Spoil Bank

Mine tailings, but more often the piles of mud dredged from a canal or harbors. They tend toward the barren as usually contaminated. Once, on Cape Cod, I was watching them dredge Sesuit Harbor, followed the huge hose to where it was dumping, behind the first line of dunes, found many arrowheads and half a lovely whale-fluke spear-thrower weight. Another very quiet day, which I needed, sling-blading between thunder storms, reading the new old "Dictionary Of Americanisms", finger food all day, cheeses and olives and bread, then breakfast for dinner. Always a little post-partum after finishing a big show, too much adrenaline for too long a period of time, one reason I mostly gave up opera and theater, the mood swings, manically working toward something, then getting there and having all the pressure lifted suddenly, the ghostly images of yourself strung back along your timeline, like a film event, slamming back together to make you whole. I have to listen to Bach for a while and not move, to avoid a headache. Later, I listen to large raindrops and wind hit the strong leaves of early summer. Cleaned out the fridge, some interesting things after working two weeks, every day, and letting things slide; I remember most things and can identify them easily, but two containers I think are plants, I don't remember them at all and they are unidentifiable under layers of mold, one of them I keep, because it is so beautiful, intense reds and blues. Fridge Art. We could get an old food-store refrigerated dairy case and display moldy food. Some of these molds are incredible, I get out the magnifying glass and put an extra lamp at the island. Everything has a name so I'm sure that the individual hairs of a mold have a name, whatever they are called are thin and delicate, and when you touch them you can't feel them at all and they crush easily. Eventually everything smells like mushrooms. I'm hesitant to smell the molds, not because the smell might be offensive, but because I don't want to suck many of those fibers into my filtration system, but I do sniff around the edges and it's earthy, brown, a clay note, that dries down to finished compost. The perfume of the working class, we'll call it SWEAT, sell it in little bottles shaped like milking pails or running shoes. -Why do you believe me- I asked her directly, she mentioned specificity, and how I was good at that but lousy at almost everything else. I had to agree. I can cook, everything else is a mystery.