Yes, brother. These are the kinds of letters I like, full of dreams and inspirations, a memory of Dad and a little mortal philosophy. Dan, I have always appreciated your way of throwing in a dozen tangents, and I want to seize on each one of them.
And politics, too, of course. Let me start with that, because —and you may not appreciate this outside of our wearisome media cycle ----I find myself wanting to be done with it lately. I will not look at another video or read another blog on what happened in Arizona, because frankly we as a nation are not listening to each other anyway. But here, in the interest of closure, is my take on it. A year ago Rep. Gaby Giffords objected to the vitriol of the right wing and specifically to the gun metaphors of Sarah Palin. “Words have consequences,” she said. Conversely, in 2007, Jared Loughner first became disenchanted with Rep. Giffords when she would not properly answer his townhall question: “What can government do when words have no meaning?” Whatever side you take, you are essentially agreeing with one of these postulates. And if you are taking the second (and I don’t mean the amendment), you probably should have nothing more to say, unless you have the excuse of being certifiably insane.
There. Then again, if one espouses the first postulate, as I do, one should continue to have things to say... And I suppose I will, but not now. I need a rest.
For this summer, not sure what you meant by Bejou/Boy River being west enough. Are you saying we have our own reunion there and drive no further? I wouldn’t want to stunt any plans either of you may have, but, extended family guilt aside, I may be in line with that. On the other hand, if either of you wants to persuade me otherwise, please do —just know that logistically, with what I hope will be a busy summer month. I would probably not be able to drive to Oregon — maybe fly there, meet you guys, share a ride back with a larger rented vehicle?
Now, for your production company idea, whynot? Although my problem is that I have not sufficiently tried to submit my stuff anywhere beyond a dozen high-odds contests. And I agree with your outlook —actually Sioux Chief Crazy Horse’s —that one lives well who lives with the mantra “today is a good day to die.” And a step further, with a paraphrase of John: Anyone who loves his life loses it, but live without fear of death (or of publisher’s rejection) and one can have life to the fullest. I am reading Peter Mathiesson’s The Snow Leopard right now, about his journey through the Himalayas in search of one of the world’s rarest species, and the author suggests that those who cling to the cliff edge as to life itself never get anywhere. “To clutch the mountain,” he notes, is an Assyrian euphemism that signifies “to die.”
And with this you have given me a good opportunity to submit, to you guys anyway, the first excerpt of what I have found in my 1990 files, a ghost story that I call “Resurrection,” in which my characters talk, ironically, about "wanting to live."
I was going to hold off on any excerpt sharing until after I had asked you both to help me solve a few enigmas. At one point I mention, for instance, that, a la Rod Broding, we should “consider insincerity as much a prayer as the sincerest praise.” Any ideas what I was talking about? Broding was a Minnesota pastor, I believe, but he is not otherwise mentioned here.
But here is my excerpt anyway. Hope you enjoy. (And yes, Dan, I will get to reading Glassworks)
- Jon
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