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The Thirteenth of August
Today would have been her 103rd birthday, and her absence these nine years has left a divot on my life’s surface. I miss her, and I am glad she isn’t here to see what has become of her country and her region. Seeing such ugliness would have grieved her tough, hidden old heart. Her middle name was Viola, which she hated. I always loved it, thinking it had a Southern literary lilt to it, like Eudora or Flannary, and I would sometimes address her by it, which enraged her. “Viola,” I’d say, “Reckon what it would take to get you to make me some bacon for supper?” And she would…
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The Thoughts, They Are Provoked
While reading Thomas Merton this morning, a passage took hold of me: Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self. This is the man that I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. … My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love — outside of reality and outside of life. And such a life cannot help but be an illusion. … The secret of my identity is hidden in the love and mercy of God. … Therefore I cannot hope to find myself…
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Inarcurlated Outlaw
I suppose it was bound to happen. Though I have held out hope, a superstitious confidence written on slips of tissue paper and tucked into the fissures in my heart. Now it’s caught up with me, and I see how futile my hope was. Middle of the afternoon, and my phone buzzes. Unfamiliar number, so I silenced it and went on about my business. A few minutes later I glanced at the screen. Voicemail waiting. Found a private room and listened. “This is Lacy? And um? Your dog is here at our house? Can you call me back?” So I called her back, and I got the story. Jinx had…
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Accomplished By Needles
Up before dawn with two hungry dogs, one of them also quite urinacious (the spotted menace has no such weakness, being of the Ancient Order of the Iron Bladder), and Mrs. Orr prepared breakfast tacos. We ate and talked of west Texas and her tough people and her immutable wind that scrapes across her lion-colored hide. Jinx and I walked and watched cows bent to their unceasing cropping of grass, working their magic of transforming green blades into white milk. In the un-sunned early hours, we could hear the moist tugging of the grass into the soft lips, and an unseen owl in the enormous oak tree asked his eternal…
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Tang In The Air
Last night, Mrs. Orr and our little elderly dog Dixee accompanied Jinx and me when we went for our twilight walk. The sun, far below the horizon and providing just a rosy glow, gave an otherworldly cast to the air. The stars were already visible, little faraway dots of fire, and man and wife talked in hushed tones between the mowed pastures while the dogs scampered and explored. This morning, when Jinx and I went out into the lightly-frosted world, I was almost in a trance of joy, drinking in the pre-dawn chilled purity of morning, the air better than any drink or drug. I remember as a teenager, taking…
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Cycles
A year ago today, an intrepid heating & A/C repairman helped me remove a dead and reeking possum from our furnace. A few days ago I caught a young possum in a live trap in the cellar. And this morning? It was raining hard and steady when I let the dogs outside. Little Dixee immediately alerted on something and followed the scent all over the back yard, nose to grass, stub of a tail quivering like the needles on a polygraph. Jinx did his bidness and wanted back inside, but not the little dowager. I watched her as she tracked around and then finally reared up on her hind legs…
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Count, O Man
The morning light was odd, just a bit more muted than usual, the greens and silvers magnified, the air still and mostly dampened except for a lone Carolina wren with her martial piping from the fence. Jinx slept under the car last night, no doubt enjoying the soft breeze and lack of rain. The frogs were hopping all about when I went outside with Dixee. They always make me jump when I am still soggy with sleep, their sudden motion so low to the ground awakening some ancient fear of things that hop and slither and coil, the things that are blinkless and slick-skinned. Leaving the farm for the day,…
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Summer Song
The American calendar tells me it’s Father’s Day, and also that it’s the second day of summer (I rather like Bruce Charlton’s view on the timing of the seasons). I’m not clear on how many churches have resumed holding public worship services, but for those who are open for bidness today, I’m sure Father’s Day sermons will follow the time-honored American tradition of devoting most of the message to telling the fathers what inept doofuses they are, challenging them to man up, and lashing them with pronouncements about what husbandly headship and wifely submission do NOT mean. For years, I’ve wondered why any father would willingly attend these services, knowing…