A part-time poet and erstwhile barista (naturally) and his wife travel south, digest every outdated cliche and savor the life experience in a manner only Ethan Hawke would appreciate.
Our decision to venture south of the Mason-Dixon line confounds many of our Northwest friends. They seem to conceive of the South as a backward place: plainly racist, politically reactionary, possibly inbred.
Don’t forget the lack of indoor plumbing.
Somehow, the Kucinich supporters survive their red state jaunt, working as volunteer farmers, or “woofers.” (Must every hipster activity have a cutesy name/acronym?) They left a part of themselves in the soil, to be fertilized liberally.
I feel the words building inside me, I can’t stop them, or tell you why I say them, but as I reach the top of the bridge these words come to me in a whisper. I say these words as a prayer, as regret, as praise, I say: Lowenstein, Lowenstein.
Sorry, that was “Prince of Tides.”
Now, I want to go back. To pour slop for the pigs and harvest squash blossoms in the dawn, before they close up in the heat, and tear bindweed out with my fists. To weed and water and water and weed.
I want to grow.
Please, let me grow.
I grew up on a farm. It is hard work, and a lot of it. This kind of crap is tiresome. Modern southern agriculture is dominated by corporate agribusiness, just as the cornfields of Iowa or the potato farms of Idaho. How could these buffoons not know this? They must have gone to public schools.