Last full day in Mississippi 

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. (Numbers 6:24-26)

We dashed from the truck into the narrow confines of Abe’s Grill to avoid getting soaked by the rain. We took our seats on the red vinyl stools. Abe’s wife immediately offered us coffee, while she attended to a customer on the far end of the counter. 

I acknowledged the gentleman one stool over. He welcomed us with his drawl of good morning. Abe, the proprietor, hollered our way, “Hope  y’all came hungry. You want eggs?” I answered yes. “What kind?” Scrambled, I hollered back. Les confirmed he wanted over medium. Abe’s son cracked our eggs on the grill with one hand, while expertly turning sausage patties with a spatula in his other hand.

Abe added bacon to Les’ plate and two biscuits to mine and cup of gravy each. I gave my gravy and one biscuit to Les. We devoured the warm, greasy goodness. 

It was a mesmerizing experience, eavesdropping on the local conversations. Once things slowed down, Abe and his wife chatted with the locals about  the rain and life.

One quotable was Abe’s remark about the rain:

“Remember what Travis  Cornelius always said … if you wait ’til it stops rainin’ to work, you ain’t never gonna make a dollar.”

I tucked this wisdom in my heart, and definitely think Travis Cornelius is a great name for a character in one of those stories I plan to write one of these days.

And I chuckled at this exchange between a regular and Abe’s son. 

As he served her a plate of ham, eggs and biscuits, he said,”This’ll be the best breakfast of your life.” She replied, “I had the same yesterday.” It’s all about perspective, now isn’t it?

After our second fill up on coffee, Abe struck up a conversation asking about our boat and travels, since I mentioned that the marina guy highly recommended Abe’s place. When we told him we were headed to St.Augustine, he immediately told us to eat at Cap’s place. The food is great and the view of the green coastline when you cross the bridge is breathtaking, so says Abe.

After our delightful breakfast, we ran back through the rain to go buy some provisions and do our laundry at the local laundromat.

It rained all day, which was just fine for us. I played around with paints in my art journal and Les caught up on work emails.

For dinner, I cooked up some stir fry with canned chicken, shredded broccoli mix and sliced celery flavored with ginger, honey, orange marmalade and soy sauce and some green chilies.

Our neighbors were heading out to anchor out on the river, as a pink sunset peeked out under the rain clouds.

And the neighbors next to them invited us over to tour the inside of their sailboat, and we ended up visiting and sharing stories of our boating adventures. 

What kind of blessings did you experience today?



from the Intuition, still enjoying the marina in Mississippi

 The Word was first,
the Word present to God,
    God present to the Word.
The Word was God,
    in readiness for God from day one. (John 1:1-2 The Message)

 

“It’s always better to have too much to read than not enough.” (Ann Patchett)

 

After a day of recuperating from the big shuffle, I was ready to do some minor shuffling inside the boat. Part of living in a small space means you’re always moving things around to find other things, which is actually part of the charm. We’ve been aboard about a week now, and today seemed like a good day to reorganize and take stock of what we have and what we need for the next phase of our journey.

And since I told you that I had stowaways on board, I gathered them in one place to sort through which ones would stay on the boat, and which ones I would store in the truck. I am fairly pleased that as of right now, I have completed three books. (I love to start books, and then another book beckons, and I leave the one for the other. It’s not that I don’t want to finish, I just like grazing when it comes to books.) For this journey, I made it my intention to savor a whole book at a time, while still browsing others at my leisure. And if you look closely at the titles, some of the books are more for reference than reading.

Instead of typing in all the titles and authors here, you can zoom in on the photo and see what catches your eye. I will share a little about the three that I completed this past week. I’ve already mentioned the first book that I read, which was Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. A classic that I started and put down a number of times over the years. I’m glad that it was my first pick, because of several reasons, but the main one being that it is a book about books.

It’s a story about meaning and happiness and life. And as you can tell I was really impacted by the conversation between Faber and Montag. It’s not light reading, but it will ignite new thoughts and possibly even clarify some old ones. If you decide to read it, I encourage you to just read it for itself. It will be hard to not make connections to the time period it was published, post World War II and the early 1950s. However, there are elements that resonate with our current technology and especially how we entertain ourselves.

Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas, was recommended by and borrowed from my friend, Carol. I am so glad, this little nugget of gold found its way into my stash. The setting is in a small Colorado mountain town (the introductory notes say that it is loosely based on Breckenridge) during the gold mining era  through the great depression.

Hennie Comfort, the main character has lived in the town most of her life and she has stories to pass on, and a secret that haunts her. She is about to retire from the mountain to live with her daughter in Iowa. Before she does she meets Nit Spindle, a young bride who has a lot in common with Hennie.

The way the author quilts together the stories, and the lives of these two courageous women, makes me want to move to the mountains despite the cold winters, so I could pick raspberries in the summer and enjoy the jam on homemade bread in the winter. This piece of historical fiction kept me riveted and fascinated. The storytelling is first rate. And the story pieces together to a satisfying conclusion, just like a comforting quilt on a cold winter’s morning.

The next book that I decided to read was another story set in the wild west. I had never read anything by Louis L’Amour. During one of my ramblings through the used book section of Goodwill, I picked up this gem called Conagher. A short read, but packed with everything that we have come to expect from a good western. My experience with westerns include Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Clint Eastwood flicks and the spaghetti westerns of the Sunday afternoon movie ilk.

The hard, gun-slinging characters of the West appear in this story, and L’Amour sketches graphic gunfight scenes with his words. The one thing that surprised me was a romantic note that rustles through the narrative like a tumbleweed on the prairie. If you haven’t read any L’Amour yet, this is a great introduction. I kind of hope some more of his books try to sneak on the boat, while we travel south.

As I read more of the stowaways, I’ll try to remember to give you a little synopsis along the way.

I leave you with a quote that my friend, Janet, sent me today. Very fitting with the musings of my soul on this trip.

. . .words, like Nature, half reveal

And half conceal the Soul within.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

And a few photos from the day:

How would you describe your reading habits in one word?

Now listen, you who say,

“Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city . . .”

(James 4:13 NIV)

Grand Harbor Marina, Mississippi 

If you would have told me a week ago that we would be docked at a marina on Pickwick Lake in Mississippi, I would have scoffed.

But here we are, happily decided to stay put until Saturday.

We’re enjoying summery autumn weather and just relaxing on the water.

Yesterday was the big shuffle day, which to be honest I pouted about for a little bit.

The big shuffle means we borrowed the marina’s courtesy car at 8am and drove 20-30 miles to rent a car, and got stuck in a construction zone both ways. We brought both cars back to the marina, picked up the dog, left the courtesy car and drove the rental car the four hours back to Kentucky Dam Marina to retrieve the truck and trailer.

Whew!

Once there, Les drove the truck and trailer and I followed in the rental. It took another four hours or so, and various pit stops  to get back to drop off rental car. Once that was done, I hopped into the truck and we arrived back at the marina by 8:45pm.

Another whew!

This morning, while we were weighing options of where to go next on our adventure, the idea of just staying put for a few days sounded real good.

Our intention was to vacation along the inter coastal waterway starting in Myrtle Beach, SC for a week or so, and ending up at Marineland Marina in Florida, so Les could work from the boat and I could explore the area.

Fortunately, the marina will take us a week early, and they had minimal damage from the recent hurricane.

So what does all this have to do with composition?

One of my leisure choices while traveling is to catch up with books that I have never quite finished reading.
I have several stowaways with me. (I’ll post another time about the titles of the books.) But one that I was reading this week is The Photographer’s Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos by Michael Freeman.

This phrase about the topic caught my attention: “Composition is essentially organization…”(Freeman)

This complex idea of composition can be summarized by the concept of organization. (I say complex, because I tend to be more intuitive on my approach to life, and especially my creative pursuits. And composition has always intimidated me.) But no more! I am going to burn the bridge that says a technical approach is beyond my abilities.

I can relate to organizing. I’ve been at it most of my life. Organizing, planning, managing my time and resources, and even my family, sometimes to their delight and sometimes not.

Organization has its merit. And also its own faults, but it is helping me understand composition.

I can organize life by descriptions.

Life is composed of happy moments and frustrating moments and boring moments and downright hellish moments.

Right now, I appreciate the inconveniences this particular adventure has served us.

And even though I’d prefer my adventures to be composed of all fun and play, my wise husband reminded me that even the best adventures have some element of work involved.

The big shuffle was tiring, but actually fun, too. (I got to drive a Chrysler 300, and for one funny moment, I couldn’t figure out how to start the keyless ignition, and finally I saw the instructions on the screen. “Apply brake and push button.” Ok, that’s real intuitive, not. But, I did figure out how to sync my phone to the stereo with Bluetooth. Who said I can’t do techy things?)

Today, I was greeted by the morning sun while I ran in both Mississippi and Tennessee. The marina is right on the state border.

We were going to have a southern breakfast in Corinth by the rental car place, but it was closed, with a simple sign that said “doctor.” Now that we’re staying an extra couple days, we might drive back over to see if Abe’s back from the doctor.

My own version of southern comfort food: fried apples, fried cornbread cakes and white chili.

I love composing meals in our small galley (kitchen) on the boat.

Now I have to recompose myself, and tidy up so we can have coffee and leftover corn cakes with honey or jam for breakfast, and maybe some eggs and turkey bacon, too.

What are you composing or organizing or cooking up these days?

Between destinations

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another…(Romans 13:8 NIV)

The last couple days, I have been contemplating a conversation I read in Fahrenheit 451, as related from  Faber to Montag.

Montag thinks books must be the answer to happiness because they have been banned, and people who get caught with books are required to relinquish the books or die with them by fire.

Faber suggests that it’s not just books, but quality of information that is missing. He summarizes his three points this way:

“Number one, as I said: quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.” (Bradbury)

A trip like this affords us the leisure to digest quality information. And our actions follow from the interaction of the two. 

Each stop and each movement forward depends on our surroundings and our provisions, with lots of time in between to observe and absorb the nature around and within.

Over the past couple days, we’ve had the leisure to digest the texture and quality of the natural world. We traveled from Kentucky Dam State Park to the Grand Harbor Marina on Pickwick Lake. We’ve been in three states over the past few days and put another 196 miles in our logbook.

Cruising the waterways of Kentucky lake, or any waterway for that matter, offers us a chance to observe nature in a closer way than usual. The perspective from the water differs from the vantage point of the shore.

 
In the same way, the quietude and solitary moments of boat travel grant plenty of time for introspection. At this slower pace, I arrive at conclusions about the emotional texture of my innerscape. There are mounds of grief, high peaks of joy and calm rivers of contentment with deep currents of desire mixed with rapids of ideas churning to become intentions.

While taking in the vistas of my emotions, even allowing some to surge over me, my nature invites me to an eye level with my soul, and it’s deeper caverns of need.

In this contemplative state my awareness of life heightens. I notice changes. I am surprised by an idea that I need to burn some bridges. Bridges that beckon me to self-doubt and sometimes despair.

I resolve to burn the bridge of deprivation, which tells me: do not touch, do not taste and do not use.

To me deprivation differs from self-denial. Self-denial often leads to a choice for higher good. Deprivation is a mean-spirited way to punish myself for wrongs never committed. Deprivation lacks love and ruins me for loving others.

To live with no interstices, no gaps of doubt or despair would be ideal, but in reality little lapses occur. Yet, my soul reminds me that fullness of life is mine. And at this pace it is abundantly clear.

My desire to keep this clarity close whether at leisure or at work, whether in want or in contentment, whether through lament or through rejoicement is keen.

I live in the rich, natural world. I have an abundance of quality, textured information at hand. I receive and give love. Abundance of nature, text and relationship overflows. All is well with my soul.

How is your soul today?