Michael Amos Cody's Blog, page 4

Saturday Song Stories (on Sunday): “This Is Not All”

“This Is Not All” is a new song that has been with me for a while. In fact, I’ve had much of it written for several years, so I suppose it’s more accurate to say that it’s a newly completed song. It’s so newly completed that I haven’t even learned it yet. Still, that didn’t stop me from trying to play it at a recent gig on the Barnett Patio. I flubbed a bunch of it, especially toward the end, but it’s now out there in the world. I’ll continue to work on the music, but I feel like the lyrics are finished and say what I want them to say.

The first verse began with hiking a trail—going on a ramble, as my friend Scott Honeycutt calls it. The lines borrow some sentiments from Emerson, Thoreau, and Dickinson (and many others, I’m sure). We too often go out into nature, as Emerson and Thoreau caution us, looking for the big payoff in the scenery—a dramatic waterfall, the colors of autumn leaves, the mountaintop view of distance (even to the moon). Emerson writes in “Beauty,” the third chapter of Nature, “Go out of the house to see the moon, and ’tis mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey.”

But the trail offers much at which to wonder that is seen only if we turn our eyes away from the big picture, away from the big expectations, and look down—not necessarily down, but just look.

Not all the wonder along the trail
is to be found in woods and sky—
look closer.
It’s the tiny frog hidden in clover
and that creature in the dust with a hundred legs or more.
It’s in how I find my way home
and that flower I never noticed by the door.

I like the last two lines in particular. Have you ever thought about how wonderful it is that you can—as long as you have a sound mind—find your way home? And you probably know many different ways to get home. Consider the Keb’ Mo’ song “More Thank One Way Home.” Take that as realistically or metaphorically as you wish.

As for the last line, Emily Dickinson writes in her poem 446 (Franklin; “This was a Poet”) that the poet

Distills amazing sense
From Ordinary Meanings –
And Attar* so immense

From the familiar species
That perished by the Door –
We wonder it was not Ourselves
Arrested it – before –

(*Attar = fragrance)

Here, Dickison suggests—as Emerson does in his essay “The Poet”—that the poet (or the poetic eye) sees the richness, even the strangeness and wonder, in the familiar. Although those without the poet’s vision are subject to a kind of “ceaseless Poverty,” we still have the potential to understand and be enriched through that vision. That is, once the poet points out the wonder in the “familiar species / That perished by the Door”—”that flower I never noticed by the door”—we are enriched second-hand.

The second verse of “This Is Not All” sticks with wonder and the wonderful:

Not all the wonder along the way
is waiting somewhere far ahead—
look closer.
A little boy runs in cape and mask,
another stands shirtless in a barnyard banging a drum.
A little girl learns to cartwheel,
And another stands by the road and sticks out her thumb.

The idea here is that when we travel, whether on the road or trail or metaphorically through life, we often let the destination or goal loom so large in our minds that we ignore or lose sight of what is wonderful “along the way.” Consider the old adage that the journey is more important than the destination. The “little boy” is my son Raleigh, who had a vivid imagination and a love of costume.

The image of the other boy is from my travels at some point some years ago. I was driving in Indiana or Illinois or Iowa—somewhere with corn to the horizon. Just off the interstate was a large farmhouse, a big barn to the right of it (in the background, corn to the horizon from which a storm approached). In the barnyard, this kid—a teenager, at least—sat behind a full drum set and seemed in the middle of a massive rock ‘n’ roll show drum solo. A vivid, amazing scene!

The cartwheeling and hitchhiking girls are less real images than they are contrasts in innocence and experience, security and danger. But each of these has in it an element of wonder.

The song takes a dark turn to look at evil. The third verse recognizes that we leave ourselves open to the threatening workings of evil if we believe that it exists only in obvious places—”the terrorist and thief.”

Not all the evil in the world
is in the terrorist and thief—
look closer.
It’s in the thousand faces of ignorance—
political and corporate and religious.
It’s in the hate and hunger
and the trumped-up fights that pit them against us.

Ignorance is possibly the worst evil in our world today. Many of us seem to be getting to the point where we can’t see anything except through the lenses of ignorance, rage, and prejudice, our desire to win at all cost (while too ignorant to count the ultimate cost), our desire to “own” ______ [insert your fear/hate here], the devotion of our time and minds and hearts to conspiracy (which even if real probably has little to do with you and your little you might brighten). Charles Dickens wrote in his last scene with the Ghost of Christmas Present about “a boy and girl” that Scrooge spots hiding under the skirts of the Ghost’s robe, children [y]ellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish. . . .” When Scrooge asks if they are the children of the Ghost of Christmas Present, the spirit answers,

“‘They are Man’s. . . . And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it! . . . Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end!'”

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol

In our devaluing of education and of ourselves along with it, we have opened the door wide to all sorts of evil. The ignorant parents and grandparents and legislators slander teachers as misleading and “indoctrinating” their students. The ignorant revel in their ignorance as their badge of difference from the educated and the expert. (This is what Dickens refers to when he writes, “Admit it for your factious [that is, divisive] purposes, and make it worse!”). Thomas Jefferson—author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence—wrote elsewhere that “the spirit of the people [is not] infallible” and we “will become . . careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims.” I think the “single zealot” is now among us in Donald Trump, who is Dickens’s boy Ignorance personified. Beware! “Deny it” and experience the “Doom” he brings.

And yet perhaps there is still goodness. Fear and hate cannot survive honest expressions of love between people, between peoples, between us. Someone who becomes friends with—who comes to love—that which is feared, be it a skin color or a faith system or an identity (LGBTQ+) or whatever, usually finds it difficult, if not impossible, to fear and hate the person that has now become, to them, a human being—recognizing another as a human being, as a child of God (if you will). And that’s what it’s about, I think, opening up of ourselves to see the humanity in everybody. It is in this recognition and love that fear and hate begin to wither and die for lack of nourishment.

That said, I suspect we’re too far gone into ignorance—and an arrogance that prevents us from recognizing our ignorance—to survive.

Still, for the song, I lifted up my mind and heart and wrote a bridge and a fourth verse and tied it all together with a refrain “This Is Not All,” which first appears after the second verse and then repeats after the third and at the end.

The means of control are more than out of our hands—
they’re far beyond our reach.
But we can love,
and love’s the root and height of all
and love’s the root and height of each.

Not all the goodness in the world
is to be found in church and child—
look closer.
It’s in the unshackled hearts that lift us
high above the right or wrong or Right or Left—
my friend’s warm hand in mine
and true emotions honestly expressed.

This is not all, no, this is not all!
Out there is more than we can own,
more than we can protect.
This is not all, no, this is not all!
Out there is more than can be known,
so much more than we expect.
This is not all!

This Is Not All

Not all the wonder along the trail
is to be found in woods and sky—
look closer.
It’s the tiny frog hidden in clover
and that creature in the dust with a hundred legs or more.
It’s in how I find my way home
and that flower I never noticed by the door.

Not all the wonder along the way
is waiting somewhere far ahead—
look closer.
A little boy runs in cape and mask,
another stands shirtless in a barnyard banging a drum.
A little girl learns to cartwheel,
And another stands by the road and sticks out her thumb.

This is not all, no, this is not all!
Out there is more than we can own,
more than we can protect.
This is not all, no, this is not all!
Out there is more than can be known,
so much more than we expect.
This is not all!

Not all the evil in the world
is in the terrorist and thief—
look closer.
It’s in the thousand faces of ignorance—
political and corporate and religious.
It’s in the hate and hunger
and the trumped-up fights that put them against us.

This is not all, no, this is not all!
Out there is more than we can own,
more than we can protect.
This is not all, no, this is not all!
Out there is more than can be known,
so much more than we expect.
This is not all!

The means of control are more than out of our hands—
they’re far beyond our reach.
But we can love,
and love’s the root and height of all
and love’s the root and height of each.

Not all the goodness in the world
is to be found in church and child—
look closer.
It’s in the unshackled hearts that lift us
high above the right or wrong or Right or Left—
my friend’s warm hand in mine
and true emotions honestly expressed.

This is not all, no, this is not all!
Out there is more than we can own,
more than we can protect.
This is not all, no, this is not all!
Out there is more than can be known,
so much more than we expect.
This is not all!

June 12 — “the 12th of June”

Wishing a happy birthday to Leesa! Age is just a number (for the most part — excepting the odd pain here and there), and she doesn’t look or act her age in all the best ways!

This year, I gave her what I gave her last year — tickets so see and hear Keb’ Mo’! (We saw him with Lane and Raleigh in Boone last year. This year the two of us saw him in Morganton.

Kevin wished Leesa a happy birthday from the stage of CoMMA (City of Morganton Municipal Auditorium) and played a song she’d requested via text: Hand It Over. As Leesa said, “It brought the house down!”

He also ended the show — maybe the next to last song — with Leesa’s other favorite, a song that you could easily imagine he wrote about her: She Just Wants to Dance!

And here’s a little something in celebration of her from her other favorite singer/songwriter: Soulmates!

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Anthologies

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I’m late to this anthology party, but I’m glad to be here finally and having fun.

What party? Again, I’m late to this, but it seems that a whole new world of opportunities has opened for creative writers of fiction (flash fiction and short stories), poems, and creative nonfiction (again, flash and short). The literary and not-so-literary magazines were once about the only places I could go to try and publish my short stories individually, but now I’ve sat up and taken notice of several anthologies looking for material that I might’ve already written or might yet write.

I’ve had a couple of gratifying successes so far. . . .

Every year, Bouchercon (aka the World Mystery Convention) publishes an anthology of traditional crime stories set in or related to the city hosting that year’s meeting. This year, Bouchercon 2024 meets in Nashville, TN. So, I took an old song of mine — “I Could Be the One” — and used it as a prop in a story about theft of intellectual property on Music Row. The story was accepted! The anthology titled Tales of Music, Murder and Mayhem: Bouchercon Anthology 2024 will be released by late August. Here’s a link to the now closed call for submissions I responded to. Every year, the Bouchercon anthology benefits a charity local to the host city, and this year, sales of the anthology will benefit Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. And get this — Dolly is writing the introduction! More on this anthology as the publication date comes nearer.

One thing I think is cool about “I Could Be the One” is that it turned out to be a prequel to my novel Streets of Nashville, forthcoming from Madville Publishing in April 2025. More on that soon as well.

My next anthology success will appear in Madville‘s Wild Wind: Poems and Stories Inspired by the Songs of Robert Earl Keen, coming in November 2024. Here’s just a bit about what’s in it: “The poems and short stories here are each inspired by Keen’s songs, some expansions of themes of Keen’s songs, others move in creative directions suggested by the characters in his work.” I found a Keen song called “Carolina” and built from its lyrics a story of the same name. Keen’s lyrical story is set in Asheville, NC, and includes hints of sleepwalking and murder. I had some fun adapting some of my scholarly interest in Charles Brockden Brown — his use of somnambulism and a couple of his character names — into a piece of crime noir.

(Not sure if that’s the official cover pictured)

In addition to these two successes, I have two hopefuls out there — one “on submission,” as they say in the biz, and one I’ve just begun writing. I’ve already submitted “Pontiac” in response to Cowboy Jamboree Press’s call for an anthology to be called Texas Wind, intended to be a collection of creative nonfiction and fiction “incited” by Texas-based songwriters such as Guy Clark, Keen, Nanci Griffith, Jerry Jeff Walker, Steve Earle, and others. My story is based on Lyle Lovett’s song by the same name from his 1987 album of the same name (his second album). Here’s hoping! (If you’re writing and have something that might work for Texas Wind, submissions are supposed to be accepted up until August 1, 2024.)

The other hopeful will be — I have only a couple of ideas and a couple of paragraphs so far — submitted to the Bouchercon 2025 anthology call for submission. The meeting will take place in New Orleans, LA, so the stories should be set in or related to the Crescent City. I read a lot about that area in James Lee Burke‘s Dave Robicheaux novels, not that I’m going to do anything other than be inspired by Burke’s magnificent prose. Again, I have only a couple of paragraphs, which I like, but I haven’t found a story yet. I’m thinking about my Dr. John Riddle, Professor of English from Runion State University, who is in New Orleans for a literary conference. Something bad’s going to happen, I guess.

As you can tell from my experiences above, these are generally themed anthologies. They’re organized around a central idea or subject. For example, the call for submissions might be for an anthology of stories related to a particular place or a particular genre or a particular person and so on. And these are often the brainchildren of smaller presses — that is, not something the big publishing houses are interested in.

Here are some examples:

Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology from my heroes at Madville Publishing. Here’s a bit about what’s inside: “54 poets’ takes on often-unsung facets of this diamond in a rhinestone world—calling in Dolly’s impeccable comedic timing, her lyric mastery, her business acumen, and her Dollyverse advocacy.” Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology from Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (Vintage), introduced by the amazing Stephen Graham Jones. Check this out: “a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.” Burning Down the House: Crime Fiction Incited by the Songs of the Talking Heads from Shotgun Honey. Here’s what’s inside and why: “A charity anthology to benefit the fight against climate change, . . . a dazzling exploration of what crime fiction can entail — deftly mixing grimy crime, small-town grit lit, literary noir, and tales that blend crime with speculative fiction, sci-fi, road trip comedy, magical realism, and horror.” Also from Shotgun Honey, Thicker Than Water , “tales featuring female protagonist who navigate the precarious boundaries of the darker spaces of humanity,” created and sold to support breast cancer research. Motel: An Anthology , from the folks at Cowboy Jamboree Press. Several of my X friends have pieces in Motel. Here’s bit about what’s inside and why: “On lost, lonely highways, deep in the American heartlands and skirting the shady edges of cities, once ubiquitous motels have faded, some into ruin, others transformed from way station to permanent residence. MOTEL captures the heartbreak, desperation and indeed magic of motels.” Bishop Rider Lives: An Anthology of Retribution and from the folks at Down & Out Books. Beau Johnson’s Bishop Rider lives again in the former: “The fifteen stories in this anthology both brand new tales and written by some of the biggest names working in crime fiction and horror today. . . . Come for the rage, stay for the dismemberment. See how a dead man makes them burn.” And in the latter, “These twelve tales interpret shady pasts, dubious presents, and doomed futures. There’s no hiding inside a hall of rock and sand from stories as deliciously wicked and terrifically twisty as the jazz-rock noir that inspired them.”

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Matthew 6:24

He is a man of
deep ignorance,
extravagant arrogance,
blatant immorality,
and no heartfelt convictions
(not counting those thirty-four, of course).
—

He is a man who cares nothing
about you or me,
about our lives in America,
or
about America itself.
—

He is a celebrity and nothing more,
a third-rate stand-up comedian.
He is the leader of a cult known as his “base”
(consider the adjectival meanings of base).
—

He has captured the devotion of that base
with a slogan (MAGA),
a ridiculous little dance,
and lies as big or small as needed.
—

If you support the man
after his conviction on thirty-four felony counts,
after he has attacked women,
attacked immigrants (fleeing to the United States–
not to take your jobs
but to find, they hope, better lives),
attacked those with disabilities,
and attacked anybody or said anything
he thought might get him some applause,
then I can’t help thinking that,
at some level,
you are like him.

Song Stories: “I Could Be the One”

I don’t think “I Could Be the One” is among my best songs. I like the chorus really well, musically and lyrically, but I’m not wild about either the verses or the bridge. I wrote it back in the 1980s as one of my few attempts to write something commercial for Nashville.

I was rarely any good at such attempts.

Recently, however, in my expanded creative life writing fiction, I was able to borrow that good chorus from the song and use it in a short story that I also titled “I Could Be the One.”

Here’s the chorus as I revised it for the short story . . .

I could be the lover of your dreams
I could be the stitch to bind your seams
I could be strong when your strength is gone
I could be the one
When the nights are cold and you’re so blue
You need somebody warm to hold on to
Girl, don’t you run to no midnight sun
I could be the one

I wrote the story in response to a call for contributions to an anthology that is likely to be pretty widely read, and I was blown away when I received the acceptance email. As Agatha Christie famously said, “Well, here’s to crime” (that’s a red herring).

I also made the story a prequel to my next novel, Streets of Nashville, which Madville Publishing will release on April 15, 2025. To learn a bit more about the process leading up to the contract for Streets, check out my query letter via the great Alex Kenna‘s blog that features samples of this important step in the publication process.

While I can’t say much more about the short story yet (contract pending), I’m terrifically excited about where it is ending up. I hope you’ll read it if you get a chance.

More later!

I Could Be the One

I have watched you be deceived by men with silver tongues
Their pretty lies just go straight to you heart
And I have wished it could be me that you run to in the night
Oh, I would hold you and never let you fall apart

I could be the pleasure in your dreams
I could be the stitch that binds your seems
I could be strong when your strength is gone
I could be the one

When you go to bed at night, do you lie awake and cry,
Wondering why true love is so hard to find?
If I had the nerve, girl, I would walk right up to you
And let you know the love you’re looking for is mine

I could be the pleasure in your dreams
I could be the stitch that binds your seems
I could be strong when your strength is gone
I could be the one

Some night in this lonely town
I’m gonna be there when you turn around
Maybe then you’ll finally see
That I’m right on time with the love you need

I could be the pleasure in your dreams
I could be the stitch that binds your seems
I could be strong when your strength is gone
I could be the one
When the nights are long and you’re so blue
And you need someone to hold on to
Girl, don’t you run to no midnight sun
I could be the one

P.S. Here’s the initial catalog entry for Streets of Nashville . . .

American Decay I

I’ve lived in the United States of America for sixty-five years. I’ve been teaching American literature for the last twenty-seven of those.

My American lit surveys–particularly the sophomore-level general education version–begin with indigenous creation stories and trickster tales before moving to the letters of Cristoforo Colombo, i.e., Christopher Columbus. From there, it’s on to the writings of Bartolomé de Las Casas and the American Puritans (including those we typically style as “Pilgrims”). My students and I then read from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, usually winding up the semester with poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.

Having gone through some portion of these writings–in both undergraduate and graduate courses–every semester, I have come to believe that the one consistent American experience is that of decay, in all its not-so-varied noun and verb meanings:

to decline in health, strength, or vigorto fall into ruinto decline from a sound or prosperous conditionrotgradual decline in strength, soundness, or prosperity or in degree of excellence or perfectiondestruction, death; Merriam-Webster identifies this meaning as “obsolete,” but I think we have a good shot at bringing it back

The United States of America has decayed to the extent that it’s no longer even half of what it thinks itself to be. And if the USA is supposed to be–as it thinks it is–God’s gift to the world, it is now a cheap knock-off of the nation initially imagined, of the nation it might have been if it’d been able to live up to its own ideals and fend off the inevitable decay.

As Emily Dickinson wrote,

I reason, we could die–
The best Vitality
Cannot excel Decay,
But, what of that?

–SECOND STANZA OF HER POEM 403

American Decay

I’ve lived in the United States of America for sixty-five years. I’ve been teaching American literature for the last twenty-seven of those.

My American lit surveys–particularly the sophomore-level general education version–begin with indigenous creation stories and trickster tales before moving to the letters of Cristoforo Colombo, i.e., Christopher Columbus. From there, it’s on to the writings of Bartolomé de Las Casas and the American Puritans (including those we typically style as “Pilgrims”). My students and I then read from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, usually winding up the semester with poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.

Having gone through some portion of these writings–in both undergraduate and graduate courses–every semester, I have come to believe that the one consistent American experience is that of decay, in all its not-so-varied noun and verb meanings:

to decline in health, strength, or vigorto fall into ruinto decline from a sound or prosperous conditionrotgradual decline in strength, soundness, or prosperity or in degree of excellence or perfectiondestruction, death; Merriam-Webster identifies this meaning as “obsolete,” but I think we have a good shot at bringing it back

The United States of America has decayed to the extent that it’s no longer even half of what it thinks itself to be. And if the USA is supposed to be–as it thinks it is–God’s gift to the world, it is now a cheap knock-off of the nation initially imagined, of the nation it might have been if it’d been able to live up to its own ideals and fend off the inevitable decay.

As Emily Dickinson wrote,

I reason, we could die–
The best Vitality
Cannot excel Decay,
But, what of that?

–SECOND STANZA OF HER POEM 403

3rd Saturday Song Stories: “Sense of Wonder”

A few years ago (never mind how many), Leesa and I drove to DC to spend a couple of days in the city and take in a Keb’ Mo’ concert while there. Leesa has developed a friendship with Kevin—we get to call him Kevin—over the years (and I’m part of it by proxy), so as is usual for us, we got to go backstage after the show to say hello. As we stood outside his dressing room, Kevin introduced us to his co-star for the evening, who was none other than Taj Mahal. But another less recognizable face was there that evening, and Kevin introduced us to him as well. (Leesa likes to say Kevin introduced us as if we were just as famous as anybody else, which is his generous nature.) That other face belonged to David Brooks, who is a conservative political and cultural commentator whose writing appears often in the New York Times.

Having met Mr. Brooks in that way, I tend to notice his writing when it crosses my field of vision. This past week I saw his name on the NYT Sunday Opinion page. His beautiful essay, which I hope you will read via the link, is titled “How to Stay Sane in Brutalizing Times.” The essay walks us through some “tragic” (in a good way) dispositions of sensibility and mentality, and Brooks summarizes his purpose like this:

I’m trying to describe a dual sensibility—becoming a person who learns humility and prudence from the Athenian tradition, but also audacity, emotional openness and care from the Jerusalem tradition.

His use of the adjective tragic doesn’t seem intended to relate exactly to its meaning in the catastrophes of ancient Greek dramatic tragedy, in which some great hero is ultimately destroyed—or at least brought low—by some fatal flaw such as pride. No, Brooks uses tragic in a less bombastic, less catastrophic sense. What he suggests here is that we look at the world and ourselves in realistic and humble ways, that we live prudently and not arrogantly, that we keep ourselves open to the good and the bad that will come our way and not close ourselves off as being above or beyond the reach of our need and that of others, of relationship, of our humanity in common with all.

One key idea Brooks offers is that our tendency to separate, our increasing tendency to rage, our tendency to dehumanize—desensitize us to the world in which we live. And in our desensitized state, we lose track of the wondrous beauty in nature and in each other. When we could be expanding, growing individually and communally, we are instead contracting into tight balls of rage, anger, and—the root of these—fear.

Such a state of being wadded up tight leaves us unable reach out to others, to feel with and for them, to feel sorry for ourselves for the right reasons such as the joy and fellowship and discovery we’re missing. This also is present in Brooks’s essay, probably nowhere more so than this paragraph:

. . . most people — maybe more than you think — are peace- and love-seeking creatures who are sometimes caught in bad situations. The most practical thing you can do, even in hard times, is to lead with curiosity, lead with respect, work hard to understand the people you might be taught to detest.

This passage, especially its phrase “lead with curiosity,” made me decide to focus this 3rd Saturday Song Story on “Sense of Wonder,” a song I wrote with Mark Chesshir sometime back in the late 1980s. I don’t remember the exact division of labor, but my guess is that Mark wrote most of the music while I wrote most of the words.

Here’s the first verse, sung over an appropriately B-minor chord progression:

A rose, unnoticed, blooms and dies to bloom again—
So many such gifts return to Sender unopened.
Calendar days fly off the wall in whirling wind,
And still the journal lays, blank pages from beginning to end.

Somewhere along my journey to becoming an English professor, I learned that the journal “lies” instead of “lays,” but setting that aside, I like the image of a natural world—embodied in the rose—full of amazing events that fail to amaze us because—busy and distracted—we pay so little attention. I also like the images of the flying calendar days I remember seeing in old TV shows and movies and the journal pages flipping through in the same whirlwind.

Next comes the second section of the first verse:

The treadmill world is small—
No place for standing tall—
Where the heart is a sleeping giant
To be feared and kept tied up.

I’m particularly fond of the image of the heart as like Gulliver among the Lilliputians. Do we fear our hearts and the acts of feeling, caring, and courage they are all capable of leading us into?

The chorus will grow as the song continues. This first chorus is short: “Racing the rain and chased by the thunder, / Hold on to a sense of wonder.” We threw in the “oh-way-oh” to mimic the moaning voices of those working through enslavement and imprisonment.

Here’s the two halves of the second verse:

The spark of childhood put away with childish things
Leaves the good life tasteless and in need of some leavening.
Look to the magic of youth—
The no-holds-barred search for truth.
The heart is a sleeping giant.
Take a chance and wake it up.

Do we take 1 Corinthians 13:11-12 a little too literally? A capacity for joy — a sense of wonder — enriches our lives no matter how old we become. Both positive and negative examples of this are all around us in the people we share family and community with.* One of the ways in which an energetic, youthful sense of wonder can be realized — perhaps the main way — is to “take a chance” and wake up our hearts, unbind them, and let them rise.

The second chorus is longer:

Oh-way-oh — racing the rain and chased by the thunder—
Oh-way-oh — walking the world and stalked by the hunger—
Oh-way-oh — senses dull from the attack they’re under—
Oh-way-oh — hold on to a sense of wonder.

I like these lines. Even more so than back yonder in the 1980s, our senses are constantly under attack, pummeled by media of all kinds and the excessive drama that all of it seems to wield in ever more dangerous ways. Our senses are drowning in information and misinformation “supposed to fire [our] imagination” when it in fact robs us of imagination, one of the main gifts that should be original in each of us.

And yet the rose continues its amazing cycle of life, which is the idea behind the song’s short bridge:

It is not for things to wonder at that we lack
In this catch-as-catch-can struggle with the hourglass.**

We must raise our gaze from our navels (or anybody else’s navel) and take in the world — move through the world — with a sense of wonder.

Sense of Wonder

A rose, unnoticed, blooms and dies to bloom again—
So many such gifts return to Sender unopened.
Calendar days fly off the wall in whirling wind,
And still the journal lays, blank pages from beginning to end.
The treadmill world is small—
No place for standing tall—
Where the heart is a sleeping giant
To be feared and kept tied up.

Oh-way-oh — racing the rain and chased by the thunder—
Oh-way-oh — hold on to a sense of wonder.

The spark of childhood put away with childish things
Leaves the good life tasteless and in need of some leavening.
Look to the magic of youth—
The no-holds-barred search for truth.
The heart is a sleeping giant.
Take a chance and wake it up.

Oh-way-oh — racing the rain and chased by the thunder—
Oh-way-oh — walking the world and stalked by the hunger—
Oh-way-oh — senses dull from the attack they’re under—
Oh-way-oh — hold on to a sense of wonder.

It is not for things to wonder at that we lack
In this catch-as-catch-can struggle with the hourglass.

[The Mark Chesshir lead guitar break!]

Oh-way-oh — racing the rain and chased by the thunder—
Oh-way-oh — walking the world and stalked by the hunger—
Oh-way-oh — senses dull from the attack they’re under—
Oh-way-oh — hold on to a sense of wonder.

*I read something recently that said the old grammatical rule of not ending a sentence with a preposition is on its way out, going the way of the injunction against the split infinitive. I’m giving it a try, but I’m not comfortable with either change.

**Here the phrase “catch-as-catch-can” joins with the second verse’s phrase “no-holds-barred” to reveal my long-held obsession with wrestling as the most apt metaphor for our relationships with the world, with each other, with our faith, with God.

A Little Healing in the Holy City

The last day Leesa and I felt pretty good was Christmas Eve. She fixed her amazing Christmas Eve meal for two this year: cheese biscuits, scrambled eggs and sausage, two kinds of gravy (savory brown and semi-sweet dark chocolate). After nightfall, we went downtown in Johnson City and walked through the Christmas trees in the parks—Founders and King Commons. The last stop of the day was Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church, where we provided music for the 9:00 PM Christmas Eve Candlelight Service.

We came down with flu on Christmas Day. We’d finished family things a couple of days before, so quiet time at home together was just fine, as long as we didn’t feel too bad. For my part, I’ve been much worse with flu at various points in the past. Our thinking is that having gotten our flu shots this year kept this infection from being as brutal as it might have been. Anyway, the week between Christmas and New Year’s was a lot of ups and downs—feeling good one minute, running a low-grade elevated temperature the next. Leesa would feel bad, and I would feel good; Leesa would feel good, and I would feel bad.

By Thursday and Friday, I thought I was steadily feeling pretty good, but Saturday brought a turn for the worse. Sometime deep in the night—Saturday the 30th into Sunday the 31st—I checked the opening time of my doctor’s walk-in clinic (7:00 AM). A little after 6:30, I woke Leesa and told her I was going to get checked out. Since I’d already had the flu for the week it usually lasts, not much could be done about that. What Dr. Stoots discovered was a touch of pneumonia, for which she prescribed a couple of antibiotics. Leesa and I were to leave that day—Sunday, New Year’s Eve—for a week in Charleston, so I asked if I could travel. Dr Stoots said I could; I just shouldn’t be much around other folks if I was running a fever. (Apparently, a temperature must be 100+ to qualify as “fever”; mine never got higher than 99.8, but that was during the week before our trip.)

Leesa and I believed that Charleston—the Holy City—was a far better place to recuperate than the house we’d been cooped up in all week, so we left a little after noon on New Year’s Eve. By 6:30 or so, we arrived at our personal Charleston entry point: Five Loaves Cafe in Summerville (see link below).

That’s my delicious flounder at the bottom of the picture.

The healing began.

I got in my 10K steps (minimum) every day. On Thursday the 4th, I got over 20K steps.

Here are some places the Holy City offered for healing:

Five Loaves Cafe (Summerville)Fleet LandingAmen StreetBrown Dog DeliThe GriffonPizzeria di GiovanniHank’s SeafoodMillers All Day

Pictures from the trip . . .

The view from our room at Lodge Alley on East Bay The courtyard and fountain at Lodge Alley The fountain in the Lodge Alley courtyard St. Philip’s (the church seen from our room), Church Street on New Year’s Day The sixty-somethings awaiting their New Year’s Day meal at Fleet Landing On the Battery with friends Renee and Mike Kidwell Battery renovation seems almost complete Almost completely healed on the way out of town at Millers All Day (tie-dyes by Lane Cody)

Raleigh and Lacy were with us as well, but I somehow didn’t get any pictures of them or all of us together. In spite of the lack of corroborating visual evidence, we had a hell of a good time with them.

Charleston—Holy City—see you again in a couple of months.

2023 Reading

Here’s a (partial?) list of what I read last year:

Midnight Lullaby by James D. F. HannahFoster by Claire KeeganSinister Graves by Marcie R. RendonBetter the Blood by Michael BennettMy Sister’s Grave by Robert DugoniThe Hunt by Kelly J. FordThe Coquette by Hannah Webster FosterWieland by Charles Brockden BrownThe Nightmare Man by J. H. MarkertCode of the Hills by Chris OffuttBeware the Woman by Megan AbbottNone Without Sin by Michael BradleyThe Ranger by Ace AtkinsAll the Sinners Bleed by S. A. CosbyThe Good Ones by Polly StewartGreenwich Park by Katherine FaulknerElatsoe by Darcie Little BadgerThe Devil Takes You Home by Gabino IglesiasPickard County Atlas by Chris Harding ThorntonScorched Grace by Margo DouaihyA Visit from the Good Squad by Jennifer EganTuesday the Rabbi Saw Red by Harry KemelmanOzark Dogs by Eli CranorThe Grass Dancer by Susan PowerReal Bad Things by Kelly J. FordKillin’ Time in San Diego, the Bouchercon Anthology 2023The Vaster Wilds by Lauren GoffBlack Card by Chris L. TerryBobby March Will Live Forever by Alan ParksEven as We Breathe by Annette Saunooke ClapsaddleShutter by Ramona EmersonWhere We Belong by Madeline SayetCeremony by Leslie Marmon SilkoWinter Counts by David Heska Wanbli WeidenNight of the Living Rez by Morgan TaltyA Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

There might be others. But that seems like enough.

I guess I could say that I’ve read my new novel Streets of Nashville several times through the year.