Read Online Long Time Leaving by Roy Blount Jr. - Free Book Online
Authors: Roy Blount Jr.
Ads: Link
another slave, Henrietta, was more motherly toward her than her mother was. (Susanna's mother went crazy because Susanna's father preferred the company of Henrietta.) So, according to Soona or Parthenia, “she wanted Henrietta to be her mother, only she hated wanting it because Henrietta was …like me.”
Clift doesn't care if she's suffering from hysterical miscegenation; he wants to save their marriage. “You don't think the foundation's toorikkitih, after awl this tahm?” Susanna asks. Aw, no, he says. So she returns to his bosom. (That's right, she to his.)
Then, after a bit, she runs off again and drowns so that he can finally marry the sensible Indiana woman who has always loved him: Eva Marie Saint.
In other words, only when the South is attached to the North is the South sane, and the South would rather die.
Shouldn't I be able to construct a cultural grievance from all this? As I look back over my life, however, I realize that something I said earlier, with regard to Elizabeth Taylor, was a lie. If fate had brought the two of us together, and made me the type of person she was interested in at the time, I might well—those lips!—have been her third or fourth hubby. In which case, that is where I'd be coming from. I would speak, whether I wanted to or not, as someone formerly married to Liz.
As it is, I speak as this Southern white guy. Condemned by every syllable I utter to be linked at least in retrospect with—how did Senator Lott put it?—“discarded policies of the past.”
So. No sympathy for me. Unless I go crazy.
In closing, here's what I think: The South started going wrong when it started getting so heavy into the cultivation of soybeans. Soy's not Southern. Ham is Southern. Everywhere you look it's soy milk, soy ice cream, soy meat, soy I don't know what all. Why can't there be ham milk and ham ice cream and ham this and ham that?
And here's another thought. It's high time we rehabilitated a Southern fruit that has for so long, through no fault of its own, been associated with prejudice. Why not go through culture replacing the word
stone
with the word
watermelon?
The philosopher's watermelon, like a rolling watermelon, leave no watermelon unturned, watermelon walls do not a prison make, if you live in a glass house don't throw watermelons, John Ruskin's
Watermelons of Venice,
heart made of watermelon doody-wa doody-wa, bomb them back to the Watermelon Age, great watermelon face. Oliver Watermelon. Everybody must get watermeloned.
James Dickey put out a collection of poems called
Into the Stone.
And he was Southern! Let's make that
Into the Watermelon.
I can see the cover illustration now! A sword (as in
The Sword in the Watermelon)
stuck into Watermelon Mountain, which has carved into it Jeff Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Melonwall Jackson on horseback. Wouldn't that make a Southerner proud?
Poets think they are so hard and cool, getting down to
stone
all the time. Let's get hot and wet and sweet:
P SALMS:
He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all
thy ways,
They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy
foot against a watermelon.
E DWARD F ITZ G ERALD:
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Watermelon that puts the Stars to flight.
R ICHARD W ILBUR:
How should we dream of this place without us?
The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,
A watermelon look on the watermelon s face?
J OHN K EATS:
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat grey-haired Saturn, quiet as a watermelon.
T . S . E LIOT:
Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! Take the watermelon from the watermelon, take the skin from the arm, take the muscle from bone, and wash them.
T HEODORE R OETHKE:
Fear was my father, Father Fear,
His look drained the watermelons.
I'm not talking about charity toward the watermelon. What good is that? I'm saying, why not co-opt the watermelon, get the juice out of it, as we have the blues. And if any damn
Clift doesn't care if she's suffering from hysterical miscegenation; he wants to save their marriage. “You don't think the foundation's toorikkitih, after awl this tahm?” Susanna asks. Aw, no, he says. So she returns to his bosom. (That's right, she to his.)
Then, after a bit, she runs off again and drowns so that he can finally marry the sensible Indiana woman who has always loved him: Eva Marie Saint.
In other words, only when the South is attached to the North is the South sane, and the South would rather die.
Shouldn't I be able to construct a cultural grievance from all this? As I look back over my life, however, I realize that something I said earlier, with regard to Elizabeth Taylor, was a lie. If fate had brought the two of us together, and made me the type of person she was interested in at the time, I might well—those lips!—have been her third or fourth hubby. In which case, that is where I'd be coming from. I would speak, whether I wanted to or not, as someone formerly married to Liz.
As it is, I speak as this Southern white guy. Condemned by every syllable I utter to be linked at least in retrospect with—how did Senator Lott put it?—“discarded policies of the past.”
So. No sympathy for me. Unless I go crazy.
In closing, here's what I think: The South started going wrong when it started getting so heavy into the cultivation of soybeans. Soy's not Southern. Ham is Southern. Everywhere you look it's soy milk, soy ice cream, soy meat, soy I don't know what all. Why can't there be ham milk and ham ice cream and ham this and ham that?
And here's another thought. It's high time we rehabilitated a Southern fruit that has for so long, through no fault of its own, been associated with prejudice. Why not go through culture replacing the word
stone
with the word
watermelon?
The philosopher's watermelon, like a rolling watermelon, leave no watermelon unturned, watermelon walls do not a prison make, if you live in a glass house don't throw watermelons, John Ruskin's
Watermelons of Venice,
heart made of watermelon doody-wa doody-wa, bomb them back to the Watermelon Age, great watermelon face. Oliver Watermelon. Everybody must get watermeloned.
James Dickey put out a collection of poems called
Into the Stone.
And he was Southern! Let's make that
Into the Watermelon.
I can see the cover illustration now! A sword (as in
The Sword in the Watermelon)
stuck into Watermelon Mountain, which has carved into it Jeff Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Melonwall Jackson on horseback. Wouldn't that make a Southerner proud?
Poets think they are so hard and cool, getting down to
stone
all the time. Let's get hot and wet and sweet:
P SALMS:
He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all
thy ways,
They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy
foot against a watermelon.
E DWARD F ITZ G ERALD:
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Watermelon that puts the Stars to flight.
R ICHARD W ILBUR:
How should we dream of this place without us?
The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,
A watermelon look on the watermelon s face?
J OHN K EATS:
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat grey-haired Saturn, quiet as a watermelon.
T . S . E LIOT:
Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! Take the watermelon from the watermelon, take the skin from the arm, take the muscle from bone, and wash them.
T HEODORE R OETHKE:
Fear was my father, Father Fear,
His look drained the watermelons.
I'm not talking about charity toward the watermelon. What good is that? I'm saying, why not co-opt the watermelon, get the juice out of it, as we have the blues. And if any damn
Similar Books
![Hard and Easy [High-Country Shifters 5] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)](https://fs.dianahicksbooks.com/601893/thumbs/152x264/hard-and-easy-high-country-shifters-5-siren-publishing-menage-everlasting.png)
