Time and Place 2011

Time and Place 2011

Godbless you, Rabo Karabekian

Godbless you, Rabo Karabekian
Originally uploaded by Jaci Sue

There was a moment when we were driving that I thought, "This is what it feels like to be a grown up."

We got a call at 11:30 that morning from my husband's aunt. We were waiting/not waiting for it to come. "Matt, your dad's probably not going to make it to tomorrow." And so we went; south and east, to a state that so far has been home to the most meaningful events in our lives together.

We made it before midnight. We sat and held his hand in our hands for the last time, not knowing if he felt it, if he even knew it was us. Sometime that night, soon after everyone had gone to bed, he passed away.

For the next week we went through his things. On the last day, after I had left for home, my husband found a little stack of business cards with notes on the backs. There were quotes from Vonnegut books, funny sayings; Matt had seen them all before and he was happy to find them. The very last card in the pile said, "At least the motherfucker tried." And he did. He tried, he tried. It's the only thing any of us can do.

While we've been hunting down the American Dream, America has been dreaming us. America dreams of itself: of it's land and those who inhabit the land. America is oblivious to the idea of itself as a nation-state. It does not care if the people who live inside of it are real Americans or not, it does not judge us on the merits that we judge ourselves.
America dreams in train whistles, in high school gymnasiums, in deep lakes, and in road side graveyards. America dreams in county fairs and in bus stops; in backyards and bodegas. America dreams in groundhogs and buffalo; in cornstalks and apple orchards.
And it breathes out and rolls over, like Kerouac said, across the great prairies to the mountains that border them and then it stretches out to the ocean beyond. America dreams of people on a shore line, some stepping into the water, some retreating back; the tide of humanity that is shaped by her pull- forever changing, surging out and back.

Felt In Passing

Photographs of my ...

By Jaclyn Sollars

I have a little book of photography for sale. I'd love it if you'd come take a look.

I.

Sometimes I find myself

still in the grips of your

schoolyard poetry;

your voice, grit in my memory.

The feel of your hands,

cool and dry and boney hard,

has stayed on the palms of my

own.

In my head

I've confused you

with the other ones too often

and I'm sorry for that.

You were a different story

altogether, all the time.

II.

Then, there were a thousand

summers in every summer.

There were a thousand words

in your mouth for me.

But how often those words

were about me I cannot say.

On July nights we would

drive from my house to yours;

from your house to mine-

all the fireflies like stars in the wheat.

because that's what makes it beautiful

Originally uploaded by Jaci Sue

I was standing in this little log church that was built in the early 1800s and it was just starting to rain. There was a glassless window there and I leaned out to see how hard it was coming down and I saw this; this perfect light.

There is something in these things that we see every day that holds magic. To name it would be useless. It's been here all this time and hasn't needed a name yet.

There's an angel that nests in the tree of life

There's an angel that nests in the tree of life
Originally uploaded by Jaci Sue

There was a man in Tennessee who lost his wife in mysterious circumstances. He was so struck by her death, so aggrieved, that he (who had never done anything like it before) took up a hammer and a chisel and began to carve her a grave stone.
On the cross is the tree of life and atop the tree is an angel. On the left side of the cross it says "truth" and on the right, "life".
The stone was found unfinished by the tree in which he hung himself.