Tentativity; "Levi's Landing" by Jan Carrington

It seems so much of my life these days are tentative. I make contact with a bookstore to set up a signing and get a "we'll see" and I wait for answers. Ithink I have something booked but then I get mixed signals or no signal and so I'm uncertain about announcing stuff. It gets frustrating, to say the least. I like the sort that likes to announce things.

So here're things that seem pretty darn certain:



Three Able to... authors (at last count) will be doing a signing at River Oaks Bookstore, 3270 Westheimer, here in Houston on September 27, 4-6pm.

September 5, I'm scheduled to be on an internet radio program called Calling All Authors ( http://www.globaltalkradio.com/shows/callingallauthors/ ) to talk about Able to... and neoNuma Arts.

I'll be doing Fieldwork facilitator training in New York City, September 6-9. (http://thefield.org/)

The same week is the Langdon Weekend, sponsored by Tarleton State University ( http://www.tarleton.edu/~langdonreview ). Usually, I'd be there except for the NYC thing. Still, Able to... will be represented by Winston Derden and maybe other authors.

Dagnabbit, there goes that tentativity thing.

There's something tentatively in November. And something I may still try to do in September and even in August. Tentatively, of course.

Visit often for tentative developments.
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"Levi's Landing" is Jan Carrington's second story in Able to..., and more easily completes the "able to ______" phrase. Levi is able to hear the voice of the universe. Some people may say it's the drugs, even though he's been clean for quite a while, and some people may say it's the burned synapses from before he was clean, and some people may say he's just crazy, regardless of drugs.

Much like "Blues in the Rafters," Jan writes the type of story that could go to all kinds of sickly sweet sentimental places. Levi has, after all, taken his two children up to a high desert mountain in order to leap into the universe, to join the voice he hears there. The kids go along and they're concerned for their father, but they're also used to his alleged craziness. There's no melodramatic pleading. There are questions and there are concerns, but Jan manages to keep it out of TV movie-of-the week sappiness with characterizations of the children that are at once complex and yet believable as a child's point of view.

In many ways, it's a simple story and to say much more here is to take away from the reader's discovery in the book, but the simplicity is a bit of a smoke screen for the levels at work in the story. Once you read the story and see the simple rightness of how it goes, read it again and see if you also see the complexity of the situation, of the relationships at work. It's a subtle piece.