Writers use words to construct images the reader can visualize. Sometimes the crafty writer, or maybe it’s just the lucky writer, can craft images that are far more vivid than an actual image, and far more personal, since the visualized image comes from the mind of the reader. This is a very subjective process. It is also true with music, when the performer creates moods the listener can inhabit.

A picture, though, is worth a thousand words we are told. Sometimes words are not necessary when a captivating image is displayed. Images and words, combined, can create a stunning confrontation in our minds, which is revealed to us in the power of film, or theatre, or opera, where we have the whole thing…words, music, and imagery.

Still, the best leave room for the audience and do not deliver that impenetrable wall where one cannot pierce between spaces and get inside the experience. Sometimes, the artist simply does too much. Too little is better than too much. That is my opinion and I’m sticking to it.

Today, I will give you images and words, but not so many words.

July 4, 2014. Independence Day. My birthday. Friends. Family. Joyous celebration. An acknowledgement that things do not have to be as wonderful as they are.Tonight, we in this place share this. In other places, it is not the same. We are blessed and are thankful for the blessing and this time in its midst.

A thankful prayer whispered, then shouted, and offered to heaven, not as an enticement, but truly as grateful reception.

Beautiful place. Cacophony followed by subdued gentle serenity. Birds singing. Fish splashing.

Explosive light in the night.

Children, children, and more children…playing, arguing, playing, hugging, playing, singing…hard at the work of play, which is the primary work of children…then collapse into the dreamless sleep of exhausted innocence without malice, even amidst the surliness of their exhaustion.

Mothers and daughters, sons and fathers, their children and grandchildren. Our future and what will be left of us is right in front of us.

The next morning, and no one stirs but me and that lucky old sun that ain’t got nothin’ to do but roll around heaven all day. Neither one of us, the sun and me, has much to do, today, though I daresay the sun will expend far more energy doing its nothing than I will. It has it to spare.

I wouldn’t trade this for the all tea in old Cathay.

© Mississippi Chris Sharp