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.