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Mt. Lemmon Continued: Hearing
Mt. Lemmon still burns on its western slopes, small brush is afire but the papers say that is good and will end soon. It still, to the eye, looks perilous. The sky this morning was a smudge above the mountain. I’ve been running around, doing errands, waiting for the alarm man to check out the system and teach me how to work it; the ins and outs are tiring, as the heat and air conditioning put a drain on the human body. One feels spent. I can well understand the native brilliance of siesta and how manana makes sense. Early morning…
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The Lady in the Coffee Shop
It has become apparent to me that the philosophical turn of my mind lends itself to short and hopefully pithy little essays. About three years ago I arrived in Oro Valley, Arizona to set up a home. At that time Mt. Lemmon, a kind of woody Greenwich Village on a mount, caught on fire. As it burned I could see day and night from my house the burning cauldrons that pockmarked the terrain. I bought a spiral notebook and began to make observations each day for about a month or so. I intended to publish them; so now, here on…
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Cameras as Remembrances of Things Past : “O insupportable and touching loss!” — Shak.
It was a Kodak Bantam camera with a lens that folded out on a rail, very charming and dainty, with little metal knobs to set the f-stops and one to set the shutter. You could put it into the palm of your hand like some inlaid treasure of inestimable value. Because it was so miniature in consequence, I honored it so much more. I did not treasure things for their material worth; I treasured them for their personal meaning to me, the decorations of my life as a young boy. The camera used 828 film which is no longer available –again, we…
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“Little Errands”
On 7 April I will be giving a reading with other authors at a local branch of the Southwestern Authors society. I will read “Little Errands,” a story from Down to a Sunless Sea. A story as simple as that of a man trying to mail a letter, it becomes an act of obsessive-compulsiveness brought to a heightened extreme. I had read Kafka’s stories, particularly “In the Penal Colony” and “The Burrow.” Both stories are bizarre, thus their appeal, and very much grounded in detail and nitty-gritty realities The burrow story drove me to distraction, for it is so neurotic in nature, so…