Azaleas

 

 

 

The deepest thoughts can often come from the simplest of things. Something that comes with a history. Something that you take for granted until it speaks to you from the past, beyond memory, understanding with a wealth of emotion that touches your soul.

I’ve been turning over this article in my mind for a few days now. I write in a very unorthodox way. I’m not schooled in literature, journalism, or any of those things that people go to universities in order to be exposed to great minds in the hope of perhaps someday becoming a great mind themselves, imparting some measure of wisdom upon the world that will be pondered long after their graves are forgotten. I’m a songwriter. Not a composer. Composers compose. Construct intricate musical patterns with things like music theory. Songwriters just get divorced and pour their hearts out in the vain hope of leaving their day job. Three verses, a chorus to reinforce the thought, lead, repeat and out. And keep it within three minutes.

When I write an article, surprisingly, I use the same formula. Idea, one, three, back to one, five, repeat, over and out. My friends who have been in a studio will know what that is. The rest of you better just keep your day jobs. The idea is the core. If you can connect the idea with the formula and reinforce it enough in those three minutes, it “cooks.” God will speak in your ear, and with any luck so will BMI.

So, what provoked me today? Azaleas! Beside my porch, in a small flower bed there are some azaleas. A friend, now gone placed them there years ago. There used to be a statue of Mary in that garden that is now in Tennessee. My friend dug the plants up and placed them around the statue because he said that Mary should always have an offering of blue flowers at her feet. Each year more and more azaleas appeared. So, what did they tell me today?

As I said, my friend died. People come and people go. People die. This weekend we remember someone who died and returned. The rest of us leave flowers in a small garden. But the flowers spoke to me. Not audibly, that’s schizophrenia, but communicated to me none the less. And I missed my friend. There isn’t a single room in this house untouched by his hand. Curtains across the French doors he hemmed to fit on an old Singer sewing machine. The cabinets in the kitchen that he stained, not with a brush, but sponges so as to soak the color into the wood. The dimmer switch in the dining room so we had mood lighting. And the ceiling fan on the porch that he ran power through the attic. I could go on.

We all ask, “Why?” when something senseless occurs. When death rears its ugly head for absolutely no reason. When a life so perfect is extinguished in a random act to violence is bad enough. An active shooter. A car wreck. But when a focused act of hate takes one of these beautiful souls it defies all logic. If there is a God, how did this happen? And you search for answers. Oh sure. Forgive your enemies. Seventy times seven. Turn the other cheek. But you want a hanging. Where the knot isn’t properly set along the left shoulder and they swing for about twenty minutes, kicking and wheezing. It would be real nice if their mother has to watch as she tears her hair out. But it won’t bring the good man back. And the atrocities will continue because that is the nature of the shaved ape!

And if it’s an interracial event it’s got an added attraction. It’s only human, if we can be called that. If this one did something like this then all the rest of them must be just like him. Society has to do something to protect itself. Which society? Not theirs!  Don’t they hav to defend their society?  And before it’s all over both are just living self-fulfilling prophecies.

You know what I’m referring to. We all do. I’m not going tic for tac about all the legalisms. There will be more than enough time for that and before it’s over you will hate lawyers. What I’m going to tell you is what the azaleas told me. I read a comment on Meta last night off a chat. A lady, didn’t look like a lady but I’ll just say woman for the sake of argument. She was from Chicago, and that ain’t good, and she was on a rant. “This isn’t Rosa Parks no more,” and “Reparations,” and “We’re gonna rise up,” and I was thinking about that rope and tree . . . a lot! But for the last week I’ve been hearing other voices. Same color as she was. But they were quite different. One wears a lion’s mane hat. Another looks like a lawyer and still another is a professor at a university. And many more. I will not call them black because that would differentiate them from me. As if that has some bearing. They were all saying exactly the same thing! Judge this person by rule of law. This is not 1955, we are a nation of laws, and this kind of thuggery will not be tolerated no matter what happened in 1612! We have come too far to riot, burn down neighborhoods and start all over again waiting for the next generation to maybe get it right!

Hate will not bring what we lost back. Blaming 41.31 million people for the actions of a degenerate will cripple our society. A society that he is no part of. But those people are. And each time we stick together and get it right another azalea will spring up in the Garden.