Posted on by Mike Firesmith

Summer of 2023: Dance with the Dragon Queen

            Summer isn’t a season in the Deep South, but rather it is a condition, a state of being, or a prison sentence. Unlike any other time of year, Summer becomes omnipresent at all times of the day. She has minions, this one does, this Dragon Queen of Heat. It’s not just the mercury being forced higher into the thermometer, oh no, were it only that simple. Summer is an assault on many fronts of the human senses and psyche.

            Any rain that accidentally falls, does so in sheets, in volumes, and it does so quickly, as if the clouds have only a specific time allotted to them by the Queen. Quickly, the heat turns rain back into clouds of humidity that are dense and suffocating.

            One of my pet theories regarding Summer and the South is the citizenry scores so low in nearly every educational category is for four months of the year, they are in a state of half drowning in humidity. If this causes any permanent brain damage has never been tested, but it would explain a few things.

            But humidity is a condition, not an entity. The Dragon Queen brings the scorching heat and billions of gnats, mosquitoes, biting flies, and all manner of creeping, crawling, and flying insects. No step is taken outside without an entourage of misery. Human eyes, ears, and noses are fair game for these peddlers of pain. Gnats, whose function is unknown to science, fly directly into the eye, and it’s painful to remove them. Mosquitoes alight on exposed skin, demand a blood donation and leave welts as payment. The biting flies are kamikazes, diving down to rend flesh and leave swelling wounds. Only poisons, like diethyltoluamide, create a barrier between the minions of the Dragon Queen and anemia. But this, too, is part of her world. Insect repellent is the cologne we wear to appease the Queen.

            Yet the Dragon cannot concern herself with individuals. She must bring excess to her domain. Ponds explode with algae and water plants even as they dry up. Land vegetation grows overnight to require mowing or pruning. Gardens quickly produce, but fruit rots if not promptly harvested. Summer demands the world slows down but quickens the growth of all things green. Trees soak up sunlight like solar addicts. The woods thicken to the point of blocking the sun, creating a dark green globe of vegetation and shadows, each plant at war with all others for every photon.

            Humans hide from the Dragon Queen of Summer. Safely secured in cars or their homes, air conditioning prevents any experience with the real world. Binge-watching, video games, and social media become electronic refugee camps for those who can or will not face the Queen.

            I am part reptile, part lunatic, and fully cognizant of whose realm I trespass. Walking in the day’s heat brings her wrath upon me, and working in the compost pile irritates the Queen with my presence, but who are you? Would you cower behind your ceiling fans, their blades protecting you, as the world turns outside your drawn shades, blocking the sun’s assault? I breathe the Dragon’s Breath and feel her power, absorb the heat, and I become one with it. The path around the fenceline is cleared with a bush hook and with sweat and done in full view of the sun. Wide brim hat, long sleeves, work boots, and the desire to experience Summer, in all her glory, compel me to tempt the Dragon to kill me.

            The Queen loves no human. She will leave me dead in the woods without a thought towards life. If I choose to dance with her, then it is up to me to survive the music played. Yet for decades, I have done this, walked into the heat, flexed muscle, bled sweat and swam in the river Styx. It is only hell if you choose to be unhappy. Misery is a state of mind. If you want to, if you set the conditions of your life to do so, you can walk inside the breath of the Dragon Queen, embrace the world she has created, and live to write about it.

            Take Care,

Mike

Posted on by Mike Firesmith · 1 Comment

Black and White

I got my last promotion in the Army because I was white. That’s an odd statement, but it’s a true one, and the truth gets even stranger when I tell you this: I got the promotion because the other white guy who was supposed to get promoted was busted on a urinalysis test. This means the stoner was actually in front of me for promotion. Now, here’s the part that’s going to really blow your mind: my unit had a policy that if a white guy was promoted then a minority guy had to be promoted at the same time. Since they were already promoting a minority guy, and their white guy had smoked himself out of the running, I was next in line. 

I got a raise and some new bling on my uniform. 

But none of this made the world a more just or equitable place. Promoting people, white or otherwise, because of a system set up to do just that, doesn’t do any real good. What that system is doing is admitting there are so many people in the system who are racist in some shape, fashion, or form, that you have to do weird things to make it work for people who otherwise would never be treated equitably. 

Worse, I knew racist white people who used the system to help minorities as an excuse to hate minorities. If we’re going to give them something for free then that proves they don’t have to work to get it. So, as a racist you aren’t about to help anyone who isn’t white, and if someone else does, it’s the reason you suppress minorities if you can? 

I knew some really good soldiers. I knew men who were dedicated and competent, but there were policies in place that defined their worth to the military, and therefore the nation, in terms of skin color. My roommate who received an award for his performance as a medic wondered aloud if he was given the award because he was a minority. I thought he earned it. I thought he had busted his butt and done his job, and he earned what he got. But because so many minorities have not gotten what they worked for, there’s the system in place to make sure they do, even when they don’t earn it. 

Did that make sense? 

To truly understand the issue of race in America, you have to understand the history of race in America. People of color were slaves, property, livestock, for hundreds of years. Then, there were subject to race laws, pigs laws, and a host of other codified systems which made sure than no matter what happened, they were not anywhere nearly as successful as white people would be. 

Take a deep breath, white people, I’m going to tell you something that is true, and you are not going to like it. In Nazi Germany, a person could be considered Aryan, if three out of their four grandparents were Aryan. This means you could have a Jewish grandparent, and still be a member of the Nazi party. This was in their laws. 

How much black could you be in America and still be considered white? 

One drop. If a person had “one drop” of black blood in their body, if they had one black ancestor, they were considered to be black. That was in our laws. 

Take a moment with that thought. Sit down and consider what sort of world we used to live in, and how much time and effort it would take to retool the thoughts and hearts of a people who have put laws into place, and lived within those laws, before all trace of that society would be gone, and there would be acceptance and there would be love, and there would be peace. 

We aren’t there yet. We aren’t anywhere near there yet. All the promotions and all the awards, and all the bling in the world cannot change what we have done for hundreds of years, until we understand why we did it. 

If you didn’t know the “One Drop Law” existed, then you didn’t know how bad it was, did you? 

How could you possibly be a part of the solution if you never knew the problem? 

Take Care,

Mike