or lump it
St. Charles
65F and 84% at four o’clock predawn. The gentlest waft of air seems to be coming off the Bay down toward the west behind me, not from the south in front of me as usual. These azaleas are months past blooming, I need to trim the tops; when I sit here I want nothing between me and the Bay.
And camellias can be demanding, whatever will mama’s White Empress do? And my favorite, the extraordinarily bright red single with yellow stamens: mama disliked it because its blossoms were supposed to be thick and full when she planted it fifty years ago, but it disappointed her and she never let up on it. Winter blooming, that unloved camellia is my Christmas tree that Charlie Brown brought home because he felt sorry for it. Who is ugly most needs someone to sing You Are So Beautiful To Me.
The boy’s a saint, you know, for all his naive innocence, Charlie Brown is the good guy. Pensive, melancholy, hopelessly in love with the little red-haired girl, sitting on the end of the dock staring out into oblivion, and always checking the mailbox for a valentine. Bit eccentric. What was Charlie Brown like at eighty? Of Charles: I knew a bishop who made a triphthong out of God.
Spring and winter flowers. Summer? These blasted fig trees that are usually so prolific? Last year I trimmed them so far back that this July we got nubbins and leaves from one and leaves and four figs from the other. A dozen years ago when we added the new kitchen in the side yard, I dug up the fig trees and moved them around front. Before that, one always yielded so many figs that on a July morning I could walk round and round it picking and eating my breakfast; it was a joy of being home in July on Navy leave those years. The other I dug up and brought home from the rectory yard in Apalachicola, where I had planted it when it was just a boy and I was forty-nine.
Life goes on, doesn’t it: how long, Lord?
The flashing green light was winking from across the way after Jimmy Gatz was gone, and yep, there’s mine, did Alfred see it that night? Besides the foolhardiness of Captain Caton, and heading out to sea with a damaged rudder, that a channel marker light was out in the Old Pass was reported to have been one reason for the shipwreck. Does anyone but me owe their life to a channel marker? ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω
Whatever are you thinking, Uncle Bubba, what's in mind this morning? That yellow 1951 Cadillac Series 62 sedan with the black top again. I was fifteen. Fifteen, sixteen. Long years parked in my garage out back, it was gone the last time I looked, maybe it's waiting in the circular driveway in front of my mansion, eh? I hope it still runs, because I intend to drive it across the universe. It will be that shooting star you see a hundred years from now.
... in my Father's house are many mansions. Maybe we will be neighbors again.
... in my Father's house are many mansions. Maybe we will be neighbors again.
Who can tell a 1951 from a 1950 and a 1952? And a Series 62 from a Series 61? It will be on the test, you know, you'd better be ready. I drove a black 1950 Cadillac a few times, and owned a two-tone blue 1952 sedan, but never got to drive that yellow one.
Thing about a blog post pecked out in the predawn darkness of late September: it don’t have to please no damn body but myself; and not even me. But it does though, it does please me this first morning of the rest of my life. Let the reader understand.
Or lump it.