December Dancing & Another Year Done
From a foggy morning that turned into a rainy afternoon, the radar red and green and yellow all day, the dogs asleep, the cats watching birds at the window,
I really hoped not to write so much. There is so much clamoring it makes me nervous. I was going to just post some sketches but then this happened anyway. With loving apologies:
Jim Northrup volunteered for the Vietnam war, something he called the longest war - the kind people were still dying from many years after they got home. And I was still thinking, I wish I could share this with Bobby, and Northrup died of lung-brain-kidney cancer but he wrote about ricing in the lakes, powwows, feeling cashy, going to the bingo hall, spearing walleye and bass, and how they came out with a new flavor just for Vets - Agent Grape. He spoke beautifully about his death that was certain, saying he was ready and he knew where he was going. He was just changing addresses. His wife said, we still argue but now we take time to step back and say - let’s try this again. Bobby said, everyone is emotional about it because I know I’m dying soon. Most people don’t get to know when. His attitude, Jim’s attitude of humor, brightness, trying to remember -
He was always trying to peace things back together again;
We rode out fast down the road to catch the drone operator, it was strange to stand in the yard and hear the buzzing overhead, I knew it was too cold to be bees. He said, I was just checking to see if our flooding for the ducks was affecting your property. And I thought, you could’ve just asked us, rode up, knocked on the door. He said, the water naturally flows south of here. The beaver dam doesn’t change that. Your flooding does. With the kind of knowing you get from living somewhere so long and paying close attention. The family land runs over most of the bayou, usually called Dry Bayou - interesting to walk and see everything all cup-runneth-over again after a long and droughtful year.
I am always trying to piece things back together again;
It’s the time of year when the land is long brown purple red cold and muddy, almost the time where it looks like it will always be this way.
We go out walking pretty dependably at the right hour so the dogs get their due, sometimes I drive to town to walk just because I’m tired of scrubbing buckshot mud off of Wilbur, down between his toes even, it comes pouring off, swirling back to from whence it came.
A covey of quail scattering and loud like whizzing flying tanks, he was at the supper table and we were full and warm with barbecue from a backroad somewhere in Arkansas and stories, purely dozy, he said the coyotes here are so bad the quail don’t flush like regular quail. They scatter. They’re hard to shoot the way they go, up, up, and in all directions. Sometimes they scare me when they barrel into the air from underfoot. One scout watching and letting me close before they all break, if I am paying attention to see him at all. The other day I called excitedly because it was so astonishing to me - there was one right where they flooded for the other duck pond, right near the edge of water in the brambles. And I got real close and ready to take a photo, it looked like he had blue lining on his feathers. Then five or six others flew up right around me! I hollered!
The deer, too, close. On Christmas I went down the road and thought the deer must have received the message, the deer out in the open fields together, everybody is up in their houses and visiting family, like you, except they got matching t-shirts on. Over thanksgiving he said he had a recliner up in his deer stand, and a heater, and he liked it best for falling asleep. He could count on his yap dog to start shaking the window with excitement when a deer approached, and he’d wake right up. He showed me photos of the two boar they got, three bucks, you can tell he’s old, his antlers aren’t so big but look how thick they are near the bottom.
I can’t remember how it came up, I think I was talking about getting a trailer and painting the outside, he said we knew a guy who painted his trailer black on the inside and the outside. He lived out past Pace. I was told he was the top of his class, had a child, he used to be the singer in a rock and roll band. I think he just figured out quicker than everybody else that it all adds up to nothing, so maybe do what you want. He lived at my house for a month, I picked him up hitchhiking and thought I was doing him a favor. He kept a cotton mouth as a pet and used to hitchhike to town to get a mouse to feed it, and hitchhike back with the mouse. After a month I think I asked him to leave, he was sort of depressing me.
I started out just trying to tell you,
I got stung ten or twenty times this summer, so much by bees and wasps that I think I got serum sickness. When I open the doors to one of the old buildings here in December, I say, it might be cold but at least there aren’t any wasps. At least there aren’t any snakes. The bees look like they have curled up in his old studio, warm in the walls, climbing.
So - I got stung so much but I never broke a bone walking the road or climbing rocks on the levee. I never got bitten swimming in the pond, never sunburned. I got scraped out at Norfolk beach on the porous rocks, but even then no sharks came and no stingrays stung. I didn’t ride a horse but I didn’t fall off a horse either. We made fires and I never got burned or burned anything down. I believe I am beginning to take account for myself. It’s hard to do. Why don’t we start planting the bulbs that people give us every year, all around the shed? I hope the canna lillies come back, that’s one of the reasons I fell in love with this place. We lost three hens and a rooster, two cats, but hopefully there will be more in the spring. We lost a dog and gained a dog.
The summer was so long we had okra through November. We had tomatoes into December, roasted green tomato sauce, tomato sandwiches, she said when the green tomato lets go of the pan that’s when it’s done frying, same as fish. She is the one generous with recipes and little fine food things, olive oil, fig jam, everything in her garden, pecans. She used to ride to the library on her horse. I was standing in the kitchen admiring her, it is so strange to be human to stand next to someone and feel the respect and affection accumulate just by talking. An only child out in the country, she survived a house explosion and she’s about four feet tall, I bet she could’ve whooped me up through her sixties if not through today. I hope she never has a reason to cuss me out. I accidentally brought home her big liberty dollar last year from New Year’s supper, here we are again.
The lilies are popping up in all of the woods where homes used to stand. Part of me wants to dig them up and carry them home. Part of me that wins, leaves them in rememberance of the people that used to live there. Beneath the sumac this morning I followed the trail of cattail dust where the Alabama duck hunters dragged their blinds. A morning for lillies, rabbits, daffodils, sumac,
Cabbage and mustard greens and beets in the garden, the other types of greens haven’t held up, we weren’t very good about eating arugula last year so we didn’t plant any yet, the spinach never got really eating big.
Vikki wrote dancing and singing is a cure for any mood, and it’s true. I’ve decided music is most sacred, next to dancing, next to art, for how to reach our collective starstuff. You get to choose the beat and it will come, welcomed, to you. It’s why it’s so good to go out and hear real-life music and see people laughing and smiling and real-life doing their best at dancing. Brennan Manning wrote something like, why are people so afraid to dance when they love music and song and laughter? Why am I afraid to love when I love love?
He also said we make ourselves what we are by the way we address the world,
So I hope your year was signed with love, and the new year addressed with curiosity,
We are heading into another raree!
The lilies will be here soon,
mule
Behind the Plow: Songs for the Pilgrims Working Their Way Back Home is up through February 8th at Lowe Mill ARTS & Entertainment in Huntsville, Alabama. More information about what’s currently on view can be found here: https://lowemill.art/currently-on-view/
Many thanks to everyone who has made it to the show! One thing that’s sweet about Lowe Mill is the artists who have studios there are so supportive, and also people that come to check out the show take time to write and say things like thank you, we enjoyed it, love your work. Complete strangers. Thank you.
2025 will be busy! Possibly (i mean probably) a show in Tennessee, Mississippi, West Virginia, Louisiana, and Georgia ahead of us. Looking forward to sharing more in the New Year and sending out a bunch of showcards! Also headed to my first residency in four or five years in North Carolina.
Many thanks to everyone who gave art as gifts this year - for sharing with friends and family, peers, students. You helped Wilbur get his teeth cleaned, kept the chickens in warm straw, helped Sandii get spayed, aided Wompus in her various cat ailments which we won’t discuss here in polite society, and so on. (Helped keep me in gas to ride around the Delta with especially!) We are so grateful for you. This life is truly unbelievable - thank you, thank you, thank you. Hope you find a reason to dance before the year is out.
Here’s some sunshine from Brinkley, Arkansas-born, Louis Jordan. I hadn’t heard this song of his before. The truth of the matter is - you got to know how to live!
and here’s some didn’t it rain from Cotton Plant, Arkanas-born, Sister Rosetta.
Another month come and gone, with all the wonder in the world. Will you post it big & loud when you're coming to Georgia? Because maybe I could get there.
A cool, cloudy, tornado-watch late December day. Listening to Ron Carter Trio. Reading mule musings. The new year is waving to me from up the road. As much evidence to the contrary as there may be, I’m feeling a bit positive about the future…Thanks, as always. 🫏🌹