Mixed Signals

Experimental geography. It benefits to study specific sites and memories. Every estuary has a story to tell. I'm a student of wet-weather springs and grader ditches: small drainages. Small enough to wrap your brain around. Read the landscape as text. I did once alter the course of a seasonal stream to save a house, it took five years and a serious study of actually dynamics (as opposed to what I wanted to believe, thinking I understood) and using the force of the water to deposit fines where I needed them, breaking the flow and slowing the current in a backwater. Sometimes it's all right to meddle, carefully, maybe even necessary. Keep the culvert catchments clear, that kind of thing, generally, it's foolish. In Missip, where I had a lot of land and more bottom than I could use, I just watched the creeks change their course, no reason to intervene. The New Normal, I was reading somewhere, grants access to the private sphere of the artists themselves. When Monteverdi first/finally asked -can this line be spoken?- opera was born. Everything before is liturgical. Access to private information is a kind of currency, the private line allows that. Words spoken against a certain back-drop. I have a list of things that I need to do, before the reunion, but my compulsion is to write while I can. Three nights I won't write, it already seems uncomfortable, but I'll be with dear friends, cooking. I operate from a position that is slightly unbalanced. Not quite a crisis. Barely under control. A rule I impose is to do no more than sample the single malts before dinner is on the table. Brandy can give me a neck rub. I feel a little like the Light Heavy-Weight, before a fight. I think I'm ready. There will probably be costumes, we have to dress one way or the other; there might be make-up, we might need to hide a zit, let's face it, we're way imperfect. My older daughter is in Iceland for a week, studying television production, the dollar is strong there. There's a question that isn't asked here and I don't know how to approach it. My family, with the exception of me, are all gathered at a locus, they support each other, and I applaud them, but I could never live there. When the Pileated Woodpecker enters the scene, I'm gone. The natural world takes presidence. Broadcast what you will. There was a really minor thing I wanted to call to your attention, but I forgot what It was. Something. A pebble? Too many mattresses. What you thought you felt. I'm a realist, if you can't swim, build a boat. I'll leave it at that. Life Preservers won't save you, look at what they say, the disclaimers, they disavow any knowledge. I'm tired, I need to sleep, I love you, but I can't go there.