Missive the Thirty-Eighth
I Love the Temple Dome
Of the Rosebud.
DATELINE: Friday, November 24, 2000, at 2300 hours CDT.
Conway, Arkansas, USA
By D. Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles
CornDancer & Company
I love rain that falls when mother earth is thirsty. I love cold winds in late autumn, men breathing like dragons. I love the broad, green magnolia leaves when all the other trees have given up theirs.
I love praise, both the given and the received. I love the moment when a new document from one of CornDancer's writers arrives in the mail, telling me the connection is maintained for another round.
I love the bloom on the flower, the bean pod on the vine of July, the texture of fertile soil as it sifts through my fingers, the pregnant haze of a midsummer evening at the cluttered potting table, the trowel and nitrogen, clay and humus, the hope and germination, the sapling and the nut.
White Oak, Walnut, Winy Bottomland Cypress.
I love the smell of white oak shavings on the worktable - and the aroma of Ozark walnut, salvaged old pine, western red cedar, and the winy bottomland cypress in the cool of a morning.
The magnolia with its sheltering leaves is the island of green in the deciduous seasonal starkness. The cold wind of November is a rightful harbinger of the winter. The cut wood becomes sawn lumber to support and decorate our shelters.
I love God. The many gods are all the same God, the same Feast, the One and the same beneficence. El, Nan, Ish, Ra, Ohm, Ain. Six is the number of man. Seven is the number of the divine, unspeakable. I love the unfolding of the scroll.
Praise is the writer's elixir. Are you, too, insecure? Is your insecurity assuaged by praise?
The Leaf of the Ginkgo, the Conch, the Okra Pod.
I love the golden leaf of the Ginkgo, Tuesday's gift from the mistress of the hacienda. The tightly woven, tubular strands of the maidenhair leaf are a visual echo of the ribs of the conch's shell. I love the forms of nature, the way mankind mimics them, the temple dome of the rosebud and the armor plating of the okra pod.
When the hour is late and the expectations for the morning are early, a short sleep is surely ahead. I love it, the precious sleep and the late hour and the richness of expectation. I know I will love the sharp jolt of the morning's first sip of coffee, the aroma of the boiling bean.
There is honor and dignity to perseverance, determination, adherence to principle. I think of Mandela, of Churchill, of the enemy Minh. I hated the enemy on the field of battle as I loved the enemy in the temporal distance of a bittersweet aftermath, the psychic debriefing.
I love the discovery of a technique that works, of a concept that closes a sore breach in the watchtower, of an idea that is real and unassailable. I love the wide river when it fades to deep maroon and purple in the last minutes of dusk. The beauty of the light's dance upon the waters is incredible, transient, unnerving.
Pies and Biscuits and Charts and Radars.
I remember now. I came to rest at the head of the tow, thousands of yards distant from the seven-thousand horsepower of diesel engine, which was propelling us with a fury downriver toward the distant port of New Orleans. I had walked on the edge of barge after barge, grain hopper and scrap-metal scow and anhydrous ammonia tanker, gloved hand on metal railing, booted feet over rigging and ratchet and cavil, to arrive on the arching bow of the lead barge, an empty riding high o'er the water. There in the quietness I escaped the rage of commerce, which was alight in the galley with its pies and biscuits, glowing in the pilothouse with its charts and radars.
The sun falls below the wooded horizon to my right, red to the port and green to the starboard, sand bars and snags, the twin strands of levee stretching forever on either side of the basin. Between my momentary sanctuary on the hard, dirty deck and the darkening clouds in the heavy sky, I see the underside of the arched bridge. It passes over, I drift beneath its painted steel trusses. I hear a vehicle rumble on the U.S. Highway, a numbered artery, which is planted in asphalt on the great bridge's gateway. I love the multiple, crisscrossing paths and the avenue to the City of Light.
I love to remember. It is a love that grows now that I remember more than I do, now that I reflect and ruminate more than I act and perform. I love the natural order. It brings me to the sunset of life, but I am buoyed by the knowledge of the long night ahead.
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