writing Archives – James D. Hogan

Advent 2: In the words of its making

On December 11, 2024

Peace be with you.

Peace like a river; an evening paddling down, the river flat and black, chimney swifts swooping down in ashen shadow, clouds of insects wound tight into balls about eye level, the sound of rushing water. All of this a season–no, two seasons–ago. Floating with the current, the brookies and browns and smallmouths slipping beneath undercut banks, disappearing into dark pools to sleep, their shadows impossible to discern, their gills slowing to an ancient rhythm, in and out. Breathe in, breathe out.

Inner peace. The sharpness of a gunshot in the December twilight, sharp and lonesome is the report, the sound racing up the cove and bouncing off these old stone hills and racing back to share. It is a massive sound, close enough to wonder who is hunting so close to the house, but then I remember that we live in a national forest, that out here it might be a fellow stalking a deer, and it might be someone putting down something lame, and it might be just the neighbor shooting down mistletoe. We think of gunfire as anathema to peace, and for a few breaths my afternoon stops in its tracks, my ears perked up, but soon the sounds of the world around me relax, return, and all of that tension leaves.

Advent 1: Point Nemo

By James D. Hogan

On December 2, 2024

In writing

When lighthouses go dark.

In the early dark of December, I recall walking down to St. David’s in Cullowhee. I was a college student, a junior I think, and it was Advent. My friend Brittany had been invited to read a meditation she’d composed, and we were both going.

These meditations were a weekly occurrence at St. David’s. We arrived in the cold, entering into the nave directly from the red door at the side. Inside was a narrow room with a vaulted ceiling. The Advent evening prayer services were candlelit; there was a podium in the aisle for reading. A chest organ at the back provided some music. Dr. Lillian Pearson–Kelly’s piano professor–usually supplied.

I cannot remember the subject of Brittany’s meditation. I can only guess it was something literary. (We were English majors.) But the reason I was there in the first place had more to do with the rector who led the parish.

Cars

By James D. Hogan

On August 8, 2024

In writing

Every car has a story. A list.

I have been reading The Autopian since it was founded. Really, I’ve been reading David Tracy for years, and he and his fellow wrenching enthusiasts have been sort of the gateway for me into caring for cars that Tony Bourdain was when it came to travel–a sort of acknowledgement that it’s a fine thing to do, wrenching, that normal, non-mechanical people can do it, that cars are machines, and every machine breaks now and again, and even if you can’t solve it, it’ll be okay.

Anyway, David Tracy put out an article this week about all of the cars he’s bought and sold, and it made me wonder if I could compile a list of the cars I’ve owned (including the ones Kelly and I have owned together). And here is just as good of a place as any to catalog them.

1979 Oldsmobile Cutlass Salon. My first car, inherited from my stepmother, Mary. When I earned my driver’s license in 1997, the car was 18 years old, but to my teenaged self, it felt 118. It was, admittedly, a car from another era. Its small block V8 ought to have provided tremendous power, but because it came from a time of fuel efficiency, it barely coughed up more than 115 horsepower. Mine was gold with a beige fiberglass top. Actually, gold is an exaggeration. The car I drove was dull brown. It consumed oil as greedily as it did fuel, which I thankfully could purchase for $0.95/gallon in those days. When I worked and saved and had enough money for a replacement when I graduated high school, we put the Olds in the front yard with a “for sale” sign in the windshield and a price of $800. A couple came by to test drive it and stole it. Later, we found it in a pay-by-the-week motel in Statesville. Mary felt so bad for the couple (who had apparently lived in the Oldsmobile for a while with their kid) that she just let them have it.

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