Ross Gay: Living the Dream, Writer and Delightsome Dude

Ross Gay: Living the Dream, Writer and Delightsome Dude

We enjoyed the On Living broadcast this Sunday morning. Thanks Ross and Krista, I think the recording was probably done in 2016.

I can fully understand why National Public Radio would choose this segment to air at this time. Most of us are sheltering in place (March 29, 2020), we are locked down in our homes, we are sequestered because of this pandemic that is rocking some worlds. Starting in China, Wuhan, Hubei State, now devastating Italy and Spain and other parts of Europe.

New York and New Jersey and parts of Washington state, and now Louisiana and host of other places are getting hit hard here in the United States.

The developing world will see the worst, I fear.

But back to you, Ross. This is about you. And me. And us.

I hope by writing this, and if you ever read it, that you will derive a delight from it, really.

And others, like me.

Your words, thoughts, actions, and deeds: I would say your whole persona spoke through the broadcast. Thanks for that, for the delights you brought to our morning, into my wife and I's lives, but more importantly, what you have shared with countless others. And how you appreciate life and living it.

Thanks for beautifying my hometown of Bloomington. I can tell you make it a better place. Thanks for doing that. Truly.

My parents still live there. I have three living on the southern side, maybe pretty close to your orchard? My mom's mortal remains are resting in Daviess County, an hour or so outside of town, to the west. She is originally from the East Coast, and I think she would appreciate your relationship with the fruits of trees and plants, and the earth.

This one great earth, where we share our wildernesses, as your student Bethany explained it, the sorrows where our low places may become high. I get it, it makes sense. Perhaps that is why I love the melancholy of Pink Floyd, sometimes. I digress, somewhat.

Back to you, Ross.

I heard you say that you played football, and were expected to hurt people. Yeah, there is some bruising and bloodying that go on in that sport. The unfortunate ones have some permanent damage to their brains or some bones or joints. Life is brutal, especially that sport.

I am glad you have graduated to more peaceful endeavors. I am in the National Guard. I get paid to know how to shoot, plan, communicate, and at the end of the day, defend my side and kill people on the other. Life is brutal, yet precious. A bit like the wilderness of sorrow that we all hold that emanates as sunshine somehow, spontaneously. Consistently, right? Amazing, this world and life that we are in.

The earth and the soil are dirty to some, but clean and life-giving to others.

Anyway, I did not intend to go down this philosophical route...

Back to you.

I wanted to bring up race, because it is affixed to us as humans and Americans.

Good and bad.

I have done some studies on my own, somewhat, mostly informal, but I consider myself a student of culture and cultures.

When I first heard your voice this morning, I suspected that you were African-American. That should not be here or there, but I listen closely to accents, I have lived in all the U.S. time zones and I have lived abroad, studied other languages. I have been paid to ply the linguistical trade.

Not all "black" guys sound "white", and vice versa. Frankly, at a lot of levels, we resent the entire classification or notion of defining speech or accent by a race, or by skin color. But at other levels, which I find important, it matters.

Anyway, black accents and culture, and white accents and culture, and everything in between, and so many others, are all rich, and there is no wrong way to talk or right way. My folks are from New England. They talk "funny", but it is rich to my ear. It is home, it is what I know.

Back to race. You are now an accomplished author, and a gardener, and I find that rich. I have a sister in Utah who has been an urban gardener for years. She should meet you, she has consorted with a former Bloomington friend of mine in the way of vegetables, in Monroe and Greene County.

Like me in the army, I feel like people of the earth, growers, are their own color.

In the U.S. Army we are not black and white and brown at the end of the day, we are Army. Army green. We are Army brown. We are Army black, whatever the uniform of the day is.

I see you as a man of the soil, like my sister, like others I know. You are a grower, which is powerful.

I see you as a man, a person, as we all are, no regard for skin tone. That is how it should be. Thank you.

Have you met Earl Reed in Bloomington? A landscaper who flies around in his beat up pick up, or whatever he may have... A man who loves ballet, a totally friendly man and a friend I have not seen for years. He was baptized in my church, maybe 30 years ago...

Earl is a man of the earth. Coursest hands I have ever shaken.

My hands are not course, like my dads's were. Electrician.

Sometimes after a week or so of Army life, my hands get a bit calloused. Especially the trigger finger.

Anyway, enough about me, and you, and us, but I must say:

I enjoyed the pondering of loitering, and all its other synonyms described by you, and thinking about the laughter and the delights. You are a credit to humanity, and I don't have many other ways of expressing that.

Thanks, Ross.