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.