New Chapters About Yosemite Falls

 

https://www.patreon.com/marshalljameskavanaugh

One challenge I find myself encountering while I attempt to write these chapters about Marshall Deerfield’s first trek into Yosemite National Park is balancing layered poetic soliloquies declaring existential intangibilities with descriptions of the necessary action to take this wild-eyed protagonist through such sheer expansiveness of wilderness. The steps he takes to climb each boulder are in essence just as important as the infinite sound of his destination, the peak of a three thousand foot tall waterfall. The poetry of Yosemite is endless, and yet I’m trying to be a modern beatnik or zen lunatic as I write it and really capture its essence with as few words as possible narrowing in on the uncertain truths that make it such an unparalleled natural wonder.

I just uploaded two chapters that I think do a good job at taking on this balance between action and setting. Below is an excerpt from one of the chapters. You can read the rest of it by subscribing at the link above. Any support is greatly appreciated while I continue to trek deeper into this novel. For small amounts a month you’ll be able to preview it as I work on it, as well as read my other published works. Please take a look and thanks!

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It’s a sound I hear long before I have completed the trek, a dull roar that replaces the sound of the raindrops giving stillness to the mind with all its immense power of movement so that I am lured closer by the way it cuts away at the air with all that potential.

A group of Japanese tourists stand at its base holding up binoculars to admire its grace and some of them pose for photographs while laughing wildly along to all its ripples. The falls sleek like a needle sewing two faces of rock into one and scattering a cloud of perspiration while the work is done. The tops of those peaks lost to the fog so that the illusion is set that maybe their heights are infinite and that waterfall comes straight from an overturned chalice of mother’s milk exposed to us temperate heathens.

There’s a bench perfectly placed and I have a seat while I try to take in the entire scene, a totally awesome one, tourists dancing by in red and yellow rain jackets like little swans, giggling when some increase in volume causes the whole waterfall to pause and then rupture sending a splash of condensation out into the crowds looking into it. Something strange about the experience even calls for the clown within to do something truly foolish and go swimming beneath that endless power as if a thousand foot drop of water wouldn’t be enough to paralyze even the most graceful of swimmers, but then again maybe that’s the point. This waterfall’s song is so much more than that of its smaller siblings, with each breath of renewed force it causes paralysis freezing the nerves and subduing the mind from thinking. A powerful nothing as big as anything could possibly be.

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Updates for the forthcoming novel

Writing a novel has been really good for all of my other chores. I find a million and one excuses to keep me from actually sitting down and writing it. Today it was folding my laundry, fixing my bike, shoveling snow, taking a shower, and oh wow! now it’s already time for dinner. Yesterday and the day before I rearranged my room and set up my bookshelf. I even went to a Walt Whitman-inspired open mic and ended up winning runner up in a competition for $100 to see who had the best Whitman-inspired piece of poetry.

That piece was written on the same road trip that this novel is about. We started the trip reciting passages from Leaves Of Grass in the voices that Kerouac and Cassady must have used when they were traveling on the road together back in the days when the Beats were still learning how to rhyme. Eventually we were writing pieces in the same style and one of them that I read last night was judged as second best in a room of Whitman scholars.

The piece is a list of all the cows I saw on the road from here in Philadelphia all the way to San Francisco and back again. A play on the pastoral, set in every type of landscape both urban and otherworldly you can see in this country. Using this nation’s top industry to describe the beauty that these bovine often cause environmental havoc upon.

I guess for me, what stuck out about Walt Whitman is the sense that he’s always making lists. Listing the tiniest details about an odd assortment of working class people and their environment to create a collage of the industrial revolution he witnessed in his lifetime in America. He talked about both the positives and the negatives but let them speak for themselves. And in a sense there was romance in all of the things that he saw, even if some of them were terrible.

The cow piece was a fun piece to write. I had fun having a chance to let it be heard out loud. Didn’t expect much in the way of competition so was happily surprised with its reception.

Anyway, back to the novel…I think it’s a good one. I want to share it with you before it’s published. Open it up to a dialogue. Let you read the pages I’m really proud of.

Like the chapter I wrote last week about Yosemite Valley. I just read it again this afternoon. About ten or fifteen times. That’s another thing I do while writing this novel. Get hung up on chapters that I’m really proud of and then second guess myself that I’ll ever be able to write something as good again. Forget that there’s been plenty of bad novels published that have still been enjoyed by someone. The trick is to just finish them.

So yeah, I’m still writing. Today I’m starting a little later than I would’ve liked to and that’s okay because it’s a miserable winter day outside and I took care of all my other errands that were bogging me down. I’ll keep sharing my progress as it comes.

If you’d like to read the poetry about cows or that chapter about Yosemite Valley go take a look at my Patreon. You can throw me some doll hairs and read my writing. The support will motivate me to keep going on it. Maybe I can even finish it by the end of next month and get started on the next one. There are two novels in my head that have been sitting patiently while I finish writing this one. Anyway, I’d love you to see its pieces and to hear what y’all think. I have a feeling the campaign will be constantly evolving as well, so expect more announcements and other rewards to develop.

Thanks for everyone who’s taken a peek over there. I know there’s plenty of other things to support right now. Travel made me more humble and I’m content with however it all turns out, but think it’s fun to share the process.

Become a patron: http://www.patreon.com/marshalljameskavanaugh

WE’VE GOT THE POWER

 

WE’VE GOT THE POWER

The lights dim and you can hear the soprano sax in the stairwell echoing a rambunctious discordance. It provides background to the dull hiss of the noise track the DJ’s cued up and everyone who talks over it.

A musician walks out with a kora, handmade from the driftwood of the Delaware River.

Another musician walks out and starts kicking the keys of an upright piano, the not-so-subtle signal for the crowd’s dull din to slow.

Sounds of the saxophone descend the stairwell and enter the darkened hall. Held by a hooded figure, an African Lion in a cloud of fire emblazoned across the breast of the player, who is busy summoning the heartbeats of the ancestors with squeals of lightning struck out by his every puff of thunder.

The room is shook to pause. Everyone frozen as this chieftain rounds the room and takes his throne. From there he begins to strum the winds to storm. The kora like a sorcerer’s staff bending under the weight of all the years casting spells. He does this till everyone is properly stewed and mind’s are blown.

Then the golden soprano sax is again drawn. It lights up the room all on its own. Staccatos and frequencies that jar the audience to life.
The whole crowd snapping fingers, shouting, “Yeah, man! Go!”
Kicking legs, toppling drums. Piano again kicked to riff some dreams to be born. The whole sound cosmic. Like Sun Ra re-embodied. But this ain’t the Marshall Allen show. This is the midnight after hours post-show. Desert to a five course meal. It has some of that same soul and takes it further with elements of magic exposed by the light of the moon.

The sparks fly upwards. West Philly atmosphere grows. All those healing tones. And everyone knows…these moments fill the spiritual impact of all this city’s potholes. Chemistry for the heart chakra.

Zip! Zoop! Doo bop! Beep! Bam! Boom! Go Man! Go!

The machine can cut at the life chords. Stomp on this city’s residents’ souls. Pound away at them with all that concrete gloom and doom. Tear away at the pieces that are dearest to hold. But no one’s got the power to make the legends grow old. They’re not dying, no. They’re growing more power, full! Feeling the call. Blasting those spiritual hymns and tones. The jazz that’s needed to take us home. Back to our hearts immemorial!

Reminding us, we’ve got the power! We are the power of storms!