January Finished, Fogged In, Iced Out, Fly Home

The monthly newsletter from the couch in Roundagator, Wompus on the table, Wilbur in the morning air, the grey cat running around the house yelling for breakfast.

January 31st 1:12 am 

Can I sing you a lullaby 

Sometimes you can hear him singing from inside of the house 

High and sweet and like anybody could sing if they thought no one was listening 

And it’s Eric Burdon saying he’ll get rich, I know, and take it back to Tobacco Road, 

And it’s George Harrison singing the sunrise doesn’t last all day, this too shall pass, 

Silver wings,

(boooo!) 

Just walking and thinking, man, time, 

If you spend it well or spend it poor, it goes by just the same. 

Mother Nature sayin, I don’t want any intercessions, no petitions, I haven’t got no time, roll on, 

She does, she do, 

Five months drought, one day filled us all back up

The buckshot sewn back up and the pond all full and my daddy asked about the river and I said I didn’t know. It’s been dry so long I figured, well, it always would be. 

climbing, 

There under the patio in October, it was balmy and blue-skyed and the clouds were bright and fluffy and we were picking shapes. And I didn’t know it, but it was the last time I got to drink a crown and coke with him and look at the clouds. And we rode out into the yard and saw where the figs were new, a strange season. I wanted to know about how mourning doves worked; they seem to fly off together without a nod or a word, it looked like they were paired down, coupled up, into their very wiring, when to fly, where to go, when to hunt and when to sleep. He said, I been wondering about that myself. 

I forgot he went to cloud classes, about the sounds of the airplanes overhead, about the galloping in the early summer. About sometimes it’s good to just ride on in peace and quiet. It used to mean everything to get to go riding with him. Sometimes (all of the time) you’d catch me at the kitchen window, hoping. Driving home yesterday down that same long lonesome road, thinking, the shine is off of the land, and it should be. It seemed like two weeks of ice and fog, maybe it was only one week. It dropped below ten degrees and was usually under twenty, even in the sunshine. Two or three days of fog where it never burned up, like we were in a dream and a portal, a new world ahead of us but beyond our view, Extraordinary.

Thinking, it looks more ordinary now that he is gone, like a part of the world went back to sleep. But it’s also winter, and it also was hard last week, and like a body coming down with the flu demands rest, here we are in January, iced in, roads slick and sliding and rutted and no one on the highway, saying, rest. None of y’all would rest before, the Mennonites with two extra weeks of land forming - two or three tractors out there in the field every day before the rain. The pecan trees worn out with drought. The land all cracked and everything frozen up, the animals without water except for the thin stream of all the house’s running pipes; a red fox fast past the chickens and cats, just thirst. 

And the taps seemed like a roar after awhile, steady, forever. Then it’s over, today like a spring day, smells like Easter, the birds are joyous, me t-shirted and barefoot, like it never happened. An extreme, demanding, winter interlude,

The world sweetly and gold-leafed looking in the sunset, we made it. 

Two mockingbirds —- ooh either they’re courtin or fightin —- ooh

Just studying, 

Wow

I believe we’re gonna have some mockingbirds living in this tree soon, 

I only saw the end of the movie, but the three brothers were sitting in the sunshine of a late spring evening and everything was green and gold and no one was sweating, and they were telling each other stories. They all made it through their own wars. And one brother said, how about we drive and get some cheeseburgers and go hang out at my house? And that isn’t anything unusual, of course. Extra - ordinary, even. The thing was, it was the perfect hour of late spring, and maybe that’s the best thing about life, our/or heaven on earth, let’s go drive with the windows down, and be together, and cherish all of this short brief season, and eat something that feels good and tastes good, and tell some more stories, you know what I mean? 

Riotous with joy for a field of greens, I think the photo I didn’t take will last longest: 

Tall, lanky, bowlegged, grinning. An arm full of mustard greens to where you cannot see anything about the person, only big hands holding a cloud of greens, guess-the-shape, and bowlegs there at the bottom poking out, walking around luck.

Harry Crews said ‘people are doing the best they can with what they’ve got to do it with - sometimes acting with honor, sometimes not. Sometimes with love and compassion and mercy and sometimes not. People doing things according to their own best lights.’

Everyone does it all differently, loves, cooks, grows a garden, breaks a horse, folds clothes, makes or doesn’t make the bed. Coffee, driving, dog-walking, so on. He taught me so much about doing what needs to be done, when it needs it, or before. Preventative - asking questions all along the way - there is always a new light to be put on something, there is always a different way to do it, maybe a better way, maybe not. 

Everyone is doing according to their best lights. And that might be Alabama born-and-raised lights, or moved-six-times-before-college lights, or never-left-these-forty-square-miles-of-California lights, adopted-lights, widowed-lights, poverty-lights, all of these things. Remember some people got a light even busted the whole way out. All trying to make it home. 

hi good morning hi i love you! thank you for being here! tomorrow! February 1st! The Little Green Store in Huntsville, Alabama! 5 - 8 pm!

There’s a little piece of mine in the Caron Gallery South 2nd anniversary show in Laurel. Then that’s it until April - going to hang work at The Greenhouse Biloxi - it will be beautiful to be back on the coast in the spring, i can almost smell it. Then New Orleans in May with some friends, and Caron Gallery in June.

You can always find prints at Threadless, and if you’re in the area (the Greater Delta, which refers to all of it) please holler. Outside of shows, that’s the best way to get work.

https://churchgoinmule.threadless.com/

The jangliest danciest rebuking of satan that i have ever heard. Hope this finds you dancing through the rest of your week. hope to see you very soon. may the rest of the winter be balmy and short, and peace on earth, y’all. doggone.