August Aiming Auspicious
The monthly newsletter from the couch in Roundagator, church is meeting across the street, Wompus Cat on the sun porch, Wilbur passed out next to me, a cardinal watching from the window behind my back
Whew buddy, a long one this month:
The simmer of cicadas in the heat, the bright white yellow of summer,
Oh the sun set last night like a blazing glory, he said well the sun looks like a full moon, it did, pale yellow white in an orange pink hazey sky, and I couldn’t help but smile because I could feel it; my mind was right with the world again, glad-glasses-on,
Wake up, out of your reality, there is another one out there in the real world of the world.
Mowing lazily and a heart of bees in the wall pulsing and buzzing, against the Virginia Creeper and Cypress Boards, capitalized for their names.
Earlier that morning I was admiring the mud where the laundry grey water runs, where the mud daubers are usually working in a cloud, thinkings, bees and wasps must not be out before 7 am, they like to sleep like I do, and I don’t worry about the mud daubers and I walk among them carefully to not step on one, but smilingly, and believed I was there in peace with the world,
And we went out on the river, and it sort of amazes me how much I don’t know about anything and I remembered riding there before but never remembered a boat launch, a red fox skinny on the road, and absolutely care-less about us, and he said, “I heard all of the foxes have moved to town these days,” and someone’s building a distillery and a tasting room, and the man used to make moonshine out on an island, and we went past all of these tug boats with Port of Rosedale and some more colorful names I neglected to my memory,
Out on placid water, the definition of placid, sort of unbelievable placid, the thick glass water, and the sun was rising red as we hit just south of Rosedale and I was sleepy still, smiling.
And so, out onto the glass blue green red water, beautiful, surreal, really, maybe, he said it isn’t usually like this, and his boat and his Toyota truck and the silhouettes, and I guess I need to start writing down good questions because all I could say was
Black bears?
Alligators?
Garfish?
And the trees out in the distance looked like headstones, or brick buildings, and I wondered. And it was a wonder to hang hotdogs or shrimp on the hooks, and throw out the jugs, which were perfectly engineered, made-at-home, and to watch them dance distantly, sometimes, and then these big fish, he said sixteen pounds but later someone called out twenty five, and involved in the baiting and the unraveling and the throwing, all of a sudden to look up in the cool of the morning disoriented, where on the river are we,
But he knows because he’s been knowing since he was thirteen, probably earlier, but all I know was the islands and the sandbars and the horseshoes and the river and the sky, where am I? I can’t even tell where the river runs, flat and glass and blue and red,
Also, biscuits, just little smaller than fist biscuits, a bite of bacon, perfect and preserving, remembering how even Vienna sausages taste best on the water, and especially while fishing in the summer.
And we rode down a little further south and the trees were glowing and they were talking about hunt clubs and deer and there was a tugboat pushing empty containers up the river, maybe, but there we were at the river and it looked like you could walk on it, and the water ran certain ways, whorling, but it felt like rain puddles to skid over riding,
stinkbait, three coolers, catfish, knives, Piggly Wiggly, brick, ice, croaking, hooks, red gills, fins and
I said early I was going to shut up and try to give everyone some peace and I hope that I did, took the job very seriously, baiting, rolling the hooks back up, trying to net them (the weight of the water surprised me against something so open as a net,) he threw a jug with a catfish on it, didn’t even realize, crawling in his white shirt all over the stern of the boat, I don’t know how the captain was but it seemed to me like we were all little kids, smiling and laughing and so serious,
Back right at nine before it got too hot and like time never passed at all,
A brahma bull on the levee right near the cattle gate, framed next by trees, bright white against the green, steady and shining,
They would push right through the wire, he was always building fences,
Back when,
And then later,
Rode down to New Orleans still thinking about the river, and I asked for this, and I received it, humbled-mule-summer, and New Orleans feeling like cozy, feeling like I can walk all around here and still find my way home, and I can,
Riding home thinking, fitting words together, lost, the horse on the side of the old highway there again magically, next to the junk yard STOP BAD DOG and the owner sitting there in his truck smiling and the horse staring but not starting, a big forelock, and boiled peanut’s 4$ and watermelons, I said I have never seen you here and he said I am from here, I have to wait for my produce to come up before I can set up, he had an old umbrella and a white ford truck and green watermelons and
I had gotten careless in New Orleans, leaving my bag on the ground in the hotel, the superstition says your money walks away if you leave your bag on the ground (think about it, I like it, like it wants to be the trees that it came from it unfurls and starts scooting) and I was out in the back yard off of Rampart Street in his beautiful garden and she said if you are getting bitten by bugs it means there are little things you feel guilty about,
4:44,
And so between the boiled peanut man and the junkyard horse, we suppose, my wallet walked off to become a boiled peanut or a a tree or grass for the horse to graze, I guess.
There’s a church that’s leaning back on the New Africa road and the creeper has grown all over it same as moss, climbing, and I like Virginia Creeper because it’s holding roots look a little bit like tiny bird feet and it’s gentle while still clinging, turning the ghost white into green.
Well then on the corner before the pond before the church, there’s a house with two satellite dishes and a mowed yard but it looks like it’s falling into itself, too. And the creeper has made it’s way from the yard to the porch to inside the screen door, and I can’t help but root for it some more. Money walking, trying to turn the door knob and see what the satellite television is all about.
Someone wrote don’t tell all of your secrets, some things you can just keep to yourself, and when I write you I feel like I’m telling everything, except it isn’t secrets, it’s just life;
I forgot about how alight and how lightfull and emerald and blazing the hummingbird looked while I was in the pond, where everything looks brighter I guess,
Been thinking of the snake we killed, we meaning I asked him to, not because it was really a threat but it was hot and it was up in the chicken coop trying to eat a whole egg and it looked like a cottonmouth, and the problem with the snakes in the pond is, there’s a real big one and it looks like a cottonmouth but it’s too big, and it’s eyes sit like a frogs do. But you cant see that for the the cottonmouth of it. So this rat snake had the same pattern, and his head said he was harmless, but when I reached to grab for him he spat out the egg and started trying to bite and I hollered, are you sure, are you sure. The way things have been going, poison ivyed, bee-stung, ant-bitten, wasp-cut, are you sure. And the snake wailed around trying to bite and he said you have boots on, don’t worry about it, but are you sure? His prison hoe, a headless snake, slap! Into the pond. An eerie thought and I hope the turtles ate it but I can see it’s body glowing white and fluttering like a pennant in the muddy water searching for my legs just to get back at me.
Sunflowers, ironweed, crepe myrtle, zinnia; the purple yellow red pink magenta is really beautiful. I wish you could see it. Another hummingbird darts and all I can do is smile.
Soft dirt in the fall air, the land saying it is harvest, we should be more kind.
Painting the house to earn my keep, he picked this color that is bright and it makes me think of beach houses, except it isn’t so obnoxiously key lime, it isn’t so different from the hazy purple it was before, but brighter, almost white, and it fits; this land so much like the beach except no roaring ocean, only grain trucks. No seagulls but the Mississippi Kites call from trees closely, and it feels sort of private, my own Mississippi Kites, the human trait of I own this because it is here with me, it is mine, just for me.
Hard to believe the fields that took three months to grow are totally gone, but of course they are, for the squeaking roaring trucks that barely stop at the sign every day for three days, we all quiet our speech to wait while they roar and rumble past, all of a sudden the corn fields don’t look like even an acre across to the woods, before they were seven feet tall and went on forever.
The fields all becoming scraped clean, dust into the atmosphere of another sunset, big trucks moving slowly through the fields all our eyes helped raise,
The long wide field that backs up to Dry Bayou that backs up to the forgotten cemetery that backs up to the field with six deer stands in it, that backs up to the place where the old car is run into the bank and the cottonmouths sat in wait, the quail echos now and his sound reaches us across the miles,
Bob-white!
And my Mississippi Kite’s cry sounds like soaring put to song,
You paint it blue so the ghosts stay away, and the flies, and the birds won’t build their nests.
And the cottonmouth swims on top of the water.
The cure for the catfish sting is in it’s slime.
Merrily, merrily, all of the time.
Wowie wow wow. Okey dokey.
Prairie Arts Festival!!! August 31st! I’ll be set up morning to night at the Black Prairie Blues Museum. Tamales! Blues music! Mark “Mule Man” Massey is gonna be back, and he served time in Parchman and he has mules and he’s a terrific showman even though he has never invited me personally to his farm to pet his mules. Come and see us, check out the Arts Festival, eat some elephant ears. Pet Wilbur. Please. He’s begging you.
More information (it’s free during the day to stop in! you gotta buy tickets if you wanna see the evening’s entertainment and if it was anything like last year, you will be entertained.)
https://www.facebook.com/BlackPrairieBluesMuseum/
https://blackprairiebluesmuseum.com/
Ps. I get to stay at the Grateful House when I am there, and if you are an artist-writer-poet-creative-HUMAN you should write Johnny and Deb and see if you can come stay. It’s a blessing.
https://www.facebook.com/p/High-Hope-Farm-100064549935817/
Saturday, September 14th! I’ll be set up at Mighty Roots! Right outside of Clarksdale at Stovall, it’s like nothin’ nowehere you’ve ever seen before.
https://www.mightyrootsmusicfestival.com/
September 21st - 22nd, Summerville, Georgia, FINSTER FEST!! I am so excited. I think you can tell. I have my costumes ready. It’s like going home, except to a bunch of crazy people who love you. Same thing, I guess. This year I hope to see you. It’s worth the trip to Paradise any time, but especially when they’re music, art, and Garden Club pimento cheese sandwiches.
https://paradisegardenfoundation.org/finster-fest/
For this month’s music, i told his daughter that his songs make me sad, but everything makes me sad so it isn’t even his fault. However, i am sad-proud to get to help share this lo-fi fuzzy-wuzzy sometimes one-take music out of 1980s Merigold, Mississippi, written by everyone’s favorite rockstar singer songwriter of that time and place, Jim Ellis. and it’s free to download so it’ll be good levee riding and crying music.
ok, love you so so so much. i hope the rest of your month is beautiful, air-conditioned, peaceful, joyful.
Like walking around with Tom Waits in the Delta. Love your details. Oh, but the poor snake. Another beautiful ramble. Thank you.
Always lovely stream-of-consciousness which I love to read. Thanks, Mule. 🩵