writing Archives – Page 5 of 32

The Many Choices Observed in Terminal D

On February 4, 2023

If you see something, say something.

On an early Sunday morning, sun rising over the skyline, the airport is a full spectrum of humanity, arrivals and departures, a tide of inspiration. Men and women arriving for their morning shifts, raising the gates on shops, punching in key codes and warming up registers. Some have been here awhile; several shops are empty, music blaring out into the terminal hall while the attendant sits behind a counter, scrolling her phone.

The terminal is a sartorial fantasy. Men wearing Hawaiian shirts, silk dress shirts, pressed oxford shirts, crumpled t-shirts. Hats of every kind: cowboy, trucker, straw, felt, beanie, wrap, hood, webbed, baseball, fedora, driver.

There are college athletes ambling through the lanes in packs, noticeable because of their height, pulling mascot-branded luggage, most often in sweatpants or baggy clothes hanging off their frames, tall socks bunched about their ankles, sliders, headphones—always headphones—eyes looking above and away, but not at you.

First Summer on Locust Creek

By James D. Hogan

On September 15, 2022

In writing

Scenes from our first mountain summer.

We walk in the evenings, for even in the mountains the days get warm. Once the sun falls past the ridge line, the valley releases into the cool of evening. A simple walk: up the road that leads to our house, up toward the meadow, where the valley floor accommodates a sloped pasture, where on the upper side grows hay, and on the far side the cattle graze.

Golden hour in the Appalachians sets the vista in theatrical light. The tops of the ridges bask in glow; straight down the valley, the broad shoulders of other ridges, still warm, fade into a deep green, then into orange, and then into shadow.

It is certainly warm enough to work up a sweat, but in the evening the settling temperatures tend to stir up a breeze more often than not, and this dappled wind is grace. You can hear it pour down from up the hill, rustling the leaves in a way that tricks your ears at first–is it a car? Is it a sudden rush of water?–before it greets your face. Out here, you can hear the breeze coming just like you can hear any cars long before they appear. Not much else makes much noise.

The Hunt

By James D. Hogan

On July 4, 2022

In writing

What do you see when you aim to stop looking?

Kelly and I are standing, ankle-deep, in rising surf, watching. The water slinks past our feet, and as the ocean reclaims it, we stare where the sand is pulled back. “Look for the darkest black, a color that doesn’t shine but absorbs all the light,” she says. “Don’t focus on shape.”

Before me, tens of thousands of little objects glimmer in a glaring noon-sun light, remnants of an entire civilization of bivalve mollusks whose crusty shell-houses have been thrown upon the beach, crushed by relentless waves and the heavy footsteps of beachcombers, and scattered across the sand. There is an astonishing spectrum of color: pink, indigo, purple, rust-red, and on occasion even hints of yellow.

We are looking for shark teeth, perhaps my wife’s favorite and most notorious beachtime hobby. I stare downward at the sand, pacing my breath, tempering my synapses. Thousands of shell fragments. Don’t focus on shape, I repeat, even as my brain impulsively picks out triangles. I see nothing. Kelly reaches down and scoops out a fossilized tooth, black as night. Rather, another one. She has a pocketful.

Category: writing Page 5 of 32