lynda rutledge

Tumble down my rabbit hole--a literary travel writing web experiment.

Twelve literary travel writing pieces with creative links. The fun part of a scholarly project about literature in cyberspace. Thought you might get a kick out of it.

After all, where else can you find poetic Bathroom Graffiti from an Arizona Truck Stop?

Or a Bumper Sticker Poem?

(Originally published: Kairos Journal 15.2)  Read More 

New York City
10/11/2001


When I think about those days now, I see a dark street in some continuous midnight.
A man in a tuxedo carrying a cello from Carnegie Hall.
The sound of a sonata behind closed doors.
A Goya by a mansion's staircase, a Shakespeare folio under glass.
A flickering television in the apartment across from my 12th floor hotel window.
Only then, do I see why I was there and where I walked an entire November night—the gaping Ground Zero gash that was once the World Trade Center. The expected images have faded, mercifully if slowly, the images everyone knows without having to go there, the ones we'll always see. But the unexpected, what the mind chooses to hold on to and where the soul finds itself again, can be a lasting surprise.

I came to Manhattan a month after 9/11 to write a book with a crisis chaplain I'd never met. At 11:30 p.m., he walked into the hotel lobby in full blue tactical uniform, introduced himself, then led me immediately to the subway. Read More 

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Texas FM Highways 25 and 79
Archer City, Texas

Remember used bookstores? They seemed to have just vanished. I'm surprised now when I stumble on one of those great cluttered book storefronts down some urban street, find myself wandering in and wandering out hours later, smiling, discoveries under my arm.

So this boggled my mind: A dusty small Texas town full of them? This I had to see. A few years back, I'd heard that Texas literary icon Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove et al) had returned to his tiny hometown (population 1,848) at the intersection of two Farm to Market country roads in Northwest Texas, and brought his used book and "bookscouting" business with him.  Read More 

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