November 8, 2023
Taking five from Janey’s artist’s residency and my Wordfest Conference at Banff. Lake Louise behind us and the ground a solid nine-degrees F. Met Anthony Marra for the first time at Wordfest who commented that we have all betrayed or been betrayed enough by the time we’re twelve to write a pretty great novel. Also, Eleanor Catton read from her recently Man Booker awarded “Luminaries.” Later that night, she and I shared some stories and laughs over a couple beers.
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A sculpture from Jane’s bone yard. I love it and it was in the house for a while until daughter Caitlin won out. “It’s porno, Mom!”
Sculptors have bone yards. We met an artist in England who threw his pieces into the river behind his small studio. An amazing human in Oakland, eighty-something Andree, has her decades of work scattered in her back yard and makes more each day. Stephen De Staebler had the most forlorn, lonely, and literal bone yard in
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Took the ol’ purple town-bike out for a spin
beneath today’s five-star, mid-January blue skies. I had to stop for a pic and think about the small joyous things we do just because – like this flock of bird houses along the bike trail, and how, somewhere nearby there’s probably a kid and their mom or maybe a friend painting a bird house to
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So the government holds…
the day after thousands of self-described patriots gathered at the feet of their leader and were given their marching orders. Following their march, hundreds of what are likely WWF fans broke into the central halls of our republic but hadn’t really given much thought as to what to do next. So they posed at federally-elected
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If there is a place where you find yourself fully aware,
not quite feeling lost, but a place unfamiliar, it may look something like this. In dreams it sometimes comes. Shadows out of time with the rhythm and sky and water, shoreline and trees and something wrong with all of that. Her father – a cop. And you are late on the river road, and you
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Years ago I heard an interview with Yann Martel
in which he said he’d written “Life of Pi” on a sailboat. We boarded that boat and sat at his desk at Banff Center, the boat propped up in the forest beneath a pavilion and assigned as a workspace for resident writers. Yes, written on a boat. We were at the Banff Center for Arts
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It’s a 1950 Chevrolet
the way a ’50 Chevy looks if it’s been cared for. Not at all like the one my dad showed up with. It had just been traded in at the garage where he worked and appeared to have been inhabited by small rodents and a family of sheep for the past decade – black paint faded
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I’m on the elliptical trainer,
headphones tuned to the Pointer Sisters station for the past twenty years, and, at the end of my workout, I’m thinking three-minute cool down, and a new voice comes on. I check the phone and it says, “Bonnie Tyler.” It’s in hyper overdrive, and this isn’t what I had in mind for a cool down,
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Winter approaching and it’s a beautiful sight—
thistle husks bristle tall and crisp. On the other side of winter’s rains, fallen seeds will come alive, tendrils rise and lush green stalks offer up bulbs as big as your hand and burst open with the most seductive eye-shadow you’ve seen. It’s unearthly, the violet blue that unfolds from those fists. Today as I
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They’re nearly exoskeletons,
these well worn, snug-fitting gloves with their double density leather, petroleum-based palm pads and carbon fiber armor at likely impact points. Following crashes, the folks at Z Leathers who made these gloves ask that riders send their gloves back to them so they can see how the gloves fared whilst the rider was (hopefully) skidding
HJ Brennan 