Maybe you have never been a part of an early-fall paddle to Astoria. Maybe you have never conveyed pumpkins home by canoe. Maybe you've never gone to the Costco snack bar wearing a life jacket.
Friends, here's your chance.
Fall is coming, Let's get in boats and do those things that rip our hearts with joy.
More like a vault -- you pull the handle out and on the shelves: not a lot, and what there is (a boiled potato in a bag, a chicken carcass under foil) looking dispirited, drained, mugged. This is not a place to go in hope or hunger. But, just to the right of the middle of the middle door shelf, on fire, a lit-from-within red, heart red, sexual red, wet neon red, shining red in their liquid, exotic, aloof, slumming in such company: a jar of maraschino cherries. Three-quarters full, fiery globes, like strippers at a church social. Maraschino cherries, maraschino, the only foreign word I knew. Not once did I see these cherries employed: not in a drink, nor on top of a glob of ice cream, or just pop one in your mouth. Not once. The same jar there through an entire childhood of dull dinners -- bald meat, pocked peas and, see above, boiled potatoes. Maybe they came over from the old country, family heirlooms, or were status symbols bought with a piece of the first paycheck from a sweatshop, which beat the pig farm in Bohemia, handed down from my grandparents to my parents to be someday mine, then my child's? They were beautiful and, if I never ate one, it was because I knew it might be missed or because I knew it would not be replaced and because you do not eat that which rips your heart with joy.
More like a vault -- you pull the handle out and on the shelves: not a lot, and what there is (a boiled potato in a bag, a chicken carcass under foil) looking dispirited, drained, mugged. This is not a place to go in hope or hunger.
But, just to the right of the middle of the middle door shelf, on fire, a lit-from-within red, heart red, sexual red, wet neon red, shining red in their liquid, exotic, aloof, slumming in such company: a jar of maraschino cherries. Three-quarters full, fiery globes, like strippers at a church social. Maraschino cherries, maraschino, the only foreign word I knew. Not once did I see these cherries employed: not in a drink, nor on top of a glob of ice cream, or just pop one in your mouth. Not once. The same jar there through an entire childhood of dull dinners -- bald meat, pocked peas and, see above, boiled potatoes. Maybe they came over from the old country, family heirlooms, or were status symbols bought with a piece of the first paycheck from a sweatshop, which beat the pig farm in Bohemia, handed down from my grandparents to my parents to be someday mine, then my child's?
They were beautiful and, if I never ate one, it was because I knew it might be missed or because I knew it would not be replaced and because you do not eat that which rips your heart with joy.
--Thomas Lux
Summer is leaving us. Let's canoe.
And maybe get a GD snack!
Yes, you can come on this trip! But your feet WILL get wet. So wear good water shoes. And love the water. And rip your heart with joy.
But, really, water shoes.