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Catawbarawabah County (cat.AW.ba.RAW.bah, for all you foreigners) was located in the South end of the edge of the earth, sort of to the north of Florida and east of Georgia, on a coastline interrupted by an intra-coastal waterway and many estuarine environments. Used to be rice, in the heyday of the big plantations. Now it's marshland again.
It is beautiful. Herons. Egrets. Ospreys -- all add majesty to the scene, serene in flight and delicate upon landing. Shrimp boats, not as many now, can be seen threading their way through the channels to the dock, surrounded by marsh grasses and wet mud-shore littered with tiny crittering crabs. It can't half smell bad at low tide, though, sometimes.
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Boswell Johnson Jefferson was seventeen that summer, and it was a great summer to be a teenager. Boz, however, had the mind and personality of a five-year-old boy, and so it was an even greater adventure of a summer than most teenage boys could dream. Boz had the free and open canvas of a child's imagination to work with, and I often saw him and his dog, Hugger, wandering down by the lagoon or along the edge of the marsh, rapt in the intensity of play. I used to wonder what went through my younger brother's mind; was he a pirate today? Or an explorer?
One day I noticed that Boz was carrying an old Danish Cookies box -- you know, those round cans you get cookies in at Christmas. We stored old photos in one -- the Johnsons and the Jeffersons had little to record, but there were some formal portraits of unhappy-looking people. Boz was out the door and away before Mom could suggest he leave it behind.
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Summer Song
Just because we cannot perceive other dimensions, doesn't mean they aren't there. Ask Brian Green what he thinks is elegant about that. I'm glad they let me roam the countryside like this: it would be too cruel to be cooped up with the others, and those SAT's don't sound like much fun. I explore this dimension without hindrance: it is folded to the edge of what you are aware of, and thus I appear: lo! as a player on the apron at The Globe; thus do I mouth my madness to the swell of applause befitting my sudden existence beyond the realm of everyday lore. Belike I falter in my steps; yet as I think on't, I do perceive I wallow in the sunshine of my youth.
I am no Vardamon.
I may not answer when you speak; that does not mean I have not heard the words nor that I cannot form coherent patterns of thought. There is something amiss, however, in the synapse that should link my actions to my ideas; lest I be considered an idiot (and many think so, I am well aware), I deem it meet to advertise my store of wisdom in another means than words. Or actions.
I move my lyric pose accompanied by a dog. This also is appropriate; I can not think so clearly otherwise than when I'm with this hound of mixed denomination and origin as bastard as my own. Not that my mother played false -- no; she clasped about my father's neck like the player queen protesting too much before the court at Elsinore. No: I refer to the illegitimacy of thought that counters meditation with the lop-sided grin of an imbecile.
I am no Hamlet, either, although I could be bounded in a nutshell, bad dreams and all, the opening riff of the Stones' "Brown Sugar" playing for me, in stereo. I am only what I am, and this derives from pictures: my antecedents range in ragged sequence before me on this river bank. As I observe them, they tell me all their secrets.
This one I know: he didn't start as a Johnson; Ruaíri Macshane metamorphosed when transliterated across the Irish Sea to a bigger island. They called him Dirty Mick. A "Johnson" is a euphemism for penis; Macshane isn't -- so where did that leave the folks back home? I smirk at the implication. Dirty Mick Johnson carried hod and balanced more than his body weight on bruised shoulder. It wasn't enough, though. The boat that brought him to this side of the world smelled worse than a building site.
It is beautiful. Herons. Egrets. Ospreys -- all add majesty to the scene, serene in flight and delicate upon landing. Shrimp boats, not as many now, can be seen threading their way through the channels to the dock, surrounded by marsh grasses and wet mud-shore littered with tiny crittering crabs. It can't half smell bad at low tide, though, sometimes.
%E2%80%8E-2.jpg)
Boswell Johnson Jefferson was seventeen that summer, and it was a great summer to be a teenager. Boz, however, had the mind and personality of a five-year-old boy, and so it was an even greater adventure of a summer than most teenage boys could dream. Boz had the free and open canvas of a child's imagination to work with, and I often saw him and his dog, Hugger, wandering down by the lagoon or along the edge of the marsh, rapt in the intensity of play. I used to wonder what went through my younger brother's mind; was he a pirate today? Or an explorer?One day I noticed that Boz was carrying an old Danish Cookies box -- you know, those round cans you get cookies in at Christmas. We stored old photos in one -- the Johnsons and the Jeffersons had little to record, but there were some formal portraits of unhappy-looking people. Boz was out the door and away before Mom could suggest he leave it behind.
%E2%80%8E-3.jpg)
Summer SongJust because we cannot perceive other dimensions, doesn't mean they aren't there. Ask Brian Green what he thinks is elegant about that. I'm glad they let me roam the countryside like this: it would be too cruel to be cooped up with the others, and those SAT's don't sound like much fun. I explore this dimension without hindrance: it is folded to the edge of what you are aware of, and thus I appear: lo! as a player on the apron at The Globe; thus do I mouth my madness to the swell of applause befitting my sudden existence beyond the realm of everyday lore. Belike I falter in my steps; yet as I think on't, I do perceive I wallow in the sunshine of my youth.
I am no Vardamon.
I may not answer when you speak; that does not mean I have not heard the words nor that I cannot form coherent patterns of thought. There is something amiss, however, in the synapse that should link my actions to my ideas; lest I be considered an idiot (and many think so, I am well aware), I deem it meet to advertise my store of wisdom in another means than words. Or actions.
I move my lyric pose accompanied by a dog. This also is appropriate; I can not think so clearly otherwise than when I'm with this hound of mixed denomination and origin as bastard as my own. Not that my mother played false -- no; she clasped about my father's neck like the player queen protesting too much before the court at Elsinore. No: I refer to the illegitimacy of thought that counters meditation with the lop-sided grin of an imbecile.
I am no Hamlet, either, although I could be bounded in a nutshell, bad dreams and all, the opening riff of the Stones' "Brown Sugar" playing for me, in stereo. I am only what I am, and this derives from pictures: my antecedents range in ragged sequence before me on this river bank. As I observe them, they tell me all their secrets.
This one I know: he didn't start as a Johnson; Ruaíri Macshane metamorphosed when transliterated across the Irish Sea to a bigger island. They called him Dirty Mick. A "Johnson" is a euphemism for penis; Macshane isn't -- so where did that leave the folks back home? I smirk at the implication. Dirty Mick Johnson carried hod and balanced more than his body weight on bruised shoulder. It wasn't enough, though. The boat that brought him to this side of the world smelled worse than a building site.
