Across the Universe

Mark Combes post of a week or so ago, with its quote from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Song of Myself, led me to click on his link "barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world."
And suddenly I met my uncle.
My forty-three year old uncle died a few years before I was born, a freak infection in a root canal, as I recall from the stories. My Uncle Vernon was my mother's older brother and her idol. He was also my father's best friend; both men were rebels with broad intellects and a deep restlessness in their souls.
The one small fact I know about Vernon is that Leaves of Grass happened to be his all-time favorite book. My mother treasured his tattered copy and reread it often.
In reading the excerpt from the link, I heard not only Whitman's barbaric yawp, but that of my long dead uncle, as well as echoes of my mom and dad, both also gone.
In The War, Ken Burns latest mini-series, thanks to a forbidden journal hidden in the leaves of his New Testament, soldier Eugene Sledge reaches across time and the abyss of war to tell us, no, to make us FEEL what it means to fight a war.
But even the lightest of stories tells a story of the human heart. And each of us who writes offers up a piece of her own heart to the universe in hopes of making a connection across time and space.

Okay, enough coffee cup philosophy, back to my drag queen with the exploding wig…
And big congrats to our Macavity Award winner, Tim Maleeny!