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writing in a southern accent

I'm submitting a story for the Traver Award today and I've been debating whether to write in a southern accent for one of the characters or not. I decided against it. But here is an excert before I changed it back to standard spelling.

Is this obnoxious? Some of my favorite writes do it (Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Denis Johnson) and I love accents. I think they add a lot to a character. But I think for a contest for a mainstream fishing magazine it may hurt.

“Ok. All rot. Fon. I was jus’ excited about gettin’ to fish fo some while trout on a famous reeva. I suppose I’m a little ahead of myself. Thanks for the pointers I gayess.”

He turned and began to walk away. I made two false casts and dropped the fly at the head of the run about five feet in front of a previous rise and mended the line. A small fish rose and the man heard the splashing and turned around.

“I stood here for two hours and didn’t catch a thing. Now you come up and WAYAM! on your first cayist!”

................

“Yeah, pretty crowded up there by the hatchery. That’s why I came down hee err, try an’ get away from ‘um.”

“Then I came wading right into your hole. Sorry about that.”

“That’s all rot. I wasn’t catchin’ anything anyway. You were catchin’ ‘em pretty good though.”

“Yeah, I was doing ok. You really have to use tiny flies and small tippet. These fish are super selective.”

“I gayess so.”

Spring Break Extravaganze 2008 Part III: wherein our hero consumes a wild pig tamale

I am a coyote in a frozen field hunting morning mice. I am a black bear carcass rotting slowly in the cold woods. I am one hundred species of salamander scampering amongst wet leaf litter. I am a war painted brook trout rising with a cocksure pop to a mayfly. I am a lazy brown trout just hooked on a midge in a writhing slimy circle of fat meat. I am a six hundred year old hemlock in the Cataloochee Valley dying. I’m a gully washer eroding the mountain side silting the river. I am the Southern Apple Latch In Mountains.












Stopped on the Delayed Harvest section of the rather high and muddy Tuckaseegee River on my way home and caught five or six stockers on Double Bunnies and big rubber leg stone flies. This is Mr. Fatty Labrador:

scarce o'fat

Like miniature men
we inspect rugged waves of corduroy
covered with a forest
of slender gray winter ingots
and a mottled brown carpet of leaves.

We walk a graphite crucible's rim
that threatens sylvan calcination
and switchback down a crumpled hollow
full of yellowwood trees
and a falling stream
obvious and bright
betwixt green pillows.

Meandering from wall to wall
leaving to ascend
waves of land
rolling to and fro.

Ingot.


What what.

I've cribbed Wolfe, you stickler

A place for everything was kept
in cold corners of the day
where the breeze walks softly
on skinny worn leather pads
and no dust is there.

Had speech been made
voices would bounce
aghast from plaster
wall to wood
floor freely.

Had things filled space
with hulking shoulders
or skinny waist
a breath you could not take
between their shadows.

But fertile ground it is
waiting perfect for the stuff
of a life too short.

january deam

Recent rains kept the dust down on the gravel road. Driving gently over crunching stones through a forest of bright gray poles each pothole was half filled with milky tan rainwater that splashed up and lacquered the rear fenders of my car. The easy upland landscape rolled in large, broad waves and the road swung and curved around them splitting the carpet of warm brown leaves arbitrarily in two.

The tower tapers toward the top and is capped with a gray box full of empty window frames. It sways back and forth like the road but we climb to the top for a view anyway.

The trail stays to the ridge barely elevated, barely delineated from the rest of the landscape. We pass fields of dark green lycopods and verdant walls of plush moss that stand out distinctly from the rest of the world.

Slipping into the woods, becoming a true foot path the trail winds its way towards the lake through a gauntlet of persistent dry brown leaves. It follows the right arm of the ridge where it splits and the land begins to fall away to each side and the ridge narrows and some sensation of elevation is finally apparent.

Yaniv is standing at the end of the trail in the middle of the cold, leafy fire pit on a broad knob where the land falls steeply away two hundred seventy degrees around him. The lake shimmers dark bluely in the distance through the trees several hundred feet below. He holds my wallet open in his hand and removes two twenties and a ten and crumples them up and stuffs them in his pocket. “I stole your money well. You never verb something good. You verb it well.”

I let him keep the money. That kind of tip is well worth fifty bucks.




Click to enlarge.





Click to enlarge.

a deluge of posts

Found a sometimes whimsical, usually weird, oftentimes clever website today called Magicmolly. If you don't like art (Yaniv) you probably won't like this website. Brian Leiter posted a link to it, to an "ad" for a food company whose foods are all named with Nietzsche puns. I wish there was an "about" section there. Very mysterious all around. A quick story that I like very much. Weird but good. This is good too.

Also, here is something I wrote while I was supposed to be thinking about Saul Kripke:

I want to be persecuted
for something so right
that I can, with a clear conscience,
tell everyone how stupid they are.

I want to say “Jesus lies!”
and make the pedophiles mad.

I want to say “Gay people love too!”
and make the unloved mad.

I want to say "Everyone knows reference is fixed by description!"
and make Kripke mad.

I want them to protest out front
in the street all night
and I’ll stand at the door, with a bullhorn in hand,
and tell them to fuck off.

inundational, infatuational (take #2)

Bloomington has done been dra
Ain’t got no rain since August fav
The lake is down below the piles
Impendin’ storm?
Another la

The foliage is drought shock brilliant this year with hot mustard-yellow maple leaves flapping hard in the breeze as if they seek to attract the attention of passersby. Lipstick-red oak leaves struggle to stay attached. The ones that fail skitter down the sidewalk in awkward arches, pushed by the dry wind painfully scraping the rough concrete with their brittle points and corners making that sound they make.

Sometimes it wakes me up. In the middle of the night. I think it’s funny that such a quiet sound will wake me up. But it does and I realize I’ve been grinding my teeth and clenching my jaw again. A muscle just above my left ear sizzles and pops and I can’t get my teeth to align quite right. I sit up and place my face on the wall on the molding just in front of the window and with my left hand carefully pull back two or three metal blinds and they make a sharp tinkling sound and I feel the warm Indian summer outside on my face through the glass. I rest there for a minute watching two bright, pointy, reflexed leaves slowly make their jerky way through the puddle of yellow light cast on the white concrete sidewalk by the street lamp in front of my neighbor's red jeep and it’s all really quite beautiful. It sounds like someone is slowly fastening and unfastening a small strip of Velcro next door. I can barely place it but there it is.

I release the blinds and they pop back into place and I lie down into my bed and throw the covers off and pull them back on and place a pillow between my knees and finally fall asleep again.

The city told us to conserve water in late October. The Showalter fountain has been turned off and dirt swirls in the big bowl in the wind around stranded statues of fish. Every car is dusty and the grass crunches audibly underfoot and you can’t really walk on the grass without shoes because it’s just too sharp. Monroe reservoir is low and the eighty five degree late October days have delayed the fall turnover causing fish kills along the whole length of the lake. Fifteen pound hybrid bass float blazing-white belly up under the hazy autumn sun, swelling with the gases of rotten entrails until they’re picked apart by birds feeding in their fetid tissue.

Wells are drying up in Brown County to the east and it’s hard to find bottled water in the grocery stores. People are nervous and so am I.

Jet black clouds rolled and folded ominously over the landscape from the west. They seemed miles high and dangerous. The bulging black line stretched from north to south as far as the eye could see. Reports of tornadoes in eastern Illinois were on the news, but talk of imminent relief was too. The dog whined and whimpered as crackling, startling, tornadic thunder rolled through the town shaking the house violently. The gusting winds tore down the last lipstick-red oak leaves and strewed them about the streets and yards no longer slowly raking concrete. Tornado sirens wailed.

Then the rain came down in buckets.

The leaves were swept from lawns and roads and regained their elasticity and their youth in the soaking deluge. They flexed and flopped and spread their wings and danced in the gutters hand in hand until they found themselves pressed up tightly against each other in pliable arms of red and gold and were carried quickly in the runoff towards sewer grates where they were stuck and their embrace prolonged.

We found a patch of tall, succulent green grass next to the river so we laid down on our backs with shoulders touching for a while talking. The pleasant smell of broken chlorophyll surrounded us and she rolled over on her side and propped herself up on her elbow holding her head on her hand and caressed my chest slowly under my shirt and it felt very good. We kissed in the soft afternoon sunlight that sifted down through tinted window panes of robust, dark green mid-summer leaves and the land felt overwhelmingly fertile and healthy.

She stood up slowly and adjusted her shirt and tucked some loose hair behind her ear and whispered something delicately and bent over to kiss me on my forehead and turned and walked into the tall grass up the hill away from the river. I rolled over onto my stomach to ask her where she was going but all I could see was the tops of the long leaves of grass swaying softly in the breeze.

The rain abated as quickly as it had begun and the dry, crackled earth swallowed up all that was given to it by the sky. The relentless sun reappeared, the wells still empty.

The leaves began to separate and curl up in the tense, hot, dry morning after heat. They were awkward and found relief only in coming apart. The wind picked them up and passed them down the street, distributing them widely throughout lawns and parks and sidewalks where they slowly raked the concrete and woke me up again.

a faux beginner's guide

We always started at seven but on the first day Chris told me to show up at eight. I knocked on the door for several minutes before it opened. His small frame swayed and stumbled shirtless holding up loose, unbuttoned faded blue jeans with one hand while his giant, round, ruined glasses threatened to drop from his bulbous, swollen red nose. He was leaning back and slightly to the side where his right hand was held upon his goose neck of an arm, single finger extended lazily, others drooping loosely, his eyes traveled in two long, torturous circles, passing over my face slowly without seeing, ultimately settling on my left shoe. His body was contorted in such a way as to appear almost comical had it not been so apparent that he was in pain. He spattered something incomprehensible at me while wagging his finger vaguely behind the house then disappeared into a haze of cigarette smoke and children’s voices. I closed the door and proceeded behind the house where I saw a young man on hands and knees amongst rows of yews and aspens pretending to weed while smoking a cigarette. He was Kyle and this was the second to last time I would ever see him.

Mike secured this summer employment for me at Kalgan’s Gardening in West Chester. Mike had worked for Chris Kalgan on and off for many years so I had some idea what was in store. Chris was an alcoholic. This much I knew. But he somehow managed to run a very successful landscaping company, caring for many historic homes in Chester County. Stone and plaster homes with walls twenty inches thick, built in the 1720s, commanding thirty acre lawns dotted with forty old-growth white oak and beech trees, perched above mill races and vast arrays of outbuildings and well houses.

I liked landscaping. It was real work. The smell of fresh cut grass and two cycle exhaust is a potent aphrodisiac to the would-be philosopher. Shins plastered with grass clippings most days, arms caked with mulch dust, a ruddy complexion and hard calloused hands appealed to me when I knew I would quit in August.

Kyle and I pretended to weed the nursery and smoked cigarettes. Around noon we heard Chris yell hoarsely from the house, “Yoooooooo! We’re goin’ on a road trip! Ge up ‘ere! You’re drivin’!” And so it begins, I thought to myself. Mike had recounted many stories of his time at Kalgan’s that simply involved driving Chris around for hours, taking him to the Alley Bar in the morning and job sites during the day. Chris had earned many DUIs and lost his license to operate a motor vehicle some time ago.

“Where’re we goin’ Chris?”

“Don’t woooorry ‘bout it. You ga a full tank? We’re gonna need a full tank.”

“Um, no, I don’t have a full tank. We’re taking my car? We should take one of the trucks I think.”

Tilted always to the right, yelling strongly now, spitting with each hard consonant, holding each long vowel for several seconds in a low groan of unhinged timbres , “I wanna take yer car duuuude…I’ll buy fuckin’ gas so shut up and let’s goooooo!”

Chris sat up front with his ubiquitous, tall, milky white plastic cup half full of a red liquid I later learned was usually cheap vodka and a splash of fruit punch. He was now wearing his jeans, a dark blue, wrinkled, short sleeve collared shirt fastened by two buttons, dirty, untied white sneakers and a faded green ball cap with an absurdly long bill, his round, photo-chromatic glasses began to darken in the sunlight.

He told me to pull into Wawa. He leaned back hard in his seat trying to straighten out his legs so he could gain access to the pockets in his jeans. He finally managed to retrieve a significant wad of cash spilling twenties and hundreds on the floor and into the cup holders. He had several thousand dollars. He peeled off a twenty and I filled the tank.

“Which way?”

“Ge on to-o-ta south. We’re goin’ ta Delaware.”

We got on 202 and before Painter’s Crossing Chris was crying. Like trying to catch his breath with a series of short, deep, staccato inhalations that ended with three or four out gassings through loosely closed lips that caused them to flap and make soft smacking sounds. I had been pressing him for the details of our so-called road trip since we left Wawa and he was not terribly forthcoming. He was falling in and out of consciousness and becoming less and less coherent .

“Jus’ keeeeeep driiiiving! Aaaaaaaahm gonna fuck ‘em up! Fuck ‘em uuuuuup!” He was screaming hoarsely through a mouthful of drunken slime working it into a hot mess of froth that broke with each exhalation and splattered on my dash board. When I tried yelling at him he began crying in earnest.

Between sobs, “I’ll fuckeeeen kiiill hiiiim…I’ll fuckeeeen kill that soooon of a bitch…I have a gun and I’ll fuckeeeen uuuse it!” He was rocking back and forth with his knees gathered up awkwardly in his arms sobbing quietly, glycerin drool escaping his lips, drizzling over my parking brake handle like so much Karo syrup.

I immediately yelled at him: “Do you have a fucking gun Chris? Chris? Do. You have. A fucking. Gun?” But it was all to no avail. He was completely gone now, motionless except for the glycerin spittle. I looked back at Kyle.

“He doesn’t have a gun dude. Don’t worry about it.”

I wasn’t as confident as Kyle but I figured I’d persevere until I could extricate myself in a more graceful manner than by kicking Chris out of the moving car on the highway, though the thought did cross my mind. Chris was in and out of consciousness. Sometimes his large, yellow, rubberized Motorola cell phone would startle him awake but he could never figure out how to answer it. He became frustrated and threw the phone at the dashboard and it bounced into the lower right corner of the windshield causing several cracks to spider web out into the glass at all angles. I yelled at him some more and he continued to sob. I told him he was paying for that and we’d never take my car on a “road trip” again.

He somehow managed to get us where he apparently wanted to go. Somewhere south of Newark. A large subdivision with hundreds of two story, two bath, two car garage, cookie cutter houses stacked up next to each other on an endless arc of lane and cul-de-sac. About in the middle of this suburban American normalcy Chris demanded that I pull over. He opened his door and literally fell half way out of the car into a nicely manicured lawn, resting on his face and shoulder, right arm pinned between his body and the car seat, feet and knees propped still in the car. His shirt had come open and was tangled around his body exposing a large swath of lily white flank steak bespeckled with small brown freckles and shiny, metallic, purple stretch marks.

He lay there. Motionless. In a stranger’s quiet quarter acre yard. In the middle of Monday. In the middle of May.

Kyle and I yelled at him some more, but ultimately had to scoop him up ourselves and place him back in the car. He managed to tell us that this is where we were meeting “him” and that we had to stay in this neighborhood. “Who are we meeting Chris? Do you have a gun?” I should have left him then and there, but for some reason I didn’t. We drove to the entrance by the neighborhood marquee where he fell out of the car again, laying spread eagle on his back on the bare gray asphalt in the sun. Lily white flank steak blinding the passing traffic.

Only a few minutes had gone by when a green Dodge Ram 1500 rolled slowly into the neighborhood, past our disturbing little showcase and turned around in the first driveway. The truck parked behind my car and a heavily bearded Ernest Hemingway in dark aviator sunglasses got out. He walked over to Chris and tried to pick him up. My heart was racing. I didn’t say a thing. Hemingway said: “We’ve got to get him up. They’ll call the fuckin’ cops. Chris, you’re a fuckin’ mess dude. What the fuck! You can’t lay in the road like this in the middle of the goddamn day in the middle of this goddamn neighborhood!” He hoisted Chris into the truck cab and drove away without another word.

“Shit Kyle. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

So we left him. Driving north on 95 through Wilmington I was relieved but still unnerved. I called Mike and told him the story. He laughed. “Chris doesn’t have a gun man. He hates guns. You can’t leave him down there like that. You should go back and get him.”

“But where the fuck is he? And who the fuck is Hemingway?”

Just then Chris’ rubber phone rang from under the seat. It was Chris himself sounding slightly more coherent. “Wheeeere the fuuuuuck are you! Come pick me uuuuup!”

So we turned around. And went back to the neighborhood. And there was the green truck. And there was Chris. He walked under his own power more or less in a straight line to my car clutching an open, dewy can of Busch in one hand and two more dangling from the six pack rings in the other. He opened the back door and got in. He yelled at us a bit. He was remarkably coherent now and seemingly at ease. He was constantly fishing tiny white pills from a plastic sandwich bag in his pocket, working them quickly with nimble fingers between his narrow lips, swallowing them with Busch.

Chris told me to show up the next day at seven; I was going out with the crew to cut grass. I arrived early on Tuesday and Chris was in the driveway talking to Nazario in his distinctly pained and grumbly, though now slightly less unhinged, timbre. He was completely sober and wearing a plastic yellow hospital bracelet. He had overdosed on oxycontin the night before and had his stomach pumped in the emergency room. Sobered him right up. Then he died in the autumn time.

louisville

Rapid travel down
through auburn corridors,
piercing Dixie over the river
on iron girder bridges
dissected black in squares and diamonds
against the gray night sky,
stretching out like spindly insects,
connecting north to south.

Broad boulevards
of tall tan and yellow brick buildings
collect themselves in a rush
and push uphill to the East
where they shrivel into streets
and bearded men and bespectacled women
in thick black frames
drink ‘round tables in neighborhood bars until
four in the morning on weekdays.

A soft warm breeze blows down the side street
between a bright red brick building
and our colorful muraled tavern wall
along which we sit
at round tables,
under blue umbrellas,
watching the tepid wind push
ten thousand crunchy yellow leaves
down the street a while.

Morning comes, yet another time,
still too warm for November.

We take the snaking parkway lanes
through auburn corridors again.

dear Feist

Is it so wrong that I should want to lick your lemony eyes? That I should worship at the tips of your dangly bangs? Brush gently your well formed cheeks in dutiful reverence to your siren song? Dare to kiss the wide horizon of your mouth? Sunset. Breathe in your breath. I am obsessed.

Last weekend I went to the Brookville Tailwater and caught these beautiful brown trout for you. Their beauty reminds me of your beauty. Their spots of your spots. The way they shake, slippery and slidey, away from me as I stalk upriver.

I had your delightful songs in my head while I spoke with local Kevin about crossbow season and catching seventy pound catfish with chicken liver. And the Schaffer boys from Rasselas who helped pour the foundation for uncle Joe’s new house ten years ago and how I went squirrel hunting once with their grandfather Wally and how the boat ran out of gas and he didn’t swim and was quite scared actually and I had to swim to shore with a rope and pull the boat in and how Tim Bremen and I walked back to the truck and he siphoned gas out of the tank and it got in his mouth and it looked intense what with the burning and the spitting and the coughing and the red eyes. And psoriasis Glenn who fishes there five or six times a week and smokes those little cigar cigarettes and has a yellow mustache and who is a very good fisherman.

It seemed rather tenuous, too many irons in the fire if you will, to keep your songs on my mind while I spoke with these men. How funny it would be if they knew. But I kept them there anyway.

I am going to catch steelhead and salmon for you this weekend Feist. I’ll mail you one.

Indiana steelhead: the Charles Bukowski of great lakes fishing

The highway hums persistently in the background. The river is flat and muddy mostly, yellow and brown mostly, sandy in some places. Beer cans, styrofoam worm containers, plastic bags, garbage can lids: various Michigan City cultural artifacts litter the log jams. It’s ninety degrees and humid. The ever present sheen of grease on my forehead does little to dissuade the multitudes of blood sucking insects that swarm exposed skin. My hands are exposed. I swat at the back of my hand with my other hand killing three and four mosquitoes at a time, smearing swaths of blood over my knuckles. They get into my nose. Stinging nettles rake my legs and with no balsamic Jewel weed around I plunge into the cold river to ease the burn. It’s better like this anyway. The mosquitoes can’t bite underwater.

Indiana is a pit of hell and despair. But there are steelhead here. And salmon.

I woke up at 3am this morning to drive more than two hundred miles to the shores of Lake Michigan where the anadromous fishes of autumn are beginning their annual migration up Trail Creek, Salt Creek, and the Little Calumet River, following their biological orders like good soldiers would. The commando is strong. Little do they know their efforts are mostly in vain. They too were once hatchery brood. They’ll spill their futile gametes all over the river in a sad genuflection to their native cousins swimming strongly in the Pacific. Then they’ll get snagged in the face, taken home on ice trying to breathe the thin, foreign atmosphere, feeling dizzy and disoriented. The youngest son will help dad with the “cleaning”, but while father’s sharpening the knife, junior pokes at the still gleaming eyes until one pops crooked, exposing plastic looking, layered white tissue underneath. Dad tells the kid to stop. Then sticks the knife in the fish’s asshole and cuts open his stomach and his guts spill out. Then he dies.

It’s a cheery day.

I arrived at Trail Creek around 6:30am. Still dark. I strapped on my headlamp, rigged my rod, and had filthy, sweaty unprotected sex with a disgusting 47 year old Michigan City prostitute behind the porta potty in the Public Access parking lot along route 20. Several people saw us.

The sun rised. I fell.

I raced up and down the dirt banks of the river, over tripping tree roots, cigarette butts, and half buried bottles of beer. The mosquitoes were horrible. The worst I’ve ever seen. They feasted on my fat blood. They feasted through my shirt. I let my hair down and tried to evenly distribute the tendrils over my face, forming some sort of faux mosquito netting. It worked pretty well actually, but was incredibly uncomfortable considering it was so hot. And I couldn’t see.

After several hours of racing around, possibly trespassing, I hadn’t seen a single fish of any consequence. Where were the forty pound Chinooks? The silvery Cohos fresh from the depths of Lake Michigan’s blue-green purity? Fresh from BP’s last illegal ammonia discharge?

I kept my muddy wading boots on and got back in the car. I ate three hardboiled eggs with Tabasco sauce and sliced ham. And some carrots. I drove to another Public Access parking lot further downstream. There were no prostitutes there unfortunately.

I walked through the woods to the translucent yellow-brown waters and immediately saw my first real fish. A behemoth to be sure. Thirty five, forty inches long? Twenty, thirty pounds? It was a big one and swam away rapidly like a log alive as I blundered in for a closer look.

I fished my way upstream through the swarms of mosquitoes, around impenetrable tangles of logs with cans and lawnchairs pushed tight against the upstream side. Eventually I stumbled across two dead steelhead. So they are here. One was still alive, it turns out. Belly-up in a stagnant pool, but still alive. I wrapped my hand tenderly around his massive tail and gently maneuvered him into cooler, clearer waters. I cradled his soft body with my left hand and held his tail with my right, keeping him upright, his gills pumping quietly while I absurdly sang to him in a low voice, “and I know loving you is not enough, and you know future is as future does.” When I gave up my grasp he turned over, fat white belly like a ball floating down the river over wood and rocks roughly.

A long green shape shudders on the shallow edge of that pool. I’m in a good position. I cast an orange egg at his nose. Nothing. Again. Nothing. Several more times. Nothing. Change flies. A red egg. Several times. Nothing. A chartreuse double bunny. Several times. Nothing. Turks Tarantula with a Caddis nymph dropper. Several times. Nothing. I’ll try my plastic eggs. Smaller than the glo-bug eggs. But when I have the new fly tied on the large green shape has disappeared. But then a pod of ten fish move into the pool, fish of all sizes, just like that. I sink the eggs into the pool for thirty minutes. Nothing.

Thoroughly chewed and exhausted at noon I start to head back downstream to my car. I’ve had enough of Charles Bukowski’s great lakes fishing adventure. Screw Indiana. I trespass briefly to access a shallow bit of river so I can cross to the public side. I walk for ten minutes then cross the river again when the brush becomes thick. I walk another ten minutes. I don’t recognize anything. Where am I? That dark blue pine tree is very conspicuous. I would remember that. Am I lost in Indiana? In the Chicago metro area? Are you kidding me? I had lost the trail so I head away from the river and walk parallel to it hoping to hit the main trail back to my car. I do. I was actually nervous. What if I got lost in the woods in the Chicago metro area? After spending weeks in the western mountains this summer without incident? I thought about getting bit by a poisonous snake in Indiana. That would be funny. Kind of.

I’m relieved to find the trail and decide to take another shot at actually fishing, as opposed to walking around the woods getting progressively itchier. I tie on an egg sucking leech (black wooly bugger with a pink chenille head). I step into the river and think I see a large tail flick in a long, deep run ahead along the bank. I cast the fly several times and strip it back slowly. The marabou tail undulates like a hula dance or an experienced stripper with wide hips and a narrow waist. The silver flash tied into the tail throws light in a quick, disorienting pattern. It looks delicious.

I readjust the faux mosquito net and swat a fresh batch of mosquitoes from my hands, smearing their little crushed bodies with blood. I just want to catch a fish. A fish for all of this my wish. On the next cast a fish hit my fly with fifteen pounds of salmonid ferocity so stunning that I cried out loud, “holy fucking christ!” The fish made a long first run upstream, stripping forty or so feet of line from my reel, the drag screaming its scared little whine. I palmed the reel to slow the fish and eventually he turned and I took up the line as fast as I could. He was running for the log jam just ten feet below me. If he gets in it he’s gone. I hold him back and hope that the 10lb 2x leader holds. It does.

I capture many pictures of the fish during the fight as backups in case I can’t get a good one of him once landed. Turns out that was a good idea as he slipped away before I could properly photograph him. The last picture below is of the fish I tried to revive.

I’ll be going back as soon as possible. To brave the mosquitoes and tie into another beast of a fish. I have a problem with fishing.

Click all for bigger.

dearest Melissa

I went to Beer and Sweat two weekends ago with Ryan and Dar and some other local homebrewers. It was beery and sweaty and a pretty damn drunken time. Read all about it at Indianabeer.com by clicking on the picture below.

2007 brewers of indiana guild festival

I went to the Broad Ripple Brew fest last weekend. Now I'm in England for a conference. My talk went fairly well today. I also moved two weeks ago. There's lots of catching up to do. But for now, read my latest Indianabeer piece on the beer fest.

the new balance horseman

The eastern Sierra is a strange place. Desert on the border with Nevada, Arizona. Death Valley lurks lowdown. Volcanoes above. The mountains explode from the brown desert floor seven thousand feet erect, straight up, gathering trees finally at the top. In twenty five minutes you can drive from the desert in Lone Pine to alpine forest and meadow at ten thousand feet. Twenty degrees difference. Shocking the system.

Luckily I started walking at ten thousand feet. Up over Trail Pass in the sunlight that shines poison UV through thin air to sear my face skin red hot and blistery. I actually felt feverish each night going to sleep I think because I was excessively exposed. Up over Trail Pass, descending into Mulkey Meadows. All the “stringers” were dry. Out there, small tributaries are called “stringers.” Only the main stem had water in it. And thousands of Golden Trout. I pulled out a dozen or so. They’re ridiculously easy to catch. Killed one by accident. Hooked him deep. Second fish I‘ve killed this year. Felt pretty bad about that. Hiked down Mulkey and into Bullfrog Meadow and camped there. My water froze that night.

Everything except the meadows, and even those in places, were sandy. It wasn’t really sand, but kind of. Dirt and small rocks. Each step produced a puff of dust. Each step slipped back two inches. Walking in sand is a pain in the ass. Carrying a 40 pound pack in sand is a serious pain in the ass. And all the trails were six inch deep ruts of sand, carved out over the years by cattle and horses. Cow pies everywhere. Crusty gray and light as dried meringue. But I didn’t see any cattle.

I did see horses. Horseshoe tracks and the errant horseshoe itself here and there. Bent tacks rusted tetanus needles on the trail. Keep the horses out and I imagine the trails would be a lot more walkable. But the Golden Trout Wilderness is horse country. Too big to see it all by foot in less than a month. Big wooden corrals in the middle of nowhere. “Horse camps” I suppose. Not much of a wilderness if you ask me.

Leaving Bullfrog Meadow I come upon twenty horses mulling about a small clearing in the woods. No saddles. Just horses hanging around. Their minder probably puts them out at night and collects them (i.e. rounds them up) the next day. I planned to hike up over a small pass and into Tunnel Meadow and down into the Golden Trout Creek watershed. Not a terribly taxing hike, but around four miles. Take close to two hours. And the trail is Sandy, sandy, sandy. This is horse country, eh? Maybe I’ll just borrow a horse.

Tried to approach a pretty palomino but he wasn’t having it. But big brown came right up to me. Bitin’ at my hand. Lookin’ for meal? Tell me Mr. Horse, what is your deal? I put my hand up behind his ears. Stroking his neck. A big, beautiful animal. Rubbed his head on my chest, knocked me back a step. He seemed gentle. I stepped to his middle and stroked his back. Put my arm around his back. Didn’t seem to mind it back. Put my weight on his back, hung there for minute.

He had his head down, nibbling at the sparse, dry grass.

I put both my hands on his back and pushed myself up as if I were climbing out of a pool. Balanced there for a minute. Big brown didn’t care so I hoisted myself up astraddle my new wheels. He didn’t like that too much. Took off at a trot and I fell hard on my pack. Ouch. But there he was. Just standing next to me, nudging me with his giant head. I pulled myself up and gave it another try. He gave me the trot again but I was ready with a handful of mane. He started off down the trail on his own at the trot. It was tough to hang on with the pack on my back but I managed.

We crested the pass and there before me were two men on horses about twenty yards down the hill. “Hey! What are you doin’?” No time for answers. Big brown didn’t seem to like this situation. He took off at a run to the right. I hung on tight, a two cowboy pursuit.

My horse tore down the sandy slope and into a dry stringer bed at tha-da-thump, tha-da-thump, tha-da-thump top speed. I flail around coming completely disconnected for seconds at a time. The cowboys are gaining. John Kinney’s riding up your ass, the balls are flying, the blood goes right to your head. You hear trumpets sound and angels sing a fargin’ hymn. It’s quite a sensation. I was terrified.

I ain’t no Billy the Kid.

We continue through a canyon, a watered stringer now, three horses in a row throw Vs of creek in the air. The closest cowboy’s lynching lariat held up and out in his right hand. He’s going to try and rope me! Like so much calf at the rodeo. He draws out a loop five feet wide and swings it rapidly over his head in rhythm with the gait of the horse, holding himself just off the saddle, all muscles tensed in synchrony with his animal, one big pulsing hunter. He’s within fifteen feet now, lining it up, lining it up, he shoots the loop, it falls below my shoulders, around my pack, he jerks it closed and me off the horse, tying the rope around his saddle horn.

I hit the ground hard, collapsed in two inches of water trying to get my wind back in. He jumps off the horse with a short length of rope and hogties my arms to my right leg with a particular alacrity. I’m not in a good way to say the least. The other cowboy comes up next to me, an older man, short gray hair under his white wide-brim hat. He has on a leather jacket, a denim shirt, and denim pants, otherwise known as jeans. Cowboy boots? No. White New Balance.

So I says to him, I says, “Is it typical for cowboys to where sneakers? What about the boots man? The cowboy boots?”

“Cowboy boots are for Brokeback fags.”

I look over at the lariater and he’s wearing tall black cowboy boots with tall, skinny black hard heels. The older cowboy looks back at me nervously.

Click for bigger little doggy.

stunt pilot buck jones, part deux

Stunt Pilot Buck Jones flies around camp in awkward, stilted loops. Ducking. Dodging. Flapping. Fighting with his loose, membranous wings to stay afloat.

Hey Mr. Buck Jones, where is it that you go?

He lands on the trunk of a young Tulip Poplar, sucked to it like magnetism. Clinging to the rough bark with tiny claws so high, his head hangs down towards the ground. I see his pig nose expand and contract, gulping air, recovering from aerobatics.

“I have rabies you fat fuck. Why the hell else would I be flying around in the middle of the goddamn day? Bats are nocturnal, dumbshit.”

Stunt Pilot Buck Jones still seems to have his wits about him despite the daylight flight.

“I’m sorry sir. I know bats are nocturnal. I suspected you might have rabies. I’m very sorry.”

“You can stuff your sorrys in a sack mister. Who the hell are you anyway? Coming into my woods, my mountains, gawking at my poor infected soul like I’m some sort of fucking circus freak. Well I’m not. I’m a little brown bat that’s had a rough go of it lately. So what. You win some, you lose some. That’s what my mother always used to say at any rate. Cold comfort at a time like this.”

He comes unstuck from the tree and flappity-flaps his way through three big rings around the grove of trees and then fwhip, right back to his perch.

“I know I shouldn’t be flying around,” he says, gasping for air, his tiny pig nose pulsing purposefully, “but I can’t help it. It’s amazing how powerful the desire is to just fly around in circles. I know it’s the little virus in there like a commando in my brain, making me do things I shouldn’t. I know that. I’m not stupid. But it feels just like any old desire I might have. Eat. Sleep. Fuck. Fly around in circles in the middle of the goddamn day. Whatever. I’m a slave to my neurons, you know?”

“So you feel completely normal?”

“100% Buck Jones.”

“That is fascinating.”

“Maybe for you. I’m a little worried myself. But enough of this. You sound big. What are you, 298? Three bills?”

“Well, more like 330 these days, not like I keep track.”

“That’s not good man. A guy like you. You’re young, right? Your vocal cords sound fairly young.”

“I’m impressed. I thought the radar was just for catching bugs and what not. Finding your cave.”

“I wish I could find my cave. Got a bit turned around here. Well, it’s like Gould and Lewontin said, or was it Gould and Vrba? Aptations my man, aptations are where all the money’s at these days. Evolve it for one thing, use it for another. Done alright by me so far.”

“Sure, sure, I see that. But the fact that Gould and Vrba got credit for an idea that’s been around since, well, at least since Darwin, bothers me sometimes. I mean, sure, Gould had a way with words, and Vrba, that’s a catchy name, right? But back to my weight. This is interesting. It’s kind of like your rabies, my weight. I know I shouldn’t eat as much as I do, but I can’t help it. The commandos in my brain tell me what to do and I pretty much don’t have a choice but to listen.”

“Ah, I see. So you don’t believe in free will?”

“Well, yes. You’re right. I don’t really believe in free will. But that’s no excuse you know. And I don’t think that’s really what’s at issue here either. I’m really just trying to sympathize with your case of hydrophobia by recounting a similar problem in my life. Seems to help people. Get them to sympathize with you for a minute. Makes their problem seem a little less pressing. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Hydrophobia?”

“Yeah. Hydrophobia. I heard somewhere that when you have rabies you’re scared of water.”

“Huh. Come to think of it, I am mighty parched. All this flying around and what not. Maybe I’ll get a drink.”

“Yeah, let’s go down to the creek there and have a look.”

Stunt Pilot Buck Jones releases his grip on the tree and glides very close to the ground before clapping his skin flaps and heading, more or less, towards the stream. He alights on a small Witch Hazel trunk, about three feet high, just above the edge of the water. I sit next to him on a large, flat, gray rock. He is at eye level.

“Yeeeeaaaah, soooo, I’m not thirsty now.”

“You just said you were ‘mighty parched’ a minute ago. All that flying around…”

“Well, that was a minute ago. I ate a big juicy bug on the way over here. I’m fine.”

“Ok, but I think it’s the hydropho…ack! Goddammit Buck Jones! What the hell…get off of me…OOOWWW! GODDAMMIT YOU BIT ME! ON MY FACE! SHIT!”

“Sorry dude. The commando. I guess you’ve got him now too. Oh well. Gotta go. Give my love to the kids!”

taking off my shoes drunk

Serious soldiers surround simple sins with celebrity
tickling tits left handed and tightening tourniquets.

Jumbling a bumble drunk and dark with whiskey.

Break a wall, all to fall, I am drunk.

Rye whiskey prickly and with cedar poisons
my reaction time a fog.

Avec un bon cul. Un gros cul pour moi.

All the trees leaning fees
to be paid.

My feet are hot
my head is not
take off the shoes today.

all around my hat, for a twelve month and a day

Coarse, gray cement smells dusty in the sun. It rolls out unevenly in front of us blending into the sky in the shimmer at a distance. We walk for many hours. Feet sore. Throats dry and voiceless. A rusty chain link fence eight feet high runs parallel to our path, anchored in the sandy soil silently. Rusting. Slowly. Quiet.

The fence posts offer tempting shade where some insects congregate in the weeds and sand. But the long, cool, shifting bands of shade are too small for humans. No other shade in sight. Perfectly endless concrete we walk.

One foot in front of the other. Plodding. Sorely. Blisters burn buried below. Lips sliced through by dryness and sun, a mosaic of scabs. Slicing pain radiates into my dry mouth. Itself cracking, caking dust. Wheezing.

The concrete crumbles slowly, giving way to sand and dirt and concrete mixed together. It crunches and shifts underneath our feet. The fence rolls up and runs away rusty. Squeaking and scared.

No concrete now, just sandy and soil and chaparral rocks. Mesquite. Up and around the corner. Cliff dwellings wall off black holes in the rock. Bushes grow to trees and shake their limbs at us. How were we to know? We had to come this way, no other way to...proceed. Promise to go.

Large forest now with real soil moist. Cool breeze blows hair and mist on dry lips. Water falling in the distance. Plunge pools and mist. Clear cold water falling. Diving. In.

Here are some pictures from the end of my spring break. I thought I had more. But I don't.

Downtown Sylva North Cackalack. Click for bigger.

indianabeer all up in here

A new and heretofore completely unexpected account of Gravity Head 2007.

Click the picture of Dr. Roger Baylor to read it.

blueberry compote and fireworks: a biannual meeting

I drove to the center of our country today. At 99 miles an hour. Chewing tobacco is primarily a driving hobby for me. Keeps me awake. Keeps me sane as I throttle through frozen corn fields and truck stops. Dodging woodchucks and the cop's drop and Midwestern transvestite hookers who walk balding in high heels along access roads fighting 30mph wind gusts and the gas station attendants who tell me: "She...he...it, whatever. It walked in here, used the bathroom, and walked back out. Got no damn idea what the hell the story is. We called 911." These are good Christian people who also chew tobacco and hunt deer and wear camouflage jackets.

On the long straight trip from the Kansas City International Airport (with daily flights to Paris) we met the Fireworks Magnate, an honest to goodness Tycoon-Robber Barron who completely looked the part except for the jeans and sweatshirt. Told us we were buying the wrong stuff, the kid's stuff. We were wary of the pitch but soon came to realize he spoke the truth. Owned 52 stores in 10 states. Worth $43 million. That is if we could believe the huge hag of a Midwestern slut who checked us out and gave us $10 in fireworks for free as she copped Ian's knob and jerked on Ryan's chain. I stayed out of it. You can get worts through that kind of contact.

We arrived at the house and played with the kids for a couple hours. Taught them how to gamble some and then Brooke took our money in a cutthroat game of Uno. She has a strong poker face. Bailey refused to play with us. She's kind of snooty. But she did show us her Cinderella (?) magnet things which was cool because Cinderella looks pretty hot in her skivvies.

The Missouri State Wrestling Championship was a nemesis far too young and sinewy for us to challenge, particularly in a blizzard, so we ended up driving around for a while in the snow. We'd head to the the Flat Branch Brewpub and gorged ourselves. Purchased four growlers of brewed-fresh beer and sat awkwardly as Mike Pell heckled our waiter: "That group there, they're gonna to skip out on the check. That's what they do. That's how they make their living. They travel around the middle parts of our fair nation buying growlers and obscene dinners then they dash out the door like so much fart in the wind and you're stuck holding the bag for a cool $200."

"Sir, you're going to have to keep your voice down or I'm going to cut you off."

"Cut me off! CUT ME OFF! I'm a doctor you son of a bitch, this is prescription!"

"Regardless sir, you'll have to take your seat now or I'll call the manager."

"Mike, dude, sit down, you're creating a scence."

"You wanna scene, I'll give you a scene!"

He flipped over the table like it was a child's toy. It knocked his wife clean out of her chair and onto the ground where his hot bowl of tortilla soup proceeded to scald her eyes and she screamed.

He picked up a chair and threw it through the side window and slipped out through the hole like so much fart in the wind.

During the commotion we took the opportunity to skip out on our check. As per the norm. Like so much fart in the wind.

Chris drives fast on the snow covered back roads. They're hilly and curvy and the speed limit's 45mph. He takes it all at a cool 60. He's got a Suburu, all wheel drive. No worries. Ryan drinks most of his growler on the ride home and my knees rub sore on the dashboard.

We gamble until four in the morning. Small stakes. I was down $20 until we started playing blackjack. Cedar the sad one-eyed-dog was good luck for me. I mounted a counterinsurgency. The growlers were gone so we started on the Boulevard Pale Ales and the Schlafly. I had a glass or two of the Evan Williams Single Barrel Bourbon and Ryan took a pull off the bottle.

The kids woke us up the next morning well before noon. Ryan said "Don't let me drink bourbon anymore and don't let me play blackjack drunk." So we made Belgian Waffles and a blueberry compote, eggs, bacon, and fried potatoes. We were, unfortunately, out of beer, so I had to take some bourbon as my digestive. It's a rough life.

We lit off fireworks and played more poker and then made a run to town for provisions. Went to Walmart and Ian took picutres of Fancy-Manhattan Ryan pushing the cart around. Ryan was ashamed. We bought a couple cases of beer and ping pong paddles, balls, and a net. All we had was the table. But if you're only going to have one thing for ping pong, the table should probably be it. We managed to get another meal at Flat Branch because none of the same people were working. We skipped out on that check too.

Snowy back roads and scary driving. We're back at the house. Ryan loses $5 to Ian in ping pong. Mike Pell and Dianna arrive and we play beer pong which I pretty much dominate. We play more poker. We play Oscar which I insist on calling Joachin Phoenix, or just Joachin for short. We light more fireworks. This is when we realize the Fireworks Magnate was right. We should have bought bigger fireworks. I eat some ice cream with the left over blueberry compote on it.

We are drunk. Again.

The next day we take it easy. I enjoy an egg sandwich on a blueberry bagel which is way better than it sounds. We gamble. Chris drinks several beers before 2pm. We decide we need some activity, dammit. Need to flex our muscles. We sneak into the athletic facility and Ian and I lift weights for an hour. That's fucking dedication yo. I haven't missed a workout in a month. Chris kills everyone in racquetball. I really suck at racquetball. We go home and make a massive pasta and sausage dinner and an inordinate amount of salad which no one touches. It was going to be good too: spring greens, cucumbers, red onions, avocado, and crushed pecans. But after you stuff your fat face with pasta and sausage, the salad isn't terribly appetizing.

We gamble until 2am as we finish the last case of beer.

The Mid-Missouri Distinguished Juniata College Alumni Biannual Meeting of Philosophy and Leisure was a success.

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