Redbud Gap

Knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door. What I seem to be doing. Listen, I am totally in the dark, what you thought I meant about something I said about something that happened. Formerly confused, now at a loss. Just got the new issue of "Dreck Und Schmutz", the always interesting and weighty German Journal Of Janitorial Sciences, and like reading Scientific American, could hardly understand a word of the lead article "The Dynamics of Dust". I mean I knew dust was light, but now the whole wave and particle conversation has landed on our doorstep. The German Sister City group, with translators at the museum tomorrow and I wish I had my new Janitor Overalls with Frank on the pocket, to greet them. -No, my name is Tom, Frank is what I am.- The dip and curve down the little section of Upper Twin Creek Road before I turn off on Mackletree, can't be five hundred yards, is aflame in Redbud. Beautiful. I stopped this morning, in the middle of it, nearly got rear-ended by a logging truck. He was pissed and pulled out around me, stopped abreast and asked what the hell I'd stopped in the middle of the road for, I gestured and said -the Redbud- he looked at both sides of the road, turned back to me -damn, them fuckers are pretty, ain't they?- Yes, I think, yes, I advance the cause, the beauty of the natural world. Start restoring order to the kitchen post wine-tasting, run 160 wine glasses through the washer and box them, realize I need to spend half a day organizing kitchen storage, not my strong suit but I'm better than nothing. Sam Beckett would deny that. Fry morels in butter with shallots, a few drops of this twenty-year-old balsamic (a gift), grill a small rib-eye steak; on the side I have the last of Dawn's green beans (home-canned green beans are the best, better than fresh, and quick) and a salad, a sinful dressing of walnut oil and raspberry vinegar, the end hunk off a loaf of sourdough to sop everything. Good eats, off the scale, one of the best meals of my life. The fox likes turkey sandwiches, we don't eat them the same way, she's one of those take-the-sandwich-apart-people, but she likes them; I'm looking at her closely, with glasses, face-on, and the whiskers on the left side are bent, the downy fur in toward her eyes is lighter in color, reverse kohl, a tricky shot, but she pulls it off. Carma asked me if I could photograph the fox, she'd loan me a camera, and I didn't know for sure if I could, because I feel so blessed to just see her that I lose track of time, forget everything else, much less remember the camera, get a decent shot, fuck, I've designed and built houses in four states and I don't have a single picture, wait, one, a picture The Utah Kid sent, after they had moved to Utah, of a house I'd help build for them in Colorado, it's thumb-tacked to the wall somewhere. The past is a kind of spit bucket. To paraphrase Sandburg. I like that poem, actually, it moved me early on, "Four Preludes to Playthings of the Wind", I still quote it, when the spirit moves me. It's all rhythm, B does this poem, "Buster Paddling", and it makes you reconsider what you thought you were doing, much like Bach, and the Cello Suites: how do you, in any medium, translate feeling. For openers, this way works, I can talk to you, B makes sense in that piece, Stephen hammers meaning like a spike, Skip is doing Bumper-Stickers that bury the unwary. My point is lost. Just at closing time tonight a great conversation crested, in the common room, but I had to get home and write, couldn't stay and discuss, had to get home, Redbud Gap, what I meant to say.

Tom

I can't believe the puddles of blossoms I have to walk through, between here and there, it's a maze, there is no correct way, there are only paths, you choose one. Good luck to your future and the one you left behind.