5 Points in late March

The new blossoms, a ghostly pale pink, hang brightly on delicate branches in the spring twilight. The effect is that of tiny drops of paint transferred to an indigo canvas by the gentle, meaningful flick of an unseen wrist. They will be gone soon.

Turning and meandering aimlessly through the five points with the car windows open, you cross from the east side to the west, and then back again. The radio has been turned off, although the dull hiss of traffic still seems remote, as if it's being refracted through the dusky haze. The houses around here are mostly similar in style, but charmingly and consistently unique at the same time. A diamond shaped stained glass window gazes mutely from its gable at something that seems to be just beyond view. One home, its windows unlit, has been overgrown with weeds and ivy. It sits on its lot like a dark secret or a forlorn passenger at a bus terminal. On other streets, reading lamps flicker and glow from galleries and porches.

A street man passes on an old bicycle, speaking to himself and staring straight ahead. He's wandering the neighborhood like you, but what would you have to say to each other? A young couple is sitting on their porch. When you pass by again several minutes later, they've disappeared. Down towards the center, people are buying wine at the gas station and passing through the intersection on their way home from work.

A soft breeze has been blowing intermittently throughout the evening, and now begins to blow again. It carries the spring promise of rain and a scattering of the early blossoms. The gloaming twilight has gathered thickest in the eaves of the smaller homes, and small birds dart towards their secret nests...perhaps even a bat can be seen fluttering in a cryptic rythym through the warm, dark air. The sky is cobalt, or maybe indigo, behind the intricate, spectral network of pecan and oak branches that line and canopy the streets. Before long, they'll be dense with emerald green leaves, and the sky will be harder to see.

Eventually, the solitary pattern of traffic begins to repeat itself, and there's nowhere left to go. It's time to head home. Driving back, lights can be seen on some of the graves in the cemetery, while other, older sections are dark. Night has fallen, and headlights boil out of the gloom, their beams bouncing off of blank windows and the cemetery wall. The changing of the season, like always, carries a deceptive sense of hope that is appealing to the lonely and bored, but reality is a dark, empty house and the prospect of another uncertain day.

TBL

Women without whiskey

The highway's humming in my head and it's hard to hear
Would you read my lips if I pulled you near enough?
Could you read my fortune in the bottem of this coffee cup
Tell me how to tell when I've had enough
If morning's a bitch with open arms,
Tonight's a girl who's gone to far
Whiskey's harder to keep than a woman and it's half as sweet but
Women without whiskey, Women without whiskey
Whiskey's hard to beat
Whiskey's hard to beat

Drive By Truckers

Rock of Ages

Round, round, I wanna go round
wanna see the rock of ages
when my body gives out gonna read the final pages

Oh, my mother who's gone
she told me I should meet her
Someday streets of gold
Gonna guide me on to greet her

Gillian Welch

Edges

the edge of a forest went shallow in twilight
the edge of a blade drew a line with a clue
the edge of a cliff too sharp for crossing
the edge of the world still known to a few

skepticism; lead and aether

....

Please don't be angry with me
I heard you crying in your sleep
You never told me what was wrong
You just looked at me and walked away

There's a strong wind blowing
And it's sweeping through some sun burned valley
There's a strong wind blowing
It's blowing a fire through our sun burned valley

A fire's been burning in both of us
And you walked away, burning, burning
Fire is going to swallow us all
Fire has taken us whole

There's a soft wind blowing
It's blowing softly through your sleep
There's a soft wind blowing while I whisper in your ear
It's blowing my voice away while you dream

TBL

"The frontier moves with the sun and pushes the Red Man of these wilderness forests in front of it until one day there will be nowhere left. Then our race will be no more, or be not us...But once, we were here." Chingachgook

"Nothing is gained by doing one thing with your body and another with your mind."

Mark Twight