Fragments From Floyd

The biweekly topic for the Ecotone this time around (for June 1) is "Imaginary Places". Let me know if you'd like to contribute and are unfamiliar with the Ecotone format (it's a wiki--the only word more dysphonic than the word blog!) and I'll help you set up the link to your tale of imaginary places--whatever from that takes.

Mulling this over last night in half-sleep during the nocturnal electrical storms we seem to be getting each night, I lapsed into the memories of the very mixed emotions I felt on Saturday as we sang along with patriotic music. My son, wife and I listened on the portable crank radio from the front porch while we ate our evening meal. We sat comfortably in the late afternoon looking out on the peaceful pasture's waving grasses shining under fat curdled cumulus clouds rising to the limits of the atmosphere. The audience of Prairie Home Companion sang the Star Spangled Banner and Garrison entoned his unpolished baritone on America the Beautiful. I confess. It got to me. The lump in my throat was not ground meat from the grilled burgers.

This memory came back to me last night in the storm ('the bombs bursting in air' maybe). I remembered that, as a boy, I sang these songs and I pledged allegiance in my cub scout uniform with one hand over my heart and the other holding my blue cap at my side. I remembered this as I lay there watching the lightning flash on my bedroom walls in the wee hours, and I grieved that sadly, I'm not sure that this is the place I honored in those days. In many important ways, America the Beautiful is becoming an imaginary place, morphing beyond recognition from the indivisible republic our forefathers fervently imagined so long ago. So there's an "imaginary place" topic for you. Agree or disagree as you see it. I'm not gonna go there. Of course not.

Being an apolitical feel-good, puppies and pansies place in cyberspace, this is not what the Fragments Ecotone post tomorrow will be about. This noctural lament comes out of a whole 'nother world that I mostly keep in a closed vault. I wonder, come the fall, if I can remain silent. I rather imagine not.