...and on some days...

And on some days the words flow freely…tumbling unabashedly one upon the other until pages and chapters are given life at an almost breakneck pace.

After a few days of not being in touch with my muse because of yet another family emergency…the preceding generation of my family always seemed invulnerable and immortal to me but, of course, they are not…I returned to my desk…to my novel of family interaction…and the words seem so anxious to get out that they often threatened to outpace my fingers on the keyboard.

Watching the end…and yes, the end is definitely in sight…come into focus…coming to grips with the fact that being true to the story means that one of my favorite characters has to die despite the fact that I dread writing that scene…feeling the words flow from my fevered psyche through my fingers and onto the screen…I am filled with bursts of excitement, trepidation, and fulfillment. And ain’t it grand.

I’ve written for the better part of 9 hours…with the dog (Autumn) and two of the cats (Bart and Mr. Gambino) taking turns being quiet company on the floor near my desk…with Emmylou Harris, Cassandra Wilson, Julieta Venegas, Nellie McKay, Elvis Costello, and Allen Toussaint serving as the inspirational soundtrack for the day…with a scant few minutes taken out to make lunch out of some leftover tuna salad from the refrigerator…and I’m done.

For now anyway (one never knows what’s going to happen after supper :-)

America Sings

America doesn’t always live up to its promise. But its promise is still something worth striving for…worth dreaming of…worth fighting and dying for if need be. I am a cynical patriot but I am indeed a patriot and no one can gainsay that fact.

Blind, unthinking loyalty to anything or anyone is a fool’s path; knee-jerk disavowal of everything this country thinks it is...everything this country wants to be…is also a fool’s path. As with most things in this world, the truth lies somewhere in between strident, inflexible extremes…this is certainly true here in America…our generous, arrogant, naïve, myopic America...our hard-hearted and inflexible, open-minded and open-hearted America… our complex , often marvelously and infuriatingly so, America.

Here in the 21^st Century, America is looking for its way…we’re fighting wars on distant soils and building walls on our borders…we’re reeling still from the knowledge that our shores are not immune from terror and chaos and sudden brutal deaths by the score; we are a nation united by history, hubris, and hope…we are a nation fractured along ever-fluid lines of politics, race, religion, pride, and culture.

We are America…for better and for worse…in times of peace and in times of war…in times of joy and pride and in times of sorrow and shame…in times when the rest of the world (rightly or wrongly) celebrates us and in times when the rest of the world (rightly or wrongly) reviles us.

We are America…the sons and daughters of many distant lands…the sons and daughters of adventurers and outcasts…the sons and daughters of slaves and freedmen…the sons and daughters of visionaries and madmen, of pirates and craftsmen, of warriors and peacemakers, of saints and scoundrels, of builders and destroyers, of emancipators and bigots, of heroes and villains…the sons and daughters of uncommon wizards and countless everyday folk…

We are America…we don’t always live up to our promise…maybe we never will completely…but it’s our birthday and attention must be paid just the same.

In the cool, soothing twilight,
In the soft, warm glow of the dawning sun,
America sings…

We sing of joy and hope, of pain and forgiveness,
We sing of sins gone but never forgotten,
Of sins to come, ready to be weathered and overcome.

We sing of bright souls lost and redemption found,
We sing of blood spilled and new life a-borning,
Of life renewing, ripe and fertile and eager to soar.

In the bittersweet shadow of our history,
In the burnished glow of complex days to come,
America sings…

We sing of our days of glory, our dreams of tomorrows,
We sing of peace from war, liberty from chaos,
Of passion never-ending, God’s grace blessing us all.

In the cool, soothing twilight…
In the shadow of our history…
America sings…
“…God shine His grace on thee…”

Happy Birthday, y’all.

Namaste.