October Opalescent & Among the Blessed

From the couch in Roundagator, the ac dimly in the other room, Wilbur snoring, chasing rabbits, hot coffee, Sunday morning.

There are still songs to hear for the first time, there are still songs to write, to sing.

Mortality been coming around a lot recently, it’s October after-all. 

We lost a cat to the road, the one the road brought us. 
We lost a chicken to the road, “sounds like she got caught in a tractor,” she was our red hen and I always believed she was the second smartest, so she’d be ok. Why must the chickens cross the road? 
Later coming home a fawn startled-slow and gone-on behind it’s herd, 
I hit a big rabbit weaving out of the swamp there at the curve, broad daylight, middle-afternoon. Too late to stop, another life too soon. 

And you can add and subtract and add and multiply, but loss, grief, life, never seems to add up. There is always too much taking. 

Hank Williams with his hound-dog grin, I’ll never get out of this world alive, 

Thinking about flowers - they are present for weddings and anniversaries and funerals, for the resurrection, too. 

Fake flowers down the road at the cemetery, blown into the ditch, blown into the woods. Dustcolored but carrying the memory of the person who put them there, for the person buried there. 

Our corner full up on flowers still, catching the light in the morning and through the day, our own field of stained glass, the aster and boneset and goldenrod lit up now in their season, too, swamp sunflowers seem to absorb the sunlight and glow until just past daylight’s end, a burning yellow, beautiful. 

The trees are changing here and there, but it’s the muted changing, not like the mountains or further on up north. The main thing that tells of our autumnal fortune is the poison ivy, rust red, bright yellow, faded green. 

The great machine of harvest is still roaring, now with exhaustion, boredom, impatience. A grain truck pulled the dust of a dry season along with it, as it does in every field from here to Vicksburg, she said is that smoke and I said it could be dust, and began sniffing in exaggeration, coughing, it’s smoke. Clouds of dust and burning up fields to reach way on up to the sky, I would say maybe it’s the land huffing hallelujah into the atmosphere, but maybe it’s more like, let it all go, let it all go, let’s rest now, please,

Walking out into the night, barred owls making the strangest sound, if quarreling and singing and running water was a sound all together, if cursive was a sound, well, i was standing in the dark smiling. If the heaters are off, or the ac is off, sometimes his whoo whoo whoo reaches in through the windows into the night quiet.

Walking out into the morning, something about the shack and the church, if you stand just right the neighbor’s dog echoing infinitely, like if a slinky going down the stairs was a sound, 

The woods this evening, Wilbur barking, like if excitement was a sound, and two deer jump and run, bright white antlers, brand-new, running to the next stand of safety. 

The frogs and crickets, patient and quiet in their evening song, autumnal dirge, as if falling asleep was a sound, 

We were out and I loved everybody and folks were dancing and I was doing my little not-dancing-dance, and I couldn’t help but think man you got to see the best in everybody. It’s hard to do in the moment. Folks are just out here dancing. You don’t have to invent fiction for their whole life story. 

He was sitting up solid like an Egyptian sphinx and later on I shook his hand and he said I’m practicing the bass harmonica. I don’t go out because I want to get it right. And so now I can imagine an old house up the road reverberating with his secret song. 

He told a story about holding the rope for a boat, caught up in keeping hold, until he was almost to his chin in the February Mississippi. 

Standing out on the porch against the full moon, coyotes in the near-woods, he howls and yells back to them, go, go, 

In the kitchen fixing supper, I don’t always turn all of the lights on but tonight,

switch,  click, slide, click, 

Let there be light. We need it right now. 

The light fading and she gave us lightbulbs ‘cause they had extra. 

And we were out in her garden and she said, let’s go pick tomatos, and three bags later, and he was over there taking trimming the okra very seriously, and the little cow dog eating pecans, and I cracked some for myself, understanding very soon why he does what he’s doing, 

And smiling, and going home with some more extras feeling quite rich, cheese, olive oil, tomatos, peppers, sweet potatos. Shared, shared. 

Dark into the full moon and the world looks like daylight in the pictures. A strange world to live and see in, another strange world happening beyond our vision. 

I kept saying they’re so smart, they’re so smart, and she kept reminding me, they just found their thing, their way. 

Dreaming of finding money and deep water, cane poles. Always swimming. This morning I woke up after me and you and her were on an air mattress in the swamp, you could just tell the water was fifty feet deep. And you were hauling down the road but you turned around because you saw a big white alligator, and so pursued it into the swamp, and then the mattress had a hole in it. Falling into the deep emerald cold clear water, swimming and hoping the alligator didn’t find me, to shore. Wakulla water, mythic gator.

I realized I don’t get it right the first time, usually, I used to paint just one and then it’d take it’s own mind and I’d let it run. But now sometimes I let it run too much it’s own way, and then need to do a painting for myself. 

And it seems like everyone is in the too-much of the right-now, and maybe it’s the constellations or our temporary extra moon or that comet or the solar glare. Or maybe it’s the hot and endless summer here, or the rainless day after day. Or maybe it’s just life, and the trees have made it this long and watched it this long, and they don’t show the wear like the road does or the church does or the signs do. Here i am, adding to the barred-owl-cursive-squabble-tangle, whooooo, whoo.

Marching into the woods in shorts and a tank because it’s hot, with a backpack, absolutely unattached to the world around me. Absolutely. He wanted her writing so I went back to get it. I couldn’t find the in loving memory, but I could find the photos. An I hung up the suit jacket tailored in the usa and wondered about what would happen to the glucerna  spilling out of boxes there on the rubbish pile - it looks like a life cut too short, shorter than anyone planned, even the people doing the careful planning. And I get it about photographs. I’ve thrown my fair share away. I’ve also made so many, hoping that something lasts this test of time. But something about a family photo in the trash. And maybe that family wasn’t a family for very long, or maybe not a happy one. Or maybe it was just too hard to look at, because it was so happy. And maybe they thought they’d remember it forever. Or maybe there was no one to retrieve it before it was too late. Maybe they moved north, east, west. 

Anyway; the season demands this, what lasts, what is harvested, what is left. 

She was talking about walking into old adobe buidings, the sides of mountains, caves, the handprints and footprints that last, namelessly. 

Picking up bottles in the woods unafraid and impatient of poison ivy, and one said Wine on the bottom, and one was the Dr. Tischner’s bottle with four dots on the bottom, and one was a Dr. Pepper Bottle with a clock face, ten - two - four. Broken glasses like little souls busted out of them. One looked like a mad dog forty and it had clear liquid still on the bottom, me opening it wondering if it’d smell like sharp shocking moonshine - it didn’t. 

It seems like everything is running it’s last hurrah, hurriedly, angrily, excitedly, unassuredly, the usual loss of winter shocking again, and stranger still against this long, long summer. 

A field of greens and she never talked to me this much before, there in the yard in her blues and a garbage bag of turnips and mustard. She never liked collards, too bitter. The last time she got on a horse it ran her out into the middle of a field and stopped. 

I guess in a flat place it’s harder to get a foothold. All you can do is stand there or maybe sink down. 

I haven’t been able to say exactly what I mean. Knowing and thinking what I mean but the words come out all around it and I never seem to get to the point. 

Seems like thin times if you’re aren’t counting your blessings. Of course all of the old sayings last because they mean so much, I think 

And I been thinking about dispossession by the angels, but then when I look around, I just haven’t really been noticing. I wasn’t in the pond looking at the clouds and seeing the angels amongst the shapes. I am not picking up pennies or watching for numbers, or listening closely or even taking notes. I am not grateful for the multitude of blue skies and greens and neighbors and friendliness, only tallying my own mistakes, if I bother to count anything at all. 

Quickly this morning it’s simple, a dog at my feet and sunshine outdoors, flowers, bees underfoot, the way he jumped out of the car and the first thing he did was go look for their hive, and he hadn’t been around for ten or twenty years. A shelf of unread books. Nightmares, but at least I was dreaming and sleeping. The hope and the potential of what is ahead - isn’t there something to look forward to? Aha, whoo-hoo, there is.

We were standing there at the stage and he was singing just a country boy in the great big crazy city. And I’m not sure what we were all meant for. But it all sure seems like a great big crazy city these days. 

thank you for letting me share this part of my life with you,

Thank y’all! October was a whirlwind. Grateful for the next few days still in the month. The One Night Stand at the Ole Miss Motel was so much fun - thank all y’all who made it. Poundcake was shared, stories were told. It was great to meet new friends and see so many old ones - most of whom I met for the first time at the same event in Oxford over the years. Magical. Somehow I’m not sure I’ve gotten much done since then, I’m not sure why. I think the block gets blockier the more you fight it.

With thanks to everyone who signed up for the postcard list - there’s still time, it’ll always be open. Planning to send show cards for shows coming up and a holiday card, too. Sign up here if you’ve missed out so far: https://forms.gle/Nwaj99jWoErZ4b5GA

Up next is Behind the Plow: Songs for the Pilgrims Working their Way Back Home. You can find the artist statement and more information here: https://www.churchgoinmule.com/blog/2024/10/23/behind-the-plow-songs-for-the-pilgrims-working-their-way-back-home

It goes up at Lowe Mill on November 27th and will be up through February 8th, when we’ll have the closing reception. Please mark it on your calendar. Something about Huntsville on a cold bright dark February night, mm mmm mm. Wilbur will be there. I’ll bring some poundcake.

I’ll also be at the holiday market in Greensboro, Alabama, on December 8th - organized by the remarkable Aaron Sanders Head at Sumac Cottage. More information soon. Lord i love to see a new Alabama town. https://www.sumaccottage.com/

Also - thank you guys so much for the outpouring of support for WNC. With the raffle we were able to donate more than $2,000 to various charities in WNC and especially Marshall, NC. I donated primarily to the Housing Coalition, the Volunteer Fire Department, and the Arts Council. You can find out more here - https://helpmarshall.org/

Lots (too much!) of new things on my threadless. Prints, cups, shirts, hoodies, etc. Honored already by the folks that are giving art for the holidays - thank you. https://churchgoinmule.threadless.com/

A very few Blest hats left on etsy, https://www.etsy.com/shop/churchgoinmule/?etsrc=sdt

here’s that song i was talking about earlier - i guess everything sounds better in person, like most things are better to see with your own eyes or hold with your own hands, wishing you such a heart-full experience soon, with love,