Reading at Sullivan's

Wednesday evening, in celebration of the publication of Clear Heart, I gave a reading at Sullivan's Pub in La Honda. Sullivan's is a new and wildly popular place to drink and dine, attracting a typical cross-section of humanity:
The pub is divided into two rooms, one for dining and one for the bar. I read in the bar. The usual suspects were there:
First I read the opening scene of the novel in which Wally is nailed to a rafter and left hanging in the air. Since some in the audience had ordered pizza or fish and chips, I skipped the detailed description of how it feels to hang with a nail through your wrist, the bone popping against the steel shaft and so on. I think they appreciated my discretion. And they seemed to enjoy the drama.

Next, I read the scene in which Opal quizzes Juke, learning that Wally writes a letter to his wife "every forkin' day." It's a somewhat comic situation, and folks laughed at the appropriate places - something you can never count on as an author, and very gratifying to hear. They started echoing the word "forkin'" which was kind of cool.The black pipe near my elbow is the chimney of the wood-burning stove. I was roasting as I read.

It's a little risky for an author to give a reading in a bar as people are getting lubricated. This was no wine-and-cheese literary event. La Honda is more of a sweatshirt and mudboots kind of place with a wonderful mix of people who don't, or won't, fit into the suburbs over the hill even if they could afford the price of housing over there. (Another tavern in La Honda found it necessary to post a sign saying NO CHAINSAWS AT THE BAR.) In the above photo the man on the left is an electrician, the man on the right is the chief technician at a biotech company. Among the 50 or so people crowded into that little bar were carpenters, an acupuncturist, a septic tank installer, a nuclear physicist.

So I learned something. And it's not something every writer can say: Clear Heart is the kind of novel you can read in a bar.

Terry Adams read several poems from his book Adam's Ribs. Thomas Krempertz read a few poems. Everybody says they had a great time. I certainly did. Sullivan's plans to have a Book Night on the first Wednesday of every month featuring local writers. I plan to return and read again. Come on down, have a beer, give a listen. Or read something of your own. You'll find a warm room and a warm crowd.

(A little disclosure: The pictures of the usual suspects were taken on a different night. But they serve as a sampling of this night, too.)

Celebration!

Wednesday, February 4, I'll be celebrating the publication of Clear Heart at Sullivan's Restaurant in La Honda. As a special treat, Susan Walker will join me, and together we'll read a few passages. Susan's voice was the star of the Clear Heart podcast, and it will be fun to read aloud with her in front of a live audience.

Terry Adams will join me in celebration of his book of poetry, Adam's Ribs.

We'll start around 6:30. Trot your horse on down, have a burger or a pizza, a coffee or a beer, and stay for some good reading. This will be fun.

Living With Wood

A neighbor in La Honda tries to share a fence line with an oak tree.

Never Argue with a Redwood Tree

How do you share a redwood forest with the beings to whom it belongs? That is, how do you share living space with the actual trees, their spiritual grandeur, their sheer physical force?

Here's one example. It's the deck outside my front door, built around a young redwood tree. (Young in redwood time - the tree is about 120 years old.) The trunk is a handy place to lean a broom or a piece of firewood, or some old wooden axle hubs and iron rings from pioneer wagon wheels.

At deck height, which is about four feet above the ground, the trunk is five feet in diameter. When I first built the deck, the trunk was about four and a half feet in diameter. I allowed a two inch gap between deck and trunk, figuring a 100 year old tree wouldn't be expanding too quickly.

Wrong.

Ten years later, I had to cut the deck back because it was strangling the trunk.

Five years after that, I had to rebuild the foundation of the deck - and cut the decking farther back - because the tree was not only pushing against the decking but also lifting the foundation several inches out of level. Here's what a redwood tree thinks of maintaining levels, in this case with an eight inch slab of concrete:
The tree will keep expanding in girth and length until it reaches its maximum height in a few hundred years. The height, by the way, is limited at around 300 feet not because of wood strength but because it can't lift water any higher. It's a plumbing problem.

So one accommodates. One accepts that the tree is boss. One schedules rebuilding the deck every ten years or so. And one feels slightly queasy with the knowledge that occasionally one of these trees will drop a branch the size of a mature buckeye tree onto your roof - actually, through your roof. It's happened to me. Roofers are guaranteed steady income around here. One keeps tabs on the health of any trees within reach of the house, as they can come down hard and fast. Next door, twenty years ago my neighbor's house was crushed. One wonders about karma, about justice. One is aware that the decking surrounding this vigorous young tree was built of redwood two-by-sixes milled from some other tree, perhaps a cousin, in some nearby forest.

Hearing them listen

I love reading my work aloud to an audience. In this, I differ from many writers. Also, if I may say so, I'm a darn good reader. Again in this, I differ from many writers.

I learned long ago how much I could improve my writing by reading aloud to an audience and hearing them listen. Hearing when they breathe. When they smile. When they slouch. If you pay attention you can hear line-by-line feedback to your writing. You may learn to your surprise that something you thought was sad is actually funny to the listener; and the funny, sad. I get that a lot. What excites me, bores them. And so on.

Most people hesitate to criticize, so after the reading you hear positive feedback. But while you are reading, you hear the negative. The squirms. The stifled yawns. The coughing. People don't cough when they're being truly entertained (unless they're actually ill). And the shifting of legs, the glancing at wristwatches, leaning forward, sitting straight, the rapt attention or the drifting off, the vacant look - all are part of hearing (and seeing) them listen.

After reading one chapter of Clear Heart last night to about 20 people at Moon News, five people came up and told me they were going to buy the book. Later, I checked with the store. They'd sold two copies.

That's feedback, too.

Reading tonight

I'll be reading at an open mic at Moon News in Half Moon Bay tonight. It starts at 7:30 pm. It will be a warm and well-lit refuge on a dark and rainy night. Y'all come!

Living With Wood

I live in a redwood forest. Here's my house plus the trunks of about a half dozen redwoods. Some of those trunks are 6 feet in diameter. They're about 200 feet tall, heading eventually for 300 if we humans don't screw the place up.

For a better idea of the scale of these trees in proportion to our houses, here's a photo of my neighbor Limey Kay's house:

When I was 7 years old growing up in Maryland, my best friend moved to Palo Alto, California. His family piled into their 1954 Ford sedan and drove away. He sent me postcards as he crossed the country: a buffalo, an Indian chief. And then when he arrived, he sent one final card: a redwood tree that you could drive a car through. From that day on, I ached to see California. They have trees big enough to drive a car through!

It took another 13 years for me to get there - to San Francisco - and it was the Summer of Love. Life was amazing. It took another 11 years for me to find La Honda. In the redwoods. On my quarter acre of land, I have 20 redwood trees ranging from 50 to 150 years old. Expected life span: 1000 to 2000 years.

I don't own these trees. They will still be standing 40 generations after I'm gone. After my house is gone. After all memory of my existence on this planet is gone.

Their patience calms me. Their spirit uplifts me. They are my cathedral and my home. Like the squirrels leaping in their branches, like the chickadees pecking at their cones, like the hawks perched at their crowns, these trees sustain me in my brief passage through life.

Wow. I just realized: After 40 years in California, I still haven't seen a tree you could drive through. Why would anybody want to do that?