Burnt Sage & Blunt Truths

 From my house, I can see the cotton gin behind the Subway across the street. For weeks now, it’s been running nonstop, like most of the gins in this part of the world at this time of year. The cotton fields have been picked bare, and enormous bales sit waiting in the fields and crowding the gin lots. Harvest doesn’t punch a clock. It’s an all-day, every-day operation. And the dust? Incredible. Especially this year, when the rain just hasn’t come. Everything already feels dry and coated, and the gins keep right on running. Even the trees look worn out. Those changing leaves might pass for autumn color at a glance, but around here, drought is doing its share of the decorating. And the farmers around here are hurting. From where I’m sitting, the economy is in the tank. But seed still has to be bought. Fuel still has to go into the equipment. Machinery still breaks, and somebody has to pay to fix it. Where the gins own the land, the men and women farming it can still be the ones footi...

Everyone talks a good game about community. We need connection. We need gathering spaces. We need teachers, organizers, advocates, mentors, and people willing to step forward. We need someone to build the thing. And once someone does, an awful lot of people seem to believe their contribution is complete because they showed up to enjoy it. Someone else can pay the venue deposit. Someone else can buy the supplies, organize the schedule, answer the messages, manage the disagreements, and stay late to clean up. Someone else can absorb the financial shortfall and the emotional fallout. After all, they’re passionate about it. Apparently, passion is now a currency accepted by landlords, insurance companies, and the electric company. Mine must be the wrong denomination. A community cannot keep treating its leaders’ passion as an unlimited resource and then act surprised when it runs out. I’m talking about community leaders, movement leaders, spiritual leaders, and the people whose names may ne...

The state of my world right now is a state of grace and peace. Along with a houseful of love and fur babies.  I almost hesitate to write that down. After the last few months, saying something like that aloud feels suspiciously like tempting the universe to hand me another administrative clusterfuck. But there it is. Peace. And I intend to enjoy it without checking behind the curtains for the next catastrophe. There is still money owed to me. I would certainly appreciate it arriving sooner rather than later, preferably without requiring a congressional inquiry, three tracking numbers, and a ritual performed over a postal sorting machine. But I am confident it will find me. That confidence is a welcome change. There is something exhausting about having to chase what already belongs to you, particularly when the people holding it get to go home at five while you lie awake doing arithmetic. For now, I have stepped away from that particular midnight accounting department. Last week, I w...

There comes a point in every move when you stop living out of boxes and start putting your life back together. The furniture gets arranged. The kitchen begins to resemble a place where actual food might be prepared. The bedroom stops looking like a temporary holding area for exhausted humans and starts looking like somewhere a person might willingly spend eight hours unconscious. And where one, octogenarian cat (in cat years) vomits loudly every night.  And slowly, ever so slowly, the place starts feeling like home. We're getting there. The apartment is finally shedding that live-in college dorm room aesthetic. You know the one. Everything technically has a place, except nothing is in its place, half your belongings are still packed, and you have to move three things just to get to the one thing you actually need. It's less welcome to our home and more welcome to the aftermath of a particularly aggressive game of Tetris. But progress is progress. The bedroom is coming togethe...

I have just uncovered the real secret history of witchcraft . Forget moon phases. Forget Mercury retrograde. Forget the complicated correspondence tables. Witches are cranky because their familiars are fucking cats. And cats do not observe human concepts such as sleep , quiet hours , personal space , or the structural integrity of plastic bags. What I experienced last night was apparently: 12:00 AM: One cat begins an aria entitled THE DOOR IS CLOSED AND THIS IS AN OUTRAGE. 2:00 AM: Another discovers plastic. CRONCH CRONCH CRONCH. 4:00 AM: THE THUNDERDOME OPENS. Two cats who have lived in the same house for approximately three weeks decide that tonight is the perfect night to settle several ancient territorial disputes dating back to the Mesozoic Era. 4:17 AM: Screaming. 4:19 AM: Hissing. 4:21 AM: Running approximately 900 miles per hour across the house. 4:22 AM: Something falls over. 4:23 AM: Silence. You think, Finally. 4:24 AM: MRRRRROOOOOOOOW. And somewher...

Somewhere between “In Transit” and “Good Luck” There is a special kind of modern frustration that comes from watching a piece of mail disappear while your tracking number continues to insist that everything is perfectly normal. You know the routine. You hand something to the United States Postal Service. It gets a tracking number. You watch it move. Then it arrives in Memphis. And apparently, Memphis is where time and mail go to die. I personally know someone who waited 34 days for a certified letter with tracking to reach its destination. Thirty-four. Days. A certified letter is not supposed to require an archaeological expedition. And yet here we are. Now, before somebody starts screaming that one person's experience doesn't prove the entire Memphis postal system is broken, you're right. It doesn't. And I have receipts for hundreds of people who have experienced the same exact thing.  But it does raise an interesting question when that experience exists alongside year...

  Sleepless in Monette It is 5:15 in the morning in Monette, Arkansas. The house is quiet—or as quiet as a house containing four cats, several humans, and enough collective irritation to power a small municipality can reasonably be expected to be. Everyone else is asleep. Sensible people are asleep. Even the sun has declined to participate in this nonsense. And then there is me. I am awake, staring into the predawn darkness while my brain conducts another emergency meeting that absolutely could have been an email. Did the check ever exist? Was it actually mailed? Where is the money? How many bills are waiting patiently—or not so patiently—for funds I was assured were already “in the mail”? At this point, “the check is in the mail” has joined “I’ll call you back in ten minutes” and “someone will get back to you shortly” in the Museum of Things People Say When They Want You to Stop Asking Questions. Admission is free. The gift shop accepts imaginary checks. I have been in Arkansas fo...