Back to Jackson

This morning, on my way to Brunswick Forest for my daily constitutional, I detoured to Port City Java for a cup of the needful. Pulling into the drive-thru, I turned the volume down on the satellite radio just as Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood began singing Jackson.

You know the song. We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout. A song so committed to its own momentum that it makes you want to do something reckless before the song ends.

I turned the volume down to place my order. When I turned it up again, the song had finished, and the disc jockey was already talking, but not about the song per se; he was talking about Jackson, Tennessee, where the temperature was currently seventy-five degrees, and the home of his good friend Wink Martindale.

From the first time I heard that song, without evidence or argument, I had simply decided: Jackson, Mississippi. I don't know why. I'm not sure what that says about me as a Tennessean, but I suspect it isn't flattering.

I filed this small mystery in the back pocket of my mind and continued my cruise into the pine groves of Brunswick Forest. Once there, strolling underneath the pine bows, I opened the app on my phone and backed the stream to the part where the song was playing, and waited for the disc jockey to talk about Jackson again.

I listened closely this time. Plash, the morning host of 60's Gold on SiriusXM, and a man I trust in these matters, confirmed what I'd heard the first time. It was Jackson, Tennessee.

I was still turning this over when I noticed something dark and wet near the bank of the lake. Large turtle, I thought. Or possibly something that wanted me to think it was a large turtle.

You may remember my interest in cryptids, but if not, search this blog for "Creature of Lake Jordan," though I'd advise against reading it at bedtime. The dark shape resolved itself, upon closer inspection, into a gathering of turtles. A bale of turtles, if you want the proper collective noun, which I always insist on.

I didn't disturb them, of course. Certainly not. I don't appreciate having my own basking interrupted, and I believe in Do Unto Others regardless of species. I attempted a photograph from a respectful distance and fat-fingered the shutter button, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last. The unintended result was that my SiriusXM app lurched sideways onto a station I'd never listened to before.

The song that was playing, in its final measures, was Jackson. When it ended, the guest host explained, with the casual authority of someone stating the obvious, that Jackson, Tennessee, was a great place, and hotter than a pepper sprout.

The guest host was Nancy Sinatra.

I stood there at the edge of the lake for a moment, listening to the water and thinking about the particular texture of mornings when the universe appears to be tapping me on the shoulder and telling me in a tone far too smug for a woman of advanced years, You ain't seen nothing yet.

On my way home, I stopped at a favorite thrift store, the kind of place that rewards a loose agenda and an open mind. I wasn't looking for anything specific, which is, in my experience, the correct way to find exactly what I'm looking for.

I was browsing the hard goods aisle when a small figurine caught my attention. A woodpecker in overalls, hammer in hand, with a small piece of wood stuck on his bill. He seemed to be midway through a carpentry project of mysterious purpose. Whimsical. The plaque on the base said his name was Woodrow.

I thought: if ever there was a soul vessel, this woodpecker would be one. I'm not entirely certain what I meant by that. But I've learned to pay attention to the things that make me think it.

I bought Woodrow and gave him a good cleaning as soon as I arrived home. When I turned him over to check the bottom, out of habit, the way one does, the Universe drove home her message.

The piece was a limited edition, hand-painted tchotchke. Its name, according to the base, was Experiencing Technical Difficulties. He'll live on my desk for days when I need reminding that technical difficulties are, on balance, more interesting than smooth sailing.

Beneath the manufacturer's information was the original sales sticker from the store that first sold him.

Jackson Cards and Plants. Jackson, Tennessee.

I've been sitting with this all afternoon, and here is what I've concluded: either the universe has a sense of humor and a fondness for repetition, or it has something specific to say about Jackson, Tennessee, and is simply waiting for me to go there and find out what it is.

I haven't ruled out either possibility.

What I do know is that Woodrow is on my desk, beak-deep in his eternal carpentry project, and that somewhere in the Brunswick lagoons there is a creature that has so far eluded documentation. I've promised myself I'm going to find it.

If the universe keeps sending motifs, I intend to follow them.

Stay tuned for the Creature of the Brunswick Lagoons. And if you happen to know why Jackson, Tennessee is so popular, I'm listening.

All That’s Fit to Fetch

The morning was one of those that arrive with a sense of divine instruction. The Universe, speaking in the language of blue skies and a light southerly breeze off the lagoon, said plainly: Come out of the house, Genome, and be among my people.  

It seemed an odd phrasing but, as someone once said in a previous century, ours is not to question but to obey. Shakespeare perhaps?

I obeyed by ankled down to Brunswick lagoon, the one with the gazebo, not the fountain. A great blue heron stood motionless in the shallows with the serenity of a monk who has achieved enlightenment and no longer requires breakfast. 

Two Mockingbirds conducted a bilateral summit in the Live Oaks. Somewhere behind me, a dog was offering its unsolicited opinion about, what I presumed was squirrel business.

It was the kind of morning that seems to have had me in mind when the new day dawned.

And then I noticed someone coming toward me on the path. He was of a certain target demographic age, purposeful in his stride, wearing the expression of a man who has recently come to a decision and feels quite happy about it. As he drew closer, he looked up. His eyes met mine. His face broke into a wide, warm smile.

"Hey!" he said. "Here he is!"

Well, I ask you.What was I supposed to do? I’m not made of stone. The man was smiling at me and had announced our meeting as though he’d been looking forward to the moment for some time. 

"Good morning!" I said, matching his energy and perhaps raising it slightly. "Wonderful day, isn't it?

He didn’t slow down and strode on past me as though I were the idle wind.

"No, no," he continued, gesturing broadly, "I told you already, the eleven o'clock doesn't work for me." 

I noticed, as he passed within arm's reach, the small white capsule lodged in his left ear, trailing a wire so fine it was nearly invisible in the morning light.

I processed this. I recalibrated. He was not talking to me. He had never been talking to me.

That ‘Here he is’ remark was intended for someone on the other end of a telephone call, someone who apparently was hoping for an eleven o'clock appointment; someone, decidedly, not me.

I watched him continue down the path, still talking, still gesturing, entirely unaware that he had just caused the internal clockwork to slip a gear in a man who had come out specifically to feel connected to the human race.

Well, said Amy, from somewhere in the vicinity of my left temple. That was something.

"Not a word, Amy" I said to that snarky little cluster of gray cells that serves as my limbic system.

I'm just saying, you really committed to it, didn’t you? 

She seemed to be enjoying herself enormously.

"Anyone could have made that mistake," I said. "The man smiled and made direct eye contact with me. Mine was a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the available evidence."

She giggled when she said, I want to make sure I have this right. You said to him, ‘Beautiful day, isn’t it?’

I made no immediate reply, which she correctly identified as a victory and celebrated accordingly.

The heron had not moved. It occurred to me that herons never have this problem. They simply stand quietly in the shallows, magnificent and unbothered, and let the world conduct its business at a safe distance.

Perhaps, I thought, the correct response to a world full of people talking to invisible companions is to become more heron-like.

I considered how the philosophy might be developed into something that could anchor a short TED Talk.

"Excuse me,” said a small voice.

I looked up. A woman with an expression of silver-haired wisdom, walking a small dog that appeared to be mostly ears, had stopped on the path. She was looking directly at me. Both ears were empty of electronic capsules. Her ears, I mean, not the dog’s.

"I couldn't help noticing," she said, nodding at the lagoon, "that heron has been standing in exactly the same spot for the past twenty minutes. I find it here every morning. Just thought you might find it interesting; you seem to be another admirer."

And there it was.

Not a grand revelation. Just a woman and a dog stopping to share a heron, the way people have always shared herons, when they happen to find themselves in the same place and time, paying attention.

"I did find it interesting," I said. "Very interesting."

She nodded, smiled and walked on. The dog looked back once, with the expression of a creature that thinks he’s seen it all and reckons it’s time to draft the memoir.

When I got home, Ms. Wonder was in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, wearing the expression she reserves for my return from a morning constitutional.

"How was the walk?" she asked.

"Instructive," I said, settling onto the stool at the counter,"I think the problem with modern life is not that people have stopped talking to each other. It's that they've made it difficult to tell who they're talking to."

She considered this with the focused attention she brings to all my announcements, however dubious their origins.

"Either that," she said, "or just maybe not everyone, smiling in your direction is making a personal connection."

"Wonder,” I said dispprovingly, “I am simply eager to engage with the world. I prefer to think of myself as enthusiastically available.”

She smiled and handed me a steaming cup of Jah’s mercy. It was, I noted with relief, the correct temperature.

Some days, that's all we need.

Rites of Passage

The day promised to be bright and beautiful, and it put the old spring back into my step as I sashayed down the trail around Brunswick Lake. I was feeling better than better, and I'll tell you why.

The events of recent months had left me feeling like I once felt while swimming at the bottom of Soddy Lake, scrambling around to find a few pebbles to bring back to the surface to prove to the boys on the bridge that I'd made it all the way to the bottom.

But hold on; I've just realized that this opening may leave a few of you wondering just what the hell I'm talking about. Let's put it in context, and then I'll get on with the topic for the day. I promise to be brief.

In the days of yore, most of my relatives and I lived near the lake, close to where it joined the Tennessee River. We had many traditional challenges, which I later learned are called rites of passage, and most of them involved water.

One of these, which was intended to occur before the 16th birthday, was to dive from atop the railing of Armstrong Bridge and go all the way to the bottom of the lake, into the trench where a cold mountain spring still flows, and then fill your hand with gravel to bring back to the surface.


Bring the gravel up, and you're ready for driving, dating, and preparing for manhood. Otherwise, you're still a child. The prerequisites for this event were to first jump from the top of a bridge support column, and later dive from that same column, a distance of about 16. The distance from the top rail to the surface of the water was about 24 feet.

And so when I say that I'd felt like the kid swimming around in the dark, cold water trying to find a handful of pebbles, I hope you will get the gist.

But on this morning, I found myself in the bright, clear light of day, sunshine and birdsong energizing my walk and lifting my mood into the stratosphere, not too near the sun.

I felt like Icarus, who I'm sure you remember from high school, and imagined that I joined the local birds of prey soaring all the way up to those towering cotton-ball clouds.

It was one for the record books, and I'm still feeling its effects. Mornings like this make me feel that I can do anything and that the future is too bright to be without the polychromatic, UVA UVB eyeshades. 

It's a wonderful feeling, even though we know there's always something hiding around the corner waiting for us to become distracted by some shiny object, and planning to trip us up when we're not looking.

Still, there's nothing like the feeling that comes from sitting on top of the world with a rainbow 'round the shoulder, if only for a little while.

It's best if we keep in mind, no matter how good things may be, that life comes fast, and it comes hard. Be ready for it, my friend. And with that, I wish you a great remainder of the day and fierce qigong to you.

Faithfully

Every morning I stand where we once stood, waiting for the wheels that go round and round. Bringing the big yellow school bus to a stop and spilling sudden, noisy life into the street. And for a moment, I feel the joy of finding you again.

The Morning Commute

There is a particular kind of silence that exists only in the blue-grey light of a coastal morning. It’s the hour when the world is still holding its breath, trying to delay the bustle of the coming day. In our house, that sleepy hour doesn’t belong to the dawn nor to the bird chorus in the backyard. It belongs to a very small, very determined, very senior lady.

She is Uma Maya, Queen of Cats and Empress of Chatsford Hall. She is sovereign; I am merely her footman.

Each weekday morning, she calls to me about ten minutes before the big yellow school bus arrives on the corner where we live. And, as always, I find her waiting for me at the foot of the staircase.

She doesn’t pace, and she doesn’t fret. She simply occupies the space with the gravity of a queen awaiting her carriage. She knows the neighborhood schedule better than I do; she knows that somewhere, several blocks away, a yellow school bus is warming its engine, preparing to make its grand entrance into our little theater of the everyday.

She looks at me, then at the stairs. Scientists call this referential signaling, but in the quiet of the hallway, it feels more like a shared secret. I am ready, her gaze says. The bus is coming, and I'm ready to take my place at the upstairs window.

I approach, and we perform the ritual that animal behaviorists call the start button. I reach down, and she makes a slight, graceful squat; a tiny physical adjustment that signals her consent. It’s the feline equivalent of granting permission to begin the ascent. I slide my hand under her, and she settles her weight into my palm with a trust so complete it’s humbling.

As I move up the stairs with her, I’m no longer simply a blogger or a food guy. I'm a voice‑activated mobile platform. I am the hand‑elevator.

It was always you and me, right down the line,  

Two parts of a whole, inseparable.  

Now the world feels like circus life under a big top,  

A strange, loud show that goes on without us,  

And I find myself searching for a reason to smile. 

We move in a kind of fluid dance. She doesn’t stiffen; she leans into the lift. As my balance adjusts to climb the stairs, she shifts in my hand, mapping my movements as an extension of her own aging limbs. For these few seconds, we are a single unit; together, we negotiate a terrain she can no longer manage alone.

At the top of the stairs, I place her onto her throne, a padded oval bed with a raised border, perched just high enough in the window to give her a clear view of the street and the waiting school children.

The transformation is instantaneous.

The vocal Project Manager who meowed with increasing urgency until I appeared is gone. In her place sits the Silent Observer. She enters a state of sensory hyper‑focus; a feline flow state in which all would-be distractions are filtered out. She listens only for the squeal of tires and the hiss of air brakes.

When the bus finally appears, that giant, flashing, yellow IMAX event, she doesn’t move a muscle. She simply stares, a biological tripod recording the data of the morning and confirming that the world is operating exactly as she predicted. 

There is an intellectual satisfaction in her stillness: the bus is on time, the territory is secure, and her hypothesis of the universe remains intact.

I watch her watching the world, and I’m struck by the depth of the contract we’ve signed.

Being apart isn't easy on this old man.  

Without you, the days stretch out like an empty road,  

And I find myself drifting through space and time,  

Feeling a little lost in the quiet parts of the afternoon. 

But you are never truly far away;  

The critics and skeptics like to say that pets are merely creatures of instinct, driven by the simple gears of hunger and habit. But the critics aren’t there at 6:40 a.m. They don’t see the intentionality in her eyes or the way she “directs” me to solve the limitations of her aging limbs. They don’t feel the weight of a creature who has decided, after years of shared history, that your hands are the safest place in the world.

The bus pulls away, its lights fading in the distance, and the show is over. Uma exhales a deep, satisfied sigh. The mission is accomplished. She doesn’t need to stay for the credits; she simply nestles into the soft border of her bed and drifts off to a satisfied sleep, no doubt dreaming of big yellow school buses. 

And I am left standing in the hallway with the feeling that, at least for today, everything is as it should be. 

You are forever in my mind,  

A constant memory through the seasons.  

And so I keep my station here at the curb,  

Waiting for the morning sun on that big yellow school bus;  

Still yours, faithfully, forever.

About Faithfully

Faithfully is a song by the American rock band Journey, written by keyboardist Jonathan Cain. The song has enjoyed enduring popularity and has been hailed as one of the greatest power ballads ever recorded.

Ambassador's Log: Stardate 2026.133

Another unremarkable morning dawned in the Melancholy Nebula of my mind. Captain Amy was already reviewing a daily manifest that was less of a plan and more of a logistical hostage situation. While she droned on with the tonal persistence of a ceiling fan, I tuned her out. I let my awareness drift away from the command bridge and toward the lower decks of the limbic system, where the morning chatter was far more revealing than the official mission profile.

While Ensigns Regret and Anger were in the corner wrestling with a sentient toaster that refused to comply until they apologized for their "sub-optimal morning attitudes,” Ensign Doubt was facing her true nemesis: a standard-issue replicator menu.

I don’t know, Doubt thought, her finger hovering over the screen like a bomb technician. If I choose the tomato soup, am I rejecting the chicken noodle? Is the replicator sentient enough to feel that rejection?

“Doubt, it’s just soup,” Ensign Optimism chirped from the line behind her, practically vibrating with unearned cheer. “Pick one! The universe wants you to be hydrated and full of electrolytes!”

Doubt glanced back, her eyes wide with metaphysical panic. “Or is the universe testing my decision-making capacity before assigning me to the helm? What if this soup is a metaphor for my entire Mindfleet career? If I pick the wrong one, will I be passed over for promotion?”

She stood there mulling it over until the replicator sighed, flickered, and entered power-save mode, a behavior known as the digital eye-roll.

"Ensign Doubt.”

First Officer Reason had materialized at her shoulder, looking as though he were composed entirely of rigid geometry and cold telemetry. "Report to the bridge. I require you to calibrate the ship's internal latency sensors. The system is currently reporting a 0.04-millisecond lag in our emotional throughput.”

“Are you sure you want me, sir?” Doubt asked, a light sheen of sweat appearing on her brow. “Am I the most qualified? Or am I just the only one who didn’t run away when you walked in? What if I calibrate them to be too sensitive and the ship starts picking up the ghost of every regret I’ve had since the third grade?”

Reason stared at her for a long, clinical beat. “Ensign, just meet me on the blue bridge at 0830.”

“Which blue, sir?" interjected Ensign Nostalgia, who had just drifted into the cafe clutching a vintage, non-functional smartphone like a holy relic. "Are we talking sky blue? Cerulean? The blue of a dying star? The blue of a 'Manic Monday'? I love Bananarama, don't you, sir? Did you know Prince wrote that song for them?”

Reason walked away without a word, his stride suggesting he was mentally calculating the shortest route to a vacuum-sealed room. Doubt remained, considering whether her next move should be a tactical retreat or a full-scale existential crisis.

While she wrestled with the physics of moving her left foot, Ensign Nostalgia turned to a group of junior officers bussing their tables.

“Do you remember internal combustion engines?” she sighed, her eyes going dreamy. “The noise! The smell of burning dinosaur remains! I wish I could return to the early 21st century. Those were the most exciting days to be a cadet in Mindfleet Academy.”

“Nostalgia, we have teleportation systems that can brew your coffee and have it waiting for you when you reach your destination nanosecs later,” Ensign Indifference pointed out, staring blankly at a wall. “Why would you want a machine that needs an oil change and a prayer to start?”

“Because in 2025, things had soul,” Nostalgia replied, stroking the 'Is it Friday yet?' sticker on her dead phone. “We had things called 'apps.' We had 'buffering.' We had the constant, low-grade fear of a global pandemic. Life was vibrant! Now everything is just… ‘Satisfactory.’”

“‘Satisfactory’? That’s your grievance?” Doubt countered, momentarily distracted from her own neurosis. “Think about when you were lost during that planetary survey in the Calabash Sector.”

“Don’t bring that up again.”

“You insisted on using your... what was it?”

“Intuition,” Nostalgia snapped. “It’s a 21st-century legacy skill. You wouldn't understand.”

“Whatever. You insisted you could find mineral deposits by wandering around a sand dune complaining about the ‘Wi‑Fi signal’.” Doubt made frantic air quotes. “You had to be rescued by a drone.”

“That drone was incredibly smug, Doubt. It reprimanded me for my 'lack of spatial awareness.' In 2025, the rescue would have taken three days and involved at least two helicopter mishaps! I would have been breaking news on television! I would have been an internet meme! I might even have been cast in a reality TV show titled Where’s Nosa?”

Ensign Indifference walked into the galley and approached the replicator. “Make me some kind of sugary soda,” he muttered. The machine complied with a depressed hum.

Nostalgia turned and walked away, her heels clicking a rhythmic, wistful beat. Doubt turned to Indifference, her brow furrowed. "Television? Internet? What is she talking about?”

Indifference only shrugged and followed Nostalgia out, leaving Doubt alone with her orders to report to the bridge.

After several more minutes of weighing the pros and cons of the blue bridge versus the cerulean bridge, Doubt settled on a third option. She reported to Dr. Downer in sickbay, complaining of a sudden onset of acute “unauthorized hesitation.”