The Elementary Shorty Harris (Road Notes)...

[mnaz]

Shorty Harris roamed the Bullfrog Hills of southern Nevada for years, living on borrowed time. He went forth with canteen and whiskey jug, mainly after a quiet slope with a big-sky view, I suspect. But he had a nose for precious metals, in part because he knew rudimentary geology, but in greater part because he loved those hills.... he loved to be out there. His big strike-- his great gold ledge-- was tucked inside a plain ripple; one of millions. It must have been pure instinct, or heightened accuity of the senses, which grows when noise is put on a shelf for a good, long while....

Shorty Harris was useless to any sort of sensible enterprise, except that his nose for valuable ore launched the robust Bullfrog boom of 1904. He filed his claims promptly, with little or no intent to ever work them.... he was more a fan of dry heat and windswept earth.... he didn't want to miss any of it. When money or whiskey ran low, he sold a claim to bring himself flush, and then returned to the hills. He thrived on borrowed time. He understood the music of basin and range, and received it as high profit. He was onto something powerfully elementary, I suspect.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

I enjoyed a thoughtful bourbon at the Comet Motel out on old 66, several-hundred mile markers ago, where I sat by the window and managed to slow my runaway fever.... enough to savor authentic rusted neon and black sky sheen.... alternative medicine, with which I am prone to experiment from time to time.

I had a flood of inspiration, but I couldn't find a pen to write it down. I rifled through my travel bag, glove box, tire iron box, under the seats.... Nothing. And I had made such a point to pack an inexhaustible supply for this type of occasion....

Certainly, the road is no place for redemption. The road is a self-interested, self-absorbed Church of Motion, unduly devoted to its arbitrary scriptures of trajectory.... God, the ceaseless motion.... And it stole by bag of cheap pens when I needed it most. So I had another thoughtful bourbon, perhaps two, as I pondered how many internal-combustion addicts may have been saved from their motion-sickness by the Gideons, over the years.... Genesis following Exodus....

I located a pen in the nightstand drawer and set it to paper, but by then it was too late.... "Zip zip drive, down to your address, reboot your stuck memory, watch an overrated paradox unfold, live report brow moisture, pure water, more pure than the bastard wearing it, who spelled out what was pure"..... It went on and on: miles of passionate, wave-like gibberish for my perusal, next morning. My scrawl lurched across page after page.... which is to say: The window can be short, and the dosage, tricky. So keep a ten-cent pen at the ready..... See to it.

[Zlatko Waterman]

mnaz:


This piece (is):


Impelled forward by the usual right series of hunches and maverick impulsions: "ripple" "tucked" AND diction . . .

This is good writing by any measurement.

There is a chipped-away lapidary, yet deeply riven stream of calm flowing through these notes.

I admire the way you can conjure a hectic surface ( the content) and still galvanize that to a competent, "hammer-in-its right -loop-on-the-leather-belt" sense of managing your stream of careful diction.

If this is all intuition, then you have a gift.

This many right hunches would take me fifty revisions.


Zlatko

Addendum:


Two nice sentences I've read lately you might appreciate:


"They set a SLAMHOUND on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair."

--William Gibson, "Count Zero"



"The grasp weakens; the climb is eternal, equal in horror to the final ascent of the Tower of St. Anne at Limehouse, when the wind revenges itself on your presumption, cutting through the sharpened angles of hieratic masonry."

--Iain Sinclair, "Downriver."

[hester_prynne]

Yep, I agree with Zlatko, this is, again, great writing, enjoyable reading.

I would venture to say, that whatever it was you may think you lost, having no pen at hand that night, certainly comes through here anyway.......

redemptive reading.
I dig it alot.
H

[mnaz]

Wow.... thanks Z., Hest...

Sometimes it fits together.... into the flow, so to speak.

These are essentially some unrelated, leftover notes, pieced together.... both of these subjects reach fairly deep into me, these days.... I identify with Shorty Harris.... sometimes I am him, though I have yet to find gold..... of course, I never actually look for it, out there. The Bullfrog District is not far from the present-day town of Beatty, Nevada. They are still taking ore from those hills, to this day....

And as for life on the road.... it has to end soon.... the stream of calm is flowing over and around a barely-concealed contempt for this rootlessness, which comes through at times....