Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

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 hard freeze

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I've been told the south is a fairly strange place to live. I'm inclined to agree. Here in the south the weather allows us just enough time for our crops to grow, but not to be harvested. I can look at rows and rows of Bradford pear trees in full bloom for a couple of days, their pungent odor filling my nostrils like the smell of stale sex. I can pick one, maybe two bouquets of daffodils. I can almost flush the winter from my system...and then it happens.

Hard freeze.

Around this time of year people rush into their gardens and begin to plant seedlings that don't stand a chance. I learned a long time ago never to plant until after April 15. It won't freeze after that. Never. But still all sorts of people and plants alike try to beat the system. They forget every year how it works. How life will treat them and their work. How all their effort will be lost over night.

I forget myself. I open the windows and fall asleep in the gentle mild breezes so typical this time of year. I wake up freezing. I've lost two orchids and a bansai to the hard freeze. I've lost piece of mind and my nerve. I've picked up guitars wrenched hopelessly out of tune because of radical changes in the climate. I've gone out without my coat only to wander the tracks shivering. I've thought about the cardinal, but haven't seen him.

And still they plant. And still things grow.

I guess in that respect the south is a strange place to live. A place where people refuse to accept fact, a stubborn place. A place where folks constantly challenge adversity in the hopes of beating the hard freeze. A place where, during the harsh summer months, sand yields tobacco fields in great stretches that steal your breath away. A place where year after year bulbs push through the ground like the shells and bodies near Verdun.

Endlessly.

A place where I live. Where I refuse to accept fact. Where I don't give up. Where I don't negotiate. Where I forget how the cycle works and given the time, will try everything I've failed at before, once again.

The south is no pep-talk. It is a place of extremes. A place of racism. A place where anti-Semites find refuge. A place forged on ideas the rest of the country has abandoned. It can be the tackiest and most beautiful place I've ever known. Yet somewhere within the environment, behind the shell, is a kind place where most of us live.

A place where once a year all living things are reminded of the hard freeze...

goodnight 3.10.98