Crystal World

Fortunately, I got up to pee, 1:30 or so, power out so no back-up heat, rebuilt the fire in the cookstove, set up with it for 45 minutes, put on an oak knot. Back to bed, then up before seven, meaning to go to work, but still no power, and well below freezing, no sun at all behind heavy, solid cloud-cover. Phone out. Stoke the stove and fix a lumberjack breakfast, suit up, get outside. Everything covered with a thin rime of clear ice. Extraordinary scene. I stay out until my nose freezes. Deputy calls, means I have a phone again, wondering if I'm alright. Yes, I tell her, but don't want to leave the house without one of the three things happening: sunlight, temps above freezing, or power. She understands, after all, B is her father, they lived in un-insulated chicken coops. I make the 12 minute clam chowder for lunch and the clouds break, a little broken, so shafts of sunlight, and the landscape explodes in a million crystals. Go back out, 32 degrees (which will hold exactly, for four hours, why there? is it a natural resting place for temps?) but the ground gives off a little heat, and the shafts of sunlight, so there is slight melting, none on the north side of anything. I stay out, work on wood. Of the new fine chestnut oak I want to stack four ricks inside the house, to help with the heating cycle when I get back, I need to fill all the stations, full wood-box, hot sticks, bone dry red maple, some osage orange I rescued from the river. Barely get my tools put away and the overcast slams shut like a hanger door and it starts snowing, medium flakes, straight down. In the dual interest of needing something to read and putting away books, under "The Song Of The Dodo" was Umberto Eco's "Kant And The Platypus", which I decided to work on. I don't know to say it exactly. B and I are both rereading this book, it's in a rotation, actually, and we both leave our notes inside, so when you get it back, you have a meta-text and two texts. It's hard to put it to bed. Eco is brilliant. An elegant writer, he weaves his theme, much like (this is going to be an odd triplet) Levi-Strauss does in the "Mythologiques", and Proust. How far through they carry ideas. Usually I can't remember what we're talking about, much less projecting ahead. I did, in fact, fall on my ass, the back porch was black ice; I fell correctly and cushioned the blow with flex so I didn't break my collar-bone; got my crampons, got right back on that horse, yes, I can walk, yes, I am a ninny. Test the water first. It might be so hot it could require both hands, THEN look around. Always look first at where your feet will fall. Oh, I see where this is going, of course, it's a kind of braid, where you, as a reader, have to make a back-splice, and I just keep time. I'll flip the burden on you whenever I can. Shameless. Whenever it's become a management technique, I abandoned that approach. I've failed at more things than anyone I know. A master of failure. But I have to tell you, out there, with all the sparkles, I felt like I was king of the world.