A most instructive lesson
Posted by TFG on April 21st, 2008
I know none of you bottom-feeding sonsabitches will click, but this is a gorgeous piece of prose.
There is a symmetry to life on the plains – death gives life, and life ends in death. That is one constant that isn’t balanced out – everything dies in the end, no matter how strong the life force. Life on the prairie flows through cycles. Periods of draught, followed by rains. The season’s inexorable march to the next, year after year. Each season brings its own distinctive weather, snow and ice in the winter, rain, hail and tornadoes in the spring and summer. One constant is the wind.
I’ve never been a sodbuster, but I had family that was. Their grace always took me aback. This is good to know, in your heart, even thrice-removed.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:59 am
Thank you, sir. Glad ya liked it!
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:58 am
Since I clicked, does that mean I’m not a bottom-feeding sonsabitch?
The older I get, the more I appreciate such sentiments.
April 22nd, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Nice work, Jeffro…I appreciate it.
You never were, Chuck. I think it’s that the older I get, the more those fleeting seasons impinge on me. Didn’t summer seem like about a year back then?
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Just givin’ you a hard time. Time is moving much, much faster these days. The phrase “endless summer” wasn’t created by someone over 50.
When’s the last time you were bored?
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Gawd, I can’t imagine being bored anymore. Excellent point. Even trying to take it down a peg or two, I come home with a pocketful of napkins with ideas all over them.
Of course, now, I imagine myself in my John Adams dotage, boring the shit out of everybody. I can only hope that somebody weeps over my carcass, but more than that, I hope whatever I’ve done taught somebody something.
Bah…fuck it, I’m gonna live forever, just like Billy Joe says.