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.