June Just Waiting Here

Another newsletter from the studio desk here in the Mississippi Delta, the lawn is cut, the garden watered, the stars are out.

June 29th 9:27 pm - 

Watering the garden and the mosquitos are climbing my legs, the stinging kind. Imagine, a garden, anything, growing against this heat. We are in two shower a day season, 10 am and 10 pm, nearly, for me - the grill has resumed it’s position outside of my door, my favorite way to eat the squash and zucchini and eggplant that is growing in spite of the heat, I think. And jalapeños wrapped and stuffed, and so on. 

Let me say, I am filled with gratitude for the collard greens. They survived the cabbage butterflies and are growing prettier than ever in the white hot heat, all wide and green and happy looking. 

When it gets searing like this, it makes me wonder how anyone ever made it. Vine borers and mosquitos and wasps and heat, drought and flood, all in a shack that wasn’t really shored up, and what if all the crops failed, and no fans and no air conditioning and no power, no light, no money, but sure enough debt, in debted. 

And working in the sun in the morning and in the evening, man, 76 feels good. Man, a little shade feels like a pool. 

Then I take that almost 10 pm shower and stuff is still on the grill and I’m so glad. Nothing depends on any of this. And my family loves me, and my friends are family, too, and if I really needed help, if they really needed help. They’d make it, I’d make it. Growing in spite of the heat;

Everything all in flux and stuck revving in the mud and the mosquitos are swarming, and it’s all right because he made it back from Vietnam all of those decades ago, and it’s all right because he got his new lungs, and it’s all right because I got to hear my granddaddy sing way back, and my grandmother cooked squash and tomato in the summer and that’s why I’m here now, and back last year when all of this seemed like it started, I framed one of his sermons, and he said, 

“Some are prisoners of their own patterns. They get in a rut and remain there…the most important point of the deliverance is that he is always opening doors. It’s what he’s always doing, from bondage to freedom, darkness to light. Exodus is the pattern of what God is always doing.” 

And I couldn’t remember why I ever framed the sermon except for today, eating hot grilled zucchini and standing still wet from the shower,  exodus from guilt concerning the past, and anxiety concerning the future, to live in love in the present. And it’s easy. That was the last time we ever galloped, ever picked turn rows and marched them. That was the last squash this summer, the last time I rode the tractor, the last time I stood next to him before he was gone forever. What else is the last time?

Even in the chaos of the smoke coming from the engine, just trying to go forward, no way we can go back, the moon is bright over the white crepe myrtle blossoms, and there’s hope, and there’s love, and we made it another day. Even the garden, all tender seeming and particular, will grow in this heat. We can, too. Exodus, change, is the nature of the world around us. Roll on. Love you. 

Ps. Trying to find photos for this postcard, I was reminded, an immaculate house and yard, layered with books and carefully chosen art, all of a sudden in this home in Alligator, Mississippi, and standing under a street light, the shift indicator didn’t really work but the truck didn’t knock, it just ran, we stood all staring under the hood for a little while because it smelled like burning oil, and sure a tree limb fell on it but it’d didn’t break the glass, just dented the roof.  His shirt read, “I Have Everything I Need,” and in the cabin there’s a dozen photos of him, unsmiling. Later in Abbeville, Mississippi, they taught me how to play poker and the next morning we ate deer her momma shot last fall, and spent the whole day listening to music, and maybe life is still tumultuous but look at all of the beautiful, forgotten things, the miraculousness of every day, it’s not so bad, not so bad. Sometimes I think I’d trade this whole world for yours, and sometimes I just want to live to find out. It’s getting better. 

Thank y’all for being here.

Black Prairie Arts Festival is on the horizon (Saturday, September 2nd - i’m blessed to be setting up a show at the Black Prairie Blues Museum, with Mark Mule Man Massey playing that evening.)

https://www.prairieartsfestival.org/

https://blackprairiebluesmuseum.com/

In the meantime, July and August will be dedicated towards finishing commissions and making work for festivals - fixing to take the annual instagram break in July, and looking forward to the growth & change ahead of us.

You already know - prints can be found here: churchgoinmule.threadless.com

Man, i heard this mowing the lawn today and i had to stop and disengage the blade and figure out who it was i was hearing, and the way the beat is, it’s like a heart pounding, and her voice is so sweet, and it sounds like Otha Turner’s people, and it sounds like someone new today, and if i had a little love, i could make it.