Monday, January 10, 2011

You Are My Sunshine


It's so gray today and chilly too and last night I was awoken several times by thunder and lightening and once the lightening was so bright that I swear I thought someone had crept into our room and taken a flash picture of us sleeping but no, just the lightening, breaking the dark's hold on reality for a second or less.
It's that sort of chilly that gets into your bones- a wet cold- a chill dampness and I want to crawl back into bed, pull the covers up and go down, down, down into warmth and back into sleep.
Of course I won't. I don't know why, though.
One just doesn't do such things.

I got the paper and every damn article on the front page was about someone getting shot. I am not kidding you. Sigh. Here we are. Our history is defined now by shootings. Okay. Not entirely, but you know what I mean. And it has been for a long, long time. Abraham Lincoln was shot by a crazy man. JFK. John Lennon. MLK. And the girl at FSU just yesterday who was shot in an accident. No one meant to kill her. It just happened.
When I think of Abe Lincoln, I think of dripping blood. Same with John Kennedy.
Guns are superior weapons at allowing the blood that keeps us alive to flow outside of us where it does no good and it's no coincidence that the color red is so startling.

When I got to the Opinion Page of the paper I read what Leonard Pitts, Jr. had to say about taking the word nigger out of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It is such a well-reasoned and intelligent piece of work that I wish you would go read it here.
God damn but we live in a weird world. You can buy a Glock even if you're insane but you can't read a book with the word the author chose to put in it. Look- the word nigger is a completely offensive word. Yes it is. I would never use it in conversation. And that is exactly why it should not be taken out of Huck Finn.
Go read the article. Please.
Leonard Pitts, Jr. is a gift to this world and a voice of reason in this land.
This crazy land.

I really don't have much else to say this morning. My thoughts are just going round and round and none of them are worth giving voice to.
It's chilly. It's gray. The birds are feeding quietly, red ones and blues ones, gray ones and black ones, all at the feeder, they dart in and take a seed or stand in defiance of the rest and eat at their leisure, depending on their own personality or breed or size, I suppose.
Mr. Moon and I were talking yesterday about how hard it is for us to tell the difference between female cardinals and the juvenile males by coloration but easy to tell from their behavior. The females are shy and easily frightened off the feeder while the young males will bow up in the air over the right to feed.

I'm glad birds don't have handguns.

Go read Leonard Pitts, Jr., put something into your head worth keeping there.

Thanks for coming by. You have no idea how much I mean that and I hope you know how welcome you are here, how very much I feel your presence as I write.

20 comments:

  1. Your title is my mother's song for me --I'm on tape singing it as a kid. Thanks for making me think of that.

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  2. Tom Sawyer is the first place I recall running across the n-word. From the context, I thought it meant someone who casts spells - a magic man - because the first few times it pops up, it's in the context of the boys discussing different charms to get rid of warts or curse someone and so on. I was in third or fourth grade, I think, because I remember reading the book on the big kids playground at Kate Sullivan. I didn't pick up Huck Finn until middle school.

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  3. Oh, and I thought that this was a well put discussion of the current political climate and the shooting:

    http://mightygodking.com/index.php/2011/01/09/on-the-shooting-of-gabrielle-giffords/

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  4. I'd like to head back to bed too. Instead, I will read that article and get into the day.

    xo

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  5. Using displacement behavior today to get the guns, blood, and other shit that seems to be thriving in the world out of my head.

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  6. Thanks for the heads-up on the link -- I'm off to San Diego now but I will read when I get back.

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  7. SJ- You're welcome and please let me know when you get your mono-test results.

    DTG- You know, you were a magical child and you are a magical man. I love you. And yes, that was a good piece. I am reading a lot of similarly thought-out pieces today online. It's all so fucked up.

    Lisa- You won't be sorry.

    Syd- Whatever works.

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  8. No mono!!! But after you told us the story about the boy who came to sing to you at your bedside when you had it as a teenager, I was starting to think it wouldn't be half bad ;)

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  9. we can if we want to you know...
    get back into bed and pull the covers up. just one of the perks of being 'not quite as young as we once were!
    do you ever wonder who made up all the rules and why we continue to feel a need to conform when the reason for the rule no longer applies to us?

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  10. Love the post and the photo of your computer in the light. I love Leonard Pitts. He said it best, didn't he?

    ..it is troubling to think the state of reading comprehension in this country has become this wretched, that we have tweeted, PlayStationed and Fox Newsed so much of our intellectual capacity away that not only can our children not divine the nuances of a masterpiece, but that we will now protect them from having to even try.

    Amen.

    I would also like to say that you probably have no idea how much it means to me to have this patch of sunshine to sit in. Thank you. XO

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  11. SJ- Believe me- it was BAD.
    I'm glad you don't have it. I really almost died.

    reeflightning- You're right. But instead of going back to bed I did the next-best thing and got in the tub and went over lines.
    Not quiet as guilt-producing.

    Mel- Thanks, baby. I knew some of you guys would love that post.

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  12. Shall click on your link to Leonard Pitts..my Love and I had talked of the whole issue over Huckleberry Finn last week. It is CRAZY to think it okay to run around with a gun but to think a book does more damage.

    Honestly I do often hide my head /ears from some of the decay of the world. I can't take. I know that is the easy way out to say or do nothing but considering that I am full to my eyeballs with aging parents it is about all I can put on my plate. I am extremely grateful for folks who pick up my slack. A sigh I have just made....

    The cold...the cold. Getting up in the morning in the dark (the dogs will not sleep in!) and only wanting to burrow closer to my Love...stay warm, comforted, cozy and loved...my mantra of late is...when will it be summer...

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  13. I am so not a gun person...hate them but...I would have given my left hand for one yesterday to fix up those dogs of mine. (no not really...well) I am going to read the link too.
    Love you,
    Terry

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  14. I love Leonard Pitts. He is such a voice of reason.

    I virtually never watch the news but have been looking at some of the Arizona stuff. It is almost more than I can bear.

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  15. Off to read that article. Big kiss to you!

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  16. Came back to say it was an excellent article. Thank you. If I was teaching this year, I would probably have used it for a reading exercise.

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  17. Ellen- I think it is entirely fine to live with the peace that we can manage to create. Honestly- isn't that what it's all about?

    Terry Joy- I told Mr. Moon to shoot one of the dogs the other day. He refused!

    Lulumarie- I know. I know.

    Mwa- It's a good one, isn't he? I think he's one of our best columnists. Kisses to you, baby love.

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  18. I agree with you and Leonard Pitts. You don't mess with art, read it our not, but if you do read it, then let it be what the author intended. Taking the word out neuters the the story, the in-spite-of-ness of it. We lose Twain's rhythm, bite, edge, beat, we lose Twain.

    Oh the ironies, given what is happening elsewhere in the country. Theater of the absurd.

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  19. Great article.

    I, too, am glad birds don't have handguns.

    xoxoxo

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