Today is the summer solstice. Today is the longest day of 2012. There is only one.
Today is about this:
Honoring the worthy dead. It's about two markers that say someone great was here. It's about laying the stones beside Jordan.
It's two windows down and warm air flooding in a 15-year-old Jeep. It's the sound of tires on asphalt. It's the on-off, on-off, on-off echo of a passing vehicle bouncing off the stone rails of a little bridge over a creek. It's the nothingness of the sound passing through the railing gaps.
It's the smell of burnt fireworks. It's the rapid popping of firecrackers and the image of several boys shoeless in the backyard daring one another to light more next time
It's face to face, close up and swaying to no music except the chirps of crickets and frogs. Its one set of bare feet on two feet tied up in leather shoes.
It's hot and sweating even as the water of a shower cascades and swirls and plunges down the tub drain.
It's a dog barking, always, somewhere in the night. Sometimes here.
Sometimes there.
It's the green glow of a cat's eyes as he crouches in imagined secrecy at the road's edge. It's his motive for roaming while the rest of the world sleeps. It's his prowling, working his beat.
It's orange lightning flashing away to the east above this quiet valley. It's veiled like the roaming eye of Sauron, piercing and menacing, but distant and powerless to reach a hand this far.
It's purple thistles on the side of a national highway.
It's the perfect song:
"Your mama always said we had nothing to lose
so we danced on a street corner.
Oh, Caroline,
heartbroken hard times never got us down.
Walking the same line
through every shady Southern town.
Hand in hand, your arm round mine,
Caroline, you do just fine."
It's knowing that somewhere out in the dark, there's a barn with horses in it, asleep.
It's knowing there's an old wooden house somewhere, and there's an old man sitting on the porch drinking a beer from a glass and thinking about a beautiful girl and a party under white lights strung like spokes from an old Oak that was already ancient 50 years ago.
It's a hundred-year-old potato storage cabin woven into the very fabric of a patriarchal homestead.
It's remembering all those who came before and not looking past those who are here now.
It's echoes off of a green mountain, as life is suddenly clearly only an echo of the lives that have already been lived. It's belonging.
It's living right now, the smells, the sights, the noises, the memories, the land, the stars, the moon. It's home, and it's never as certain as it is today. It's in the heart on the summer solstice.
Que Sera, Sera.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Gas
I went to a corner gas station yesterday because my fuel needle was hovering between the bottom-most line on the gas gauge and the first marker. This region is orange and intended to show danger if not addressed.
It was warm outside, and I drove with the windows down. Out of the four adjustable windows in my late '90s Jeep, only the front driver's side was down. They are all hand-cranked and inconvenient to turn.
I slid my bank card in and out of the card reader on the pump - pump two - and I began to move the fuel needle out of the orange danger area.
A white SUV pulled up to the opposite side of the pump I was using. The SUV was facing the same direction as mine, toward the store. Its fuel door was on the passenger side. I thought that placement would bother me. I like the driver-side fuel door. I imagined that it would be harder for me to judge my distance from the fuel pump if the fuel door was on the passenger side.
I was watching the black digital numbers tick on the pump's display. I pulled down the spring-loaded piece that fits into grooved teeth on the metal guard of the pump handle and let gas to flow freely into the tank of my Jeep.
The pump was dusty, and on one side, there was a square white sticker with black bold print that said, "PROLONGED EXPOSURE TO FUMES WAS FOUND TO HAVE CANCER IN LABORATORY MICE."
That was only a portion of the entire wording, which I can not remember. But I considered whether brief exposure to fumes over several years tallies up to prolonged exposure.
A man and a woman were in the white SUV on the opposite side of the pump I was using; their side was pump one. He was out working the pump, and the woman sat in the car. The front two windows of their white SUV were down, and she was wearing large, rounded-square plastic sunglasses, and she was not listening to the radio.
His head was shaved, and he had a goatee, and he wore thin, angular athletic sunglasses.
My right hand was on the pump, and I propped myself against it and looked out on the highway to avoid looking at him. As the digital numbers in the "Amount Sold" display neared $40, I took back control of the handle's trigger.
The man putting fuel into the white SUV said that it is about time that we see some relief with fuel prices, and he asked didn't I agree.
I agreed.
He said it's unbelievable and frustrating how much the cost of fuel has risen since he was a kid and it averaged 96 cents.
I agreed.
I said that I even remember fuel costing little more than a dollar. "And I'm not -" I was going to say old, but I realized that he was not old, and it would be rude to indicate that I felt him so much older than me.
"And I'm 22," I said.
We exchanged frustrations. I had long stopped fueling my Jeep. I joked about the Keystone Pipeline. His wife spoke up for the first and only time from the passenger seat. That oil won't go to China if a Republican is elected president, she said. She guaranteed me that.
She was a fifth-grade teacher at my elementary school. I remember her, but she does not know me. I wondered if after I told my age she calculated in her head that I could have been a student of hers 11 years ago.
I concluded that the entire oil ordeal is frustrating. The man agreed.
"And I fought for this country ..." he said. He didn't finish his thought. I wondered if it was that he felt he deserved relief even more than I, or any civilian, do or does. I wondered if he suddenly thought less of me because I didn't, and won't, fight. I could feel him examining me - my face alone visible to him because of the pump - and holding something back.
I said nothing. He said nothing. His mouth curled into a shape that I could not identify as either a smile or a frown. He swiveled his head slightly to the right with the strange expression in his lips. I was ready to end our conversation.
"Well, we'll see," I said. What we'll see, I don't know. He agreed. I told them to have a good evening, and I meant it.
It was warm outside, and I drove with the windows down. Out of the four adjustable windows in my late '90s Jeep, only the front driver's side was down. They are all hand-cranked and inconvenient to turn.
I slid my bank card in and out of the card reader on the pump - pump two - and I began to move the fuel needle out of the orange danger area.
A white SUV pulled up to the opposite side of the pump I was using. The SUV was facing the same direction as mine, toward the store. Its fuel door was on the passenger side. I thought that placement would bother me. I like the driver-side fuel door. I imagined that it would be harder for me to judge my distance from the fuel pump if the fuel door was on the passenger side.
I was watching the black digital numbers tick on the pump's display. I pulled down the spring-loaded piece that fits into grooved teeth on the metal guard of the pump handle and let gas to flow freely into the tank of my Jeep.
The pump was dusty, and on one side, there was a square white sticker with black bold print that said, "PROLONGED EXPOSURE TO FUMES WAS FOUND TO HAVE CANCER IN LABORATORY MICE."
That was only a portion of the entire wording, which I can not remember. But I considered whether brief exposure to fumes over several years tallies up to prolonged exposure.
A man and a woman were in the white SUV on the opposite side of the pump I was using; their side was pump one. He was out working the pump, and the woman sat in the car. The front two windows of their white SUV were down, and she was wearing large, rounded-square plastic sunglasses, and she was not listening to the radio.
His head was shaved, and he had a goatee, and he wore thin, angular athletic sunglasses.
My right hand was on the pump, and I propped myself against it and looked out on the highway to avoid looking at him. As the digital numbers in the "Amount Sold" display neared $40, I took back control of the handle's trigger.
The man putting fuel into the white SUV said that it is about time that we see some relief with fuel prices, and he asked didn't I agree.
I agreed.
He said it's unbelievable and frustrating how much the cost of fuel has risen since he was a kid and it averaged 96 cents.
I agreed.
I said that I even remember fuel costing little more than a dollar. "And I'm not -" I was going to say old, but I realized that he was not old, and it would be rude to indicate that I felt him so much older than me.
"And I'm 22," I said.
We exchanged frustrations. I had long stopped fueling my Jeep. I joked about the Keystone Pipeline. His wife spoke up for the first and only time from the passenger seat. That oil won't go to China if a Republican is elected president, she said. She guaranteed me that.
She was a fifth-grade teacher at my elementary school. I remember her, but she does not know me. I wondered if after I told my age she calculated in her head that I could have been a student of hers 11 years ago.
I concluded that the entire oil ordeal is frustrating. The man agreed.
"And I fought for this country ..." he said. He didn't finish his thought. I wondered if it was that he felt he deserved relief even more than I, or any civilian, do or does. I wondered if he suddenly thought less of me because I didn't, and won't, fight. I could feel him examining me - my face alone visible to him because of the pump - and holding something back.
I said nothing. He said nothing. His mouth curled into a shape that I could not identify as either a smile or a frown. He swiveled his head slightly to the right with the strange expression in his lips. I was ready to end our conversation.
"Well, we'll see," I said. What we'll see, I don't know. He agreed. I told them to have a good evening, and I meant it.
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