Crispin Creek about three miles east of Agincourt, Iowa

“If we cannot tell a story about what happened to us, nothing has happened to us.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Languorous refers to a certain kind of mood everyone gets in sometimes — when you’d rather lie around thinking than doing work or having fun. When you’re languorous, you’re tired and maybe a little depressed. Things can be languorous, too — like a hot, languorous summer afternoon or a languorous song that’s slow and mournful. If you’ve ever lounged in bed for an hour after you were supposed to get up, you’re familiar with feeling languorous.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

This picture of our creek, Crispin Creek, must have been taken mid-summer, possibly late July, before the August heat takes half its depth and you can walk across barely wetting your knees. If this blog had a sound track, you’d be savoring Samuel Barber’s “Summer Music” for woodwind quintet, as lazy and languorous as the creek. Dragonflies hover and tempt the fish — agricultural runoff hadn’t yet lowered their numbers — while cicadas hum in G major.*

Tonight this image of the creek carries special feeling; outside the temperature is double-digit below zero, and the windchill is double that. I question the value of another Agincourt exhibit — what story could it possibly tell; what audience longs to hear it told? — and doubt what the investment might yield. I have nine months’ gestation to answer myself.

* “Everything rustic, idyllic and lyrical, every calm and satisfied passion, every tender gratitude for true friendship and faithful love — in a word every gentle and peaceful emotion of the heart is correctly expressed by this key.” — from “Emotions of the Musical Keys” by Kevin Lessmann. Who knew?