I’ve mentioned this before: I’ve resisted calling this collection of notes a blog because that word just doesn’t seem quite right. I think it might be a concatenation.
I grew up listening to storytellers. One topic would lead to another. No matter where a story went, no matter what new topic was mentioned, a good storyteller would have it covered. The storyteller’s mind wasn’t so much a storehouse as a treasury, more like Fort Knox than the country store.
Donald Hall, who writes beautiful essays, tells of accompanying his grandfather on a hunt for some lost heifers as a storm was coming.
I knew what would come next. Rain or the lost heifers would bring to his mind and his tongue some anecdote of the past and he would recount it to me. I don’t remember what it was, this time. His memory was great, and his curiosity, and the two kept his voice active with stories out of his youth and manhood. We could have walked ten years without breaking the links of anecdote or repeating a single one.
It's how my mind works. I'd like to say there's a governing architecture or order to it. In fact, one thought leads to another.
• Sources and notes: Donald Hall, String Too Short to Be Saved; Boston: Nonpareil Books, 1979, p. 2. For a note on finding Hall’s book, see “Eureka!” July 17, 2023. For more on concatenation, see “Lytton Strachey’s diction,” Feb. 16, 2023.
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