Staying

It's hot. Like really- I don't think you can understand how hot. I went for a walk and thought I'd die. It's hot and I thought I'd die and I didn't and I'm home and I took a cold shower and now I have chills and it seems as if the sky should be white- the color of ash- burnt to a clear, white ash of heat. But it's not. It's blue.

I'm home. God, how I wish I didn't have to leave this property ever again. That's how I feel right now. No library, no Publix, no anywhere, just here. I'm safe here. I think. I don't want to think about the coast and how that oil is creeping closer. I don't want to think about the birds or the dolphins or that tiny fish Mr. Moon and I saw in a tidal pool which we both marveled at with its giant-elephant ear pectoral fins that fluttered like wings. No. I don't want to think about that or the white dunes or the blue water or the way the fish in my refrigerator smells which is like nothing and that is how fish is supposed to smell. Like nothing. When it's that fresh- that is how it smells and I don't know if we'll ever get fish that fresh again.

My mind is rather jumbled. I'm sorry. I'm not at my best. I'm home. Yes, I mentioned that. I know. The baby birds have flown the nest on the porch and I have no idea whether any of them made it out or whether they were a snack for the dog Buster.
My chickens are laying out in the garage in what used to be Carol's nest. I find their eggs there now, a group of them, five or six. They don't mind me getting their eggs, it would seem, but they don't want the snake to have them. I love them for that. Carol, though, is laying her huge, dark brown egg in the hen house. I don't know about that hen. She seems as confused as I am. Elvis is trying desperately to court her. I offered him a piece of watermelon the other day and he dropped it and Mable tried to get it but he wouldn't let her. He nudged it over towards Carol and she took it with a dainty beak. She is running with my flock now during the day but I think she sleeps in a tree at night. Another chicken from next door where Carol came from originally is on my side of the fence and Mr. Moon saw her around our coop this morning. I wonder where she lays her eggs.

There's a blue jay on the birdbath, chirping loudly as if to tell me to fill that fucker up. I will. I need to water my plants. We haven't been getting our rain.

I haven't seen Owen since last Thursday. I almost feel as if I made him up. Do I really have a grandson? I would leave the house to go see him. Lily and Hank took him to swim in the Gulf on Friday. I hear he was a fish, that he stuck his head under water, didn't mind the salt, tasted it and found it fine, wanted to nurse in the water like a monkey, drinking milk but seeing everything around him. That he kicked and splashed. I wish I had been there to see that. I hope I get to see him in the ocean too. Very soon. I would leave the house for that, too.

Oh, it's so hot. I need to go see if the green beans are ripe for picking but it's too hot. It's too hot to do anything outside which doesn't involve a slow handling of the water hose. Is it time yet for me to be that crazy old woman who sits on her porch and drinks icy gin and yells at cars as they pass to SLOW DOWN! gray hair tumbling out of a messy construction of combs and hair pins, mumbling to herself in the shade and scaring the children so that they cross the road to walk on the other side as they go from here to there? Is it that or the psyche ward?
Or do I just hang the sheets on the line and do something about my dirty floors, gather the eggs and put the dishes, dry in the drainer, away in the cabinets, wait for it to cool to go check on the garden?

I don't know. I guess I'll just take option three, try to keep the Church of the Batshit Crazy going as best I can with clean sheets and clean floors and just move slowly while I do it.

On my walk this morning I saw a man walking towards me. He had a cup of coffee in one hand, a cigar in the other. We crossed paths under the magnolia tree and he smiled at me and had a beautiful face. When I was coming home, another man crossed paths with me and he was a Mexican, probably on his way to work at the truck stop, and I said, "Good morning," and he said "Good morning," back and in his voice I heard all of Mexico and for a moment I was there again, and then, no, back here right on Main Street, the road which leads to the road to my house where I am now.

Good morning. Thank-you, all you batshit crazy people, who come here and check in, say good morning in your own voices, smile at me. You don't know how much I need that. You don't know how you save my life.