Good Fortune

Kroger before work, a few things for the weekend, I'm thinking maybe a steak, also bread, and lo, good french bread on sale and as I approach the meat counters a guy is wheeling out a dolly loaded with pork loins, the whole loins, cryo-packed, and they are so cheap I'm stunned. The smallest of them, just under six pounds is $9.63, and I can't not buy it, figuring I'll cut off a couple of meals, probably butterfly two chops (stuff with chutney) and cure the rest as a kind of Canadian Bacon, fucking yum. Still not quite time to open the museum so I go below the floodwall, thinking about the Death Tree for Roger's set, stop at the first turn-out on the lower road, get out. What I need is slightly odd in tree world, a trunk section with a branch at close to 90 degrees, small enough that I can lift it, large enough to hold a teenage girl. Get this: the first stick I look at fits the bill perfectly, load it in the back and head to the museum, I park, D arrives (we go in his truck for the scone and coffee run) and he nods approval, recognizing, as I already had, that it was another stick that would work for the River Wrack show. Sara is out, visiting another museum to check on circus items for an upcoming show, Trish is out on vacation; Pegi, the Deputy, D and I have way too much fun, working hard and verbally abusing each other. Pegi's on a roll and we all feed her set-up lines. We collate, fold and stitch 36 booklets for the second wine-tasting / fund-raiser and can't believe we get them done, still time to carry down ten bags of mulch to fill the frame I'd built for "The Secret Garden". On the way home there is no one at the lake so I stop and roll a smoke, walk over to the spillway, there's a Burger King bag, I hate trash, so I pick it up, to collect other trash before I throw it away, and inside it are a few french fries and $15, I pocket the cash and feed the fries to the ducks. Someone must have bought a Whopper for someone else and put the change in the bag. My good fortune. In my world all windfall profits are spent on booze, so Tuesday (I don't make unnecessary trips) I'll buy a bottle of whiskey. God is in his heaven and all's right on the ridge. Going back to the museum from a trip to the hardware store, I drove past the college, and in the new-mown green I noticed some white dots. I knew they were a slightly toxic Conocybe and stopped to harvest a few, ate them in an omelet a while ago, probably soon be leaving you. Such a day. I might write something strange later or I might trim my toenails, there's no way of telling. I like uncertainty, as a principle it guides me. I unwrap the loin, a dangerous procedure, and butterfly a couple of chops, then rub the remainder with a mixture of chilies, brown sugar, and salt, put it on a rack in a pan in the fridge, break down the cell walls, leach out the moisture, is my intent, pretty sure I know what I'm doing, still, I've lost pieces of meat before so this wouldn't be the first time I failed. At a certain point failure is necessary or you don't learn, a pat on the back is seldom a lesson, what you need is a huge mess you have to clean up before you can start again. The learning curve. Dried shit on the floor and a chisel.