It's been a month

He rolled over, 

stretched his arm to the other side 

to see if she had come back to bed yet.  

Empty space.  

Eyes wide open, 

heart clenched like a fighter's fist,

 awareness:  she will never come back. 

Hot tears.

Sleeplessness 

until the dawn breaks.

Who Am I?

 

And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee.

And the spirit entered into me when he spake unto me, and set me upon my feet, that I heard him that spake unto me.  --Ezekiel 2:1-2, 6th century BC

Stand up, and the Spirit will help you stand.  

No Man is an Island

No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man

is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;

if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe

is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as

well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine

owne were; any mans death diminishes me,

because I am involved in Mankinde;

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. --John Donne, 1624

Every man is a part of everyman.  No one does it on his own.

Plagiarism?

 You can't scare me. I'm eighty-six years old, wore out, can't sleep at night, can't stay awake in the daytime, can't taste my food, can't hear the music, teeth gone, money gone, wife gone, whatta ya gonna do to me to make things worse? 

 

Approaches plagiarism, you say?  Maybe.  It is cobbled together from some lines I heard in an old Western movie from half-century ago and a verse in 2 Samuel 19:35, adding a sprinkling of my own experiences. 

 Solomon said, "There is no new thing under the sun." And Willa Cather wrote, “There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.”

What's the Point? #T

Twelve years ago today on a rainy night in the middle of Missouri I made my first blog post.  Here it is in its entirety.

 "Traveling Life's Road

"In Missouri at the end of a very rainy day on I-44.
Watching the 'debate' between two pretenders to the seat of power.

"There will be a tomorrow; but what are we going to do with it?

"For myself, I plan to get back on the highway and head on to Indiana.
But that's not what I mean."

I was right on at least one count: there has been a "tomorrow."  There have been many tomorrows I can see looking in the rear-view mirror.  I could scarcely have imagined even had I tried what those tomorrows would hold.  My retrospectroscope is so much more accurate than is my crystal ball.

When I first wrote on "String Too Short to Tie" I had a beautiful companion who shared my life, almost my every moment since that day.  Now I am alone.  Who would have predicted that?  I am older than she was, I am male, two factors that say I should have preceded her to eternal rest.  But the twists and quirks of life, the unexpected, in a word, is exactly the principal composition of life on this orb.

The past twelve years have been a joyous journey.  The companionship with my beloved is now but memories, wondrous and wonderful memories.  My proclivity to sit at the keyboard and pound out word after word, stringing them together to provide entertainment or enlightenment, if not for other readers at least for myself, seems to be shrinking, even as the body itself and probably the mind as well is in that stage of life where shrinkage seems to be the norm.

One who has read this far might well ask, "What is your point, vanilla?"  To which I would be compelled to reply, "Not everything has a point."  And I could go on from there to cite example after example from life in this day and age which surely would support the assertion.  i won't.

Be well, and keep the faith!

Sincerely,

vanilla

12 years and 2876 posts later

My Love

Today my sweetheart

my love

went for a ride in a long blue Cadillac

my love

rode past farm fields, silver-lined clouds

my love

with sunbeams streaming down 

my love

I rode behind her and I drove home

my love

did not return with me, the ground received

my love's 

body

But God received 

my love's 

spirit

My Love.

--September 28, 2020

JoAnn

                                           Grace JoAnn Womack Harrison Lacy

                                           October 5, 1937 - September 22, 2020

She stood faithfully and firmly by my side for more than twenty years. 

Crooked Nails and Generosity #T

 Cañon City, Colorado, summer 1940 my father in the process of building a church building is sitting on the ground, hammer in hand, a bent nail in the other hand held against a flat stone.  Dad is straightening used nails.  There is a small pile of nails next to him.  He places the straightened nails in a near-gallon lard bucket as he works.

Coming up Seventh Street we see an elderly gentleman, arrayed in full three-piece dress suit, starched collar, cravat, walking briskly to the north.  This is "Busy" Jones.  Mr. Jones acquired the appellation because he is busy.  He is milking virtually every cash cow in the community and though he has amassed a fortune the size of which the town busy-bodies speculate about and wish they knew.  Jones lives with his spouse in a nice but modest abode a few blocks north of the church site.  Jones walks to and from his office daily.

"Good day, Preacher," greets the old man

"Nice day, Mr. Jones," replies Father.  Dad drops a nail into the can, picks another from the pile and places it on the stone.  As he pecks at the crookedy nail with his hammer, Mr. Jones reaches into his pocket.  He pulls out a dime, drops it onto the mass of bent nails lying on the ground.

"Here, Preacher," he said, "go buy yourself some nails!"  He turns and heads on toward his domicile.

                                                   

I have speculated about this event over the years and have wondered if perhaps the old tight-wad acted that evening to buy himself a piece of heaven, for he was 74 years old at the time, or if he was just having a piece of fun with a "religious crank."

It was nearly a lifetime later that I grew curious enough about Jones to use the interwebby thingy to see what I could learn about him.  His name, which I had never known, was Lewis Jones.  He was born in 1866 and lived ninety years on this orb.  He built Cañon's theatre, The Skyline, in 1917 but sold it a few years later as he had many other fish to fry.  RIP, Busy.

Earthquake!

The words of Amos, who was among the herdmen of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel, two years before the earthquake.  --Amos 1:1 KJV

Some modern scholars refer to the earthquake mentioned here as the "Amos Earthquake."  Geologists, seismologists and archaeologists have verified that this quake occurred in 760 B.C. which would have been during the "days of Jeroboam."

The quake was estimated at 7.6 to 8.0 on the Richter Scale and its epicenter is placed roughly 60 miles north of the Sea of Galilee.  It was the largest temblor along that fault in the past 4000 years.