A string of hot days that have been taken up by news of the Democratic convention, fund raising pleas, flying a kite with Arthur at the beach, Dot getting sick from fox tail ingestion, rats nesting in the Camellia plants, rats wreaking havoc to my sleep by running across the shed roof, rats waking me from my sleep by being caught in the big snapping traps on the shed roof, reading books in the cool of my room during the heat of the day…. the books I’ve been reading: California and Other States of Grace by Phyllis Theroux Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson, and Palm-of-the Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata. Jan and I had our first real dinner party where we made a banana soufflé, Alaska Cajun Shrimp and rhubarb crisp as a back up desert for our three guests who are the three people we’ve made friends with in the almost two years we’ve lived here.
California and Other States of Grace is a memoir written by a woman who grew up on the Monterey Peninsula, who somehow captured the feeling of central California without resorting to any type of cliché or overused descriptions stolen from John Steinbeck.
In Reading Genesis Marilynne Robinson lays out a literary interpretation of the book of Genesis. Robinson is a contemporary Calvinist, and is perhaps our greatest American novelist, something I have a mind bendingly difficult time in understanding. But I enjoy reading her even if I spend a long time looking up words and laboring over her meaning.
Last winter I read Snow Country by Yasurnari Kawabata and loved it. His Palm-of-the-Hand Stories might be called micro fiction but I rather think of it as applying the principles of haiku to the novel. Very short stories that have complete thoughts and characterizations of human beings who live with the help precise word choice..
There is a short pros form I’ve dabbled in called Haibun. Here there is a short pros piece that is followed with a haiku. it is not up to Kawabata’s standards but I enjoy them none the less.
Here is my Haibun entitled :
Hardcore Haibun
She was a big girl, almost fat, with piggish eyes accentuated by her thick glasses. Her pinkish skin gave her a shivering and vulnerable manner. I didn’t know it then but she was wanted for questioning in an ugly murder in our little town: a man in an abandoned building had been found with his head smashed like a pumpkin with a claw hammer. I had been looking for her to ask a few questions about her boyfriend who had been a witness to a petty crime and was just then blowing town. When I found them the boyfriend was climbing up on the truck with his duffle bag headed to the ferry. I introduced myself but he refused to talk. As I tried to ask again he banged on the top of the pick up and the driver pulled away.
When he was gone the big girl started crying , turning to ask me, “Have you ever been in love?”
“Yes I have,” I said.
“You want to have a cup of coffee?” she said through her tears.
“Of course,” I said.
Spring…
your lover leaves.
In a broken down building
cats pad through warm blood.
Here is an older presentation I recorded on a cold winter day in Sitka..
