Monday of last week we was sitting in Johnny’s on South 27th, eating our scrambled eggs and corned beef hash and waiting for the coffee to cool down enough to drink. We didn’t think much on it when the beat-up, mudcovered pickup angles into the parking space just over by the door and rattles to a stop, and out steps this lanky cowpoke in a Levi’s jacket and a ten gallon hat, looking like mebbe he come in second in a tangle with a tornado. He slaps the dust off shoulders, hitches up his pants, and heads on up the steps.
Process Reflection: Never been to Omaha. Never set foot in Nebraska. Got started on this by trying (again) to write a poem about poker, but that wasn't happening and I started thinking about particular poker games, of which my favorite is Omaha, and that got me thinking that since I don't have any information about Omaha in my head, I might be free to invent my own private Omaha, so I figured I'd start someplace, like in a diner. I googled "omaha diner" looking to come up with a credible name and found Johnny's, and then figured I had to make something happen, and so I did, and while I was doing that I started trying to create this other (wholly imagined) voice, the way this narrator is talking, and that kept me entertained through my hundred words. All of this is somehow the offshoot of the seed planted in my brain by the David Foster Wallace quote I posted yesterday. Up on that wire, and the abyss below, nada.
Oh yeah, w/r/t the guy in the truck: Dostevsky said there are only two stories: a man leaves home, and a stranger comes to town. This is the intro to the second.
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