Bare Ruminations

I love that word. It evokes so much more than "thoughts" or "inklings." Creative types really tend to chew on their inspirations and have no set timetable to swallow and begin to digest.

I loved the readings. To be frank (but I could never be Frank -- he sits on the other side of the cube wall from me), I haven't had time to close read all of the selections, but have at least skimmed the "extra credit" ones.

I wanted to get my thoughts down before reading anyone else's responses to avoid undue influence.

Bear Stories

I was tickled by this choice because if you've ever met Keith Taylor, he's a gentle bear of a man. He's fiercely protective of his students, forests, and other things he holds dear. Although he was my thesis advisor at the University of Michigan, I can't profess to know him very well, but apparently well enough to be tickled by the bear I know writing about bears he's met (at least in his imagination). I digress.

What worked best for me through these short vignettes were the moments of tension in each one. The idiosyncratic characters interested me immensely — how much we don't know about Stanley Stewart's aunt who gets first billing yet remains a complete enigma, being just a foil for the hapless father who fed his daughter to a wild beast! I imagined Old John, spitting tabaccy into an empty Mountain Dew bottle that crackled in one hand while supping his biscuits and tea with milk from chipped souvenir china in the other. The gendered pronouns in LaVerne's ditty had me confused as to who gutted whom until I realized the bear probably didn't shoot the "boy named Sue." My least favorite of the series was John and the injured bear. Not because of the violence, mind you — all of these had some element or at least threat of violence. I think it's more that the story moved less in two longer paragraphs and a greater physical storyland space than the previous ones did. Without it as a bridge, however, I wonder if the suspenseful but peaceful encounter the unnamed "I" (almost) had with his/her bear would work as well.

The sequence progresses through stereotypes, through truths perhaps, and through POV. We start with third person twice (thrice?) removed and end in first person. An interesting choice to help move the reader along, and a difficult artifice to successfully accomplish. Of all of the main readings, I thought this one felt the most traditional.

Sidebar: In trying to come up with a clever justification to use a non-caniforma/canoidea word in my title (we aren't, after all, reading about cows or giraffes), I discover that "In the Canoidea, the penis is highly specialized. [further explanation needed]"

I'll say it is!