Give Me Your Sympathy and Lots Of It

Hope you all are having a lovely Saturday. The weather is beautiful here. It's absolutely perfect. Not too hot, but not cold. No humidity and the mosquitos haven't begun their attacks in force. Yet. Don't worry, they will. They are just waiting for the opportune moment.

I spent all day today at the Delta Blues Symposium listening to paper presentations and a photography presentation. All the papers were good, stemming from Southern novels and some of Tennessee Williams’s works. One paper was about Richard Wright's Haiku and the presenter was a Mississippi professor who is from China. I kept thinking, as he was reading his paper, how difficult it is to learn English, and then to be able to write so well must really be a task. My favorite Haiku he discussed is:

Is this tiny pond
The great big lake in which
I swam as a boy?

I remember the first time I went back to my grade school as an adult. It was five years ago, when Emily was in the first grade. The halls were so small. The desks were tiny, and the cafeteria wasn't the huge expanse of territory I remembered it to be. I could immediately relate to that Haiku for that reason, as can all of us, I'm sure.

The photographers at the symposium today showed photos from the Mississippi Delta region. I particularly enjoyed seeing David Rae Morris’s work, not only because he’s so good, but he is Willie Morris’s son. Willie Morris was a writer who grew up in Yazoo City, MS, and later lived in Austin, then England (as a Rhodes Scholar) and then in New York as editor of Harper’s Magazine. He later retired in Mississippi and wrote a lot about the South and its unique characteristics. I recommend reading his nonfiction work, North Toward Home.

I’m getting crankier as the day goes on, however, since I am being forced to follow a liquid diet today and tomorrow. Yes, nothing but diet coke, coffee, and a little jello. YEE HAW. It seems that when you are scheduled for a test of the colon on Monday at 7am, you must be completely empty. This is also going to mean drinking some really nasty stuff tomorrow afternoon and remaining at home to let it work its magic. I must also swallow four laxatives Sunday night and, well, you know what that means. Then, to add a little fun to all of this, I must get up Monday morning at 5 and do more colon cleansing, and be at the hospital at 7. Yes, that’s 5AM and 7AM. With no coffee that morning. Word to the wise: stay out of my way Monday morning.

Not feeling very loving right now,
Vanessa