July Joyful & Still

From the studio desk in Bolivar County looking north, growing quietly towards harvest and hopeful. Looks like my muse quit me. Let's go walking.

July 8th 8:35 am 

It was July 6th but I wanted it to be the 7th, 

He calls it floating and I get it now, 

I still get snagged on my own reality, often. 

I forget it’s not the whole world. We were walking the dirt road and the cloud started big up in Clarksdale and moved over, bigger than the church, steady, what’s it like to be an ag pilot and fly into something like that, a thunder head, maybe. 

He was saying, he flew his crop-duster and landed on the road, she climbed in, there’s barely enough room in there, and they flew away.

He was stoned once and they flew all over. It’s just like driving a car. He couldn’t land it, but he got to circle. 

And he was saying, he’s about given up on politics. Too many realities. Too many alternate realities. Then he said something about the deficit and I remember it isn’t all about narrative, always. 

Too many realities. And on the 6th I was driving the levee but didn’t really feel like driving down the boat ramp. And it was fixing to rain but it was only raining all around me, gentle thunder. And feeling lonesome and bottomed out and raw and left. And it’s only my reality, for those couple of hours. Then another day we are walking the dirt road, and there’s that big cloud, and an occasional breeze, and it’s awfully beautiful and it feels like I hope what heaven is like. Long walks, hot enough to sweat but nice enough to walk awhile, no bugs, no pain, no heartache, just conversation and a big sky to soak up all of the sorrow and laughter, too. 

And he’s talking about, she used to have her brick house there. That’s where the church was, I guess this is a piece of the stained glass, blue and strange looking there on the ground. That’s where the jook was, and there used to be twenty houses on this road, kids walking and throwing rocks into the fields. He never fought, never broke a bone. Me either. And we walked down a long turn row and the soy is so deep and green and tall, the road cracked and also muddy, and that was a crack in reality I don’t experience much anymore, where I can step back and look around and be grateful. Here I am, in the Delta, walking with this country-man-artist in a Mennonite-kept field going towards the anomaly, where there’s a long forgotten cemetery, all fallen down, and Wilbur jumped another deer, it’s standing there in the distance, golden colored and it’s ears gigantic, just above the soy, trying to figure out what just ran at it, waiting. Then it sees us and leaps away, 

And Wilbur leaps too, but he’s forgotten about the deer, and he covers some ground, man. Then he eases into the black bayou dotted with lily pads, and he just eases. Like an otter. All around, cooling off, comes out dripping and smiling, running again. 

Last night, this morning, said a prayer for the poet and the cowboy and the joker, for the artist. Thinking of how I’d call everyone when I was gone. Doughnut-maker-dancer, teacher, coach, country-quiet, friend. 

We stay up late, or wake up early, and I think I am beginning to understand how color informs shape now, beginning to. And it’s the tree behind the leaves, the light behind the leaves, 

He was saying, my body knows how to paint, my hands know how to paint, it’s what happens in translation from my brain to my hands, gets in the way. All the worrying about getting it wrong, but if you just let your hands.Your body knows how to do it. What else does the body intuitively know how to do? What does it do naturally all of the time that we never consider? How about gut instincts. How about knowing. I just found out the other day some people see more color than others. Some people, color blind, see less. And the folks in the middle. Isn’t that kind of remarkable?  

Sitting at my desk with the curtains closed so it stays cooler, in this little sanctuary I forget to be grateful for, the sound of the brush on wood, the miracle of mixing colors, of matching bluegreenpink to bluegreenpink exactly, magic. Of, not pushing the miracle too much, of, just waiting for the signals to come down. 

He said, we were driving from out near Benoit on 8, headed to Eden. The lights in Cleveland there past sundown looking like I was driving into the kingdom of heaven, the throne of God. 

He said, I think I see you. Can you see me? 

I think I can. The light shining through you. Making up your entire shape. 

He said, everyone mistook my quiet for peace. 

Everyone walking around in their own realities. 

I hope now your quiet is peace, 

I hope now you can sit back and approach the day, or end the day, for a brief moment outside of your own reality, and find a small beautiful thing to be grateful for, a moment of grace for your life, that even if it is in chaos, you are alive. That even if it is brambles, or shambles, or on the decline, or on the way back up, you are alive and you are loved, too. And the world is beautiful. Are the stars out tonight? Did you get to see the sunrise, or the sunset, or a big thundercloud, or a puddle with a dozen yellow butterflies like living sunshine? A lightning bug at the top of the tree in the pitch dark, a smiling dog, a sleeping cat, 

Sitting there approaching midnight, and approaching sunrise, and photography is about light, and painting is about light, and gardening is about light, so, therefore, life is about light, seek, seek, seek, 

A body knows how to sleep, how to dream, how to love, even when reality gets in the way, even when the mind runs on. Ease out into it, sweet dreams, good morning. Love you. Thank you. 

It’s been very quiet here in the high heat of July on the other side of social media. Been missing y’all.

Still working towards the Prairie Arts Festival in September - i have the extreme privilege of setting up work at the Black Prairie Blues Museum.

https://blackprairiebluesmuseum.com/

https://www.prairieartsfestival.org/

At the end of September i get to be back among friends and family at Finster Fest. Still sad to have missed last year and looking forward to being back in darling sweet Summerville, Georgia.

https://paradisegardenfoundation.org/finster-fest/

You can also now find my work with Turnrow Art Company - a dream come true for me.

Turnrow Art Co.

Turnrow Art Co. on Instagram: ”✨Silver Linings✨ Until we have a more permanent gallery space, I am happily living with and showing some of our fantastic artists’ work in my home. It’s been a blast to work some of these in among our personal collection. If you are ever interested in a piece, I will gladly take appointments. ❤️🥂”

July 29, 2023

Hoping to make 31 shirt designs in August for Mississippi - for counties and towns and just celebrate my favorite place on earth. If you have any Mississippi-centric ideas you’d like turned into a t-shirt, please let me know and we’ll work out a deal. You’ll see them start to pop up on my threadless on August first: churchgoinmule.threadless.com.

Mississippi Fred McDowell singing, i’m going away darling, don’t you want to go? His marching sound is high and hot like summertime itself and he’s making hoodoo, throwing trouble into the river running. His guitar stringing spiderwebs and matching the Mississippi, going south at eight miles an hour. amen.