The thunderstorms of myth and legend
Brandon Taylor's campus novel, flower of the week, and more
Brandon Taylor on Southern thunderstorms:“That’s what comes to me first, the scent of the damp earth, the heat clinging close to the ground, and the gray mist rising after a heavy storm. The clouds were purple-black and gray, softening when the weather broke, and you could tell which way the storm had come from because the trees were still split wide and there was a path through the woods as if some huge animal had come slinking through them.”
This invocation of the mythic power of Southern storms comes from Taylor’s novel Real Life, mostly set not in the South but in a certain university town on a lake in Wisconsin. Wallace, the protagonist, wonders whether he should leave his biochemistry doctoral program in favor of, well, something else— “the real world,” “real life,” vague phrases that non-fictional grad students do often use and that are dissected throughout the novel. Faced with the isolation of lab-work along with being Black and queer in a mostly white college town, Wallace wavers between the misery of staying and the fear of creating a new life elsewhere.
Acute despair doesn’t come for everyone that does lab-bench science, but it does for some—me, for one. Real Life is the most accurate depiction of that experience that I’ve read, and of course it tackles many things outside my experience, too. (It also has a terrific tennis scene. Tennis rackets seem to be on back-order; maybe Real Life caused a run on the rackets.) Along the way, there’s precise and vibrant nature writing about the South and that university town on the lake. There are all kinds of insights into relationships and friendships among people that can’t escape each others’ company. A gray and white bird—probably a Dark-eyed Junco but never identified as such—appears as a motif. The quote above comes at a major shift in rhetoric and setting (most of the book is narrated in 3rd person.) And the book does all this in a span of a single eventful weekend. Anyway, heartily recommended.
Speaking of storms, here are a couple of thunder clouds seen from our nearby ball-fields.
I narrowly escaped this downpour.
Chatting with a fellow birder from St. Louis living in Boston a while back, we commiserated about missing honest-to-goodness Missouri thunderstorms that send you running for the basement, the camping lantern, and the weather radio. (And if you’re like me, the root beer stash.) It’s just not the same here in the Northeast—the thunderstorms don’t pack the same punch. All bark, no bite. I hear they have something called hurricanes here, though. Wouldn’t know, never seen one. And I’m sure it won’t come up.
Speaking of frightening natural phenomena, I’ve got a shark story for next week! Spoiler: it’s not a scary story.
Flower of the week: Buttonbush
Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) isn’t a plant I grew up aware of, but one I’ve seen often in Massachusetts (thanks to Lisa S. for identifying it for me!) The entry on wildflower.org describes its flowers as “Long-lasting, unusual blossoms”—may we all be so lucky to be described as “long-lasting, unusual blossoms.” It’s a shrub of wet soils—I saw this one on the shore of Ponkapoag Pond south of us in Canton. The explosive flowers draw in all kinds of pollinators. Sometimes in a flower patch you notice that one plant is circled by more butterflies and bees than others around it—this is one of those kind of plants. The idea of a flower that’s going to stick around for a while is consoling when summer is peaking and you start to see the road to fall.
Need something to read?
The New Territory magazine just put out its 9th issue. I edited some of the features and am thrilled to see them in print. Order it here!
CMarie Fuhrman has written an essay that, for me, breaks new ground in how to tell stories about place and personal history. The premise of “Coyote Story” is simple: finding a coyote with its leg caught in someone’s trap in Montana and having to decide what to do with that unwanted knowledge. The narrative that unfolds, though, defies expectations and resists the typical ways it might resolve as Fuhrman retraces traumas from her past and tries to find a coherent way forward. Emergence Magazine has provided a space for work that challenges conventions of narrative and has featured underrepresented voices in the landscape/nature writing genre, and has been a reliable place to look for writing that excites me while I can’t go to the library. If you’re stopping there, don’t miss Bathsheba Demuth’s “Reindeer at the End of the World,” which considers the dangers of apocalyptic thinking as seen from Russia’s Chukchi peninsula, and Amaud Jamaal Johnson’s “And God Laughs,” a stunning reflection on fear and identity in a time of social isolation. Plenty more to find by browsing around, though!
Possum Notes is a weekly newsletter about wildlife and landscapes around where I live. It’s produced on occupied Massachusett and Wampanoag land.