Water in Tennessee

Took the family back to visit my Mom & my brother's family a few years ago. My bears had never met their counterparts, my brothers' grandkids that were the same age. Big culture shock. We took DVDs of the twins performances at The Whiskey here in LA. We all went out for a picnic in the Smokeys and me and the bears ended up floating down the river on inner tubes. My brother came after us in the car and brought us back. My Mom looked on. It was fun. I realized that my grandparents were our age now when we were little, and how much has changed for those of us that have escaped where we came from. I'm not ready to be grandpa and sit on my front stoop and rock. I'm going backpacking tomorrow morning early. We walking along the north rim of Yosemite Valley.

I wanted to put up the video of my Bear's metal band, but I couldn't find it. You'll have to wait and settle for this See you in a week

The Water of West Texas

This is a painting by Frank Reaugh of a west Texas river. In the poem that follows, I did walk down to this river from the highway and felt the way I managed to write it. The water was surprisingly cold for a hot August day.
1976, boy- to be that young again.

STRANDED You want to know why I balk At west Texas; at working the rigs There another summer? You ever been stranded On the white shoulder Of a little highway, of a little town, And chatted with the boys Who’ve driven out from their cruising To discover where you’re going? You ever spent the night Rolled in the wet grass below And slept late because of the silence? You forget to think With the itch to go And you take a ride With a red-bearded rancher Who’s turning off in five miles. The beer he offered for breakfast Makes you steam like the dew rising Before the sun. Across the high dry concrete And the dust settling after, There was a brook running so Shallow and clear, it was ice in the sand. The water falling from your fingers Could be her cold tresses in the shower; The smooth sand, her hip beneath the sheet. But there was no need to recall her, I could soothe my throbbing scalp And fill my canteen In the frozen moment Where a breeze might seem like a wild desire Only dreamt of. You’ve never waited all day For the good ride, And when it finally comes (A moving van, pushing ninety, Through the rolling hills at dusk) You’ve not been made to explain To the driver, younger than yourself, Why you’ve left her. It couldn’t be the beer every evening, The long crying spells, Or that your friends wouldn’t come around Any more, But what could you say to a stranger? One that tells you, you’re wrong? You could get out at the next stop. Then alone, Wish to go back to where the water runs Like ice in your veins, For now you’ve recalled her And you must bow your head And hold out a thumb to get away from there.

Waters of the Delta

This is a painting from the 19th Century by William Henry Buck of the bayou country. I was wanting a vacation from the bookstore where I worked, but had no money and no car and was interested in someplace that I could go as a sort of a retreat to work on my book without interruptions. Cary, my boss, found a cabin out in the bayou that a friend owned that was miles from the nearest town, no TV, radio, no indoor plumbing and no cost. So I went for a week. Cary even drove me out and came to pick me up. The cabin was beside a stream where I bathed and washed my dishes. I wrote and wrote. There was mosquito netting and an outhouse that you had to make a mad dash for in the night so the bugs wouldn't catch you. I did hitchhike into the little town nearby one afternoon and had a beer in a bar and then hitchhiked back out- just because I was getting lonely. The guy that picked me up going in talked and talked and his Cajun was so thick I didn't understand a thing he said. He didn't seem to mind. The water in the little stream was wonderful during the day.

Avery Island is to the south of New Orleans, they make Tabasco Sauce there and they have a park and a bird sanctuary. You can't swim there because the alligators are abundant. I went with a couple I knew pretty well. The husband wanted to start a writer's commune and have us all live together and work on each others stuff and collaborate on things. It sounded intriguing at the time.

This is the beach over in Biloxi Miss. The couple and I went there too. All I remember was blowing sand, muggy weather and food sort of grainy from the beach. I think the couple was having martial meltdown and within the year they were separated. I tried to put it into a story, but it didn't go very far.

Waters of Indiana

Griffy Lake, in between town and where I used to live as a teenager north of Bloomington. We'd ride our dirt bikes around here. We used to buy Boones Farm Wine and come down to hang out and swim. It was illegal to swim in here in 1968. The locals would come to hopefully find naked coeds from the university out here in the spring skinny-dipping. They really did. A lot of us did back then.

Starve Hallow Lake, one of the places we would go camping before my parents divorced. I tried to walk around this lake and had to be rescued by a couple fishermen.

Lake Lemon, named after the mayor that got it built.

The Dunes up at Lake Michigan. My brother and I spend days out here body surfing and turning blue cause the water was so cold.

Swimming Part 2

This is the upper Kern River here in California. It was on a stretch like this that I watched a rattlesnake slide off into the water, raise its head to face up stream and whip its rear end like it was dancing and it sailed across the river like it had been doing just that for its entire life. It crossed and climbed out a little further down on the other side. You haven't lived until you've slipped your own feet and tail end into this water after a six mile hike with full pack.

Places I've Swimmed

This is what a limestone quarry in Southern Indiana looks like on a summer day. The water is always cold. This was at least twenty feet deep. There were cars on the bottom some said. The folklore was that a kid jumped in, came up screaming "Barbed Wire!" and then disappeared and when they recovered the body he was covered in snakebites. This was actually a cool place to come in the summertime in a hot August. Or a cool place to come at midnight after working a shift at the A & W in the greasy kitchen.

MOTORCYCLE RIDE TO THE QUARRY There’s a ride, they say, that takes A boy from the booths of red vinyl, And the girls in their white blouses, Away from the spatula scraped once more across the grill, And all the paper hats soaked gray with sweat. A ride in the summer night sky, Four miles along the two-lane To a turn off which weaves Through the ruins of a city yet to be: Great stones sliced and yanked and left On the rims of the black quarries. There were others before him, And whether he knows them or not, He’ll find them in the lantern’s glare with the bottle: The liquid clear and pure which catches The methane light. He dives And the searing glow in throat and belly Is pulled inside out by the pool Kept like ice in the jawbone of stone. He is a white angel in the dark mire, The pieces of the acrobat fallen, Or just a clean child swimming skyward. Breaking before where the remaining tower Of a forgotten crane reaches into the sea of stars, He is the lost child dizzy with dreams.

Philip Leslie Hale

Found this today looking for a new monitor background. I've decided to stare at it for the next month or two.
Isn't the modern world a cool place sometimes.

http://books.google.com/books?id=4ytXAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Philip+Leslie+Hale&source=bl&ots=aM495EaH3C&sig=dEe1Q25RUcX5RyGor2-X1OboN2o&hl=en&ei=DxhOTJKZMYb2tgPumM3VDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CDwQ6AEwCDgU#v=twopage&q&f=false

He wrote a book on Vermeer and ended up trying to paint like him. I'd imagine if one wanted to learn more about Vermeer, this would be a good place to start.