Thursday, July 10, 2014

Why I Love Lloyd

Dear god but I feel good today and my walk felt strong and fine. I was a very bad woman last night and ate two bowls of granola with almond milk before bed after eating a goodly portion of the chicken enchiladas I'd made with black beans and mushrooms and green and red and yellow tomatoes and onions and peppers too. When I used to run and was bordering on the eating disorder thing, I realized that when I would "cheat" (and oh, the agony I put myself through when I did that) and ate some ice cream, the next day's run would be so much easier.
You'd think I would have figured it out, but no. Not me.
I was pretty skinny though.

Anyway, it's simply a perfect summer day here in North Florida. The rain last night immediately greened up the grass.


Here are Butterscotch, either Chi-Chi or Cha-Cha, Eggy Tina and Drogo, flapping his wings to show his bravery, strength, and nobility. The act will be far more believable if he ever grows more than two tail feathers and learns to crow properly. But he's working on it.

The rain unfurled the Resurrection Fern as well which always astounds and delights me.



Here are three pictures of the light pouring into the back side-yard this morning. I never grow jaded about this early-morning phenomenon. It is, well, it's fucking holy. 




I could live to be a thousand and I doubt I'd grow tired of it all. The way the light comes through the oak trees to bless all of this, the very magnificence of it as it glories the pragmatic and humble- the chicken coop, the old barn, the fallen limbs and overgrown wisteria and confederate jasmine, the ferns, the gingers, the fig tree, the phlox. 

Sometimes I take a different route on my walk simply so that I may stop and stand and stare down into a little piece of wetlands where great trees have fallen and the light dances over everything.
In The Game Of Thrones books there are Gods' Woods and this is the term I think of when I pause to look into this shady glen of silence, a few feet from a road where thousands pass a day with no idea that it's there, a blur of green as they drive on.



I went to the old graveyard today too, to see it in summer. 


It is also shady, hidden, and quiet. The headstone in the forefront is definitely the newest one there. The death date is from July 13, 2013. 

And this. Oh my heart! I love this old homestead!


Look at those trees! Look at that house! I would live there. You can believe that. Quite happily, too, I think. I am deeply in love with this place where I live. This tiny village with its squalor and truck stop, its hidden emeralds of beauty. The dirt roads, the falling-in cabins that still whisper of the lives lived there. 

Perhaps it is all of this which I love so much. The history of it. The arrowhead I found so many years ago in the driveway of the house I lived in down the road about ten miles from here. The pieces and shards of pottery and glass and old bottles I find everywhere in my yard. The moss hanging from the Live Oaks which were here before the white people came to claim it all. The creeks that slip through the woods, deep-set back from any roads or paths, their voices unheard by anything but the birds, the trees that line their banks. 

I close my eyes and I can almost see it and hear it and smell the history of Lloyd and my place in it. The children born in this house, the way they must have run down the dirt roads to the little wooden store, how they probably fed the chickens and collected the eggs where my grandsons now do the same. The backs bent to hand pumps and the water carried to kitchen and to garden, the strength and perseverance of these people, both black and white as they sweated their way through the hot summer days and nights, coaxing corn and greens from the dirt, quilting in the hallway of this house where I live (I spoke to an old woman who remembered the quilting frame which hung there at one time), the canning and preserving, the salting and the smoking of meat, both raised and hunted. Every moment of my life here I am surrounded by all of this and maybe I'm insane but I cannot help but love the fact that someday, when I am long gone, some one else will live here who may pick figs off the trees I planted, gather camellias I started from mere twigs to put in a vase in the hallway as I do, have chickens in the coop that my husband built, sleep in the rooms where I have slept so peacefully, live out a life where so many others have lived. Someone who will find the secret places, the quiet, shady places where the bones of trees and of animals and of people lie and crumble back into earth, where the creeks tumble over fallen trees and rocks and send spray to rainbow up into the sunlight. 

Yes. It is like that here and today my heart is filled with it. I sit here on this back porch and I can type away on this magic portal into the world and it all feels like a story that I hear every day, that I live every day, that I can share every day.


Hell. I need to get busy. Clothes to hang on the line, eggs to gather, floors to sweep, tomatoes to pick, moments to simply sit and stare at it all. Perhaps words to write in my old office about it all, the stories that I hear as I sit and stare, given to me simply for the price of observation and dreams. 

And it feels so very, very good.




12 comments:

  1. You are so in the flow of your life right now, and it is indeed holy. Like the light in your yard. Like your cathedral trees. I feel so whole after visiting you today. I am happy you are happy, and that you share it with us, along with all the rest of it. i love you.

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  2. Such a lovely place -- I am wondering what the origin of the name "Lloyd" is -- was it a person?

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  3. Very, very nice. I totally dig Maurice.

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  4. Thank you for the heartfelt tour. With heartfelt thanks. We are all bound together.

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  5. Angella- There are, as everyone knows, bumps in the road of life and there are moments, stretches of time, when the path goes smooth for the most part. I am so glad to be in one of those. I love you too.

    Elizabeth- Indeed. And I live in the Walter Lloyd Bond house.

    Bethany- Some days and today is one of them.

    SJ- I dig Maurice too.

    Denise- We surely are, aren't we? The living and the dead and all across the world.

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  6. I love the image of you, sitting on that porch, writing away.

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  7. Of course it feels good. It is.
    I'm far, far (yet of course only a thin veil, a nanosecond) away from, as Angella said, the state of flow that is so apparent in your descriptions; but they remind me, and I do appreciate that. Hi, Maurice.

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  8. Who wouldn't be moved by the light coming through the trees like that?!

    I love the name Eggy Tina. Every time I read about her I laugh.

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  9. Holy, indeed. Celestial light is a favourite of mine. And my son's. We marvel at the hills and the church spire with the light beaming on to it when we walk the dog in the evenings together.

    I know those photos can't do it justice. Amazing.

    I wish you could come here and see our old places - they're much older! Sadly, this is not my blog, but there are nice pictures! http://frametoframe.ca/travels/travels-ireland/glendalough-beautiful-places-ireland/

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  10. I too really like that little house and the beautiful trees. There is something about the light coming through the trees early in the morning. It is a magical time.

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.