ENRAPTURED, 21 May 2011

(PHOTO: Robert Baxter)



It only lasted a few minutes, but sitting by the river as night came on it seemed that everything was right--the river's details swaddled in gold, the black stripes on a golden bumblebee, the river uncurling from light into dark, on its way across this grand old peninsula where--near what Daddy called Cedar Keys (plural)--it enters the Gulf. Perfect, the world is perfect, its light spilling upriver from the west, blasting cedar trunks into golden staves, woven and rewoven daily in the flights of its birds--small, black, white with yellow legs, the red-shouldered hawk--all stitching the invisible shirt of the world that holds me here, beneath the delicate call of the screech owl.

DEAR FOLLOWERS,

Hi, there, followers of my blog. You were two and now you are five. YOU ARE WELCOME!

I can't post tonight but I've got some stuff piling up here, so tomorrow there should be new material. Oh, wait! here's a photo of my driveway, leafing out. You can see the house beyond and Thomas the Cat in the foreground:

Gorgeous, isn't it? I wish I could name all the different hues of green I see outside. (I also wish I weren't allergic to oak pollen.)

As long as I've opened this window and am typing, I do have one more thing to report: yesterday I drove to Valdosta, GA, for a reading/signing of the new book, THE SALVATION OF MAGGIE RIDER: Stories from Nokoftaand when I got there was surprised to see what a large space the Valdosta Daily Times gave me, announcing the reading, including a photo of me, and a picture of the book. What interested me most, however, were the questions my interviewer, Dean Poling (author of Waiting for Willie and Cowboy Boots and Pony Tales, asked. Try this: "With exception of young Maggie Rider who seems like a bridge from one era to the next, this book's characters seem to have a dual quality of being timeless while their time's running out. None more so than the tragic Gus. Not giving too much away, is it fair to say Gus represents the mystery of Florida's past and that when Maggie discovers Gus's mystery, one era ends and a new one begins?"

Sometimes the critics enlarge one's reading and Dean's question reminded me of that; not that I know the answer to his question. I did respond, though: "I think the reader decides that; really, I do. The book means whatever the reader takes it to mean."(And it will be that way until writers can stand over the shoulders of each reader and tell him or her what was intended.)

After the reading, my friend Mary Alice Warren and I met Haley and Barry Hyatt of Valdosta for food and drink at a charming place that allows its patrons to eat reclining on couches rather than at tables if they choose. I hope I get to go back to Valdosta soon. It's a charming city and I'm near certain I spent time with two of its most charming citizens.

GRANDFATHER GREYBEARD

[This photo courtesy of Robert Baxter]

I got an email yesterday, telling me of another friend, an older woman in Jacksonville, whose health has taken a turn for the worst. It seems I have so many sick and dying friends--and my friends who aren't sick also report they have sick and dying friends. Is it our age?

I first saw the Grandfather Greybeard tree behind the Alachua house with the yellow pine floors--in my own backyard in spring, 1976. That was my first spring in the house built in 1926 that had only two owners before me. The second owner was wild for plants and she'd been there fifty years: Professor Sargent and Pink Perfection camellias, walls of azaleas, red and pink roses and 50 square feet of white Cherokee, the climbing rose. Come spring, this tree of white beards appeared in the far back corner of the property. When my Gainesville boyfriend originally viewed the house and I asked what he thought I should do first, he replied, "Cut down this forest back here." I grew to love it, but I sold the place in 1990.

I didn't know how young I was in 1990, but I know now. I didn't know when I sold the Alachua house and moved to MS, that my mother would go right downhill and get a cancer diagnosis within the year. That's what the Jax friend has--cancer, and I think like Mother she's not going to fight it. I'm told that when her doctor informed my mother that if she didn't have surgery, the cancer would kill her, Mother stuck to her original "no," shook her head, and remarked, "Everybody's got to die of something." She was 86.

Just yesterday I decided to push my own estimated point of departure to 90 in order to finish these manuscripts. Until yesterday I thought I'd go at 86; I don't know which is more difficult, the knowledge my own death is coming at me, faster and faster, or the goodbyes I'm constantly saying to friends, falling fast, like today's bits of oak pollen flying through the air.



Yesterday I saw many smaller specimens of Grandfather Greybeard, dappling the newly-green woods on either side of the entrance to Suwannee Springs Park near Live Oak. There's also one a hundred yards upriver I have to lean out from the deck to see.

This morning I saw a huge (4-1/2")yellow and black butterfly sail past the kitchen window, got out binoculars, and identified it as the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Papilio glaucus. The weather's been cool since our Big Rain two days ago that brought the river's water level up.


I believe tomorrow's prediction puts the high temp somewhere in the 80s; I hope we get a breeze along with it. And maybe I'll see some more Greybeards on my way to the reading at South Georgia Regional Library in Valdosta. I think I"ll count how many because I know they won't be with me long.

BOOK EVENT IN GEORGIA

BOOK COVER PAINTING FOR MAGGIE RIDER BY JOHN RICE OF LIVE OAK, FL


2 p.m., 2 April 2011 - South Georgia Regional Library, Valdosta, GA: Reading/signing for THE SALVATION OF MAGGIE RIDER: Stories from Nokofta.

NEWS FOR FRIENDS OF NORTH FLORIDA CENTER FOR DOCUMENTARY STUDIES, INC.

NFCDS,INC. officers Frank M. Cellon and Sudye Cauthen met today over huge plates of food at Lake City's Red Lobster, then split their dessert of Key Lime Pie. The meeting was useful, fattening, and pleasurable. It moved our next project--THE PLACE OF OUR REMEMBRANCE--forward. We made important decisions, leafed through old photos, considered inclusions, exclusions, attitude, and prospective dates of completion.

THE CENTER'S NEXT EVENTS:

Saturday, April 9 - Tower Road Library, Gainesville, FL 2-4 p.m. - WRITE. WRITE IT NOW! Tips, Tricks, and Techniques for the Writing Life, a Creative Writing Workshop led by Sudye Cauthen & open to the public. Reserve space at library.

Sunday, APRIL 17 - Tower Road Library, Gainesville, FL 2-4 p.m. - MEET MAGGIE RIDER 7 FRIENDS (a reading and signing) open to the public.

COME SUNDAY! Meet MAGGIE RIDER & FRIENDS & hear LLOYD BALDWIN'S MUSIC

The hope for human civilization and the planet.

"If human nature is materialist to the core--self-serving, utilitarian, and pleasure-seeking--then there is little hope of resolving the empathy/entropy paradox. But if human nature is, rather, at a more basic level, predisposed to affection, companionship, sociability, and empathic extension, then there is the possibility, at least, that we might yet escape the empathy/entropy dilemma and find an accommodation that will allow us to restore a sustainable balance with the biosphere.

A radical new view of human nature has been slowly emerging and gaining momentum, with revolutionary implications for the way we understand and organize our economic social and environmental relations in the centuries to come. We have discovered Homo empathicus."