{"id":5043,"date":"2019-05-01T06:18:07","date_gmt":"2019-05-01T13:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=5043"},"modified":"2019-05-01T06:18:10","modified_gmt":"2019-05-01T13:18:10","slug":"bonnie-and-clyde-files-launch-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/bonnie-and-clyde-files-launch-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Bonnie and Clyde Files Launch (3)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

My latest book, The Bonnie and Clyde Files: How Two Senior Dogs Saved a Middle Aged Man <\/em>is out. I invite you to support me and an independent Oregon publisher by purchasing direct from my web site, nestuccaspitpress.com <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Below\nis an excerpt:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fifteen minutes later, I pulled the\nchair back another few feet. My hands burned. I sat down stinking of\nsweat and smoke. I ate the rest of my breakfast, drank water, and\nstarted another letter to the young poet. She would open the second\nenvelope and whiff the burn pile again. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A wavy, blurry heat rose over the pile\nand I wondered what the word for that was. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something moving near the fire riveted\nmy eye. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I saw a red hummingbird darting around\nthe edges of the fire, then hover above the coals. I\u2019d never seen a\nhummingbird near a burn pile. I stood up and moved closer. I didn\u2019t\nthink about taking a photograph. I was really seeing. I walked into\nthe fire and my shoes started smoking. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hummingbird lifted off from the\ncoals and flew into the flames; he bored through the waves. I saw a\nhummingbird fly through fire!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I walked out of the fire. This was no\ntime for self-immolation. That time had passed. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The smoke snaked toward me. I brushed\nit away from my eyes. I looked for the hummingbird again. Nothing.\nThe bird had vanished. I sat back down on the chair. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For so long I had been waiting to\nidentify a survival metaphor and now one had magically appeared! I\nhad sifted through many candidates, such as the clay court tennis\nspecialist who could win from the baseline deep into the fifth set\nand outlast everyone with his fitness and patience, but I discarded\nit, along with the stranded seal pup, the boxer clinching for\neternity, and the image of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now<\/em>, \u201cI\nwatched a snail cross the edge of a straight razor.\u201d \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, here<\/em> was my metaphor,\ninvigorating with its beauty, poetry, originality and fierceness. It\nwas certainly well beyond anything I could make up. It was real. I\nhad just witnessed it and could barely believe my eyes. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The breeze shifted and twirled up some\nsmoke, embers and ashes in my direction. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No<\/em>\u2026 the hummingbird flying\nthrough fire was not my survival metaphor. I hadn\u2019t flown through\nfire like a hummingbird. More like a blue heron. No, not even like\nthat. I hadn\u2019t flown at all. There was nothing in the hummingbird\nflying through fire that represented my recent life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My survival metaphor didn\u2019t exist.\nThis wasn\u2019t about a writer\u2019s conceit and phony construction. I\nhad survived because people had held out their hands to lift me up. I\nhad survived because Bonnie and Clyde had held out their paws. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My latest book, The Bonnie and Clyde Files: How Two Senior Dogs Saved a Middle Aged Man is out. I invite you to support me and an independent Oregon publisher by purchasing direct from my web site, nestuccaspitpress.com Below is an excerpt: Fifteen minutes later, I pulled the chair back another few feet. My hands […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5044,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[203,5],"tags":[693,534,535,6,694],"class_list":["post-5043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bonnie-and-clyde-files","category-meditations","tag-bonnie-and-clyde-files","tag-dog-books","tag-dog-writing","tag-matt-love","tag-oregon-books","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5043"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5048,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5043\/revisions\/5048"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}