Morning Open Thread is a daily, copyrighted post from a host of editors and guest writers. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum.
I’ve come to think of this post as one where you come for the music and stay for the conversation—so feel free to drop a note. The diarist gets to sleep in if she so desires and can show up long after the post is published. So you know, it's a feature, not a bug.
Join us, please.
Good morning everyone.
While I write in the early morning hours, it’s the moonlight that helps me think. Last night she teased me and haunted me in turn. She reminded me of John Coltrane’s Sextet in the Village Vanguard and what it is to cry simply from feeling hollow. I’ve never been one to shy away from tears and never bought into the idea that crying show weakness (though I’m most certainly aware that this is the default cultural position here in the South).
Though I cry seldom, the combination of Coltrane and moonlight can be a near-lethal mixture for the wandering mind; and last night the familiar notes of the soprano sax and the shadows of the dancing bougainvillea reminded me of tears of regret. I beat a man in prison and I held another who had been serially abused. To the first—at the point I was exhausted and shaking uncontrollably—I whispered, “isn’t death the greatest of all human blessings”; to the second I lulled “you’re safe, now.”
Yeah, both statements were lies; but both were delivered with tears and a sincerity I damn well meant at the time. Years later, though, on pleasant nights with “A Love Supreme” playing and a moon shining bright, you begin to wonder whether you’ve done enough. You begin to wonder whether there is time to do more. On nights like that, I begin to wonder if all the tears in my life were wasted, only to remember those shed at the birth of a child or after making love for the first time to the woman who defines you. Like trying to describe the feelings stirred up by moon shadows on this patio, it’s complicated.
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Friday’s Lagniappe
This week’s highlight from The Bitter Southerner is "Why I Don't Hunt Anymore" by Charles Dodd White.
“When I hunted the Southern woods as a boy, my first concern had little to do with what I might kill. Instead, I time-traveled….[W]hen the weekends came around, a century dropped out from underneath me. My life became the ritual concerns of making camp, reading sign, collecting kindling. The campfire was by far my favorite TV program, and I could stare for hours into its suspense and drama. The most important lesson from the camp was what I could learn form the trials and creek beds and swamp bottoms and how they provided a sufficiency that would be hard to express to anyone who had never experienced it for themselves.
Today though, I feel no desire to pick up a rifle or a shotgun and walk the Tennessee ridges and hollows within easy driving distance of my home. It’s been more than 20 years since I’ve sat in a deer blind or called for a tom turkey at daybreak.”
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Grab your coffee or tea and join us, please.
What's on your mind this morning?