Rick Simonson

LAST IN THE WOODS
July 16, 2007

Last seen, last heard from, Mist Place was in the woods north of New York City ... it was before BEA ... it was ... a long time ago, by certain reckonings. It was. And from what I can tell, no one has come looking to see if he ever made it home. (Ha, spoken too soon. A bit of writing was done, parked ... then in email was a friendly inquiry from the homeland security realm of PW: where are you? On a week that has Harry Potter's last retail hurrah, has the breaking news of Houghton's owner buying Harcourt, and whatever else is a-brew, there must have been some wondering about who in the hinterlands might be having a say.)

Tellingly it was the very day of that last post that set this correspondent off in a kind of walkabout mode, not sure what part of this work/life is doing, what part rehashing (here). It was an early morning post, the phone line used for the little pre-BEA message and another email or two. The intention then was for there to be more as that week transpired.

Some hours later - this was Memorial Day, the Monday holiday - the people I was staying with and I descended from their hillside lair, down into a nearby town for some lunch. There the cellphone did work, and there on that I saw what I knew to be the home number of a colleague back in Seattle. She was part of our New York entourage; I assumed it was a relevant question, wondering if I brought something, or should she? An invitation question, whatever.

Instead: have you seen your email?

No, not since much earlier; why?

Al Gore.

Al Gore what?

A week from tonight. They called today from Penguin. Apparently it wasn't them, it was Gore's people.

A week from tonight? Who's going to be there? (I had my plans for being in New York, still.) A week from tonight? They called from Penguin? This is a holiday ... 

It was a holiday. There were more calls, both with Seattle and a somewhat beleagured (but gallant) Tracy Locke of Penguin in New York (hey Tracy, this is Rick from Seattle, who is actually about two hours north of you instead). She had gone in to a buiilding without air conditioning on to do some BEA things. And this arose. By day's end there were more calls and emails, a plan was in place, first to figure the venue, then for how else to proceed. (It was heard later that Powells in Portland also did all of this, on even less notice.)

The upshot for me, trying to have a rare day 'off,' and having this come along and occupy all the headspace ... my friends had led me down to a sweet old riverside district, the mighty Hudson in sight, a lovely spot on a lovely day for lunch ... and my head was reeling with all these logistics, weighings, wonderings ... never mind how I might rend this for Mist Place ... much less regain place or space to relax with these old friends ...

I did make it back. A lot of walking was involved: that Memorial Day night in the woods ... a luminous moon shining through. There will be some more words about these walks. What this work is, has been, is part of them (what isn't?). Twenty-four hours after the woods walk, there was a spontaneous and most beautiful stroll over the Brooklyn Bridge. A week later, there would be another. Back in Seattle, there have been yet more. There are other things afoot. Out of the woods, back to the words we go ... 

Posted by Rick Simonson on July 16, 2007 | Comments (0)