July Long & Wide

From the studio desk in Roundagator, still air, Wompus sleeping on my paintings, a sleepy morning in the world

She wanted to know what seeds I was planting ahead of the full moon, ahead of the new season, and I said Lord if this is a season of closing doors please rush to close them, 

It has been hard to wake up in the morning, sure. But it never felt so good to cross the Mississippi line back home,

Meanwhile he’s gone out and planted new long beans on the trellis and the pond is sparkling with rain and it’s raining - we’ve had a couple memorable rains this month which is better than the stretch of drought last summer, like maybe everything will be ok for a little while. I saw a bug peeking out of a crack in the ground and still I worry for the baby turtles that have to make it from the shack to the pond, or a rat snake, he always says Ab-iss, I’ve always said ay-biss, anyway - a rat snake hissing into the abyss. 

And I been trying to bring and keep my mules around me, there’s a bookshelf of them, a flood wall, a little levee against the world, of mules watching me at my studio desk. I always try to make them smile, and so they’ve got sunsets and fireworks, flowers, stars, ribbons, hearts, cards, homes. 

And she said we could try wrapping the bottoms of the squash and zucchini in tinfoil, and it’s worked all summer, even when it didn’t look like it was working and even when the squash looks sapped. Still, zucchini, and still avocado squash and patty pan and the rare sweet dumpling squash. Still, cucumber and still the max squash she sent in the mail, it ran the whole garden and we let it climb the corn and all across the rows with big fat momma blossoms and now we got two giant pumpkin sized things, we are waiting to see how big they might get. The okra has hit it’s stride and this year there is a renewed affection for it; it stings less. The tomatoes we babied all winter are wild. It looks like I can really do it, from seed to fruit. The watermelon led us on all summer only to give up, now there are winter melons and bitter melons and a bevy of Tigger Melons and Charentais melons and cantaloupes, and I forgot I snuck in spaghetti squash at the top of the hill so there is more, more, more. Some things I planted believing he would paint them, I think. 

Imagine, still life paintings that reflect the season: polaroids, immortal: 

Sweet dumpling squash and red tomatos,  okra and cucumbers and sweet tea, or gin and tonics, 

Two summers ago, crown and coke and reins and ropes and cheese-in-wax, 

Last summer, bud light and fishing poles and books and blackberries. 

This summer, what about cherries? Dark red and shining the blue light of the raining day, 

Black cherry tomatoes and long beans, a blue jay feather.

The raccoons got the corn mostly and the pond garden is a mess, but the other gardens are, too, and not - everything growing in joy and I could laugh and cry to see the giant sunflower on the hill bend it’s heavy head, I never seen such a thing look so depressed and also so bright, eight feet tall it surrendered when it got just a little too close to the sun, 

Isabella Stewart Gardner said “My garden is riotous, unholy, deliriously glorious! I wish you were here.” 

And the corn in the fields around us is turning yellow and brown, meaning that harvest is upon us soon, and then another year will be gone, again. 

Reading on the porch, looking out the kitchen window, the light has changed, but it hasn’t ever gone out. 

Long dreams through the night, my imagination seems a little more awake these days, trying to resurface; I remember riding the school bus and worrying if I was at the precipice of when the imagination quits, like it was a light switch that would be flipped at a certain age, inevitably. 

I wish I could paint like Carrol Cloar and it startles me to see my home in so much of his work, to have been standing in a painting and not known it. 

Someone wrote about an angel down an old wagon road in the woods and I believe. 

It is ours to find one day if we only go out looking.

Marbles, plowshares, bottles broken in the turn rows,

Hipdeep in soybeans following tiretracks and deer trails, we see them almost every evening now and Wilbur ignores them entirely, admitting defeat and off in pursuit of rabbits, mice, skunk. 

Listened to Boyce on MPB while I was trying to fish in the pond, after that it was Highway 61 with Scott, and still no fish on the hook, he brought out sausages because we couldn’t find any worms, the ground too dry and hard. Another peaceable hour and since it had been scientifically proven there were no fish in there today, I went swimming. (Nevermind that we throw the too-big squash and yellow-white cucumber into the pond and watch the turtles bob it into oblivion) 

Wake up, wake up, 

I am going to Oxford tonight, you can come with me if you want to. I need to get out of the delta for a little bit and tonight I have an opportunity

Reading about artists that had their trailer in the woods, or their island in the gulf, and wondering if it always leads to a lonesome road. And if this place where I am, when will it feel like home? Like it belongs, and I belong? Aha, an invasive species or a square peg; surviving but not belonging. 

I love you and have loved you for all of this time. 

He wrote that man used to look at nature from nature, now he just looks at nature from a distance. 

I feel sometimes like my dog out in the woods when he trees a cat or squirrel or raccoon or. And barking, chasing, but not listening, not really seeing. 

The buck moon fits this season, with all of the deer out in the morning at night. Wilbur surprises them sometimes in the corn fields and they come crashing, diverting at the last minute when they finally see me, gigantic, clumsy, some of them, like a car jumping the ditch. 

But you could’ve called it the surprise lily moon, or fig moon, okra moon (Hibiscus moon, rose of sharon, swamp rose mallow moon, cotton blossom moon.) 

He painted a trailer into the belly of whale, built a whole new trailer into the art museum itself. 

WC Handy said the blues is music that came from the earth, aha. 

They worshipped the sun, kept it’s firing burning all year. Still the sun is here, every day, the same lucky old sun, rolling around in heaven all day. 

A frog, unnamed, singing from a tree this morning to the rain, brightly.

A human, unnamed, singing to the clouds this morning, rightly. 

lastly, a raccoon-stolen pawpaw, and another pawpaw fallen and caught in the branches, my first, banana - mango - cinnamon - strange, kept the big brown seeds, counting the remainderings, 

Merrily, merrily,

big love & brayerfully,

mule 

Hope you’ve had a peaceful and shaded July, that all of your travel or garden or sleeping dreams have come true. Thank y’all for making the Caron Gallery release such a success. I am so lucky, thanks to you.

Bigggg giveaway coming soon to instagram! Giving away books, bandanas, music, gift cards, and some mules, too. Excited to share with you soon in August.

I hope you will consider entering the Delta Arts Alliance’s first annual juried show! https://www.deltaartsalliance.org/juried-show

Ahead of us lies the Prairie Arts Festival in West Point, Mississippi. 9 am - 4 pm on Saturday, August 31st. I will be there with my art and Wilbur at the friendly Black Prairie Blues Museum. That evening, Mark Mule Man Massey will be playing, too. Last year it was tamales and friendship and a pleasant rain. And a losing arm wrestling match which I am still mad about. And a lot of gratitude, I am always like a deer in the headlights in public, and never outwardly grateful enough to the folks that made the journey. Thank you. You can find out more here -

https://www.facebook.com/BlackPrairieBluesMuseum/

I might be at Mighty Roots this year, but that will be a part of August’s newsletter, I guess. If you’ve never heard of Mighty Roots, or been to Stovall, it should be on your Mississippi bucket list.

https://www.mightyrootsmusicfestival.com/

I will definitely be at Finster Fest in Summerville, Georgia, on September 21st & 22nd. It never fails to be a delightful weekend among friends and pimento cheese sandwiches.

https://paradisegardenfoundation.org/

Lastly I wanted to share some things that I got into this month.

My friend Ashlee has been a creative singular soul inspiration since i had the chance to meet her. I hope we all can become beacons and historians and spiritualists and naturalists and above all, artists of our place, like she is. I would link to more of her work but it’s a journey for one to take by themselves.

https://prairiedesfemmes.threadless.com/

I watched this twice, and it was inspirational on many levels, but especially just to see how one artist went down their own path and the kind of easy no-question determination. West Virginia is a magic place in it’s own rite, and i delighted in the imagination and self-knowing of this documentary.

I picked up Walter Anderson’s Bicycle Logs and was so glad to be plunged into the world of Walter Anderson again. Filled to the brim with artwork and writing, context and poetry, and a link to watch the documentary for free, just a jewel to add to my Anderson book collection. Hard to recommend it enough. (I had met Johnny Anderson in 2020, and still cherish the memories of the stories he shared and his kindness, most of all that he believed his father was perfectly sane in a world that didn’t understand him, in a world that was perhaps actually insane for how they saw his father, but this is all paraphrase.) (Also i was fortunate to do a collaboration with the Walter Anderson museum, which you can check out in the store or online - https://www.walterandersonmuseumstore.org/s/search?q=church%20goin%20mule)

https://walterandersonart.com/products/bicycle-logs?variant=45186423619751

Just wanted to remind you with this groove that it’s not what you do, but how you do it - it’s not the song, but the way you sing it. You got to love me strong! Wishing yours is with love and curiosity and light, yep. Lord have mercy.