Rest beside the weary road

A few early snow flakes was startin’ to lazily drift down that mid-November day when the Strickler kid ran into the store shoutin’  somethin’ about a body out at the mine.  The mine had closed down the week before, just like everybody was afraid would happen, and I reckon the kid had been playin’ around where he ought not to have been out at the mines while nobody was around.

Well, he sure got everybody’s attention in nothin’ flat.  Chairs hit the floor, coats were thrown on, and men, and even a couple of women who didn’t have kids with ’em took off runnin’ for the mine.  I went, too, although Mam and several other women stayed behind, and their buzz of anticipation followed us out the door.

It was cold, and the clouds had already covered the mountain, which usually means the snow might amount to somethin’.  It was at least a half mile to the mine, and we were all puffin’ clouds of white smoke by the time we arrived at the mine entrance, and stopped and looked where the Strickler kid was pointin.’   Sure enough, he wasn’t lyin’; just inside the entrance to the mine in the shadows we could make out the kinda crumpled-up shape of a body.  Ole Man Kline took the lead, goin’ in slowly, while Big Al, he held out his arms, holdin’ everybody else back.  We could see Kline bendin’ down, and then he hollered for somebody to go rouse the sherriff at Athlone, the nearest town, ’cause this feller was dead.

And it turned out he didn’t die of natural causes either.  He had a big old bullet hole right in the middle of his chest, right where that fist-sized nugget of silver had been layin’ the last time we saw him.  The silver was gone, too, just the twisted and broken leather strap lay around his neck.  It woulda taken some strength to’ve torn that leather strap, folks said.  Nobody admitted to knowin’ anything about the affair, or knowin’ who this feller was either.

I heard some people whisperin’ about that Suze-woman, tho’.  We hadn’t seen hide nor hair of her since she came by the store that first time.  Seemed mighty coincidental, two strangers comin’ into town in one week, and one of ’em gettin himself killed.  And the women especially thought she looked kinda suspicious-like.

Murder was big here.  We hadn’t had one since Tom Jameson hauled off and killed his pa when his pa came after him with a meat hook at a butcherin’ one day.  And Tom, he was just sent off to the state hospital ’cause folks just figured he wasn’t right in the head.  So as I say, murder was big.  And everybody was a’speculatin’ this and a’speculatin’ that.  But the general consensus had to be we didn’t know nothin.’

So imagine our surprise when the week after the murder, who should come walkin’ in the door again but Suze Campbell.  You coulda heard that pin drop again.  And Grandpap Ed, he was a little slower gettin’ to the post office counter this time, kinda hesitant-like.  I reckon he was thinkin’ he could possibly be dealin’ with a murderer here.  And Mam, she look mighty interested.

Suze, on the other hand, she looked kinda surprised, kinda raisin’ her eyebrows like she had a question, but Grandpap Ed, he just shoved her letter, a thick one, across the counter at her.  And as she took it, she turned around slow-like and swept the room a glance.  Most folks just dropped their eyes to the floor.  Except for me.  I was gettin’ one of my feelins’ again, and I knew this time we couldn’t let her get away without findin’ out . . .  I don’t know . . . Findin’ out somethin’.

 

Life is difficult, and complicated and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.  (J.K. Rowling)

The weather, she changes, yet again, and always.  Yesterday’s golden light may be replaced today by gales and rain, and white-capped tossed water.

If we really pay attention, we would learn early and repetitively that we really can’t count on much.  Unless, of course, these changes — this eternal Change — carries its own kind of security.

Life will change.  Light will yield to dark, sun to rain, good to bad, fortune to misfortune . . .

And . . .

Dark to light, rain to sun, bad to good, misfortune to fortune.

The eternal Round.  Weather teaches one things.

. . . always the question of how far you ought to sell your soul for the sake of your life. (Powys)

Ain’t it the truth?  But first you gotta understand the myriad of ways you sell your soul.  Not an easy task, for me, at least.  Do I sell my soul when I stay in that job too long?  That relationship?  When I don’t speak up in the face of what I think is wrong or evil?  When I compromise my values?  When I refuse to take a risk and step out into the unknown because I’m too cautious?  How to know??

Which brings us to the kitchen . . .

Ah, the kitchen.  The dream symbol for the place of change and transformation, where raw ingredients are magically transformed into a delicious meal. Or not.  A space or a time in our lives when change can happen . . .

There is a Welsh proverb to the effect that love is drawn to love, gratitude to gratitude, bitterness to bitterness, resentment to resentment.  When I do one of those “searching, fearless moral inventories,” at times I find within me a bitterness, a sour note, when what I want there only to be gratitude.

I have never liked the taste of bitter things.  I prefer the real solid food of gratitude.  So, clean the kitchen, the refrigerator and the cupboards, I tell myself!  Toss out those bitter, sour things you don’t care for, and fill your kitchen with things you do like.  Don’t become bitter from what you eat.

Ah, the kitchen, the place of transformation.  I spend a lot of time there of late.  I guess I’m learning yet again:  Don’t sell your soul for your life.  Choose what you want for dinner.

If the only prayer you ever say in your life is Thank You, it will be enough. 

The day is done, and the darkness falls from the wings of Night . . . (and brings with it) . . . A feeling of sadness and longing, that is not akin to pain . . .  (Longfellow)

Autumn is deepening, and the sun is sinking lower in the southern sky.  Nightfall comes earlier; instead of a long twilight, the shadows creep in as soon as the sun sinks below the horizon.  There is a certain melancholy that seems to accompany this time of year that doesn’t really seem to have much to do with what we in the “mood” business have called Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD.  To me, it always seems to hearken back to a time when the darkness, unrelieved by artificial light, was dangerous — somewhere in our genetic makeup, I imagine we might “remember,” and maybe that recalled wariness makes us uneasy.

Or maybe not.  In any case the stars are brilliant on these crisp clear nights, and as holiday decorations begin to appear, twinkling white lights vie with the stars in sparkle appeal.  Just today at a yard sale I bought a 55 foot strand of evergreen garland, complete with twinkling lights.  So the deer and possums, the skunks and coons, and the occasional bear will have quite a show here at the farm this year.

But I still wonder.  Do we do ourselves an injustice in filling our darkness with light?  At what price do we buy safety — and does each one of those little twinkling lights that I love cut me off a little more from something I once knew about the earth and the sky and rootedness and my place in the scheme of things . . .

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Build thee more stately mansions, o my soul, as the swift seasons roll . . .  (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

I was 16 years old when I first read The Chambered Nautilus by Oliver Wendell Holmes, and I can still remember where I was sitting in English class, and the feel and musty smell of the old textbook out of which I was reading it.  Because in that moment I knew . . . even though this land-locked mountain teenager didn’t have a clue what a chambered nautilus was . . . I knew that “building more stately mansions” was exactly what we should all be about, that this should be our purpose.  I had only a hazy sense of what this kind of spiritual journey would be like, but the idea appealed to my idealistic self.  In retrospect, it would have been a lot easier to have gone out for basketball.

But I was neither wired nor built for basketball.  And I guess I was wired for envisioning those mansions, and embued with a fervent desire to assist others in doing so as well.  Whether they wanted it or not, by gum.

Along the way, I learned what a chambered nautilus is, a mollusk with a splendidly segmented, spiral shell, enabling it to handily move to a larger room as it grows.  And I also learned the fallacy of evangelistic fervor, and the total arrogance on my part of thinking that I knew the  path that anyone other than myself needed to walk (or in this case, what mansions they needed to build).  A lotta times God had to tell me to “get out of the way, I’ll do it myself.”

It has been my privilege to walk alongside many people on portions of their individual journeys, sometimes shining the light a little further down the path when it was dark and they couldn’t see.  I learned that the most I could do was be present.  That was humbling. And one of my very best “stately mansions.”

There is a morning inside you wanting to burst into light.  (Rumi)

Morning is the dream renewed, the heart refreshed, earth’s forgiveness painted in the colors of the dawn.  (Nerburn)

. . .  the morning is all awash with angels.  (Wilbur)

Our first ice, sleet, snow, freezing rain, unknown-slushy-goop mixture of the season fell on these here parts this past week as a nor’easter swept by.  While I can’t say much for the enjoyment value of this particular weathery concoction, the morning after was spectacular.

Yep, there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

 

Yeah, Mam was on a tear this morning.  Grandpap Ed had evidently done something to displease her, and she was lettin’ him and everybody else in the store know it.  In his younger days, Grandpap Ed was evidently quite a dandy, a ladies’ man, plus he had the wanderlust, which meant he went off and left Mam and the kids for weeks at a time, supposedly searchin’ for and findin’ work elsewhere.  I reckon Mam never forgave him for that, since it meant a lot of extra work for her.

And she ruled that store and post office and her kids and grandkids with a fist of iron — tried to rule the rest of us, too, and right now she was bemoaning the loafers around the stove, drinkin’ her coffee, and forgettin’ to put a few pennies in the old pickle jar for the cheese and crackers they ate along with it.  They didn’t pay her much mind, because their attention was on the everlastin’ rain we been havin’ this fall, plus the man that rode through yesterday, the second stranger we’ve seen in a week.

It was rainin’ this mornin,’ too, probably accountin’ a little for Mam’s mad, since the place kinda steamed, and the smell of wet wool and bodies that coulda stood a bath sooner rather than later was pretty potent.  The stove sizzled when the occasional stream of tobacco juice would miss the old coffee tin and hit the fire instead.  And the talk swirled about who the man was, and did he have somethin’ to do with “that woman,” who hadn’t been seen since, even though Grandpap Ed just happened to let slip that a letter for Suze Campion had come in and was waitin’ for her.

It seems nobody had really talked to the man who rode through, nor seen where he went.  There was a lot of talk, though.  Tall, lanky, no, short and kinda stout, no, a big feller, looked like Paul Bunyan, mebbe, with a big ole silver nugget on a strip of leather around his neck.

That silver was the interestin’ part, ’cause there’d been rumors forever about how the Indians that used to live here had talked about silver down in the mines.  And the zinc that we mined there had about played itself out, and not a bit of silver had ever been spotted.

But that don’t mean folks didn’t look.  Times bein’ so hard, and rumors about the mine havin’ to shut down, left a lot of folks scared about what the future held.  And since the present was already gettin’ hard, that was tough.  Some folks was already talkin’ about havin’ to move on, while others couldn’t imagine leavin’ the farms they’d been on for generations.

So you can see how talk about a silver nugget, “big as a fist, mebbe,” around a man’s neck would arouse a lot of interest.

I would define poetry . . . as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.  (Edgar Allen Poe)

My mother’s well-worn and age-spotted copy of One Hundred and One Famous Poems (publication date 1929) lies open on the nearby hearth as I write.  My mother loved poetry and spent so many hours with these poems that I imagine this little book has vestiges of many emotions lingering within its pages.  It also is marked with what are most likely dirt and food stains from pudgy little hands that labored over these poems, maybe because they seemed to mean so much to my mother, and I wanted to know why.  I do know that a lot of unintentional memorization was one of the results, for which now I am so very grateful.

The Preface to this book, written by editor Roy J. Cook in 1929 or thereabouts, reads as follows:

This is the age of science, of steel — of speed and the cement road.  The age of hard faces and hard highways.  Science and steel demand the medium of prose.  Speed requires only the look — the gesture.  What need then, for poetry?

Great need!

There are souls, in these noise-tired times, that turn aside into unfrequented lanes, where the deep woods have harbored the fragrances of many a blossoming season.  Here the light, filtering through perfect forms, arranges itself in lovely patterns for those who perceive beauty.

It is the purpose of this little volume to enrich, ennoble, encourage.  And for man, who has learned to love convenience, it is hardly larger than his concealing pocket.

Sociologists believe that the rituals practiced in any given culture serve to reaffirm that culture’s most important values and beliefs.  (Cole)

As I write, Thanksgiving is rapidly approaching — a week from today it will be here, bringing Christmas quickly in its wake..  One of our most uniquely North American holidays, it supposedly celebrates the earliest settlers’ valiant struggle for survival, freedom, and prosperity.  What it has come down through the years to mean to us today seems so wonderfully and crazily representative of our wild and wacky culture — masses of food and eating jokes (or issues); family joy, dysfunction, and awkward moments (and issues); children coloring turkeys with every tail feather a different color and wearing scotch-taped-together Pilgrim hats; hunting season (here in the mountains it’s time to tie orange vests on your cows and dogs and go about shouting “there’s people here, by gum!” as we try to avoid the shots echoing up and down the mountain); football madness; decorating for Christmas; Black Friday and Cyber Monday; butchering (here in the mountains again); over-the-river-and-through-the-woods-to-grandmother’s-house-we-go kind of traffic (made even more scary by the stat that more booze is sold on Thanksgiving Eve than any other day of the year); and so many more  images and rituals that contemplating them all makes one kinda dizzy.

Like a huge pot of richly simmering stew with so many different ingredients that you can’t count ’em, just like this wonderful country of ours — that’s Thanksgiving!  Beyond all the recent rancor in our country, each of us and our unique traditions are all part of that stew — isn’t it great??  We’re in it together.