Ol’ Dixie down

 

 

 

“Well go on, girl,” Maime said to Jadie, her oldest.  “Take th’ others an’ go on up and pay your respects to your lovin’ Granpappy.  I cain’t go up there again.  I jus’ cain’t.”  Her voice had gone up from a shaky whine to a squeak. 

 

Jadie looked up at her mama, saw her quivering lips, like the speed wobbles, getting fast out of control, and she knew her mama was fixing to take that inevitable spill.  “I just cain’t do it no more, girl,” she heard her mama whisper low and raspy, spooky-like.

 

Jadie wondered if that meant just going back up to the casket or carrying on, period.  She didn’t know what it was like to lose a papa like her mama had just done, didn’t even know who her papa was, so she could only imagine a little bit of what that might be like.

 

Maime bent down to Jadie, put her hands on her girl’s bony shoulders, and looked into her eyes.  She said to Jadie in that same, spooky rasp, “The very heart of me is torn up ta shreds, girl, and like ta leave my body and go with Granpappy.”

 

Jadie guessed that meant her mama had meant carrying on, period, and all of Jadie’s insides just dropped out under the heaviness of her mama’s agony, felt like they were getting crushed like junk cars.  She had thought prior to give her mama a look that would lift her up a little, but now she felt too small to do even that, and her eyes dropped like the rest of her innards, and she whispered an empty, “Yes, Ma’am.”

 

Then Maime let it all go.  She bust out crying like a sorrowful howl changing to an angry screech and everyone froze and looked and finally the preacher ran over to her just as her eyes rolled back in her head.  He broke her fall to the floor and lay her down easy and hollered for someone to call 911 and get a glass of water.  And Jadie wondered if maybe now was the time her mama was going to follow Granpappy.  But her little brothers were running around all willy-nilly and her baby sisters were crawling toward the flowers and someone had to do something about that.

 

Jadie dove out from the rumpus after her siblings with a vengeance, she hurt so bad.  She grabbed Jackie by the scruff of his neck with one hand and caught little Jimmie’s trousers with the other.  She pulled them together like wishing to glue them together permanently.  She bent down to them and through gritted teeth hissed, “Move or talk and you’re dead.  Dead, like Granpappy, dead like Mama!”  The impact of those last words turned the two little boys to pillars of salt, the desired effect.

 

Jadie glared anger and pain at them and rushed over to where her two baby sisters were fixing to pull down the monstrous flower arrangement on the table by the casket.  The one-year-old was pulling on the two-year-old who was grabbing the tablecloth trying to pull herself up by it and the whole thing was sliding.  Just in time, Jadie grabbed them both.  She looked over at the two boys and began zinging eye-darts at them when she heard the preacher holler, “She’ll be alright, folks!  Praise God!  It’ll all be OK now!” 

 

Jadie’s knees about gave out right then, she’d been through so much so quick, and now it’ll be all OK.  But it wasn’t.  There Granpappy lay dead, and her mama might as well have died for all the fear and the icy, hollow insecurity and dread she felt gripping her head and all of her guts.  And even though her mama was still alive, in a wave Jadie felt a knowing  wash over her that her whole life was hinging on those words, “I just cain’t do it no more.”

 

She felt faint, like she was going to drop both babies and die herself, when she felt something shift hard inside her, like when you take one thing off the rack at the store, the next thing in line behind it chunks into place, and those racks are never out, Mr. Pickard made sure of it.  And she had a feeling that her racks would never be depleted, either.  Trust in her mama got taken out and trust in herself had chunked into place.  Now she was running the store.

 

She looked over at Maime being checked out by the paramedics and mumbling all manner of nonsense interspersed with the occasional screech, and Jadie quickly walked over to the two boys still glued together in the same spot, bawling.  Pretty soon the grown-ups would be deciding about what to do with them all while their mama was indisposed, and she must pay her respects to Granpappy.

 

Jadie worked fast with the boys, hugged and kissed them until she saw hope in their eyes and she wiped at their wet faces with her hands and dried her hands off on her skirt.  She gathered up the babies, headed for the casket, and motioned with her head for the boys to follow.  They hopped and skipped to the casket calling, “Granpy! Granpappeeee!”  Jadie shushed them and said, “Boys!  You know Granpappy’s not in his body, right?”

 

“Where’d he go?” Jackie asked.

 

“Yeah, whea?” Jimmie followed up.

 

“Same place Pinkycat went,” Jadie said.

 

“Ta Heaven?” Jackie asked.

 

“Some say,” Jadie answered.  “All I knows is you don’ have ta holler ta talk ta Granpappy no more.  You can jus’ think things ta him and he can hear ya.”  The boys squealed with delight.  Jadie tousled their hair and continued, “An’ you can feel him hanging around, like now, I can feel his smile on me like sunshine!  Can’t you?”

 

Both boys jumped up and down and shouted, “Yeah! ” and high-fived each other.

 

Jadie just leaned over the casket, kissed her granpappy goodbye and whispered in his ear, “But don’ trust me nor nobody, boys.  Jus’ trust yourselves.”  She stood back upright and said aloud, “Ain’t that right Granpappy?”

 

“Oh, you knows it, girl,” she answered for him.

 

Fini

 

CREDIT/MISC

 

Old Mississippi River Bridge from http://image64.webshots.com/164/9/54/4/2445954040050986932UuYywA_fs.jpg

 

Joan Baez “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”

 

 

 

Missalister’s “Ol’ Dixie down,” copyright © 2009, was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#151 – Trust.”  Click here for more on prompt #151 from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

 

  

The Jules Letters: The beginning

 

 

 

This is a recital of a few events that occurred around the time my dear friend Jules discovered “A Year to Live” by Stephen Levine.  The day she finished reading it she told me that all its content was mystically stirring to her, but that she was most enthralled by the notion of sending letters, either physically or cosmically, to those, either alive or dead, with whom you have unresolved issues. 

 

Jules had no death sentence close at hand that she was aware of, and truly she was interested in a clean universal slate, but most strongly and immediately she desired to test the notion of cosmic letter-sending in general.

 

She felt within her a sense that the concept was workable, was true, although it was hard to tell how much of this sense was fueled by childhood stories of messages in bottles and how much was being received through the airwaves in real time.  Certainly, movies like “Message in a Bottle,” with Costner and Robin Penn, did little to support a nonsubjective position.

 

But the overall feeling that grew on Jules after a week of pondering the concept, led to a fevered belief that she could speak letters into the wind and that those letters would hit their mark, would reach the hearts of their intended recipients, and be translated into an understanding.  And she felt certain that the translation of her words would include her name, perhaps whispered, as a signature flourished in the air.

 

So very shortly after that week of pondering, she called me up very early one morning, overly excited.  She’d finally decided on the recipient of her first letter to the wind, had composed it loosely in her head, and wanted me to come over that evening to be a witness to its dispatching to the airwaves.

 

You may detect a little tongue-in-cheek flavor in the way I’m writing about Jules, but it’s only an awkward attempt at objectivity.  Perhaps I need to dispense with that and maybe I will, for the telling of this story, if I tell it all to you, promises to take a few writing sessions.

 

Truth is, I believe the same as Jules, basically, and was glad to oblige her a visit that evening.  In fact, I’d like to share with you her first letter to the wind, for it went out on the breeze to a potential love of Jules’ and today is Valentine’s Day, which is what reminded me of Jules and this experience in the first place.  I know that Jules wouldn’t mind.

 

I won’t write anything after the letter, for it would surely be malapropos, and perhaps I’ll return later with more.  The first letter went something like this:

 

Dear Terry,

 

Ever since meeting you that day, I’ve thought of you off and on.  I hear that you ask about me every now and again, as if bookmarking time, and I wonder if you think, because you never hear back, that I never think about you.  I’m telling you now that I do.

 

Why do I want you to know that even though a continued story for us is unlikely?  I suppose because I am grateful.  You advanced me in many ways that day, and I feel that I did the same for you, too, and that is why you ask after me, and that is why I think of you.  The human brain wants more from whence something good came, but the heart knows the truth of how life must unfold.  To send word back might encourage you and my heart holds me back for reasons it knows.  And I trust it. 

 

In that sense, the purest, most distilled sense of love, I do think of you and care about you and know how valuable you are in the world.  

 

Sincerely,

Jules

 

 

Fini 

 

PHOTO CREDIT:

 

Wind turbines snagged from http://photos.upi.com/story/w/fa8384d34362497e6d9f0ce14daa1381/US_Energy_Department_to_push_wind_power.jpg

 

 

I visited Floreta’s site on 2/12, did a little catching up on back posts, and commented on her “Learning to Love You More” post.  In Floreta’s back posts was “Letters – Past”  which affected me and must have been working in my head such that when I sat down today to write as an exercise, not originally intended to be a post, I found that the idea of “Letters – Past” had intermingled with my experience of reading Stephen Levine’s “A Year to Live.”  That, in turn, must have got all balled up with this, from Floreta’s “Learning to Love You More” post:  “The best art and writing is almost like an assignment; it is so vibrant that you feel compelled to make something in response. Suddenly it is clear what you have to do.”  So if any of you enjoyed this post, thank Floreta for what compelled this.

 

More on “A Year to Live” here

 

More on the movie “Message in a Bottle” here

 

The mere mention of Chicago

 

The Sony Center canopy at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin

 

 

Lyn went to sleep with Helmut Jahn upon her lips.  She had gotten into bed and lain there in the quieting moments before drifting, falling.  And out of the moonlit darkness she opened her eyes and spoke his name aloud.

 

Whether it was a brief illumination that caused the speaking of his name or vice versa, is unknown, may never be known.  Its light was snuffed by the blackness of nothingness, of sleep, and all that was left in the physical world was a pinpoint of saliva glistening in the corner of her peaceful mouth.

 

She awoke six hours later to a sweet taste and a light fog of confusion.  She waited for the slow-rising light of clarity to come, watched familiar wisps of information float and begin to organize themselves into puffs.  Puffs formed clouds of recollections, and out of them came the remembrance of speaking his name.

 

Lyn said it aloud again.  Helmut Jahn.  A name from years ago.  A name in the importance of large print on the cover of a Vis à Vis magazine.  A name that went with her major back then, that went with his picture back then, that was hard to forget.

 

His fedora was tipped and his wild eyes were piercing from underneath it, firing out vigor and knowing.  His body was caught, photographed in the position of determination, of certainty of calling and self.  His dashing wildness beckoned and his fierce confidence enticed.

 

Why she spoke his name out of a still night years later, was still unapparent.  She liked imagining that assimilating the effect of him back then was like assimilating the essence of him, and that it was doing its work to this day, building something of her life as magnificent as his buildings.

 

But Lyn was one to be patient in these matters of life’s puzzle pieces being slowly slipped into place, and she would be watching to see what place Helmut Jahn upon her lips slipped into.

 

 

 

 

CREDITS:

 

The Sony Center Berlin photo was snagged from http://www.bradley.edu/academics/las/his/Berlin/images/clip_image006.jpg

 

Helmut Jahn back then is from http://www.the-artists.org/Images/jahn.gif

Flying blind: Chicago, naked and pissed

Ford building

 

I heard the phone slam down in the boss’ office across the hall.  “Slagel’s hinging!” he bellowed.  “Shit!“  After the sound of his fist pounding his desk one, big time, I heard the sound of his frenzied typing, then I heard his rushed footsteps coming my way.  I cringed.

 

The door frame of my office filled with him.  He pointed at me, shouted, “You!”  Then he leaned out the door to holler at the admin, “I need you to book Wondergirl in here, on the next flight to Chicago.  I’ve sent you all the details via e-mail.  Do it yesterday, pleazzze! “

 

He leaned back into my office, pointed at me again, bellowed again, the wind of him swaying me like a reed, “Check your e-mail now! “

 

I swayed back.  “Already did, Tony,” I said.

 

“Print it…”

 

“Already did, Tony.”

 

“Read it on the way.  You’re going straight to the airport.  You’ll stay in Chicago and hold Slagel’s hand until he comes around, however long that takes.  Expense any clothes and sundries you buy there.  Got it?”

 

“I do, Tony,” I said, stuffing the last of the files and laptop cords and batteries and all into the laptop case.

 

“We need this account, Lyn,” he said.

 

“I’m on it,” I said.  I swung the laptop over my shoulder, grabbed my purse, and extended my hand.

 

“Well alright,” he said, pleased.  He gave me a firm handshake and patted my shoulder.

 

I gave him a wink and headed out the door.

 

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~

 

I sat in the back of the cab on the way to the airport wondering if this might be similar to birth.  You’re lounging peacefully in Nothingness, when some higher being blusters in and shouts, “Alright, you’re up next!  C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!  Get a move on!  No, there’s no time to pack clothes!  You’re up next, you’re on, now! “  And you pop out in Chicago, or wherever, naked and pissed.

 

You’re slimy, with nothing, no idea how you got here or where you’re going.  Pretty soon some tall people fill you in on all that and then some (they sure do have some weird ideas).  But you trust them.  They’re older than dirt, they must have a clue.  You go to school.  You’re sitting in a puddle of angst when the tall people bluster in and shout, “What are you going to do with your life?”

 

This is when you realize they don’t have all the answers.

 

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!  Decide!”

 

“Huh?  Ahhhh…”

 

This is when you realize, neither do you.

 

This is when you begin to learn to fake it.

 

Soon, you solidify the fake and learn to add a wink to it.

 

Et voila!  It’s like you really do know what you’re doing.

 

Fini

A few bad forks

 

 

 

 

The airline wouldn’t admit it, but the baggage handlers was on strike was the word.  Everything were backed up, it was obvious.  Me and this sea of people was going to be in Philly for a couple of days looked like. 

 

The airline people was looking everyone in the eye, dead-on, telling them it were a weather situation and therefore it weren’t the airline’s fault and therefore they didn’t have to accommodate anyone, “so please wait in line, because you will lose your place if you leave the line, and it’s first come, first served as flights become available.” 

 

There was folk who took them seriously and lay down on the stone cold, Terazzo floor right there in the snaking line in front of the ticket counters, but there was no flights.  That airline’s whole operation was seized up, sidelined, and the airline people all knew it.

 

Some of the airline people was uncomfortable lying, you could tell by how nervous they was.  They looked fevered, glistening with a mist of sweat on their arms and foreheads.  And you could tell by their eyes.  Management must have told them, “Do not break eye contact with the passengers, whatever you do, or you will be fired,” and some of them, their eyes would start to flicker and fade in their heads, like to faint, if eyes could faint. 

 

But these airline people, they would not look away, whatever they did, whatever you said.  So for us folk it were like looking through the cracked windows of a rundown shack that held only ghosts of the folk that used to live inside.  I’ve been through troubles with the airlines before, so I just left that sickness and went on down the escalator to the baggage area. 

 

I picked my spot on the beaten-down carpet with all the others who didn’t have enough money for a place to stay overnight.  Or maybe they was too tight or pissed off to pay for a room when it weren’t their fault they was stuck here.  In a few minutes I’d make some phone calls, try to get a flight on a different airline or get a bus or a train or something.  But right now I just wanted to catch a wink of sleep.

 

I plumped up my duffle bag for a pillow and curled up on my side with my coat as a blanket.  The low hum of voices, broken by the occasional child’s high-pitched giggle or cry, became as a thick snowfall blanketing my ears and brain, muffling reverberating sounds and clouding over visions, until visions became bizarre scenarios, and scenarios became dreamless sleep.  The airport floor or heaven, it were all the same to me.

 

I woke to a jostling.  Some scared rabbit looking gal was trying to squeeze her cute little behind in between me and the guy next to me.  I picked my head up and looked around.  “Jesus, this place has filled in since I got here,” I said, genuinely surprised.

 

The scared rabbit drew in a breath sharply, and although it was ridiculous to whisper in this mess of talking people, she whispered urgently, “Oh, sir, I am so sorry to have disturbed you!”

 

“It ain’t no thing, ma’am,” I said.  I sat up and moved over to give her some room.  Of course this jostled the guy on the other side of me, but he was cool.  “Here you go, Ma’am.  Set yourself down right here,” I said smiling and patting the floor next to me.

 

The rabbit nervously shifted her weight over to the spot I’d made, spread her things out in front of her like she was setting up for a picnic, and flashed me a grateful glance and a quivering smile.  She couldn’t take it for long, though, looking at me, that is.  I laughed and said to her, “You’d never make it working for the airlines.”

 

She’d dug a breakfast bar out of her handbag and had started fumbling around trying to open it.  When she heard my airlines comment, she stopped fumbling and shot me a quizzical look.  “Excuse me?” she’d said before going back to the breakfast bar project.  I just shook my head and chuckled.

 

Finally I asked her, “Ma’am, would you like me to open that for you?  You look mighty nervous.  Ain’t you never been through something like this with the airlines before?”

 

The rabbit just stopped in her tracks and started to cry.  I patted her shoulder and said, “There, there, now girl.  It’ll be alright.  It always is.”  I reached for the breakfast bar, which she had a death grip on, and gently tugged at it.  I said, “Here, can I take this?  I’ll open it for you.”

 

She continued to cry, but loosened her grip on the breakfast bar.  I took it and started to open it.  “Geez, I see what you mean.  This wrapper is like my ex-girlfriend, won’t give nothin’ up!”

 

The rabbit both sighed and chortled at once.  I don’t know how she managed it, but she did.  I handed her the opened package.  She didn’t need to know I’d had to use my teeth to open it.  I don’t have nothing contagious, so I figured what could it hurt.

 

The rabbit took the breakfast bar with a shaking hand and nervously began to nibble at it.  Then she stopped short.  “Oh!” she exclaimed, one hand over her mouth, “Thank you, sir, for opening this, for your kind words…  You’re so…so kind.  I’m just so…so…”

 

She looked like she’d start up crying again so I jumped in with a quick, “It ain’t no thing, Ma’am,” and let her nibble her rabbit food in peace.

 

When she was done with the breakfast bar, she rummaged through another of her bags and pulled out a bottle of acidophilus tablets and a bottle of water.  She washed down one of the tablets with a swig of water and curtly returned the bottles to their rightful places.  She clasped her hands in her lap and sighed.  Her energy seemed to have shifted somehow, and she turned to look at me—she lingered a little longer in my eyes than before—and she asked me, “Do you have any regrets?”

 

I said, “Regrets?  Naw, Ma’am.  I mean I do, I mean I could.”  I patted her clasped hands and laughed.  I said, “What I’m trying to say is, yeah, I’ve made a bunch of messed up decisions, taken a few bad forks in the road, but when I look back, I see that under each particular set of circumstances, with the knowledge I had at the time, I couldn’t have made a different choice.  I never made a bad choice on purpose!”  I laughed again.

 

The rabbit looked shaken, just stared straight ahead.

 

“Ma’am?” I said.

 

“Where are you going?” she asked.

 

“To Houston, Ma’am,” I said.  “Where are you going?”

 

“To Charlotte,” she said.  And then she turned toward me and looked deep into my eyes this time and asked, softly, “Can I go to Houston with you?”

 

She sure was pretty, but I knew she was a bundle of issues I didn’t need.  So naturally, I told her, “If you want to, Ma’am.  I’ll take care of you right fine.”

 

She smiled, slipped her little hand into mine, and put her sweet, troubled head on my shoulder.

 

Fini

 

 

 

Missalister’s “A few bad forks,” copyright © 2009, was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#148 – Regrets.”  Click here for more on prompt #148 from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

 

 

 

CREDITS

 

PHL at night snagged form EPCO Group at http://www.epcocorp.com/images/MVC-287.jpg

 

Bench and Lighted trees found at http://www.photosfan.com/images/beautiful-christmas-lights1.jpg

 

 

And another video extra, an Edith Piaf song, here, “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” with clips from “La Vie En Rose,” a movie that affected me in a very good way.

 

“Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien”

Translated to English

 

No! Absolutely nothing…
No! I regret nothing
Neither the good that I’ve done nor the bad
All this is much the same to me!

No! Absolutely nothing…
No! I regret nothing…
It is paid, swept away, forgotten
I don’t care about the past!

With my souvenirs
I lit a fire
My sorrows, my pleasures
I need them no more!

Swept away the love affairs
With their tremors
Swept away forever
I leave with nothing …

No! Absolutely nothing…
No! I regret nothing
Neither the good that I’ve done nor the bad
All this is much the same to me!

No! Absolutely nothing…
No! I regret nothing…
Because my life, because my joys
Today that begins with you!

 

 

 

In French:

Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien
Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien I Regret Nothing
Non! Rien de rien …
Non! Je ne regrette rien
Ni le bien qu’on m’a fait ni le mal
Tout ça m’est bien égal!

Non! Rien de rien …
Non! Je ne regrette rien…
C’est payé, balayé, oublié
Je me fous du passé!

Avec mes souvenirs
J’ai allumé le feu
Mes chagrins, mes plaisirs
Je n’ai plus besoin d’eux!

Balayés les amours
Avec leurs trémolos
Balayés pour toujours
Je repars à zéro …

Non! Rien de rien …
Non! Je ne regrette rien …
Ni le bien qu’on m’a fait ni le mal
Tout ça m’est bien égal!

Non! Rien de rien …
Non! Je ne regrette rien …
Car ma vie, car mes joies
Aujourd’hui ça commence avec toi!