I remember being a passenger in a car full of teachers back in the 1970s.  We had been to a meeting in Columbia, SC, as part of the South Carolina Education Association.  Six of us shoulder to shoulder in someone’s sedan.

“What would you wish for if you had one wish?” posed our driver, a lady named Pat from Fort Mill.  I remember what I said. “A Corvette.”  Conversation flowed and time flew.

I only recall one other answer. “Money to buy all the groceries I want in the supermarket” or something close to that.  I was struck by that humble longing and felt a little ashamed of what I had offered up and said.

Today’s wishes:

Banish Nita’s pain.

Have the magic ability to speak other languages and place myself in another country for a few weeks with my language ability.  I would love to drop into China and see into the rise of the new leading country of the world from the perspective of a native speaker.

 

I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

 

The wilderness rose up to it,

And sprawled around, no longer wild.

The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and of a port in air.

 

It took dominion everywhere.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

 

–Wallace Stevens

 

I object to how it haunts my mind all these years later.  I do not want to always see jars.  Now I will put the book it is in up and hope for relief now that I have written Wallace Stevens words down myself.  (December 6, 2017)