But I Can't Fly Without Caffeine, Road Trip Part 6

Now that I've come down from that angel dust high of the South Texas beach, whose mad bright sexy come-on line made me think I might just launch myself airborne...well, sobered up, I can bitch about the other side of a road trip: the devastating lack of decent coffee. It is a sad state of affairs indeed when the Starbucks logo appears to me as a luminous emerald herald of all that is Good and Right...


Oh South, what is it with you and your weak-ass coffee? Why are you playing me like this? Even Cafe Du Monde--shame on you, former chicory haven--presented me with a pale drink as milky as an opal. Hot shops, truck stops, cafes, homes, hotels, motels, dives and fancy restaurants: uniformly pallid brew.

One lone beacon of hope was Tootie's, where finally I procured a deep dark cold murk of delight...as well as coconut custard pie...but we weren't speaking of pie, so I won't elegize, or rather fetishize, the smooth pale yellow creamy spoonsful, the toasty tender flakes, the thick crumbling crust...for while the South can't make a cup of coffee to save its Confederate life, it can certainly win the war with its pie!...

Anyway, bless you bitter expensive Starbucks, because three espresso shots and a few headlines later, I am for the nonce as right as rain.




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South Texas Lullaby, Road Trip Part 5

I went to sleep last night in a huge soft white boat of a bed, toes tucked in cool cotton sheets, air conditioner humming me free of the murderous, humid heat, and as my eyes closed, the last thing I saw outside our bedroom window was the dark water moving and the last thing I heard was the singing of ocean wind, the lullaby of South Texas...





I woke again to water, a bright heat, and a lone crane visiting the neighbors across the way.




How funny it seems to me that a
Brooklyn girl, a lifetime back East spent on concrete and under immense dusty old-growth trees, or in the rumination of pine-dark, cold mountainscapes, could feel so right, here: the strange heat, the scrubby thirsty land remind me of my own bones, my foundation; and the vast sky, alive with clouds, releases the bonds of gravity. Looking up I am convinced I could fly!





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The Weight of a Snake, Road Trip Part 4

The Voodoo priest was a very nice man, who giggled at his own little off-color jokes. Yet, behind the thin distortion of lenses, his eyes, preternaturally blue, held mine without once wavering. Even in the damp close hot courtyard where we met to talk, even in the close air of a Louisiana midsummer, I felt a prickle on the back of my neck, under that gaze.

He spoke in such a soft little voice that it was necessary for me to put my hands on the table and incline my head intimately toward his, all the way forward, as if leaning in for a lover's kiss. Even then, I could only catch every fourth word, like whispers on a rustling wind: "death...snakes...look...hear...old path...new path." I knew that I was allowed to assign any meaning I wished to his words, or no meaning at all; in the end, the words were of no great importance, just something to say.

The priest stroked sweet oil on my forehead, and on my palms, and he laid the resting coil of python across my upturned hands, and blessed me, and the weight of the inscrutable snake was a new experience of sensation: cool, still, heavy, quietly alive. A message, a lesson: a way to be in the world!

The snake raised her head and stared at me for a moment and her eyes were, improbably, as blue as the priest's eyes.








(photo taken at the Voodoo
Museum, New Orleans)


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Voodoo Letter, Road Trip Part 3

Dear Jack,








I hope that you will feel this pin through your heart as I feel the sharp prick of the pin you slid into mine. I dream about you every night, strange dreams, cruel dreams, baroque dreams, drawing room comedy dreams where the polite laughter is always at my expense, and, right before I wake, I'm left alone at the roadside, the seaside, the dinner party, the carnival.

If only magic and prayer would keep you bound to me...

Love,


X





visit Theme Thursday: Letter!

(photo of a voodoo doll taken at the New Orleans Voodoo Museum)

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Tennessee Morning, Road Trip Part 2

A nice bottle of Cheerwine soda pop and a leisurely browse through the Just Busted pages...Cheerwine is a subtle gustatory mix of faux cherry, off-brand cola, and poison. I will say that it woke me right up.






The mountains here are spectacular, and thanks to the hallucinatory effects of Cheerwine, they are looking larger and smokier than ever on this bright morning. Thank you for your hospitality, Tennessee! I mean that.

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Road Trip Part 1: Hotel Room

On the road to Texas...so far the sights: a truck stop, a bible, and rain on the windshield.










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Buttons

Our fragments of Grandma are ruined, mostly. The comb misses its teeth, the straight pins are rusted. The lace yellow, beyond bleach; china chipped, beyond glue; sweater frayed, beyond darning; beads loose, beyond stringing; books grey, beyond dusting.

As if the violent storm of years tumbled the leftovers to, fro, in winds and waters, leaving them wrecked and broken, swept gracelessly back into the closets and drawers of a very old white cottage by a very old lake.

Alone of a lifetime's treasure, the buttons are whole, fine, perfected in their lovely utility, their softly crowding, clicking handfuls. Even the herring jar says: now I am beautiful!








[photo of a button jar found in my grandma's country house; for more writing on a theme, visit Theme Thursday]

Phebe Jane, Clarissa, Rebecca, Allice, Olive, Nancy

My daughter and I walked among the women on the hill, where they rest in the sunshine, hot sunshine buzzing with flying things, rest from their housekeeping, the washing and washing up, the clearing away and folding, the stacking of platters. I took away, when I left, a hundred questions: for which the shameful secret, the secret love; for which the nerves and headaches; for which the murdered child; for which the bottle; for which a sheaf of letters never out of mind; for which the locked box, full of pennies saved toward a leave-taking?

The soil stirs, still warm, under their names.










































Please visit Sepia Saturday

Sparkle

Wild raspberries, blueberries, tiny strawberries in the fields behind the house, if you know where to look before stepping, and I do. Freshly planted lavender and a thousand free-growing tiger lilies, all bending toward us, confiding; and the pines, a hundred feet tall, their top branches mobile and creaking, reeds on the lake, and daisies on the shore, all moving together in flow and rush of wind. The nights are short between deep dusk and pale dawn, and in the afternoon the water catches sun, filling the eye with sparkle so that we're sparkle blind, nothing but sparkle and sun and the wind rush: summer.

Brooklyn, July 4th

Elanor and her friend were, for one afternoon, captains of industry on a bright hot corner of Brooklyn. The lemonade, squeezed by hand in a sticky orgy of juice and seeds and pulp, served in pressed glass pitchers, took pride of place. Ice was dipped with tongs, again and again, money changed hands, a great deal of money for little girls; the chocolate in the cookies, the marshmallow in the treats, melted a little, but no customer complained, and the heaps of sweets were decimated by day's end. With frequent breaks for cold seltzer and visits to the sprinklers across the street in the park, and quick intense water fights, sudden dripping little clouds of activity, another summer afternoon passed in the dusty diffuse light of old-growth trees and the heat of children. Another afternoon, like so many others before and to come.



Expectant Before:



Aftermath:



(a piece of my summer, for Jimmy and Mr M)