We cannot ride very far into fantasy
on these Wisconsin farm horses, can we? Where we live nails us pretty much to hard fact. Rainfall, neighbors, roads. It is not a sultry country at all. All the cards are turned face up and nobody's got an ace up his sleeve, at least nobody I've met. It's not a hard life, at least not hard as compared to one hundred years ago, one hundred fifty years ago. It's not a hard life compared to the Indian villages of the far north of Manitoba. We have had the resources to make our comfort; and we have accumulated the centuries of wisdom needed to do so. And we have had the need. The indolence of the tropics is perhaps the fruit of plenty. If there is no struggle, can there by greatness? If no one is out to eat you, will you grow fat and sluggish? Or is this now the German Iowa farmboy in me expressing itself? Am I investing a kind of righteousness in hard work that it doesn't have? The California surfer dude would tell me to mellow, wouldn't he?
Is steadfastness the premier Midwestern virtue? Solid, stable, eternal, there. Is endurance the second? Solid, stable, eternal, there. We are like a toothache, aren't we? Constant as a rock, constant as water defeating the rock. Is dependability the third Midwestern trait? Solid, stable, eternal, there. We don't let our surprises surprise us.
I suppose there are things we will run from. We'll run from a tornado, if we have to, most of us will. But we'll curse it first. We'll run from a flirtatious girl, maybe. The difference between Bill Clinton and a Midwestern farmboy is that the farmboy knows if he sticks it where it doesn't belong, there'll be hell to pay. Apparently they don't learn that about tallywhackers in Arkansas.
A little rain this morning, a little grey sky, the sound of wipers like grinding your teeth in your sleep. On the neighbor's lawn, a white plastic duck and four yellow plastic ducklings. Good weather for a duck. The music on the roof of the truck intensifies.
A few more trees in town have noticed that it is, after all, the end of September. The wet asphalt streets shine their reflections.
There are two hawks in the hawk's tree this morning. Are they mates, as in a breeding pair? Are they mates, as the Australians speak of mates? Hawks, I think, are territorial.
A one-eyed vehicle is following me north in the rain.
There are layers of clouds here, some light-colored and some dark. To the northwest, it almost looks like sunlight on thunderheads. I know of no fire that might have smudged yesterday's sky.
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