"All good things are wild and free."

I am between worlds, in the rift of lingering memory, in the dog days of childhood, bent trees teeming with fig fruits, villas on stilts, skin crusted with sand, and star spangled skies. Sisters in the backseat, threadbare backpacks with their bellies emptied between us, cats cradle strings, thumbed thrift books, tattered paperbacks, and paper dolls. Then skimming beneath the seats for the one scuffed sandal that slipped out of reach, limbs all asleep, blood rushing back in bursts, like lit firecrackers beneath our skin, as we tumbled akin from the family minivan, into the shrunken sleeve of heat.



At my grandmother’s, my grandfather’s house, homegrown garden squash sliced like a dozen yellowed suns on our dinner plates that parade past platters of roast. Wicker chairs, and cherry wood, and sun porches where we shucked snap-beans into wooden bowls. The backyard bisected by laundry lines, a faded wading pool, sun bleached blues waned white, slouching lopsidedly in long grasses, in the gentle growl of the condenser unit, hoses inhaling through hot coils.



After dinners, in the den darkened besides the blood oranges of eventide bleeding through the vinyl blinds, and elastic shadows slinking and retreating from a lit television set, antenna outstretched to oak panels and a plaque, to which the head of a deer is tacked. And we three, young and yawning, propped on the velour couch, the tempo and pulse of the pendulum clock half-hypnotizing us to sleep, trails of ice cream treats clinging to our fingers.



It is never the same, we change. We grow old, and if one isn’t careful, growing up can be slow death to the soul. You cannot let the years use you up, lick from you the last drop.



Society has become slugs festering in the sun, flesh consuming flesh. I am in a seeker of enlightenment, fulfillment, joyousness; leeched of all lust for money, for meaningless luxury. Comfort is for cowards, come sweat and strife, strike like a viper, and I will milk the poison from my mind.



They cry, “You cannot survive outside the rat race of society!”, and I, “Have any of you tried?” They further, “You won’t have an automobile nor a house!” “See these feet, they can carry me, and while you, in your bed, look into pale planks, I look into a depthless galaxy.”



So, go and throw my bones to the wild beasts, swallow your pills, and grit your teeth. What I am afraid of is apathy, egos, and greed, the eluding of truth, regret, eternity. Cut me from this leash! If I am committed, it is to independence from the chokeholds of conformity, of currencies.



I am six, I am eight, I am ten again, in a baptism of sunbeams and folded limbs, freckled cheek pressed to the pillowcase, smelling of peaches and warm flesh. Somewhere inside, I am still this child, seeing the world with wide-eye wonder, forever free, and wild.



P.S. I'd write in my blog more routinely, except sometimes I suspect that I'm the slowest writer in existence, and it takes an awful lot out of me to cultivate and compose all these words that live within. Thus, again, I've been gone a good stretch, (besides my presence in the pair of filler entries beneath this), tell me, how have you been?

P.P.S. There seems to be many, continuing mix-ups with my RSS feed on sites where you can subscribe. Please excuse any entries that appear twice or as new when they're not, I'm unable to edit these feeds.

Title Quote: Henry David Thoreau
Photo Credits: (1, 3, 5) Sally Mann, (2) Thomas van der Zaag, (4, 6) Roger Sargent, (7), Lukasz Wierzbowski, (8) NASA, (9) birddie.