“It’s getting darker earlier now & ominously, for those of us working long days and returning to cold houses. I still remember summer, & having time to spare, time to stop the truck and talk to a neighbor on that luxurious raft of hours before sundown. It’s a rural thing I guess, to shoot the shit right in the middle of the road, even blocking it if you have to, until someone rude enough to honk comes along. It’s not good form to get annoyed, pulling up behind such a scene yourself. But you do feel left out, don’t you, witnessing those kinds of mystical friendships, possibly even the convening of a secret society. And, no ... today, you limp about, musing only upon your lack of creature comfort, in a raw, cold drizzle, ill equipped for chilliness, not sure where your long underwear is at & with no stability of place, really, not yet. Cooking in the same one pot, without furniture because its all in storage, unable to get your firewood under cover, terrorized by endless calamities & financial demands, every call, text and email taking a personal toll, stabbing with its impersonal tone. That’s what being a grown up is all about. Yeah, well. And there, by the grace of god, go I. Add to that, the clamor for censorship, and the endless repetitions, leading decent folks to doubt their own common sense. But if you really, really think about it, where you were muzzled before, is exactly where you’re muzzled now. The pontificating genius you supported to get his degree, while you raised his children; that “little Napoleon” who was clinically paranoid, & classically in love with praise, that ambulance chaser who always arrived just in the nick of time to suck up to a handsome widow; next, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the ones who hated you based on what they thought you were doing, which you weren’t doing, but which they were doing - you could put an end to this, once and for all! Just thinking about your innocent ass, absolutely willing to surrender the earth & sky, it’s like a B movie that only plays reruns between 2-4 am. Well, surprise, surprise. If it weren’t for how effectively dirt erases all that disease, & how repeated applications to the legs, hands, & heart make for healing, I’d be gone by now. Forced to one knee, as the other one’s shot, falling forward into a position of servitude, stabbing for balance with a root knife, life actually feels sort of noble & knightly. Oddly, for the more “in-plants-we-trust”, or anything that doesn’t profit from itself, the more it’s all just music, trumpeting thru the heart, one enormous, contrapuntal, ecstatic, do-re-mi, the pure, positive emotion of effort, and way, way more. Because, despite the rhetoric, it’s the simplest of prayers. The best cake, made from the fewest ingredients. Why, they thanked me - for helping them - load my truck today - at the garden center. It made me chuckle, a little unhappily, as I drove out the exit, following the arrows painted on the asphalt. I’m never going to sit around and wait for anyone, to do what needs to be done: whether they’ve been hired to load my truck for me or whether they’ve been pretending to be god, in awful, dripping, self righteous, delusion.”
