It’s an attitude and it’s a way of life. Even if you don’t see it directly, look for its effects. For it carries weight, swaying the will gracefully, the way summer breezes gently bend branches of the silver maples and honey locusts—those shade-tree parasols meant for houses with big front porches. It’s a mind-set, aging to perfection like a cured ham. But this smoky spirit has escaped the smokehouse, for it hangs in the air and hovers in the highest branches of those ancient oaks lining the edges of country lawns—old-growth trees that define the border between a modest yard and the wilds of nature beyond. Those trees, out at the edge of the range of the night’s porch lights, wrap their limbs around you in the starry night, folding you into a cocoon of comfort, giving you that warm feeling of security, as if your mother just tucked you in to bed. Time slows and almost stops.

That frame of mind has cast a spell, settling on everything, clinging like the evening dew in the cooldown that you count on to follow the summer sunset, casting a contagious mix of drowsy desire and sticky inertia. You start to see that it’s fermenting plans for this lazy summer night that doesn’t match what you had in mind. But you don’t care.

“What’s yer hurry? Don’t go yet. Set fer a spell.”

Such a friendly request is made harder to ignore by a belly full of fried chicken, fluffy biscuits, okra fried golden brown in cornmeal, garden-ripe tomatoes and steaming blackberry cobbler. Linger long enough—maybe through a sweating glass or two of icy sweet tea—and someone is likely to offer to cut a watermelon.

“Red meat or yeller?”

It would be rude to decline. So you don’t.

“Let’s try a yellow.”

No, I don’t crave the musical sounds you might expect. I don’t long for the Southern twang of a steel guitar, for the quaintness of the simple banjo, or even the storytelling nature that the Smoky Mountain dulcimer lends itself to. Yes, those were the instruments that I heard growing up back in Tennessee, and they call forth the Southern spirit for most of my kin. Such country instruments are my heritage, but they are not the sounds I so fondly recollect.

It is the saxophone that I find magical. This sexy musical instrument pulls at my heart and drags my thoughts to younger, simpler days. The sax brings to my mind the South that I left behind, for it regenerates the soulful music of those Southern nights and lets me replay such great memories in my mind. I feel the sway of the porch swing as I watch the sunset and rock to the clinking of the looped chains above my head. I listen to the lyrics the whipperwills pass from near to far and for the deep-voiced tree frogs singing to their lovers. I hear crickets fiddling at a tempo set by the temperature of the night air. I smell the raindrops as they fall. They tickle the roofs of tin like they were fingers caressing a keyboard’s polished ivory, announcing the cooling rains with a soothing piano lullaby. These are the notes that make up my childhood. They are all packed in the nuances of—and ready to be unfolded by—a mournful sax.

Bill Clinton hears the Old South accent of the saxophone. His Southern roots are soaked in the practical attitude that goes with the land. Open sensitivity and deep compassion are the gifts he was given, gifts nurtured by the hot sun and warm rains and cultivated in the red soil of the Deep South. His “I feel your pain” is empathy born of his experiences there. That’s the South I wish to remember as I move forward with my life in this city. The tales that I carry with me from my childhood there are what give me strength and courage now to soldier on as I make my own story.

I still have family back home who love me. I have friends there who miss me. I know lots of Southerners who are right-good-people. But the culture, oh, that culture. It calls to me, and yet my place by choice is here. God’s great gift of life to be lived and for diversity to be experienced wills it so—for now.

I trod the labyrinths of this great city by day, but it is the soulful saxophone of special evenings that hearkens back to the South I recollect from my childhood. And those sweet notes call forth the images I want to be among my final memories, no matter where I depart this life. If I had my druthers, I’d make the sax the South’s official instrument. And I’d use it in place of Gabriel’s horn. I’d use it to call my people home.

 Unfortunately, my friend—I’ll call him Matthew—now lives out west and simply can’t get away for the long trudge back home for the burial. So, Matthew grieves among foreigners who don’t understand Southern bereavement. And he feels like a believer among the lost. Now, don’t get me wrong when I say among the lost. This is no tale of Christian fundamentalism. Okay, maybe in some respects it is, but Matthew converted to Judaism years ago. He has come a long way since our Southern Christian upbringing, and so have I. But that doesn’t mean he has forgotten the old days, the old ways. Or that he pooh-poohs our heritage.

 I begin to understand his becoming a Jew when I hear him say, “If my family were Jewish we would sit Shiva for seven days. People would come, bring food and, tiptoeing, whisper condolences, and sitting on cardboard we would collectively mourn, our dead being buried immediately and before sunset.” He contrasts that with our Christian upbringing: “My sister, the evangelical who praised Jesus and foretold Gary’s healing in his name, now praises Jesus as he welcomes Gary into a better place. Funny how she can have it both ways.”  My friend isn’t one to push his own religious beliefs off on others, so he’s quick to add, “I only challenge her faith in my own mind.”

 I’ve invested time allowing my friend to grieve to me, listening to him tell me how he longs to be there. He says, “I want Alice’s rabbit hole now, to fall quietly into darkness, to be aroused by a white rabbit, to drink tea with a Mad Hatter and to confront the Red Queen.” Matthew can do all that safely by talking with me. He needs a friend as a release valve, knowing that after a while, I will reach down and pull him back up through that rabbit hole to the real world.

 But that must come later, for now he recalls his own mother’s passing, years ago. He still sees and smells the sickening, mixed aroma of those heaping bowls of food magically appearing on their kitchen table and overflowing the counters. Foodstuffs left even long after his mother was buried. Deposited even if no one was home when it was delivered. No, they didn’t lock their doors. There was no fear of neighbors who filled the now-too-silent house with macaroni and cheese. With deviled eggs. With fried chicken and other meats—mostly hams and pork barbeque. But all kinds, boiled or baked, but mostly fried. Oh and there were cakes and pies. Chess, lemon, apple, cherry pies. Peach, apple, blackberry cobblers. Food is the Southern condolence card.

 Matthew knows what’s in store for the widow, his niece-cum-sister. Through it all—from the wake with its interminable wait, to the funeral with songs like “When the Role Is Called Up Yonder,” and on to the solemn procession with headlights blaring and cars stopping respectfully all along the route to the cemetery—the bereaved will endure with Southern grace all those weak attempts at consoling her. “He looks so natural,” someone always says. But nothing feels natural; there is no feeling at all except a sensation of bottomless emptiness. The emptiness of a huge hole that, over and over, wells up with a lava flow of despair. “Honey, time heals all,” says another. She doesn’t want to be healed; she wants the father of her children, her husband, friend, confidant, sparing partner, lover.

 Matthew just wants to be there. To say nothing. To wrap his arms around her. To hold her close to his chest as she sobs. Offering quiet comfort like Abraham’s bosom.

It had been a good companion. I felt like giving it a eulogy. My cup of kindness began its life with me back in Alabama as a coffee mug. The orange lettering spelled “Tennessee” in that familiar font that had become a comfort, for it reminded me of my birthplace and of the university that carries my home state’s name. I bought it after moving to Alabama as a visible link to my beginnings. After many life-changing years, I moved to Brooklyn and brought it with me. As a nod to Park Slope’s literary culture, I switched from coffee to green tea, finding my mug readily adaptable to its new purpose. I was changing, but here was a familiar item that physically connected me with my past. Its demise produced an odd feeling of loss in me that went well beyond bemoaning the simple breaking of a piece of porcelain, beyond losing a favored utensil. This was a mighty chalice, holding more than the simple comfort of a warm beverage. It represented my history, memories, home.

Western thought perceives the mind as a “tabula rasa,” or blank slate with which we are born and upon which we write our life story. However, I think I prefer the Eastern philosophy that pictures an empty box that we must carry and that we fill with our finest memories and precious possessions over time. This viewpoint warns that there is only so much room in our box. As we continue growing and adding items, it becomes necessary to discard some of the older treasures already there in order to make room for the new. Otherwise, we become burdened by the weight of the box we carry.

I retired from running a business back in Alabama and came to New York City to write—again. Writing, as a columnist at a daily newspaper, had been my first love and had provided my first real job. That homecoming to a life filled again with trying to shape words into poignant phrases and works of wonder was a dream I had nurtured for many years. Getting here—to New York City and back to writing—required a great deal of sacrifice. I left behind parents, a young adult son, and friends. Family tends to be accepting, if reluctant, of actions and events in the lives of their loved ones—even of those decisions that they don’t understand. On the other hand, friends are often less accommodating. Perhaps that fact is another way life reviews and adjusts the contents of our box. True friends allow us to change, to grow.

I don’t mourn the loss of the mug per se. I grieve the loss of close contact with family, friends, and the Southern culture that it represented. Nor do I regret my decision to come to the greatest city in the world. In fact, I confess to having a bit of a love-hate relationship with my Southern culture. As such, I have tried to make a clean break with my Southern past by acknowledging its contributions to my character and reconciling myself to its peccadilloes—and mine. I will never forget my upbringing, and I will apply forever the lessons I learned roaming the rolling hills of rural middle Tennessee and walking along the banks of the Tennessee River as it wiggles its way to the wide Mississippi. But even that mighty Mississippi River still must empty into the great ocean, and I have found my own way to the sea—alongside Lady Liberty in New York Harbor.

So, with all the changes in my life yet to come, I know that from time to time I must be willing to make room for all the new treasures I am now storing in my personal box. I guess the mug had to go.

So, enough about the process; I’m very happy with the outcome. My home in Kensington, near Ditmas Park, is an oasis of tranquility, a place of refuge when the whirligig that is Manhattan becomes too much. When the Midtown Manhattan workday is over, serenity is only a few stops away via the express Q Train. Conversely, when the weekend finally arrives, I can venture out from my cave to experience the joys of a Broadway play, a new museum exhibit, or a delectable Manhattan dinner—all within a half-hour’s journey.

Now that I am at last settled into my apartment, I’m able to ponder why ownership means so much to me. I missed it horribly. I had owned homes in Alabama for most of my adult life—until my divorce of almost a decade ago. Post divorce, I had rented in towns around Huntsville, Alabama as I worked in that area. Upon moving with my partner to New York City, we found ourselves occupying five different apartments within six years. Our odyssey started on the Jersey shore, at the Newport neighborhood of Jersey City, where we lived in a gated community. The idea was that we needed to get our feet wet—learn the ways of the city—before diving into the deep end of the city proper. We soon decided that being on the “wrong” side of the Hudson was not ideal: Waiting on the PATH train to traverse Hudson Bay only to wait again for the New York Subway trains was no fun. Living where we could only look at the splendor that was and is Manhattan didn’t feel like we were even getting our feet wet.  It actually felt like our ideal of big-city living was all washed up.

So we  jumped over that expensive Manhattan real estate and landed in Brooklyn. First, we settled in Crown Heights, finding ourselves loving the architecture and our neighbors there—all ensconced within a jewel of a building where we were definitely the minority, inside and out of the complex. Unfortunately, “out” was a problem, for we were holed up right in the middle of a less than friendly neighborhood, one that didn’t cotton too well to two Southern white boys invading their version of deep, dark Africa. Add to the name-calling—“Go home, crackers!”—the almost nightly gunshots, and the occasional guy sprawled out on the street or sidewalk with stab wounds, and we decided that a year in Crown Heights would be sufficient to give this writer the real-life experience he sought there for his writing.

From Crown Heights, we migrated south by southwestward to Windsor Terrace, where we spent a very interesting year learning still more about the vagaries of renting in New York City. We lived on the second floor of a semidetached home, above our landlady. Let me just say—ever mindful of the power of lawsuits to infringe upon free speech in modern America—that an owner has the right to make “requests” of her guests, no matter how odd those requests may sound to the tenants. Notwithstanding an owner’s quirks and the things one might learn about said owner and her family via shouting matches reluctantly overheard, the tenant can in no way justify to said owner a reasonable request to which he might expect acquiescence.

This new knowledge gained led us to move six blocks—southward again—to a smallish condo building. We leased a nice apartment from an owner who would be living on the other side of the Borough. This arrangement left us reasonably satisfied, but still longing for our own place. The lessons presented—and learned quite well, mind you—taught us that ownership creates certain prerogatives that are simply absent for renters—like the ability to choose a paint color to our own liking without having to grovel for official sanctioning.

One more move that took us just a bit more to the south finally let us find our balance. Don’t think that I don’t know there will be issues to resolve as a co-op owner. The Board has most of the power. Many desired changes to the occupied unit still have to clear that committee hurdle. However, that’s a bureaucracy that is likely to possess a level-headed member or two to whom one can appeal for reason.

Many travelers possessed with wandering souls will shout to the open sky—and to anyone within earshot—that it’s best not to own. Rather, they say, strive to be free, to move with the wind across the face of the earth. To those free spirits and would-be philosophers, I say that even a ship needs an anchor—with a port to put down in—so that one can take stock of events remembered from the islands of adventure just departed and to restock for new explorations yet to come.

In reviewing the rise and fall and rise again of my excursions into the complexity of home ownership, I recall the theme of Pearl S. Buck’s “The Good Earth.” Its Pulitzer prize-winning depiction of the importance of property as an anchor for life resonates with me. Foolish mistakes with money, eventual flight to the big city, the many struggles and the will to overcome—yeah, I’ve been there and I hear those echoes in my life. Oprah’s endorsement made the 1931 novel new again. She’s had both the challenges and the victories that made the novel’s power real for her.

I have survived huge struggles, and I’m confident that I will also achieve great victories. Already, I am back from the brink of renter’s hell, back from the cliff’s edge of a fatal fall. I stand on the cusp of new challenges and grasp for the status of character-building greatness through new challenges. We all have stories to tell, for all lives have challenges. Endurance of the events that make up our stories is the key to the rewards we want in life. Pearl S. Buck knew this simple fact: Endurance is the ultimate victory.

That largely industrial landscape, dominated by its soaring train trestle, certainly caught my eye the first time I glided over it by train: bleak is the word that came to my mind back then. That was seven years ago—when I first moved here from the South, knowing nothing of the nuances of my newly adopted home. I was not prepared for the metamorphosis that was yet to occur—not of the Brooklyn landscape but of my own mindscape.

There is a hot season of excitement for every new resident who is drawn to this City-on-Hudson-by-the-Sea. In the beginning, each local trip provides a new vista that is seen through the eyes of a tourist. But, through the passing of time and repetition of the journeys, that initial excitement slips away like the spent leaves of autumn. For those who truly come to love this city, the beginner’s exhilaration is inevitably replaced by a mounting sense of familiarity and quiet comfort, like—well—like a warm cocoon for surviving the winter, and for facing change.

I moved here in the fall of the year—and the fall of my life—landing on the Gold Coast of Jersey City. Eventually, I was sucked across the salty Hudson Bay to that great city, sucked so hard that I was jerked across Manhattan to land deep in the heart of Brooklyn—out past the Gowanus Canal and Park Slope—where I became part of the cadenced movements and slower beats of Kensington.

Still, I must cross the Gowanus Canal twice daily to get to and from my work in Midtown Manhattan. My rail passage through that extraordinary terrain has produced an intimacy that I feel nowhere else in the city. This place has chosen to unveil its subtle beauty to me, and my spirit has bonded with it like the Muslim groom who fully sees his beautiful bride for the first time. You cannot know the sacred things I see, but there is no harm in describing the pleasure I find there.

Any morning on the train could find me filled with expectation of the work that waits in Midtown. Or with eyes still filled with sand from a late night—sand thrown up while exploring the cultural joys of the evening just spent. Either way, when I emerge from the tunnel at the Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street Station, I awaken to the unbridled pleasure of the present.

The train meets daylight on the cusp of Park Slope, with the view rolling out before me as we begin a long, gentle arc that targets Downtown Brooklyn in the distance. The train remains mostly level, but the ground falls away beneath the tracks. Earth drops quickly, morphing into a valley that cradles the canal.

I look down on the calm, flat waters of the Gowanus Canal now so near, with its siren-song promise of housing, businesses, and an esplanade along its serene banks—like the canals of Venice, or at least of Venice Beach. “Someday, someday,” the siren sings. Around the canal, the low, flat roofs of warehouses interlock like parts of some giant’s Rubik’s cube. It is a massive puzzle my mind always seeks to solve. What’s there now? What could be there, if only we dreamed and then made it so?

But I’ve already turned away from that siren song, to the middle ground out past the warehouses and industrial buildings we are nestled among. I let my eyes ascend that pitched territory that half-names the neighborhood. Park Slope sprang from the union of that hillside and the park that lies atop the ridge above it. The colossal ridge dominates the view I see from my etched-graffiti window. That backbone of Brooklyn juts up to frame the portrait I see. And Grand Army Plaza regally sits on the distant ridge’s brow, a queen surveying her lands—her crown, the majestic circle of high-rise apartments that make the area such a jewel. Without needing to see, I clearly hold in my mind the image of soaring arch and tumbling fountain; of stately museum, expansive library, and verdant botanic garden; and of glorious greenmarket days with diverse people roaming there. It is a place of magic that calls all to this main portal of Olmsted and Vaux’s most-beloved of parks.

The train—ever moving—advances, and so my eyes dart onward, alighting briefly on Atlantic Center to greet the towering Miss Brooklyn. Then pushing off to skip lightly across the profile of Brooklyn’s emerging downtown. Next I see East River, Midtown, Downtown—that larger downtown—all calling me on to the markets and madness of Manhattan. Beyond the Ninth Street Station, I sink again into the earth, for a time. Rather, I simply slide forward and the land leaps up to claim me.

For the return home, I sit to see the other side of Brooklyn and wait to emerge from the tunnel on the edge of Carroll Gardens. Soon, I surface amid a mix of brownstones well lived in, and of mid-rise apartments with overflowing windows of softly glowing yellow light. It is not business or retail, but family that boasts such a succulent radiance. The gardens there are green—luxuriant ever, even in winter—and packed off-season with lively detail, where not filled by evergreen color.

Beyond, I look toward Red Hook, with its teasing promise of a ship sometime in port. The waterfront beyond offers an open view to the grand bridge of the Verrazano Narrows, that giant transom over the gateway to open sea. Look at just the right angle and moment to see Miss Liberty, dwarfed by Bay and Bridge, but with torch still held high, looking ever Brooklyn bound.

A glance across the aisle and out the opposite window now gives a nocturnal take on two downtowns. One is close and almost manageable in scale—not quite of human scale, but not soulless either, I feel. The other is more distant and more mysterious still, larger and much more complex—all tangled in the zeal of want and will. This is the time to check the light flooding the Empire State Building, for it will be cloaked in colors that wait for the night’s local news to be explained.

As I close my day by crossing the Gowanus Canal—my own River Jordan set among an industrial waistband—I look out across a kingdom I’ve come to know of late—but not too late. I’m at the entire subway’s highest point and at the high point of my life, as well. I’m settled here, safe and content.

I’m in a beautiful paradise—an Eden that I did not even recognize when first I laid my eyes upon it. Home is three stops away. Home is here, and I’m upon it.

Yes, I did know that name! This was the Pete I remembered and had tried unsuccessfully to find more than a decade ago; but, in my recollection, I knew only his nickname. Without recalling his actual name, which he’d never used at school, I had been unable to locate him. I had searched for Pete when the Internet was in its infancy. That was before search engines had become the supped-up, all-in-one reference resources they are today; and software for networking utilities like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Plaxo was still a dream—if even that.

Soon, I would learn that Pete had legally changed his name to his preferred moniker “Peter” shortly after college, as part of his becoming the person he pictured himself being. But, wait. I’m getting ahead of the story.

I added Pete as a friend, and we “rebooted” our dialogue after a three-decade hiatus. Many memories of our time together as college friends have been reviewed now. And, we have started to fill in the gap of that missing time. For instance, we’ve discovered that we both chose to leave the South; he went west and I went north. Our conversation is just beginning, but already I’m remembering things I’d forgotten—or buried. And, I’m finding out things about myself that I never knew—like how I was perceived then and how I’m perceived now, by Pete and (through deduction) perhaps by others.

However, we find that much data is missing and needs to be restored—events in our lives that happened during that interim in which the dialog was frozen. Thirty years of loves found and lost; thirty years of adventures in our lives; thirty years of dreams created, and then realized, abandoned, or still pending—these are the topics that will require careful attention to detail and nuance as we key it all into that ethereal mainframe that holds our joint memories. This extended metaphor works best for what has been, but what of the future?

Any decent story has a protagonist. And, there is no story unless there is action. Moreover, that action—the events that unfold through time—must show character development, which brings me back to the protagonist. Who would like, or even finish reading, a novel or short story in which what happens to the leading character has no effect on that person at the center of the story? Change must take place—not just around but in central characters. This transformation is a process that is in addition to, but also essential for, the plot. And so it is with Pete and me. I hope to be learning about today’s Pete; but, I also want to learn about today’s Larry. Who am I and how did I get here? And, what of tomorrow’s Pete, tomorrow’s Larry?

Pete says he’s impressed that I made it to New York. “The Larry I knew would never have even considered moving there,” he told me. He wants to learn what events in my life led me here: where I got the idea and then the courage to carry it through. I don’t have those answers right now. Like another Southerner, Scarlett O’Hara, once said, “I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

Sadly, that Old Gray Lady, perhaps suffering from declining hearing, paid no mind to my call for consideration—other than thanking me for my submission and reminding me, with a matronly poke of her dagger, that many letters are received but space (Ha! Make that inclination!) permits use of only a few. Well, I liked it when I wrote it, and I believe it still shines, even though Father Time has spent these past few years testing its mettle. See if you agree that it’s worth a read. The gist of my letter follows:

I grew up just a few miles from Lynchburg, Tennessee, home of the Jack Daniels Distillery. When I read “Whiskey’s Kingdom (Pop. 361),” by R.W. Apple, Jr., published March 17, 2004, recollections stirred in me. I wasn’t thinking of the whiskey itself, as I have never been a connoisseur of fine spirits—I was recalling a droll incident with my grandmother who has long since passed away.

As a young boy, I recall the mischievous chuckle and the relish with which she told the tale of touring the facilities at Jack Daniels and accepting a sample of that Tennessee Sipping Whiskey! My grandmother was a life-long Baptist and for me, not yet knowing much of the ways of the world, this tasting was totally out of character. (Sadly, since the distillery is in a dry county, this free sampling was halted many years ago.)

As I approach the age my grandmother was at the time of her “indiscretion,” I have come to realize that a few excursions outside the boundaries of ordinary life can be good things. After all, life is for the living, and for living—fully.

As for the dead, I’m sure my grandmother—perhaps with the welcoming of each new family member—has grand, midday Southern dinners, held like our old-time family reunions, replete with fried chicken, stone-ground cornbread, creamed potatoes, garden-ripened tomatoes, fried okra, and hand-cranked ice cream for desert.

Oh, and what of that heady, perfumed evaporation that lingers in the air over Lynchburg, which the article calls “the angels’ share?” My grandmother is undoubtedly partaking of the angels’ share that is always offered-up in Heaven at such joyous occasions. (#2)

To read  Mr. Apple’s fine article in the New York Times, copy the following URL and paste it into your Web browser:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE6D61731F934A25750C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

As a married couple with young children, the protagonists have settled for less in their lives than they imagined they would—settling, literally, in suburbia. The wife dreams of moving the family to Paris, finding their true paths, finding themselves. She sells her husband on the idea, and now the fun begins. In revealing their plans to family and friends, they evoke reactions quite unexpected  and wholly disappointing.

I recognized the palpable sense of confusion portrayed on the screen, for I sensed the same resistance when we told friends and family in the South that we’d be moving to New York City. A parent’s hesitation can be easily understood, but what of friends who turn away? Suddenly, friendships dissolved as faces turned to stone—stony walls that suddenly loomed between us. Was it envy? Was it fear? Was it that Southern sense of place, leading to the belief that we were abandoning our precious birthright?

In the movie, events (or are they simply excuses?) prevent the Paris relocation and trigger tragedy. In our lives, a new beginning was chanced and took root, for now we find we are strangers in a strangely wonderful land. I will always carry my Southern sensibilities, but I have also become a no nonsense New Yorker. I like that convolution, and I try to reveal a similar complexity within the characters that I create.

To conjure up the idea of starting over in a grand, new place is almost a universal theme; yet, so few people make that dream a reality. Where did two Southern boys find the courage to make the move that fulfilled our dream? Part of the answer is that it was a dream we shared equally. However, the mystery of it is much deeper.

Our mystery’s resolution is embedded in the following exchange. A group of Southern tourists, visiting New York City, overheard our accents one evening while we were out to dinner. They struck up a conversation and commented that we must miss the South. They were implying in that subtle, Southern way that we must be heartbroken—trapped, as we were, here in this city so strange. My partner’s answer, delivered with that same Southern smile and air of “you poor darling!” that often precedes delivery of the knife to the back, said gently, “When we arrived, it felt like we’d come home at last.” Imagine their faces after that comment.

One of my dearest friends back home said we’d be back within six months. It’s been almost six years now, and Rodney and I thank our lucky stars that we followed our hearts’ desire. (#1)

GARLANDblog

 What follows are my Southern-tinged observations (a blog, if you will) on the world around me, largely in and about New York City—my personal Oz. 

THE JOURNEY

Artists can take black and white, divvy it up and parcel it out in shapes and shades of gray that paint the past, or just some rural scene—depicting times and places of easy and simple living. That has a real appeal. But there is something in some of us that demands more. Some enticer comes to call on us who urges his chosen few to know the nuances of color. He tells us to spread our wings, to search out the blush of life. And so we hunt for some magic font with fluid of rainbow colors. All are given a glimpse of the glory within a rainbow’s arc, yet few go on to eye that azure sky, to dare to dream and hope to fly over the rainbow—to seek, to find, to drink from fountains flowing there.

Late in the Middle Ages, many devout folk across Europe followed the custom of making a pilgrimage to a religious shrine. One such procession, from London to Canterbury, is now immortalized. Each pilgrim in that particular caravan took a turn at crafting a tale to help carry his or her companions (and now us) through the boredom and hardships of the long journey. Storyteller is who I am as a Southerner. My muse calls out to me imploring me to write—and calls me out when I do so less than eloquently. By making literate use of words as my tools, I strive to weave thoughts into baskets that can bear the weight of literary substance; baskets that will wait no longer to bare my baggage for all to see as I travel the Long Journey. Glean what you will as you inspect my luggage. I have no choice in the writing, but the choice is mine to share my words with you.  

Won’t you join me on the journey?