Olding like a Pro

Plucking Around for the Week of May 2nd

I am now one of those people who go for a hike before breakfast.

Louie woke me at 4:45AM for food and affection. I can’t really blame him; we went to sleep before 11PM last night, trying to make up for late nights, so his time was off. He’s usually fed around midnight, and on a good day I get to sleep until six. Not this day. I can’t stay angry at this galumphing dingus.

Here he is, lounging comfortably in my duffel, all seventeen tabby pounds of him:

I tried to get back to sleep for an hour, then gave up and went for a hike at Timber Creek. It felt right. And it was nice to walk the trails alone, to listen the birds shriek their morning gossip, sending squirrels and chipmunks scarpering in my wake.

I checked the pond for the beaver, but no luck. I’ve seen the critter once, in winter, but this year I’ve only seen gnawed trees as evidence they are still around. The other day I saw a dozen or more turtles sunning themselves, but they are so skittish that half kerplunked into the water as I approached from the other side of the pond, a hundred or more feet away:

When I hike at lunch or after work, I usually take a headset and listen to a podcast, because it gets crowded and there’s no peace to be found. This morning, I left it at home. It was just me and the woods. And my thoughts, which are often not in the woods.

I can’t remember if it’s Henry David Thoreau or Walt Whitman who I’m paraphrasing here, but I often say to myself, “what business do I have in the woods, if my thoughts are not on the woods?”

This helps keep me from playing with my phone, or worrying about something that can wait, or imagining a confrontation at the bagel shop. Needless to say there was no confrontation at the bagel shop, only a delicious pork roll¹, egg, and cheese on a jalapeño bagel from Sharky’s. The chewy water bagel had nice, large pieces of fresh jalapeño in the dough, one of the best of its kind that I’ve had. You can see it on Instagram if you wish. (I have been told that “food photos are gauche,” and I would hate to commit a high society faux pas.)

I read Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones and loved it. It’s a YA fantasy romance from the ‘80s with a flawed, nontoxic wizard as the object of a cursed, flawed, eldest sister heroine’s desire; but she doesn’t know it. She’s been turned into an elderly washwoman by an evil witch, and escapes to force herself into Howl’s household with his apprentice Michael and fire-demon familiar Calcifer. It’s a delightful, fun, complicated story that was made into a lesser, but equally complex, fun, and twisted film by Hayao Miyazaki. I watched it last night, and while I liked it, I found it wanting in comparison both to the book and to Miyazaki’s original works such as Princess Mononoke. It’s not Studio Ghibli’s worst adaptation; the less said about their mangling of Ursula K. Le Guin’s brilliant A Wizard of Earthsea, the better.

Now I’m reading both Horizon by nature writer legend Barry Lopez, and The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin, a novel that begins with four siblings in ‘60s New York visiting a fortune teller who tells them each the date of their death. They all react differently, and we follow them each in turn. Gripping writing evokes wonder without denying tragedy or wallowing in it, I’m savoring this one. Lopez is a great writer who I’ve only read in short form, and this penultimate book, that was a capstone on a long and storied career, may not have been the best place to start. It is big, and looks back on a life of adventure, trauma, and contemplation. It makes me want to read more Loren Eiseley, a favorite nature and science writer. Or Annie Dillard. And Lopez himself, when he isn’t facing his own mortality, and the consequence of human frailty, as he looks upon a future of authoritarianism and climate catastrophe, that he won’t have to endure, and the rest of us are only beginning to experience.

I’ve planned a few trips, which is a hopeful thing. One is to Necon, the 40th gathering of the Northeastern Writer’s Conference, which is a horror writing convention. It’s one of the most welcoming and inclusive cons that I’ve attended, and I am happy to return. Hopefully with my friend the artist Kim Parkhurst. It’s held in Lowell, Massachusetts this year, which gives me places nearby to explore if I get tired of crowds. I should have an announcement regarding this con but I can’t speak of it yet, but show up if you want to hang or get books signed or both. I’ll be lugging books there.

If you can’t wait until July, I will be signing books at Second Time Books in Mount Laurel on May 28th, with my friend and fellow Jersey author Jen Conley. It’s part of the Rancocas Craft Show, which is always a fun time. The bookshop is one of my favorites, and there’s a BBQ and Tex-Mex joint next door, and you can visit Timbuctoo as well. Follow the link to read my write-up on the historic “lost town” founded by former enslaved, and how they drove off slave-catchers.

Later this year, we’ll be spending time down the Shore² with another couple, which makes me feel like a Real Adult. As a child, I watched Alan Alda and Carol Burnett in The Four Seasons on HBO, and I must have internalized the idea that a yearly vacation with other couples was a signifier of successful adulthood (or at least bougie-as-fuckness). We aren’t skiing in Aspen or renting a yacht, but it should be a relaxing time exploring the barrier islands of the New Jersey Shore on foot and bicycle, which used to be against my religion. I’ll explain that another time, but I became infected with the car-centric, unreasonable hatred of bicyclists that is frighteningly common (at least in the U.S. and U.K.) and being me, I’ve got to write about it.

This Sunday I will be sharing “The Green Manalishi (with the Two-Pronged Crown)³” as the story of the month. It’s the second Joey Cucuzza story. You don’t need to read “The Cucuzza Curse” first, but you can, as it’s free to read online at Tough Crime. Let me know if you like them; I have been dithering over completing the story I began with “A Taste of Cucuzza” and I could use a kick in the ass.

If you need further reading, I really enjoyed these reads this week:

“The Rats Survive,” by Vanessa Micale, as part of Roxane Gay’s emerging writers series. I’ve had pet rats; I still flinch at wild ones. It’s about this, grief, and much more.

Why did it have to be snakes? “Snake Pit” by Lauren Hough is a great read, as is all her posts here. If you haven’t subscribed, you ought to.

“My Mike Tyson” is part one of Joyce Carol Oates’s reckoning with the former heavyweight champion of the world, who she met to interview when he was twenty. My comment on her post is my commentary on the man and the matter.

Boxing? What about foxing? Apparently, sometimes foxes also need to rub their itchy tuchus on the earth’s living room rug, and it is both hilarious and horrifying to behold.

Enjoy your weekend. Happy Mother’s Day to all who deserve to be celebrated.

1. I am now officially a South Jerseyan, and cannot refer to the delicious ham of John Taylor by its northern sobriquet any longer.

2. This New Jersey colloquialism is pronounced “down the shaw.”

3. A reference to the Fleetwood Mac song of the same name, the cover by Judas Priest, and all it entails.