Nothing Everywhere

I love that line of Beckett, from Endgame, Clov is looking out the window. Eight inches of snow make for a white and muffled world. Ice storm coming tonight, slightly warmer temps. Probably lose power, end of the grid blues. Can't find my gaiters and a trip to the woodshed leaves me with wet feet. Hole up and reread a Dorothy Sayers mystery, The Nine Tailors, a delightful book. Writing early against the loss of electricity. If you don't hear from me it doesn't mean anything. Anxious Jana called from NYC, concerned about my circumstances, and rightly so, it's setting up to be awful outside, rain, 28 degrees on the ground, a layer of ice is forming. Get out candles and the oil lamp, bring a blanket down for the sofa, so I can sleep there, intermittently, waking often to stoke the stove. This doesn't happen often and it isn't a big deal. Snow this deep always reminds of the snow gauge we had on Martha's Vineyard, a mutilated statue of Don Quixote, plaster, with a lot of the armature showing. He stood sixteen inches tall on his base, on a stump cut level with the ground, and was dead center out the front of the house, due south; with a glance you could tell how deep the snow was, and choose appropriate footwear. Once, he was covered completely, there was suddenly no frame of reference. I'm getting the house as warm as possible, storing BTU's: the books, the stone counters, the beams, the massive iron stove (800 lbs.), store a huge amount of heat, I might that, later. Wish I had a few hundred gallons of phase-change salt, so much heat is wasted, I'd like to hold on to more of it. Hard to do, when it gets cold and your house is built off the ground, on piers. The wind sucks heat, especially if you've built on a tight budget and didn't do some things that you should have. It's all part of the original equation, how much money, how much time, how much space. And it works for me, though I might bitch about having to wear too many layers, living so completely in the natural world. I can't imagine a better place for myself. Tracks are so different in deep powder. I went on a minor hike looking for some stories in the snow. Not far to look: in soft powder everyone's belly drags, it confuses the prints, that poor bunny, where did he think he was going. I can't tell the difference between a shrew and a mole, I'm not even sure if it might be a mouse. They should have stayed home, maybe they were just clearing the entry, seeing what the weather was like. Headed into a frozen world here, the branches are freezing. It's beautiful, so stark and clean. I'm going to send this now. I'll make notes. Read more...

Snow Advisory

This was supposed to miss us, but radio warning that the shit is going to hit the fan. Two storms in 36 hours, could be 8 inches or more. I need to work on wood, call B at the college and he agrees to get me a jug of whiskey, the only thing I didn't get yesterday (if I'm going to be snowed in I'll need drink). Avoiding a trip to town allows me to work outside, two inches of new powder, temps hover around 20. Suited up and out the door at 8, work straight through until 3. Haul six double-splits from the depot, cut them, split half, take it inside and spread it on the floor; split the kindling bucket full, split out starter sticks. Seven more carries out of the hollow to the depot, hot tea break, then the seven carries home, ricked. As prepared as I can be. Rick the sticks inside, sweep up. B comes over with the whiskey and we have a late afternoon espresso, talk about writing, as McCord has McPherson & Company interested in a book of mine. Isolating a book in this flow of posts is an interesting idea. I've been thinking about it. One thing that we have here, is a series of overlapping books, The Ridge Book, The Fox Book, The Frog Book, The Wrack Book; another thing is a continuum, that, at this point, can contain anything. I'm really dirty, didn't cleanup yesterday; after B leaves, I heat water, take a sponge bath standing at the kitchen sink, near the cookstove, wash my hair, shave. Feeling nearly human. It's a gift to be clean. Some of those Norwegian boys at Janitor College didn't take off their long underwear from December to March, talk about high. Sometimes we had to intervene. It wasn't homo-erotic, it was sadistic. When I got seriously interested in the sense of smell, all those years on the farm and ranch, all those animals, hundreds over the years, breeding, all that display, all that exchange of scent. Clearly, something was going on. I have a very good sense of smell, always have had, I knew the normal smell of most of the animals and could discern a difference, a language of receptors. Jammed my index finger, left hand, moving some frozen billets, I don't understand what happened and I was there. I tripped and reached out my hand, my index finger is longer so it took the blow, probably, something like that, and it hurt; ripped off my glove to see whatever the damage, and the finger is slightly kinked. I'm uncomfortable enough, my feet are frozen, my gloves are wet and stiff, I need to deal with this. Grab the offending finger and pull sharply. This really hurts, we're talking tears, but fades away. Losing everything is nothing squared. It's hard not to imagine they expected me gone. My claim on anything is very circumstantial. It's only my readers that keep me alive. I'm just a figment, otherwise. I assume you know what I mean. We could talk about it, or not. Being able to express yourself. Read more...

Town Run

Mid-winter, you take these whenever they fall. Above freezing long enough yesterday to melt the snow, then falling temps and the driveway is clear and frozen. I get the laundry together, make a string of water jugs and head down to the truck. Laundry, library, Kroger (three juices, tonic water (I drink a lot of straight tonic water), milk, cream, cans of tomato soup, cheese, eggs) and get right back home. Drive up, unload, have a coffee with B, split some wood, get the truck back down the hill and walk up as the first snowflakes fall. On my game. Not snowing hard so I make four carries out of the hollow, then it starts coming down hard. Very cold again and the snow is powder, I'll brush it off tomorrow with a whisk broom I carry as part of my winter kit. Sound is quickly dampened, a few birds out, foraging. Perfect conditions, frozen ground, cold temps, virgin snow. It's a beautiful sight from every window, I make the rounds. Cookstove is cranking, so I make an elk meat and egg noodle casserole, mushrooms, onions, garlic, with a thick layer of cheese on top that I finish in the oven. Comfort food. Should last several days. This is a dish that I would have fed Wittgenstein, since he expected the same dish at every meal when he stayed with someone. Lumberjacks in the north woods require 4,000 calories a day. I'm not prone to headaches, but the most common one I have is the one telling me I need to eat and this is generally a winter thing. The treatment, which I've codified, is to take a heaping tablespoon of peanut butter, orally, and make a small quick chowder. The fish lady at Kroger has promised to get me some salted cod, but for now I just use one of those small cans of minced clams. I forgot potatoes today, goddamn it, and I need onions. Left in such a hurry this morning, the window of opportunity, that I didn't make a list. Bad form. Still, I feel fine about the day, even better than that. The house smelled of dirty socks and I needed some things, the driveway was doable, and I have a house guest coming next weekend. Like when those planets line up. Point being that I knew enough to drop whatever I was doing (chasing dust bunnies behind the sofa) and get my ass to town. I need to haul wood from the hollow, but I really need to get to town. The decision tree. For instance, I had saved one of the Ridge Zins, that Glenn had brought, when he was filming, and now I can drink that with Diana. Considering the menu, want B, in his actual persona, Brian, to be here, to help carry the conversation while I'm cooking. We're a tag team on this, maybe World Class, I kid you not. We cover a lot of different bases. And choose to live a similar life. We talk about that, occasionally, how strange it is that we would even know each other. We both knew Howard McCord, that was probably the first link. We were both letterpress printers and we had both published him. But there was something else, a similar view of the world, a link, someone to talk with. I view good conversation above all other activities. I might qualify that. Conversation is really important, if you're going to sling the rest of those arrows, and I like to be prepared. I'll be the first to admit I wasn't prepared. B had warned me, what if the winter hits you like a brick wall. What do you do then? I didn't exactly ignore it completely, but almost. Now, I'm having second thoughts. I suppose I could burn the table and chairs. That might gain me a day or two, I wonder if that would be enough. At this point I'd take any advantage; the world, between you and me, is brutal, my thumb aches, I'd really just like to sleep.
Read more...

Pain Control

Almost went too far, but I had set in my mind what needed to be accomplished. Over to B's for a second coffee, then split everything in the shed and froe out some starter sticks. Armed with a second wedge and I'm back in the hollow where I free the first wedge. I bust the three trunk sections into 14 pieces, lining them upright against the remaining log. Halfway through I bust my left thumb between two sticks, bad enough that I have to go back to the house and repair the damage. With damage to both thumbs rolling a cigaret is an act of not-so-quiet desperation. Excellent lunch, B had rolled chicken hearts and gizzards in corn flour and chili powder, browned in olive oil and simmered for several hours in enchilada sauce, gave me a container. On toast, with a mug of hot chicken broth. Incredibly tender and wonderfully rich. Finished splitting, carried out the maul, two wedges, small bag of kindling, then laid flat on the floor for an hour, nursing an afternoon espresso and munching aspirin. Go back down and make two carries out of the hollow, just to prove I can, toss in the towel; heat some water, sponge bath and shave, eat a can of beans, right from the can, using my fork and pieces of bread to get all the juice. Shoulders sore, a little cramping in the legs, nothing a toke and drink can't mellow out. I should sleep well tonight, or maybe not, I could wake up hurting. Doesn't really matter, sometimes a little pain is a good thing, reminds you you're alive. My thumb is throbbing but I can push that away. If you're going to live this way, dependent on yourself, isolated, basic, then it's a good idea to have a high pain threshold. There was a flock of blackbirds and a couple of nuthatches while I was at B's. Not another live critter all day, not a peep, not a squawk; especially after I smashed my thumb, maybe I wasn't paying attention, enough attention, to the world outside. What happens in the winter wood is subtle, if you're not paying attention, you miss it. Everything is a distraction, almost everything we do diverts us from the primary course. Consider the foundation and imagine what corrections need to be made. A course at a time. Spring the arch exactly where it needs to happen. Backward or forward, or technically correct, if the spring point happens where it should, we're cool. I have friends in Weights And Measures that could adjust the clock, but I don't think that's necessary. If you followed the problem back to the source you'd probably find the difficulty, a hearing problem, or something, what you thought you were saying was misunderstood. Or maybe not. It's so hard to tell sometime.
Read more...

Nuanced Lines

Talking with The Brit today, about directing amateur actors. He's having a difficult time with the current rehearsals for a play at the museum. If they can't learn their lines they can't begin to nuance. They can't begin to act. Fully half of being any good on stage is just learning your lines, so you can get a good mouth-feel for them. Writing pages or books is a bit different from writing for the stage, no mediation, you sound the words in your head. If you've heard me read, even if you haven't, my voice is natural; my reading voice and my prose are fairly flat, but nuanced. More effective than screaming. I'm often pithy, getting morning coffee at Market Street, this morning getting my Robust Blend and two blueberry scones which were still warm (one for me, one for the Deputy), I said to Liz, the owner, and she signaled for silence from the kitchen help, wanting to hear: -the quality of mercy is spared when I can have a warm blueberry scone- and she curtsied. I thought, right there in the moment, tripping over my own feet, that it was cool, that I could say whatever I wanted, and someone could either respond or not. I like Liz, I like Jim at the pub, I like a lot of people, but I don't want to spend any time with them. An exception looms, one of my oldest and dearest friends, Dr. Diana, she of the amazing hair and swirling skirts. Brilliant, informed, one of the few people to visit everywhere I've ever lived. This is a treat, I think, then look around, at my winter survival hovel. She calls, I'm a little anxious. One reason I can live the way I do is that I don't have to consider another person, other, there is no compromise, no need for one. But if someone visits, then you have to consider other. Creature comforts, that kind of thing, outhouse, no running water. On the other hand, I'm a good cook, and it's usually warm near the stove. This house is too large for me now, I needed space for my daughters and a lover then, but I don't now, need a smaller house, easier to heat. B and I have talked about this so many times, I might just build that organic house, to grow old in, and rent this place out. My sense of attachment is different now, I used to think everything was connected, now I'm not so sure. There are splits and checks I can't explain, they happened on my watch, and I accept responsibility. Guilty as charged. I just wish I knew what caused them. I've looked at this closely, January, Janus, I look at things closely, it's my nature.
Read more...

Comfort Zone

I have a place I can go, beneath layers of buffalo blankets, where I wouldn't freeze to death, much more likely I wouldn't be found until spring. Oh, we wondered what had happened to him. But I learn, you know, hole up when necessary, hibernate if necessary, pull the covers in such a way that my ears are covered and I can still breathe. I recognize it's a game but I don't speak the language. Fuck the death and dying thing, I knew I was gone from before the beginning. The taste of bile gave everything away. That luger you coughed, what you spit in the snow. I listen to the wind, what seems to be being said, it makes a kind of sense. Above freezing this afternoon for the first time in a couple of weeks, things will be messy for a couple of days, then the temps will fall again. D out most of the day, collecting art for the next show. I putter around, getting little things done, running errands. Off my feed, sleep issues from the really cold weather, and this damnable change in pattern. Slog up the hill through rotting snow and by the time I achieve the ridge, my spirits are lifted; home, and not so cold. Start a fire without that sense of urgency. I can laugh at my bungling now, instead of being dead serious. Strikes me as odd that I work in a sophisticated setting and live such a basic life, work at an art museum and don't have running water. An interesting dynamic. I live this life because I choose to, have subsidized living this way by doing more things than I can remember, and now, the employer of last resort is an art museum. I suppose it makes sense. It brings me to where I am, the arm-pit of Appalachia where I am serially robbed. What a deal. Maybe the lesson is to not acquire things, or to carry everything with you all the time, or to just live in a cardboard hut. I'm insured against nothing. I get sick, damage myself, the whole house of cards collapses. Why I'm so careful now, poking my footing with a stick; I love being here, where the crow meets the branch, where any sighting of the fox is an event. Being so fully engaged by the world that there isn't anything else. I knew I'd feel better when I got to the top. The ridge is a harsh mistress, ask anyone, but she is so cool, with just the tattoo you'd been hoping for, so you cut some slack, never a good idea, and are fucked up the ass again, wondering, why me, why again, why me again?
Read more...

The River

My drive in, I cross the Scioto just before it joins the Ohio. Icebergs. The Scioto is nearly solid, the east shore jammed with various sized floes. The Ohio flows freely but there is shore ice and at the mouth of the Scioto, the incoming ice swings a graceful curve against the north shore. It's very beautiful, the currents so clearly revealed. Below zero again and the lake is frozen, and there is an ice issue too, at the spillway. The napp (water over the spillway) needs to escape so right at the lake edge the water lifts the ice-cap, so it can release the pressure. When the ice freezes too deeply, it starts pushing ice blocks ashore, pictures show blocks the size of apartment houses when the Great Lakes freeze. I don't think water is the only element that expands both when it freezes and when it vaporizes, probably ammonia does, and some other things. I remember something about the moons of Jupiter. That Damn Brit was back today, full of vim and vinegar; Julia, a board member, came in, to pick up something, and he, Roger, had her laughing so hard we all stopped what we were doing to join in the fray. Work should be interesting, if you don't enjoy what you do, do something else. I was the King of patch and paint today. 4,000 square feet ready to hang, I pride myself on this, as good as you're likely to find. I also walk dogs. Not to draw too fine a point, but That Damn Brit, talking about British acting groups, mentioned a group, I forget their name, horribly incorrect, who were very funny. Life is like that, a sequence of scenes, make what you will. The overriding image is that curve the Scioto assumed, curling into the Ohio. There was a sound, a deep grinding, I can't reproduce it. Read more...

Confronting Odds

Good I got back to the museum, the physical plant suffers. No fault, it's my bailiwick, everyone busy as they can be. Janitor stuff all morning then unhung the smallest gallery, museum collection of abstracts (meager, they should buy a Gampp), stripped the main gallery, patched and repaired. Had forgotten how many anchors we had hammer-drilled into hard walls. A mess. Hanging big shows is tough on a gallery. There are two small areas, large enough for a single painting of a certain size, so the same exact area is patched every time. We need a Gringo Block there (in Southwest adobe construction you need some wood to attach door jambs and windows, so you embed blocks (anchored securely)) to make your life easier. You can get by without them but it takes conceptual thinking, with a block, you just nail. Thus the name. I guess we're known for taking the easier route. I prefer speculating, myself, and conceptual is fine. The greatest door I ever installed, I think I wrote about it somewhere. A welded steel jamb to hold a massive door I'd built from 4x8's. Way overkill, but it was the door into Thomas Jefferson's father's (Peter) above ground cistern, and it was just right, perfectly correct. I had to cut a door opening in foot-thick concrete, then install the jamb, no Gringo Blocks, anchored it with welded rebar, what a piece of work. Drilled the rebar into the rough opening. Resplendent faith that I drilled the holes correctly, and it worked out almost perfectly; door like that, level and plumb become relative. In hindsight it becomes a rhetoric of certitude, but, believe me, at the time, I was sweating bullets. I picked up a few things at the store, need to get some meals ahead: back at the museum, getting home to a cold house. It's all fine, the trade-off, the algorithm. My feet were cold, when I came in for the second time yesterday, quite cold, and I hadn't noticed; I need to start noticing the things that I've previously ignored. I'm held together by an Ace Bandage and two safety pins, there's not a lot of slack. I need to make this as easy on myself as possible, but this life isn't easy. I nod, make an adjustment, anyone is closer than me, but I'll take the shot if you think I really should. What's her name, whoever got me onto this, my muse, I forget her name, led me to the bottom circles of hell. What I see is a kind of prism. Makes up for definition with pure color. Hold it against the glass, what do you see? Refractions, I rest my case. How does a mouse when It spins? Read more...

Skewed Schedule

Sore. Frustrated. Cut up all the wood I had in the shed, split out kindling and small sticks, loaded all the stations, set to get back to the museum tomorrow and catch up on the backlog. Head out to split trunk sections in the hollow. Ten years splitting the red and chestnut oak on the ridge and I've never needed more than one wedge and the maul. Only have one wedge which I think is B's. There's a pattern, splitting these large guys, I've done thousands of them; get the wedge started with small blows and when it's well seated, hit it a big blow and the oak falls apart. Hit this one a particularly fine whack and the wedge disappeared. Wood under enormous tension. I see the problem. The split didn't go through the heart and out the other side, just enough grain to tell me that a branching had started right at the heart, incredibly tough fiber. So tough it started another split at 90 degrees from the center. No getting that wedge out without another. Beat on the billet with the maul until I realized I could hurt myself. Sore shoulders. Did I mention that the robbers took my five gallon stainless steel pot? Fuckers. I used it to melt snow and heat water for my bath. Have to make do with a sponge bath, hair-wash, and shave. Need another pot, no, wait, I have an enamel canning kettle, they didn't steal that. I figure they needed something to carry the loot. Took the aspirin, took some silverware, I keep reaching for things that are no longer there. Got 'em once though, the can-opener doesn't work, maybe they'll bleed to death from a lid cut. 20 degrees today, calm, nice. Sleep schedule shot to hell. Still in bed at seven-thirty when a Pileated Woodpecker set up shop in a tree near the house. Gets your attention. Soon as the fire was going and I'd had some coffee, I put on a pot of Navy Beans with some fatback, chicken stock, onion, which will become a soup after I strain out a meal of beans to eat with some pork loin chops. One thing becomes another. The "skewed" aspect of things, the time-line is fractured, or fractured more than usual, but, when I'm thinking about that, at lunch, staring into space, I realize you understand that too. You understand the content and the context, no reason to believe that the time-line would be a problem. I'm living in a dream, though most people would call it something else. I went down into the hollow a second time, thinking I was smarter than a stump, proved not to be the case. I gave up, for the moment, I don't need blisters. What I need is another wedge. I can be diverted by almost anything, but I won't be defeated by a stump. Smashed my thumb pretty good today, splitting kindling, one of those peel-backs of flesh, have to protect it until new skin forms, band-aids don't work for me, but the liquid stuff, which I love, a human sealant, stings badly on a wound this large, which I knew it would, so I had rolled a couple of smokes and gotten an early drink. And the combination of a skewed schedule and a minor injury led me to writing early, wondering if I had anything to say and how it was possible that you understood that. Increasingly, what I write is just a sampling of experience or imagination, doesn't matter which, doesn't matter what, a threshold is reached where it really doesn't matter. Throw a piece of coal through the door or sprinkle pepper over your back. Or was that salt. Probably depends on where you live. Usually what you throw is a cheap common product, rice or bread crumbs, so the birds could recycle it. Unless you were the queen or the king and what we threw were Humming Bird tongues. I don't speak for the crows, as a union, but I wouldn't eat those. The tongues. That's just weird. I cooked a batch of onions, ala Thorne, to that "dissolve in your mouth" state. Took an hour-and-a-half, but god they were good, like candy. I never understood sugar before. Spare all of you close to me, I see it all now, in a wedge of Key Lime pie.
Read more...

House Bound

Should have gotten out more but it was snowing all day. Did hike out to the graveyard knowing the small light flakes would define the graves; they did, it was pristine. Pretty sure the fox den is out that way, looking at sign. She got a vole or mouse and I followed her tracks, the startling occasional red blood drip (bright red, like a Pileated Comb, punctuating the whiteness), until it went under a tangle of green-briar and blackberry canes and I couldn't follow without a Bob Cat. The left-over instant mashed potato pancakes were like large thick potato chips. They need leavening, anything, grated zucchini, bread crumbs, reconstituted salt-cod, certainly some onion. I'll work on this, because anything that can be eaten with maple syrup is fine in my book. And I need a new breakfast food: tired of drinking protein, banana, yogurt, juice things. This has real possibilities, infinite substitution; grated vegetables and cheap fish, a couple in the morning would probably keep you going. Sometime, during the day, I do a little dance around the island, I know it's time to start writing you. This is my perk. They let me speak my piece, as long as it's in this format. I just wrap the lines, my job, what I do; I type with two fingers and hope for the best. It's the correct speed for me, just , about the speed my mind works, two fingers in real time. I never could trust my thumb. Always wanting to rub something. This is really about you, it isn't about me at all. They're using me to get at you. It's too late to declare trust, but we could talk. I might talk you out of killing me, Ralph said I could, but I never tried. Pleading for your life, what would you do? I don't know. Almost anything probably. Say you were saving one of your kids and had to make a split-second decision, which way you think you'd lead? I don't do sports but I see where you're going. Throw the fight and get on with your life, but you know I can't do that. It's become an issue. I'd never throw a fight, even if I knew it was a lost cause. Read more...

Relative

It's faster if you wait. Really. My computer, for instance. Got up and caught the fire, a quick glance outside, with a flashlight to be sure, shows 8 below, no wind though, what you feel is what you get. I like the quiet. Like there's a damper on everything. Nothing moves. Deep in a reverie, after the third carry, I see the fox's footprints in the snow: a perfect record. Wait, those weren't there before, and there she is, a hundred yards away, fluffed out and beautiful. Her tracks, in fresh snow, are a thing of wonder. I've never before seen anything so clear. Exactly where we were headed. Nothing prepares you for the moment. That I should love a bird or a fox. Out of sequence. Another day. Up, get a fire started, off to town, library, liquor store, Kroger. One too heavy a load instead of two trips; probably fifty pounds, full pack, eggs and bread in one hand, walking stick in the other. Finally up to twenty degrees, but windy, blowing a gale, no outside work. Even with a face-mask, the wind cuts through, much worse than the last two days, though the house is warmer, I can type without the fingerless gloves. Great grilled cheese sandwich, British double cheddar on sour dough, tomato soup. Pink scudding clouds at sunset. For dinner I use something I never would have imagined using, instant mashed potatoes, not very good as potatoes, but one hell of a binder. Perfect crab cakes. Make a note to get some salt cod. Cod fish cakes, oh god, for breakfast, with a fried egg on top. The instant mashed potatoes are the binder of record. Some chives, a small dollop of good mustard. Three crab cakes from a small can of premium crab meat and the leftover potatoes will make fine pancakes tomorrow. I added the left-over roasted vegetables and a small pot of lentils to the stew, blenderized the whole thing, added some cream and hot sauce; it's not particularly good but it is hot and hearty. Winter is a set of demands. Rereading myself, the stuff that Skip sent, I need to get the box from the museum vault, I've recovered more of the manuscript than I thought, several, actually, but the monster, Text Toward Building A House, I could probably reconstruct. Of the original 1500 single-spaced pages I have nearly a thousand, half is repetition, and half of the remainder is dross, still, there's a book there. I like the beginning and I like the end, the middle is just hammers and nails, try-pots and whales. If I get firewood ahead, a year ahead, I might take off next winter, except for setting shows, and just stay on the ridge, rereading myself and crossing things out. I need a grant, maybe I'll sell the Klee. It's a rough call, what you'd sell. I could imagine myself more comfortable, a thermostat and polar underwear, but I choose to be slightly uncomfortable, the lesser of evils. Fuck the coal-burning plants that make your life possible. Where do you think that bacon comes from? I have a life-long obsession with pork-chops, so I've always raised pigs or at least bought them from people that knew what they were doing, I don't want any separation between me and the world, I want my salad to be local. I'm green, I'm so completely green I glow, but I don't have any point to bear, I don't have a vested interest because I'll be dead, whatever you decide. I think sea level is rising and global warming is a fact, despite these really cold nights, damn it's cold, going out to pee. Read more...

Much Colder

10 below and windy, bad wind chill, warnings to stay inside, warms to 10 above then starts right back down. I make six carries through the woods, severe clear, brisk. With a face-mask, hat and sun glasses, I look the classic thief. At these temps every step squeals. Too dangerous, I go inside and drink chicken broth, reread Guy Davenport essays. Got up at three-thirty, stayed up, stoking the fire, couldn't get the house warm. 20 degrees below my design temperature, that peculiar algorithm that involves how much money you got, how much time you got, and how uncomfortable can you be for how long. I'm alright 10 to 15 above, below that and I don't get much done. Nice to see the half-moon. Roasted a sweet potato and carrots for dinner. Really need to get out sometime. Dirty socks, boring food, need supplies. Could easily last until Monday and ride in with B, but maybe tomorrow, quick run, 30 pound pack of groceries. Get through tonight, another 10 below, I'll think about it. Late afternoon, as warm as it was going to get, I shaved and took what I think of as the Vermont Winter Sponge Bath, not acceptable, but I hit the hot spots and didn't freeze. I've got my work that Skip sent spread across the island, I read myself through the day, weird, I don't read myself, usually, but I need to read this stuff, see if I can recover that book. Also, I like long sentences. It's embarrassing, but, truth be known, I'm a fan of Proust. And Stendal. Though I never roll on the floor, looking for a word, words are easy for me, rhythm occasions differently for different folk. What, it's too cold to think, don't trust anything I say, there was this moment, I was shuffling papers, I thought I understood what I was saying. Nothing could be further from the truth. I heard Son House one time, probably the defining moment of my life, that exploding guitar and his voice. Blues is the gospel. I listen to other points of view, they don't make much sense. But even Rory Block, is better, than nothing. Read more...

Later

I thought about what I thought I meant. Not sure it even approaches what is, words in a pattern, gibberish. I fall back on certain touch-stones, making sense, describing clearly, find the thread, an easy transition, then you're on your way. They'll be a large guy at the door, ignore him, wear the silly hat and act like you know what you're doing. Kick him in the groin. It's important to get the large guys down. Focus your attention. Small things are important too. I clip buds as a matter of course, I need paths, there's some carnage, what was the point, that some things die so that others might live? Making sense of myself is just a reward. It's in the act that I become myself. I'd like more control, but I don't have it, just another drone. Carrying wood is fine, another assigned task. I don't have a problem with work. I have a problem with drug tests, because I'm always doing drugs, one kind or another. What do they mean even asking? Below zero nothing matters, everything is still inside but outside is a gale, it pushes against the house. It doesn't mean anything, just a cold wind, slipping down from Canada. Wear a vest and pray for warmer weather. It seldom stays below zero for any period of time, this isn't the South Pole, after all, just Southern Ohio, cut me some slack, the continental USA, it shouldn't be possible I'd freeze to death. I'll just hole up in my sleeping bag, let this blow over. Really. The wind is awful, blows like it had something to say. I ignore it until a piece of my puzzle falls over. It could happen to any of us, what number you were missing, you might even make a guess. Wouldn't matter. If I hold the high ground, I control the battlefield. That only makes sense if you think about it a certain way. A kind of game. I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours. I'm so much older now, I don't want to play. The snow was so delicately balanced any move you made disturbed things, of course you moved, who would not, and the house of cards tumbled. Nothing is as it seems. A post, what seems. I have to go. I'm gone. Now I'm back. Very cold weather necessitates different patterns. I tend to keep a paragraph going, send at odd times, start another piece in the middle of the night. Today was full-frontal winter, right at zero when I got up, high temp just above 10, below zero tonight. Get the house somewhat warm, eat potatoes and eggs and toast, then suit up. The hollow is protected from the wind, a solid veil of sparkling ice crystals, footing is bad and I remind myself that a fall could be fatal. Split the last branch section in half and split one of the trunk sections into quarters. Exhausting, working in such cold, but so beautiful in the sparkling. The trunk section quarters are almost too heavy, but I get them to the staging area, I'll carry them in tomorrow, maybe bust another one and carry it out. Being very careful is draining. But looking down, as you must in these conditions, every footfall being critical, I become again a student of tracks. I make up stories about what they mean, and at this point, after decades, some of them might be accurate. I can see where a small rabbit was taken by a hawk, the tracks end. I can see where a yearling deer heard something, and stomped her foot, they way they do. I can see I should harvest a grouse, because they seem to be everywhere, remember to take a screen out of an upstairs window, so I can shoot the next one in the yard. Yard is an euphemism for the chaos of my surrounding. Grouse cooked until the meat falls off the bone, duly boned and added back to a thickened sauce, served on egg noodles. No sign of the fox, she's gone to ground; I imagine her with the two of this year's kits that survived, holed up, warm, in a den somewhere, slowing down their processes, going out for the occasional mouse. Sleeping most of the time. I damaged my right thumb, not badly, and I don't know how I did it. It had to have been right through my work-gloves, because I was wearing them all day, the glove in question isn't damaged, but I took off a good bit of skin somehow. Maintaining the wood stations is easy when you're splitting oak; kindling, starter sticks, are a by-product; I collect everything. You wouldn't believe the ritual. I have to touch so many things in the morning that I have a check-list, posted by the door, so I won't forget anything important. Memory is a monster. Mostly I choose to forget. Don't ask.
Read more...

Bleak, Windy

Made it into work this morning, turned right around and came home. Black ice projected after rains and falling temps. Snowing hard at times. 34 degrees when I left the house 31 by the time I got to town, 28 when I got home. Difficult drive, snow accumulating over ice on Mackletree. Crampons for the slope. Caught the fire, suited up and split some wood (so the house would seem warmer). Thought I was coming down with something this morning but I was just sore from too much work yesterday. Shoulders, backs of legs, and, oddly, toes and feet, which is, I realize is from extreme toe-flexing getting a grip on icy snow-steps climbing that wood out of the hollow yesterday. Got up to pee early this morning, stoked the fire, now I remember, so sore I couldn't get back to sleep. Rubbed some SOMBRA (gift from Lauren) on shoulders and legs. This stuff works, capsaicin in matrix, with other herbs, not greasy, fast. Slept like a warmed baby for a few more hours. Weather supposed to steady deteriorate, much colder, much snow. 0 degrees by Friday. After lunch (stew, better the second time) I suited up again and went with maul and wedge to the hollow. No way, the footing was treacherous. Ball-bearing hail. One rule about living alone in the woods and getting older is: don't do it if it doesn't feel right. Also, I'll probably have to stay home another day this week, because of the weather, and those big trunk logs will split nicely when frozen. I'll have to make better steps, which I'll do using a quarter-round piece of firewood, dropping it on end where I want a step. About 20 more trips, 3 more times, 2 more tanks of gas, 60 more trips minimum. My exercise. Best improve the path. Wind howling at times, as the front moves through, if it picks up any more I'll have to SEND LATER, so I can store this. B argues, coherently, that I should write in a file and send from there, and of course, I should, but these are letters, not forwarded copies; missives, not files, posts. It's interesting that it bothers me, because I make stuff up all the time, it should hardly be a problem in which program I write. I'd have to sit down with someone and make damn sure I had the sequence down pat. A level of separation, though not one I couldn't deal with. I'd still be writing to you. Wouldn't I? I sense unresolved issues. These are serious considerations for me, I live alone, I think a lot; there's lots of time for thinking, there's even time for not thinking. Those last ten trips yeasterday toiled scant fat. I knew where I was going, considered the balance of the rick, dipping dangerously low on the left (stage right) knew there was a bulbous piece, I split this stuff, and it exactly balanced out the pile. It's fine to feel slightly floatable at the end of a run. I've done a survey and very few people are ever actually happy. I manage happy most of the time, usually I'm better than that. I like where my life has left me. That grimace you thought you saw, was actually a grin, walking into the snow, blowing a gale, in my element, happier than I've ever been. Not that I need to suffer, but I enjoy being engaged. Allowing for heart and windage. I take breaks, I read. But the world you confront, that awful thing on the other side of the door, drives you to action, maybe you'd do something, probably not; but I'd done a survey, did I mention, and the yeses came out ahead. I know what you thought you meant, what I thought I meant, whatever. Fact is, we are so predictable. I leave B's glass right where it was, so we could invent fiction. What I might have said about what I thought I understood. And at just that moment, in my recollection, I'm drawn to a first-person narrative, I seem to be unavoidable, what he thought, there's a long string of gory details. Maybe he/she didn't mean that but there's a compost pile, we made it in the shape of a snake. We bury people there because the ground is soft. Another day, the next, today. When I got up to pee it was too cold to write, added some layers but I have to let the stove go out to clean the ash-box, scrape the soot from the air-space around the oven. Can't get the house warm, realize another problem with the floor insulation, the high winds last night. Cut all the wood I've brought up from the hollow, split some, make some ricks in the house, where, I had forgotten, the frozen wood creates cold currents, repair the insulation. Much snow expected, now saying ten below before warming to almost freezing by Saturday. I call the Deputy and tell her I'm in pure survival mode, would be useless at the museum, worrying about my house. Have to get to town sometime, but I've enough supplies yet. Added more vegetables to the stew, it would have to be called a soup now, and I eat it right out the heated pan, warming my hands, reading at the island, close to the stove. Before I was robbed the first time, and started posting so as not to lose, Skip Fox was a repository for my of my work than I remembered. My pile of his work topples. But I had sent him quite a bit and he just sent it back to me, several presumed lost items came to light. I need to read through this stuff, perfect timing. There's a part of the "Mississippi Book" that I had forgotten, also things that became parts of "On Three". With this addition to the avalanche, in various caches, there are 4200 pages of manuscript. I'm both proud and insecure. Sure not much of an editor. Snowing harder. I think we're looking at a winter event. My daytime drink of choice recently is chicken broth. I got a buy at Big Lots on the cartons, ten for ten dollars, and I bought ten. Low Fat, Salt Free, I salt and pepper it, and it's good, when the temps plunge. Your Jewish Grandmother was right, correct, whatever. I walk in the woods a bit, wearing a facemask, the wind is brutal, the graves are white depressions at the graveyard. Everything stands out in relief. That's the thing about winter. The contrast. The outline is always in front of you, stick-trees and snow, make no attempt at meaning. It's merely paint on a surface.
Read more...

All Illimsy

A day that set the bar very high, then, foolishly, raised the damn thing. Woke up to pee just before dawn, a vague glow in the east, drank some juice, went back to bed for an hour, planning the course. I need to do everything so I need to prioritize. First is breakfast, I need some calories to burn. On a large and thick piece of toast, potato patty on top, over-easy egg on top, salsa. I eat this with a knife and fork. Fortified. I need to clear the skids in the woodshed, cut all the doubles and split them, top up the kindling bucket, split starter sticks. Supposed to get very cold and snow all the time so I need to get some of the wood out of the hollow. I go down with maul and bust five of the main branch sections (12 inches diameter), carry the maul and wedge out, kicking out toe-holds in the ice and snow. Must go to town, need booze and tobacco, and must get back in time to make a stew or something, a comfort food, easily heated, so I'll eat enough. I sometimes have to remember to eat enough. I get so involved I forget. Go to town, run the necessary errands, considering the weight-to-trip ration that rules my winter. What I can carry up the hill. Back in record time, not quite dead, I make ten trips carrying wood, 116 steps, the slog out of the hollow was only 68 but nearly vertical. I'm feeling it in my body, the work, the way the muscles flex. Still need to clean-up and build a stew. While I heat water for a bath, I cook some potatoes, caramelize some onions, brown a cubed London Broil quickly in peanut oil, cook some of those silly carrots, mini-peeled things, I would never use them but they were cheap, with the last of the chickpeas and that chorizo juice. What I'm thinking, is that the beans will become the thickener. This proves difficult. Chickpeas are resistant to heat and require mashing. They should give you a rule book at the beginning, it would make life so much easier. I ended up with a great stew. Maybe it's the bottom line, what you end up with. I'm way too tired and sore to speculate; but I had goals, and had reached them. I felt good about myself. Then that fucking demon, inside yourself, manifests itself. Hey, I'm just along for the ride, but I notice there is a difference, where you step now, between here and there. Maybe it means nothing. Still, I noticed a difference. What you thought you heard was different from what you needed to hear. Happens to me all the time: what I think I hear. Constant adjustments. A balancing act where you spin a lot of plates. Nothing really happens. But it looks like something is happening, and that's Good Enough. Confuse the audience, look in your pockets for a record, there should be something somewhere that would tie you to a place, a ticket-stub, something. I don't care about your personal life, whatever you do, simply surviving is challenge enough. Winter is such a challenge. Today was balls to the wall, but I got through it, actually accomplished more than I thought I could, it's good, occasionally, to exceed your demands. That sense of control. I think I understand.

Tom

Three crows, they
bandy a bit, then
quiet.
Read more...

The Sound

It hardly does credit to say I hear it. The river is a fact of life. When a drainage is channelized, it becomes an empoundment, and loses it's voice. This is always the case. Not so much that things don't speak, but that we don't hear the very clear language being spoken. What we've lost is the ability to hear. I said to B that the world is always out there, always on the tip of your tongue. Open the door. Fling open the windows. It's that close. Today, I would have written off the world, read for ten hours and called it quits. There's a pile of books. I need to read. But the minute B comes over and says we need to work on firewood, I understand. He's concerned I'm not set for the winter and knows this tree makes my nut. He says something to that effect. Affect. Trees are alive, they experience the cycles. I never knew a fox that wasn't. And he's right, correct, I need this tree. And being in the woods is so perfect. The place to be. "Nothing could be finer than be with..." In the morning. My course is set. Drizzle, fog. I mark cuts with the hatchet, and clean the ice off. Our rule for this kind of work is to use one tank of gas. Anyone else would call the conditions miserable but we always enjoy any time in the woods. Whatever gets you out there, whatever the conditions. Boots wet, gloves wet, over-suit wet. Everything bucked to 30 inches, 6 or 7 pieces from a large branch (larger than the last tree) will need splitting in half, cut the crotch out, then three length from the main trunk, which will need to be quartered and still weigh 30 plus pounds. Three operations here. A goodly session splitting, B said to bring my lunch (it will take a while) and to do everything to save my shoulders. Metal maul to metal wedge, full swings. Need to pace yourself. Stage two is carrying the splits up out of the hollow, ricking them at the depot. Third is the glory job, piece by piece, back to the woodshed; knowing every step, falling into a rhythm. It's probably one of those things that you couldn't understand, or wouldn't understand why someone else would choose to. It's the closest I approach to religion, a mildly euphoric state. This cutting will produce 26 or 28 carries. A repetitive motion thing, the mind is freed. The fact that it is necessary is important. You need to be in danger of freezing to death, an obvious exaggeration, but who's keeping score, and besides, I almost mean it. I'm often uncomfortable, trying to fit in. It's Freudian, certainly, never having had a thermostat. It's probably important that the wood is critical, not just some rocks you were moving from one place to another. A mindful rather than a mindless activity. I have the thought that I'm telling you too much, then realize I'm telling you almost nothing. There's another sound, I've only heard it twice, my hearing is acute, it's the sound the Sioto makes, running in spate, from rains up north that we didn't get. The Ohio is low and the Scioto is high and there's a sound where they meet, a slurping thing. Back-waters are always interesting. I'm on our side, just want to make that clear. Power fails, you read by candlelight, do what you have to. Not a big deal. I'll need to get out tomorrow. I need some things. A flexible agenda emerges. What I think I need to do. What I think I hear. Are you really there? Read more...

Several Things

The river, the show, being in the woods. Hold onto those thoughts. I'm cooking chorizo and it's driving me crazy. Just going to make a little stew I first ate at a bar in Provincetown. Chick peas are too perfect. There should be a law. Brandy asked me about the sound the river made. I thought about that all day. B came over and said we might as well cut the tree. There's snow on the ground, it's raining, the fog makes it difficult to see, but he's correct, we need to get outside and deal with the world. The sound the river makes is subtle, mostly a gentle lapping. When a tug goes by, pushing a load of barges, I can hear the bow wake. Trains of coal, across the line, in Kentucky, their lonesome cry. I can't describe this, precisely, what it was like; I'd suited up, I had the proper tools, knew what I was getting into, still it was a revelation. Hours later I'm digging thorns from my fingertips. I said to B, there is no thing better than being in the real world. Fuck the wet cuffs, the damaged sleeves, your imagined injuries. If you don't experience the world you experience nothing. I lose perspective. Carving a path is a kind of surgery. Green briar is the enemy; I just want to get back to the house without arterial damage. When I said "listen" it was just a memnonic device, it didn't mean anything. My chest is clear, whatever nipplage. Put me anywhere in the woods and give me a hatchet. I'd build something, how could you not? It's an oyster. Primitive, but real. Pass the hot sauce. The cookstove is clicking. Burning wood makes sense. Yes, I say, yes.
Read more...

Cold

It's cold. Everything is frozen. A dead Vireo, that didn't make it south, got trapped between the door and the screen. I tried to use a tennis racket to free it but the technique didn't work. Fuck a small bird, I have to survive, but I feel bad, that I couldn't be everything to everybody. I should have saved the bird. My feet were cold, I wasn't wearing enough clothes, the tennis racket was the wrong implement, a ladle would have been better, a scooper, rather than a swatter. So the bird dies, freezes solid, and I feel bad. Unexpected consequences. Odd that I can deal with almost anything in the field, amputations, bodies, clogged toilets, but this dead bird bothers me. First off, it has a yellow collar below a black band and it's the first color I've seen all day, and secondly it's so soft. My clubbed fingers hardly do it justice, but it's like the outside of my mother's breast when I was nursing. I remember the rain on the roof, stroking something softer than dawn. I don't know what the Army Corp thinks they've done, where Mackletree flows into Roosevelt Lake, but they're wrong. I know this drainage and they've made several mistakes, the first is thinking they can control what happens. Bless them and their backhoes but they don't stand a chance. What water will do, it will do, you can watch it or run, but you can't interfere. Not much, you can do some things, plant willows, limit access, post notices that you protect this place with a gun, but the creek will do what it will. Control is a relative issue. Protection is more concrete. What would you do? If I were you, I might put sugar in their gas tanks, slash their tires, but I'm a fiction, I really can't do anything, my hands are tied. An imagined janitor, at an imagined museum, in an imagined town in southern Ohio, I don't see where I have a lot of leverage, the fulcrum is either missing or masquerading as something else, a knoll, a glacial deposit, an expensive watch, from which I either time or watch whatever is going on. The acronymic agency disavowes your existence. You less than exist, you're not even a shadow. All the photos are doctored, nothing is what it seems, what you remember is a carefully constructed fiction. That Grateful Dead song in the background, sampled, a fake, really, if truth be known. The next week's weather looks brutal, I'd better lay in supplies. Carry in a full pack tonight and maybe make an extra run into town tomorrow, lay in food and drink for two weeks. Got two of B's chains sharpened for the saw. Cut up Big Bertha this weekend and the rest of my winter is set. I need to clear another path, will need to carry this wood out in two stages. I have a flat place cleared, with a couple of log stringers on the ground, to keep firewood out of the melt, where we dropped the last tree, and I think I'll use that as a staging area, carry splits up and rick them there. The tree is in a deep hollow, just maybe 200 feet from the staging area, but extremely vertical, 30 degrees at least. I love carrying wood, it's such an intimate connection with the natural world; I'd rather make getting the wood out of the hollow a separate task, something I had to do, like earning a living, so that I could enjoy actually bringing the wood home. There is a mind state you can go to, easily, when the chore is exactly repetitive. When I carry the wood out of the hollow, I'll have created stair-steps, as long as you start on the right foot, that allow decent stability climbing up the slope, but my mind will drift. I try and create a safe space for that to happen. I know I'm prone to fall, I make allowances, I fill my pockets with bookmarks and rocks. Everyone's solution is different. I trust I'll find a way. Did I mention that the motel room in Johnson City was the worst I've ever had? Nothing worked but the bed, I slept the sleep of the dead. There is nothing that tires you as much as family. Me, I should say, barely endured the pointless babbling. I often took my dinner alone. Let that be on your tombstone. "He Often Ate Alone." I know him, I speak with some abandon, he is my friend. Read more...

Rule Book

You'd have thought there was something easier, to say something simple, a specific thing, but there's not, I've looked back over the attempts. All of them clip a rail, trip a hurdle, do something wrong. And they're asking you for advice. First I'd prepare some answers, then I'd disappear. Really, I don't want anything to do with it, whatever it is. Roosevelt Lake is freezing up, when I get back to the ridge, nothing is changed, still several inches of crusted snow. My Dad was 89 yesterday and I forgot to call him, I'm barely accountable. I split a butt log, in the glooming, one of those twisted awful things that require wedges and too much effort, but it was there, as Hillary said, and needed splitting. Made a crude dinner of chick peas and chorizo, with a fried egg, so I'd have a yolk as sauce, simple pleasures. I wear a bath robe and fingerless gloves. I'll survive, not even that bad, will probably almost enjoy barely scraping by. I consider my mandate. Merely write and sort out the bodies later. What I am is a construct, just along for the ride, what I most enjoy about winter is I don't have to listen to the bugs. There's usually a sound, the wind, or ice cracking, something to serve as an anchor. Winter is thoughtless, I'm already thinking about spring. Brandy asked about the sound of the river. You can't buy absolution. The sound the river makes is mostly a smell. There are sounds, the lap of small waves when a tow of barges pass, a train in Kentucky, that slight sucking sound a drain makes; but mostly it is a smell. Not quite bad, not quite evil, but a lingering oily thing that clings to the back of the tongue. The Ohio, at Portsmouth, is a sewer, digesting the shit of Pittsburg and everything upstream. I was down this morning, where the Scioto entered, and a whole house drifted by, it was completely silent. Nothing is what it seems.
Read more...

Winter Reading

A new book about the far north. Every winter for 30 years I've read about people who froze to death, trying to figure out how not to. One thing about this weather is that it's hard to actually get to my house. I can't imagine a crook deeming it worthwhile. Right now it's rain changing to a kind of frozen ball-bearing that makes it hard to walk. I could hit you with a stick and you'd fall over, what's the percentage in that? I don't understand people, I try, but I just don't get it. Why would you rob a hermit? The best you'd likely get is some stinky frozen socks, a flashlight with dead batteries, a freezer-burned pork roast. B was over for a quick drink, we made plans to cook some elk tomorrow, that's as far as I can plan, dinner the next day. If all goes well. I assume it will, look forward to whatever. A life based on assumptions, I have a plan, if I don't get sick, don't break a bone, I can do this; but when the cold fog settles and you are so completely an isolate, how do you survive? We can argue terms but they mean nothing. I build a fire, nothing in the scheme of things, but a pocket of warmth, something to lean against. Put on some long-underwear and go to bed, supposed to be above freezing tomorrow, I can deal with this, just another cold night. Frozen rain taps a rhythm on the metal roof, hard not to shuffle. Where I had imagined a burn in the new rug was pretty much exactly where it occurred. We're so predictable. If you really need to be a drunk, don't smoke. My time frames are changing, when it gets really cold I like to get up and rekindle the fire at maybe 2, stay up and read for an hour or two, maybe have another drink, maybe toke, surely roll a smoke. No time constraints. Think about it. B comes over with a back-pack of hot potatoes and a foil wrapped onion that isn't completely done. Pop the onion in the Tandoori oven and the elk top sirloin isn't what we expected. B cubes it, cutting out the connective tissue, browns it quickly in olive oil, I sprinkle on a spice mix, we both forget I'd made slaw. The year is young but this was the best meal so far. B eats a second potato, soaking pan juices, I lick my plate. B said, when he was leaving, to kick his fire, that we should do this more often. It's an interesting bond, I'm not sure I understand completely, how close, how understanding we can allow ourselves to be. Frankly, I don't like the world, most conventions suck, and you're left with yourself. I could paint it pink, but there it is. Pink is the new black. Pretty sure I have my finger on the pulse. You can pay attention without paying attention, I trust you can act. Describing something that didn't happen might be slightly more difficult. B said, and I agree, that time on the ridge was special. Because there is no control I can go from one extreme to the other. You follow me, amazing. Three inches of snow quiets everything. Light snow all day. Beautiful. Split some wood. Read Roy Blount Jr, "Alphabet Juice", excellent book. I use a lovely woven Turkish bookmark, from Jana, for where I am, and a dozen pieces of paper to mark passages and quotes I want to reread. Brought home a catalog of museum books and can't help but notice the tendency toward catchy two word titles, semi-colon, boring sub-title. A sampling: Questioning Assumptions, Paying Attention, Old Collections, Bare Essentials, Covering Assets, Celebrating Pluralism, Sacred Claims, Capturing Vision. Skip Fox's lists of titles in any of his recent writing is much more amusing, but it does get me thinking about titles and naming. Sometimes, when I'm walking in the woods, when I know what a certain thing is, I'll touch it and say the name out loud. Partly, this is an effort to not get shot (B sings, or calls imaginary dogs) but partly because I love the sound of Latin. I know a lot of mushrooms and in the fall sound like a scribe. Two years of Latin was required at Janitor College, we translated "The Custodial Tomes" by Janitus; pretty boring stuff, but some of the specific cleaning techniques are still applicable. I keep discovering things that were stolen (I was going to say "I keep finding things that are missing" but that had a glaring internal flaw, on close examination didn't make any sense), wondered at the extra space in the studio/junk-room, and realized all the extension cords were gone, including the #12 gauge, 50 foot monster that someone must have really wanted because it weighed a ton. Got it to run a compressor for a jack-hammer when Dennis and I were carving a foundation in solid sandstone in Western Colorado. We talked then about a house we might build, a single-point cantilever off the edge of a canyon wall. I had the perfect piece of real estate, with a bench below the rim, maybe 9, 10 feet down, we could build a staircase down to the patio. We were both so good at visualizing what we were talking about, that we would make corrections in each other's visualizations. I've always had this bond with certain individuals, and it's only lately that I learned it isn't common. In theater it's essential, or there is no show. No Show is not acceptable, except for major Acts Of God, and even then there isn't a lot of slack. Total destruction probably means No Show but partial destruction is just a challenge. A wing and a favor. The Bound becomes an incredibly important thing. Understanding what someone else is saying. Keep coming back to that, the holy mantra of my hybrid fantasy. That you read me. The act involves both the writing and the reading. The writing is nothing, a dying swan, it's only the reading that makes it alive. If something strikes a chord, you rise, like a trout to the fly, and are engaged.
Read more...

More Rain

The good news is you couldn't start a fire in the woods with a can of gasoline. Point of saturation. The driveway is running twin creeks in the ruts and the leaves are turning black. Much colder by the end of the week, so things will be a mess. Feeling vulnerable I call the gun-totting poet, McCord, and he recommends a .38, shoot at ten feet, center of mass. I can buy and keep a pistol at the house, carry it anywhere on my property. Sounds like good advice, need to nip this paranoia thing in the bud, somebody coming at me with a knife, as has happened several times recently on the creek, I'd have no problem shooting them. Southern Ohio, with meth labs everywhere, is become the wild west. Maybe all of rural America has. What we had imagined as our margin of safety has disappeared. I can survive in adverse circumstances, but not if people steal my food; I have to draw a line, I mean really, they took my winter gloves, went through my drawers, took socks and a coat, if they were on food-stamps they make more than I do, but they steal from me. It's not right. Evil fuckers relegated to the lower levels of hell. Satan encased in a block of ice. Dante is so clear, once you crack his language, like Emily is; I'm reading Wallace Stevens now, as poetry of choice, because I love his language, and I don't have anything new from Steven or Skip or B. I was thinking about poetry today, the way it condenses experience to a line, a phrase, even just a word, how magical that was, that it could operate within such constraints; understanding that desire, the mandate, and choosing to let the lines wrap, whatever my computer wanted to do, because I wanted to tell a story, without leaving out the juicy parts. Even Olson said, didn't he, "opening OUT", which I took to mean, also, probably, form. The Wrack Show engages form. I like the way it's addressed. Make what you will. I walked a group through today, they were amazed: it's quite the show, what it draws from, what it is. Rain, on the metal roof, establishes several patterns, an interval thing that always makes me think of Bach. A Partita. If you listen closely there's a sub-text, you don't even have to hear it to enjoy the music, he's that good, but it's always there, something underneath. Like your last string quartets, when you could no longer hear. What you have to do is listen closely, feel the music in your bones, then you can dance. I only assume a high ground because I chose to live on a ridge. Everything flows downhill, it's simple science. Ridge-tops never flood. Keep some beans and rice around, you probably won't starve. I leave to rest up to you. Stretch a bit before you carry. Be careful. Same advice you'd give me, what goes around. I know, I know, the wings and arrows, they fling, a shit-storm, wear a hat, cover your back, do what you need to do. Cover Your Ass is the operative phrase, CYA, in the acronymic wave of the future, the way this new world is constellated, shoot anyone that is a threat. I have to think about this, I'm not a violent guy. I don't really want to carry a gun, but confronted thus, they are dead meat. I imagine a cartoon scenario where I'm just trying to get home and something gets in my way, needless to say I bulldoze it out of the way, whatever it is. I'm focused here, where ever this is. Like a black-mouth cur on a boar. That may be too specific, but you get my drift, what I thought I meant. I hang the new Outhouse Calendar, finally, on the 6th of January, early for me, I often don't hang a new calendar until April or sometimes May. I don't care what day it is. My only interest in month is length of day. There'd be a blues riff here, you're sense of time and my propriety. Listen to the double bass, he has something to say. Transposing Bach. Who could imagine? Love you, and your extended.
Read more...

Sacrifice

Whatever you might give up, for whatever rewards you might reap. I live a Spartan life, don't even think of it as a matter of choice, just the way I live, falling off a log. My muse is a scrawny fox with a litter of pups, we eye each other with distrust. One of her kits takes food from my hand and she grabs it by the neck, shakes it a time or two, never trust a white man offering candy. I agree with her caution, make a note to call my daughters. Beware strangers in airports. Everyone looking for a fix. Grinding their sex against you in subways. Nod, and step out of the way. The best defense is apparent distraction. Gay State Troopers are the worst, but I always pretend I'm talking to their superiors, waving my arms and dancing in place. No one fucks with a crazy person. Gains me some space, and given a head-start, I will not be caught. I know these woods and the dark, will not be caught, become a shadow, then a pile of leaves and history. Outside most of the day, working on firewood. Start a lot of fires this time a year, two a day, I fill the stations. Variety is important too. I can control the oven heat in the cookstove pretty well but I need a variety of woods and oak splits in every size. I'm highly selective of my kindling. Bone dry poplar strips are very good. They save newspaper for me at the museum, Bev does. Failure to start a fire is not allowed. I've a beauty going now, knots and burls, oven temp above 600 degrees, I need to start thinking about Tandoori again, it's that time of the year. Stuck a goodly splinter right through my glove, right hand, little finger, on top, just above the nail. May lose the nail. Took out a little chunk of flesh, and tore a groove to the cuticle. Thought I'd never get it to stop bleeding, finally got it plugged with Liquid Skin. Satisfied about the wood situation, I drive the truck to the bottom of the hill, projected snow after midnight, and we take down the Abstract Show tomorrow, so I really need to get in to work. Walking back up, I did my aging Sherpa imitation, pointing out landforms to imaginary children with my crooked cane. They giggled. Before I got to the top I was doing interviews, imaginary questions, I'd have a few seconds to prepare a response. It was interesting, what I said, I sounded mad. Not crazy, just hot because of some violation, and I seemed coherent. I'd question if there was any content. You can't be too careful. I was filthy, washed my hair, shaved, took a bath; hot water, cold sponge, really, I just don't want to stink to myself. I live too closely. We've established that. Fuck whatever convention. Thinking about Herbert sketching something on an off-cut of upson board. These sketches were works of art, but we didn't know that then, none of them survive. Part of the sacrifice is that you have to let go. Part of the package is you understand. Consider "Billy Budd" or whatever makes you feel guilty. I wouldn't presume to know. I have an elaborate ritual I rely on. It works for me. I get up in the morning. I don't think about things until I talk with you, much later that same day, whenever. At some point, it's more important that you actually say what you mean. That's what I'm trying to do, get to the heart of the matter, the rest of this shit, I couldn't care less about convention.
Read more...

Warm, Fog

Forties before dawn, thunder showers, lightening, rain hard at times. Late light because of the overcast and everything is gray. Dense fog early, warm air, moisture and frozen ground. A lovely day. Split some wood, froe out some kindling; tomorrow need to spend several hours working up the week's wood tomorrow, another day in paradise. B over for an afternoon coffee and we make plans to cook together one night this coming week. Interesting by-product of the trip to Florida, making some assumptions, is that because I use very soft water (rain) most of the time, treated water is terrible on my hands. Undergoing a complete change-over of skin, using so much lotion I can't grip anything. Burning very dry oak, I need to remember to use a glove to load the stove, splinter control is becoming an issue. My body is a chronicle of lapses, sloughing skin, minor punctures, hammered nails, but I never was pretty, so in the great scheme of things, as long as I don't break any bones, I should be ok. Picked up a couple of sacrificial sweat shirts at the Goodwill. I never wash these, wear them once or twice or even three times, cutting a new path, and they're shredded. They cost a buck and save better garments the wear and tear. Wore a red, hooded, Riding Hood thing out to the graveyard this afternoon, looked like the village idiot, but, then, I usually don't give a shit about what I look like and today was no exception. I wanted to count graves and it was a perfect day for that. Fall leaves collected in slight depressions turn black in early winter rains. I count 27 but that number doesn't mean much. I really don't know what I'm seeing, some of them are probably just cracks in the hard-pan, like the pot-holes on the driveway. There are 17 marked with either head-stones or foot-stones or both, all of them face east. Sitting there, foam block on a stump, I want to dig one of them up, to see how deep they're buried, to study the confirmation, but I won't, but I think about it. I have trouble living with me, no wonder I've made a hash of relationships. Bought the smallest flank steak I could find at Kroger, pounded it out even more, rolled it around Linda's Green Tomato Chutney, tied it in a tube. Cooked in a very hot oven for less than ten minutes, brushed with a butter-lime juice-maple syrup. Green beans cooked with new potatoes and a couple of slices of B's home-cured bacon. I would have cried but there was no one to see me all warm and fuzzy, and I was way too intent on just eating. Black and gray, no white, no color, the landscape is defined, late February it might bore me, probably not, but right now it's like a charcoal sketch I live within. Almost unbearably beautiful. Anything I do is small price to pay. When I was splitting wood a single crow settled in the dead tree just beyond the outhouse. I hate critics, and he seemed to be making comments about what I was apparently doing, and I attempted to make him take flight, but he wouldn't leave. Nature can be a pain in the ass. Finally, I go inside, get my pouch of tobacco and a beer, roll a smoke, go back outside and engage in a serious staring match with a bird. When he squawks, I squawk, not to be outdone, I introduce a few new notes, he responds. I have to think about what constitutes communication, I'm pretty sure I'm talking with a bird, maybe just at a kinder-garden level, but talking nonetheless. I communicate with a fox, I have an intricate relationship with a doe and two fawns who live between me and the driveway, where they are perfectly safe, but our relationship is shaky, they don't completely trust me, and who could blame them, I don't trust me. Not completely. I have a history of shooting myself in the foot. Metaphorically, you know what I mean. We all engage in this. The usual bullshit. Very little is what it seems.
Read more...

What Floats

I've got an internal alarm clock, when my breathe freezes, I wake up and start a fire. It's a crude system, but it keeps me alive. I've compared my system against others and I don't see much advantage, being successful or not, earning money, wearing fancy clothes. I prefer splitting wood to almost any other chore. It's satisfying. Involves various muscle groups. Listen, I'm going somewhere with this. When I'm physically sore, down in my back and complaining in places, I'm in my body and aware, otherwise there is a tendency to merely float. Just getting by is not an option. B said something, the other night, about living in place. It struck a chord. How we live is a product of what we think. He, for instance, has cleared a path that goes deep into the woods. From somewhere to somewhere, from nowhere to nowhere. It's a trail, it leads. I'll walk it with him, but I already know where it goes. There are places you stop, to look around, there are places you forge ahead; knowing him, I'll wear gloves and carry clippers, one person's path is another's tribulation. Nothing and everything has prepared me to live this way. Chop wood and carry water. What matters is in the moment. Honestly, I wouldn't want anyone else to appreciate where I am, standing here, blessed by this ridge, at this point in time, Miles Davis blowing a forlorn horn. It's a rough row to hoe. Consider your options. You might well chose an easier path. I wouldn't blame you. Who would live this way? Quiet afternoon at the museum, I spent all four hours reading/looking at a huge book "Art Of The Twentieth Century", a year by year account, lots of text, many pictures, made it all the way to 1940. There's a painting by Giorgio De Chirico, "Premonitory Portrait of Guillaume Apollinare" that looks a lot like a young Marlon Brando. There needs to be a writing table, a stand-up table, in the museum library. I'll have to bring the book home, I didn't take any notes, but I did mark (an undetectable pencil point mark, page numbers on an index card) certain passages. I looked at Balthus for a long time, don't really see why Guy Davenport was so strong on him. A great many Artist Statements, always interesting to read what someone thought they were doing. The cute, young receptionist today, Krista (Christa?), and I didn't flirt with her at all, so immersed in recent art history, but I was forced to look down her front when she was packing up to leave, in a situation where she should have squatted, ladylike, but bent over, so she'd know I noticed. Perky perky perky perky. She was working on chemistry problems all day. Perky. I did the docent thing a couple of times. Walking young couples with kids through the Wrack Show. People like it. Mostly they've never seen anything like it. I added a few balls I picked up today, one, a foam thing, while an older couple were wandering around, they asked me what this was, and I told them it was just what they saw. That got their attention and we chatted for twenty minutes. They're going to bring back their friends. In fact, everyone said that, that they were coming back, with friends. When the show is over I'd really like to reinstall part of it in the artifact exhibit, the Rock and Bone Show (which I love, don't get me started on rocks and bones) might benefit from something organic. What I always point out to people, the Adena, the Hopewell, were organic cultures, most of what they used for everything rots, eventually, and we're left with the rocks and the bones. Lashing had to be early, it's an obvious attachment, rawhide, then something braided, pretty soon you're back-splicing hemp so it will freely slide through a block. This is a talent, I got a merit badge, when I thought I wanted to be an eagle scout, for knots. I could tie anything anywhere, I've forgotten most of them, but I can still amaze my friends. I keep some hemp around, in case I want to show off. Knots I've known, a pattern of blood spatters against the wall, on whatever you base your view of the world, take it far enough, to the edge, look over. It's a fucking cartoon, you're Wily Coyote, strapped to a device set to explode. Consider your options, fire up or fall. Maybe you think you're different, maybe you are, I'm not in any position to judge, I just want enough dry wood to get through the winter. I swear, my needs are simple. (Whatever you imagined. who you thought I might become.) Listen. It's black and white, I can see how you might be confused. I am. Then the wind blows through the remaining leaves. Perfect. One of those breaks, where everything is silent for just a couple of seconds, that's where I want to be, completely silent, a ghost. You and me.
Read more...

Tech Support

Between input from the guy at Radio Shack and D, I buy and install a new internal modem, then call AOL and I'm back online. I'll install the new printer Sunday as I'm the only available body to be staff at the museum on Saturday. Finally cull my mail, make a list of people I need to respond to, check some sites. Just a couple of days and I'm back-logged. Fixed an Elk Casserole so there'd be something to eat. Life in the slow lane. Could drive in tonight so I bought a few supplies, drinking water, juice, half-and-half for the coffee. The heavy things. I can carry dinner, seldom more than a pound, but I balk at carrying water uphill. It's a specific gravity thing. I explained to a three generation of women group, grandmother, mother and daughter, that the show was mostly about specific gravity, what floats, and they seemed to understand me. I must seem strange, coming out of the woodwork the way I do, but I'm often coherent and that seems to count for something. I was so popular at the pub, when I went over to eat lunch and get lunch to-go for D and Bev (at the desk); you'd have thought I was important, a mover or shaker, the way they treated me. The owner and two employees, catering to my every desire. Mostly I want to disappear. There's conflict. I want to be engaged but I want to be alone. The last morning I was in Jax, I fixed my breakfast, a couple of fried eggs, and there was no place to sit, too many people in the kitchen, and I took my plate out to the formal dining room, alone, and, of course, they all had to make something out of THAT. I just wanted to eat and get on the road, I meant nothing. Construed differently. Allowed now to reread myself, I discover B is the anchor. But of course, why else would I be here? Serious conversation is everything, everything revealed in the moment, what we think we are. Listen, last night, I heard a bird I didn't recognize, it was late, I was in bed, the birds should be asleep. I slipped downstairs and went outside, to listen closely, sure enough, not something I had heard before. Maybe an owl, maybe a dying crow. I don't know. It was gruff and then it stopped, choking on itself. An old bird dying, that's what it sounded like. But how would I know what that sounded like? Why would you trust me at all? I lie, I bury various crimes in a compost pile, I certainly am not to be trusted, nothing is as it appears. I hurried through this, I wanted to connect with you, now that I could, everything else is dross. I trust that you're there. Writing is nothing without a reader. Without you I'm nothing. The various flowers, the swamp smell, the salt intrusion: everything is a red-herring. What you think you hear. Hey, listen more closely. What you thought you heard.
Read more...

Later

I'm still pissed, but I wanted to get rid of some stuff and maybe this is a lesson. Don't be attached to anything. Consider the positive side, what you've gotten rid of, all that chaff. From no creature comforts to everything. I pale. Maybe so. Nothing matters. I'm not thinking I'm merely responding, consider the situation. What would you do? Suddenly there is running water. Do you wash your hair? Consider the situation. You could be anywhere, but you are here. Does that mean something? We're all dying, from the moment we're born. A simple Bell Curve, a certainty. What did I think, a free-standing hypotheses, a confederacy of isolates? I'd rather die with my hair clean. It's a personal choice, a last gesture. Maybe I'd shave. Nothing of any consequence is gone. I can replace a hammer, yet I feel violated. Why would anyone rob me? I have almost nothing. What little I hold is almost nothing, what you imagine I might mean. The best case. What I thought I meant. Anything else is heresy. What I thought was meant. You know what I mean. I rest my case. The wind picks up. When I left Jax there was some rain, the last squall from a front blowing through. Interstate 95 was a mess so I slipped over onto 17 north of Yulee, stopped at "Skippers", a fish camp, because the rain was coming down so hard I didn't want to drive. It's early for lunch but the staff, Sam and Connie, agree to fry me some oysters and make a Po-Boy with a sauce to die for. Interludes are overlooks, where you stop for the view. I make a kind of sense from road-signs, stop and make a note. In some states rocks are falling, in others they are fallen, I don't understand the difference between roadways and roads. Signs confuse me. I remember to stay to the left in Asheville. Memory serves. Then the highways are empty, a gap in the gap, no one coming or going; I pull over, at the peak, and there is nothing but the view: some cows and a few scattered crows. You can see forever. I'm pretty sure I'm looking at several states. I love my family but I can't wait to be alone. Doesn't mean I'm not a nice person, just means I cherish my solitude. At a Scenic Overlook, just where Virginia becomes Tennessee, I have a minor epiphany, something about open spaces. The leaves are swirling, dust-devils, what is it my father calls ducks, dy-dippers, I wonder what that means. Nothing but blue skies. There's a moment, at the end, the last night with my girls, they're out on the dock, feeding bread to fish, leaning against each other, and my Mom asks how I could have raised such children. I'm at a loss, she is, after all, my teacher. I strike a deal with myself: be nothing if not clear. Underneath the wind there is a current. Hail, sleet, something. Listen. Pellets strike the metal roof. There's a rhythm to it. Something that can't be denied. Despite the congregations of egrets and the salty smell I was missing myself. Something was wrong. Not just the fact that people were dying, but that they were my people. Listen. I make a note to myself. Post it. Listen. The natural world is cruel. A fine and final place. Consider the slings and arrows. Darts, quarks, the various by-ways, what you are is in the moment. Welcome back to the ridge, the wind is blowing a gale, what do you do?

Tom

A bowl of noodles,
nothing much,
go to sleep.


Next night. My AOL is screwed up and I want to copy this before I reboot it. Afraid I'd lose this. Have to hook up the new printer. A perfect task for tomorrow, and firewood, naturally, get out and about. So stuffy at my parents. Both on blood thinners so keep the house at a shocking 80 degrees. Then cooled to 68 in summer. Go figure. Be good to spend several hours outside in the cold. I did most of the cooking in Jax, including ribs for 15. The girls demanded southern style butter beans at almost every meal; Samara, gone vegetarian, pretended to not notice the fat-back in the beans. At every meal part of the discussion was about the next meal. Cooked a whole loin, rubbed and grilled; my Sis started a ham cooking, Mom's method, about which I know nothing, slits and cloves and something with a can of coke. I deal with home-cured hams, always slices, soaked in milk. Reminds me, and I make a note, to cure the boar ham currently in the freezer beneath the print shop. Forced Mom to make her wonderful ham salad, sitting down, with the little food processor. Dad still cooks breakfast, then he's done for the day. They both must sleep 18-20 hours a day. Dad turns 89 next week, Mom says she's 84 but the math doesn't work. Probably repeating myself, with no printer and can't go online to reread myself. The void. The usual questions about my preferred life-style. I am a mystery to my family. They love me, respect my intelligence, but don't understand completely why I live like I do. Close, maybe, in many ways, both parents raised in houses with wood cookstoves, no running water. But choosing to live that way, they don't get, they both left as soon as possible. How we are viewed by others. My nieces and nephews view me with a certain awe, I inspire disbelief. But I truly can't live without the natural world just outside my door. The horrible driveway, my cemetery, the fox, the crows, firewood, these things keep me grounded. And solitude, I require so much solitude. It's very difficult for me to be around people all the time, the unspoken builds up and I eventually say inappropriate things. I'd rather be watching tree-frogs or ants. I'm not a social critic, more a casual observer. I make no claims, absolutely do not recommend living this way, it's brutal and more than slightly dangerous, but for me, there is no alternative. The ridge is a kind of paradise, and I'm just another violated temple whore. Someplace on the way back, South Carolina I think, in the coastal plain, there was a swamp that was filled with white egrets, hundreds of them, they looked like a concentration of punctuation marks. At Darien, Georgia, I fed power-bars to a school of mullet. Did a cursory study of Country Music and marveled at the rhymes. Taylor Swift is hot. I bring back some frozen elk meat, from Florida, which is strange, when you think about it, the animal shot and processed in Canada. Who knows what it costs. Everyday paradoxes are enough to keep me awake at night. "Pretty much a nobody to everybody because I'm just another guy" I read in the Sunday paper, some football player, I'm out on the screened porch, having a morning smoke, trying to cool off, a cup of coffee and the sports page. Like I'm buying into the package. A single crow, Christmas morning, and it sounds about right. Make a joyful noise. I don't buy the package, the package is a piece of shit, everyone knows it, no one mentions it, like it's a big secret. The prescribed life sucks. At some point you have to ask questions, what if, you have to ask, Camus was right, even Derrida, you can't ask too many questions or you fall off the treadmill. Listen (I see my note) what you have is what you have, nothing more or less. I'm wrong about so many things I hesitate to sign anything. You would be forced to assume I meant something. What I meant. Certainly there is a sub-text. What he thought he meant. I don't go there very often, mostly I merely observe; it takes up my time, you know, engages me. Like a mouse when it spins, his sorry ass trapped in a trap. Keep me in a certain cote and I seem to make sense, a homing pigeon returning to the roost. If no one disturbs the snow tomorrow, I might see something clearly, who went where for what, that's all I ask. All I need is a clue. I can reconstruct almost anything, what you meant by something I might have said, listen, I can make meaning out of whole cloth, the yet not knitted, the mote in God's eye, a tiny drop of blood, I'm cursed, I can't not see. Maybe it's a product of the ridge, maybe the ridge is writing me, the way a place would need to be explained. Low jumps and bad horses. Listen.

Bad modem I think, still can't get connected. I'll get a new one tomorrow. Brown-outs eat them, this will be the fourth in my black Dell girlfriend. In the tradition of southern storytelling, I tell a few. Recounted several recent events when I first got to Florida and they were being told back to me before I left, checking certain points. B over for a drink, we discuss life on the ridge, the weather, Aphrodite. Outside most of the day but I didn't get much done. I had places I needed to go that I hadn't seen for a couple of weeks and I wanted to verify that the robbers had walked in, along the upper, logging road. Squirrel hunters, probably, clear impressions of work-boots. An opportunistic thing, though I can't help feeling paranoid. If I was here, I think, when someone broke in, I might not kill them, but I'd certainly break their knees.
Read more...