Magg Zelma

"The lights that once festooned our bathroom are now bulb-burnt in the county landfill."

It's sixty-six degrees here today in Iowa City, Iowa and I am listening to Chicago Art Ensemble's "Magg Zelma," which is a psycho-spiritual ride royale through the African diaspora, starting with the rural American South. Hot damn, I love these guys. In other news, boxes have taken over our home. Boxes and flotsam and jetsam.

I notice a sheet of paper on the floor. I pick it up. Upon it, these words are scrawled in my be-inked cursive: "Being a writer means being part of what a civilization says to itself." These are notes from my first workshop with Marilynne Robinson.

"In terms of craft, John Updike is vastly superior to Faulkner."

"There tends to be a consensus in workshop, however pluralistic, and it tends to be congruent with a quality of voice authoritative in (the writer's) own mind..."

Yawn. (My body's tired.) I'm still listening to "Magg Zelma." I'm still surrounded by boxes. It's still sixty-six degrees outside. And we have four lime-green tomatoes on our vine.