August Harvest Again
Another muleletter from the Hey Joe's Bar in Merigold, down from where they're burning off a field, because Roundagator doesn't have wifi.
August 30th 3:49 pm
What would you like to sing?
Been storying it all up for you, the whole long pretty, pretty-hot, month. Blues in the air like it’s supposed to be here, a breeze cut loose this morning, we caught a break, the whole world moving together to make the weather, that hurricane made landfall back home, pines down, lines down,
The horse is gone and the whole ragweed woods and the bayou and the fields, but it’s ok, the first time I ever moved through mourning. You could see it coming, it had to end like this. It’s better this way;
Further away out into the country where the stars are brighter and last night the air conditioner wasn’t even running, no fans, no sound at all, way out under the near-full-moon, stony quiet. Soon the pumps will stop their steady groaning and the crop dusters will rest for awhile, too, all entirely still and maybe then we can begin to hear the trees sing.
Full days spent living, gratitude in the morning, in the morning-light of the pothos and trumpet vine, the greenness glowing against the white shed. The whole world feels like it could belong to us out here because there’s hardly anyone else to say it couldn’t. I’m only an interloper again, like I’ve always been. He jokes and calls me a carpetbagger, I recount part of his whole beautiful life here in the Delta back to him and say, I’m sorry that’s what I’ve been seeking.
I can see how people get how they can be, this country road seems longer every time it looks like I need to leave. Whatever is at the other end of it seems like it isn’t as necessary as it did at the beginning of the need.
He jokes, but I still stutter into saying dinner instead of lunch, supper instead of dinner, because I know the words don’t fit my mouth like they do his. It sounds like a lie when I say it.
And she says, taste of it. And he says, smell of it.
Feel of it.
There’s a muscadine pie in the oven and they were talking about this pie way back in the spring, talking about it’s a labor of love, but the smell is like something you cannot imitate. She said, seemed like muscadines was always ready right before school started. Remembering my mom making pies and if I said all day long, maybe. She makes everything look easy, all cookie cutter maple leafs for an apple pie and she could probably make poundcake with her eyes closed.
At Nana's funeral they buried her with her golf club, and he brought up the story about injecting snakes with air when they were kids, and it was sweet to see him struggle around the words of the event, you could see his heart meant it but it was hard to say, hard to tell. Grateful to be there in the distant pew, knowing I couldn’t say it any more bravely, and wouldn’t try. Grateful to be at the other end of grief, moving through living mourning, where there is only relief for the ghosts and angels when the time comes. The pastor said she was probably singing in heaven, and I tried to remember if I had ever heard her sing. Cards, golf, nail polish, rush limbaugh, parakeets, oil painting, squash, tomatoes, lima beans, cardinals, the porch, her lemon tree, ice cream, brass beds.
We tried to tell stories but there was too many happening at once. I said, dad, there’s no crying at Timberwoods.
The harvest is here among us and it’s the best season some say they have seen in years. It’s so unpredictable. I wonder if I am here at the end of my own harvest season, headed naturally into wintering, or maybe I’m at my own planting season again. It’s hard to tell until the blossoms appear, the flowers, then the fruit. The problem is the roots keep getting pulled up. Strange to be so in control and out of control of your own watering, rain, sun, so on. Strange to not know what you’ll have to bear. I don’t know where I’m growing.
We had another long pretty day out in the country, maybe we planted the fall garden, maybe we went to town, maybe we’d walked another long dirt road and watched a dozen white herons cross the sky, the imagination of them all roosting together lovely enough on it’s own.
And I’m on one end of the couch and he’s on the other, and we’re listening to sixties music, and he’s dancing while he’s drawing me and grinning. I’m leaning into the couch and trying to be very serious, but it’s Eric Burdon singing mean and sounding like he’s at the bottom of a well and full of thunder, we gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do, and all of a sudden I’m back in Thomasville, Georgia, with my family on a picnic blanket way out under a blue sky and longleaf pines. And then the song is over, I know it baby, you know it too. So he’s on the couch wiggling his knees and squinting his eyes and turning the pencil to find the angle, laughing “you’re gonna kill me when you see this,” and the music is all like I’ve never heard it before, but I’ve known it my whole life, and it’s so joyous, and so beautiful, and like I’m really alive for once there in the moment, and nothing is meaningless, and I start to cry a little bit and grin. Later, you can see him welling up, I said, you can’t cry, too.
All I mean is, I don’t know what there is left to bear up. I don’t know how long I get to bear it. It’s hard to reframe when you feel like you’re way out in the Atlantic and paddling hopelessly. But eventually, one day, the distant shore. What a glory to make a home, what a miracle to be welcomed into others,
Reveling in the golden hour of harvest every day for it’s brief celebration, thinking that music and art and writing help erase the meaninglessness I am scared of in my worst moments. That those things catch time in amber, makes it last. It takes the smallest moments, brief spots of bright, takes the good things and stretches them out for a little while, all cat in the sun smiling, for days, for months, for years. Holding hands for the first time transformed into a photograph on the wall, enduring. Look - remember.
(Rode by the Delta Arts Alliance today and their marquee declares The Purpose of Art is to Stop Time - Bob Dylan)
He stands at the bridge and paints the light, and he stands out there and paints his hayfield, and he rides out there and plants, and he rides out there in his truck with those gas tanks poking in the back and looks, and he rides out there in his dust streaked truck, and he rode out there with his little daughter on the seat next to him just to see about the rice, and he hasn’t lived here for seven years or longer but that’s where he used to farm, let’s go ride out to see,
and they are all turned towards the sun, the light, the soil, everyone studying, obsessed. That’s all - the whole of the land making us watch it, asking, beckoning - lookout, slow down, study, and all of the men respond, and that’s the pretty thing about here, both the farmer and the painter stand on the same land, with the same steady serious gaze, all in the morning of their religions, angels and muses like dragonflies and hoverflies on the bridge, trying to make it good, and trying to make it last. Amen.
Prairie Arts Festival is this Saturday, September 2nd, in West Point, Mississippi! I will be set up with a ton of work inside the Black Prairie Blues Museum from 8:30 am til 4 pm, and again while Mark “Mule Man” Massey sings the blues from 7 pm until midnight. It’ll be a big and diverse festival, I hope we get the chance to see you! And Mark’s got the sound to him, man.
https://blackprairiebluesmuseum.com/
https://www.prairieartsfestival.org/
Next up is Finster Fest in Summerville, Georgia. That’s September 23rd & 24th, a Saturday and Sunday. The music and food is always just right, outside of how wonderful Paradise Gardens is in the early fall. Looking forward to being there among family & friends again, fortunate to have been invited back after missing last year. Can’t wait to see y’all.
https://paradisegardenfoundation.org/finster-fest/
The 31 Days of Mississippi - well - i guess i sort of did it. There’s more still to be done. Really thankful for the enthusiasm and for everyone who reached out with ideas! https://churchgoinmule.threadless.com/collections/31-days-of-mississippi
i probably have shared this video before, but i was at the desk recently. making a painting about this song, and i was pretty pleased with it, and my dad sends a text to the group, saying what a wonderful world, without knowing and out of the blue. and Louis Armstrong is smiling while he sings, and when they ask how do you do, what they’re really saying is, i love you.