I wrote a few weeks ago about the cricket that went all the way to the light and lived to tell about it. I wondered how I could compare that to meeting Annie Proulx, nothing so dramatic, but it was a good experence, th emoderate amount of "I wish I had done X differently" but all in all it added to me rather than being anticlimactic.
Driving down the road to Davidson I popped in my "Wings Remix" CD I just acquired. At first I was like "uh, I dunno", but driving on I40 at 80 mph changed all that. Good travelling music, good dance music. It added the flavor of a soundtrack over my on life, like I was taking a step back and watching me thru a camera lens. Ah, the inate gay ability to be dramatic. I was going to the mountain to hear the goddess speak in a way.
The reality is Annie Proulx is a very plain woman with a very beautiful mind. If you read her biography on her website you know she has had her share of ups and downs, and had suceeded largely to two things: She never gave up, and she has had a long life.
Thought I was watching her on a screen, she came out and sat in that chair and with her text in her lap, she foulded her hands in front of her and bowed her head. As she was being introduce she kept her head down, but when something amusing was said she would rise up and smile the smile of a country woman, teethy and broad, and would fade back into herself. Speaking, she was hunched over her papers, close to them and the microphone, no eye contact with the audience, exect when a cell phone when off. She read her wors, told her story and andswered her questions. There was no pretense about her, no drama, no pounding rhythm except that of her heart.
She is the most unlikely person to have ever written the things she has. Agnis Hamm uninating on her half brother/molesters ashes, where in this lanky woman did such a thing come from? One of the questions I did not hear but read about later in the Charlotte Observer article was how she could get in the head of a gay 19 year old, she replied "we all have our secrets". Reminded me of Rose dawson explaining to her granddaughter in "Titanic" that a woman heart is a deep place. So it is. Thankful I am of it.