Tuesday, November 1, 2011 - Sumner Lake State Park, Fort Sumner NM
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Got a Fly, Oasis State Park, Portales NM, November 1, 2011
Got a fly
In a swatting frenzy before I flew out of Oasis this morning I broke my hi-zoot designer swatter with the big comfort grip handle and light plastic head.
Met a guy here at Sumner Lake who opened his door (at another park) and in came 145 flies. Wish I had only a 145 fly problem...
[Later] I got the herd pretty well under control with a new cheap, strong, WallyWorld flyswatter in concert with some good old-fashioned fly paper.
Night camp
Site 34 - Sumner Lake State Park, Fort Sumner NM
- Verizon cell phone service - fairly good signal
- No Verizon EVDO service - connection is very slow.
- Go to Sumner Lake State Park website
- Go to Sumner Lake State Park on my Night Camps map
- 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.