The first line in Nunez’s new book—“It was an uncertain spring”—
makes me uneasy for some reason I cannot seem to name today.
You in your mid-thirties writing to a dead Russian. Me in my late
fifties writing to a dead Yooper. The Yoop. The UP. Your place,
the place you saw in dreams even while blooming in Paradise Valley
or counting rattlers down south near the border. Your true north,
home to that giant pine stump beneath which you sat and codified
your true religion with its unquenchable appetite for communion:
elements of blood (wine) and body (women). Thanks be to God.
Not unlike Chardin with his Gauloises, you with your Spirits a
priest at the world’s altar blessing it all by your sacred doggerel:
It is this. It is this. It is this.
Colorado was my place, the home that haunts my waking dreams.
My father’s place was Kansas, a tiny windswept town peopled with
faces and voices he spoke wistfully about until his shattered end.
My father did not know the word saudade until I shared it with
him (I discovered it via you), but he immediately shook his head yes.
I’d thought my brother and I would get the chance to take him back
there, back home you know, one of those father-and-sons road trips
Hollywood used to make quiet movies about. But like many of my
best hatched brainy plans I dicked around and it never happened.
Dickin’ around sure can steal away a ton of our brief, sweet lives.
Still, I can’t put my finger on what’s so uncertain about this spring.
The mourning dove out my window cries It is this. It is this. It is this.
Tempted to keep here!
Thanks for the reminder not to dick around.