Trees Can't Move If Their Neighbors Are Being D-Bags

1. We are coming home, starting tomorrow! I miss Muncie, or the people in Muncie, or the disc golf course, or the air, or the roads/no, or the people. What?

2. I wrote this a few days ago. It sounds kind of mean. It's not supposed to be:

My mother-in-law worries about the single dark cloud in the sky, her 17 year old daughter standing 3 feet from the canyon’s edge, unseen deer running into the car. I am afraid of the moment when neither foot, that tiny millisecond, touches the beautiful sandstone. In that instant, my wife could faint down the cliff, in need of water I’ve taken in mini-flight with me, the earth could shift, leaving me without a place to land, a bird could slip between the space under my feet. Today I saw a 400 pound man hike 8000 feet above sea level, hobbling six feet at a time. I saw a small child leaning over the railing, shouting HEY the 650 feet down Bryce Canyon, and her mother beside her, leaning an inch further, shouting a little louder, both smiling. My wife gets real stoked seeing wildlife in the distance as we drive around dusk. Last night, we saw 26 deer, a possible mountain lion, and each other naked in an awkward backseat rendezvous in the rental car, rented in her father’s name. There are moments when my mother-in-law thinks everyone is too tired, too fat, too full of $20 buffet food to hike another trail. Sheworries about the heat, the wild animals lurking in the wilderness. I want to show her the picture of her daughter crouched next to a tiny cactus, thumbs up, huge smile, in between a conversation about the walk around the lake she wants to take tonight. I want to say, do you want to miss out on something like this.

3. Here is a picture:


4. In Denver the other night, Sara and I went to a show. We saw a really cool local band (Tennis), a really bad local band (?), and a cool touring band from Texas (Woven Bones). Woven Bones' cd has the same coolness as their live show.

5. I've been buying up books. Like in Denver. Like at the Tattered Cover: Walking a Black Cat by Simic, The Art of Recklessness by Dean Young, Vanishing Point by Ander Monson, and the new issue of Hayden's Ferry Review. Like at Mutiny Now!: Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by Ashbery and Embryoyo by Dean Young (That last one I was like what, why, how, woah). Like at the Denver Book Shop: a Pinsky collection, a Selected Neruda, an Olds collection, What We Carry by Laux, and What Is The What by Eggers (finally own it). Like in Manitou Springs, Colorado. Like at The Black Cat: Rilke's Duino Elegies/Sonnets to Orpheus. Also, I found 30 degrees Everywhere by The Promise Ring at Twist and Shout Records in Denver.

6. I have two new interviews up at The Collagist blog. Perry Janes and Subhashini Kaligotla.

7. I miss you.