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.