The Dredge Cycle

Estuary Dredge?

I encoun­tered a word late last week I didn’t know: estu­ary. It’s got me think­ing about the title of the sister’s sec­tion. Ini­tially I started call­ing it Trib­u­tary, as a kind of default title; almost a joke between Pat and me. It seemed appro­pri­ate  –  a join­ing of the other two sec­tions  –  and reader Ben Bormann’s point was so com­pellingly insight­ful I kept it. But now there’s some real com­pe­ti­tion. Let’s looks at the def­i­n­i­tions, cour­tesy of dictionary.com (which is care­ful enough for our pur­poses): Trib­u­taries. Trib­u­tary –noun 1. a…

Very Important Statement

The bur­dens of force-​​fitting lift when you real­ize who’s who (and thus who’s falling for whom). One degree shifts on the kalei­do­scope; align­ment; the six-​​month headache of extra­ne­ous char­ac­ters was never there.

Chekhov’s Gun: +1.

Next Levels of Dramatic Irony

Your expe­ri­ence as a stan­dard reader: Toward the end of Pat’s ren­di­tion of Weetamoo’s diary, the sachem-​​​​to-​​​​be is finally called for her adult­hood rite. The year is 1654. She’s been antic­i­pat­ing it most of the book; she’ll spend sev­eral days and nights in a sweat­lodge, tend­ing a fire and wait­ing for con­tact from the non­ma­te­r­ial world. In her two visions, a deer she’d uncer­e­mo­ni­ously killed leads her through the win­ter night to an impor­tant fish­ing area to the Pocas­set, down­stream from a water­fall. The sec­ond night, the deer…

One at a Time, Please

This week­end I decided to make the sis­ter the only speaker in Trib­u­tary Dredge. She’s cer­tainly inter­est­ing enough for her own sec­tion, and it’ll be really excit­ing to see what she does with it. Four con­se­quences from this one sim­ple change: The mid­dle brother’s poems cur­rently slated for Trib­u­tary will have to be mas­saged into Fresh­wa­ter, and Fresh­wa­ter itself will have to change some to accept them. Maybe this will involve more event-​​​​based con­nec­tions with Well­wa­ter, too. Excit­ing. Only one speaker in Trib­u­tary will make a much…

Seven Poems Planned

It’s Jan­u­ary 8, and I’ve writ­ten two of the seven poems I swore I’d have first drafts of by the end of Decem­ber. Sounds like ahead of sched­ule to me. This lat­ter one, though. It’s from the middle-​​​​brother (Fresh­wa­ter)‘s per­spec­tive. I haven’t writ­ten in his voice in a WHILE, and the last time I did, I didn’t real­ize what dis­tin­guished his from mine, or from his sib­lings’. What char­ac­ter­izes him, as best I fig­ure, is an airi­ness. Room for reflec­tion, even as things are hap­pen­ing. Compared…

Redemption

Just now, read­ing Sex at Dawn in the Captain’s Chair in the liv­ing room, I had one of those Impor­tant Moments. A few years back a friend asked if and how my writ­ing redeems its dark premises. While I stared through the wall, he sug­gested “beauty.” That answer always sounded like a copout. The words can dress the sub­ject ten­derly, but the sub­ject remains dark, bit­ter, dis­turb­ing. Untrans­formed. But all this talk of humans fight­ing and caging our sex­u­al­ity by insti­tu­tion­al­ized “pair bonding”  –  on top of making…

Flintstonization

I’ve been read­ing Sex at Dawn: The Pre­his­toric Ori­gins of Mod­ern Sex­u­al­ity. Along the path to claim­ing that humans are really bad at monogamy, authors Ryan and Jethá make a very impor­tant point about fram­ing and per­spec­tive: we can’t pro­duc­tively cast old worlds in the mold of the present. It’s like tem­po­ral hege­mony. In the same way we can’t pro­duc­tively look to other cul­tures exclu­sively through the moral frame of our own, we can’t the­o­rize about ear­lier ones with cur­rent behav­ior pat­terns as a guide.…

I miss you, Pat

I’m read­ing my late editor’s Wee­t­a­moo (pro­nounced Weh-​​​​táh-​​​​moh) book, Heart of the Pocas­sets. It’s a heavily-​​​​researched, 95% imag­ined diary of the Pocas­set sachem at 14. Pat wrote it for Scholas­tic, for those lucky eighth-​​​​graders with an Indian His­tory unit. It’s sim­ple and refresh­ing, if light-​​​​weight for my needs. An easy lit­tle recap after the over-​​​​saturated and dis­turb­ing Mayflower. Weetamoo’s par­ents man­date that she find time each day to learn patience. Because the his­tor­i­cal Wee­t­a­moo didn’t read or write (her cul­ture didn’t use those tech­nolo­gies) it’s a…

Tributary by January

I live across the fence from a Coun­try Club neigh­bor­hood; the houses after dark remind me of Trick or Treat­ing in sixth grade. That year, some kids were egging houses, and at the top of a lawn-​​​​hill, in the dark, I caught one in the back of the head. Every­one, includ­ing the guy whose front door we were demand­ing candy at, thought it was hys­ter­i­cal. Except for me. But the guy gave me a sweet t-​​​​shirt  –  for a pseudo frat, called Das Haus; tagline: “If you…

So Many Questions

Almost done with Mayflower. Help­ing me: I know a tremen­dous amount more about the region and the 17^th cen­tury than when I started. Not help­ing me: the absence of infor­ma­tion about the area I’m most inter­ested in. This morn­ing I’m look­ing for a map (or five) of tribal lands in 1605 (and 1620, 1650, 1675, 1690). I just want to know the names of what and who the hell I’m look­ing for. This absence of acces­si­ble infor­ma­tion may be a core moti­va­tion of my book, but…