Saturday, July 18, 2009

Saturday With Pictures And Words



Saturday morning and it's raining in Lloyd. No thunder or lightening, no dramatics, just a rain falling from a gray sky.

Mr. Moon has gone off for the day and night to fish at Lake Seminole with an old buddy of his. It just struck me that wouldn't it be funny if Mr. Moon actually had a girlfriend and was really and truly going off with her instead of up to Lake Seminole with Randy? Or RA-Andy as I call him? Because that's how Randy talks. He, like most southerners, likes words so much he gives them as many syllables as possible.
Well, I don't think Mr. Moon has a girlfriend although he is very partial to Elmira.

I'm thinking about Jessie a lot. She should be done with the rural clinic work portion of her journey and now in the all-inclusive beach resort part. She was looking forward to that- the all-you-can-eat, the all-you-can-drink part.
"Now don't you come home pregnant," I told her when we were discussing the food, the drinks, the very handsome Men of Jamaica whom I hear are like gods, walking the beach barefoot with glistening muscled bodies, their twinkling eyes, their Rasta talk, their dreads and spliffs.
She giggled.
I should definitely hear from her by tomorrow when she will arrive back in Miami. I can't wait to hear her voice, that giggle.

Tonight I'm going up to Thomasville, Georgia with Herb and Kathleen to see a production of Our Town that our friend, Rich is in. I'm looking forward to this. I played Emily (the star!) in a community theater production of Our Town when I was in high school. It was a beautiful play, a wonderful role. I remember being fitted for my costumes. I remember the gentle dialogue, the bare stage with only chairs and a ladder as props. Someday, before I'm too old, I'd love to play Emily's mother in a production.
"Am I pretty?" Emily asks her mother.
And I don't remember the mother's lines but they are something like this:
"You'll do."
I miss acting right now. It's not the time for me to be in a play but I miss it. I'll go back to it soon enough, when my grandchild is safely born and no one needs me in any special way. I miss the Opera House and dream of it almost nightly.
But tonight I'll sit in the audience and I'll remember those characters, those lines. It'll be good.

The redheaded baby boy was released into foster care yesterday awaiting the end of the criminal investigation of his abandonment. Criminal. Well, I've already had my say about that. He weighed 7 lbs., 11 oz., which is a good weight for a baby boy. I still get so sad, thinking of his mother. Because he's white and healthy and a "cutie" as the paper reported, there will be people waiting in line to adopt him so that's good. Good for him, good for the people who adopt him. Sorrow for the woman who is still bleeding from his birth, whose breasts are full of milk, not knowing that the baby the milk is being produced for is being fed by someone else from a bottle.

I read something else in the paper yesterday that struck me as so weird. It was just a little puff piece on a local Catholic school written by a parent whose children attend it. She just happens to be Catholic herself but she was trying to reassure parents who might not be Catholic that they too, might want to consider sending their children to the school. She talked about how, when it came time for First Communion ceremonies, even the little girls who didn't receive the Holy Eucharist were able to participate in the fun, wearing their little white bride dresses, being excited. What's up with that? If the girls dress like brides, does that symbolize their marriage to Christ? What about the little boys? Who are they symbolically marrying? And do they all get excited to be able to cannibalize Christ? Hmmmm....
Does any seven or eight-year old understand what all this frufra means? Do any of us?
"Here. Eat of my body, drink of my blood."
We all love a good vampire story.
Poor little non-Catholic girls who only get the dress and veil, not the body and blood.
The writer made sure to stress that no nuns or priests were teachers at the school. Why did she feel the need to state that?
History, people. History.

Well, it's still raining. I have made no point. I have no point. I am pointless.
Here are some pictures of Lloyd and maybe, looking at them, you'll see where my ennui comes from, my lack of motivation for the day, my reflective mood, my contentment with all of that.

Rain on miniature roses, maidenhair fern, black elephant ears:


Baby chicks, racing to tear up and eat the collard greens:


Okra coming up:


Five-foot tall collard plants which I haven't ripped up because the chickens love the tough, buggy leaves:


Edamame beans, swelling in their pods:


The frogs are trilling in the swamp behind the railroad tracks, the birds are calling as if the rain was of no matter to them at all and there are two cardinals on the feeder right now.

The sky is giving rain. The earth is receiving it and so there is a sort of perfection and I am witness to all of it.

17 comments:

  1. Yay I am the first one to comment! I love you and hope you ave a good day.

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  2. I loved waking up in the midst of this rainstorm.
    Tell Rich we said hello and break a leg. I wish I wasn't working so we'd be able to go.

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  3. I love your posts. They're warm and generous and sexy. Really!

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  4. Christianity is such a screwed up belief system, but especially Catholicism.
    I have never seen collard greens au naturale and endamane beans were a new discovery in some recipe I ran into this spring ( long forgotten as I couldn't find any anyway).
    Dream your dreams. All I can think of is Jon Love in his famous little character when he runs around shouting I was only ACT---ING! or dom Deluise as the magician instructing his audience..."Save da plause for d'en pleez."

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  5. It is perfection. Later, I'm going to sit on a porch and snap beans and my granny's going to give me some eggs and corn. And I'm sure I'll think of you when I see the chickens =)

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  6. Aye aye aye. Tried so hard for so long to wrap my head around Christianity. Or wrap Christianity around my head. Wasn't ever able to do it.

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  7. I think about those Catholicism things, too. So many emotionally unhealthy influences in religion that mess people up.

    I like the pictures on here. That's a hopeful little okra.

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  8. Lily- I love you too! And I am having a good day.

    Jon- I'll relay the message. Miss you, boy.

    Elizabeth- Sexy? Really? Huh.

    Mr. Berry- Edamame beans are wonderful. I can't wait to try fresh ones. And aren't we all acting and waiting for the applause?

    SJ- Sounds beautiful! Post pictures of the chickens for me.

    Michelle- Wasn't it Lyle Lovett who said, "If Jesus wants me to find him, he's going to have to find me"?

    Maggie May- Well. If you say so.

    Joy- It IS a hopeful little okra. Bless its little heart.

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  9. According to a friend of mine in the office, the men of Jamaica are pretty much the best looking guys in the world, as a group. She's got family there and says that when she visits, she dances all night every night and barely needs to sleep, and "I am not normally that kind of woman" she says.

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  10. I'm going to reference you in my blog now. Right now.

    The verification word is promis. Yes, I promise.

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  11. I love your advice to Jessie, and the fact that y'all can talk like that.

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  12. DTG- Which is why we go to places like Jamaica. Or...Mexico.

    Ms. Windy- Wow. That was some post, baby.

    Steph- Thank-you!

    Ginger- Hey! By the fourth child, nothing is out of bounds. Okay, that's a lie, but mostly very little is out of bounds.

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  13. I was a little girl in a white dress like that. And no, no seven year old ever knows what they are doing then. If I may reassure you, I don't think the symbolism is anything to do with brides. Just purity and stuff like that.

    I took years rejecting all the guilt and now I'm sending my children to Catholic school because they have the best results in Belgium. At least they don't get it at home as well. In fact, they get sermons on why they should think for themselves. Resulting in Jack deciding he would believe in Allah instead.

    What a muddle.

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  14. I spent most of the afternoon yesterday in a Catholic church filming an FSU student film. The only available bathroom was in the back area. Right next to the bathroom was whole water cooler type thing labeled "holy water". I was so tempted to stick my mouth under it and let it drain in. Why? I don't know. Maybe because it was such a bizarre impulse and I NEVER act on those things. I mean what could possibly happen? I'm looked at oddly by the crew or other cast members? I don't believe that water can actually be any more holy than it already is. Maybe I just wanted to be bad and crazy.

    That's all I got.
    xo pf

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  15. Mwa- Good for Jack. Allah today, The Tree tomorrow.

    Ms. Fleur- I completely agree. Water is holy. So is bread and wine. So is the body. Why get them all tied up into strange superstitions? But that's just me.
    Hey! Want some holy pickles? How about a holy butternut squash?

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