Musings

It’s an hour past midnight in Lake Claire, and way over in Candler Park you are fast asleep, have been for hours, perhaps alone, perhaps with someone else. Perhaps in those dreams your heart rises up through the ether and into the sky since you say it has been hanging heavily in your chest as of late. Perhaps sometimes in those dreams I find my way in, as you frequently do in mine. I don’t know if I will ever write anything that is not in some way for, or about, you. The dedication of the first book would read, “For my mom and dad,” and then printed in invisible ink would be “and Grier, wherever you are.” Perhaps I fool myself. I don’t even know if that Grier is really you. It’s funny how you feel like you have lost knowledge of someone if you don’t see them in a couple of months, when some people you can not see for years and you pick up right where you left off.
I am not sure that the you that would receive such a dedication would be you at all. I have created such goddesses in my head. You are one, the main one. Athena enshrined in your Parthenon – the one in Nashville. Muses are gods I suppose, and you never should marry your muse. You should bring her gifts, and I guess I have done that. You should feed the muse, but you should never marry her. I still wish to be the fool though.
Perhaps tonight it is still cold in the Yaak Valley. There are a couple of emergency lights on now down by the Dirty Shame Saloon. There’s a couple 20 years our senior. Let’s call them Rick and Elizabeth. In the late 80’s, just after college, they moved there looking for a simpler life, and a place to love and create. His muse is the land, and texture, and the animals, and atmosphere, and the changes of the season, and mostly Eli. Later they get married and have children and those children laugh and walk in the woods and think that dad is strange and that mom is beautiful, and they would have it no other way. His books sell, and she sings till the birds join in chorus.
You should never marry your muse? Is the Grier of my mind the Grier of flesh and blood, raising her heart and spirit to the skies, while asleep over there in that other neighborhood. Given the chance, I would take mine.
Come back from Sewanee, get in the car and go to Texas and take your chance?