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Tracy Kidder and the week after Christmas
Dec. 27th, 2008 02:38 pmAh, the dead zone. No, nothing spooky going on here, the "dead zone" is what I've always called that week between Christmas and New Year's. An entire week! Trapped between holidays, often forgotten about, it can seem to last a long time. (This year, I hope so. Things are peaceful. We have a new coffeemaker. I sit around, wired and relaxed all at once).
One of the things I'm doing with this time is reworking my website. Ostensibly, the goal is to get all the HTML pages to validate as HTML 4.01 Transitional, but while I'm in there editing all my files I'm naturally noticing a lot of cruft and/or finding things that aren't cruft. I just found this prose-poem that I for some reason put into my www directory years ago, but never linked to... it's a tribute to Tracy Kidder and it will probably make more sense if you've read Soul of a New Machine, House, Mountains Beyond Mountains, and the rest of his work. Kidder writes beautifully, you see, but never about himself...
TRACY KIDDER'S BIOGRAPHER
The evening the vaccuum cleaner had kittens I hovered near the ceiling, balding and ridiculous, while he breathed life into the newborn machines. I grew less real the longer I watched him. I could not reach my notepad, could not even touch the floor until the light had gone and the closet was full of a dark electric purr. Where had he gone? He has, I think, a wife and child--or children? He does not look at them, they blur and are lost. I see the bones of the walls rise around me to the shouts of workmen while he remains in shadow. I become less and less, I can fold myself into his suitcase when he travels and still I can hardly see him. Sometimes I am convinced that he wears black loafers. After all these years I haven't written a word. The kittens grow up while I search for a pen. His name folds around me on the wind, as voices shout for this man who saw the world for us all, and they wish they had sent better than me. But the focus is lost. When he is gone they will find only this house, that hospital, these children, perhaps a machine that smiles in the night and remembers his hands.
One of the things I'm doing with this time is reworking my website. Ostensibly, the goal is to get all the HTML pages to validate as HTML 4.01 Transitional, but while I'm in there editing all my files I'm naturally noticing a lot of cruft and/or finding things that aren't cruft. I just found this prose-poem that I for some reason put into my www directory years ago, but never linked to... it's a tribute to Tracy Kidder and it will probably make more sense if you've read Soul of a New Machine, House, Mountains Beyond Mountains, and the rest of his work. Kidder writes beautifully, you see, but never about himself...
TRACY KIDDER'S BIOGRAPHER
The evening the vaccuum cleaner had kittens I hovered near the ceiling, balding and ridiculous, while he breathed life into the newborn machines. I grew less real the longer I watched him. I could not reach my notepad, could not even touch the floor until the light had gone and the closet was full of a dark electric purr. Where had he gone? He has, I think, a wife and child--or children? He does not look at them, they blur and are lost. I see the bones of the walls rise around me to the shouts of workmen while he remains in shadow. I become less and less, I can fold myself into his suitcase when he travels and still I can hardly see him. Sometimes I am convinced that he wears black loafers. After all these years I haven't written a word. The kittens grow up while I search for a pen. His name folds around me on the wind, as voices shout for this man who saw the world for us all, and they wish they had sent better than me. But the focus is lost. When he is gone they will find only this house, that hospital, these children, perhaps a machine that smiles in the night and remembers his hands.
