definition

guy 1  (g) n. A rope, cord, or cable used to steady, guide, or secure something.

Lord Knows Best

that I don't give a damn

about anyone but you. 

little heart

My brother is tall, rangy, thinks he knows most everything. 

His wife is tall, lissome, understands things without being told. 

Together they have made this tiny creature who seems both

to know and understand everything already --

who takes it all in -- even while his eyes are closed.  

Henry & me

the short list

ceteris paribus...

Oxford, Mississippi
Cheyenne, Wyoming
Las Cruces, New Mexico
Bend, Oregon
Portland, Maine

Under a Certain Little Star    

by Wislawa Szymborska 
translated by Joanna Trzeciak  

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity. My apologies to necessity in case I'm mistaken. Don't be angry, happiness, that I take you for my own. May the dead forgive me that their memory's but a flicker. My apologies to time for the quantity of world overlooked per second. My apologies to an old love for treating a new one as the first. Forgive me, far-off wars, for carrying my flowers home. Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger. My apologies for the minuet record, to those calling out from the abyss. My apologies to those in train stations for sleeping soundly at five in the morning. Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing sometimes. Pardon me, deserts, for not rushing in with a spoonful of water. And you, O hawk, the same bird for years in the same cage, staring, motionless, always at the same spot, absolve me even if you happen to be stuffed. My apologies to the tree felled for four table legs. My apologies to large questions for small answers. Truth, do not pay me too much attention. Solemnity, be magnanimous toward me. Bear with me, O mystery of being, for pulling threads from your veil. Soul, don't blame me that I've got you so seldom. My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere. My apologies to all for not knowing how to be every man and woman. I know that as long as I live nothing can excuse me, since I am my own obstacle. Do not hold it against me, O speech, that I borrow weighty words, and then labor to make them light. 

what you will

If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line - starting, say, in the Dark Wood of Error, and proceeding by logical steps through Hell and Purgatory and into Heaven. Or you could take the King's Highway past appropriately named dangers, toils, and snares, and finally cross the River of Death and enter the Celestial City. But that is not the way I have done it, so far. I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what looked like a straight line to me has been a circle or doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led - make of that what you will.

Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

the desolate

Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; 
break forth into singing, and cry aloud, 
thou that didst not travail with child:
for more are the children of the desolate 
than the children of the married wife, 
saith the Lord.  Isaiah 54:1

Some lines along Secession

More Tired

I'm more tired than I've ever been in my whole life I tell Squirrel after a particularly harrowing string of days. Go to sleep, she says before hanging up. The next day she sends me a plane ticket to visit her at the Left Handed Captain's house on the shores of Lake Secession.

Packing List

4 dresses with pockets, 6 books, 2 aprons, pens & hairpins, ibuprofen. 

Middle Seat

Sweetheart, can I buy you a drink? the man in the window seat asks as the drink cart rattles our way. Forget the drink, the other one says, she looks like she needs someone to buy her a good steak and a month of sleep. They are nice men, these two good old boys in their Clemson caps and fishing vests. They hand me each a bottle of Wild Turkey and then pretend not to notice that I can't stop crying. 

ipod: shuffle: first song

Sufjan Stevens: Seven Swans
A Good Man is Hard to Find
Once in the backyard, 
she was once like me, 
she was once like me. 
Twice when I killed them, 
they were once at peace, 
they were once like me. 
Hold to your gun, man, 
and put off all your peace, 
put off all the beast. 
Paid a full of these, I wait for it, 
but someone's once like me. 
She was once like me. 
I once was better. 
I put off all my grief. 
I put off all my grief. 
And so I go to hell, I wait for it, 
but someone's left me creased. 
And Someone's left me creased

Tenderness by the hand

Used to navigating the open seas by stars, the Left Handed Captain is at a loss when it comes to keeping the moving blue dot on the course charted out for us by google maps. We pass the exit for Fair Play, South Carolina 3 times before I fall asleep amidst the pile of bags and fishing gear in the back of the truck. When I wake, the truck has stopped at the end of a gravel driveway. Squirrel leads me with tenderness by the hand to the guest room of the house on the shores of Lake Secession. A real live dead alligator is splayed out across the floor and the collected works of Flannery O'Connor sit on the table by the bed, as though waiting up for my arrival.

Crawford's Country Store

South Carolina Department of Natural Resources: 7 day fishing license 90994213
Issued: Crawford's Country Store
$11.00

Yeah, Mang

The back wall of the country store is lined with jigs, lures, weights, hooks. Bait. Tackle. There, the Left Handed Captain, stands, talking crappie and bass with his high school buddy Dixon and another guy who stretches out his hand and says Max Crawford, ma'am with a nod. Their voices are slow and cool and deep and I find myself floating on the surface of this particular lagoon with no trouble at all.   

It doesn't take long

Aww hell, Kate, I whisper to myself. Don't you practically do this very thing for a living? Skin is skin and a needle is a needle. It doesn't take long before I can reach into the bucket, fish out a minnow, thread the hook through its lip, and cast in under a minute.  I let my line drift, let the tethered minnow think he is leading the charge. And then I reel him back in.

Certain Sensibilities/High Life

We pass the boiled peanuts back and forth across the boat and I marvel how much the afternoon tastes like my childhood in Japan, all salty legumes and dried bits of fish on my fingers.  The Left Handed Captain is a man of certain sensibilities, some of which extend to the lining of his intestinal tract, so he leaves the six pack of High Life to me and drinks something from a bright colored can that is supposed to taste like sweet tea, only no sweet tea your mama would make. When we stop to fill up the tank, he comes out of the shack with a giant dill pickle and my heart almost explodes trying to contain the perfection of the day.

All is indeed lost

The land is wooded, with gentle hills and patches of good pasture between the stands of trees. I watch for houses with handsome bunches of cattle and imagine knocking on the doors of these homes and asking for work or if there are any awkward, taciturn bachelor sons who need the love of a good woman. I'm a hard worker, I'd say, and what's more I'll make biscuits on weekdays and pies on the weekends. As we pull into Abbeville the Left Handed Captain points out the Burt Stark mansion and tells me this is where the Confederate Generals decided to surrender, where Jefferson Davis looked at the great price of secession and declared All is indeed lost. I picture his nice full head of hair and high cheek bones. I wonder if any of his great great great grandsons are awkward taciturn bachelors still farming these parts, hankering for a piece of good pie; secretly wanting a more perfect union with the north.

Handful of hushpuppies

Squirrel dips the crappie fillets in buttermilk and flour and drops them into the skillet while I stand over the kettle of bubbling peanut oil and wait for the hush puppies to roll over in their bath. The Left Handed Captain keeps the daiquiris flowing, his mother opens jars of pickled okra, and his father teaches us dice games. We laugh and laugh.  At the end of the night I put a handful of hush puppies, heavy as musket balls, into the pocket of my apron and sneak down to the dock to throw my edible rocks at the lake, my only weapons against Secession.  

Girls are shitheads, too.

Squirrel and I leave the Left Handed Captain to his book by the falls. We tell him we want to go shopping! and then over our drinks, laugh at how he believed us, two rumpled old gals that we are.  We find a bar called The Velo Fellow and I fall for it immediately, for the rhyming name, half french and half english, for the bicycles everywhere, for its cool dark sanctuary. Squirrel tells me all her sadness and worry about the Left Handed Captain and then I tell her of my exhaustion and fracture. The bartender listens as he dries a flat of clean glasses and doesn't even ask before bringing us another round. Men are such shitheads! Squirrel says after we've said just about all that needed saying.  Yeah. But girls are shitheads, too I remind her.

Moonshine cocktails

In Greenville we meet the Left Handed Captain's friend from college.  He has dark, dark hair and bright blue eyes and the best manners of any man I've ever met, a real southern gentleman.  He takes us to a distillery where they make moonshine. The rawness of the liquor burns its way down my throat and I feel the wiring of my insides, already stripped and frayed, spark. Back at his house the southern gentleman makes moonshine cocktails with strawberries and home-made ginger ale while we get ready for the party. I put on my new dress (pink and black flowers, pockets), pink lipstick, a brave face.  Outside hail the size and weight of quarters pelts the bathroom window, snapping the dogwood and azalea blossoms from their stems.  

This is how the conversation goes

He tells me he is 22, almost done with a degree in philosophy. I catch him staring at my breasts. I am in no mood to be charming and certainly no mood to be charmed.

So you're from Washington, DC? 

Yes.

There are a lot of great museums there. Do you like art?

It's okay, I suppose.

You know what city has great art museums?

Do tell.

Florence.

Florence, South Carolina? I've never been.

Oh...um...I mean Florence, Italy. It's beautiful!

Yes. Most of Italy is, I hear.

Do you like music?

Some.

You should listen to this guy called Sufjan Stevens. You'd really like him.

Easy now, Old Gal. Only spinsters call young men whippersnappers.  

I bite my tongue and smile for the first time.

Thank you for the suggestion. I'll have to look into that.

Yeah! He's great. Hey...are you on facebook?

Turn away and stamp your feet

It is Palm Sunday and the pews are filled with men in pastel polo shirts and women in sleeveless sundresses. The choir mistress is ancient and perches unsteadily on a stool, looking at the congregation over her beaky nose like an egret gazing over the water.  A woman announces from the doorway that there are lemon meringue pies and seven-layer salads left over from the church social on sale, a bargain at $7 apiece. Across the way I see Max Crawford from the country store. The minister notes how good it is to have Sister So and So back after all the trouble she went through with her sugar diabetes. We wave our palm branches during the hymns. You sing hosanna now, the minister booms from the pulpit, but when God's plan doesn't look like what you want do you turn away and stamp your feet and yell CRUCIFY HIM? At the end of the service we file down the aisle and leave our palms at the alter. 

 After church, sitting on the dock at Lake Secession, I think of the poem 
I read every Ash Wednesday, 
of reading it this Ash Wednesday, 33 days prior, in particular, 
in the poetry corner at a man's house.

And pray to God to have mercy upon us

And I pray that I may forget

These matters that with myself I too much discuss

Too much explain

Because I do not hope to turn again

Let these words answer

For what is done, not to be done again

May the judgment not be too heavy upon us

Secession, rebellion, submission, redemption. We turn and we turn and we turn again.  

Teach us to care and to not care

Teach us to sit still   

(from Ash Wednesday, by TS Eliot)

Spare half hour

The airport restaurant overlooks a sculpture garden. We eat salads and talk about the weekend in the spare half hour before I must go through security. I look at these two people across the table, people who I love so much, who are trying to figure out what it means to love each other. I wonder what will become of all of us, about all the ways we could die, or kill each other, trying. 

     

Middle seat, again.

Are you coming or going? the man in the aisle seat asks me. Both, constantly. I close my eyes and sleep.

--
(for Squirrel, JPB, and JLR).

new home #2, #3

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."

J.R.R Tolkien, The Hobbit 

---

Peach ranunculas in a blue jar on the window sill. An orange bowl full of purple grapes. An old brown chair, a stack of crimson books. A yellow apron on its peg. Only the green typewriter is missing in this violet hour.

new home #1

Even before I moved I crawled inside this song and made myself a new home.  Ain't it feel right? Ain't it feel nice. 

further mystery

You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out - perhaps a little at a time.
And how long is that going to take?'
I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps.
That could be a long time.'
I will tell you a further mystery, he said.  It may take longer. 

Wendell Berry,  Jayber Crow

sweet old fashioned words

Travail, fidelity, and solace at last.

The Cemetery

Step into the light poor Lazarus/Don't die alone behind the window shade/

Let me see the mark death made/I dream a highway back to you

-Gillian Welch

Bowled over lately by the unfine-ness of things, I take to wandering the cemetery in the melting light, a mug of milky tea in hand and a nip of bourbon in the pocket of my spring blue coat.

There are lots of Katherines and Catherines there. Some Katies and Kitties but few Kates. On good days I make sure to visit my favorites: Ms. Peach Wayland, The Meachem Family, Agnes Plum, Stonewall Jackson Kerns and his son, Adelbert Jackson Kearns. On bad days I consider laying down amongst the McCathran clan until the damp green ground of their plot accepts the persistent weight of my tired bones.

Today is neither good nor bad, though, so I sit on the slope of the far hill and watch the birds peck at things I can not see. An old man follows his dog along the muddy path below and when he looks up and sees me, doffs his cap with a sweeping bow.  I touched three dead bodies this week I say aloud to the birds. Three men who were alive one minute and then not alive the next. I think of everything it means to be dead and then I think of all the ways to be dead while you are alive and the way to come back to life, which requires another kind of dying, too.  In my notebook I write DEAD in all capital letters and below it

CHERRYRED UNWED INBRED SOFABED WIDESPREAD TALKINGHEAD

which makes me laugh aloud to myself. Underneath my rhyme I sketch crude outlines of headstones and fill them in with my best gothic handwriting:

KATE

who tried her best to be kind

to drunks & addicts

who pissed on the floor & her shoes

or

Here lies KATE

who believed in

at least 100 second chances

or even just

KATE

who was usually on time

but is now truly late.

I sit on the side of the hill until I hear the bells from the church down the road. Long after their carolling ends, their message floats over the acres of graves. I sit as still as I can in the near dark and listen. Let the dead bury the dead. Go back to your living.  And for heaven's sake, be thankful you were not named for a Civil War general.

The Healing of that Old Ache

"In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you--the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence: the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves: the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth's expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things--the beauty, the memory of our own past--are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be re-united with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache."


C.S. Lewis 
The Weight of Glory

faith, hope, and jungle cats

Oh, but Kate! A tiger doesn't change his stripes! my father says.  He says this because it is mostly true and because he is my father and its his job.

And yet...my Father also says The lion shall lay down with the lamb which is also true and so beautiful a promise, and real, that I am able somehow to step outside myself and continue believing that there is nothing better than this feral, ferocious love and that it is my job to share it.

(Yes, I know that the the real verse is about wolves and leopards.)