Lord It’s Nice Out

I wish I could play hooky today and just enjoy the beautiful weather. The hollyhocks are not just dead–someone has absconded with their carcasses. Every last one of them, just gone.

Honestly. When I first moved here, everything I planted turned out awesome.

But since the flood?

All that shit I planted two weeks ago? And have been watering diligently every day? No sign of it.

What the hell?

Have I lost my gardening mojo?

Other things

1. Rosemary’s Baby, feminist icon? I love that folks are using Scott Poole as their go-to “What’s with this scary shit?” guy.

2. I’m going to write about this for Pith, but man, I think that, if you’re the mayor, you’re wanting to vomit at Boner being all “the other women in my department are younger and prettier.” Might as well have just put on a t-shirt that says “As long as I’m in office, I’m going to cost the taxpayers settlement money.”

3. Honest to god, the amount of time people in this city spend pissing and moaning about Emily Evans amazes me. I eagerly await celebrating the graduation of Hollin’s offspring from Metro public schools.

Gossipy Digressions

I think I’d feel less anxious about the Sue Allen project if I didn’t feel like no one takes this narrative approach because it’s stupid. I mean, I don’t think it’s stupid. Obviously, I write what I write for two reasons–either to see if I can or because I’d like to read a book like this (or both).

But I like a lot of things other people think are stupid, so I’m just not sure.

I wish I knew how exactly to describe it, but it’s kind of a straightforward third-person fantasy broken up by gossipy digressions about the narrator’s opinions on the Civil War and Inanna and who would get to be in an occult history of Nashville and why and also sometimes broken up by the narrator talking directly to the reader about the narrator and reader’s interactions–as if they, too, have made some kind of incomplete jump to the past–and the reader might need a tour guide.

See? To me that sounds awesome. If someone said to me, “Here’s a book about a women in Nashville who was a medium during Reconstruction and it has all these gossipy digressions about other shit,” I would have that book on hold at the library so quick.

But the question I can’t answer is whether I would then finish reading the book thinking “Oh, yeah, that was cool” or “wow, that was kind of weird and didn’t work.”

I also think, upon reflection while walking the dog, that I’m going to have to combine Jere and Edmund Baxter, because I want Ed to have more to do in the second part of the book. I don’t know. I’m still thinking about it, but I think I can divvy up Jere’s plot points between Ed and Bobby Overton. Sorry, Jere Baxter fans, of which I’m sure there are a few. He still has a high school and a town named after him. He’ll be fine.

I guess I should feel more anxious about that kind of revisionism, but there are already so many names, so many dead people dragging behind those names like morbid bridal trains, that I feel like I need to keep the people heading toward the altar pared down, you know?

I don’t picture it as historical fiction, really. I picture it as a legend, a myth. Leave it to someone else to clear up what really happened.

Which reminds me–at the Metro Archives, in the Allen file, there is a lengthy pissed-off response to The Raven’s Bride by one of Eliza Allen’s however many great-grand nephews that appeared in either theBanner orThe Tennessean, I forget which. And I haven’t read the book, but it appears that the author imagines that Allen was in love with someone else and that that’s why she couldn’t stay married to Sam Houston and the nephew was all pissed off about this because he thought that this claim somehow dishonored Allen.

So, I spent part of the afternoon on Friday just looking up what I could find about Allen. There’s not a lot. But it is clear that something not good happened to her in the very early days of their marriage. Every other speculation–that she was pissed to be brought to Nashville, but then not let actually participate in Houston’s social life, that she was pissed at not being included in his planning, that she was bored and lonely, that he was a miserable drunken lout whoring it up in front of her, etc.–all seem plausible. Hell, it’s plausible that she may have preferred another suitor to him, but he was the Governor of Tennessee so tough shit for her.

But it’s hard not to read what little there is to know of her and not go to a very dark place–that when Sam Houston got drunk, a woman was not safe around him.

I think that’s the truth. I mean, I don’t know. Who knows what goes on in other people’s marriages. I’m just saying that, when you look at what little evidence of her life Allen wasn’t able to destroy, and you look at the fact that she both told people she hated Houston while they were married and that she was really, really nice to him in public, the dots are kind of easy to connect.

I think the fact that his last wife was like “Motherfucker, you will stop drinking if I have to nail you to this floor to make it happen” (obviously, not a direct quote) also points to the fact that he probably wasn’t a man safe for women to be around when drunk.

So, Crook comes along and wants to tell a story that imagines for Allen a possibility in which she wasn’t just a child her dad gave to some drunken asshole who did things to her that were bad enough that, when she ran away, her parents didn’t make her go back (I mean, people, my god, Andrew Jackson tried to talk Houston out of getting married, because marriage didn’t seem to suit him. When Andrew Fucking Jackson is the voice of reason and restraint?! Andrew “Oh, hey, honey, I stole you this kid while I was out genociding his parents” Jackson is all “You know, let’s try to decide before it turns out like shit whether this is a good idea”?! Andrew Jackson, fuck him, really, but for all his faults, and let’s not start listing them, because some of us have to go to work, he liked women. And I am starting to get the impression that he understood that this was not common among his peers.) because it was a good political match, but instead was a woman who could exercise some agency in her life.

If you’re not going to choose the truth, wouldn’t you rather have that story?

Draft 3

Draft two was basically just a massive clean-up of draft one, actually cutting everything that needs to be cut and putting in some stuff that needs to be there. I spent all weekend cutting and putting in and saying to myself repeatedly “This sucks. Why can’t you stop messing with it?”

I just feel all kinds of doubts and yet I can’t stop myself from working on it.

I don’t know what draft 3 will need to be.

Did I tell you I read Alex Bledsoe’s Memphis vampire books? Holy shit. I finished them and I just wanted to “holy shit” for like ten minutes. They’re terrifying. How a person takes something so cliched and makes it terrifying again, I don’t know, but he’s done it.

I also feel like the structure of these books is less “beginning, build up, build up, build up, climax, denouement” and more “winding, winding, winding, winding, winding, winding, SURPRISE!!! IT’S WORSE THAN YOU THOUGHT!!!”

Ha, that’s how I feel, but not on purpose.

Lord, no wonder writers drink.

Oh, Those Allens

I spent my morning at Metro Archives. They have nothing on The Thing which is kind of a bummer. We did see that Ben Allen had two wills and that the court ruled that his earlier will was the valid will. But nothing that made me go “Oh, right, I have to put this in my book.”

I did learn one cool thing. You know how Sam Houston had a scandalous Tennessee marriage? His wife, Eliza Allen is the daughter of John Allen. John Allen’s brother is Robert Allen, Ben’s grandfather.

My Mom and her New, Bigger Family

Sorry I didn’t post more yesterday. It was just an emotional rollercoaster and I wasn’t up for trying to make anything of it. I had two long tearful conversations with my mom and a long, hilarious conversation with the Butcher, all about Mom’s new, bigger family.

The thing that the Butcher and I were laughing about is that, when we were younger, my mom went up to a woman in a Dairy Queen in Springfield, Illinois and asked that woman if she was her cousin. Twenty-five years we’ve been teasing my mom about going up to random strangers and asking if they’re related to her. But seeing where the Corcorans lived and where my mom’s family lived, now it’s like, well, shoot, of all the people in the world who apparently could have been asking random strangers if they were her cousin and gotten a yes, Mom was it.

My mom was all “I should call her” and I said, “It’s okay to wait, Mom. How you’re feeling–finding out that there’s a whole part of the family who lived near you and who was kept from you–that’s how she’s feeling, too. Talk to Grandma about it, talk to your sisters. Give yourself a little time to get used to it.”

I think the thing that’s hard to deal with is that something clearly went very wrong for Marie and how much of it was her husband’s family (sounds like a lot) and how much of it was being trapped between a rock and a hard place (sounds like some) and how much of it was  her own fucked up family situation (sounds like some) is hard to say. And yet, there’s that human tendency to want to assign blame–to dole out responsibility for who did what wrong when.

And I think that my mom is a little afraid, too, that her dad or her uncles might be to blame in some way for some of this.

I hope, though, honestly, that we can just let it be a good thing, that we can meet each other figuring that we’re not betraying any dead folks by leaving undone the things they undid, but picking up the threads again later, and tying our own new knots.

Two Things

1. Gordon Belt has an interesting post about tracing his Melungeon heritage. He’s descended from Goins-es, which is a pretty good tell. If you’ve got a Goins ancestor from Appalachia, you need to learn about the Melungeons. The thing I thought was interesting here is that his ancestor was a ferryman. And you know the Hulans ran the the ferry out at the end of Bells Bend. You know I always wondered if that wasn’t a survival mechanism–live in a fairly isolated rural place, control the one easy way in or out, and protect yourself from the kinds of hassles other people who weren’t firmly white got.

2. Let me say up front that I think women should be able to breastfeed wherever they want, whenever they want, for as long as the mom and child are both comfortable with it and able to do it. This is not a comment on breast feeding in and of itself. This is, instead, a realization I had after reading Chris Wage’s post. This is like the headless fatty picture. Are there morbidly obese people? Yes. But when we’re talking about the obesity epidemic, you know, the one we illustrate with headless morbidly obese women, is that an accurate representation of who in our nation is seeing rising obesity rates and what their obesity looks like? No. It’s an image designed to disgust you (hence why you don’t get to see her face) and to, I suspect, annoy you that she’s not making herself aesthetically pleasing to you for you.

See?! See how that is a similar dynamic to the Time breastfeeding cover? Are there young, blond, fit women who are dressed like they just got back from yoga class who defiantly let their three year old stand on a chair and breastfeed out in public? Sure, I guess so. The world is big and it takes all kinds.

But when we’re talking about breastfeeding in public–and in fact, when most people are like “Oh, that baby is too big for that”–who are we actually talking about? Babies. Maybe very tiny toddlers. Mothers who don’t want to stand next to a park bench while Junior stands on it to eat, but mothers who want to sit on the park bench and hold Junior in their arms while he eats.

But, this picture is supposed to disgust you–”the kid is too old!!!!!”–and, I think, annoy you that this woman who is aesthetically pleasing is doing something with her tit other than letting it titillate you (hee). The “ew, gross” thing is easy enough to see. But the tricky thing is to see the message  of “be angry! This woman whose body is for you is not concerned about what you think and thus all women who share this trait with her are like her, defying you.” But that’s actually the more problematic message, especially since most of us don’t consciously see ourselves as wanting to be the boss of everyone. It plays on something deep–the desire to control–that we don’t often have conscious awareness of.

Mom Gains Some Relatives

My mom has a somewhat enigmatic grandmother–Marie Corcoran, mother of my Grandpa Bob. The stories I heard about her were all along the lines of “We didn’t really know her.” “She was weird.” “She divorced her husband and abandoned her sons.” etc.

Yesterday, I heard from the granddaughter of Marie’s brother. I told her what little I knew, and then I called my mom to tell her I’d heard from a woman who is the daughter of my grandpa’s cousin. My mom is quite close to her cousins, but that next layer out? I don’t think she knew those people at all. My dad claims the Phillipses aren’t close, but I knew his aunt Vi and Veda and I know quite a few of his cousins and, at the end of the day, he hasn’t been surprised or weirded out to learn of these far-flung distantly related Phillipses (or, in some cases, closely flung, distantly related).

My mom was… well, I was not prepared. It was as if I gave her some delicate, fragile thing she couldn’t quite make sense of–Now who is this again? It’s her grandfather who is my grandmother’s brother? Is she sure? She’s been living in Aurora all this time? That’s so close. Have they been so close this whole time?

And then she began to tell me about Marie, who apparently was not someone they “barely knew” but a woman who lived into her 80s and who lived with my mom’s uncle and sometimes came to Thanksgiving.

Marie was Irish Catholic. The Riches were WASPs, old-school been here since the early to mid 1600s, related to Salem Witch Trial accusers WASPs. My mom isn’t even sure how they met or fell in love, except that it was Chicago. People met.

They married, in spite of her family’s concerns, and the Riches all moved out to Colorado to seek their fortunes–my great-grandfather, his brothers, their father, cousins, aunts and uncles, the whole lot of them. And they were enormous assholes to Marie, making fun of her because she was Catholic, making fun of her because she was Irish, making fun of her because of her bright red hair. Apparently, she ran away a couple of times and my great-grandfather had to chase her down and bring her home.

I’m not sure if they moved back to Chicago together, but by the time the census taker found my great-grandfather in 1930, he was living with his parents and his sons and she was gone.

But not as gone as I had been lead to believe. She worked for the Illinois Central Railroad, first in Chicago and then down in Florida and then maybe back in Chicago again. She made lingerie and helped my grandma perfect her sewing skills. My mom thinks my grandma’s Singer was first Marie’s.

I have gotten the impression over the years that Marie may have suffered from depression, but honestly, learning about her early married life–moving away from her family, being tormented by her inlaws in between bouts of son-having, feeling so desperate that she runs away, and then not really getting to be a part of her sons’ lives–it’s just no fucking wonder, you know?

Grandma Marie, I wish you had had it easier.

Maybe Elizabeth Bennett Wasn’t Lying About Her Age

Holy cow. I just read this old news story about Elizabeth Bennett’s nephew, who lived to be at least 106 and who had a daughter who took care of him who was 80. So, you know, maybe Elizabeth lived forever, too. Although, the descendant of this nephew calls her “Elizabeth Hensley Bennett.” Which would seem to indicate that Bennett is a married name? But I see in the forums that folks are pretty sure that Bennett is her maiden name and that Hensley is a dude she just had kids with. I didn’t find any Bennetts in the 1810 census, but I didn’t find Demonbreun in there, either, so I could just be a bad study.

But check her here in the 1850 census, living among a bunch of Demonbreuns.

She’s from Virginia?!

Man I would love to know how and when she came to Nashville.

It’s Kind of Creepy Out There

I’m in the grouchy stage of not-writing. Ha ha ha. I know. What’s different? But I’d like to have some good chunks of writing time to start really getting into the book and I just don’t have it. And it’s making me grouchy.

The weather has a cool edge to it this morning, which is disconcerting. It’s almost like fall is in the air, though I suppose it’s probably just the spring that has been muted under our early summer.

Goofus continues not to leaf. It also continues to have buds that seem to have green on them. I just don’t fucking know.

I wrote a post for Pith the comments under which have already grown so stupid that I’m not going to read any more of them. Once you see someone being all “I’m going to insist you’re saying all this stuff that’s the opposite of what you’re saying, just so that I can argue with a position I’m more comfortable opposing,” all hope is lost. At least for me.

I mean, seriously, if saying that pictures accompanying stories about obesity should reflect the bodies of the people you’re actually talking about and show faces, like how real people are photographed, means I’m saying they shouldn’t run photos… well, then, what’s there to argue?

I got into it a little in that post, but I think there’s a reason they don’t show obese people, but always show the asses of morbidly obese people. It’s not just what I said there but it’s also that “fat” is both a physical characteristic and a moral judgement.

I’m obese. Like the death fats. And I have people telling me, still, all the time that I’m not really fat. And I’m never quite sure how they mean that. That I’m fat but I’m not really fat, like those huge people? Or that I’m fat, but I’m not gross like those fat people who don’t dress well or don’t bathe very often or what? Or weirder (and I do sometimes get this impression) that I am literally not fat, no matter what my actual body looks like, because to be fat is to be gross and they don’t find me gross.

I get bullshit for being fat. I have heard enough that no one will ever love me because I’m fat to last a lifetime.

But it’s weirder that I have a kind of thin privilege, too, not because I’m not fat, but because I don’t read as poor or uneducated or dirty or a minority. It’s like if we’re standing at the intersection of weight, gender, race, and class, because I’m an educated white woman who meets some basic level of conventionally not ugly, I can sometimes use the “not fat” road, even though I actually am. Yes, I often get kicked off it, but as often as I get kicked off it, I get people trying to pull me back onto it.

Believe me, I don’t want people running around calling me Fatty-Boombalatty or anything, and so it’s not like, if you say, “Oh, but you’re not really fat” that I’m going to put you under my boob and smother you with it or something. I’m happy to hide in plain sight, even if that makes me a coward.

But it’s creepy to not be seen for who you really are.

And it’s especially creepy when it shows you that “fat” in our society is more a judgment of a person’s worth than a neutral descriptor of the type of body they have.

That, especially, is why I think you don’t see an average obese person’s photo next to stories about the obesity epidemic. They need to show you a person “everyone” agrees is disgusting in order to motivate you to see the obesity epidemic as a problem. Seeing what obesity actually looks like for most people–in other words, a neutral photo of the actual issue under discussion–would not kick up the same levels of revulsion. Hell, I even think showing a morbidly obese person–her whole body and face–wouldn’t do it.

Those photos are designed to make it as easy as possible for you to make a moral judgment about the value of that person. If they give you other cues–that she’s conventionally not ugly, that she’s well-groomed, that she’s got a lively sparkle in her eye, that she’s confident–you won’t shove her down the “something to be ashamed of and hidden” road.

(I don’t have all morning so I’m glossing over the whole issue of using a woman’s fat ass, usually clad in affordable clothing, to illustrate a problem that has leveled off among poor and middle class women, but is rising in rich men, but it’s there.)

Mice, Unions, Cats

As I announced on Facebook, there is now proof of at least a third mouse in the house. After I posted that, I had this actual text exchange with my brother:

Bro: For rent or sale: cats that eat mice and poop outside

[there's a picture of a largish Siamese licking his crotch]

Me: Do they eat inside mice?

Bro: If the mice could even get near the inside, yes.

Do you want me to ask them?

All right, they talked with their union rep and he said, “That’s almost too damn easy, but they can bend rules for family.” Talk to your cats’ union rep. Probably some clause is why they won’t catch.

Me: Yeah, I think there’s a work stoppage due to the fact that I let the live bird [the orange cat] brought into the house go.

Bro: You’re definitely going to need new cats. He’s probably bringing mice in and letting them go for revenge. Maybe you can get [the new kitty] to cross the picket line. Just start talking about getting a rat terrier.

I laughed and laughed. Seriously, when we’re not busy being giant piles of ass, we are funny people.

Google Scares the Crap out of Me

Whoa, lord, sometimes you read things and you think, “man, it’s a shame more people who interact with Google every day (i.e. all of us) don’t pay more attention to what’s going on in the Google books lawsuits.”

But check this out from over at The Melville House blog:

Google, meanwhile, made the bizarre argument that most writers don’t own their own copyright, no matter that the rights page of most books state rather exactly the opposite. But Google attorney Daralyn Durie told the judge that “Many authors contracted that right away to publishers.”

This seems to be such a fundamental misunderstanding of copyright law that either Durie is incompetent (and I have my days with Google where I think that’s possible) or Google is trying out a redefinition of copyright. And considering how small books are in the grand scheme of copyright issues Google might have, it seems to me that trying it out at the book level is a way to sneak a foot in the door.

See, the thing is that, yes, most commercial authors do indeed specify in the contract that the book is copyrighted in their name. But, yes, some authors, especially authors with non-trade publishers, do indeed find their books copyrighted in the name of the publisher. In real life, the difference between those two approaches matters barely a whit. The only person who can own a copyright is the creator of the work (let’s ignore work-for-hire-s right now). You can assign the administration of the copyright to whomever you want, including the publisher, and the publisher can copyright it in their name on your behalf, but if you’ve ever sat down to fill out the registration form, you know that, no matter how the book is ©whomevered on the copyright page, the government wants to know the most information about who the creator is and how the person claiming the copyright came to get permission from the creator to do so.

It is true that, in effect, when you sign a book contract, the publisher acts, for all practical purposes, like they “own” your copyright. But they don’t.

It’s a slight distinction, but an important one. After all, if the publisher really “owned” your copyright, the right would never revert back to you.

It’s easier to understand if we think of the creators as the bank and publishers as the home buyer. Yes, as long as you’re paying your mortgage and meeting the conditions laid out in your mortgage agreement, no one gives a shit if you say you “bought” a house or that you are a “home-owner” even though, technically, that puppy is the bank’s.

Copyright is similar. Even if the publishers say they own the copyright, they are really just holding it. And there are mechanisms by which the author can get it back.

So, the question becomes–why would Google want to advance an understanding of the nature of copyright that actually allowed ownership of copyright to be transferable? Why would they want you to be able to create something not covered by work-for-hire statutes that could be taken from you forever and you could never get it back?

Think of all of the ways you interact with Google–Youtube, Blogger, etc.–by creating content they benefit from. Right now, even if their EULAs allow them to use your content (mostly to power their search engine), they don’t allow Google to own the copyright on your work, which means they can’t straight-up monetize it without getting permission from you and, potentially, cutting you in.

But if I were a betting woman, I’d put my money on this being the start of Google testing the waters to see how much courts are willing to accept that copyright ownership is indeed transferable.

And that should be something anyone who creates content and publishes it on the web keeps their eye on.

I’m Seeing All the Kids

It must be “take your baby out for test-flights” time in the neighborhood, because today, toward the end of our walk, Mrs. W. and I saw a bird sitting on the barbed wire surrounding the AT&T building that looked just like  bluejay but grayer. And then his/her mom squawked at him and he flew right in front of us, which caused me to look over at its mom and realize that she was its mom which meant that it was a juvenile.

It seemed to me to be flying pretty well. It got from the fence to the treeline easily, but I still hope we get to see it practice some more.

Robert Johnson is at the End of Every Pop Culture Moment

There’s been a little ridiculousness because some pop culture asshole was all “Why hasn’t Obama said anything about the death of MCA when he said something about the death of Trayvon Martin and MCA has more talent blah blah blah than Jay-Z blah blah blah.” Which, ugh, is so dumb on so many levels. But the idea that Jay-Z is somehow not a valid hard-working talented artist is just delusional. Plus, he listens widely, which you know is something I love in an artist.

So, I want to talk about “99 Problems” so there’s going to be a bunch of “bitches” and, if you’re not familiar with earlier versions, those bitches are pretty graphically described. You probably shouldn’t listen to these at work. At least, not loudly. Though, I should warn you, Ice T’s version is damn great. But, anyway, this is the line I want to trace back to Robert Johnson. There are two ways–through the propensity to hear a good line and know enough to take it and through an actual invocation.

Here’s Ice T, who I sometimes forget used to be a really catchy rapper, since he’s mostly just a personality now. But check out how he’s all “I love ‘em all/ I love ‘em crazily/ and they love me back/ that’s why they stay with me” right before he invents a line so great others are going to have to step in and steal it, over and over again–”If you’re having girl problems, I feel bad for you, son./ I got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one.” (I use “steal” but I’m sure he’s getting paid.)

He’s got some asshole 2 Live Crew dude in there ruining things, which kind of keeps me from enjoying the song, which otherwise is kind of so over the top joyful that, it reminds me of a NSFW version of Dion’s “The Wanderer.” (Seriously, there’s something about the rhythm of the “I love ‘em all” part that reminds me so much of “The Wanderer” that it would not surprise me if Ice-T had it in the back of his mind.)

And then a few years later, Trick Daddy comes out with this version which somehow manages to sound completely dated and stupid in comparison to Ice T’s. I’m not sure why two songs so similar in content, with the same chorus, can be so different, but Ice T’s version works and this version somehow sound like something you’d be forced to listen to in a dark basement permeated by the smell of mildewed carpet, stale beer, and cheap pot.

Okay, before we get to Jay-Z, let’s take a listen to “Touched,” a song he also quotes directly in his version.

You’ll see that opening again right here. But it’s also obvious what Jay-Z has done: take the stuff from these sources that works–words, in the case of “Touched” I think also a kind of rhythm, not to mention the music he’s sampled from all over–and rework it into something uniquely his own.

But it keeps going. This guy, Hugo, is signed to Jay-Z’s label and he’s a British-Thai kid who grew up in Thailand, who has re-imagined the song as a kind of country blues (meaning more a country music/blues music hybrid). And here we are invoking the legend of Robert Johnson, with the singer going down to the crossroads a second time “to make the Devil change his mind.” Because, as I keep reminding you, all roads lead to Robert Johnson, whose birthday is, maybe, tomorrow.

It’s true that Robert Johnson was a minor blues figure in his time, but I think it’s important to note that almost all pre-war blues figures were minor blues figures during their lives. I think Johnson’s influence goes to show that you never can tell. It’s weird to think about but being relatively unknown during your life is no guarantee that you won’t be one of the huge figures all culture revolves around in death.

In other words, people, we can’t know that, in the end, Trick Daddy’s version won’t be the one considered “best.”

 

 

 

Don’t Hunt Bigfoot

And don’t miss my exciting post outlining why.

I’d Like a Few Words

In general, I prefer to keep my spiritual practices to myself. But this morning I did miss the fact that I don’t have group knowledge to draw on. There was another mouse in the trap this morning and, while I am not morally opposed to killing things that poop on my spoons, I do kind of feel icky about it.

I mean, I would prefer not to kill them, but that’s because I’d prefer them not to be in my house. Once they’re in the house–proof that they know a way to get in–they have to be dispatched. That’s just the way it is.

And yet, both times, when I looked at the mouse in the trap, I felt this urge to say… I don’t know… something. If I believed in reincarnation, I could whisper, “Better luck next time.” My one sure-fire charm, which I have just blatantly stolen from Frigg, figuring that anything she says that works to keep Odin safe is more than strong enough for anything I might need it for, is about keeping folks safe and, well, it’s too late for the mouse and I don’t particularly want mice to be safer about avoiding my traps.

But, it’d be nice to have something to say that meant that I am sorry I caused their passing.

Hunters have shit like this. Well, not all, but some.

Still, there must be words for a necessary kill, and I wish I had them.

 

Speaking of Tunnels Beneath Nashville…

You wonder how people could get the idea there are elaborate tunnels under Nashville?

Check out this photo:

Don’t see it? Check out my enhanced close-up:

I believe that is actually a creek that has been rerouted underground. On old maps, I’ve seen a creek there and it makes sense. We’re looking over at the part of town known as Black Bottom. Bottoms are wetland. They have creeks. But man, it’s hard not to let your imagination go, imagining what might be in there.

Cumberland Park and, Well, Mostly, The Cumberland

Points to whomever can tell me if those are burial mounds. I know there used to be a big complex on this side of the river, and I’ve seen things in town I thought might be, but these are the first things I thought “Aha! Those are! Or definitely might be.”

Who the Bad Guy is Is Slippery

My cousin A. called me last night! I haven’t talked to her in way too long, but it was good to hear from her. I need to be better about reaching out to people. I have a phone. It works to call out. But even with my brother, I usually talk to him when he calls me. That’s no good.

Anyway, our discussion ended up helping me kind of get at something about Lee, in the book, that I’ve not really been probably doing a good job of getting at. And it’s, I think, another reason the end of the book feels a little… ugh…

See, here’s the thing about Lee. He comes from what we have to presume is a family of okay people, because everybody married an Overton at some point and uniformly, if they married into the Overtons, they named their kids after that side of the family. I’m not saying there might not have been individual fuckers. I’m sure there were, but there is a line between “known” and “notorious.”

I’m not going to sing the high praises of the Overtons of real life, because I don’t know, but within the context of the book, the Overtons, in general, were good people. Martha Overton Allen made sure her boys always included their cousin Ben in their adventures, because he didn’t have any brothers. The Baxters were thrilled when Nancy became engaged to Robert Overton. And Sue even tells us that she felt fondly toward Lee’s mom. And Lee married Sue’s cousin, not a match that would have been made if the families had any real reason to think that Lee was a fucker–not just because Henrietta’s family wouldn’t do that to her, but because Lee’s family wouldn’t want to risk pissing off their neighbors.

But as A. and I were talking, I realized that, though the branches of large families are a lot alike–I think you can see a lot of our family, for instance, going through similar things that just play out slightly differently–people are their own people. You can be going through the same things, hear the same life lessons from the same people, and still come away with really different takes.

I think the Overtons, in my book, were the kinds of people who enjoyed their prominence and felt that remaining prominent was important, because it allowed for them to make the biggest impact on their community. Let’s call it an altruistic greed.

But Lee gets born into this family, learns these same lessons, and he takes from it that he is a person who enjoys his prominence, because it allows him to have a huge impact on his community, which will allow him to remain prominent. We might call this a kind of greedy altruism.

They’re the same values. You can look at Lee and say “Yep, he shares those things with other Overtons.” But the end goal is very different. I’m not even saying those are necessarily good or bad values. They’re just the kinds of values a prominent Nashville family in this era might have.

But switching the emphasis from “we’re working to shape this community (or in the Overtons’ case, this state)” to “I want to keep my position” does really change things. One lets you decide to muck about in the wilderness where it’s humid and miserable founding Memphis. The other sends you to the enviable comfort of the 21st century where you become angrier, crazier, and lonelier.

I’ve got to get some of that into the book. I need to flesh out Lee and that will help the ending.

Ha, I may need to call A. up regularly and talk about shit, because it really unblocks some things about my writing.

 

Reading and Writing

I used to believe that reading and writing were the same thing–different branches of the same activity. You can’t be a good reader without ending up a good writer. You can’t be a good writer if you aren’t a good reader.

I think I’m wrong. Because lord knows, I read the shit out of things all the time and I think I still suck as a writer.

I read through the Sue Allen thing over the last couple of days and I read it really well, you know? But now what?

I know I need more and better descriptions of Nashville. Which means, in part, I better get a better idea of what Nashville looked like in 1860. I need more and better descriptions of people and things. The descriptions I have work really well. But I believe you could pick Ed Baxter–a minor character–out of a crowd and not be sure which one was Sue.

Okay, I can do that.

I took out the butt-sex scene, but I need something right there that gives you a good idea of how and why Ben and Sue are together.

Okay, I can do that.

I want to rework the Innana part using not the formulaic thing she says now, but the formulaic thing that comes at the end.

I can do that.

I need to rename a bunch of minor male characters who appear to all have ended up named “John” even though the running joke of the book is that there are so many John Overtons. I need to reduce the non-Overton John population in the manuscript to zero.

Not a problem.

Here’s the problem. I’m not sure about the pacing of about the last third of the book. It just feels off to me. But I’m not sure how, once one knows she has a pacing problem, that one goes about fixing it. If things are happening too fast, do I add more events? Do I leave the number of events but add more description of the events so that it literally takes the reader more time to read about them, thus giving the illusion of things slowing down? How do I tell where to add in these things? And how do I balance that against keeping things suspenseful?

And speaking of suspense? I suck at it. I’m not sure how to fix that, either.

Also, I feel like there are parts of the book that are wonderfully and perfectly strange. And then there are parts of the book that, even as I’m describing obviously strange things, just aren’t. The kite of strangeness does not catch the breeze. It just plummets back to earth. And I don’t know why the strange parts work and the non-strange parts don’t.

I have this idea–which I’m going to act on after I get another load of dishes started (since every piece of silverware I own seems covered in mouse poop)–that I should make an outline. Yes, I have an outline. But I mean, an outline that actually reflects what’s in the book. I wonder if that will give me some sense of where and what my issues are.

The First Rereading

I’m reading the Sue Allen thing in anticipation of my second draft. I thought I would be doing more rewriting on the page, but I’m finding myself just making broad notes about where I’ll need to dig in. So far, I think the biggest issue is that I don’t have a lot of descriptions–of the city, especially, but also of the characters. I still think that I’m going to leave out racial signifiers, though. I’m hoping that it doesn’t come across as an erasure, though. But the thing is that, I realize, even in myself, this tendency to explain away a lot of what happened to enslaved people in the antebellum South with “well, they were black.” And the truth is that it functions as a shorthand for me to kind of skip over what white people were doing and just place it all under the umbrella of “Terrible Racism.”

But in rereading it, I still think that not using descriptors of skin color and only infrequently referring to someone specifically as a slave, undermines my ability to use that shortcut.

I also think that there’s a way in which that kind of sorting allows a lie about the antebellum South to creep in–that it was an okay society except for the things it did to those people. No, the whole society was set up to benefit a very small group of very powerful white men, who would have gladly done to anyone what they did to those people. Everyone’s lives had a kind of shakiness to them.

Plus, you know I think the central sickness to the U.S. practice of slavery–and the rot that still lingers in our country over it–is that this is something men did to their own children. That’s not a central story in my book, but it is a central nugget of truth that permeates–the precariousness of the lives of children to the whims of their parents and the moral rot that comes in a culture where a man can sell his own children.

It’s not in as bad a shape as I thought, though, so that’s good.

Now Here’s a Little Story I’ve Got to Tell About Three Bad Brothers You Know So Well

I remember getting License to Ill for my birthday from my friend, Amy. It was promptly taken away from me–I believe that was the only album my parents forbid me to listen to–and so Amy just make a copy and labeled it something else, and gave me that.

That album is one thing to listen to when you’re young and don’t know anything. When you’re old and don’t know anything, and you know where the samples all came from, it’s good in another way.

I don’t really have anything profound to say. Forty-eight is very young.

Sue Allen’s House

As a reward for having to go to the eye doctor, I went to Sue Allen’s still-standing house, which is now a funeral home. The carriage house is where they prepare the bodies. There’s not much left to give you an idea of what it would be like in Sue’s time–a stained glass window that looks like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a couple of fire places, and the front door are pretty much the only things I thought might have been there when Sue was there.

But it was still pretty damn cool!

Transitions

This morning, I was listening to Lightning 100 as I came into work and it was whoever was subbing for Mary Brace, not the new guy with the gravelly voice, but the guy who sounds like you’d have fond memories of making out with him at a wedding. Someone will know who I mean.

Anyway, he played this song, which I admit to being quite fond of, even though it’s not for me:

And then he played

And it was tremendous. I’ve spent a lot of time listening and reading people talking about music. I’ve even sat here and tried to talk some myself. But I have no vocabulary for this. I have no way of talking about why these songs work so well back to back, why hearing them next to each other is so perfect, but it is. And the thing is that “guy you’d make out with” seemed to have a “whoa” moment after playing them together, like even he was surprised by the power of hearing them right next to each other, like we’d all heard something occult by accident.

I almost drove by the studio and high-fived him, but I thought it would be weird.

And I Feel Fine

I read the other day that 22% of Americans are certain that we are living in the end times. That’s one in five people. Even after the Great Disappointment, even after the fizzle of Y2K, even after all the people who have said “the world is ending right this second” and it never does.

I’ve even heard some folks say that we don’t have to worry about, say, global warming or long-term solutions for social problems, because Jesus is coming.

In other words, we can just shit the bed and then roll around in it, because Jesus is coming with new sheets. You can tell by my metaphor that I don’t believe, even if the world ends on Friday, that Jesus is going to want to hug some of us until after we’ve had four or five showers. I also have grave concerns about His happiness with an attitude of “Oh, that world you gave me? Whatever. I broke it. Where’s my new one?”

But I also just don’t believe that the world is going to end in my lifetime. And I have a pretty low opinion of humanity, so believe me, I am sure we can shit the bed in ways so disturbing that it makes the 20th century look quaint. But that isn’t going to end the world. Even if it ends most of our lives. We are so small and fragile and easily dead. And the world is a huge hunk of rock.

But we Americans have an apocalyptic strain. That can’t be denied. I used to think it was because we thought we were special–the New Jerusalem that would usher in some new order that would pave the way for Jesus’ return. So, hubris, really. We are so special that we must be the ones God’s been waiting for.

And then I wondered if it wasn’t unarticulated guilt–our arrival here did mark the end of life as they knew it for everyone who was here before us. Is it the fact that we caused an apocalypse for Native Americans the driving force that leads us to believe that our world should be destroyed? Guilt and judgment?

But, you know, the truth is that I don’t see a lot of Americans who really think they’re so great or who feel social-justice-y levels of guilt. So, I don’t think either of those things are it.

But I do see a lot of people who are miserable, either in their own lives or with the state of the world, or both. And I think the feeling that we must be living in the end of days is actually a direct statement of a loss of faith that things can go on. A statement about a lack of hope in the future so severe that the end-timer doesn’t actually believe there is a future.

And, honestly, to go back to my point at the beginning, I also think it’s a kind of loss of faith in their belief system. I mean, if you thought the world was ending and Jesus was coming back–if you truly thought that–you would not shit the bed, you would put clean sheets on it and put things in order and give the house a good cleaning. You’d make things ready for your house-guest/landlord.

But the fact that our apocalyptic segment of society is indeed taking a shit-the-bed approach rather than a “woo hoo! My old friend is coming!” approach can only mean that they both believe that the world is ending AND that Jesus won’t show.

And that is a bigger crisis for American Christendom–having a core group of faithful people who, at heart, feel that Jesus will not show for them–than all the folks who drift away or find some other religion.