Reminiscences

Today it rained again, much to my near indifference. The consequences for me- which is all that weather should ever really be about- are few. A rug I picked up from the side of the road ( they throw things out here, too) was almost dried in the sun yesterday, recovering from previous rains; today it is again water-logged and lamely carpeting the spacious backyard lawn, now doubtlessly festooned with brown leaves. The carpeting of carpeting....

My sister is an inveterate leaf-blower. She battles leaves like she battles snow, without a touch of tenderness for the beauty that is natural excess. She battles the lawn, the broad growth that unreasonably insists on increasing, like our heads of hair we bother over as a society, to the tune of billions.


I like the spillage of leaves, the detritus of moistened,decayed cellulose. New England greenery is a source of sweet melancholy- if that is not too antiquated an expression in this age of digital vibes. The leaves themselves remind me of my humble origins as a writer; they are humbler than most, because I wrote a couplet which is the quintessence of dull:

Leaves in Fall tumbling down,
They fall down, they turn brown.

Looking back at this petite poem, I see that it was not as bad as all that. However, the call of bigger deeds tempted me into dishonesty. Keeping with the season, I submitted another poem the following year to the summer camp for it's literary project. It was something I lifted from Mad Magazine or the like:

O autumn is the time of year
when witches and goblins and ghosts appear;
they hoot and scream and scowl and stare,
so all you people had best beware.

And so on. Why I plagiarized this I cannot now say: it could be that I thought too low of myself as a writer, yet longed for recognition. It certainly did no harm to anyone but myself to fake this creation. It was not until I caught the literary bug again at the age of 14 that writing meant anything to me. By 16 I discovered that my neighbor, Stewart Allen ( rest his soul) was an English teacher; not merely one, but a man with aspirations to write ' The Great American Novel'- a work that, I'm afraid, perished with him, incomplete.

Literature and Philosophy became my passions, though being a teenager, they were not my only ones. And what did I derive from Stewart Allan? A standard of high excellence in writing, joined with an infantile inhibition preventing me from marketing myself liberally. The latter is a disorder from which I have yet to recover. In fairness, it was not Stewart who infused this mentality in me: it was his own tendency- one born of insecurity- dovetailing with my own adolescent angst and directionlessness.

Stewart's friend ( and your grandfather's), James Lee Burke, was his colleague at the time at a local community college. My father preferred him, though they both frequented my house ( Stewart living literally on the other side of the wall). Both men drank heavily, but Jim was a drunk who drowned quite regularly, hardly able to stagger back to his car with his wife's help. Jim was and is a great man, and a great writer. His books have become bestsellers, and he is regarded among the very top in his genre: detective novels. He has also been sober for what must now be 30 years. That has made all the difference.

When I think of you girls and the business you are up to as a result of school, it makes me wonder how dreams can actually grow in a person when they there is no time to breathe. My own creative work has been a flurry of initiatives, interrupted time and again by the drama of love and work; or is this merely the story I tell myself? I know that now I at least have achieved a greater seriousness and sense of purpose about my music. I use it at school every day, and I am getting a reputation through shows. I have been playing guitar now for 40 years! It is nothing if not a marriage: a great one! I can see how members of old married coupled still profess not to really know one another. I still do not know my guitar!

Not a single person or thing is left untouched by the business world, which is the world of capitalism. Yet the essences of beauty and love themselves remain pure. I cannot describe how this is. No matter what you are able to do in the marketplace with your passions for music and literature and dance and theatre, you have the chance to treat these crafts as your beloved, and exalt your relationships to them by the practice thereof. That it what it takes to be great. The rest is luck.