Cadillac in a Ditch

I am not going to flood, I tell my dad on the phone. I just checked the creek, and it’s fine. I am slipping on shoes to head over to my neighbor’s house, because they are flooding. My job is to get the plastic bins of school photos and Greenville High annuals up the stairs. The water in their backyard is still, even as it has imperceptibly crept up to the edge of the driveway.

Grand Gulf, Mississippi, Polaroid SX-70 (2019)

We are in tension with the earth. I have never felt it so keenly as this past year, trying to coax peppers and tomatoes and squash and okra from a patch of black dirt in my backyard. The peppers are automatic, but the squash was blasted to death by July sun and the tomatoes raided by birds and then spoiled by weeks of August rain. I have no idea when to pick okra and plucked a good mess of them recently, chopped off the tips and tops and cut them vertically, roasted with olive oil and big flakes of pink salt. One was delicious. The others were so fibrous I could have woven them together into a sturdy piece of twine.

A church somewhere around Waterproof, Louisiana, more or less (maybe Tensas), Polaroid SX-70 (2019)

Everything seems quiet at my house today but somewhere, not very far from here, the Pearl River is still rising. It is inexorable, like a Monday after a long weekend.

At this point we all talk about it like a wedding that got canceled last minute. “I think it’s going to crest Sunday night,” you’ll hear someone say at the Kroger, while sifting through apples. “No, the federal says it might be as late as Tuesday.” “Well, it’s already at 36 feet I think.” You just expect a “I heard it was because he met someone in New Orleans and done run off,” then a gasp, before an outraged “After the invitations were mailed?”

Up in the Delta, one winter dawn, Polaroid SX-70 (2019)

I quickly thumb a response to some friends: No, I’m fine. It’s the other side of the highway. Are y’all okay? A buddy I haven’t seen in a few months texts I can be there in 20 minutes. I am humbled and a little ashamed by the expressions of care, since I am sitting very quietly, listening to a good used copy of After the Gold Rush¹ and drinking coffee. I’m safe.

And, on this morning, I wish safety for you and your family as well.

Senatobia, Mississippi, Polaroid SX-70 (2019)

LAST WEEKEND was the Mississippi Book Festival, the first live one in two years. It was amazing to walk around with thousands of other people just watching and listening—all of it centered on art and learning and curiosity. I had three favorite moments.

I’ll tell you about the first: it was watching Jericho Brown in conversation with Beth Ann Fennelly. There is a tremendous beauty and lightness in his poems and he also can command a terrible power. The whole hour was a triumph, and thank God was recorded, but at one point Jericho said something along the lines of “there’s this one poem by Ezra Pound that really sums it up,” and then began quoting the poem from memory. And then Beth Ann began reciting it with him.

It was like watching Led Zeppelin circa 1972, at the height of their powers, deconstructing and transforming Willie Dixon with reverberating screams and a violin bow. Just artists perfectly in sync for this one moment, excavating the past as they create a new present.

I actually felt a little bad because I kept punching my friend Katie in the leg when magic happened and really almost just pushed her out of her chair when they both quoted the poem (she’s fine, the next day she ate like $16 worth of ch*cken from a ch*cken f*nger place and then we watched a lot of Elvis) (I’ve been a vegetarian for coming up on thirty years but have gotten ch*cken f*nger ads since then) (FLAT-EYE EMOJI).

And then there were others. I’ll tell you about them later, lord willing and—well, you know the rest.

“CADILLAC IN A DITCH” is this week’s installment of GORJUS, a newsletter devoted to art and life in the South on instant film. If you like it, consider sending it to a pal. Just like anything, some weeks are better than others. I’m gorjusjxn on Instagram, and you can see more Polaroids at McCartyPolaroids.

1. The only thing that keeps it from being a great copy is because the sleeve was beat to heck and had the kid’s name written on the back; the record itself looks brand new. But I like it when somebody writes their name on the sleeve of an LP.