Updating the Bromide: A Refresher Course in Wyoming
“The spiral is a spiritualized circle” according to Vladimir Nabokov in his autobiography, Speak Memory(1951 ed. p. 275). I admire the Nabokovian, knowing it’s not just the same old bromide that will join all the other bromides, but a complete original, dedicated to making a new life even in the midst of chaos.
I’m throwing off the shackle of bromides one by one, beginning in Wyoming where the state’s motto is Equal Rights and the minimum hourly wage is $7.25, to create a new motto that escapes, I hope, the feeling I often have here of being trapped in a roomful of giant American flags populated by Republican politicians who are wearing their name-tags and party affiliation.
New Wyoming Motto: NOT TO CRITICIZE, ONLY TO OBSERVE
Thus, I smite one bromide after another until all bromides bite the dust and a kind of resurrection may take place in which the minimum hourly wage in Wyoming will be raised to at least $12.00. Wishful thinking perhaps, but I might also whisper into the ear of a certain Senator from Wyoming that if he could just find me “another 11,700 bromides” I’d be mighty grateful, indebted to him for the rest of my life.
Meantime, I’m reading The Death of Virgil, my new favorite book, finally supplanting Samuel Beckett’s fictional trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable), knocking Beckett off the bestseller list. The writer Hermann Broch is long-winded and overworded to the point of sublimity: Language and Thinking become One in which the reader becomes the main character as the writer recreates the state of of mind of the Roman poet, Virgil. Highly recommended.
Not to criticize, only to observe—On the way to Wyoming I stayed in a hotel (DoubleTree, Spokane, Washington) which I wouldn’t mind seeing condemned and then demolished, once I’d vacated or been evicted. The hotel is a new-fangled architectural mess, most likely designed and built in the early 1990s to confound otherwise clear-headed visitors as to where they might park their car upon arrival, or which of 3 inconveniently placed elevators might finally be located in the haphazardly designed lobby.
Perhaps we’ve only guessed the world into being. Perhaps this life of ours is a rehearsal and not the real thing. We’re in hot water territory now. Washington is hot, Idaho is steamy, Montana the same. Meantime, a bit to the north, Canada wears a collar of sunflowers while defending an arsenal of white socks and hockey sticks.
When I finally arrive in Wyoming, a white-tailed deer, a buck, peeks around the corner of the cabin where I work to see if I’d yet made it home.
Male white-tail deer peeks around corner of the author’s studio to see if he’s home. Wapiti, Wyoming, September 7, 2024.