Thursday, May 21, 2009 - Red Rock, East Chatham NY
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Three Rivers Petroglyphs Series #10, Three Rivers NM, April 28, 2009
Night camp
On my property off Less Traveled Road - The Home Place, Red Rock, East Chatham NY
- I used to camp in a few locations on what little I had left of the family farm
- In the driveway by the house
- Across the road where the barn once stood
- On the 20 acre piece off Less Traveled Road
- Now, with the kind support of the friends who now own the place, I camp across the road where the barn once stood.
- Verizon cell phone service - Terrible, barely usable with an amplifier
- Verizon EVDO service - Terrible, barely usable with an amplifier
- Find other references to Home Place
- List the nights I've camped here
- Check the weather here
Writing From the Inside Out
A young writer, if he is unknown, can be at a party and watch what everyone is doing. If he has a marveluos ear for dialog, he can wake up the next morning and remember all that was said and how it was said. He is a bird on a branch. Sees like a bird and writes books that are extraordinarily well observed. But once he is successful, especially if that happens quickly, it's as if the bird were now an emu. It cannot fly. It grows haunches and foreshoulders and a mane: lo and behold, it is a lion. And everyone is looking at the lion, including the birds. But it is a lion with the heart of a bird and the mind of a bird. So there is a terrible period when the transmogrified emu is trying to live like a lion and has little talent for it. Then the beast begins to experiment. When it runs, it now sees other animals scamper. It takes a while - often years - for the writer to get to appreaciate his effect on others, and even longer to begin to understand human beings again. In the old days, he could write about friends, enemies, and strangers by intuition, by induction; now he puts it together by deduction. Of course, he does have more material on which to work his deductions.