I just picked up the latest issue of the New Yorker and Thomas Mallon has a review of the new Neil Armstrong biography by R. Hansen (First Man). Pretty much Armstrong is a stoic astronaut and says next to nothing and Hansen apparently worships him for that. Which is a bummer because if it sounded halfway decent I would be all over it for my stepfather's Christmas gift, but no dice. I'm not surprised though, Armstrong has never come across as a big emotional kind of guy in anything I've read about him before.

I was attracted to the article mostly for Thomas Mallon, who I adore. He wrote a great piece a year or so ago for American Scholar about the history of his house in DC. And his novels always impress the hell out of me, but then I'm a sucker for a good historical novel, especially one about astronomers like Two Moons.

I picked up Mallon today for a bit of inspiration, hoping he can push me along on the piece I started writing a month ago. It was originally a short story but wasn't sitting well like that and now I think will move more to essay territory. The weird thing is that I was writing about Hurricane Diane and how it tore apart the town my father grew up in back in 1955. The flood that poured through Woonsocket, RI in Diane's wake was devastating and culminated in the partial destruction of one of the town cemeteries - that left caskets floating through downtown. Oh, and the graveyard was named "Precious Blood Cemetery".

How do you not write about something like that?

I had it all worked out in my head and was actually buzzing along on the story and then Katrina hit and has completely mesmerized me ever since. It's hard to think about how bad Diane was when it is clear just how bad Katrina is. I've lost my sense of place and time in this story because the modern world keeps interfering. So I've been looking back at Mallon to get some much needed perspective and hopefully he will help. I start writing again tomorrow.

The thing that bothers me most about Diane is that my father was there, he saw the cemetery, he saw the caskets, it was a major part of his teen years but he never told us about it. It's another thing I find out only years after he is gone. And that, probably more than anything, is why I have to write about it. I keep looking for him in half of what I write and hoping for some kind of divine intervention.

Bradbury would say that I want to go back to Green Town, and that never works. But I can try, right? I can try.