All right, THEN I will shut up…

… about John Irving. Among other things, his characters make him so interesting. Note the ether-addicted abortionist below. So in Last Night in Twisted River he introduces a woman vital to the plot and an eventual love interest for the main protagonist, How many times has this happened in literature and movies? Picture the ones you remember. For the most part they are almost cliches. The beautiful woman in the cocktail lounge. The surprise meeting in a phsyical situation. Most of it is almost standard. So how does John Irving do it. She is a muscular, big woman, even a former wrestler (a common theme) who parachutes nude into an artists’ party and lands in a pig sty. Among the first words the guy hears from her are something like “I’m covered in pig shit. I will kill those guys.” Nothing common or stereotyped there. Hmm now maybe I am giving writing lessons -- but, honest, only to myself.

About John Irving

Wild, wild horses, couldn't drag me away

Of course, you cannot “used to be a writer.” You might not always be physically writing things down but you continually look at the world as an observer, searching for that moment of insight when everything suddenly clears and you actually see what you have been looking at and at that moment truly find something to write about.

And what brought that on? I had just finished the newest novel by one of my absolutely favorite authors. A new book by John Irving, I have told people, is an event in my life. In Last Night in Twisted River he went a direction I don’t recall him going before. He started giving writing lessons. Norman Mailer could not write a book without putting a writing lesson in there somewhere. I learned how to handle adjectives from Mailer. And now Irving is doing it, too. Taking John Irving’s lesson. well, need to explain that first I guess: What he did was refute another great writer’s writing lesson. He accused Ernest Hemingway of originating the ubiquitous advice for people to “write what you know.” Irving said that’s baloney and so limiting in subject matter. As I thought about it, of course he is right, although somehow tarnishing Hemingway seemed almost blasphemous. You can always “know” new things. I actually had thought of that before. It all harked back to something else about John Irving. I saw him interviewed on television one time and the host asked him where he found his stories. He said he liked to find someone outrageous. someone who perhaps had performed a heinous act and then give that person humanity. His example was Cider House Rules. What he said was if you saw a headline in the New York Post on the doctor’s obituary it would have read something like “Ether addicted abortionist dies of overdose.”

Could that person ever be a sympathetic character. Irving made him one, doing “the lord’s work and the devil’s work.”

So the thought process goes on. John Irving and I are the same age. He is who I envisioned myself being at this age. Only I fell a little short. Not even sure I gave it a good try. Vonnegut (whom Iriving met at the Iowa writer sessions): “So it goes.” All of it comes to the point where maybe I didn’t get to the level I dreamed of, but though little comes out on a screen these days, I am not done yet. That moment of clarity is still out there somewhere, the problem is I never really went looking for it, rather took the lazy way and waited for it to come to me. But, “ether addicted abortionists” do not necessarily walk the trails I know. So, of course you cannot used to be a writer. You most likely always have been, and for sure always will be. Might as well say you used to be a breather. You may not think about it much, but you are still doing it.

And, thanks, Tom

They'rrrrrrrr baaaaaaack

Turned on the yard light last night and look who was out there.

I have my freedom, but I don’t have much time…

“Are you the writer?”

Standing up on his snowmachine with the engine running and his back to the trail, he had been staring at an evenly cut stump where someone had taken one of his trees for firewood. The sound of his own machine masked the whine of the second one until it was almost past him. A man, a woman and a child on a big machine, towing a sled full of the things people hauled along that trail. The woman waved and then the man stopped the machine, a universal sign they were going to have to talk. Reluctantly he shut his own down, fervently hoping it would start again, given its infuriating habit of not starting when the air was warm and it had idled a while before he hit the red button.

“I used to be.” He answered starting to smile then curling his lip over his upper teeth as he recalled leaving his false tooth, a flapper the dentist called it, up in the cabin. Instead of a smile with a gap in it, the action degenerated into a churlish sneer, though he really had no idea how it looked.

Used to be? “When did I get to used to be a writer,” he thought.

“We heard someone out here was a writer and I thought maybe that was you,” she said.

“I guess probably that’s me.” He reached to shake the man’s hand, a tight-lipped smile twisting his face.

Amenities made and the subject of the writer who used to be passed, they moved on down the trail and he drove up the hill to his own place vowing from now on to put that tooth in when he left home no matter how alone he figured he was in the woods.

Later a crescent of a waxing moon, its convex curve toward the bottom, hung for a while low in a northwest sky so clear the rest of the moon showed as dim silver light filling in the missing portions of the orb started by the crescent.

Where was that kind of clarity when he tried to dredge it out of his mind, the clarity missing so much from his recent thoughts. The moon remained almost in place longer than it should have, defying its orbit and his intellect, mocking him with its Cheshire grin.

(Of the pictures: 70 degrees and snow: does it get any better than this?)

(Of the title: Thanks to Mick and Keith... still relevant after all these years)

Getting ready, always getting ready

So, big Bush trip coming up and today was the day to get everything ready. I am pretty sure we have been over how Alaskans are always getting ready for something or other. In this case it amounted to digging out the snowmachine trailer, one snowmachine, greasing the trailer wheel bearings, starting both machines to make sure they run and geting them up on the trailer and all ready to take off Monday for a week. I hadn't been over to that side of the house in a while and as I was shoveling off the trailer I noticed some larger tracks among those left by birds and squirrels. They looked fairly new so I followed them a ways. Funny thing. By the time I got to the end of the east side of the house and looked up, this moose was lying down about 20 feet farther on. I didn't bother it and two hours later it was still there. I actually took this picture from inside the house. You can tell it didn't know I was there, notice the ears are aimed forward, not turned back like they would be if it had heard something. All pretty and white out here now with a good dump of new snow. I actually had to blow dry the driveway two days in the row and take the Jeep to work Monday and Tuesday. Monday I never would have made it home in the Insight. The last two miles to the house hadn't been plowed and that car is so low to the ground it would have hung up. But, March is the best month in Alaska, long days, cold at night to keep the snow, but warm in the days and for some reason, usually sunny. The absolute best time to go to the East Pole. I know I have been remiss. Maybe I will come back from the Pole with a bunch of new photos.