Junebug

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My Mom had a childhood friend named Junebug. Junebugs stick to screens, they buzz when ya flick 'em off the screen, and can awaken an entire neighborhood when you do. Junebugs are here, and I no longer see the fireflies, do you? 

Junebug.  Why oh why must June punish me so?  My brother in law died in June exactly ten years ago; my favorite singer ever, my precious Rosemary Clooney left this Life in June; and for some reason, lambchops, I always break my own heart in June.  So...June bugs me.

I have met cool guys during the year before June arrives -- all my life this has happened -- and they're just fine in the cold winter months, spring days when they're looking for that four-leaf clover and making you a ring from it, but come June, ack.  Vacations, sabbaticals, the choir meets only once a month, not every week, and hell, it gets hot here in Lexingburg.  It's been a brutally hot spot for the last two or three summers...my visits to SummerFest make up most of my July summers now, but June.  June is when the SummerFest 'kids' as I call them, are all out in the sun, on a stage with no shade, for hours upon hours at the Arboretum, working their little buns and rocky horror bottoms off, sweating like there's no tomorrow (or air conditioning)...and to watch them rehearse and prepare for the marathon festival of coolness on stage, well, it's kinda hot and sticky for a poor ol' gal just looking for a place to play her ukulele and write a few blogs about a few nice artists and lovelies in our presence.

Back to June bugging me.  I guess it also harkens back to my summers as a child...the school year was over, so my moments to shine diminished quickly.  As a middle child of seven, summers pretty much meant picking beans, getting switched like a barnyard animal by my Mom, and just trying to stay out of fights with my brothers and sisters.  Mom and Dad fought a lot; so did we kids. Not bloody nose fighting (we would've been switched for that), but for mean things like not letting my brother swing on the swing long enough, or I wouldn't play basketball with Addison, or we'd play softball and I broke my brother's thumb throwing him a hard pitch (he was wearing a catcher's mitt okay?).  We'd get in Junebug kinda trouble, the sort that only comes with the opening of summer's opportunities to be in the sassy sunshine, and to get switched...we were switched if we were lucky, though. Usually Mom would use Hot Wheels tracks to d iscipline us, once the hellhole of a toy company started making them. Heck, we were seven ornery kids, way too many for one woman to handle all at once.  The switch was necessary, but gawds I wish I had never seen a forsythia bush or tomato stake, or especially a damn Hot Wheels car (I threw my brothers' Hot Wheels cars surreptitiously down the drains on my way to school). 

Hmm. I'm being contemplative and a little tattle tale-ish tonight, but ya know what?  I don't care about keeping those things hidden anymore.  I am going to talk more honestly about why I make destructive choices, why I think I am never going to be good enough, why I love to please everyone and make them feel important, no matter what they do.  What would Jesus do, eh?  He might not make the poor choices I have made, but he would love kindness, do justice and walk humbly with our God.  According to Micah, that's all He really wants. That's all She expects.  That's all Love means.


okay ... THIS June experience
was quite fabulous, I must say!



Amy Owens and Me at the Derby

no caption needed. this totally defines the
post-derby crowd at Churchill

hang on, hang on to your heart...

Thanks for reading all this.  I am in the middle of heartache, as you might have guessed.  The past six months have been holy horror on me.  My poor brother was dying; my longtime friend and confidante was having heart attacks and trying to die; and my heart was starting riots in my chest.  I learned the Mozart Requiem and sang it, with full feeling, knowing it was the closest experience to the death and all its friends.  The Requiem by Mozart changes me every time I sing it.  It's terrifyingly irresistible, to know I am preparing to sing a Mass for the dead...the mass Mozart wrote as he lay dying, at the hands of the rich and greedy 'benefactors' who put him on the treadmill and provide his motivation to complete the work.  It is an exquisitely painful experience, and I fully appreciated every moment of every movement.  So his Requiem helped me grieve for my brother, my health, my lover, my friend, it helped me begin to see a semblance of closure.

Then April came and we sang the great work with a gorgeous orchestra and Dr. George Zack conducting!  He was obsessed with the piece; we were living and breathing the music - I played the alto part to the Dies Irae on my ukulele (lol) -- it was a truly holy and spiritual time.  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.  Dickens, and Mozart, my two great loves ;-)

So once April and Easter were past their mark on the liturgical calendar, May came and I went to the Derby, which was fabulous. I was afraid because of my heart issues, but Z told me all I had to do was push a button, just one button one time during the day (the start and finish of the world's most famous sporting event, that's all :) -- so I loved May...but then came June, and its Junebugs.  I saw Allie Darden play Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (she was incredible, set the bar very high for actors in this town with that performance).  I also told my guy that I had been seeing someone else, and now he absolutely detests me.  I don't know about y'all, but I don't like it when I'm not liked.  So I apologized, am apologizing as I blog here, and I really hope June buggers on off.  I'm done with it already. 

I will quash the Junebug syndrome, and fill it with ukulele teaching, playing, jamming, singing and gigging. I will find a new singing partner, one who will let me sing my songs and not muzzle my sizzle.  heh

I'm hushing but want to say, yes, I will be back, as soon as my home computer is fixed and I can blog freely about all the cool shows and art exhibits going on in Lexington.  Maybe, just maybe, I will fall in love again.

Whaddya think my chances are of that?  Well the race is on... and here comes pride in the back stretch; heartaches coming to the inside...

peace, y'all,
kimmy