Getting Back

So I'm back. I've been trying to get the time and the energy to post to Xcargo again for ages. But, well, I just haven't had either.

Here's the story: as you know, I am (among other things) a writer. Recently, I've managed to sign with an agent. That's a hard thing to do. It used to be said that it was easier to get a book published than it was to get an agent to represent it. I'm not sure it is still true (book publishing is a very strange business) but, still, I'm delighted that I have finally gotten—as they say—"representation."

I'm working on a book for the agent that is basically a travel essay combined with a popular history of several major regions in the United States. (I'll tell you more about it as time goes on.) She is very optimistic about it. I wish I were as confident.

Right at the moment, I'm doing my research on the American Southwest, one of the areas I'm going to be writing about. It isn't going to be easy for me. I grew up, of course, in Albuquerque, and that city (along with Santa Fe) will play a major role in the chapter. And, frankly, I have mixed feelings about the place. It was the town in which I experienced a very unhappy adolescence—and before that a not terribly much more pleasant childhood.

Oh, I love Albuquerque …in my way… and there are parts of the city that are beautiful and fine. Yet, I cannot escape the fact that it is also the place where I spent a lot of time being lonely, or bored, or afraid, or sick…or some combination of all those things at once.

I suppose, in a way, it is a little bit like being the child of some very lovely, very gentle mother…who, now and then, exploded into murderous fury. A woman not evil, but subject to a kind of unhappy madness…

One can never forget the loveliness and the gentility. But, neither, can one escape the memory of the madness.

Copyright © 2010 Michael Jay Tucker