An Arrangement of Ancient Thrones

A friend of ours, Bryan Thao Worra, who is a poet active around Minnesota's Twin Cities, wrote the other day asking how the new book was coming -- just out of curiosity. That there is to be another McFarland book from me is a matter of record; so it seems just as well to munder and wonder about it publicly, as privately. I tend not to talk about works in progress ... but I talk about wines in progress, yes? What harm ... so long as I am speaking of nuts and bolts -- of grapes and wire-bending pliers.

Bryan's question came about when the realization struck me that I had put aside all work on the book a week before the recent family visit, to have time to rearrange the house; and that I had failed to return the book to its somewhat central place in my life since then. The manuscript was supposedly due for delivery (for an already-deferred deadline) around the time of that visit; so I had obtained another extension, giving me a few months more. I will need them -- especially since these are heavy gardening-and-auctioning months.

My typewriters were stashed here and there: that was part of the problem. Finally this week I dedicated a few days to wrestling furniture around, rethinking my main workspace arrangement; and I brought back into the study necessary tools -- the books, the notebooks, the typewriters, even the typing paper.

Early in our time in Cashton, at an auction in a downpour, we paid a fair dollar for an old kitchen table that has crackled white paint on the underparts and a top of bare boards joined in the manner of narrow floorboards. This attractive, somewhat weatherbeaten piece has moved off our front porch and into active use, at last. Somehow its height -- a bit lower than most desks -- suits me: I am writing at it now ... sitting on a wonderful old glass-ball clawfoot organ stool that still has much of its original finish ... with spiral-bound notebook upon the bare boards, which are dark-cedar hue ... and in being here I feel utterly at home. A phrase comes to mind -- "A writing serf who feels like a king." Being surrounded by simple old things aids the flow of thoughts -- while the sterile products of our Age of the Masses global mega-industry tend to steer mental flows toward conformity and imitation.

The genuine creativity found in writings by some literary figures of past centuries flowed not only from their minds and heads. The writer's spirit is a spirit of exteriors as much as it is a spirit of interiors.

Cheers ...

Tugging the Wires

One unexpected pleasure in working with grape vines is that of working with wire. Sunday after pruning I tightened the wires strung along the two grape rows, using a pair of pliers that happened to be in my coat pocket -- the wrong ones, but the ones at hand -- and my bare hands.

When I first strung the wire I was pleased to find how useful certain old pliers are. Picked up in auction batches of old tools, these are various pliers that have no teeth or serrations for gripping: so they bend and turn wire without damaging it, which over the long run might weaken it. One pair -- you might think of a squared duck's bill, to imagine its jaws -- is especially good for twisting two strands together.

I use steel posts to support the wire, something that may need to change, at some point. So far, though, it seems adequate, even though it means the upper wire is not as high as might be desired.

This morning I was wrestling with the structure of my current book -- doing my best to stretch the supporting wires taut, as it were. Had I known at the beginning of writing the book what I now understand, I might not have to struggle so, in tugging it into a somewhat straight line. Yet it seems never the case that you understand what to do until you are done doing it. (Which is a thought that, this year, calls to mind my raising the southeast porch of the house, which was sagging. By the time I truly knew what I was doing, the job was done. I could undo it now, and do it again better ... but will I? Ha!)

The grape-support wires sagged last summer under weight of vines and grapes -- and certainly my early structure for my book was inadequate for containing the turnings of ideas and knowledge that I encountered and gained, while actually writing.

Cheers ...