June Jump In & Just Right

Good Sunday morning from the couch in Roundagator, the newsletter written for you last night next to the pond before the mosquitos woke up and after Wilbur treed a raccoon.

June 22nd, 5:36 pm - 

Can you believe it? There’s a truck in the field next door starting the well pump, smoke, roar. A white truck shining like a cloud on the ground, engineering it’s own thunder. 

Can you believe it? Lest you believe it is all sunshine, covered in bug bites for another summer, a new land and a new season of adjusting to it’s creatures! 

He was talking about miracles, and how he lives in one every day and so much wonder and light and it’s hard to see sometimes, afterawhile, and you got to take yourself out of it for a moment to come back to it. 

Well, 

Little white cabbage moths, I like them even if I shouldn’t, made the kohlrabi holy and the kale, too, but it’s ok because they look like little ghosts and little fairies and little bits of dappled shade moving around. 

butterflies; 

yellow, orange, blue, black, yellow. 

Bees; in the clover, in the squash blossoms, in the crepe myrtles, in the zinnias and cosmos and, 

Wake up in the morning and head to the bridge, all of a sudden again I am in love with walking and I might be sweating but they are glorious miles; a deer hears and sees long before I do, crashing next to the creek, 

We were walking and he said these rusted well pipes remind me of barnacles, I said sometimes the breeze makes me think I am near the ocean, she said there are places of silence and when the well pumps do not roughly purr it can be silent here, to where the bees take over, to where you can hear the echo from up the road of someone talking, 

Sweat bees for company sometimes, 

The sun takes our energy and so in the afternoon long spells of slumber, 

I mean. Smilingly, laughing, swimming: summer camp. Life is but a dream, 

The sunflowers and crepe myrtles bursting, more clouds on the ground but they’re pink and red pink and all of these shades of green, 

Oh the whole world! The whole world. 

The cicadas finally started buzzing here, 

The fig trees fragrant from a distance, 

Turk’s-cap-tiger-lillies finally unfurled, 

Maybe my last perennial painting. 

(what a parade) 

We had come out on the road and Wilburdog was headed north long past the graveyard but I turned to look south, and it looked like a dog sitting there watching us. What other creature would? We stopped and watched back for awhile, after awhile approached. It stood up, wagging it’s tail - surely, surely. Closer, curiouser, closer, curiouser, a bobcat. Run oft. 

He laughed, curiosity and cats. 

Swimming, I feel good about myself because I can do a few laps and usually try to do four or five, and it’s whole body and I like that if I breath in while I’m floating my body rises, 

Swimming and laughing because I always hit that same underwater stick and always worry for half a moment, swimming and looking at that log that’s always above water and then all of a sudden; a stump with eyes there staring back at me, I start. An alligator snapping turtle watching me, 

The world as curious about me as I them, I never realized. 

Floating, a bass comes up and wants to know what I might taste like, snap! 

Two red horses, a paint, a seal bay, a buckskin, a white horse. 

A winding path through the woods, nettle, gnats, mosquitos, even in the fallingdown of the humidity I am smiling, wow another new vision.

Returning to myself, I thought maybe the last time I cried was when the horse went back home. But now I am back and he was singing in a good place now, and for some reason tender for when they picked basil stalks filled with seeds, as fragrant as the leaves themselves, and thinking of them as a still-young-courting-couple sitting outside with my parents and they were going to a football game but they came to meet me and my folks, partially because he wanted to know who could raise such a strange individual. And they looked like the shining delta. 

And, well, I have been a fall down and a know-better, and a should’ve-known-better. 

And, well, I am still finding out. 

And, well, the turtle laid eggs under the apple tree. And the melons are swelling, and the corn was a bust, but there is color everywhere and next year we get to try again. 

Wilbur watching me with shadows cast on his belly and he has been the most patient of all. 

Finally we saw the soul of the building, 

I had never been in the store before and really looked at it, strange delights for just the right person at the right time. Kites, most of all, kites. Bright flashing colors of kites. Thinking of what a world we live in, you could dye eggs all year if you wanted to. And there on the shelf, an egg dyeing kit. The backyard a garden, hard dirt, the kind of yard someone might sweep. A bird calling and we couldn’t figure out who it was. Bitter melon, winter melon, bean. He had six guitars and I never noticed the birds on the fretboard, falling, diving, then the doves near the hole of the guitar, like the ones he had painted on the bridge that morning, 

oh, the world, imagine an earth as curious about us as we can be about it, and the fearful idea of a world as disinterested of us as we can be of it, 

Does it create magic for us, smiling and knowing if, when, we see it? 

Does it create magic if we don’t? 

Yes, yes. Yes. 

At home off the street name I can’t remember. At home in the balcony watching the stories unfold. At home walking and sweating and out to the river, at home next to the chocolate red colored pond and the green and the bright blue sky, at home here in this jungle of this resurrection heart, of this Deep South, of this.

She said, The Word. She said, it’s important, it’s our foundation. He lead me out of my family’s church, my great-grandmother’s-church, my whole-family. And when I got to the new church I cried (quietly, it isn’t a crying church) every Sunday. Because I was being Fed. 

And I didn’t know what she meant, exactly, and also - I knew. Oh, to be fed in the waking world of Sundays, a waking world of miracles, of ponds and fish and bobcats and rainbows, of safe travels and full tummies and song. 

Merrily, merrily,

Big love and brayerfully, 

Amen. 

Hello! Hello! The Beloved collection release happens tonight at midnight over on the Caron Gallery website: https://thecarongallery.com/collections/church-goin-mule

Caron Gallery is great ‘cause it’s all Mississippi artists! It’s amazing to browse the website and see all of the talent that the gallery, the state, and you support! Thank you! Wowie.

Also! Thank y’all for the wonderful support on Looking the World Over at Hey! Cafe in New Orleans. It was a blessing to go and hang the show, and it felt good to pick it up, too - New Orleans still has some magic it is willing to share. Grateful for shining friends for making the show happen from the ground up - for coming to check out the work, for sewing, painting, printing, too. Proud proud proud, proud of you.

I am taking my annual July instagram break a little early - I’ll be on tomorrow, then see you in August with a big huge giveaway to celebrate! Celebrate hubba wha? Celebrate everything! Life is good, he said “This is a world of suffering, aren’t we lucky not to suffer?” Books! Bandanas! Music! Some more things if I can think of more things! Art! Yes!

Also we just had the JOY of Hemlock staying with us, and she did the sweet interview about the new album Amen! which i am honored to be a part of - checkkkkkk it out: https://uglyhug.wordpress.com/2024/06/18/hemlock-and-the-case-for-daily-miracles-featured-interview/

Been WAY into Sun Ra recently for some reason, one of those rabbitholes i be snaking down trying to find and listen to everything i can. here is a documentary:

Wow! There’s been a change! I love you. This life is a blessing. Thank you. I wanna testify.