bridges to somewhere...

If your Nerve, deny you --
Go above your Nerve --
                                                   Emily Dickinson

deep in october...

I miss you most
deep in October
when the chill wind rushes
through the empty places
of my heart
searching.
And the runaway leaves
twirl me in a winsome dance of love
hoping.

I miss you most
deep in October
when the frost bites
and the farmer stacks the hay
in the fields of warm gold
and the island's shrimpy
sunset begs with wide eyes for your
open heart.
But you are not there.

I hear the echo of your words
Formed in some deep place.
A place you will not let me go.
Oh, I miss you most deep in October.
And it's then I decide I cannot let you go.

"what is to give light must endure burning..." viktor frankl

"The life that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt. Our lives are linked together. No man is an island.

But there is another truth, the sister of this one, and it is that every man is an island. It is a truth that often the tolling of a silence reveals even more vividly than the tolling of a bell. We sit in silence with one another, each of us more or less reluctant to speak, for fear that if he does, he may sound like a fool. And beneath that there is, of course, the deeper fear, which is really a fear of the self rather than of the other, that maybe the truth of it is that indeed he is a fool. The fear that the self that he reveals by speaking may be a self that the others will reject just as in a way he has himself rejected it. So either we do not speak, or we speak not to reveal who we are but to conceal who we are, because words can be used either way, of course. Instead of showing ourselves as we truly are, we show ourselves as we believe others want us to be. We wear masks, and with practice we do it better and better, and they serve us well –except that it gets very lonely inside the mask, because inside the mask that each of us wears there is a person who both longs to be known and fears to be known. In this sense every man is an island separated from every other man by fathoms of distrust and duplicity. Part of what it means to be is to be you and not me, between us the sea that we can never entirely cross even when we would. “My brethren are wholly estranged from me,” Job cries out. “I have become an alien in their eyes.”

The paradox is that part of what binds us closest together as human beings and makes it true that no man is an island is the knowledge that in another way every man is an island. Because to know this is to know that not only deep in you is there a self that longs above all to be known and accepted, but that there is also such a self in me, in everyone else the world over. So when we meet as strangers, when even friends look like strangers, it is good to remember that we need each other greatly, you and I, more than much of the time we dare to imagine, more than much of the time we dare to admit.

Island calls to island across the silence, and once, in trust, the real words come, a bridge is built and love is done –not sentimental, emotional love, but love that is pontifex, bridge-builder. Love that speaks the holy and healing word which is: God be with you, stranger who is no stranger. I wish you well. The islands become an archipelago, a continent; become a kingdom whose name is the Kingdom of God.”
― Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark

first full moon in june...

It's every gift you could ever imagine wanting at Christmas.  It's the Easter Bunny and the prize egg rolled up in one.  It's your favorite birthday cake lathered with green icing and homemade decorations.  It's better than the white Schwinn that had only three gears.  It's the road trip of a lifetime that is never going to end.  It's the green of Ireland and the mist of Scotland.  It's a lone bagpiper on a sandy stretch of a Carolina beach piping an ancient Celtic tune.  It's the blue ribbon you never won.  It's the red dress you're dreaming of.  It slipped in on a magic carpet...at exactly the right time.  Just the way full moons do.  It was the first full moon in June!/?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver                   Summer's Day

           "Sometimes I think
           That love is somewhere
            Living on an island all alone.
            I can see it in the darkness
            I can feel it in the distance
            And then its gone...
            And it always will be..."
                        

bejesus...

be·je·sus/biˈjēzəs/

Noun:

An exclamation traditionally attributed to the Irish, used to express surprise or for emphasis. Sometimes people scare the bejesus out of me...not the murderers; not the the leaders of the theft rings; not the income tax evaders, etc.  We all understand their actions as reprehensible and not to be tolerated in a civil society.  The ones that scare me the most are the manipulators, the passive aggressive smile-on-their-face, lie-to-your-face-never-get-to-the-bottom-of-the-pile person...the actors of this world...speaking one creed, living another.  Yes, they scare the bejesus out of me!!

"some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen" (michael jordan)...or back to the future...

Salters Depot (Photo by Marlo McCutcheon)

Holding on until lightning strikes...that's me!  Scotch-Irish stubborn I am with hint of red-hair feisty. Tired of holding on...making it happen is where the magic shows up.  How does a shy girl run into the future with both arms open wide and no fear or doubt whatsoever?  How many noes does it take to conjure up just the right yes?  How many crooked roads end with a 'welcome home'?  It doesn't matter because when you truly know what you want, you get it.  I remember playing teacher as a little girl.  I would watch Captain Kangaroo and whatever else flashed across the black and white screen, pack my books, and head out to the giant oaks that graced the end of the long, shady, sandy lane at Route 2, Box 72, Salters.  I honed my skills on the roots of those giant oaks.  Well, guess what?  I grew up to be that teacher and can't seem to escape it...no matter the effort.  Geography seems not to enter into the equation.  No matter where I roam, the dream from long ago comes knocking on my door.  Someone please tell me.  Why didn't I play being a millionaire?

Country Roads, Salters Depot (Photo by Marlo McCutcheon)

go as far as you can go and then you are there...

Figurehead of the HMS Caledonia at Robert Sarco's
Antique Sales and Restorations, Hollywood 

On the road again.  It's dark thirty...my little sideways moniker for the ungodly early morning hours. I barrel down Maybank, cross bridges, dodge bright lights, navigate the dark and sinuous twists and turns of River Road, cross the Stono (twice), wait in line on Main Road, cross the Limehouse, and then finally break free on the Savannah Highway!  Where are these people going, and why are there so many of them?  I yearn to be alone on River Road so I can entertain some sort of magic for the day ahead.  Alone...my mantra.  Overhanging oak branches hold hands and sing a little pluff mud song in the salty breeze. I cross nine bridges...give or take...and narrow country roads wind past places like the the Lazy B,  the hefty once-upon-a-time figurehead of the HMS Caledonia, various creeks and landings, white squirrels, and a village on Yonges Island.  I take a long, deep draw of creek smell and my mind's eye visualizes the people whose lives are tied to such places as Red Top, Peter's Field, Ravenel, Meggett, Rantowles, Sugar Hill, Adam's Run, and Edisto.  I go as far as I can go; I turn left; and I am someplace I swore I would never be again.  The moon sets; day dawns; bells ring; and then...?  Oh yes, I hear God laughing!  And I do think He laughs at me?

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started
   And know the place for the first  time.

T.S. Eliot -- "Little Gidding" (Four Quartets)

Love this little boat.  You can find it at Sarco's, too!

Mustang...do you have one in red?

on the hidden and to those who saved us...

 "...the effects of [her] life were noble, though they were not widely visible...the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and things that are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."  George Eliot (Middlemarch)

Selling the golden leaf in Williamsburg County, South Carolina

   "Grandmither, think not I forget, when I come back to town,

An' wander the old ways again, an' tread them up and down.

I never smell the clover bloom, nor see the swallows pass,

Without I mind how good ye were unto a little lass."

Grandmither, Think Not I Forget, Willa Cather

Photo from The News and Courier (Charleston) August 4, 1948

never been kissed by a boll weevil...

"Never been...never been kissed by a boll weevil," she sighs...with jaw-dropping insight.  "What's a girl to do?"  To be honest, not one of those hot, come hither, gotta have you kisses that a girl never forgets belonged to a boll weevil.  I have received my fair share of kisses a girl is oh so happy to file away under look what I just endured.  Sorry guys, I'm sure you felt the same way.  So, here's the deal.  Now, you would have to be from Kingstree to really understand the boll weevil kiss and know what all the fuss is about.  I put myself on the fast track.  I graduated from high school a year early.  I read every book I could get my hands on, visited my grandparents, memorized  the gospels-in particular the Gospel of Mark-(and please forgive me, O Holy Father, I'm not all that fond of it to this very day), picked and shelled butter beans, jumped cotton bales at the gin in Salters, and "put-in" tobacco.  Always had to "hand," never could "string," and was always looking up...up into the top of the barn to be exact...thinking how can he, whoever he was on that particular day, perch so precariously and fling his arms about all at the same time?  But what I really wanted was to drive the tractor...as in, how fast can it go, or take off exploring down some never before traveled lane?  Let's throw in some good works (they were genuine) and my various jobs...paying and otherwise.  They. Tried. To. Domesticate. Me.  The sad truth is I spent far too much time being serious...serious enough for forty boatloads of people.  I was around adults solving serious problems or enjoying them.  I'm not sure which.  But the fact of the matter is, I missed my boll weevil childhood and adolescence.  I missed all the fun.  Not good.  Must be corrected.  So, here I sit on my Folly with a bad Butler dog trying to figure out how to correct something I just recognized as missing from my life.  "No," I must say to my past and those who inhabited it.  "The ferris wheel in Myrtle Beach does not in anyway make up for missing a boll weevil kiss.  And you know what I mean!"

"It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive."  Bruce Springsteen 

KHS 1970

lucky strike or L.S.M.F.T....

Lucky Strike was a three-legged hound dog.  I can still see her hobbling around the yard at Route 2, Box 72, Salters...loping in and out around the giant oaks...lounging under the porch in the heat of the day, gazing into the beyond...usually to Union Presbyterian.  Maybe she felt the call.  She always seemed deep in thought.  Strike, as we called her, lost a leg in a chance encounter with an electric fence...probably while on a chase.  She never gave up hunting though.  Her uneven gait became her gift.  Daddy called her the "arithmetic dog"...put down three and carry one.  Country people have dogs that are useful...they hunt, they bark at night-prowling strangers, they round up stray children and beasts, they whiz through the woods in chase, and they ride shotgun in pickup trucks.  I always loved Strike from a distance.  It now seems odd to me that I think of her almost every day.  I don't recall ever playing with Strike, chasing her, having her chase me, throwing a ball, or running through the fields with her, but there was something in those lonesome eyes that still calls to me across the years.  Strike was one of us much like Pet and Black, the mules, and Tony's dog, Rambo.  Yes, she was named after a cigarette brand...the same brand that would spark the cancer that would eventually wring the life out of a man ill-suited for happiness.  So, I guess I can't think of Strike and not think of him.  The lucky part I haven't figured out yet!