Writing my first auto ethnography, non-fiction, fiction piece and I feel an awful lot like this. It would help if a deadline wasn’t involved.
“And then the people came along. Each as he appeared snatched up one of the truths and some who were quite strong snatched up a dozen of them.
It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood.
…Concerning the old carpenter who fixed the bed for the writer, I only mentioned him because he, like many of what are called very common people, became the nearest thing to what is understandable and lovable of all the grotesques in the writer’s book.”
Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio . Picture by Alfred Stieglitz
Today, I picked an old copy of the book from my shelf. I bought it for fifty cents at a garage sale or something of the sort. There was an airplane luggage receipt stuck between the pages for someone from the USSO dated in the 1950s. The book itself has mostly small items underlined in pencil. Things like ”berry pickers” and “to drag.” The quote from above was the longest underlined section. The original penciler did not underline the last bit about lovable grotesques. Still, I included it.
This song has been sticking around me a lot lately.
“Fangela,” Here We Go Magic.
It is a challenge for me to be back in Indiana, surrounded by my old haunts. Most days I feel a bit baffled to be in Bloomington. Its difficult to walk by the places and people I used to know better. Other days—and they are becoming less rare—I stop being such a chowderhead and enjoy the muted beauty that is the midwest.
Photo taken on a walk.
BOTTLED LIGHTNING:
n. (a) = lightning n. 2; (b) concentrated vigour or energy; also attrib
1839 Dickens Nicholas Nickleby xlix 489 “Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.”
1899 W. James Talks to Teachers 209 “To all who looked upon her an impression as of ‘bottled lightning’ was irresistibly conveyed.”
1899 W. James Talks to Teachers 210 “There are plenty of bottled-lightning temperaments in other countries, and plenty of phlegmatic temperaments here.”
- Oxford English Dictionary
I could use some bottled lightening right about now.
Photo taken at the Wonder Tower in Genoa, Colorado on a road trip in 2008.
Back in the saddle and I’m picking up where I left off with some help from Josephine Blatt one of the first “strongwomen.” In 1937, she lifted 23 men and a platform (3,654 lbs). You go, Josephine Blatt.
I’m getting ready for the holiday season. My family is big and full of (dominant) women.
I google searched “women” and this is what I got, a new amazing artist to follow: Joyce Polance.
Taken from Nostalghia, film by Andrei Tarkovsky. I’ve been thinking about buildings and the things we put inside them.
This tumblr needed more of this kind of pulp.
