The Sun shines on me and I like it.

There is no excuse. We must take on the world.

Build! Build! Carve out great swaths boldly!
The warmth on my face is free. Who can imagine the immensity or beauty of the sky. At any time, those of us who are free may walk beneath it.

There is no excuse. All prevarication must be denied.

If no one else had ever dared to break free of the cave to cartwheel in the open air, then we could rationalize an argument. But too many have escaped. We can see the smoke of their morning fires on the horizon, and we can smell their cooking meat.

We must engage. We must seek out our targets.

No limits.

[the other day, I was trying to describe Thomas Wolfe's work. i am reading "O' Lost!", the unabridged version of "Look Homeward Angel". I was trying to say that you could not "read" Thomas Wolfe because his writing is too rich- you have to "eat" it so to speak, but not like food, more like eating a landscape. Of course, that just sounded crazy- I was trying to say that Wolfe's thoughts are too big to objectify- they have an organic life of their own, and coupled with an immensity of scope, grouping them with the usual clever novel just doesn't work. So here is a metaphorical/poetical attempt to explain my understanding ( : ]



I do not read Thomas Wolfe.
I cannot.
His words are too large.
Textual landscapes
Verdant sentences thick with woven roots.
The chapters loom like organic monoliths
Each inch carved with a biography that records a minute history
Intricate weave
Documenting the progression of synchronistic artifacts
Each breeze
Every thunderstorm
An accounting of each knot and gnarl,
The random scars and deliberate marks
Inscribed, noted and em-poemed in stone.


The splendor of his vision
Gossamer connected arches
Shining nouns and singular verbs with buttresses of adjectives
Conceptual cathedrals ink-hewn
Midnight mortar 
A loom of pencil and pen.


I cannot read Thomas Wolfe.
His work is larger than I am- 
The tyranny of reader and work
Subject and object is overturned:
For Wolfe there is no seventh day.
You cannot close the book 
You cannot stop creation
To play God would be obscene.
The potter becomes the vessel
The vessel becomes a tower and swallows the moon.


Wolfe creates worlds with life
They live and breathe, have form and breadth and exist in space.
Like immense vistas
Continents 
Solar systems with gravity.
He paints pictures that tremble with a pulse:
The sweeping shores and wide waters
The misted islands of Puget Sound
Rich with trees
The smell of moist earth mixed with old leaves
The rough solidity of granite in the sun
Residue of snow on the mountain
Soft sand with a hint of heat.
His man walks
Has meat in his voice
A button is missing on a sleeve
There are wrinkles in the corners of his eyes.


No, you must eat his words
Digest them.
Dig holes in the hills and valleys of his books
Excavate into the loam of his thoughts
And like a heavy cake, eat slow bites.
Dip into the waters
The warm shallows
The translucent mean where silver trout gleam
Into the deep cold where darkness is a current
Sip them
Drink them down
Savor like a connoisseur.


Wolfe carved his Michelangelo's and bound them into books
A universe un-contained by any beach of sand.
Explorers and wanderers walk his shores
Waves wash their feet
The sun is reverent while the land sings. 

Autumn is Coming in the Door

Fall comes to Virginia suddenly. Within a week, it is noticeably cooler in the mornings, and there seem to be less birds singing. I wonder if some have already started their long flight south?

Perhaps it is my imagination, but in September the light seems to change to "fall-light", and  there is a hopefullness in the air. I don't really know how to define this feeling better than that, especially when it seems that there should be some sort of mourning or sorrow for the free days of summer, more of melancholia perhaps. Yet, there is a fullness, an autumnal ripeness that descends like heavy apples from trees with coloring leaves. Fall marks a harvest time, the point of the year when maturity still has its virile strength. Later, in the darkness and cold of winter, it will transition with feeble steps to a maturity identified by finality.

But the pleasure of the fall! A gentle breeze, the rattle of leaves down the street in the evening, the golden light in the Sunday afternoon. I am researching my Gilgamesh/Steampunk novel while sitting on my deck. Books on Zeppelin Airships, Illustrated Encylopedias on Sailing Ships and Steamboat are stacked in tumbled disarray on the glass table top. I pause and sit back as a breeze sweeps through, and suddenly leaves are drifting over head. The oak tree drops acorns regularly, and I can see hawks wheeling overhead while a crow scolds them with a gutteral cawing. When winter comes, that "caw-caw" will be a lonely sound that echoes through bare trees and fields of snow; for now, it is simply a vulgar herald of shorter days and the increasing smell of woodsmoke in the air.

My neighbor's garden is beautiful across the lazy street. The flowers will soon fade, but for now, they match the growing orange and redness of the leaves.

It will be a good week, and I look forward pulling the box down from the closet filled with my sweaters.