Joe Ely at the Haltom Theater

Martina and I went to see Texas music legend Joe Ely at the newly-restored Haltom Theater last night. Ely, who was making his first appearance in the fair metropolis of Haltom City, put on a great show and even included a song about "a suburb of Haltom City" in the encore. That song, of course, is about a little town called Dallas. Have you ever seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night? I'll bet you have.

     

On the Bedside Table

When I was young, I heard Ray Bradbury speak at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, and he advised the aspiring fiction writers in the audience to read poetry. I, personally, had always read it. I had loved it since childhood, but after hearing Bradbury speak I started keeping books of poetry on my nightstand to read before bed so the language could dance in my head while I slept. This habit has not changed in twenty years.

Over the last year or so, works by Christian Wiman, Les Murray, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Fred Chappell have found their way to my bedside table. Last week I read work by the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh, and I was struck by the poem entitled "I May Reap," where Kavanagh writes: " I WHO have not sown, / I too / By God's grace may come to harvest." I understand this sentiment, and Kavanagh, through the power of poetry, makes me feel as if he were a close friend right here with me, though he died before I was born and lived a full ocean away.

   

A Life in Old Boxes

Recently I reacquired boxes filled with artifacts from my younger days, which has left me in a pensive mood. I have found photographs of loved ones who are long gone, letters and postcards from the days when people still mailed correspondence, and my first attempt at a novel, a manuscript which I assumed no longer existed.

And I have found boxes of books, each box a record of an intellectual phase. In one box I found works by Whitman, Ferlinghetti, and Rimbaud. I found Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G. Jung and Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame by Charles Bukowski, which I bought in a space that was once the notorious club called the Cellar in Fort Worth. In that same box I also found Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I started reading in South Korea and finished in Yellowstone National Park in 1995.

To be honest, it has been an odd experience to revisit my past, especially considering that I had no intention of doing so. It is as if all of these boxes somehow belong to another person who has lived along the same timeline as me.

   

My Name Day: A Surprise Every Year

Every year, essentially by design, I make sure not to write my name day on our calendar. Thus, every name day comes as a surprise. A name day, incidentally, is like a birthday and is celebrated in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox countries in Europe and Latin America on the feast day of the saint after whom one is named.

Considering that I was named after a character on a TV Western rather than a saint, I do not have a name day in the purest sense. However, my friend, the late great composer and historian Igor Heinz, dubbed me "Hynek" because trying to pronounce my real name absolutely exasperated him. You see, there is no "th" in Czech, so Igor decided to give me a good old-fashioned Czech name rather than continue making a hissing sound to simulate "th." Thus, February 1st, the Feast of Saint Hynek, became my name day.      

This year, as usual, I was extremely surprised when my name day arrived. In the morning I received a "Happy Name Day" text from Baba Jaja, my mother-in-law, who lives in Europe, and when I got home from work Martina told me "všechno nejlepší," all the best, and handed me a cured sausage that Baba Jaja had sent me as well as a gift-wrapped package, which happened to be a copy of the recently-released memoir, My Years with Townes Van Zandt by Harold F. Eggers, Jr. Well, friends, I must admit that it's hard to beat having a surprise party every year.

And here's a little Townes Van Zandt, upon whose family's former ranch our house is situated.