Category Archives: Other People’s Thoughts

Other People’s Thoughts: Bosque County Romance

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When I first moved to Yunnan in 2000, my cousin sent with me a two-CD album of cover songs by Lyle Lovett for the purpose, she said, of reminding me of Texas. Step Inside This House became my “homesick music” over the next decade in China. The album lives and breathes home for me. If you’re not familiar with it, you should change that. Each of the songs is poetry in the form of words and guitar. I regularly included selections from the album on my playlist when I worked at Mountain Cafe — it just made me happy, in a simple way, to be in tropical Xishuangbanna, palm trees overhead and fruity drink in hand, to hear Lyle singing “Texas River Song” or mentioning places like Waco or Abilene.

Now that I’m back in the States, the songs from Step Inside This House continue to make my regular playlist. I wrote on the blog last August how “West Texas Highway” and “Ballad of the Snow Leopard and the Tanqueray Cowboy” were part of my soundtrack as I looked through my grandparents’ photos and schemed about putting together a book on West Texas. Not long after, that book began taking more definite shape, and I continue to turn to those songs for writing inspiration. As I interviewed my grandparents earlier this year, they would often have the satellite on their TV turned to the honky tonk radio channel, and many of the songs from Step Inside This House would come up, though in their original recordings, rather than in Lyle’s versions — those songs literally became a soundtrack to the book, as my voice recorder picked up the music in the background while we conducted our interviews. Then, when I spent a few extra days in the Fort Davis area after Pat and Randy headed home from our road trip in March, I mainly chose these CDs as my playlist for my solo drives.

And now, as I’m 50+ pages into the writing of the first draft of West Texas Interlude, I come to the part of the story where Bob D and Ann (my grandparents) tell of how they got married at ages 20 and 18, set off in their car for the desert, and started raising a family in the dust and drought of 1950s West Texas. How could I not think of “Bosque County Romance,” the third song in Steven Fromholz’s “Texas Trilogy” that opens the second disk of Step Inside This House? Change the names Billy and Mary to Bob and Ann, and it sounds so similar to stories I’ve heard from my grandparents. It’s a beautiful song, with Alison Krauss singing harmony.

The song is a story of love built on more than passing emotion, built on a life lived together working in the same direction. It’s the same story of love I see in my grandparents — it’s one of many things I’ve learned and seen in them that I aspire to as well.

I’d love to embed a video of it here, but alas, I could not find one. Here are a few of the lyrics instead:

Mary Martin was a schoolgirl

Just seventeen or so

When she married Billy Archer

About fourteen years ago

Not even out of high school

Folks said it wouldn’t last

But when you grow up in the country

You grow up mighty fast

 

They married in a hurry

In March before school was out

Folks said that she was pregnant,

“Just wait and you’ll find out.”

It came about that winter

One gray November morn

The first of many more to come

A baby boy was born…

 

Now Billy kept what cattle

His daddy could afford

Bouncing across the cactus

In a 1950 Ford

The cows were sick and skinny

And the weeds was all that grew

But Billy kept the place alive

The only thing he knew

 

And Mary cooked the supper

And Mary scrubbed the clothes

And Mary busted horses

And blew the baby’s nose

And Mary and a shotgun

Kept the rattlesnakes away

How she kept on smiling

No one one could ever say…

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Other People’s Thoughts: On the Pecos River

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“We crossed the wild Pecos,

We forded the Nueces,

We swum the Guadalupe,

And we followed the Brazos”

from Texas River Song by Townes Van Zandt

Well, on this trip so far we’ve only crossed the wild Pecos and gazed in the distance at the Rio Grande, but this song keeps going through my head. As does this quote I recently read in Three Dollars Per Mile by the Texas Surveyors Association:

“The Pecos is a remarkable stream, narrow and deep, extremely crooked in its course, and rapid in its current. Its waters are turbid and bitter, and carry, in both mechanical mixture and chemical solution, more impurities than perhaps any other river in the south. Its banks are steep, and, in a course of two hundred and forty miles, there are but few places where an animal can approach them for water in safety. Not a tree or bush marks its course; and one may stand on its banks and not know that the stream is near. The only inhabitants of its water are catfish; and the antelope and wolf alone visit its dreary, silent, and desolate shores. It is avoided even by the Indians.” 

— Captain S.G. French’s description of the Pecos River from an 1849 exploratory mission for the U.S. Army

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Other People’s Thoughts: Hope Beyond the Blue

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Sometimes the only way to return is to go

Where the winds will take you,

To let go of all you cannot hold onto

For the hope beyond the blue

- Josh Garrels in “Beyond the Blue” from Love & War & The Sea In Between

My personality and work style tends toward the type that likes to get things done. Identify the problem, figure out the solution, make a list of steps, put my head down and work until the job is finished.

Some things in life don’t resolve themselves in such a methodical way. Some problems can’t be solved by coming to a pragmatic conclusion and putting in the man hours to work it all out. Looking back over the years of my life as an adult, much of my greatest growth as a follower of Jesus has come when I’m in those types of situations, when I have to let go of my control of a situation, let go of my expectations for how things should play out. Even if what I’m expecting or envisioning or praying for doesn’t seem overly selfish, even if it seems like it would be a good thing and could bring a measure of glory to God, ultimately I just don’t know everything in this life — and my deepest joy comes in the moments when I can glimpse beyond the Right Now into that place “where the winds will take you” when I’m completely surrendered to God.

Check out Josh Garrels’s music on his website. You can get a free download of his latest album — powerful, meaningful lyrics.

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Other People’s Thoughts: The Choice of Simplicity

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“Simplifying your life is meant to make things better, not worse. It’s about choices — about saying no to the things in your life that aren’t the best so that you are free and available to say yes to those things you truly want.” — Tsh Oxenreider

Last week I read the Kindle version of a book by Tsh Oxenreider called Organized Simplicity: The Clutter-Free Approach to Intentional Living. It was the #1 free book for Kindle for several days, and I recommend it, though now it is back to full-price in the Amazon store. If you have 8 bucks to spend on a book, this one is worthwhile.

My quote for Other People’s Thoughts today comes from one of the early chapters in the book, where the author is explaining the philosophy of simple living, before diving into some practicalities in later chapters. I’ve written blog posts in the past about my own desire to live simply (see Couchless or Help and Helplessness) — and Organized Simplicity is one of those books that in reading it I found myself saying, “I wish I could say I’d written this book.”

When Oxenreider says that simplifying your life is about choices, I couldn’t agree more. There are a lot of things I’ve said no to in the past few years so that I’m able to say yes to others. No to cable TV (not a huge loss, except that Baylor is now doing well in both football and basketball) so that I can say yes to more time for writing and more money for travel. No to new clothes every season so that I can say yes to buying a tent or new running shoes. The peace and freedom that comes from living without debt, without excessive stuff, without numerous bills is more than worth what I’m “giving up” in order to get it. It’s a choice, not a loss.

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Other People’s Thoughts: A Garden and a Desert

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“The West seemed both a garden and a desert, an ambiguous wilderness of untold happiness and opportunity, filled with dread and evil.” from Frontier Crossroads: Fort Davis and the West by Robert Wooster

Unless they’ve been there themselves, when I tell most people about my excitement at getting to travel in West Texas again next spring, they just look at me with a confused expression. Isn’t West Texas just…empty? Flat, desolate, barren, hot, dusty, boring? Why would you want to go there…again?

They must not have paid attention to the light on a canyon wall at sunrise. They haven’t stood at the edge of a vast plain of tall grass at sunset and felt the waves of gold washing over body and soul. They must not have visited the garden places — the Davis Mountains, McKittrick Canyon in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, any number of places in Big Bend. They have only looked at the dirt. They have looked at the distant horizon and felt the panic of not seeing a building between here and there for fifty miles, instead of looking at the distant horizon and feeling the exhilaration of not seeing a building between here and there for fifty miles.

One person’s dread and evil is another’s happiness and opportunity. What seems lonely and frightening to one is invigorating and beautiful to another. Some become weary of the drive on seemingly endless highway, bored and anxious, hypnotized by the monotony of the scenery. Others know that going through the miles and miles of desert is the only way to get to the best spots. And they know that when they’re standing at the bottom of Santa Elena Canyon, staring straight up the walls with the Rio Grande at their feet, it is worth the long journey to get there.

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Other People’s Thoughts: Linger Till the Sun Goes Down

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I wrote in January that I wanted to read Jane Eyre at some point this year. It’s October, and I’m finally getting around to it. For years I’ve said that it’s my favorite book, but I had lately started to worry that if I reread it now I wouldn’t enjoy it as much as I did when I was younger. Look for a post in the next couple of weeks about whether or not I’m finding that the book lives up to my memories.

Today’s “Other People’s Thoughts” is taken from a scene early in the novel, in the lead-up to Jane meeting Mr. Rochester for the first time — such lovely, picturesque description of the countryside:

“I was a mile from Thornfield, in a lane noted for wild roses in summer, for nuts and blackberries in autumn, and even now possessing a few coral treasures in hips and haws, but whose best winter delight lay in its utter solitude and leafless repose. If a breath of air stirred, it made no sound here; for there was not a holly, not an evergreen to rustle, and the stripped hawthorn and hazel bushes were as still as the white, worn stones which causewayed the middle of the path. Far and wide, on each side, there were only fields, where no cattle now browsed; and the little brown birds, which stirred occasionally in the hedge, looked like single russet leaves that had forgotten to drop.”

I remember now why I loved and identified so much with Jane all those years ago — she can sit on the roadside and ponder a field and linger from 3:00 “till the sun went down amongst the trees, and sank crimson and clear behind them.” My favorite time of day, my favorite way to while away a few hours.

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Other People’s Thoughts: from Bamboo People

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“Do you have dreams for the future, Tu Reh?” Chiko asks suddenly.

“Not as big as yours,” I say. “Some land, some rice, a family, a home. That’s all.”

“That’s enough. Who needs more than that? I hope you get it.”

“I hope so, too.”

Today’s quote is from Bamboo People, by Mitali Perkins. It’s a middle grade novel set in Burma and Thailand, not far from the part of Yunnan where my own middle grade novel is set. The quote captures so much of what is fundamental to the people of that area, and really, to people anywhere. Land, rice, family, home. I think of this when I teach the refugees in my ESL class. That’s all they wanted in their homelands of Burma and Somalia, but somewhere along the line they ended up in Kennewick.

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Other People’s Thoughts: The Value of My Work

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As I said in my summer reading post, I’ve picked back up on reading Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. I’m remembering now why I put it down in the first place. She has some really thoughtful essays on writing and creativity that I enjoy and find to be motivating, but she also gets a little too Zen a little too much of the time, at least for my preferences. Anyway, I love this quote from the book and feel that it sums up my life right now:

“Now, let’s understand — writers do like money; artists, contrary to popular belief, do like to eat. It’s only that money isn’t the driving force. I feel very rich when I have time to write and very poor when I get a regular paycheck and no time to work at my real work. Think of it. Employers pay salaries for time. That is the basic commodity that human beings have that is valuable. We exchange our time in life for money. Writers stay with the first step — their time — and feel it is valuable even before they get money for it.”

 

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Other People’s Thoughts: Keeping Sabbath at Home

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This one is classic Emily Dickinson — and it’s so very appropriate that it showed up in my daily poetry reading on the Sunday I’m stuck at home with a stomach bug.

“Some keep the Sabbath going to church;

I keep it staying at home,

With bobolink for a chorister,

And an orchard for a dome.

 

Some keep the Sabbath in surplice;

I just wear my wings,

And instead of tolling the bell for church,

Our little sexton sings.

 

God preaches, — a noted clergyman, —

And the sermon is never long;

So instead of getting to heaven at last,

I’m going all along!”

 

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Other People’s Thoughts: from Jayber Crow

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“Telling a story is like reaching into a granary full of wheat and drawing out a handful. There is always more to tell than can be told. As almost any barber can testify, there is also more than needs to be told, and more than anybody wants to hear.”

- Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

A fine line to walk, a fine boundary to discover, the right amount of story to tell and the right amount to leave out. Something to think about as a writer and editor, but I imagine it’s also an apt word for just about everyone to apply to conversations with anyone other than a counselor!

 

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