A Tree

I'm sad today. My dear friend's brother was tragically killed Saturday night by a tree. He was collecting firewood and a large tree fell on him. A tree.

I am reminded of how gossamer fragile life really is.  How delicate and confounding this sticky wicked proteinaceous spider web of existence can be. A tree.

And I don't know what's real or True or if we are simply "billion year old carbon," as Joni Mitchell declares, trying break through the tensile strength of one fragile day to the next, or exactly what the Supreme Being has in mind or if there is such a thing after all, with its warped sense of destiny. A tree.

In the midst of this bluest eye felt in a whole month of assorted blues, my son Imani sends me a hilarious clip from Saturday Night Live, with Jim Carey doing a spoof on Matthew McConaughey in that Lincoln commercial. I laughed so hard I cried and almost peed on myself--a welcomed intermission in today's opera. It amazes me how things can change from one delicate second to the next and back again. A tree.

I am reminded of how peppermint cool it is to draw on tissue. How fragile and susceptible it is to being wrinkled and creased. But yet it endures, strong as its roots, its source. A tree.

Pencil drawing of Patti Austin from the--uh oh--is it the Havana Candy album? I forget; the albums are all packed away.