A brief line from my novel Nod, Virginia:

He was thirty-three years old, certainly old for a beginner teacher but the Ice-Cream Stop had burned down and he didn’t have insurance or the wherewithal to rebuild and teaching had seemed like a good idea.

Note: Above is a picture of the real Ice-Cream Stop here in Abingdon. It is, in reality, in fine shape!

Another line from Nod, Virginia:

Carson, head still plunked on the steering wheel, reached into the glove-box for his flask of liquid courage. He turned it up and gulped, felt the burn, imagined melting like that bitch witch in The Wizard of Oz.

Perfect Day.

Emma at Seabrook Island

“Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. This, however, is not generally a part of the domestic apparatus on the premises. I think myself that the thing might be managed with several pails of Aspinall and a broom. Only if one worked in a really sweeping and masterly way, and laid on the color in great washes, it might drip down again on one's face in floods of rich and mingled color like some strange fairy rain; and that would have its disadvantages. I am afraid it would be necessary to stick to black and white in this form of artistic composition. To that purpose, indeed, the white ceiling would be of the greatest possible use; in fact, it is the only use I think of a white ceiling being put to.” --G.K. Chesterton

Currently reading, oh, three different things: On Being Catholic by Thomas Howard (really good 3/4 stars), Sorrow Floats by Tim Sandlin (excellent; Tim shares my demented aesthetic--or I share his...); and Lord of the Barnyard by Tristan Egolf (barely started this one--fantastic thus far; plus the author's name is cool).

Just trying to figure out how to combine my disparate (?) muses: Catholicism, hillbillies, absurdities, super heroes (see Catholicism), and redemption (sort of ties in with Catholicism). Hmmm, maybe my muses aren't so disparate after all. But how to combine them in an interesting, slightly subversive, and original way--that is the task. Plus, I do want people to read the thing, so how to make it appealing on a large scale. Hmmm. Hmmm.

Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos is quite good. You should check it out. Really. Gotta see this documentary on Walker.

I felt fall in the air this morning. Football, turning leaves, sweater golf: good for the soul.

Starting off this morning listening to a little Fang Island. Gonna try to get a 1000 words on Nod. It's so very odd, this world. The scene I'm working on takes place in a cemetery atop a hill in Nod. Looks kinda like this:

Fred, Carson's best friend and brother-on-law is circling above the cemetery in an ultralight. Fred's rather a simpleton but makes good homemade beer and is a back to basics type. A good bloke. Picture John C. Reilly and you've got a good idea what Fred looks like.

Good Friday to ya.

From Nod, Virginia

Carson read Riley Shine, DOB: August 20, 1972; DOD:? Carson replaced his glasses and his name reappeared on the headstone: Carson Nod, DOB: August 20, 1972; DOD: August 20, 2012. Sweat pouring down his face and running in rivulets down his bony back, Carson contemplated having only two weeks to live and of dying on his birthday. Well, this certainly sucks, he thought.

An awesome prayer from one of my heroes, Thomas Merton:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFTniXn0ZCM&feature=player_embedded#at=21

Discovered a fantastic band from the U.K.: Keston Cobblers Club.

From St. Thérèse de Lisieux:

Let me suppose that I had been born in a land of thick fogs, and had never seen the beauties of nature, or a single ray of sunshine, although I had heard of these wonders from my early youth, and knew that the country wherein I dwelt was not my real home—there was another land, unto which I should always look forward. ... From the time of my childhood I felt that one day I should be set free from this land of darkness. I believed it, not only because I had been told so by others, but my heart’s most secret and deepest longings assured me that there was in store for me another and more beautiful country—an abiding dwelling place. I was like Christopher Columbus, whose genius anticipated the discovery of the New World. And suddenly the mists about me have penetrated my very soul and have enveloped me so completely that I cannot even picture to myself this promised country … all has faded away.

6-3-11 8:25 A.M.

What an ugly little creature, he thought, opening the cage door and reaching in and taking hold of Frank’s loose hide and lifting him out. Frank awoke, hissed, and bit the air and flailed with his feet.

“Quit now,” Raymond said. “Or you can just stay in your cage. You wanna go to the golf course? Huh?”

Frank hissed and peed.

“Vile bastard!” Frank screamed. “You little jerk!”

Frank craned his head and bit Raymond on his thumb.

“AWWWW!” Raymond screamed, dropping Frank to the floor. Raymond plunged his bleeding thumb into his mouth, then thought of Frank chewing crickets and eating cows’ entrails, so he simply encased the bleeding thumb inside his opposite hand. He reared back and kicked Frank from the floor into the opposite wall; a dozen pictures and broken glass covered the lifeless possum. Raymond hoped Frank was dead but only for a split second. Sick with fear, Raymond rushed to Frank. Raymond picked up the possum, limp, tongue dangling. I’ve killed him, Raymond thought. I ruin everything. But then Raymond noticed the gentle almost imperceptible rising and falling of Frank’s chest. Raymond whispered in Frank’s right ear: “I know you’re alive. Quit faking.”

Miscellany from Nod

Interesting building on grounds of Southwest Virginia Mental Health Institute.

6-1-11 1:36 P.M.

He piddled the day away and around three decided to head to Greenway to loaf around the golf course. He tossed his old set of Ping Eyes into the back of his rusty Ford Ranger and then remembered Frank. Flower may have taken Sally but she didn’t have a certain three legged possum, did she? Nope, she didn’t. Raymond went back in the house, an old Craftsman that had belonged to his and Stuart’s maternal grandmother, Evangeline. He walked up the steep brick steps, onto the front porch painted a deep, peeling green. He walked through the front parlor with its ancient hardwood floors and a small anteroom/ solarium stocked with maybe a hundred plants and flowers. His bedroom, the guest bedroom, was located down the hallway, first door on the left. In a small wire cage, Frank slept. Grandma’s black and white pictures of the sky (interesting cloud formations, birds in flight, many, many shots of Fred Holbrook buzzing Glade Spring in his ultralight) covered the eggshell colored walls from floor to ceiling. Raymond kneeled on all fours and looked at his little savior, curled in a grey ball.

5-19-11 3:42 P.M.

Stuart, a giant of a man, an el-cheapo, not albino but close to it, forever a bachelor, took his bowl of cereal and turned it up, forcing it down his gullet with maybe eight or nine desperate-sounding gulps. Raymond looked away, seeing in his mind’s eye a hog devouring its soupy slop. Rent-free, he told himself. Rent-free.

5/19/2011 9:04 A.M.

Dreary, grey, and drizzly out, just the way I like it. Last night, Hannah and I watched episode 28 of All Creatures Great and Small, the excellent TV series (excellent books, too, btw) filmed in jolly ol' England. I highly recommend the series.

* * *

Raymond is not a member of the Nod family but rather plays the straight man to the wackiness around him, certainly not an original idea. Raymond sort of plays the Marilynn from The Munsters role.

Raymond is a former high school English teacher who takes a job at the local newspaper writing profiles of interesting local-yokels. He's a good sort of bloke, lost in a lot of ways, needing and searching for redemption. I'm still thinking about a last name for the gent.