Monday, September 1, 2014

Weather Report

I slept so hard last night that I can't remember my dreams but tiny fragments keep coming back to me, so fleeting and diverse that I feel as if I dreamed about everything in the universe. Run-down beach motels, gold fishes in bowls, the voice on the telephone of a long-dead relative. My astonishment at that.
Maurice lays on the table and flicks her tail occasionally. Is she having a dream that makes her angry? She tucks a paw up under herself and sighs.

Labor Day.

The argument about minimum wage rages. And so it should. No one can support themselves on minimum wage. No family can be, certainly. All these Family Value Republicans who fight increases in the minimum wage and who, at the same time, want to cut the programs which allow people to eat and keep the lights on while giving huge tax incentives and breaks to the giant soul-sucking corporations who employee these people make me ill.
But I'm singing to the choir.

I walked hard and fast this morning. The lower temperatures have drifted away and we are back in regular summer mode. Perversely, the hotter it is, the faster I walk. I want it to be done with it as soon as possible. I think that for great stretches of my walk, my mind is nowhere, my feet blindly follow the path, the memories of the walk like my dreams- quick fleeting images. The tiny blooming clitoria, the blue green berries forming on the cypress trees that line one of the roads I walk down, the cool and shady deep woods, carpeted with pine needles as I pass on the sunblasted white dirt road, the butterflies which hover over some animal's scat.

A bulldog came out of a yard and barked at me this morning. He was a fine beast with a lovely gray coat and he wore a length of chain around his neck that looked as if it could have held a bull. He barked but he kept his distance and did not attack and for some reason, I wasn't afraid. A man in another yard yelled for the dog and I felt bad for disturbing the peace with my presence.

It is a hang-the-clothes-on-the-line-day. It will be a play-with-the-boys-day.

The chickens walk by the back porch to scratch in the rusty dry fallen magnolia leaves. Maurice raises her had and looks up, then settles back down to her dreaming. Birds call. A plane drones overhead. My body cools down, my muscles feel loose, relaxed. The first firespike bloom has risen up to announce the brilliant colors to come. Soon the hummingbirds will be feeding from them.

It is September. The weather is sultry. So am I in my own way.

And I am content.

8 comments:

  1. I will never be able to wrap my head around the right wing, those who believe in God, not wanting to care for those without. It makes me soul ache.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds like a near-perfect morning.

    ReplyDelete
  3. working in the antique store today for my sister while she is out of town. almost no one has come in. almost. very quiet and dead in this small town of Labor Day.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This was beautiful, so vivid.

    I had not heard of Labor Day until now. I have a few friends in the good ol' USA in my Facebook ...... but they just seemed to spend the day drinking!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I am so proud of you with the walking. maybe this will be the month that i take a page out of your book. you inspire me.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ditchingthedog- Yes and amen and my soul aches too.

    Elizabeth- It sort of was. Yes.

    Ellen- Labor Day. We forget what it means or we remember. Fact of the matter is, most of us here work on this day as we pay tribute.

    Wayne- Hardly anyone remembers why we celebrate this day. But I do.

    Angella- As a New Yorker, I imagine you walk miles every day. Is this not true?

    ReplyDelete
  7. I am sick to death of the hatred that is poured out on those less fortunate people who have to scrape by on minimum wage or cut wages because the corporate millionaires are greedy. And for everything, the POTUS is blamed--for everything. Tired of it all.

    ReplyDelete
  8. "Summertime, and the living is easy..."

    ReplyDelete

Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.