hindsight haiku — pink cadillac (on the road)

Pink Cadillac, Hindsight, outside the Pink Cadillac Diner, Natural Bridge, Virginia, October 2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Back in Pennsylvania. I always think I’m going to post more than I do from the road. But at the end of the day, I find myself exhausted. Out as soon as the head hits the pillow. Perhaps it’s the introvert in me. I love traveling West to East, North to South, all the people I see only once a year. I wish there were a dozen of me. Maybe a baker’s dozen.

Yesterday I drove 13 hours back from Georgia with Mom. I spent this October day with my family in Pennsylvania. It’s almost 4am and I find myself wide awake, wanting to write. It’s the best I can do to post a haiku, a note, a few photographs from the Pink Cadillac Diner in Natural Bridge, Virginia. It’s a little off the beaten trail. Mom was finishing up her ice cream cone while I walked out to photograph the Caddy. A young woman strode proudly up behind me with her two daughters, camera in tow.

“My dad took a photo of me in front of this very spot,” she said, “and now I get to take a photo of you.” Snap. I watched her daughters gleaming next to the rusty chrome. “Would you like me to take a photo of all of you together?” I asked. “I’d love that,” she smiled, rushing over to hand me her pocket camera.

Lineage. Family legacies. The things we pass down.

The day was perfect for driving. The light illuminated by Fall. I hung my head out the window and snapped photos of a sunset front over Virginia. There is so much to tell. For the time being, will you settle for the highlights?

• visiting the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art in Augusta, Georgia with my mother
• walking with my dad through the Brick Pond Ecological Park in North Augusta, South Carolina
• dining on my uncle’s chili he’s been making since he was 12
• riding on the back of my brother’s Harley Softtail
• driving through Virginia with the mountains framed in gold
• visiting my paternal grandparents’ graves for the first time with my aunt
• photographing a historic Sand Oak at Westover Memorial Park Cemetery
• standing by the Savannah River on the down side of Clarks Hill Dam
• spending the day on the Georgia side of Clarks Hill Lake working on family history with Mom
• watching the Vikings/Steelers game with my family
• grits, sweet tea, barbecue hash, boiled peanuts
• seeing the faces of my brother and mom at the airport when I land
• talking to Liz on the new BlackBerry from Sconyer’s Bar-B-Que (she asked for hushpuppies)
• Twittering across the Mason-Dixon line (and the rest of the 1200 mile round trip to Georgia) with the same said BlackBerry
• photographing the October Blood Moon rising over Pennsylvania, setting over Georgia and South Carolina
• writing haiku in the air, Minnesota to Maryland and Pennsylvania
• watching my sister-in-law tap dance across her living room floor (and later my niece and brother’s fiancee danced across the same floor)
• The Beatles Rock Band with my niece, nephew, and brother in his living room
• attending a huge Halloween bash with my aunt at the Julian Smith Casino building where in the 1950’s my mother used to go to dances and work barbecues to raise money to build a local church
• laughing with my family, North and South
• stopping at the Pink Cadillac Diner in Virginia with Mom on the way home from Georgia

season to season
hindsight is 20/20
reflecting the past;
future remains uncertain,
jumps hoops through the looking glass

-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, October 25th, 2009

-related to posts: haiku 2 (one-a-day), WRITING TOPIC — MEMORIES OF CARS, WRITING TOPIC– ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS, you can’t go back — 15 haiku, Cassie’s Porch — Then & Now, Excavating Memories

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WRITING TOPIC – WATER WINGS

Island of Pine and Clay, Clarks Hill Dam, June 3, 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Have you ever made love under a rustic waterfall or on the sand at Cannon Beach, Oregon (it doesn’t feel as romantic as it looks in the movies). Have you soaked in a natural hot springs in New Mexico or dipped in a sulphur pool on a canoe trip along the Nahanni River in southern Canada? Have you ever flown in a  seaplane?

Tell me everything you know about water. Here are 20 useful water facts to get you started. Did you know your brain is made up of 70% water, the lungs weigh in at 90%, the body can be all the way up to 60%. How many times a day do you shower? What’s the longest you’ve gone without brushing your teeth? Have you ever heard of the human squeegee?

Would you rather live in the desert or along a lake, river, or stream? Did you honeymoon at Niagara Falls? When’s the last time you walked slowly in the rain? When did you learn to swim, who taught you, were you wearing water wings? How long can you hold your breath underwater? What are your first memories of water.

Do a writing practice on everything you know about water. Then choose a memory and write it down adding as many details as you can.

 Wednesday, June 6th, 2007

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Excavating Memories

 –Magnolia, June 3rd, 2007, Augusta, Georgia, all photos © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

The magnolias are blooming in Georgia. And the mimosas, wisteria, Spanish moss. I don’t have to dig all that deep. Everything falls into place the minute I ask. My body is tired; I am holding all this in my brain. The 5th Street Bridge, one of the first Coca-Cola bottling plants, the haunted pillar, Richmond Academy.

Broad Street, one of the widest streets in the United States, and Green Street and Reynolds Street. Walking through Magnolia Cemetery where my great, great aunt is buried near her father who was a soldier for the Confederacy; watching my mother walk down the leaf crackling road with a plucked magnolia in her hand, laughing and smiling and content to be back in the South.

Riding in the Chris Craft along the shores of Clarks Hill Dam. Calling the aunt I haven’t heard from since I was one or two. Hearing her Southern drawl on the other end of the line and knowing she’s related to me, bloodlines, blood kin, though I haven’t seen her in 50 years. It doesn’t matter. Before she hung up, she said she loved me. And I believe her.

My step-dad seems the happiest I have seen him in years. It’s as if he has a new lease on life. I ask the questions, we drive by childhood homes. He calls me Shug and tells me about Audubon Circle and the minute my chubby, two-year-old hands squeezed his cheeks and asked, “Can I call you Daddy?”

Hearing my uncle talk about our ancestors in the Civil War, photographs and relics lining his den, on shelves, and in drawers. Arrowheads and 400 acres of family farmland, and an island near Brunswick that can be traced all the way back to King George the Third; there’s proof on a letter that reads:

GEORGE the Third, by the Grace of God, of Great-Britain, France and Ireland, KING, Defender of the Faith, and fo forth, To All To Whom These Presents Shall Come Greeting: KNOW YE, THAT WE of our Special Grace, certain Knowledge and mere Motion, have given and granted, and by thefe Prefents, for us, our heirs and fucceffuors, DO GIVE AND GRANT unto…

And the letter is signed by the Surveyor General and the Governor in Council and dated April of 1763. Back, back, back. I listen, should not be surprised. All that history and the shape of shovels digging through the mind.

The things I carry are:

a Canon Powershot, an Olympus digital recorder, a trusty wirebound Supergirl notebook, a bag of Sharpies, Dell laptop, LG cell phone, cords to connect and connect and charge, two weeks worth of clothes, a 4 GB memory stick, black Adidas slingpack, camera bag, two sets of bifocals, a rolled family tree, water bottles, maps of Augusta and Georgia and South Carolina, a couple of rabbit fetishes, a lion, a turtle from Wyoming, and questions, yes, all those questions fall from me like curled rain.

              –Amelia’s Magnolia, June 3rd, 2007, Magnolia Cemetery, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

I carry the scent of magnolia, the purple of the martin, and the energy of all the ancestors, and I want to say I know what I’m doing, but I don’t. I have faith. I follow my nose and my heart and people seem to open to me. I watch generations before smile down on me, and generations to date, heal and let go. Soft kisses to the cheek and hugs all around. I am astounded every moment.

Tomorrow it is another trip to Clarks Hill Dam to meet my aunt who I found out helped her parents build the house I stayed in after I was born (and had photographed only hours before I called her). And I’ve located Mrs. Juarez but do I really want to spill the beans? Or should I save the story for the meet and greet.

I step across generations of sandy brown pine needles, past homes of Georgia brick. The land is red iron clay and the memories are mine. There is so much to say and too little time. I wanted to get something on the page, anything.

I wonder how long it will take me to sift the strainer and see what pours on to the page. It will not be everything. Only what is essential. Yet gathering these pieces leads me to feel complete.

It’s hard to explain what it’s like. All I can say is if you get the chance, go back and ask what you need to know. And write it all down. It is healing. It’s like discovering gold in a deserted mine where you thought the canary had sung her last note. But when you take a chance, and risk dropping down, you find the gleaming vein against a backdrop of emeralds. And somehow you know each line uncovers a rough-cut diamond made from thousands of years of lumpy coal, shining just for you.

Monday, June 4th, 2007

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