WAIT... Everyone quiet! If you listen close, just behind the announcer snake charming our skinny wallets, we can hear the sounds of the holiday left out in the cold by the dot dot dot gift-giving juggernaut. If my gastric impulse is aligned with the Mayan calendar’s prediction, it can only be the day yard fowl live to die for. Thanksgiving Day! And like all time tested traditions there usually comes wannabes leeching on its success. For nearly a decade now it has become apparent to few and new to more that the fourth Thursday in November has produced an itty bitty platform of loose style and jumbled imagery. And even though the United Daughters of the Confederacy dry heave when the “send” button is hit, this is The Chronicles of a Lost Southerner.
Once considered a meatloaf of 12 months worth of scribbled and orphan thoughts, Chronicles has become my literary equivalent of show n’ tale for friends and family. A celebration in prose, this day every year, a product of observations. Writing has become the connection to my posterity decades away. As my children will know me as father, my grandchildren only as old; their grandchildren will never experience me. Not consummated in narcissism, rather in compunction for not knowing those before my grandparents. Chronicles has become a public glimpse into my voice to the 4th generation and beyond. A cathartic exercise as mortalities final act is hopefully tardy, like sticking my hand as far down my soul and pulling up congenital peculiarities for those I will never ken.
Dignan’s notebook wrote of a 75 year plan… This southerner is shooting for verse that pushes through blood lines 300 years forward. Cuz if I’m working on something which can be completed in my lifetime, it ain’t big enough. As these thoughts are masked in androgyny, steeped in the emotions of tradition, and perfumed by the shadows of grace’s substance, let one’s posterity speak in the ears of the now. The mirrors forward extend as far as the mirrors to the rear -- connecting through multi-direction generations that enjoy chakra expansion as individual’s lineage aligns. Death doesn’t have to be the deal breaker.
What a cruel joke on this experience if Charles was correct. This whole sand castle with aware ants playing ant games, merely the random spawn of aimless space junk dancing in the soup of time. Even with that lingering, being addicted to the now is becoming more unsettling. It would be twisted humor to duct tape America’s fidget to the floor and watch with awe as their vagabond communication devices buzzed and beeped in a symphony of utilitarian oblivion. Driving the addict to social madness, as if the info junkie has become an abandoned dairy cow agonizing for the farmers hand to milk their brains of all the sweet substance the rest of the world must have to continue spinning. Perpetuating a false sense of life’s accomplishments.
I am cattle!
Thanks for letting me take up a bit of your attention. To my family this year I give thanks for having you all. To my friends I give thanks that none have been lost and a few friendships have been regained. Hopefully this day finds you well and in good spirits, and the rest of the seasons are full of importance. Until his time in twenty-ten, may we all enjoy this roller coaster ride.
Jarvis
