I see you. You’ve pulled Flag Live out of your book bag and so it is wrinkled where your nursing text, that enormous tome, has crushed both your newspaper and your container of yogurt. And you there: you’ve set the paper down on a ring of leftover latte at your favorite wooden-tabled, street-peeking, or peak-viewing home to seekers of the morning buzz. Or maybe you’re catching up after work or hike or river trip and you wonder where is that last Flag Live as you paw through the piles in the living room and find it between the exploded sections from the Sunday Times and the Daily Sun. And yes, I know some of you read this column online, taking a break from your lab in Vancouver or lunching away from town business at your desk in Connecticut.
I know this because I’ve heard from faithful readers of “Letter from Home” and because I’ve observed you by around town, too. (Yes, I do sidle closer to people on those metal benches on Heritage Square. I wonder, are they reading me, me, me?) When more than 8,000 copies hit the streets each Thursday, I relish knowing Tony, Kate, Shonto, Darcy or I are meeting your attention again.
A while back when there was still a table there by the copy machine at the downtown library, I was lurking through the magazines for sale when I saw a young woman bent over my column reading with so much focus her eyes seemed to be riding her forefinger that moved from word to word.
“Do you like it?” I asked.
She blinked at me.
“I wrote that,” I said.
She looked at the tiny picture above the words and looked at me and said, “I’ve never met a writer before.” Maybe she wondered how these particular arms, hands and face could sculpt paragraphs. She didn’t say; she went back to reading. After I found enough used magazines to exhaust the quarters in my pocket I passed her again, and she said, “This is good writing.” That small, quiet, certain voice still blooms in that garden in my head where I go to harvest when I’m three paragraphs done but stuck for three more. “This is good writing.”
Another time I staggered off San Francisco Street with so much hunger at my throat I sat in a daze in Pato Thai; I was relieved to have found a table and made my order without fainting. Gradually the buzz of diners nearby permeated my anticipation of noodles. I began to understand that at the table of four beyond my left elbow, strangers discussed my writing. One gal thought it was cool to have a bike you didn’t worry about. One fellow argued any unlocked bicycle would be stolen eventually. The other gal said that wasn’t the point; the point was … well … I didn’t hear her point as I shrunk behind my newspaper. Half drawn to join in the discussion I was more powerfully motivated to disappear, not wanting to be a live nearby human instead of a thumbprint of a photo in the local paper.
Strange you might say to both wave my arms in print and shrink. But so many of you have become writers yourself—pundits in blogs, poets on Twitter—that you probably get it: how giving in to the allure of creating a public voice does not necessarily mean you’ll stand up to a microphone.
Nevertheless, soon you will have your chance to see in person we five who write about chickens, starry skies, whispering rivers, the delicacy of the creative process and the vigor of life on the plateau. Mark your calendar, key a message into your Blackberry, write on your hand or put a sticky note on your dashboard: Show up at 6 p.m. on Wed, March 30 when Tony, Darcy, Kate, Shonto and I will give you our voices aloud with stories, writing and song. Last year we were a warm collection of mirth and truth on a snowy night at Coconino Center. This year we’ll mix our voices into the murmur at the bar and the clicking of cue balls at Uptown Billiards. It will be a stirring together of local flavors you don’t want to miss.
And I want to meet you. Really. Come buy me a beer.
