A Few More Sentences - 01

Not exactly grind culture

Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to the THIRD EVER PAID SUBSCRIBER ONLY EDITION! of An Irritable Métis. This one is not a photo essay, though the next one will be. Maybe you aren’t a paid subscriber and you’re wondering why you’re seeing this? It’s because the way it’s set up you’ll get to see it … up to a point. To see the rest, you have to become a paid subscriber. It still feels a little greasy, this whole notion of trying to “add value” for paid subscribers, but whatever. If you’re someone who really digs this newsletter but just can’t add more expense to your existence, I get it. Just contact me and let me know, no questions asked, and I’ll hook you up. I want a community here, not customers.

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On That Note: Just this week I found a couple requests for comped subscriptions in my Spam folder. It’s the first time I’ve looked there in forever and I don’t even recall why I was poking around there in the first place. I don’t know why some messages get flagged as such when other damn near identical ones don’t (especially direct responses to these emails) but who am I to speculate. When you consider that all of these so-called “tech geniuses” running things are really the worst kind of people who should be jettisoned into space, is it any surprise nothing ever works like it should? My point is if you’ve asked and have not received, keeping bugging me.

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The header image displays the opening lines to the Preface of my first book, One-Sentence Journal. From there it goes on to tell the story of how the dedicated practice of writing those sentences led to turning some of them into short poems; what inspired that second, transformational step, and how they came to be collected in a book. It’s hard to imagine it’s been almost ten years now.

I’ve kept up the practice with varying degrees of dedication ever since then. It wasn’t always a daily thing, especially from 2019 – 2020, when I devoted myself to a practice of daily actual poetry writing instead. I never entirely stopped though, even if sometimes months would pass from one dedicated stretch to the next.

This past November 1st I decided to re-dedicate myself to it for a couple reasons. It’s a good practice, at least for me, and most importantly I like doing it. Back when I was first doing them I would occasionally post a selection of them and people seemed to dig them. So I’m doing that again, right here. On the first of every month, give or take, I’ll post a month’s worth of sentences capturing my day-to-day observations. Some may become poems, or maybe not. It’s possible I’ll never do anything with them again. But maybe it will be interesting for you as readers to see behind the curtains a little bit, this process, and maybe think about writing your own. Just remember, for every good one you’re going to write a bunch of garbage. That’s no reason not to do it. I mean, just because you inhale a pizza now and then doesn’t mean you’re going to give up on efforts toward “clean eating” are you?¹

November 2022

2022_1101: Too warm a saunter in even just a flannel shirt at Council Grove, where the water is still far too low and a kingfisher giggles unseen among the cottonwoods and a hairy woodpecker tap tap taps at a cavity in an old silver snag.

2022_1102: Dark clouds arrive bearing sleet that I am sorely tempted to call the valley’s first snow of the season.

2022_1103: Cold weather is on the horizon so Missoula blankets herself in golden leaves.

2022_1104: A room full of faces and only two other Indians.

2022_1105: Night saunter begins in thick clouds and driving snow, ends under stars, clear skies, and the brightest Moon.

2022_1106: First bare feet in the snow of the season; daylight savings begins.

2022_1107: On a day when snow blows in sideways and turns the roads to ice, a solitary coyote prowls the big field hunting mice.

2022_1108: Five or so inches of snow in a day seems like so much and I did not hesitate in getting out into it.

2022_1109: Uncollected brown and golden leaves threaded through the berms of snow plowed into the centers of Missoula’s streets.

2022_1110: A day in the lair when the road north beckons.

2022_1111: Reflections on how some healing can feel almost diabolical.

2022_1112: Morning mist rolls down off the mountain slopes and across the crowns of the yonder pines on the coldest morning so far.

2022_1113: Squeaking snow on the banks of the Bitterroot River.

2022_1114: Like a biker gang roaring into an interstate rest area, a flock of starlings swoops in en masse to noisily occupy the limbs of my frozen cherry tree.

2022_1115: No different from the miracle of a holy face appearing in the butter pooled in the crags of an English muffin, a deadline met, on time.

2022_1116: I find no loneliness on the fifth floor of the university library, just companionable scholarship.

2022_1117: On a day swinging hard toward frustration and crabbiness, a reminder that the world is beautiful and that the cutting out and eating of the hearts of the colonizers is always an option.

2022_1118: A pair of coyotes hunt mice on the frosty open country of the Bison Range.

2022_1119: Longing for more than a snapshot of what life in the bitter woods might be like.

2022_1120: Fresh suet in the hanging cage but of course the northern flicker is compelled to go after the frozen brick, still in its wrapper, inadvertently left on the front porch.

2022_1121: The glorious first winter moment when, after a snap of bitter cold, 20° feels like vest-only weather.

2022_1122: Nothing says winter cozy like the hot red glow of a heat lamp from inside the enclosure housing the neighbor’s three enormous pigs.

2022_1123: What is easier: prowling the forests and meadows to stock the dinner table, or navigating North Reserve Street where hundreds – even thousands? – of frenzied people are scrambling for supplies the day before a national holiday?

2022_1124: Thanksgiving Day begins with a sunrise saunter at the river with Muskrat at either end of the outing.

2022_1125: Slinking around the edges of the shopping-mad city like a fox angling to pick off a scrap or two here and there.

2022_1126: A Saturday opportunity to smile into one after another of dozens of beautiful and beaming Indigenous faces.

2022_1127: Walking off lunch on the icy trail of Maclay Flat while snow falls in big, wet flakes.

2022_1128: I’ve decided that if I ever squirrel away enough money to afford a new car again I’ll keep the hooptie and buy a Leica camera instead.

2022_1129: Measured against what it could be, what it will be, it isn’t that cold outside … but for whatever reason I spent the day chilled to the very bones.

2022_1130: Snow blowing sideways is no deterrent for a pair of spirited magpies bent on being jerks to all the other birds outside my window.

This cheeky magpie was hopping around in the backyard of the house I stayed in while a Mountain Words Writer in Residence in Crested Butte, CO, in May of 2021. A different photo of this bird would later be carved into permanence on my shoulder to commemorate my time there.

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Miigwech for reading, friends, and chi-miigwech for being paid subscribers!

1. Don’t answer that, actually….