A Pictorial Essay

A seven mile stretch of highway running east and west in central South Carolina. Along it you see a white sign shaped like a huge arrow that used to read 'Rocket Science' but the words disappered a couple of years ago. Maybe when a teenager left home and a small lab in the garage went silent with inactivity.

'Strawberries 359-Farm' reads the sign attached to the front of the rural kiosk. It anchors a mall without walls where people pick the juicy ripe fruit and then pay for the privilege of doing so. Oh, but they're paying for the strawberries you say. Not really. They're paying to spend some time underneath Heaven's blue vault. The strawberries, though tasty, are ancillary to the mission of reuniting ourselves to the earth from which we came.

They died almost 150 years ago but at the moment they're not resting in peace. The bulldozers and front-end loaders are making sure of that. There are roads to pave, ground to break, electric and sewer lines to install, and a host of other things to do in preparation for the arrival of yet another sub-division. But the new homes will be needed, they say, for living human beings with wants and needs. The dead will take care of themselves. But the land is all that's left of what once was and a little lament is not that bad a thing.

The most beautiful sites are the ones closest to home.

There's an actual cornucopia of fruits and vegetables at of all places, Taylor's Open Air Market. Large floor fans and ceiling fans hum busily as they move the air on a 100 degree plus day. I ignore the enticing plant life as I make my way to the soft drink cooler where I pull out a 20 ounce Mountain Dew. Taylor's has the coldest drinks around.

Outward bound so to speak. We leave this mortal coil and find a new home in the ground. If we pray for more time, it's not for ourselves, but for work left undone. But someone else will do it. Knowing that, we can rest much easier.

Old machines never die, they just shade away.

Late summer and late spring are two sides of the same coin. But they have different segues. The former comes out of the heat while the latter emerges out of the cold. We enjoy the result more than the process.

We tend to slow down when the road curves a little. Better to keep things under control than to go spiraling off into the bushes and ditches. Better sometimes to keep both hands on the wheel unless a friendly wave to a neighbor is called for; then it's worth taking some risk. Conviviality has its own rewards.

It must be the last days. Time is a fast arrow that never hits its target. The target keeps receding as fast as the arrow is moving. The end will only come when our backs are up against the wall. But how far away is the wall?

Is this the road not taken? More of a pathway really that is not conducive to high speed traffic or the establishment of convenience stores. Walk this path and you will find yourself mometarily alone, adrift from your ordinary existence. Maybe time will stop and if you're really lucky, a gentle rain will fall.

Going west, you turn right on a dirt road. To the left is the usual stand of pine trees but to the right is a glorious, grassy hill five football fields in length. Seen from the highway, the hill is pristine; no litter; no stunted trees or out of control weeds; no broken down automobiles. Just an uniform stretch of grass waving briskly in the summer breeze. It's Plato's perfect hill from heaven; a launching pad from whence to leave this earthly plane. Maybe it'll snow this winter and children of all ages will find a board of some kind and go sliding the side of the hill.

Each day brings a fresh awareness of the dangers that lie ahead; such as stubbing one's toe on the bedpost in the early morning dark of the next day.

Colors are changing. The sky above and the earth below are not figments of our collective imaginations. There are times when we are nostalgic for a golden past but everywhere there is the undeniable now.

As long as the walls hold, we have a chance to continue. Life has many aspects, but none so paramount as simple survival. Friends and neighbors come and go, and the winds of change may vary; but the core elements of this universal kingdom are with us always.

All things have a sort of structural integrity. Even when they begin to deteriorate.

We spend our lives crossing boundaries. Very few shrink from such activity. It seems right somehow that we're always moving in some direction or the other. Aren't atoms and molecules, though invisible to the human eye, doing the same? They constitute our inner soul and even if we decide one day there are no more boundaries to cross, our molecules may not agree.

Ebb and flow. Ducks on a pond. Corrugated tin. Just another morning in an endless line of mornings. One day we'll wake up.

Wandering around on a September afternoon, one finds the air reminiscent of nothing in particular. The sunlight you see and feel is more comfortable when it's filtered through the shade trees and realizing this, you are naturally inclined to covet those cool places that don't require artificial energy.

Water for the grass. Grass for the goats. And so on. Since about the year 1500, humanity has experienced 'modern life'. Before that life was essentially unchanged for thousands of years. Unless we somehow, either accidently or intentionly, destroy ourselves, the current cycle may continue for a few thousand years more. So it's best to live life as if there's a tomorrow. Because, so far, it always has been.

From the earth comes all good things.

We've been wandering over this planet with quiet determination for thousands of years. And yet, our journey has just begun.

What lies beyond the horizon? We'll never know, of course, but just knowing that it's there is the stuff of human dreams.

This moment is like no other. Or is it like every other? What do you have when you capture a moment? Does it portray reality or some romaniticized version of such? Is the foreground really more important than the background? What lurks back there? Could it be the part that changes everything?

Once you begin walking, you realize there'll be a need at some point for stopping or at least slowing down. The quality of life depends on where we choose to stop.

Meeting on the fringes; gathering at various watering holes; stretching the late afternoon into the wee hours of the morning, we find that our friends are more than happy for us to spend our money. But if we should leave earlier than expected, does it really matter?

When we look to the sky the darkness tends to take less prominence.

Any place of worship holds out hope for finding the key to other worldly existence. It's easy to say that such an effort always meets with failure. But we'll never be certain until our opportunity comes along.

The air above is part and parcel of the land below. They form one entity and travel together as the earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun.

No cars passing; no loud noises at all. Just a calmness in the midst of it all.

Outwardly decayed but still functioning is the way most of us can describe ourselves.

Some places have been the scene of quiet heroics. Human activity beneath a complaisant sun. Where no gets hurt and you can go home at night.

Just another scene where the potential is greater than the actual. Where did it all begin if not in someone's mind? All the building blocks were there, we just kept ignoring them. The momentary needs of the day always seemed so overwhelming. Then there was an interlude of peace and quiet that served as a starting point for all that followed.

We follow familiar paths but with conflicting thoughts.

There's an aura that emanates from the most mundane to the most ethereal; from the insignificant to the cataclysmic; fromt the highest to the lowest. Be glad we can't capture it in a bottle.

Living as we do, on the verge of extinction, we take comfort in the long span of time that existed before we existed. But are we living in a hall of mirrors?

Small towns busting at the seams. Accepting manufactured goods from 12,000 miles away. Halfway around the world. Build it and they will buy. But as long as the blue sky is overhead, who cares?

It's when our purposes become hidden that our aims become less diverse and the chances improve we lose sight of the bigger picture.

We can't go everywhere.

It would be easy to disappear amidst the foliage and lower sky, and it might be nice, if only for a moment.

It would be a messier world without trash barrels.

What are you looking for? Is it an air of neglect or just a trace of incompetence?

Each day reminds us of things we might rather forget.

If we're still looking for the morning, perhaps we've found it.

By definition, it's the invisible corners of the world that are hidden from us. But there are worlds within worlds, and the daily humdrumness of life, the incessant treadmill 0f quotidian activity, keeps us away from those interior places.

A little rainfall and cooler temperatures have made late August almost idyllic. All in all it hasn't been that bad of a summer and with a few weeks to go until fall, we can still find ways to be lazy. At least we can as long as there's ample shade along Augusta Highway.



THE END