Gulf of Mexico.
The bright Gulf sun splashes its sharp light through the waving palms.
It dances atop the broken marble of the tomb
It slashes a pulsating light down into the morbid abyss with jagged knives of sun and shadow.
Deep inside something moves.
A skull…the light slashes again and a fat black roach is seen scurrying from one eye socket to another only to dig and claw his way under a brackish mass of
the nasal septum.
His, fat, black, greasy body is bloated and it is covered with green sticky dust.
He seems not amused that we are here, and given the circumstances neither are we.
We set the gin pole of the old truck over the collapse and get to work.
A blues tune blares from the coastal am station from the dash of the truck
“Wah-dah, Wah-dah round my do.” It’s Bessie on a 78, scratching out the blues.
The sand is dazzling white, and in the distance, an emerald green Gulf beckons with coolness.
It’s not for us
All around remnants of twisted fences and broken tombs show themselves under a mass of wild and ancient vines whose hungry roots snake in and out of the crypts searching for water and the sticky green dust of the dead.
By the emerald gulf "da Wad-ah" by our door is a paradise.
Yet just Here, it is a torrid jungle of broken cemetery and tortured landscape.
Remnants of oyster shell paths meander to no where and fallen angels with bleached and blackened faces point upwards in mocking jest.
Underneath there is a hidden underworld of rabbit warrens where ugly armadillos, toads and feral wild cats make homes in its labyrinth.
The cats scurry and hiss at our arrival.
They seem to be the guardians of this macabre and morbid sub terrain
The day is hot.
Thor beats his anvil across a bright blue sky as the men work shirtless with their naked torsos glistening in sweat and sun.
Their picks rise and fall with muffled cadence as the white sand glares their eyes.
Their trousers are moist at the belt ring, making wet the curvature of their muscular backsides.
The air is salty and thickly perfumed with honeysuckle and Camilla.
Its sickly sweet smell carries with it, the humid musk of sea weed and the stench of drift wood. Dust of saw grass sticks to their skin.
At break, the men take their cigarettes or drink eagerly from the field canteen, letting the water dribble their chest and glisten their hard bodies and tight abdominals
They smoke and tell bawdy stories, laughing with life
While the dead sleep below.
We were working tombs and state prisoners in a two week project on this tortured landscape of toppled tombstones and sand.
The job says we are allowed to use convicts.
At 5 am, I show up at the prison yard of open air holding tanks and pick 5 men from the Mississippi state farm satellite system.
A Marshal Deputy with a shotgun rides atop a large mule.
He nods from his lofty position on his magnificent jack
which prisoners we get to pick and which we must refuse.
Under old arc lights, we make our pick of their shapeless forms.
It’s a daunting task to train men in stone.
People whose live s are broken by age twenty and their hearts are already hard.
Trailer trash and babies of teen agers who had nothing and will most likely never have anything
Here, we teach them stone.
If lucky, the stone teaches them about themselves.
Here we teach them stone repair and stone setting.
Cleaning and restoration-- mortar and brick.
Stone is the great teacher. The Magus
of all that is hard to overcome and create
The Magus and the Master
Lesson Number One is
No matter how hard this life is…. stone is harder.
Its wisdom is infinite.
Its spirit is its strength
And its spirit is
unbridled.
Stone teaches us in order to make anything of ourselves,
You have to understand the medium of Self.
This means
To know what you’re made of.
To Be able to identify your strengths and your weaknesses, and like stone,
Know the cracks and crevices
To cut, shape, mold and form stone,
You must become intimate with tools.
Your Tools.
You are not born with skills, but you are born with Tools.
Learn to use them.
And the first Tool to learn is Patience.
To be successful in Building, you must have Patience and Self Confidence.
There are many stones.
Be willing to make mistakes.
Hard work and Self Confidence alone is not enough.
The building blocks of stone are geology, science, math, chemistry, and engineering
Practice Perseverance and Faith.
Psychologically, you must feel yourself Alive…
beware of addictions.
And one must have Awareness that there is a greater order at work in the universe,
A Supreme Architect, if you will,
Of God, as we know him.
You must align with this greater power to do great things you were meant for,
So you have to discover and work on your Higher Self.
This takes practice and Mastery of Tools.
To become this Master, you must do the work of Mastering Yourself,
learn the skills of Education and Practice.
Above all The inner must reflect the outer.
The bedrock of the great Masons is the building of good character,
Men who will keep their word…keep that safe I tell these men,
And you will be served you all your days.
Other blog posts by Michael: Buried Alive
The bright Gulf sun splashes its sharp light through the waving palms.
It dances atop the broken marble of the tomb
It slashes a pulsating light down into the morbid abyss with jagged knives of sun and shadow.
Deep inside something moves.
A skull…the light slashes again and a fat black roach is seen scurrying from one eye socket to another only to dig and claw his way under a brackish mass of
the nasal septum.
His, fat, black, greasy body is bloated and it is covered with green sticky dust.
He seems not amused that we are here, and given the circumstances neither are we.
We set the gin pole of the old truck over the collapse and get to work.
A blues tune blares from the coastal am station from the dash of the truck
“Wah-dah, Wah-dah round my do.” It’s Bessie on a 78, scratching out the blues.
The sand is dazzling white, and in the distance, an emerald green Gulf beckons with coolness.
It’s not for us
All around remnants of twisted fences and broken tombs show themselves under a mass of wild and ancient vines whose hungry roots snake in and out of the crypts searching for water and the sticky green dust of the dead.
By the emerald gulf "da Wad-ah" by our door is a paradise.
Yet just Here, it is a torrid jungle of broken cemetery and tortured landscape.
Remnants of oyster shell paths meander to no where and fallen angels with bleached and blackened faces point upwards in mocking jest.
Underneath there is a hidden underworld of rabbit warrens where ugly armadillos, toads and feral wild cats make homes in its labyrinth.
The cats scurry and hiss at our arrival.
They seem to be the guardians of this macabre and morbid sub terrain
The day is hot.
Thor beats his anvil across a bright blue sky as the men work shirtless with their naked torsos glistening in sweat and sun.
Their picks rise and fall with muffled cadence as the white sand glares their eyes.
Their trousers are moist at the belt ring, making wet the curvature of their muscular backsides.
The air is salty and thickly perfumed with honeysuckle and Camilla.
Its sickly sweet smell carries with it, the humid musk of sea weed and the stench of drift wood. Dust of saw grass sticks to their skin.
At break, the men take their cigarettes or drink eagerly from the field canteen, letting the water dribble their chest and glisten their hard bodies and tight abdominals
They smoke and tell bawdy stories, laughing with life
While the dead sleep below.
We were working tombs and state prisoners in a two week project on this tortured landscape of toppled tombstones and sand.
The job says we are allowed to use convicts.
At 5 am, I show up at the prison yard of open air holding tanks and pick 5 men from the Mississippi state farm satellite system.
A Marshal Deputy with a shotgun rides atop a large mule.
He nods from his lofty position on his magnificent jack
which prisoners we get to pick and which we must refuse.
Under old arc lights, we make our pick of their shapeless forms.
It’s a daunting task to train men in stone.
People whose live s are broken by age twenty and their hearts are already hard.
Trailer trash and babies of teen agers who had nothing and will most likely never have anything
Here, we teach them stone.
If lucky, the stone teaches them about themselves.
Here we teach them stone repair and stone setting.
Cleaning and restoration-- mortar and brick.
Stone is the great teacher. The Magus
of all that is hard to overcome and create
The Magus and the Master
Lesson Number One is
No matter how hard this life is…. stone is harder.
Its wisdom is infinite.
Its spirit is its strength
And its spirit is
unbridled.
Stone teaches us in order to make anything of ourselves,
You have to understand the medium of Self.
This means
To know what you’re made of.
To Be able to identify your strengths and your weaknesses, and like stone,
Know the cracks and crevices
To cut, shape, mold and form stone,
You must become intimate with tools.
Your Tools.
You are not born with skills, but you are born with Tools.
Learn to use them.
And the first Tool to learn is Patience.
To be successful in Building, you must have Patience and Self Confidence.
There are many stones.
Be willing to make mistakes.
Hard work and Self Confidence alone is not enough.
The building blocks of stone are geology, science, math, chemistry, and engineering
Practice Perseverance and Faith.
Psychologically, you must feel yourself Alive…
beware of addictions.
And one must have Awareness that there is a greater order at work in the universe,
A Supreme Architect, if you will,
Of God, as we know him.
You must align with this greater power to do great things you were meant for,
So you have to discover and work on your Higher Self.
This takes practice and Mastery of Tools.
To become this Master, you must do the work of Mastering Yourself,
learn the skills of Education and Practice.
Above all The inner must reflect the outer.
The bedrock of the great Masons is the building of good character,
Men who will keep their word…keep that safe I tell these men,
And you will be served you all your days.
Other blog posts by Michael: Buried Alive
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