3.23.2006

 

You ever see a house burning up in the night, way to hell and gone out there on the plains? Nothing but blackness and your headlights cutting a little wedge into it, could be the middle of the ocean for all you can see. And in that big dark a crown of flame the size of your thumbnail trembles. You'll drive for an hour seeing it until it burns out or you do, until you pull off the road to close your eyes or look up at sky punched with bullet holes. And you might think about the people in the burning house, see them trying for the stairs, but mostly you don't give a damn. They are too far away, like everything else.

The year I lived in that junk trailer in the Crazy Woman Creek drainage I thought Josanna Skiles was like that, the house on fire in the night that you could only watch. The reason for it seemed to be the strung-out, buzzed country and the little running grass fires of the heart, the kind that usually die out on their own but in some people soar into uncontrollable conflagration.

- starting paragraphs of A Lonely Coast, off E. Annie Proulx's Close Range: Brokeback Mountain and Other Stories

it's not especially poetic, but it's a very interesting image. it's in keeping with the whole theme of the book: short stories about country life in Wyoming, where the girls are as tough as the guys. and i like to think we're all a little like that. its not poetic, but its the truth.

timestamp: anonymous 02:55 0 comments