Living in a Wonderful Dream

Last Monday morning my wife was roused from her slumber by a maniac jumping around the bedroom screaming. However, there is no need for alarm.The screaming maniac in our bedroom was me.

Most Monday mornings I do not jump around in the near darkness hollering at the top of my lungs. In fact, I am more likely to be seen quietly fumbling toward the kitchen in search of the coffee pot. However, last Monday was different. Last Monday morning I checked my e-mail to discover that my story, "Ink Upon the Furrows," had been named a finalist for the Kay Cattarulla Award for Best Short Story by the Texas Institute of Letters. I had even been invited to attend the awards ceremony in McAllen.

Once I finished jumping and hollering, I started to feel like I was living in a dream. Folks such as Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, and Willie Nelson are members of the Texas Institute of Letters, and to be named a finalist for a TIL award is an incredible, almost unfathomable honor for me. I truly could not be happier or more grateful. Honestly, I still feel like I am living in a dream, and I would like to thank my family, friends, former teachers, and colleagues for their unwavering support. I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to the Texas Observer, as well as to my wife, Martina, whose sleep is occasionally interrupted by my wild, delirious whooping.

 

¡Viva Jerry Jeff!

Over the last couple of weeks I have written several birthday posts for Texas artists. It seems as if many of Texas' finest decided to be born whilst the bluebonnets were in bloom. Today I would like to wish a very happy birthday to Jerry Jeff Walker.

For me, his music is the sound of home, and whenever I had those lonesome Texas blues while living in Europe and Asia, I would just turn on a little Jerry Jeff and he would magically transport me to the homeland. Even today, I have a copy of ¡Viva Terlingua! hanging on the wall of my little office to help me travel to Waylon County when I sit down to write. Thank you, Jerry Jeff Walker, for always being able to put me in a Lone Star state of mind.

    

The Last Kolaches

Friday was National Kolache Day, which inspired Martina and me to pull the last two genuine old school kolaches she brought back from the Czech Republic out of the freezer. I will admit that I had very low expectations for these kolaches. They had, after all, been squirreled away in the freezer since last fall. However, once the kolaches were defrosted and heated, they were fantastic. You would have thought they came straight from some sweet babička's kitchen. 

Clarification

Recently I was asked what advice I would give to young writers aspiring to publish. I responded by saying that it’s like any other fight. When they knock you down, come up swinging. But that answer, I feel, needs clarification. 

Sometimes a rejection letter can feel like a knockout punch to the jaw, but the writer has to rise from the canvas and keep up the good fight. As soon as a rejection letter arrives, it is time to submit more work. A writer who is afraid of rejection letters is like a fighter who is afraid of getting hit. Fear decreases the odds of winning. In order to succeed, both the writer and the fighter must roll with the punches and keep their eye on the prize.  

Happy Texas Independence Day, Y'all!

Today is a fine day to pull those souvenir coonskin caps from the Alamo out of the closet and wear them proudly down the street. Yes, today is Texas Independence Day, a day we raise the ol' Lone Star flag high. Although I remember little of my childhood, I do remember my first visit to the Alamo when I was about seven years old. I remember finding myself completely mesmerized, like I was living in a dream. While our family was at the old mission, my dad bought me a coonskin cap from the gift shop, and I proudly wore that cap to places such as Pancho's Mexican Buffet and K-Mart back in the 1970s.

This year, I must admit, I will not be celebrating Texas Independence Day by doing victory laps around K-Mart or eating my fill of flautas with a coonskin cap on my knee, but will be celebrating the day by reading my short story, "The Nine Lives of Ivy Lee Jones," in Fort Worth as part of the Funky Town Writers series, which is put on by Funky Town and the TCU English Department. Come on down if you can. And don't forget your coonskin cap.

Here is a picture Martina took at Simon Flory's record release show at Fort Worth Live on Thursday. While I was reading, Chris Schlotzhauer played pedal steel, my favorite instrument on Earth, to accompany me. I was enjoying that lonesome sound so much that I was tempted to stop reading and just listen. 

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.