Speaking of Politics...

I'll admit it...I'm addicted to election news. While I haven't blogged much myself of late, I have followed political blogs (especially Talking Points Memo, Andrew Sullivan, Five Thirty Eight, and David Frum almost rabidly. The poll fluctuations, the latest gaffes, the rollouts of new commercials and the commentariate's take on it all...I'm up on them, maybe to the detriment of other obligations.

Being a student of language, I naturally pay close attention to the candidates' rhetoric, and not only to its strategy or structure (or factuality) but to its delivery. And it's that last which often moves me to some empathy for candidates or politicians already elected, even ones I don't support or even like.

Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin has been the subject of incredulity and ridicule since her awkward interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. It's fair to say she's out of her depth, but beyond that I don't feel compelled to pile on. After last Friday's debate Barack Obama was criticized for his halting responses. I'm voting for him anyway, but as I watched him occasionally stumbling over his words, I felt, more than I usually do, that I could identify with him. Mulling over his and Palin's performances last week, a paraphrase of Eliot came mind.

And I Tiresias foresuffered all enacted on this dais or set...

I think I'm a reasonably intelligent person. And I'm a very good public speaker--IF I have a text prepared. But off the cuff, I have trouble coherently discussing so much as the plot of a sitcom. I have to talk around books, complex ideas for quite a while before I can say what I mean to. It's a rare conversation in which I don't need to attempt one or two or three clarifications of a statement or I don't leave groaning about some utterance.

So I feel for the politicians who, on camera day in and day out, find themselves asea in their native tongue. That goes even for our current president, for whom I have sufficient disgust to burn up most of Blogger's bandwith were I to vent it here.

Unsurprisingly, then, I don't put much stock in fluency. I would like to say this benefits me as a voter since I am inclined to discount a candidate's manner of speaking and focus on what he or she actually says. That advantage could only hold, though, if candidates' actions after being elected tended to conform to promises made on the stump. I can more confidently say that it constrains the sanctimony with which I might inveigh against candidates I don't like. Which at least makes me a more rational participant in civic discourse. So, hard as it is to say it, for the one and only time I will ever say it, Thank you Sarah Palin.

Cloud Creek Closer

It's been nearly a month without a post. The semester has been a busy one already, plus, weird as this sounds given that I teach writing and literature for a living, I've developed an aversion to writing. I shrink, go numb at the thought of it. It's about as appealing as touching a corpse. I don't know what to make of that.

Don't get the wrong impression: life overall is pretty good. At least the part lived away from pen and keyboard.

I'm biting the bullet today since I do have a fishing report to offer, if not a very inspiring one. I'd originally planned to be up north now observing the end of trout season with a cast and blast weekend somewhere near Gaylord. But with money tight right now I thought I'd best hold off. As a consolation, I've indulged in some little local cast and blast. Yesterday I went to the Pinckney Rec Area hoping to scare up a grouse in some decent looking cover I scouted out this summer. None to be found, though I did see a few squirrels. Maybe I should hunt those.

I hadn't fished at Cloud Creek this season, and having always wondered how it fished in the fall, I headed there to try for my last trout of the year. After I pulled in at my favorite access (seen in the photo above), I strolled to the creek to check out the water and see if any insects were coming off. Some BWOs and tan caddis were winging about, but the water was running fast, high, and brown--this when we haven't had rain (at least where I am, 50 miles away)in a week and a half, at least. Having driven all that way, though, I felt like I had to give it a try. It could actually be a decent day for streamer fishing, I thought. I suited up and waded in, and for the first twenty yards or so the wading wasn't too hard. The water never got more than knee deep. I cast a coneheaded sculpin along the edges, hoping to draw a big brown from under the thatching of alders. When I approached a section that gets waist deep at normal water levels, I figured I could pass around it if I hugged the bank, but the water reached waist level while I was still 10 yards upstream from the really deep hole, and I was struggling to stay on my feet. Sometimes I curse the dense brush along the banks of Cloud Creek, but today I was glad I had something to hang on to.

It would be better to close my season early than to fight the water all day, I figured, and trudged back to my car. I was disappointed with the experience, but not sorry I came out. Outdoor time on clear autumn days, spent with rod, gun, camera, or picnic basket, is good time.

Five whole paragraphs! I haven't written that much, anywhere, since my last post here. And it only took two glasses of wine.

Happy Labor Day '08 (& a trout fugue)

It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation.
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth;
whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I
find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses,
and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet;
and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me,
that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from
deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking
people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea
as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.

--Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Last Wednesday found me in extremely grim and anxious; it took a great deal of self control not to begin punching whatever was in sight. Or to begin running in some random direction until my heart burst. Maybe it was the stress of the new school year; maybe it was a random chemical imbalance. But something foul had taken posession of me and I felt like it would start to tear me open if I sat still. Eventually I slipped into something resembling what psychologists call a Fugue State.

According to the DSM-IV, this is:

* sudden, unexpected travel away from home or one's customary place of work, with inability to recall one's past,
* confusion about personal identity, or the assumption of a new identity, or
* significant distress or impairment.

No amnesia, but the distress and the travel were right on the money. The least harmful solution to the problem seemed to be to go fishing.

So, as I did the Wednesday before, I drove up to Mio to fish the evening white fly hatch and drift the river in the afternoon. It accomplished its purpose, maybe not least because the fishing was considerable better this time.

The white fly hatch Wednesday night was excellent: enough bugs to get the fish active but not so many that your fly wouldn't stand out among the naturals. Landed seven chunky rainbows and browns, and could have caught more if I hadn't switched from emergers to spinners too soon. Spinners had begun floating by and I figured the trout would quickly target those, but they took their time. After the hatch, I tossed some mice along the bank near my camp but didn't hook anything. Casting under the densely woven constellations and Milky Way glimmers overhead was reward enough, though.

The next day I drifted in The Meadowhawk from Mio to Comins Flats, landing five rainbows and one brown in the process. Hooked and lost at least as many more, and each time after a lengthy struggle. There must be a secret to netting fish on the big waters of the Au Sable I'm not privy too, though I've never had this problem there before.

Thursday's white fly hatch was meager, though a few fish came out to feed. I took one brown and one rainbow, both around 12". Way more people on the river that night. I had the bend to myself Wednesday, but I joined three others on it Thursday, and could see other vest lights along the banks in both directions.

Didn't bring the camera on this trip, sorry to say. I had other thins on my mind as I was packing up. Fortunately, I seem to have left most of them up north. I returned home calmed, comfortable in my skin. Here's to better days ahead.