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East Again
It’s a funny thing, how fast everything moves in this world, and how that existential speed can disorient us. A week and a half ago, we got into a box of metal and steel, and we sat in it all day and part of the night, and when we got out of the box, we were in another country. We were in Texas, and how did that happen? It’s also a funny thing how different people can be in different regions of the same country. When we go home to Texas to visit, we’re always struck with how different the people are from the people we live around now. We’re…
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Summer Comes In
While the spotted twins snoozed on the back porch this morning, I walked for an hour and inhaled summer’s new air, holding it in my lungs like a stoner, letting it absorb into my body and give me a morning buzz. The neighbor’s feed corn is thigh-high, the leaves grinning their green grins beneath the sun’s path. While I leaned against the fence and scanned the rows, I could still hear the dogs — two yappy Dachshunds and a basset mix — carping about my temerity in daring to pass their house on the way to the pastures. I knew that if I was near Jinx and Bluebelle, I would…
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New Year, New Decade, New Day
My mother used to say that whatever a person does on New Year’s Day will indicate what that person will be doing for the rest of the year. Mindful of her words, I have all my life avoided doing things like laundry, paying bills, or coming within aural distance of zydeco music on the first day of January. If today is any indication of my coming year, I will be living like a kaiser. We slept in after falling asleep last night in front of a mellow fire in the stove, arose in good health and spirits, and feasted, thanks to Mrs. Orr, on a regal brunch of eggs and…
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Decade Ending
My wife bought me a crucifix and a statue of the Holy Family a couple of years ago at an antique shoppe, both made of porcelain and painted with blue highlights. Lately, I have found myself gazing more frequently and more intensely at the statue than at the crucifix. The idea of a heavenly mother is a novel one for me, and yet it is sensible and appeals to me. Since boyhood, I accepted what I was taught as truth, which was that God is a sort of single dad. Like so much of the rest of it, I chafe under the idea nowadays, and I fill notebooks with my…
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Winter Solstice
The longest day of the year, significant to my ancestors, my people, those who endured in silence the things that make me wince and retreat. I love this day, and I do not love what comes after it…the gradual truncation of the nights and the incremental encroachment of more and more sunlight, until that day comes, that day that comes every year, that day when I go out into the world of men and hear a stereo in a car or see a female dressed like a camp follower or wade through deluded suburbanites jamming the aisles of the store where I’m trying to buy a spark plug and they’re…
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Sands, Running
We’ve had a respite from the August heat for a few days. This past weekend, it was so chilly in the mornings and evenings, I had to put on a light jacket in order to sit outside comfortably. This coming weekend is supposed to be more typical of late August, with temperatures back up in the mid-to-high 80s. But the sphere is tilting and the sands are running through the narrow neck, and the effects, while slight, are most definitely there. The crickets keep up a steady chorus. The little things that migrate are extra-busy, flitting and feeding constantly. The leaves are applying their grown-up makeup. The late afternoon sun…
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Layksuh Hayull
I sat outside this morning with bible, breviary, and notebook, my coffee steaming in the cool and sugared mugginess of the day’s initial pages. Up in the woods in the direction of the new-born sun, a screech owl called, sounding as always like a tiny spectral horse whinnying. His appearance is early this year; I usually don’t hear the screech owls until mid-to-late September. And I sat and sipped and wondered if his eerie song was considered a harbinger in the mythos of any peoples. The squadron of the buzzing bullets we call hummingbirds were about their business, and watching them reminded me of something from my pilgrimage to Gethsemani…