Twelve Oaks Residency 20

To be uncompromising against a wall of life always asking us to bend or break, a levee of self-possession, never cracking, and never topping her walls. To be uncompromising, like nature in her seasons - summer, winter, they will arrive, they will. Maybe mild but never absent and always moving on.

(This life among people, inside and televised, maybe ain’t right.)

Understanding comes first from other people, and then from experience.

Solitude finds unity.

Does your work show how joyful you are?

A person knowing where to find the ecstatic, but living attic minded instead.

Roughly:

“Experienced something where i was that moment and then i exploded into the cosmos and

i was the bird and the bird was me and,”

i knew - i think - and i really do believe.

“Folks are scared to name Providence, or God, or the Creator” (pointing out we are all creators)

“Nature is the face of God.”

“Providence is neutral.” (To you.)

Out here simply stumbling into awareness. In balance/in Eden. Walk around your mountain, see it all.

“Accept your own authority. It is your story to tell.”

Find the place that you are granted. I went out in the woods and hugged a pine tree the other day. These old oaks have so much warmth in them, and so much strength and stability. These trees have always been around me and with me, and i did really wrap my arms around a scaly brown pine and it stood there, but i believe it must be too old to be embarrassed, and it might be too rooted and loved by Providence to have ever been embarrassed.

When was the last time you had a moment of pure existence.

Thinking then, later, often. Measuring up and measuring down and rounding off. Thinking about ecstasy where it meets humans, and how you aint gonna find it inside a house, probably. So much time taken for granted. Faulkner wrote that we often have exhausted our chance at life before we are done living.

Little bradford pear blossoms coming out one by one and two and three, those grey woods on the side of the path, worn with winter, making a brave and calculated step into spring. You can see by all of this that Providence has been directly under the house and gone out towards the road. She doesn’t ask anything of the oak trees, they have their own time and Providence & the trees both agree. Winter and spring are still holding hands before winter has to return underground, return to Providence’s back to sleep through the summer and dream into the fall.

We saw a tree standing down near the water, an alien plant vining up its trunk, all it’s arms outstretched in praise to the sun and to the season. Sunset, for a moment, prehistoric red and bloody and old, birds calling the same as they been doing for centuries. We can’t picture the woods anymore like they used to be, all swampland and patient. But we can see the sunset every day if we bottle up and go.

The water is often so still. We would have missed its glass, it’s complete mirror, if it weren’t for the pelican, all perfect just about the surface.

Worried all the time, waking up in the sunrise-light in bed, worried - but whatever is strangely scratching on the roof is still on the roof - and i am safe still in bed.

Twelve Oaks Residency 19

No one tells you in church that heaven ain’t all at once. Heaven is in stages and over a series of years and so quiet you caint always tell til it is gone.

And all the good and saved memory glowing.

A sweet satsuma off of a tree.

Reading back through so much writing it seems all last year i was lookin for rain and here it is just the same.

This house out here a heaven of overwhelming, light leaking up in the clouds, we see but never knew, it seemed. A quiet rooting to all of a sudden be so planted this way.

Roots carefully dug up, a summer garden, a summer tomato still making offerings. Roots dug up again ad again, hands knowing & gentle, that it is bound for a better place.

Knowing like all of earth knows when it is spring here in this hemisphere, and the pecan tree knows to blossom last thing.

The azaleas around here wilted, some of them dropped, after the cold. It feels like fall outside, sitting on the porch in the dappled sun.

Little bursts of flowers on bare branches. Winter left them for dead, but the ground and sun been all preserving through and through.

Ferns, each kind, and all of them, little fuzzy fists bursting from the ground, from the bayou, unfurling again from the trees. Strange dinosaur plants, shelled as they unroll into the sun. A garfish with roots, a season with leaves.

Green darlings sprouted over night, everywhere, steadily studying. Easy to get caught up in their capturing, once you are noticing.

No stop to stopping, once you start stopping.

All the sun seeking creatures coming out now. Me too.

There is light in everything here.

Peace & penance & prayer moving forward & watching everywhere.

Lists & listening.

Talking, a lot of talking, a lot of writing, a lot of barking. Silence broke up quicker than it falls.

Spring slow and steady though at first and in the moment it seems like lightning, but it is a month or two months and then maybe summer isn’t so quick as it used to seem, either. Always looking up the road instead of down, where we came from.

Done the workshop, and it was wonderful to see the house filled with warmth and smiles and patience and listening. The light was good and the people were the best, and family gets held close and we get to speak all of our names proudly.

Art under the oaks. Mother Nature and Providence partially present and smiling, they knew these Twelve Oaks had us in good hands. A sunny and warm and cool day fell into night and into Sunday, again sunny and overcast and kind. Running these roads and helping folks and seeing all the lives living out here.

Walking to the truck, i believed they were car lights from the road at first - surely. Some strange new light like sometimes happens out here in the darkening of dusk.

They really was there - it really were lightning bugs. Buzzing, glowing, blinking. In a trio, all alone, little paint spatters of phosphor, little sulphur butterflies for night. A dozen, thinking of Georgia, then Oxford, Mississippi, out near Faulkner’s grave, and Providence might be Providence or she might be God, too, and we all slowly moved by a gracious and knowing hand to land.

The lightning bugs began on the leap year day, in their own timing, in their own planning, and it is a dream all over again to be here among them.

Twelve Oaks Residency 18

Twelve Oaks Residency 17

Twelve Oaks Residency 16

Twelve Oaks Residency 15

Been scheduling posts - three left with writing and photography - written back in February and early March. These are photos from the past week, i’ll save you the wordiness, been tired of it myself.

Twelve Oaks Residency 14

The first plant-naming i remember was the devil’s walking stick. Of course we probably learned the names of the Dogwood, the Cherry Blossom, the black walnut and maybe even the Hackberry. But nothing looks so properly named as that old Devil’s Walking Stick. You can nearly see his red-scaly-hands grasping that evilish branch. But i never knew til now it would bloom. Providence in her lineage of Mother Nature, surprising in a quiet way at every turn, if you are looking.

Wilbur’s first time out on the water, brave and curious like maybe all living things should be. We was out looking for Providence and all of her spring-time-prosperity.

Out paddling, like suddenly we had so much horse-power and self-power and capability. All these island ideas and heading into marsh-labyrinths and certain we will arrive home safe. A crooked lightening-looking limb marks the entrance to Twelve Oaks, from the bayou, the home of a dozen lightening-looking limbs. And there are photos, but you can imagine this clumsy fool ain’t bring no actual camera to the bayou. A phone in a sandwich bag and an eye full of wonder. Worried for all the creatures around us and underneath us, but we are safer in this kayak than on the road, walking or driving. A maze ahead and above and below and we go on.

Signs all around for spring, every where you look. Bright buds, bright green. An unfurling over-night. Brown sticks, things winter kept for dead, greening again. Curious to see all of these strange species come to life again and again and again. Winter curling everything inward and spring taking all the underground and kiting it up and out. Quiet, first, very quiet and balled-up, hopeful. Blackberries, second named, after that old devil’s walking stick. Plain, simple, sweet.

Same as all these strange birds, you believe you know birds until you see a Shearwater or a Royal Tern, and they look so magnificently and perfectly designed, could they be just another bird? Leafs as feathers, leaves as feet, sky in the water, mist rising from that old street.

We took that kayak out looking for Providence, though it was clear she had already been moving back toward human kind. And the shift was strange, the water looks more winter, though we know she has been working. Every day is it’s own miracle, and it’s hard to think about ever leaving. We walk our highway road and know the signs of spring, but these plants have begun to look like people. The photo above is the plant on the turn towards the camellias, it always brushes you and it always has done. But now it is greening, and it is a thought like a dream to see the path green and obstructed with that fine life.

A hundred-years old tree and a young azalea. Time demands to teach us, but if we don’t write it down and take care to remember, we will never really know to recall. Superstitions last over time only because they are told again and again, finally trusted, true reasoning behind lost to time. This old oak stands, it has stood; all of these tests. It is strong, it is supportive, it is rooted deeply, it carries it’s young ferns, it lives. It cares for it’s canopy, and by that - all of the trees around it. The azalea grows, blossoming every spring, or pre-spring, careless, but on time (in it’s own time.)

(we had been to the Christenberry exhibit before it closed down, and the whole museum seemed like a home, a place where we had all been together as a family for the past several years. Now we are faced again with moving, with loss, with death. Christenberry painted with strikes of color to bring a whole landscape together, made a graveyard the same as a heaven with pinks and blues and stars. His greens the same dark green-bright-green as the spring around here. It feels like New Orleans has already been sunk, it seems like the Ogden was lost into the deep dark of the Mississippi, i love you all so much and the distance seems too far to bear by walking or dreaming or talking, and i was crying in an old metal rocking chair, like the kind Muriel had on her porch in Morganton.)

Twelve Oaks Residency 13

Today:

You can tell by my words and every photo before, i am no flower photographer, but all of this all at once, like a secretive new beginning to the world, this thing that happens every year without fail, on a predictable but unpredictable schedule, too beautiful and new and hopeful to neglect as it bright greens all around.

This past fall we lost an uncle, and two days after i was sitting with a great-uncle, he was approaching his 90s. We was all at dinner in the mountains, and he knew every mountain’s name, and every road that brought you to them. He was named after his father, and i was named after his father, and this new baby was named after his father, too. He smiled, leaning, sitting, “Look at him, not worried about a thing.”

Here is spring:

Get your gladfull glasses on and get along.

You can see Providence been mighty hard at work. Must have finished up in the bayou and began to call down the rain. From the low tide to the muddy land to the trail, green is coming up all over. Before long, you’re right, she will have touched every part of her earth and it will be spring. Vines will curl in close and even the devil’s walking stick will be in bloom.

(worse monsters to come than winter, life all short and good for teaching.)

(February 7th

Everything too beautiful to understand, too breathtaking, beginning to know, beyond realizing: heaven is here. We just built up all of our own so much, we cant hardly see it anymore.

February 8th

It would be so troublesome to be in love with an island.)

Night creatures tap tap tapping into my dreams - morse code to a soul to get along, a generous spirit in the land, a generous spirit in the house.

Out here steady walking all of the time, even the most attentive eye won't catch all of these sudden blooms.

i believe if i put a face to Providence she would be beautiful but she would also by my grandmother or great grandmother. Soft, her most important feature in her heart, soul, back, hands - working hands.

Mother nature’s face is different to everybody, so goes Providence.

In North Carolina, mother nature is a cool blue morning in the shade of the mountains and walnut trees. In Louisiana, a cypress in muddy water, secretive cypress knees and a cloak of bright humidity.

In the Delta, she goes on forever, obscuring her face with generosity of fertile ground & threats of flood and wind.

Here on the hidden coast i am in her arms so i cannot see her face.

But Providence moves all around and i catch her eyes smiling in the sun and while it rains in the woods.

We was out runnin the levee in New Orleans and i was glad and surprised both, to see the city deep in the fog of the river. This is how it goes, another non-day, another dream of living in New Orleans when i should be in the woods. Fighting my own sleep the whole day. Providence is awful loud if you can see how to listen.

A flock of whistling ducks in the new moon night. Irises blossoming in the ditch. The cool of the river reaching us in the fog, we are breathing in the Mississippi and shaking hands. Out of the levee and down the road, humidity weighing down our clothes.

We borrowed us a boat and went down to the water. The mud generous in it’s giving - soft and stickless and turtle-less and we sank down before we lifted out and in, on to the bayou. Now i have seen much of the trail from the inside and the outside. The trees once distanced from me by water and marsh-grass now next to me and smiling.

The brown water holding all of it’s creatures in safe obscurity. Little bubbles race ahead of us, and lazy bubbles follow our paddling. We came to an arm of the bayou where pollen had collected. We traced our trail from the water until the kayak breeched and we back-paddled.

Mazes of marsh grass, inlets, outlets, muddied platforms for surely nutria, and probably our last great land lizard. A turtle balancing on a root fairly flailing to get back to the water. Twice a blue heron startled us, knowing our approach before we could dream of his. Great blue wings to the sky, a great clattering rising.

Another unseen creature loudly leaving near the water. Pouncing, our silent approach still startling and alien, this is the quietest we have ever been out here, on the water instead of traipsing the woods, and still scaring all things out and away.

All of the trees nearer and closer and looking down to us. Eagerly & strangely growing in their mudflats. An egret flew up into their arms, starry against the green needles and grey sky.

Quiet. No one on the water. Not a soul in the woods. Traffic buzzing and droning up river and side river and down river. One egret and me, and all the untold things beneath.

Providence splashing in the water and whispering to the strange creatures in the roots. Strange creatures i can’t hardly see and can’t puzzle to sense.

Twelve Oaks Residency 12

Monday we went to Horn Island. It was a halcyon day, as Anderson might say. It is still too beautiful and strange to comprehend, a love so true & secret you won’t call it’s name. Someone said it is like going to the moon, and they were right. Those photos will be for you one day, but now i can’t even bear to look at them. The world is too beautiful and people are too good. Coming back to the real world, the sky so close to the water, heaven got to be within jumping distance.

We were very quiet in Shearwater pottery. It had just been restocked, newly, brightly decorated bowls and figures and cups, horses and cats and folks. A mule angrily pulling. A woodpecker as a handle. Turquoise, white, trick colors. All of the pottery cooling and sparkling, creaking and singing and popping to us in the silence of Shearwater. A mourning dove on the ground.

Tuesday, friends and artists came and we sat under the oaks and ate lunch in the New Orleanian way, and it was beautiful and the weather held. A strange planet, woodpecker feathers scattered, a small green treefrog bright in the red pine needles. This trail known to me, its low spots and muddy spots, and fall-apart spots, and hopeful it calls everyone on back. The light is always changing and nature has a whole swell of promises.

Wednesday, today, it rained just like they said it would. It began when they predicted and it never let up for hours. The light came on in my studio mid-afternoon, the sky glooming towards night. The front and the back of the house became warm rivers of rain (puddle-wonderful,) then the fog began to move, the mist, like a dream. Everything here seems to be all-encompassing first, but then it is either a dream or a jewel, and that’s just how it is. For Anderson it was halcyon or almost-halcyon and i can see the unbelievable beauty of it all now, beyond my own simple wording or understanding.

Painting and sketching and thinking. A little restless and a moving easel. Climbed the rarely-used stairs, and visited every quiet and warmly-lit room, a new perspective among the trees and an audience to the rain. A pleasant & cheery blue bathroom with its windows to the trees. Upstairs seemed glad to have my visit, and i was glad to be there.

Obscured + defined out on the trail, browned & wintery with everything growing towards spring deeply green saturated and bright. Proud. The camellias especially, hollering in their greenery. The bayou is high, the water is high, the trees erased into sleep. Something about the deep water, the fresh rain water filling it to the brim & it climbing, made it safe. Made it clean. Barefoot we went in, often to just below the knee. Clear, cool, pine and bayou water. The muck all loved up by Providence and welcoming, hugging, even - safe.

This morning just before the deluge we were out in the woods, everything heightening in it’s vibrancy, our old brave turtle at his turtle crossing, as unafraid as ever. The woods getting louder before the storm, for most of the trail we were shielded. Thunder rolling holy-holy-holy, rumbling and grumbling, lightning flashing. Before that, we stood on the threshold of the house, after a run. During that run we was watching the rain come in over the bay and us all unworried. Back home, i shucked my shoes and pondered going or staying, does lightning hit the trees then cross the ground? and would we be safe? We are safe. It was safe. We went out and on and barefoot and gladful.

Not good at reading signs and not good for knowing much. Just out, looking, practically rolling in the pine needles with joy and needing. Numbers and constant turtles, maybe like crows, they are just there, on their way, always going, and it’s no secret to come upon one. But it is. It must be. Life, little life, little mushrooms we saw two days ago, then yesterday, then today, completely changed and beautiful. A bright mango color in the wet decay around it .

Branches and leaves, rain and trees, needles and mud, all of the contact i have. They brush my head, like a mother holding and petting her sleeping child during Sunday service. Many promises to myself broken. This new-clean-mud welcoming and holding and safe as we crush down upon their mud-hidden branch-bones, leaning into the cool water. Cypress knees with their moats, steady moors in changing waters.

The water is crawling towards the house from the bayou, but it will be days and months of this before it could truly reach us. Anyhow, i reckon. Mother nature, well, you know. It’s supposed to rain more tomorrow. All of the rain gathered in the back, at the feet of the younger oaks and an old magnolia has drained already, down the trail to the bayou. Did the trail come first from nature, or from folks and their engineering? A little laughing & sure river, a microscopic Mississippi.

An alien planet. By alien, just forgotten. All of us turning to our old ways because we have already forgotten - history repeats itself - it’s true. Before long we will all be plowing and sewing and planting and pickling again. We forgot.

The night colors floated down. It rained and leaves fell and all of spring’s creatures thrilled with the day. We will sleep through the night and see what nature has planned for us tomorrow. It’s supposed to rain.

Twelve Oaks Residency 11

i guess back home i need to be outside more. Those woods never seem to hold as much mystery as Mississippi does. Those woods back home seem threatening with snakes and boars and coyotes, all lingering around in the imagination. As with the water, all of the things i’ve seen in that water keeps me scared.

Here i have temporary pelican wings, holding me just above the gulf of reality.

Back home my wings are stumbly pecan-tree-sitting mockingbirds, easily cat-caught and otherwise plainish.

Maybe i need to go out looking for new wings in the swamp. Could tell you about my wings in the delta, but i can’t claim them yet.

A pelican sunning on his totem, ruffling, bringing me back to Old Fort Bayou and the oaks.

Drove to Ocean Springs in another pouring rain. My truck with it’s own wings through the water and puddles, never failing me and so thankful, over bridges and all of the rivers of the interstate.

The house our warm lantern. Providence out swimming, steadily working, touching all of the roots, one by one, so they might unfurl and blossom in the sun.

She is not thinking of us.

Whenever i leave and go too far it is always strange - fog, rain, holding us in another land and time, patiently guiding us back to Ocean Springs’ loving arms.

Back home in Sunset, for just a moment of time, the rain began at 2 am, after the coyotes went to sleep. Rain pouring, cold, clear. Our fall planted hopeful garden too generous. A fallow field is a sure enough sin, but what is one gone to seed? In that rain and cold and clear, gathering the lettuce, the simple rainy loving pages of the next chapter of life.

We was out in what would seem the turtle hour, but it must have been too cold for their reptilian souls, and instead it appeared we were in the sleepy spider hour, all careless webbing across a clear path.

Out steady wondering in our living dream. We have begun to go down the trail backwards and it seems a dozen more side trails exist again. A black dog follows us in the corner of our vision, lurking. Our possum gone.

The alarm jangling at 5:00 am, no raccoon in sight in the morning dark. But we hear him burrowing next to our bed.

A timid hermit crab, more timid than a turtle, steady unmoving, my phone and Lightnin Hopkins crooning, too much for him to bear.

The sky was mist to mist, land obscured to sea, the beach suddenly more yellow and red, more antique, the ocean more brown and blue, a curtain of dreamery the background. High tide at night, low tide in the morning. Sacred shearwaters keep their secrets. Nature been out here so long you can’t disrupt her patterns. She’ll eventually force her way through.

Twelve Oaks Residency 10

Well the muse, or Providence, as i believe she must be named, went off walking and swam into Old Fort Bayou and went in under the mud among the painted terrapins and gulf coast box turtles, and all of the creatures she has always know & loved. Same as sisters.

Silent bald eagles and speckled hawks over head.

Providence with her toes sinking in.

We went out looking for her. High tide, low tide, in the morning and out through the night.

The storm obscured her and it got cold and she was sinking down, all of her fine fingers lightning into the bayou causing spring to begin rearing all around.

Providence belongs to no one. Even Walter Anderson meant to keep his island. We are only human.

We hung lights in the trees, and stars all lanterned for us. We worked into the night, hoping we could bring her back inside.

She moves spring and she carries slow winter on her back, a fuzzy and drowsy child. She pulses spring to us but she must uncover it from the muck first. It’s been moiling for so long under that muck.

We saw the pine tree muted and knew we would not see a halcyon day.

Out in the woods waiting for heaven to be realized.

Jellyfish on the beach like old lost souls, slimy sea-suns on shore, dangerous & prickly no more. We poke them with our toes and imagine the sand grit of their land skin and the tangles of their insides. Their skin showing everything within.

Two porpoises, sent perhaps by Providence herself, asking us to stand at the shore and watch. Asking us for patience. They move in no pattern and appear where they will. In the same way the pine tree told us to be patient, today was not our day. Watch, wait. Heaven is all around.

(pelicans on tide totem poles, they know their hour.)

The filtered light, the cloudy light, the rain, the moon, the stars, the morning sun, the mid afternoon sun, these oaks catch every bit of it and i am beginning to believe they must be moving slowly all of the time. Their wooly coats highlight them fine as lines, fine as lightning, living.

He knows his boat rides smooth but the pine already told us to stay home.

We are out closely looking for patterns among the tree’s skins. Hoping that realization also comes from within.

Twelve Oaks Residency 9

There’s been gospel all through the house. Music quiet in the evening with raccoons scuffling around, maybe on the roof, my heart in my throat at two in the morning. But it’s just age old nature and her daughters, the trees dropping leaves & limbs in the wind, the raccoons and all of their kin out looking to eat. The trees and their canopies covering us at all times, in the pouring rain, where everything gets to be so glistening & bright, and new paths sure enough open up.

we was in New Orleans in November or December. And i was out in the French Quarter, the whole Mississippi river keeping me from home. And looking at those buildings. Tiresome just to get back. Tiresome to walk in all the pastel colors on the dirty pavement, and the tourist music shrouding in the humidity. I looked up with tremendous regret & sadness, that i had lost all of my love & wonder for a place that used to be my only dream.

The oaks here gave me new eyes. Sometimes those eyes come in on my heels, leaves all over the ground. Now in this time, this year, New Orleans echoing all of it’s ever-present love and even the terrifying river bubbling in chorus on the pavement shores. The colors & the light & the sound all vibrant and beautiful & embracing. Ducks and their partners all across the water, canadian geese loud & proud, a heron stretching his neck to croak low down across the river. Pelicans all strange and lizard-like on their piers. The river is high but the land doesn’t seem worried. They reckon they’re all the same.

We are here always at our crossroads, there is left & right, up & down, sky & ground. We are at another crux of winter & spring. Summer seems to still hold us in it’s loving arms. All of the tender green things are bravely curling upwards. Winter and it’s passing hanging down & skeletal, pine diamonds rainy & saturated. Brush washed down with water & tide & calling. All of these paths always opening to us if we are out looking for it. Vivid in the rain, living in the rain, all of these trees an umbrella, forgiving their weather-mother and letting some through down on us, happy and spattering in the water and mud. Trees is blushing with spring.

I was afraid and i am still afraid to lose my sight like i had with New Orleans. To go home and see Louisiana is another harsh shake. To be here at Twelve Oaks sure seems like heaven within all comparisons. The rain carried us back to Mississippi, just like a portal, again. We came through safe and glad. New eyes came to greet me, all the leaves, in the woods, in the rain.

We are here in the quiet resurrection, the restoring of life to death among the plants and animals. It is so silent out here. Birds and squirrels and other creatures quiet in their winter. The rain muted by the trees. The resurrection swelling from beneath our feet, spring is always promised, but before it is spring, it is mighty cold and mirrored, everywhere. All of nature watching and all of nature knowing just when to come through.

Blossoms just as beautiful in their pre-blossoming.

Twelve Oaks Residency 8

Seems to see that all those doors closed up on purpose or by providence or - well, they got ways of creakin’ open, eventually, and another soul-part might be hiding there. You can get lost out here, i almost did yesterday. In the blinding of the setting sun, truly a blazing magnificent star among all of those old pines. Moving through the woods into the sun my heart pounding because another land had truly opened up, it seemed, it was blued in the true shadows around the sun and beautiful. I knew for certain, for a moment, that i had gone on. The sun shifted from its brilliance to these bluer shadows and i came back to earth, Wilbur pulling on his leash.

Get lost - the trail is secret and winding the first second third lap, and you’re still nervous. After that you arent so lost. You get to finding. Instead of the trail, while you’re pacing it, its your own mind you can get lost in. Pullin on doorknobs to see who is there.

It seems as though things really just appear out of the ground, you know, you could say they spring out. To see the woods in its many coats. Curious to see if the live oaks lose their resurrection fern wooly sweaters or keep them among all of the colors all year. I hope so. The blackberries are beginning to flower. Watching all of the small green things come up, slowly, carefully, as it’s still cold and threatening.

a whole world of smilin story tellin folks and i look up and look around & smile smile smile too (i love all of you!) Folks seem like they are just streaming in and i got my shell, same as that turtle, curious & darting.

Strange to live in a place that belongs to everybody, with their lights & flash & photography & family.
Old dogs, young children, all the promise of the woods hidden, hidden. i got my favorite view of the trail, let me show you sometime. The hard lines of the trees & the bright sunset light.

Smudging up my own eyes for a minute. Kicking pine needles. Burying, burrowing animals digging their own quilts into the dirt & continuous.

I said this earlier, but different, and this is how i wrote it down so i guess i’ll tell it again:

walking into the light, the sunset at 4:30, the gloaming - walking into it all - the sun so bright . deep into the trees its hard to see, convinced for five slippery minutes we is truly on the next, the other path, some where. Stopping, so certain we could be next-dimension. The trees, the pines, each skin, all bark, it’s own. Lighting into the sky as night leans down.

Twelve Oaks Residency 6

Been reading Lewis Nordan’s “Music of the Swamp.” He made me remember all those times in the woods with my old dog, Tanner, and we used to go all the time. It seemed then as i know now as a levee road, holding in the little Tallahassee lake. I tried to build a deer blind in those slight woods, just to watch. Never seen much. Only ever found. Used to go to them woods, like i do now, if it’s not every day it’s pretty well near. All of the excitement of their shade and stories and hope building up to where we practically running to get there. Used to go - and Lord did i cry when they cut some them trees down. Just a few, here and there, no particular apparent rhyme nor reason. Weren’t enough to make a difference, probably. But i cried. Because it meant, eventually, surely - they’d be gone. Couldn’t fathom i’d be long gone before they was.

They didn’t seem to have bramble out there like they do here. And it doesn’t rain anywhere on earth like it does out here in the bayous. Met my first liar out there. Couldnt - cant - understand. All them walks. All them tadpoles and that little alligator before the 4th of July. Out in these woods in the ouroboros we walk and walk and now we feel like friends, maybe, i might be acting too familiar. All of these beautiful things obscured by the next beautiful thing.

Birds sing, crickets sing, frogs sing, we sing. You might find me out there if you’re walking, i’m wondering. Sometimes i catch Wilbur staring and i begin to stare as well. Between the wind and the branches, the birds, frogs, all of these hidden creatures, we are listening so that we might begin to see. You might hear me saying, often, in the squelch of the marsh, “i believe! i believe i’m sinkin down!” and Robert Johnson rolls his eyes again. Never fallen down on my knees and raised up my right hand in this swamp, just at least not yet.

These waters is gentler waters. (this land is your land) and i been dreamin so good out here. Carrying you on my mind as all of these fern-coated oaks green & dream-misted, “holding patterned” waiting for our storm & it still ain’t stormed. Out wondering and staring and listening in these woods, quiet in the morning, birds shaking dew from their feathers as they sing in the trees, the trees showering us in our dawn and at a night a boy and his boat circle and circle, ripples find us in the grass and we sure-nuff sinking down, squelching, searching, one day these vines will be summer snakes and these logs alligators but i wont know til i know.

The promise of fireflies in March. The promise of spring and threat of summer. Alligator tunnels, nutria, fox, raccoon, rabbit tunnels, all around us, turtles waiting for the turtle hour. Snakes for the snake hour. We will see (eventually.) I am here among my southerners and alone all at once. A man and his motel room. An artist and her tree house. A person and their land. Waiting for blessings.

stories stories stories, the whole world stories. i want to hear all of your stories, all of them. i see what i know now - looking and hunting for stories and i got some but the priority is stories- books books books - all of your stories. Make this world more perfect with your stories; amen, hallelujah, praise God, amen.

Twelve Oaks Residency 5

Falling asleep with the fog crawling up, clouds rolling in from the gulf, that mist on the fine hairs of my arms looking down startling. We are at home here in this house and prayin ground, the mist treating us as a globe and going all around but never to the door. All of the fox holes and turtle holes and snake holes woke up with fog all around, instincts keeping them unworried, to be an animal must be mostly a strange dream. (To have spent so much time in the woods coming up, and pining for it the rest of the time, i can’t name very much and can’t understand how i never set out to know.)

Glad to have the memory of writing-it-down, it makes it almost appear as if time has gone by slower. The mist and fog has been enveloping and slowing. A man with a boat the other day told me about horn island, and said as if it was all clear & simple math - “yes, all of this fog, we are in a holding pattern waiting for the rain to come and break it, break into cold weather.” It feels just like that, a holding pattern. These time here a holding pattern, certainly, an animal dream and the fog is all around.

(Yaupon, a dear friend mentioned that this plant’s leaves are caffeinated and make a fine tea.)

i couldn’t believe when i walked in (let me see if i can start again.)

all of these creatures are here, they leave their tunnel homes, they leave-their-leavings, you can tell. Their homes are dark and deep, pine bedded, muddy, always quiet. You could be staring up at the night sky by staring down into this earth. The tunnels through the grass, the saw grass, the underbrush, the roots. There is a tree here with roots crossed like a dozen hands and the tree (a young water oak) leans impossibly. It is still alive, limbs getting in where they can, this tree ain’t grew how it was supposed to and the other trees have no time now to move. Growing towards the light or storm bent or both. Some of these pine trees have their hips cocked and i wonder why.

These hidden creatures, Lord let me be a hidden creature. A possum at night unworried yet, slow and knowing. An armadillo blind in the day and especially at night among the flood lights. Let people know i lived a little while and somewhere among them but help me from being all seen.

(Tiny pink possum footed and armadillo shelled and hoot-owl-voiced but otherwise gone.)

(seen the storm coming last week. But it already happened. i seen this storm coming all day today. feel so care-free and safety netted we just go out walkin. Its hard to worry much when all your time is in your own hands.) We seen this rain comin. Been tasked with watchin. (took a wrong turn walking on the bridge peering into the fog and wound up back on government.)

the leaves fall as the moths in the light, racing carefully to the ground. Hoping nothing never gets old.
Leigh Anna Newell said the other day that “art is as a faithful friend,” and she is sure enough right on. But it also feels like my whole body. Taken for granted. Ever present. Susceptible to its private kinds of needs. (A faithful friend bound to hollering yowlering if forgotten.)

Seen that black snake in his snake hour, from a distance. We was out past turtle hour and before pelican hour. Couldn’t hardly believe the luck of it, providence placing that snake in the air to be seen. Too coiled up to come back down without careful thought. Perfect and testing the air with his tongue, brave enough to get close but not enough to reach out and feel. But by looking you could guess.

Twelve Oaks Residency 4

Said it out loud the other day, it feels like i’m in high school again - back then i was driving to Monticello, Florida, or to Thomasville, Georgia, every moment of it breathtaking and heart swelling and so beautiful. It has been a strange thing to feel the chill of, i guess, adrenaline (a word i would volunteer with? anything else) or excitement or, well, shivery love. All of this music, all of this vision, all of these people, too much to bear in all of their shimmering beauty. Ocean Springs, East Beach, Biloxi, Diamondhead, Shearwater, Cat Island, all of the names of these places - thank God!

Hoping to keep new eyes all of the time, small snails all clustered as milky ways, gulfy-salty-blue-gray-days, to see and keep seeing in this new world. It seems on the edge of magic. (Wilbur has his long-leash now, been hooked on cypress knees and sturdy trees but he is always quiet, always watching, star-gazey, mid-day and helps me hope.)

Been out walking on east beach, where Wilbur can run at liberty without me (he is snoring on the couch now), and there was these strange formations, strange like oyster shell buildings but on the flat of the beach. Looked just like rocks - just like lava rocks, porous, scrapey. Put my boot on one of them the other day. Exclaimed out loud. Whoa. It sunk into the sand, because it was sand, too. (humans, all tender humans, too)

The sky was vivid, cerulean, blue, against the next rain cloud. The pine tree patterned up as a warm and crimson brown quilt. Grow how you want to. So much of what we come upon seems so jaw dropping and too purdy to be true. We still sleep at night with no real understanding of all we have seen and said. Been interrupting folks, too, too excited to be polite though that’s still shameful. I know less-than, less-better-than, and please forgive. Life has begun to feel extremely important, extremely rare, extremely flash-in-the-pan. And i guess that means i got to shout out loud at the worst times, all of the time. (shh - like a —-)

We woke up this morning! Hoping to see the fog that carried us down out and through New Orleans to my parent’s house. Thick and terrorsome, like a dream before it turns to a deep water night mare. The last two days all fogged up like maybe they never happened in real human time. We woke up early this morning, hoping for fog. There was no true fog, just a steady and obscuring grey, nothing creeping up and blanketing to the house (yet but still praying.) Wore my boots out, but i been sinking down, ankles and socks attentive to the mess around them that soaks. It’s January. The snakes are all hidden, the mosquitos mostly-quiet, we could be barefoot. We could be barefoot.

A finger-drawn notice on the back of a traveling and hauling truck, sooted, it said winning lottery numbers next week 11 21 2010 etc all of these numbers and all of these words and all of these people, all distilled in the quiet and by the spirits of this house. I don’t want to win no lottery. Done already won.

Galaxies and jewels all around. We woke up this morning! Like i said. Been out through the morning, no fog, just coating, out through the new-mud, through the champagne glasses, through the pearls of rain and dew, another patient dinosaur at our feet among the leaves, their amber eyes perfect. We met a dog and his human, too not-awake to be quiet, interrupting like i said - interrupting their morning. This house is mine, for now, for a moment, but this land has belonged to this man and his dog longer than i could know it.

The thing about the woods is, when you are in it, with your dog, it feels like it belongs to you, and it’s your own quiet no trespassing sign time, and i done trespassed for the fog that weren’t there. We won’t wake up to trespass no more. Every wildlife, every change and shift, like a single gift and sight i have never seen before.

We interrupted and trespassed and dreamed in the morning with no real fog. The alarm started at 6 am. We went back to bed after our 6:50 am walk. Two dreams just like an actual living life, a dog at the windowsill curious, and a strange man peering through once his dog had done. We got up and got out, but it never felt like i was awake til noon. This has been my experience for a few years now - dreams so strange and sometimes terrifying and at the edge of knowing if it were true or false. Dreams so mundane (mundance!) sometimes that its hard to distinguish later what really went on.

( i feel my feet are ruined by just a handful of years in the stables of racehorses - water and rinsing and drying and rinsing and walking) woke up this morning (thats three times now) and knew how to say. Every time i get up to walk around these days i feel like i’m not in my own body, but in my grandmother’s. Her slight and leaning and bending frame, like an old wind whipped pine, hovering over all of her young pines & peoples to help them instead of her own. She seemed as though she was always seeing right. People that see me, despite me and all of the strangeness i have, i smile, and they see her. All of her justice commonplace now. Was never, ever, somehow, still twistingly grangrishly about this fact: never my great grandfather i was named after. He was, his sister, his brothers, these long-and-tall-and-strong-folks. Simple, i guess. Plain-working. Proud? Angry? Strict. Providing. Despite now having and holding his name i am not him, and can’t resemble him, or any of his family, except barely by the truth of blood. I’m his great-granddaughter and i am more Welsh-looking-raised-by-wolves-family. And i never been mad about it. Only pining.)

All of that is to say, i can’t believe you could have read all of this. Thank you. My whole heart a tall person-named, strict & wirey & a thankful body of love. Grandmotherly or modernly. We seen a toad, after all of our meditations. He was hopping, nervous, outside of our reach and strange from our turtle-hours. Patient for photography & thankful for that. All of nature around us is alike, in some way that we do not immediately see (how could we.) Barefoot, amongst the sleeping snakes & syrup mosquitos. Barefoot into the hazy water, gladful for it’s cool-warm ripplings, like maybe if we go out this way in a semi-holy baptism, God will look on and smile, smile, smile.

Twelve Oaks Residency 3

It turns out the oaks here, in the front, they’re already named. Who? What? Why? When? Hard to tell to know. Faith, Hope, Charity. The storm came through, a couple days late, i can’t tell about mother nature or it’d be a sin. Like making fun of the teacher while they’re teaching. She is all powerful and she is assertive, and she came through. These trees, roots below & limbs above, they encircle us and it is hard to worry, with that knowing. They might be her children from longer than before hurricanes was invented.

so she came through. It rained, there was thunder, i had heard Walter Anderson say thunder rolls holy holy holy. This was more a growl, the way Wilbur grows at folks from the windows, because he feels deep down he should, but he loves everyone, he doesn’t - couldn’t - mean it, really. It were a growl. It weren’t a hymnal nor a psalm, either.

There was no wind to tear our crosses of power lines down. There was no wind to shake our foundations and our sidings and our roof. We always had our power - the lights never shimmered scared. Thankful it werent hurricane season. But the way i love this place i’d lay out on the roof if that meant i could be here somehow, in the peak of a hurricane, hollering and angry as hell.

(the truth is i have holes in my pants and paint on all of my clothes and for as safe as i feel i am always scared)

it seems as if all of nature is here to mirror. in a broader world, you can imagine what that might mean. here, the mirrors in the leaves cup the sky plainly. The water, all around, all secretive about how deep the mud is. Shattered with pine needles, same as champagne glasses. Taking photos, not seeing good yet, not knowing i am in that murk, too.

i am borrowing this computer that i’m typing on and photo editing on. The camera is borrowed. The house is borrowed. All of this time is mine, truly to my soul its mine, but its borrowed, too. Everything looks so fine on this camera, on this computer. Can’t quite tell if it’s just being here, where everything is better and more alive, or if it’s some technology that i won’t ever know, or if it’s rose glasses cuz this fountain of youth water helps the vision and your memory of it all (making everything looks sharp, and well exposed, and intentional, and ultimately, beautiful - in a world so exhausted by beauty)

Twelve Oaks Residency 2

It has always been about home, home a function of love, love a marker for home. A goal here at Twelve Oaks is to learn some new things, eventually, hopefully. Thankful to have learned to linocut on Thursday, hopeful to grow this skill over the next year. Can’t believe i would ever be a live-oak-living-artist, but i believe i could grow to be a slash pine.

We are out in the woods every day. It has become familiar in the way a small trail will - the oaks cover and surround the house, it is always cool inside from their shadings. They shield and hug the house, they weave their leaves & tremendous arms together and it feels very safe. These trees are older than the house. They’ve seen it all before. They’ve sat and prayed during Sunday services, when the house was a church, they’ve heard the hearts of the congregation swell in praise and hymnals and gladfulness. Their roots are unfathomable underneath us all of the time. The trail opens up every day, i begin to name the trees, but they aren’t mine and they are beyond naming, any sort of conjuration here would be an insult.

We woke up this morning. It always begins with planning a dozen other routes to carry us to the day - walking, running, coffee, then to work. The woods always draw us in, winning out - checking the tide, hoping to see a waddling mammal of some kind, raccoon prints in the low-tide-side-mud. It is quiet out here with day-wildlife.

At night, a possum and raccoon and armadillo root and scrabble for bugs and things. The cat next door graces us with her presence. Moths dart in the light and fool me for car lights on a highway that isn’t there.

We walked our usual route, it must have rained last night but i have been sleeping so good i didn’t know. Wilbur is always crying up to the trees for squirrels, startling after so much silence. We go off the path sometimes, only because they are mistaken as part of the path. Finding the first gulf coast box turtle was just exactly like finding an opal. Yellow and brown like the pine, delicate & hand-painted-looking, nervous and bubbling at our approach. The lighter shell just the same as a butterfly wing pattern, but a whole home & not a cocoon. It was remarkable to find the next, darker, braver turtle. Their shells freshly washed and glimmering as the night sky, carrying everything across the universe with them, patiently, unhurried & unharried, too. His dinosaur eyes curious & unafraid at our approach.

Out of the corner of my eye i saw a woman in a white floral dress walk towards me. Out of the corner of my eye we walked within feet of a lazing slathering prickling alligator, but he was only a fallen worn out log.
Choosing our paths is bargaining and gambling, as though it will come up gone the next day.

A silent bald eagle glides over head. Everything is silent except us.

We ran our two miles and came home before the rain. A rainy obscuring end of the world erasive drive to the book store, and for coffee. Returning, the woods ushered us out, the trees promising it will be beautiful in the rain. They whisper that before long the snakes and bugs will be out. They’ve made this weather-blanket for us and we need to see it all. The tide has come back in and settled, collecting rain drops and we sit on our heels nearly into the mud and pine needles. Before this is all over i will put two feet into the bayou and tell it how much it means to me.

Twelve Oaks Residency 1

Moved in January 3rd and have been moving since then. We headed to Bay St. Louis that evening to see Charlie Mabry’s show at Smith & Lens. Each day i bring Wilbur on long walks since he no longer has his yard to laze in. We have been under the oaks, in the marsh lows, down Henley to Gulf Islands National Seashore. We are looking always for creatures, walking on beaches, looking into the trees and brambles.

There were six pelicans floating in old fort bayou. They were drifting on their perfect morning, going where the water brought them. Living for providence, as Walter Anderson might suggest. Been studying Anderson. Tentatively saving the third or fourth trip to the museum, the first for the year, as a treat, as a secret weapon for a worried heart.

Trying to keep my eyes very open. “To be in a constant state of applause.” The light in this old house, older church, oldest land, is beautiful. It is a cave and a cathedral. It was a bayou and a balcony all together.

Anderson had advised, “The actual process studying and understanding the working of a natural design law, opens of a world of new ideas and free the mind for real creation.”

This must be true.

There have been early quiet mornings, the fog never quite laid on. Early. We ran down government street, to the green house, to the beach. We ran to the seashore and all of its marshes, gently & patiently tiding and feeding all of it’s creatures.

We saw a blue heron stalking the water, his winter coat hunched on his shoulders, our gulf coast & old man winter.

I have already called this place home.

I can’t promise anything after this, any regularity, anything, really. I am hoping to grow & create but it is taking a little nesting, and the idea of failing after all of this support is perhaps the highest rung of a very tall ladder.

The first real painting of 2020 hasn’t happened yet. Maybe it needs to just-be-done, but i want it to be a mile marker like 2019’s first, the hawk.

Hopeful you will enjoy these photos of Twelve Oaks. Looking to learn the land more, more-better. It seems the land changes, the trails shift & open & change the more i go to them. We go daily.

(Used to think i was really quite the photographer but i think i’ve gotten pedantic, and that’s ok, too.)

Artist Residency September 2019

September 1st began my artist residency in Hot Springs, North Carolina. I had applied to this residency a year earlier, and had been looking forward to it a long time. My trip from Louisiana brought me to Ocean Springs, Mississippi, then Clayton, Georgia, and finally Hot Springs. The winding rattlesnake mountain road was tough on my little Louisiana flat-road sensibilities and found me stopping often to just...take a doggone breather.

Once i arrived, i received a tour from the legendary Camille, the woman and creative mind behind Azule. The story is much deeper and more beautiful than i had known, and Camille in herself is a character and force of nature. It seems to me, i would believe, she knows something about everything. It was a task i laid upon myself every day, to see a new intricate detail that had gone unnoticed the day before. In the three stories and vast landscape of Azule, it was an easy thing to do. When they moved to Hot Springs, in the mountains, it was just a small wood cabin - it has grown like the forest around it since then.

After the tour, i unloaded my car and groceries - a diet of tomato sandwiches, apples and peanut butter, and avocado with egg sandwiches were in my future. Then i began the first coat of paint on the many pieces of wood i had brought with me from Louisiana. There was no plan outside of that - simply to read and paint and be in nature as much as possible.

Not sure when it started, but once it did it’s been unstoppable - i’ve been carrying several sketchbooks and books, a diary and a calendar with me most of the time. At Azule i had five or six sketchbooks going, a book on historical Texas life, Firefox volume 1, and a book of short stories from southern writers. Painting began the second day, and i was able to finish about ten paintings in my four days there. A bit unexpectedly i had to leave for a trip to Richmond, Virginia, to attend a funeral. The thing i learned from my first residency in Georgia in 2018, is it seems at once like an experience in a whole, but after time passes the memories of the place, and the things you learned, sort of creep back to you steadily and surely. Hoping that my short time in western Carolina will treat me so good as that. The main takeaway, right now, is the experience of the ice cold water running through the mountains, getting into it among the slippery rocks and total solitude. Walking the mountain in cowboy boots, til the end of the road. The abandoned and secret old tobacco barns and fallow fields, building-bones left to collapse in the ridges. The very aloneness of being that far from the world and the silence. Azule is a part of the nature it inhabits so much that is is almost the same thing - deer, frogs, lizards, bees, plants of all kinds, creeks, snakes, birds, cicadas. The noise at night is astounding, the stars so bright and so close. The most striking thing i can think of in this reflection is the wild spooky sound of an eastern screech owl whinnying in the branches near my room. All of those memories and ideas i get to hold real close for a little while & reflect maybe on how this would have been for my ancestors up in those mountains.

You can find out more about Azule here: http://azule.org/