Sunday, January 29, 2012

If Nothing Else, This


They're called Pink Perfection for a reason, no?

Owen caught five fishes at the sink hole today and now he's at the circus with his mama and daddy. Big day for that boy. Here's his new thing he says when he doesn't want to do what you have in mind: Hang on!
Hang on. I love it. It's somehow better than No way! which he still says. A lot. Two year old boys have their own agenda and it frequently does not agree with their grandmother's.

Mr. Moon and our friend Tom came down to the Opera House today to help build the stage. We're doing this play downstairs, which means that a stage has to be built and those men got 'er done. Judy and Jack and George helped too. I took my script and walked around in Monticello and studied lines and looked at old houses and stole those camellias from a yard in which sat a house that had "For Sale" and a number to call spray painted on it.
Why not? No one was living there. The thorn vines were taking over the camellias. Now they are a glory on my hall altar in my grandmother's old tea pot. The handle has been broken and glued so I don't trust it for tea any more but the color is too blue and lovely to throw it away and so it holds camellias when they are blooming. I could fill the house with camellias. When I hear the term "Japanese Import" I think of camellias.
Camellia Japonica.
Thank-you, Japan.

Some Spanish moss came home with the camellias. I liked it and left it.

When Lily told Owen that they were going to go fish with Bop, she asked him if he thought Mer would come. He told her that no, Mer would not be coming. She had to make dough.

Am I already stereotyped?

Actually, I had to stay home and study lines. I feel the lace of my swiss-cheese brain trying to retain these lines. The ones I know, I know. The ones I do not know I most certainly do not know. And they are all lines like this:
Hello, hello. Are you all right?
Hello, hello. Where are you?

The great blasts of dialogue lines I can handle. It's those little sparks of inset hellos which are making me insane.

My hands smell of arugula. I picked some for our salad.
Camellias have no odor that I can detect. Unlike roses and other scented flowers, camellias don't need perfume. They are perfection in their appearance. They are sometimes red and sometimes white and sometimes pink and sometimes coral and sometimes striped but they are perfection, no matter what.

It's going to get cold tonight. The moon is a slice of silvered melon. The cats meow for their dinner. The chickens cuddle on the roost. I go out to tend them and look up to the stars on my way there and back. The magnolia leaves are dark and sharp against the light of the house.

The camellias were free and I took them. They are the ones who found their way home and will not fall to the ground, brown and unnoticed.

If nothing else today, I did that. I brought home doomed camellias and I let them be as beautiful as they were meant to be, right here and called them glory and I guess that's something. In my grandmother's blue teapot beside the found turtle shell with Spanish moss they are glory. And every time I pass them I shall call them that in my mind and also, I will remember that house, abandoned, spray painted with a number to call and for sale, the camellias bending to the thorn vines, but glory, nonetheless, just unnoticed, just waiting to be freed.

14 comments:

  1. Those are tiny beauties. Isn't it odd how their pedals feel fleshy? They are not as thin and wispy as many kinds of flowers are. They feel almost human.

    Sounds like a nice Sunday.
    xo

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  2. I would like some camellias - for the glory of course.

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  3. Abandoned homes remind me of my mom's home town in Alabama. I can only imagine the spray painted signs there now. So sad. Homes deserve laughter and happy times just like people.

    Your photo of the Pink Perfection shows the dainty beauty of a camellia. Better you indeed to pluck it before it browns and falls.

    Owen and the boyhood joys like fishing with his Bop. What a great time for them to share.

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  4. I made that photo bigger and just about climbed in. Such delicate sturdy beauty. Hang on! You'll master those lines I have no doubt, none at all.

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  5. Believe me, when I was running my lines today, I kept blowing the most simple lines, because I kept thinking there had to be more to them.

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  6. This was pure joy to read...and that camellia looks like it should be rising and falling on a Bronte heroine's bosom.

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  7. I love your new header Ms. Moon. I also love the camillas in your grandmother's teapot.

    I don't envy you the learning of all those lines but I'm sure as always you will pull through. :)

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  8. Love the camellias and LOVE teapots.

    So--want to send me the number spray painted on the house? Does it have a big big yard for gardens and dogs??

    I think Annie could live in Lloyd....

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  9. Shoot, I wish I could come see you in a play. I'd shout and whistle and make an ass of myself. Because I love you. All the way from here.

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  10. Ms. Fleur- Yes. They have substance which is why they are such good pickin' flowers.

    Jeannie- Well, there are the ones I give you.

    Rubye Jack- Yep. I will.

    Ellen- I am even more in love with this man, now that he is a grandfather. Funny. But true.

    Angella- I printed out a lovely photo from that picture. Even with the camellias in my very own house, I wanted to keep them.
    The lines? Oh yes. Eventually.

    Jon- Well. Tonight we shall see how we are doing.

    Chrissy- Those flowers don't really look as if they belong in this world, do they?

    Mel's Way- We are so lucky here to have these flowers be part of our winter. It's a blessing.

    Akannie- It was in Monticello and I think that there were too many trees in that yard to do much vegetable gardening and the house was sort of sad but with a lot of love and work...

    Beth Coyote- And wouldn't that be funny and sweet?

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  11. I can imagine that home in my mind's eye. So lonely but yet, the bushes were planted by someone who loved them at one time. Such a shame to see things become neglected, just as people often are.

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  12. Camelia rescue. Why not? If I were a camelia, I'd like to be lovingly gazed upon while resting in a pretty old tea pot.

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.