Not Off

D out on emergency childcare, the Deputy on vacation, Pegi at the Cirque, skeleton crew. I reread the manuals on the electronics and hook things up, everything step by step and correct, but when I plug a stagelight into the system it is not off, as it should be, with the dimmer pre-set down, but on, and I can't get it off except by unplugging the damned thing. I do the entire programming sequence three times. Manage to waste half a day, keeping a light on even when I hit Black Out. Tomorrow I intend to mop and clean bathrooms, something I understand. Fuck a bunch of high-tech. Dogs back again, a feral pack, mix-breeds, but still I don't want to just keep shooting them so probably get a pellet gun, start pissing around my perimeter, try to establish a territory. Shot an ugly little black one last night, snarling at me, mouth foaming; shot it in the ear, dragged it down the logging road, downwind, and into the brush, -Food for worms, dear Percy-. Nice rattlesnake this morning, on the other side of the driveway puddles, 34 inches, 5 rattles, very dark, thick bodied, a female. Trapped her with a stick and got my foot behind her head, stretched her out, lovely thing but they do scare me, re-trapped her and stepped away, stamped my feet, amazing how they move so quickly away from vibration, no crows (quid pro crow, Sara still laughs at that) but some red-neck asshole has thrown his garbage out on Mackletree. You have to realize this particular section of Mackletree, through the State Forest, almost completely canopied, is as drop-dead beautiful as any section of the Natchez Trace, and for someone to stop (they had to of, we're not talking a Wendy's bag here, Taco Bell) and dump several bags of garbage. I keep trash bags in the truck, and latex gloves, pick most of it up on the way home, I'll finish tomorrow, but I have to get home because some other, or maybe the same, red-neck bastards have smashed my mail-box with a baseball bat. I feel violated, but have to measure my response: I don't want a war, there's no way I could win. I think about casting a mail-box in concrete, or, this is a fairly common problem, smashed mail-boxes, buying one of those steel ones, with a life-time guarantee, and setting it in concrete. If it's a drive-by bash, as I think it is, that would really sting, a broken-bat dribbler down the third base line. I don't think I'm hated, locally, I'm not sure they know I'm here; wait, yes, of course they do know. Not a problem, I often have to rethink, not a problem, one thing I know is that I'm not slow, usually.

Tom

-Catching up is hard to do- doo-opp, a down beat, let's get those guys back. Cage in Portsmouth? I'm dreaming. One of them is a Classics scholar and we talk about translations. He couldn't believe I'd done "Antigone" here, -Goddamn- he said, we don't get "Antigone" in Cincy. -Yep- I said, -we're full of surprises-.