I stop at Walmart on return from the field. I buy fish and laundry detergent. We are out of both.
Home, I sit on the porch as a storm rolls in: flashes of lightning and thunder to north where I know tractor and planter rest, dead and idle in the field. I’m dirty as fuck, and I stay that way a little longer, poisoning myself in smoking as I sit. If a cigarettes were my choice, I’d be chain smoking; but they’re not, so I work on my cigar. It doesn’t help, but it doesn’t hurt; and maybe that’s what I need—if not beneficial, an action without harm.
Sky is navy blue with cloud overtones of deeper violet. Lightning and thunder still flash and sound off and to the north.
I think I’ve killed my tomato plants—I know I’ve killed zucchinis. Trying to reduce weed pressure, spraying their perimeters with roundup—I got too close and killed what I tried to protect. Funny how that works rather than permitting and making peace with coexistence. Instead, everybody loses—both sides die; fault of a warrior in a garden.
I’m frustrated. I think of vocations. I think of purpose and know what I’m doing with my life isn’t it. I can bullshit myself and pretend that I don’t see and know—or I can change: admit and be open to how and where God leads.
I don’t have a fucking clue, but that’s faith: trusting and following, not because you know but because you believe, or at least hold hope.
I keep the cigar lit and its end flowing under stack of embers. I knock them off and take another draw, fueling flame and burn before it dies away, exposed.
I’m restless, ready for a violence, and so I will direct it inward—asceticisms and changing of self rather than taking out on world and others.
It’s happened before. It will happen again. I pray for reconciliation—atonement—with God and with myself, beginning again, without a clue, but ready to discern and do.