Sunday, June 9--
6:15 p.m.-
Got off work early this afternoon to attend graduation exercises, an
affair of Barnumistic disgrace and dignified indignities. Speakers speaking
re-issued rote oratory and prominent citizens swaggering, staggering; charlatans
rushing the stage. Still fleecing their subjects for imagined self worth,
still faking in prison-suit stripes. The Senior Speaker cried when she spoke
and an honors student, denouncing conformity, commanded all his classmates
to raise their right fists and repeat after him, "Please never repeat
what somebody tells you to say. Hah-Hah-Hah."
Honors were awarded to ten outstanding students (but they left out
the others). A beach ball, then a second and third were launched and kept
airborne until an officious young man with a walkie-talkie and Secret Service
dark glasses hurried to the scene and confiscated two, to the "boos"
of a few audience members and students who were naughty. An unruly front-row
graduate leered over his shoulder at the retreating official and brandished
the third ball. A bystander asked, "What hath unchastely seized thy conscience
to harm harmless fun? Did heaven's higher authority radio you to?"
He did not say, but tightened his lip and tramped under the bleachers,
stopping while hiding to knife each one to make them deflate.
Desperate teenagers leaned against the fence in attitudes of slack
tedious boredom. One T-shirt read: "If it has TITS OR TIRES it's gonna'
give you trouble."
A man in a vinyl leather-look vest, graduated forty-five years earlier,
leaned in blue jeans against a stadium railing, cowboy-booted foot jacked
onto a rail. He'd never heeded a call to non-conformity, though, in his way
non-conformed well by still wearing what was thought dapper for young men
in the 50's. Wispy thin hair permed long in tight ringlets; so sparse it was
invisible but for the tips tinged with black shoe polish. His wife towered
a wind-startled blond wig, with a baby's breath sprig at the crown, and an
ebony chintz strapless--with lacy crepe bodice--charming her chest.
The band played taps and a chorus sang glory and weighty words got
proclaimed and the principal mispronounced last names (as principals do when
they're tired) and toddlers toddled trash under stadium bleachers.
The principal announced my daughter's name. She stepped forward. And
that was that.
4:30 p.m.-
I picked up two pounds of sunflower seed today, one pound black and
one stripped, to sow along my office halls. I want to see the difference in
flower head. It should cheer up the place to watch progress growing beside
my riverside space. The genesis of the idea came last year when I discovered
a single sunflower growing high out of a mazy tangle of tipped-over tree roots.
Back then I thought it a fun plastic joke, put there by a whimsical boater.
But it was a for-real four-foot tall sunflower.
I landed the boat into shore. EZ got out and started right in eating
a snack rich in green grass. This diet inevitably results in her throwing
it all up, but I don't like stopping her. She requires some nutrient not blended
into her Senior Chicken and Rice.
I first brought the sack with black sunflower seed and, with putty
knife, slit narrow grooves and dropped in a few seeds. Mosquitoes were wild
and plenty but the Repel 29% DEET did battle well. Though it didn't repel
unpleasant brushes with nettle, which burned brightly at first then settled
in to a red stinging itch. (For experiment's sake and a portion of vanity,
I am going to wear shorts exclusively this summer to see if I can toughen
my leg skin, get rid of unsightly pimples, and re-grow leg hair which, I surmise,
has abraded away through years of exclusive Jean wear. So far my forelegs
are scabbed and scratched and suffering the whiteness of no sun, but by July,
if I keep up my resolve, will be scarred and scratched and peeling from too
much sunburn.)
So, I stuck seeds around in a meadowy spot and got dirty wet tennis
shoes. EZ chewed.
Back into the boat and over to the west shore to sow striped sunflower
seeds. But the west floodplain is hillocky and swampy and does not encourage
sunflower planting. I found another spot slightly downriver in the office
foyer. Everything is now in place to impress clients if, in a few weeks, any
should come calling.
I worked at the desk for an hour in calm, except for a man intermittently
yelling "Hey!" every few minutes from somewhere downstream. I'd
first heard a jetboat motor repeatedly revving then stopping, as though someone
was stuck in a swamp, soliciting rescue after giving up trying to be independent.
The hollering stopped after five minutes or so. Either he died, or got what
he wanted by means other than me.
Tree toads chirped in the overhead branches and spring peepers screeched
in stereo surround-sound. We were startled by a pair of squawking sand hill
cranes who stood on tall spindly legs and craned gangly long narrow necks
over the grasses, letting us know they were there. Sand hills are relatively
new to northern Wisconsin and, though I've seen an occasional one stalking
stubble fields, their appearance at the office is a pleasant addition. A Sand
hill crane's call is similar to a tree toad, if a tree toad should chirp through
a battery-powered bullhorn.
A while later I looked up for a think and saw EZ laying distraught
in the bow, shivering spasmodically and licking her lips. I hastily hauled
in the anchor and got her to shore just in time so she could vomit up grass
and a convivial arrangement of shattered clamshells.
7:10 p.m.-
A cow with a prosthetic electronic voice just "mooed" somewhere
through the woods.
8:08-
It's that short-lived time of year when the setting of the sun does
not bring along sudden low dips in the temperature. The air is still ambient
and the breeze is asleep. The mosquitoes are abundant; EZ's muzzle looks like
she's just purchased numerous new piercings.
A rain shower moved through and gave me the chance to hear its pittering
on the new golf umbrella.