Haiku #210

In your cut-off life
you resemble reptile ancestors,
Little Bird

I was coming back from the mailbox this steamy afternoon, my eyes on the ground and lost in dreamy thought, when I saw this little bird. I don't know how it got there; it wasn't near a tree. I went inside and got my camera. Because I was in such a dreamy state, I didn't think to mark to place, so it took me a while to find the bird again. It was only ten minutes or so, but in that brief time, the body had already changed. It was more limp and the head had fallen into the rocks. I know a lot of people will think it morbid of me to be so fascinated with this dead creature, but I find beauty in it.

Novel update

I've been wrestling with this novel so long that it's hard to find new ways of talking about my work on it. Now that my trip is over and I've rested a bit, I'm back on it. I did quite a bit of writing--bits and pieces--on the road, and much of it I feel good about.

When I looked over my drafts, I found them to be cluttery. While I was on the road, I found a voice and method that pleases me. So, yes, I am starting over. Not really starting over because I'm using most of what I've already written. It just needs to be recast in the new voice, style. And of course when you change your voice, your narrator changes, and when your narrator changes, everything does. So it's best just to start fresh.

But I have a new plan. I've figured out that if I write just three to four pages a week, I will have the book finished in a year. I hope to do better than that--finish earlier--but for right now this plan seems possible. Fifty-two weeks times four pages is 208-pages, a good length for a novel and certainly the longest single work I have ever written.

I am off to a good start. I told one of the Graduate Students I taught last fall that my new prose is like fresh, clean sheets snapping on a line just waiting for a reader to take them in, put them on their bed, and warm them with their body.

New goal: By the end of July 2010 have a complete first draft of novel 2 finished.

If I do as well with this goal as I did with the Haiku, I'll be happy. My original goal was to write 100 Haiku in a year. I started last fall and so far have over 200.

Haiku #209

Old Graybeard,

spirit mask:

Bison in snow

Haiku #208

Makes soft clicking sounds

above the geysers:

crow flying

Haiku #207

The best fry bread
I ever had was made
in Monument Valley

Haiku #206

Bikers have stony
Mount Rushmore faces
in the West

Haiku #205

Men grasp bottles by the neck
to drink beer in the casino
at Cody, Wyoming

Haiku #204

Three blackbirds
ride its back: bison
grazing on the hill

Haiku #203

There's a place at Mammoth
Hot Springs the color of gold--
Touch the water with your hands

Haiku #202

Have you ever
seen a big elk
prancing?

Haiku #201

Our dogs
chase a ball in mountain snow--
The Cascades in July

Haiku #200

Cloud-shadows
make green mountains blue
near Butte, Montana

Monument Valley: The Navajo Reservation

Through the windshield on the way to Monument Valley.

A roadside stand in Monument Valley on the Navajo Reservation.

Brief Internet Access!

Three more photos of Arches. I took this photo at ground-level. I liked the texture of the dry, cracked earth and how it contrasted with the smooth rock in the background.

This photo has a sense of movement, created by the lines in the stone.

I love this photo that I took of Allen. It was overcast at Arches that day. The cloud cover was dramatic.