Daily Kup (My Life on Assignment on the Road)Being neither Jack Kerouac nor Cormac McCarthy, I cannot claim to be "On the Road" or on "The Road," a good thing in the latter case since I'm not feeling post-apocalyptic at the moment. Does that mean I am "beat"?
We are having a wonderful visit with T's family. One of the objectives of the trip was to record the reflections of an old family friend. David had been the best man at my husband's parents' wedding and a close friend of T's father from childhood until his sudden death in his mid-forties. Attila the Son, always at odds with the world and wanting to find his place, had asked many questions about his grandfather and sparked this chance to gather the threads of the past and tie them into the untidy bow that is a survivor's summation of the life of someone never met.
In Swahili tradition, people who have died become the 'living-dead' in a state of personal immortality in the present period of time (Sasa) when there are friends and relatives who keep the person alive in their memories. Once there are none left who can recognize the name or recall the anecdotes, then the person is truly dead and moves into the past (Zamani).
We have a video recording of David recounting tales of T's father's youth and some wonderful photographs to scan - a boost to T's dad's immortality in the Sasa, some answers to a little boy's questions and maybe some more closure for a bigger boy as well.
"I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.” ~ Jack Kerouac
Two Spoons of Sugar and a Splash of Cream
This stately lady lives at the Houston Nature Center. Located on the Root River Trail, the HNC has a reputation as the best trailhead in the state and certainly the only one with a live owl living on premises. Meet Alice, the resident Great Horned Owl. She was found as a chick with a badly damaged wing. Hand-raised, she became the inhabitant and mascot of the Center. The extent of her injuries prevents her from living in the wild but she obviously enjoys her "perch with a view."
The
Center also features flowing prairie plantings accented with sculptures like this one made from bicycle parts.
This squirrel is facing a long Sasa tacked to a board next to a sign saying that he isn't a complete albino because he, with his brown eyes, doesn't have all the traits of albinism. If the taxidermy shop had only brown eyes in the tackle box on squirrel-stuffing day, perhaps the eye color was more the product of convenience than genetics. So, dead, stuffed, nailed to a wall, located next to a flying predator. I don't even wish that on Glen Beck.
Early tomorrow, we head back home.
“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” ~ Jack Kerouac
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