I was raised in a scorching town of about three thousand folks set in the steamy and fragrant pinewoods in the south of Georgia, seventy miles inland from Brunswick, on the Atlantic Ocean.
Baxley had a Main Street, a post office with a marble floor where our box, number 162, had belonged to my great-grandfather, and a water tower. It had a courthouse that had recently abolished "Colored Only" signs. It had a handful of Jewish families and one family of Vietnamese refugees. It had a juke joint (the Ponderosa), where I never went, and a country club (Pine Forest), where I also never went.
My mother’s people were from Baxley, my father’s people were from Baxley. Both lines shot a long way into the past in that place, and before that, jumped a series of migrations beginning mostly in the British Isles, with ancestors who were clan-based, tribal, and fiercely independent.
In my sleepy, tense, and careful birthplace, everybody was connected to everybody else, marginally or profoundly, usually in multiple fashion, the way parts on a car or elements of a landscape are linked. Our lives snapped together like Legos. A person without connections was marginal, alien, and dangerous.
From these braids and bundles of relationships, stories were born. Stories are the result of the connections made and connections broken.
A mile north of town lay a junkyard, where I lived. My father, a junk man, trucked in stories more than he did batteries, alternators, and tie-rod ends. Born into poverty and into a family threaded with mental illness, Franklin Ray was a heroic character, as tall and handsome as Elvis, as complicated as Fred Sanford. He never wore glasses, he never went bald. He was larger than life, mythic, brilliant—he would spend time in the state's psychiatric hospital.
People knew my father as a problem-solver (Can this radiator be fixed?) and as a money man (How much will you give me?). They arrived at the junkyard to inquire, to make an offer, to pay a visit, to find out, to pawn wedding rings, to sell hubcaps.
I heard stories endlessly.
The characters in the stories were people I knew or people connected to someone I knew. The settings of the stories were places I knew.
From a very young age I understood myself to be part of a vast, tightly woven, land-based literature, whether I could name it as such or not. That’s how I came to fall in love with stories.
Question
What about you? How did it happen for you?
Personal News
I’m still doing a lot of behind-the-scenes preparation for the launch of the Kickstarter of Craft and Current, the book on the craft and the magic needed for writing.
The campaign launches on June 4, 2024 and will run for 11 days.
I haven’t announced the Kickstarter to anyone but you here—I just got home from 10 days of readings, workshops, and research. But already 58 of you have clicked the button to be notified on Launch Day. I’m really grateful for you all. I appreciate your support of this project of my heart oh so much.
Here’s the Kickstarter link. There’s not much to see yet. About all you can do is express interest in the project.
Thank You
Thank you for being here. I really love and need the company of writers. I think about you a lot. I’m very grateful for your presence in The Rhizosphere.
Sabbatical
I’m halfway through my sabbatical from teaching. I taught so many courses during the past year that I wore myself out. I do miss it. I love working with other writers, especially if I can see a clear way to help them. I want to catch up on some of my own projects before I start doing the Sunday sessions or the co-working sessions or the longer courses again.
Bear with me. I’ll be creating offerings for workshops and courses in the next few months.
While I was traveling last week I was too busy to walk or do yoga, so I’m in need of movement. Today I sat almost all day at my desk doing hand-edits on Craft and Current. Tomorrow I intend for the day to be more balanced, with time for exercise first.
I hope your life is in balance, with time for fun, exercise, fresh air, spring sunshine, grounding, loving your place—oh, and for working too.
See you next week! Until then, enjoy writing!
Your friend,
Janisse