Met Cleatus and Connie at the Gin last night. How delightful to spend a little time with sympathetic people. Cleatus and I both talked about the current insanity. We spoke in low tones as one tends to do these days. I don’t feel much like writing poetry these days, one of us says. The other concurs.
It’s going to reach 103° today. If I’m going to get my bike ride in, I had better do it early. The prediction is for 108° tomorrow and 109° on Sunday. The lake is being sucked dry by the pumps moving the water to the Georgetown lake. Some time ago, the growth in Georgetown moved past its capacity to support itself with local water. Range wars have been fought over less.
There’s also simple evaporation. The trend for hotter and drier is obvious to anyone who bothers with the matter. My lawn is turning to dust.
When the water runs out…
When the water runs out, will they blame the poets. Will they call it God’s punishment on a nation that drove prayer out of the schools.
I sip my coffee. Take a breath. I talk silently to God—a brief prayer—though if one understands the nature of God, he or she will understand that every thought carries the potential for prayer. With every thought we stand naked before God. Just as I am, without one plea—the old gospel whispers in our ear.
I find myself weeping for the world—but not for me. I take another breath. It is July of my seventy-second year. I am still here—for now. I know who I am, what I’m here for. I am here to take it all in and remember. To remember honestly and as truthfully as I can is my job. To write as much of it as I can, though writing isn’t necessary—still it helps.
In Virginia’s A Room of One’s Own, she writes that the duty and opportunity of the writer is to live in the presence of reality. When you do, there is this freedom that comes with it, a freedom not otherwise afforded. It is an almost boundless freedom—a dangerous way to live. But just a taste of it, and one realizes there is no other way to live.
Not just the writer—any artist, any scientist, any person who desires to be whole.
Love,
Brady