Being from Mineral Wells, I think about the fires burning over Possum Kingdom Lake and worry. I spent many a summer at PK, lying around on its shore, pretending I was at a spa and enjoying a mud bath treatment. I put myself in New York City where the mud would be pure and snakes wouldn't be hanging off the trees, but there I was, in Possum Kingdom, not so far from Hell's Gate, a couple of rock cliffs that come out of the water and served as the ultimate truth or dare for people tanked up enough to think it was a good idea to jump off them.
When people remember childhood, they often cast back to the simplicity of it, which does not mesh with my experience at all. Childhood means longing and loneliness and a certain kind of painful clarity that fades with age. But I also know what they mean -- I never thought about disasters except the ones I saw, never thought about the snakes even as I was surrounded by them. I wonder about the snakes and where they go when they are driven out by smoke or if smoke even bothers them. Like me, they enjoy the night when everything fades from view and the past seems to haunt the present, a specter that can never be banished, only viewed through a lens darkly.
Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I'm out there doing the best that I can, My lip is cut and I'm still playing." Miles Davis
Cocktail Hour
Kudos to the latest episode of United States of Tara -- a truly haunting ending, beautifully done.
Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Thursday! And many happy birthday wishes to my dear friend Nick and also the great Iggy Pop!
8 comments:
Thirteen years old and lovesick,bungling and petrified for the first time in my life, but peculiarly hopeful, too, and astonished, definitely astonished - I wanted to cry, I almost started to sob when Marsha Guthrie actually touched me-oh God-below the belt in the back row of the Graham Cinema. Our knees bumped and then our mouths bumped...that's pretty much the story of my childhood! By the way, I was only kidding with my first comment a couple of days ago about discovering you were a poet. Obviously my lack of humor was funnier to me than it was you.
My Best,
Wings sweep the Coyotes!--Sid Abel
Shit I didn't even know what fun was until I got the fuck out of Detroit the first time at 17. It's better now though because most of the snakes here now, I know where they are and vice versa. We know that each of us has our own kind of venom. It's an easy peace to keep like M.A.D.
The snakes in a grass fire try to get as deep underground as they can.
I don't know. For me, childhood was completely oblivious to anything outside my imaginary world. It was very near perfect because I largely lived in a world inside my head, of my own making.
Yes ! Happy 122nd Birthday to Iggy Pop !
Happy Easter Michelle!
Beauty from ashes, or ashes from beauty, it really depends on who's childhood one references. Snakes indeed.
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