“I turned around and looked at Hankow. No one could say it was a pretty city but today, with spring in the air, it was at its best. I tried to memorize the Bund. The American flag flying over the consulate. The branches of the plane trees bumpy with buds. The clock on the Customs House, looking down, like a great-uncle, on us all.” Jean Fritz, Homesick
More so than January, June always seems poetic, young, full of promise. Even in the tropics, where there is no line of demarcation between winter and spring, between brown and green, between cold and warm — even here, June is full of hope. I turn the calendar page, and I hear it sing.
“Did it grow flowers yet? Did it grow flowers?” she asks of crumbling earth and tiny seeds and an old clay pot.
“No”, I tell her. “Not yet.”
But maybe this will be the year.
Spring here doesn’t approach slowly with neon green buds or opening blossoms. There is no fading ice, no crocuses or daffodils. Spring here is akin to a lobster in a pot of water, temperature unconsciously leaping upward, a baptism by immersion of drenched air and torrential rain until the whole wet world is submerged.
There is one month left between us and hurricane season, between us and and daily electrical storms. One month left until the six-month stretch of tropical storms begin and the canned goods stack up under the countertop and the gallons of water in the closet are restocked and clocks are reset by the rhythm of cyclical thunder and the afternoons are spent inside.
Inside, outside, inside, outside, inside.
One month left until the sidewalks are rivers and the windows are our constant view to the outside deluge.
I want to see beauty in it this year. I want to see beauty in the spongey grass and the low skies and the waterlogged earth and the thick roadside ponds and the one single shade of green coating it all. I want to see it for what it is, rather than what it is not. It is not the thin high skies specked with pollen and pine resin and wildfire, it’s not the sun-baked clay earth that shatters into a million immobile pieces every summer, it’s not twisted oak silhouettes or mountain ridges. The sunsets are pastel, not copper, but we are the same people here as we are anywhere.
This is a journey of becoming, after all, and a journey is not where you put on the skids and claw and pound your tent stakes in deeper and rage against the rain. Sojourning means you tend to your fires and your campsite wherever you are, keeping the light alive from dawn to dusk, no matter if you’ll pull up stakes tonight or in three months or in a year. You pull your loves in closer, you keep your eyes to the light, and in the darkness you see the One who pulls the tides and pushes the moon and punctured heaven to give you stars has not failed you yet.
And so you tarry, and so you sojourn, and so you live.
“Underneath this billboard with my thumb up sticking in the air,
take me to New York, New York or California I don’t care…
…feels like this county line only ties me down…
feels like this interstate just circles back around.”
-Jill Phillips
“Look up, look up it’s like the sky is falling
down on us, on us.
Wake up, wake up it’s just this dream I have,
it’s made for us, for us.
Well, I can’t be anything I’m not;
you get what you see.
But I’m gonna give you everything I got —
I’m not living in the in-between,
I’m not living in the in-between.”
-Bebo Norman
I hardly ever post mobile photographs here — I think low-res images are better suited to Instagram than blogs — but I couldn’t resist sharing this chalk art!
My mind can hardly wrap around such talent. It’s the transitory nature of this medium that is the most profound to me, I think. The image will only last a short time. The artists know this work is temporary, and yet create greatness anyway.
We’re in Minnesota right now, and I’m thoroughly enjoying this (entirely unintentional) break from blogging. I’m still carrying my iPod everywhere, though, so you can follow me on Instagram if you’d like to keep up with some of our summer vacation moments.
Hope you’re all enjoying a terrific July!
The Oaxacaborn Blog 