The Summer

If I were Harold Bloom, one of many protagonists from James Joyce's Ulysses, I'd detail every encounter, every stained hand, or maybe account for those receipts I throw out in my laundry. And as much as I believe that the most beautiful moments in life can happen in little moments such as these, I have, by nature of the form of this publication, this being an online function, which dictates small and concise reports from a particular state of mind, objects, breathing and inanimate, all of these things are more relevant than what some authors might deem mundane.

But this is not that story.

I read that in a short story once, its the tried and tested method of leading a reader down a hole, a passageway, one in which eventually is barricaded by the author, so that the reader, if she were a sheep, wouldn't run out of the wrong gate. But it is late, and this introduction is far too long, it reeks of older literature which does not mimic the syntax of the current mode.

Summer, a time which all teachers look forward to, the calendar year appropriately adjusted so that Summer previously occupies chambers formerly inhabited by Christmas.

But the idea of Summer has been co-opted by classes that truly feast on the marrow of the creative spirit, and that I would find to be complimentary to the courses I am enrolled in.

The teachers droll on and on, and while the content is useful, it would be more suited to a manual that I was required to read and then tested on later preferably posthumously, the human component deemed unnecessary.

But I am living, at the moment, not in my adopted home of Portland,OR but in Tacoma, WA. Firstly let me say that for the record, I like Tacoma, Washington, its quaint, there are views-a-plenty, streets that only the cruelest drafter could bore, and even though the people are really nice, and despite all of this, well, I miss my home.

I feel like Summer as a concept, as a thing has been put on hold. The writing waits to be judged added to the way a prisoner on a hunger strike squires and builds up meals, or the way a vacation rental acquires newspapers, steadily and with great cost.

I am living with people who are fifteen years younger than I. To say we have a different perspective is to make a great understatement. But still, despite all of this I am having a wonderful time.

I have read two books that have spun the top that is my brain this summer, one is a new discovery in the name of Padgett Powell, deemed enfante terrible, by the press, but he did create a most memorable account of growing up in the Antebellum south, specifically in Edisto, South Carolina, a place which I can say I have experiences which not only match up to his, but he paints a portrait that I just want to saddle up and live in.



So Padgett Powell's Edisto and David Gates's Jernigan in which he creates one of the greatest anti-heroes in Western Literature. With the mind of a scholar tethered to an alcoholic's mental electrical system, Jernigan has the mind of a steel trap with the internal terrain of self loathing.


I hope to write more when I return next week. despite a vacation where we will see lots of blue sky, sandy beaches and one of the best performing Shakespeare troupes in the galaxy, as found in Ashland.

Enjoy that marrow of life I talked about earlier, and have an intelligent conversation, if not to act as a counter-weight to my own daily torture as just to have an intelligent conversation, for the mere joy of it.

Wishfully, (no, not really)

Peter Jernigan