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.