natural enemy permitted her return to the shelter of the earthen roof chamber; ouch … suddenly complicating matters, little grains of angular clear quartz had lodged in the skin fold between her left front leg and belly, probably picked up from her exploration of the comfrey, causing a painful abrading as she scampered up the wall, not a good day, she bent to the task of flicking them out with her tongue, then continued to her penthouse chamber; unexpectedly another reflex look, head rigid, and then firing of the puce tongue, an instrument longer than her body, darting without pause in her locomotion, to snatch a nutritious, al dente, frog flea into her mouth – dinner for two young hungry, alone at home, children awaiting their mothers return; all this as seen and from and reported from her level of observation.

 That frog, another old confident who supplied the flea I mentioned, is another story I’ll share later with you all. Look, all I got to say and at risk of repeating myself … the level of observation will produce the phenomenon; so if you care to venture into other realms, then try looking closely at the small world around you.

Eyeless In Luminary

My newest novel is currently being made ready for publication.  It will be available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle. I'll let you know the minute it goes live.

"The Genre I am writing in is “meta fiction or magical realism”. To some extent, I have tried to avoid the pro-forma and formulaic writing, and have inserted some unusual techniques that may entertain or may bother. I do not view my story as a wide net cast to retrieve the greatest number of readers, rather those few who want to travel down the same road with me, for whatever portion of the trip they find interesting.

The “Theme” of my story is presenting reality and magical realism and to have them pass through each other with that special moment when they blend undifferentiated, becoming inseparable, suspending disbelief, and then when exhausted, separating again, leaving in their wake the semiotics to be pondered.

Inside Out: Walt's Poetry (and Photos) - Preview

Life is a journey better traveled if you understand with whom your're walking . . . from beginning to end. Self. Inside Out is a collection of poems that reflect and project in a perfect blend of then and now, forward, and beyond.