September Stormed & Slick

The monthly newsletter from the state where i was born, while it is raining back at home in the Delta. Someone's dog yipping timid while he washes sand from his shoes. You can almost see the Atlantic.

Got home yesterday, beat, tired, worn out. I don’t travel as well as I used to, I guess. I got home and we walked out to look at the okra and the pond, hurricane mosquitos all over us, and we picked greens, big hands full of every kind we planted, broadleaf, curly, purple top, collard, and I washed them and took the stems off, he made cornbread and the whole house started to smell like Christmas, and the local news was on and I fell asleep, like waiting for the new year. I was thinking about birds, and my mind was writing all kinds of things for you but my eyelids couldn’t be kept up any longer.

Waking up before the sunset and the whole house is warm and sunset-colored, and there’s a truck outside the window with bright-white lights waiting for the harvest to come to him, a tractor sending clouds of dust across the landscape. Exclaiming “Look!” And the tractor is there at 9 pm, a spaceship with twelve lights approaching us. 

A copperhead red with copper on the road, the road sand colored and benefiting him, he was long-ways and watching me. I gave him plenty of room, but I’ve gotten either wise or stupid out here and walked near him carefully, smilingly, to take photos. Wilbur’s down the road, what won’t hurt him, he doesn’t know. 

Neck bones and greens and black eyed peas, and I’m harping because it is the same as a welcome home to me, and I keep hoping by writing what I meant to say will come back to me. 

Walking into Wal-Mart and the cantaloupes made me lonesome for the summer, already. Eating melons from the garden with some salt for breakfast, tasted as good as if it already had vanilla ice cream on it. 

The man out past the electric company levee, he said one time we went out there and there were some red-tailed hawks circling his land, and the man pointed at them and said to his dogs, get ‘em, get ‘em. And they did, running off barking and jumping at the hawks in the sky. Can you see it?

A morning awake in an old house and through the panes you can hear the soft whinnying of a screech owl, good morning. 

At the dinner table they get along not talking about politics and he has ivory colored birds on at least two of his guitars, and they used to sit out in the tree farm and chase off starlings, the plan working so poorly until a farmer took pity and let him borrow a rice cannon, “ka-pow!” In the evening, ka-pow, ka-pow, the collective memory that makes the murmuration move like a river cried out, don’t come back here no more, 

Walking out this morning to feed the cats, she falls at my feet to get pets, good morning baby kitty, good morning JD, and they all purr and rub and it’s sweet in the quiet, the chickens come-a-running. 

And walking out this morning just a little later, the screen door slams and the static of starlings like the car radio turned up to the roof, wow, I guess they’re back, across the road to the church trying to come to an agreement, is this the place? 

Driving and watching there were geese traveling south, later that weekend she saw them first as they flew infront of the rising sun and across the ridge. 

Always thinking about the stories we tell and forget, Harry Crews again sneering, “them birds,”

What practical magic have I forgot? 

Rows of greens like winter rye grass, bright. The chickens wander over and tear mostly at the collards, probably only to spite me, knowing they are my favorite, picking and dropping most of the leaves. The kale we planted this summer persists, now that the cabbage butterflies have quit, but the chickens wonder under them, too, and hop to grab some for themselves, “Y’all quit!” 

And a birdhouse gourd is trying again, and the sweet potatoes sprawl all over, and we just got the cabbage in, maybe it’s too late, but we got the main thing, the greens - it looks like riches to me already, heading into the fall and winter. 

And let’s go back to Summerville for a moment, the coffee shop had a note that read “please let us know how we can pray for you today,” and a man walked in with a slouch cap and suspenders. Down the road there were women on the corner bright on a Monday morning, Free Bible Course. Craft Beer Bait Live Worms at the Stop N Tote, 777. The man at Jim’s who looked like he was the sheriff from The Trouble With Harry, I said good morning and I remember he looked at me without saying anything. We were sitting there waiting on coffee and he began a stream of dialogue to himself, laughing and running. He was tickled and it made us tickled. Over a river of biscuits and gravy, we could hear her come up and ask him how he was, and he took off again. Something about he draws, too, and now all I can do is wonder. Someone had planted fig trees and a peach tree and the wham! Of black walnut in the morning falling. She said we have been collecting them and put them in the driveway, the cars pull off the green coat and then it’s easier to crack the walnuts out. Stories like these keep appearing, starlings coming back home.

Telling you already, once before at least, but some days the importance underlines itself; the biggest mistake was not writing it down, believing he would remember it all. Searching around for the other stories I didn’t write down in time, hoping they’ll navigate back. 

It turns out all of these lives are pretty messy, I feel like I’ve been washed and dried and starched and pressed in comparison. I guess it gets that way after awhile. 

Taj Mahal sounding like a Delta Summer, sometimes I still get clarity on why and how I got here, sometimes it still looks like the Andy Griffith show, dust in the white heat sun, an old white GMC, the air heavy and waiting. Neighbors outside at the coffee shop, dogs walking down the sidewalk ahead of their owner, mourning doves on the wire. 

I believe I have determined how come it is, how come it is this seasons can make a person feel low, at least out here. In the spring sweeping winter’s quilts from the beds, cleaning, dusting, hope in the air. In the fall, the fields are long and winterbrown and striped and very quiet. The quilt of the winter world is placed as early as August now, rowed out, clean. Our corner of the earth put to bed and tucked in. (I forgot he wrote about so many heavy quilts he could barely move, and still snow would blow in through the cracks,) 

Still, we are in hurricane season and the one before this one,

Let the outside cat in and she startled at the generator that we moved next to the door, oh to be a cat like that always paying attention to her world. It’s raining and green outside, the wind chimes dancing. 

The farmers working into the night, their lights shining from the field into our windows, picking it up and putting it down before the rain comes. I said, what happens to the cotton, won’t the rain ruin it? No unless it rains for days, or the wind is real bad, it might fall out of it’s boll but they can still harvest it. If it rains for too long, the seeds will sprout in the boll and start growing again. 

Cutting tomatoes and thinking, we ought to be celebrating everything. The last tomatoes from out of the garden this year, it should be special. 

Walking out in the night to lock the chicken coop up, flashlight on so I can watch the cracks in the ground, and all of a sudden a blaze of spiderweb. Back in Richmond it seemed like when we were little we always rode out to this one house with a giant web covering it, a giant spider on the roof. This barn spider made me think that maybe spider web decorations point more to the spider’s tradition than the human’s, that the webs are put up because they’re scary. But this big spider, the kind that inspired Charlotte’s Web, she built this masterpiece and took it down in a flicker of life. That’s all. What else am I missing for not always noticing?

The man with the cowboy hat and low voice and soft hands with twenty chickens and twenty rabbits and three horses, he passed away. Reminding him of the time he called and said the chickens he sold me, all of their teeth fell out. The baby rabbit small and eyes closed in his palms. 

An old commissary with the floors falling out beneath your feet, a taxidermy ram, bookshelves full of art books. A thousand decoy ducks and a rolled up carpet. Looking out in to the rain of the day the peeling white building fits the story.

Sometimes riding in to town I see a new house or building I have never seen before, despite the thousands of times we have run that road. Sometimes walking into the shed I see a painting I have never seen before, and I begin to think this world does shift around us to help us tell the story. We rode up to the church that is falling into itself, to possess it in perpetuity in photographs. And the other church we passed was the one that fell down. Missed another chance, again. 

The highway shall be there,

In the country the land has a way of hugging up on you,

Ahead, all I have ahead is to paint and remember stories. 

hello! hello! i hope you are safe & sound, high & dry.

A huge heart-full of thank you, thank you, thank you! to the new friends from Mighty Roots (finally got to meet Maria Hughes in person! her instagram) and old friends who made the journey from all across to Finster Fest! Truly blessed! Thank y’all for being a friend for so long and for all of the love and joy y’all brought to the weekend. Sunshine, baby. Beautiful.

Up next is the One Night Stand at Ole Miss Motel, in Oxford, Mississippi, on October 5th - put on by the multitalented hard working Erin Austen Abbott (she has a new book out, too, Small Town Living check it out here.) It’s from 5pm - 9 pm, and FREE after 6 pm. (First hour dib tickets can be found here.) It’s an event like no other - she finds such wonderful artists - and they come in and set up their own motel room for the evening, filled with art. Hope we get to see you there!

In November, I’ll have a solo show at Lowe Mill in Hunstville, and then I’ll hopefully be at Sumac Cottage in Greensboro, Alabama. But more on that in next month’s newsletter. (Learn more about Sumac Cottage here)

New Blest hats are coming soon - stay tuned on instagram. Also, people ask how to find out about where I’ll be next - I’m always perplexed on how to reach everyone because it doesn’t seem possible. But know that you can always check out the website under “About” and scroll down a little bit. I try to keep it updated because it helps me stay organized! (the website) That being said, if you have an idea on how to reach 100% of everyone (haha) please share. I’m all ears! (hee-haw)

Alsooo last but not least, i really think i’m gonna do it this time! at the end of this year i’m going to wipe out a majority of the prints on Threadless so it’ll be less cluttered. Be warned! (threadless)

this month we have two videos i have probably shared in the past, but it’s worth revisiting i think - first up is Harry Crews talking about them birds:

and then we were sitting there in Summerville and i could hear Bessie Smith on WWOZ from the other room singing her Mississippi Moan and i was about to subject you to that, but the blues is too much for everyone right now, and i think especially Bessie Smith, cuz she really can make you feel it. So instead, we have Louis Armstrong and Louis Jordan again singing about Life is So Peculiar. Hope you dance around a little bit. I’ve heard it’s good for you.