Turtleback Inn, Orcas Island
– Posted using MobyPicture.com
Quote of the Day:
“From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard one or the other.” –Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Under a week now. In spite of my frantic attempts to brainstorm a way out of it, to devise some means of time travel perhaps, or even a time treadmill would suffice, TB is faced now with the inevitability of forty. Some months ago I wrote about my dread of the actual day of reckoning and that I was determined to be somewhere great so as to cushion the blow or even to make it glancing and inconsequential. Well, thanks to the Rambler and the Scamp, I’ll be “celebrating” from the islands, mountains and rain forests of Washington state. What a travel trifecta! And to top it all off, there are a dozen or more waterfalls to pursue.
I love waterfalls, always have. As a child one of the highlights of my summers was the annual pilgrimage to visit my Grandmother in Phoenix, Mississippi. That’s way, way out in the woods my friends. Even deeper into the ancient forests, past the abandoned homesites, along the narrow ridges separating continually eroding gullies is my waterfall. It’s not much of a falls, but its always there. It’s spring-fed, so even during droughts, it always runs. It is a beautiful, peaceful place, quiet to the uninformed or the soulless, but if you are perceptive and willing, you can hear the active spirits of generations of animals, native Americans and 19th century school kids who have left their old trails and tree etchings, the occasional penny and even fossilized remains at the old waterin’ hole, swimmin’ hole, place of refuge.
It is the memory of these walks I guess that instilled in my bones this strange love of running water. I drag the girls with me to find some most anyplace we go. And on what would otherwise be a day to dread, instead I’ll be led by those girls to new and different waterfalls. And I’ll take lots of pictures. And when I look at them forty years hence, I’ll smile at the memory of a great birthday.
Quote of the Day:
“And we’re ready for the kickoff……the ball sails high into the air and the Bulldogs let it bounce (silence for several seconds). I can’t see who’s got it…..there may have been a whistle on the play……a Bulldog is holding the ball aloft in the Auburn End Zone area……it appears to be a touchdown…….It IS a touchdown. Touchdown, Mississippi State.” Jack Cristil (this is actually a paraphrased memory of his call of the opening kickoff returned for a touchdown by State against Auburn in the mid-90’s. Jack had lost his cool complaining that State had been penalized fifteen yards before even taking the field and was completely lost. I think Sweet was with me that day, though I doubt he remembers it).
BR’s “Freestyle” post about probable new Ole Miss quarterback Jeremiah Masoli reminded TB, and just in time, that I hadn’t posted my annual Football in Julypalooza. So here it is. This year, the Julypalooza looks at the approaching college football season through a deluxe crystal ball, one capable of seeing all, not merely the records of each team. But first things first–Mississippi State goes 7-5, Ole Miss 6-6, and USM 8-4. Alabama wins the SEC championship, but loses to Texas in the BCS Championship game.
More specifically, Mississippi State is a team on the rise. By Mississippi’s standards anyway. Here’s why–Dan Mullen is an impressive young coach. He is a future star in the SEC, ready to take over the leadership mantle from a peaking Nick Saban and the fading Urban Meyer (due to health), Les Miles (due to not having Saban’s players) and Steve Spurrier (because he’s old as hell). Don’t worry, I have only had a single cup of the Kool-Aid. He won’t do all that at MSU. But he will have two good seasons to prove to the big money folks at Florida that he’s ready to take over there. Then Meyer can retire and regain his health the way he wanted to last year. It’s in the league’s interest for the coaching transition to go down this way too. That’s why MSU will get just enough calls to go their way, and will stay off probation this year and next. I’ll even go so far as to say MSU will be relatively successful five years out since they will have the players Mullen brings in for awhile after he’s gone and because we won’t get nailed with probation until after Mullen’s golden-boy hands are completely washed of Starkville. Oh, and we’ll also have (relative) success because of improved quarterback play and a stout defense that Jackie Sherrill says will be as good as some of those he coached in the late 90’s.
Ole Miss is tougher to call. They have a strong defense and a weak schedule. They are coming off back-to-back Cotton Bowl winning seasons but they have no quarterback. The solution appears to have dropped into their soul-selling laps in the form of disgraced former Oregon quarterback Jeremiah Masoli. But will the Masoli pickup backfire? I say it depends. If the team believes in Nathan Stanley, Masoli will be an instant wedge, cleaving a deep and bitter division between factions. If Stanley sucks half as bad as he appeared to last season however, the team will rally around any chance to save them from that suckitude. I lean toward the latter probability. The Rebs will follow him to another bowl appearance, but they are destined for a stadium built back in the mid-twentieth century rather than a brand spankin’ new beauty. And they will struggle for a couple of years after this one, partly due to the fact that the SEC needs Mullen to spruce up his resume, and the league doesn’t take kindly to the two Mississippi schools stealing enough wins to make everyone in the Magnolia state happy.
Southern? Hell, I don’t know. They always win between 6 and 8 don’t they? They will be back in a bowl and….wait a minute….the clouds in my crystal ball are beginning to part…..I can see clearly now…..oh, it can’t be…..no, I’ve not lived a pure enough life to have something like this happen….but, if the crystal ball says it, it must be true. Southern will play Ole Miss in the Liberty Bowl. That’s gonna be fun.
What else? Tulane will suck. SMU will suck. Bama will win a lot, but they still suck.
More specifically, MSU will beat Auburn. Book it. Ole Miss will lose to Vandy. They are due. LSU will fire Les Miles at the end of the season. Spurrier will retire this year. Sweet will get killed in Thursday Pickin III (The Return of Thursday Pickin’). Feidt’s Follies too. Quail and Zeek will return to the TBU. Cowbells will be outlawed for good after this season, because Ole Miss is a bunch of pansies and they cry about them like clockwork every time MSU goes on the rise.
Quote of the Day: “Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.” –last words of Pancho Villa
TB’s bank here in Ridgeland was robbed Friday. They know who did it, sort of. It was this dude:
Best Bank Robbin' Disguise, Ever
I wanted to call him Pancho Villa. Because the Federales let him get away. Out of kindness I suppose. But they will probably catch him any day. At least that’s what they say. I can see this man beneath that Brilliant Disguise: 
But they’ll probably catch him. Bank robbers never seem to get very far. In which case, I’ll have to give him the moniker Sancho Panza. And anyway, while a vest would certainly be the sort of garment chosen by a modern-day Pancho Villa, going with the orange reflective variety is much more up Sancho’s alley. And while Pancho would definitely have been armed, the pea shooter in the photo is more likely a part of Sancho’s arsenal.
Sancho Panza
Really, this story should’ve blown up by now. A possible illegal immigrant trying to pass himself off as some kind of blond Aryan just robbed a bank at (heh, heh) gunpoint in a law-abiding, hard-working, upper middle class, mostly white suburb. Could somebody please get Beck on the phone? For me personally it would help. You see, God help me it must be something from a prior life, but I can’t help that I partly hope he gets away. And if Fox got on the story I’d feel less guilty about that. It’s not that I condone crime and I certainly condemn the use of a (heh, heh) gun in a crime. It’s just that it seems like such a grand, hopeless adventure, almost romantic in its desperation. And oh how I would have liked to have used “desperado” in that last sentence. The other part of it is that I’ve grown so bitter about the true American/transnational corporate criminals who not only continue to terrorize our nation in a never-ending crime spree, but are actually rewarded annually with millions such that my small bank branch, to say nothing of our little desperado (I feel a little better now), can only dream about. So Sancho/Pancho, whoever you are, if you are in some little cafe searching the web for information about your heist, I leave you with two suggestions. One, if any of your confederates go by the nickname “Lefty”, pay him off and be done with him. Then do your best to emulate this guy:
Arriba! Arriba! Andale! Andale!
One more thing….this post needs a soundtrack.
Quote of the Day:
“You may ask yourself, “how did I get here?” –Talking Heads
TB comes to you after the longest hiatus in TBU history from a small cabin somewhere in the hinterlands of Stone County, Mississippi. As I sit here admiring the stars out my window and listening to the sound of the window unit humming contentedly above the din of crickets outside my door, I can’t help but wonder what I’m doing in this place. In the cosmic sense, anyway. I am still in touch with reality, that being that I am in the cabin of my client, and in route very early tomorrow to their place of business in South Louisiana where I will get the grand tour in order to help me understand the work they need me to do. But it’s a strange job, in an unfamiliar place, and while I can’t quite put my finger on all the reasons why, I feel like I’ve gone outside the lines of my preordained path. Hmm, that’s not exactly it either, I don’t go for that brand of Calvinism. More like my preconceived notions of the preordained path, the one that I don’t even know I’m on until I look behind me. Man, I think I just blew my mind.
It’s not the first time. Once in law school I chanced to sit at the outside bar at The Gin and have a beautiful model sit down beside me. She even struck up a conversation. Turned out we knew each other, sort of. She knew me, anyway. After a few minutes of her explaining who she was and who she was friends with I recalled her, vaguely at first. You know those models who say they were gawky or awkward in high school and not always seen as beautiful? Yeah, she was like that in high school. Well, we had a good time talking at the bar and she invited me, many hours and even more beers later, to go up to Tunica to the casinos with her and some friends who were making the late night road trip. Well, when a beautiful model asks you to take a road trip like that, you take it. I didn’t get anywhere with her, and I think she took satisfaction in having the upper hand on me after my difficulty in placing her earlier, but that’s not really the main thing I remember from the whole ordeal. It was the sudden urgent compulsion to ponder, at three o’clock in the morning, with a crowded car full of strangers, including a knockout I now knew I would not kiss, on a deserted two-lane highway, zooming through endless cotton fields toward a pair of Hollywood style searchlights beaming in the distance like a scene from some kind of psychodelic Twilight Zone, just what seemingly insignificant previous turn in my life had led me to that singular, unforgettable speck of time and space?
The question presented itself a few years ago when I awoke upon a mildewy couch in a single wide trailer in Vaughn, Mississippi, with a cat on my chest, a faded Rebel flag on the ceiling over my head and a bottle of wine cradled in my arm. Also in the instant after I decided to go to law school during a moment of abject despair while staring helplessly out the window from a freshman science class at Mississippi State. And another time when I sat listening to ancient black men who left Mississippi in their youth testify about their lifetime careers as Cleveland, Ohio, steel mill laborers in a dialect which required the lawyers born and raised in the deponents’ adopted hometowns to look to me for deciphering.
The cold buzzing air and the crescendo-approaching cricket symphony of the cabin make good background for such mind travellin’ I think, the kind without a specific destination in mind. Reverie is not always a malady after all; sometimes it’s quite pleasant in fact, when questions arise in which no answer need be found. I just hope I remember where I am when I wake up in the morning.
Quote of the Day:
“There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie.” Oscar Wilde
One of the great advancements of our time is the ability to carry around whole libraries of music and books on a device that will fit in a pocket. It is this technological marvel that has led me to resume a long-delayed goal of becoming more well read on the classics. Thanks to my iPhone I finally got around to reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by one of the most quotable writers of all time, Oscar Wilde. Among many gems in the first half of Dorian Gray, I came across the most “bon” of “mots.” The “malady of reverie.”
How he must have leapt out of his seat when the phrase came to mind! I imagine he wrote it down, dropped his pen and took a brisk trot around his neighborhood to celebrate the moment and to burn off the endorphins, then probably sat down to a decadent meal and a bottle of wine or two, leaving the drudgery of writing behind for a day while he reveled in his own genius. My God, I’ve searched for that phrase my whole life.
If you write at all, if you read books, newspapers, or even blogs to keep your mind from wandering you know what I, meaning Wilde, mean by “malady of reverie.” It is a sweet sickness that few of us would see cured if the result was to permanently shut down our brains. Oh, sure, we’d like a vacation from the strange and sometimes frightful thoughts travellin’ through our minds all day, but none of us who think would trade the malady for blissful ignorance very long. Yet to be afflicted makes us argumentative, contrarian, suspicious and cynical in turns. It is wearisome and frustrating because for every epiphany achieved, a dozen new questions, problems and for me personally, inconsistencies present themselves and these new issues serve only to increase the disease along with the great pleasure we derive from it.
The “malady of reverie.” Damn, that’s poetry. And I know I haven’t captured the totality of what those good words connote, but enough I suppose. I think I’ll go to lunch and think of something else now.
Oscar Wilde, thinking, it seems
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Travellinbaen 