Welcome, readers – new and old. There are a few newbies on this go-round, believe it or not. To all those returning suckers, well, I hope your bar or tea-cabinet is well stocked for the season.

The 25-cent exposition: During my 10 months in New York City, I kept up a web site called Morningside. Just for family and friends (and eventually, friends of friends, as it turned out), Morningside was a way for me to (a) deliver news of my exploits to a wide variety of folks without having to write the same stories in 40 different letters (lazy, I know), (b) report on my life and write about it, thus keeping at least some basic journalist and columnist skills from being utterly blunted in a year without writing, and (c) pretend that my life was much more important and fascinating than it really was.

No one told me to shut up, in cyberspace terms, and many people seemed to genuinely enjoy the damned thing, even encouraging me to continue. If you know me – which you must, if you're here – then you know that, humble as I try to come off, I don't exactly need a great deal of prodding to talk about myself. But I think I managed to complete a year's worth of editions without slipping into self-importance or -righteousness. Hindsight will inform me.

So here I am again – like any of you are surprised – with a different name but the same basic format. I can't imagine this site will appear as often as Morningside editions popped up (monthly), because I'm busier here and there's probably not as much to write about in the slower pace of ol' Tulsa. But I think I said that about Morningside, too, and three days after returning from Ireland I had about 30 pages of text up with almost as many photos. (I've had several requests to post that edition again. So here 'tis!) It's the experiment of cyberspace: making everyone's life worth reading. Or trying to. Paging Neal Gabler.

The format, as mentioned, is pretty much the same, only for some reason, despite the American title, I named each section after a British newspaper:

The Mirror: Opening remarks, comments, shout-outs, kvetching. Plus, 10 Songs!

The Daily Mail: Stories from my life, the universe and everything.

The News of the World: Tales of a Midwestern rock critic in a one-"Wild Horses" town.

The Electronic Telegraph: Media that's mesmerized me – books, films, theater, music, what have you.

The Observer: Relevant links and those not so relevant.

Plus, each edition may have some extra sections. This one, for instance, has some catching up from the final days in the Northeast. Plus, your regular poetry injection; for Little America our dead poet in residence will be Raymond Carver.

Finally, a word about the title. Arriving on a new email system, most of the name combinations, you can imagine, are already seized by other users. Thus, I had to be more crafty in selecting an email handle. It took me about an hour one night, scanning my CD shelves and typing in incredibly clever choices. (Can you believe 12 people on the Cox@Home system use some variation of the Steely Dan character name Hoops McCann? Drat!) I decided to focus on something – or some band – that was at the root of my experience, so I hit on R.E.M. The last song on the Reckoning album is "Little America." It's one of Stipe's more convoluted lyrics, but the general gist is that of a narrator and his homies who are lost on roads they've traveled numerous times before. That certainly spoke to my situation, and I landed the handle.

It also is a nice way to describe the Midwest, don't cha think? Beats the hell out of "heartland," which was stripped of its meaning three hours into the Oklahoma City bombing coverage.

Shout-outs to my peeps!

• Good luck to Cynthia, the intrepid wonder woman, who finally decided where she wants to be. At least for a while. New Orleans is my second-favorite American city (look what New York has done to me), so expect us visiting soon.
• Congratulations to Melanie upon the release of her debut CD, Windswept. It's as beautiful as we expected, and it makes life without Michael Hedges a tad easier.
• All our love with Mark and Kelly in the south of France. I found a good wine from Cahors, but I can't find Saint-Chinian anywhere. Can you ship?
• Does anyone know what the hell has become of Michelle G.? She left me in New York to go back to Iowa, and I haven't heard squat since – only rumors of romance. Do tell!
• Thanks to Andre for his help in getting this site up and running. And a domain name, no less. Anyone out there need a dependable, affordable web host? Contact Andre.

You, there

Summer 2001

Death by lightning strike – that would be the way to go. Yeah, the ultimate send-off and surely the soul's most direct route from the imprisonment of the flesh to the plasma of the sky. That's how I'd like to go, high on a hill, wet, wired and screaming taunts, daring Zeus to give me his best shot. I wonder if you could commit suicide that way, by making a concerted effort to get struck (stricken?).

Tonight would have been an easy gamble throughout the Verdigris hills. Mighty-mouse storms – small but fierce – skittered throughout the region, knocking over cans and whipping up trouble when they blew through town like a gang of greasy hoods. We stood on the balcony (excuse me, the veranda) at Wooley's place east of Claremore and just stared at the storms. One over past Chelsea, another towards Vinita. And that one, maybe on about Adair. Wooley's place is on an idyllic hill in the ouskirts of greater Foyil, Okla., and from his newly built perch one can see for miles and miles to the northeast. The panorama was breathtaking, in that shocking, sucking-breath kind of way. Pitch black, the horizon only discernable where the fat bolts of lightning stopped – and how they struck tonight! For hours, ceaselessly, the high-voltage shots perforated the countryside, stabbing repeatedly with the speed of life, showing the grace of their form in the trail of their attack. I'd never before noticed the variety of color in lightning, save maybe those killer coppers and eye-popping purples in the Sonoran Desert. Tonight it was a rainbow of violent violets, tarnished golds, lifeless greens and dress whites. And later, when we walked out toward the southwest hill, with the prescient oak tree, the sky was streaked with bitchin' blue tendrils, like Einstein's vericose veins. Mark thought that a big bolt would split the oak any second, like the night one strike carved a tree into a baseball bat for Roy Hobbs (The Natural), and I hoped so. But what would I make from the wood? Not a bat. A walking staff? A CD rack? A pen?

On the way to Wooley's, an extended perfect moment. Ahead, straight up Route 66, a mass of indistinct steel-grey began to spread over the horizon. Over my left shoulder, the sun became trapped in a clearing of turbulent clouds, a camera shutter that started to close. As the clouds tightened around the setting sun, its rays streamed through like God's own mercy, as if Jesus himself were about to ride them down like an escalator at a department store. (Halter tops and halos, level seven. Men's sandals, level three. Wretched humanity, ground floor.) Pinstripes of lightning began to appear ahead, getting fatter as the nebula of rain neared the highway. The dimmer the sun became, the brighter the lightning, exactly in relation. Just as the Reivers crackled through the stereo – "I suppose you can reach some magic, just in time when I'm feeling low" – the crack of thunder rattled the asphalt and raindrops the size of my nephews' Nikes began tap-dancing on the roof of the CRX. I rolled down my windows and stuck my head out like a dog, even howling. The rain tastes so much better here than it did in New York.

And that's just it – tonight was the necklace of beautiful moments I needed in order to finally feel at home. The storms, bless their little hearts, were typical catalysts for my emotions, my irrational decison-making, my weakness for believing in fate. The night with Wooley's family and our friends – Jim, Mark, Kelly – watching crazy old films, our semi-regular gathering to watch reels from Wooley's collection of 16mm prints, everything from episodes of Peter Gunn and Surfside 6 (a great one starring Dennis Hopper) to Laurel and Hardy shorts and educational films (a series of '70s-era high school female flag-corps films gets the breeder males to hooting), well, this was the reminder that life is about people, not places.

I have a hard time remembering that. Maybe it's because I'm an earth sign (Virgo). I feel the pull of places. I believe in man's connection to his native soil. Ashes to ashes, right? Hell, that's what kept Woody Guthrie going – his unbreakable link to his homeland, his witnessing the same bonds in the outcast Okies. We were born on one plot of land, our tears sank into that plot of land, we ate food that came from that plot of land – we were that plot of land. It's basic biology, really.

Maybe that's the old model of human connection: location. The direct connection to the soil was pretty literal, and it was the excuse we needed for community, a gathering spot. But how does that work in a world where the corn on my plate came from a field in Iowa and the apple juice in my glass was squeezed from fruit grown in Argentina and sometimes our families move around so much we can't even remember what the back yard looked like on Cornwall Place? No wonder the American Indian model of humanity seems merely quaint. The people fighting against globalization – they're too late. The world is our home.

If that's the case, then we have to create other excuses for community. Without land, we have to make our homes in each other's company. Small wonder small-minded conservatives cry out from the darkness of their terror dumb, easy slogans about "family values." It is more valuable now than ever. Nothing like wandering the world or moving far away, even temporarily, can drive that point home. How many writers have told the tale of the traveler who sets off to see the world and realizes he was better off at home? How many people do I know who change cities every year or two, chasing jobs and lovers across continents and oceans and still sigh into the phone, "I just feel so lost"? New York was supposed to be the Ultimate Place. Everyone expected me to go to That Place and become a new person. The place would change the person. Phooey, says I. The place is dazzling and wonderful, but any changes were the result of people – contacts, experiences, friends, classes, opportunities. People. That's why writers write and readers read – "Look at these people!" That's why we stare at TV – "Look at those people!" That's why we go to the bar – "Look, people!" New communities, old communities, we crave people. We are social animals. Part of nature, part of the land, but still not beasts.

That is my change of heart, the realization I had like a lightning bolt. That's why I was drawn to journalism, at the root, to meet people and tell their stories to other people – to foster community. So that's what I want to worry about now. I'm tired of wondering where I'll end up. I'm tired of summoning weak demographic skills to analyze a prospective city somewhere in America to determine whether or not it's the Place For Me. All my life I've yearned to get out of Oklahoma – you're programmed with that insatiable desire when you grow up here – yet I've come back three times. It's taken years of study, some of it in New York, to understand the nature of Oklahomans and their values as people. Daniel and I both have spent far too much energy forecasting places we might end up. We never pay attention to the things that matter around us, the people in those places. When I did, I realized that this was the place I wanted to be for a while longer at least. This is the place that has the people who matter to me, or the highest concentration of them, anyway. I belong with these people, damn the locale.

I'll be back in the earth soon enough. I want to value and enjoy my fellow humans now.

[ ten songs ]

Each edition of the Mirror will conclude with [ ten songs ]. This is not a top ten list, not even a program for a mix. These are just songs that have occurred to me, that have crossed my path, that have impressed me or reminded me of themselves, that have some fleeting significance in this one life one more time. It's like a little palmful of confetti flicked into the air as someone walks out the door. Poof!

This edition's ten songs:

"World Leader Pretend" by R.E.M. An unflinching analysis of the narrator's own life, and a theme song for myself at present. "It's high time I've razed the walls that I've constructed."

"Midnight" by Yaz. I finally bought Upstairs at Eric's on CD. It was thrilling to hear "I Before E Except After C" again – it's been years – but the jewel on this album is the next track, "Midnight." Simple, succinct romantic angst. A fantastic woman I knew in high school (she was never a girl), Emily Pennington, wanted to sing this at a chorus show. I wonder why that never happened. She surely would have made me wet my pants.

"Random Blues" by the Silver Jews. The Silver Jews remind me a lot of Souled American – slow, woozy American slurs. This song's opening line is, "In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection."

"Beautiful Day" by U2. Because the dead shall rise again.

"Slipping (Into Something)" by the Feelies. An ultimate example of tuneful drone from the ultimate album for an overcast drive, The Good Earth.

"Cast Your Fate to the Wind" by the Vince Guaraldi Trio. I'm eating up Guaraldi lately, something I always knew I'd get to. Those Charlie Brown specials were great training for approaching jazz as an adult.

"Sudden Organ" by Yo La Tengo. How many songs are named for their abrupt entrances – and then reveal so much more?

"Bled White" by Elliot Smith. Another great winter song, about a town that's been bled white, and about pleas to stand clear of new resolve ("Don't complicate my peace of mind").

"Web in Front" by Achers of Loaf. This line: "You're not the one who let me down, but thanks for offering."

"O Death" by Ralph Stanley. It is the unique problem of my generation and those to follow: we start in the middle of music history and have to work backwards. I've listened to Camper Van Beethoven do this song – and do it justice – for the last 15 years. It's rewarding to drink from the headwaters.