Boise

November 4: Reading at Boise State University, Farnsworth Room, Student Union Building, Boise, ID.

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The next day, Martin and I headed off toward Boise. We decided to drive four hours to Idaho Falls, where we stayed with Martin’s old student and his pregnant wife; they are ranchers. Here they are cooking:



Here are the beautiful plains by their ranch the next day:





Here is a picture of The Craters of the Moon, which we passed on our way from Idaho Falls (bastion of McCain support and population of inveterate smokers) to Boise; we took the scenic route:





As you can see there was all kinds of weather.

Boise itself was another sort of quickie: I got into town with Martin at about 5, we went to the post office to send some things back to New York, grabbed a bite, and I read. I was the only reader, it was Election Day—tough bill to fill. Right before I stepped into the auditorium, Ohio was announced for Obama; right afterwards, Virginia. The reading itself was great—a really good turnout, maybe 30 or 40 people… I opened the reading with an especially political William Carlos Williams poem my friend Caroline Crumpacker sent around earlier in the day.

It was nuts to be in a red state all day. After the reading, a bunch of us went out to a bar. McCain gave his concession speech, but only about a third of the people in the bar seemed excited. Not just a red state, a red bar:



Martin and I then got a bottle of wine and watched Obama speak on the TV at Martin’s house—wonderful, drunk. I thought the little frolicking sort of moment at the start of things when his family came out was cute—happy wife and kids. The speech was great—conciliatory, thoughtful, intellectual, really. He is literally an idealist. It’s nice to have a president who acts neither like a rock star nor like a cowboy. In a way he seems more like a child—pre-sexual, pre-cynical, preternaturally beneficent and fair. Here’s Obama:



Goodbye beautiful conservative smoking Boise.

Missoula

November 1: Reading with Martin Corless-Smith at the New Lakes Reading and Performance Series, Missoula, MT. Zootown Arts Community Center, 235 N. 1st St. West, Missoula, MT.

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Immediately after the Q&A in Portland, I hit the road (after dropping Robyn off) for a nine-hour drive to Missoula. It was Halloween, but the only costume I would see the whole day would be someone dressed up as a bee in a bar where I stopped to use the restroom. The first few hours were beautiful—gorgeous mountain passes, long, winding river, giant gray-blue sky of blowsy clouds—but by the end of things, it was dark, and I felt as if my body was moving somehow ahead of me… vertigo, hard to stay balanced.

Lucky for me, a good youngish friend named Alec filled up my iPod before the trip… I listened to his 100 Favorite Songs play list over the nine hours… Alec’s taste in music tends toward the melancholy—mostly melancholy indie love longs… Aimee Mann (“Today’s the Day”), Keane (“Underneath the Walnut Tree”), Ben Folds (“The Luckiest”), The Shins (“Caring is Creepy”), Future Bible Heroes, (“No River”), and it got me ruminating—naturally. Several months back in New York, I’d been through a painful and emotionally confusing breakup… I took it pretty hard, and it was difficult to get over things in the city—so many people and stories and neuroses and opportunities to compare and misread and get even more confused… and drink, for that matter.

On the long drive to Missoula, I kept thinking about Keats’ notion of negative capability—the ability to be open, not “chase irritably after fact and reason, etc.” In New York, everything and everyone is so crowded in—all there seems to be is fact and reason—and there’s that corollary space (or lack thereof) inside... I was thinking myself into oblivion there, so it was phenomenal to be out alone on the open road, to mentally and physically consolidate recent losses and gains… and not just those associated with the boyfriend, but also those associated with quitting my job at the hedge fund (yet another breakup). The summer I spent in a kind of haze… thinking too much, crying too much. On the road, I got to shed all that.

Close to eleven—and after all my surprisingly pleasant angsty rumination—I arrived at my friend Prageeta’s house. I knew Prageeta for many years back in New York. Now she directs the creative writing program at the University of Montana. Her house was lovely—the same in many ways as her Brooklyn apartment, but bigger, more stuff. She and I had a glass of wine and then I crashed.

The next day, Prageeta and I took a nice walk by the river. Here is Prageeta:



Some woods:



Here is the audience for the reading. It was great:



I read with Martin Corless-Smith, who I met back at Iowa when I was a student. He had come to read on behalf of his first book, and I introduced myself, soliciting work for the magazine—Explosive—I was editing back then. Here is Martin:



The nice woman who did the introductions:



Martin and Rob, who hosted the series:



Karen Volkman, Brian Blanchfield, Martin, a professor whose name escapes me:



An intense sort of fan; he was interested in photography:



Right before leaving, I did Bikram (more on that later) and bought some vitamins; the last thing I can afford on this trip is to get sick:



So far, so good.