The Fire Next Time

High summer here has always been hard to bear. This one was the worst in memory, long weeks of heat and humidity near one hundred. Then, quickly, came a mighty wind killing century-old trees, an earthquake that rattled homes and confidence, a hurricane that drove water through our old house’s seams, followed by a week-long deluge.

Aftermath of Hurricane Irene

Another hurricane is out there somewhere. In Texas there’s fire and drought.

The writing seemed to fetch up on the rocks too for a time. Not writers’ block, whatever that is. No, not that. Rather I reached a place where events become quite precipitous and start occurring quickly, and that posed a dilemma. Should I speed up the pace to match the events and move quickly through them, or would that simply seem impatient? Should I slow them down instead to provide more sensory perception, more detailed description so the reader can savor them? I wrote it both ways and liked neither one very much.

The hard truth of course lay somewhere in the middle, that is, I should select the telling moments and concentrate on them but be sure the details earn their keep. Otherwise kill them. Many hard choices along this path, concentrating on this, skipping over that. It feels like walking through a minefield must feel, though I’ve never walked through one. It’s a critical period, hard to concentrate when also thinking about some unnamed tropical depression in the Atlantic.

James Baldwin wrote this:

“If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!”