Forget transitions

A couple of weeks ago, I heard writer _____ (hm. have to get frank to remind me of her name) speak and she said that since she’d gotten older, she didn’t have time for transitions-- not “like her brother, she loved sand castles, too” and not “meanwhile across town.” She said that in real life, events just butt up against each other and vie for attention.

So the other night, I was playing guitar in my backyard, and as I tried to get the rhythm right on Aeroplane Over the Sea, the coyotes across the street started up, huge noise, and I was telling Dad about it later and he said, “speaking of the coyotes across the street, have you done your taxes?” and I thought that was a good punchline. I’m full of transitions, I think it’s part of what we do, but she’s on to something, too.

I picked up a guy on the interstate today; an old black man with a broke-down old station wagon waving a gas can. I want to live in a place where people (with some careful eyes to survey a scene mind you) can pick people up and be picked up if they are in trouble stranded on the highway miles from the nearest exit. So I act like the person I want to see out there. His name was Charles. Of course the first thing he said was, “you know God is going to bless you” and I said that that wouldn’t hurt and that was fine and he was glad and I was glad if healthily wary and onward to the gas station. And then he had to start in on how pretty I looked. And I guess the idea might have been to flatter me, but I think it’s usually more about what the guy wants than about kind words. So, look folks, if I give you a ride I don’t want to hear it. It is not polite to want me. If I look pretty, I know it and when strangers say it, it says a lot more about them than it does about me. Oh and I asked Charles how it was living in Oklahoma. He said, “Bad. But there were a lot of Indians.”

I think Dairy Queen would have gone out of business years ago if it hadn’t been for the Blizzard. On Highway 259 in Smith Grove, Kentucky-- at least I think that’s where I was; I went from Western KY to Birmingham today-- I saw one advertising a “Dream a dream pie” Blizzard. Kentucky was a dream a dream pie for the eyes this morning. She has a special way of bringing together burnt orange grass stalks with new green growth starting up below and blue skyline cut diagonal by the hilly horizon, stately red barn standing with its feet a little wide apart on either side of the barn door, a little knock-kneed in its old age, little strip malls each with their storefront churches. “Nothing Fancy Church” sticks with me. I passed three billboards of the ten commandments before I hit Tennessee. I wondered whether they were Really trying to tell me to honor my father and mother, or just trying to warn me that this was God’s country and that I had better repent or keep driving. My friend out in that neck of the woods has become a serious person of faith and an evangelical in a way that perhaps Western Kentucky inspires. I think that maybe being an Evangelical is hard on believers-- when your faith demands that you convert others, you have to translate the silent language of belief and simple faith into all sorts of words, into all sorts of apologies and arguments. You have to speak History and Psychology and Philosophy besides just the Language of the Heart. I thought about it a little as I rolled along in the early morning cool, until I got to one of those vistas that lay out miles of hills and valleys before me and the rose of the new sun, horses grazing quietly, and in that moment, the Language of the Heart, of pure blank belief was all I could feel.

Tennessee and Alabama had things to say, too, although they don’t speak as clear to me as Kentucky does. Tennessee Highway 431 reminded me that it is IMPOSSIBLE to imitate old money houses without OLD TREES. The tottering little cottege that hasn’t been painted in fifty years outshines the new brick stuff on trees alone. And Decatur says that we should build more highway bridges low to the water so folks can fish off of them. And check out the rocket at the Huntsville rest stop. Who in their right mind would believe that that thing could get to outer space. Strange world.

And if you’ve just found this because I said, “Hey guess what I have a blog now,” welcome!