Bless This Mess

Bless this sweet beautiful mess of ours. Bless fields and breezes and fiddleheads. Bless Emmlyou and Bonnie and Willie Nelson and Otis Redding and Elvis. Bless ham biscuits and deviled eggs, lobster rolls and clam shacks, fresh corn and—the great equalizer— fried chicken. Bless lemonade and cold beer and the Shirley Temple. Bless sunsets in the west and sunrises in the east, bless south Texas and south-western Virginia, bless New York City and everything that is not New York, bless the wilds of Maine and the mossy coasts of Georgia, the bounding scrubs of Mississippi and the raucous lush of Louisiana, the eternal flat of Dakota and the abiding rise of the Rockies. And bless California, for foretelling the future and gilding the none-too-distant goldrush Kerouac past. Bless porch swings and hammocks. Bless banjos and fiddles and dive bars and honky tonks. Bless dance parties and side roads, the swimming hole and the alternate route. Bless our mess and forgive us our debts. Bless us, America, and have a happy 4th of July.

Oh, yes, and God bless Andy Griffith.

Images from the incredibly wonderful Lost in America.

Author: loiseaufait

Little by little the bird feathers its nest, and object by heart burnished object we surround ourselves with lovely necessities of memory and function. It is these things that make a silly Apartment a Home or a silly Wednesday an Occasion. Whether my nest is an old farmhouse, a sixth floor tenement walk up, or a brownstone basement... whether I share it with family, vagabonds, women of heart and mind, or a little brown cat and a sweet ginger banjo, my principal joy is filling it with light and laughter (and corralling). View all posts by loiseaufait