Lambent Will

Driving into town, two different places, I smell ramps; I could find them with my nose, such a strong onion smell. Quite the sidetrack today. Google-Mapped to Easter Island, D navigating. What started it, we were talking type faces, then side-barred into cuneiform languages and I mentioned that the script from Easter Island had not been decoded (this language was lost in recent historical times, maybe 1750), and that the forms were almost exactly like an Indus valley script that was proto-Phoenician. Almost exactly. "Extinct Languages" Johannes Fridrich, 1957, was my source for the script. Way out of date, as it happens, but a favorite little book that was sent me, when for several years I was the only member of the Bizarre Book Of The Month Club. J Cressy presiding (also got a Field Guide For Amputation) and D quickly had more recent information, seems that the Chilean Navy (Easter Island is a Chile annex, 3500 kilometers west) had the Rosetta Stone for the script in the form of a staff they'd stolen years ago. Rongo Rongo, the language is called, which somehow seems condescending, as a name. Another book, in my eclectic library, traces Jason and the Argonauts back to a Phoenician story, and charts their course to South America and ultimately to Lake Titicaca; and sure enough, some of their tin, the alloy so pure, perfect DNA match, came from the mines above the lake. They also used some British tin, as did everyone else, at the time. Also, another book. The stone Olmec Heads are almost all alike, rounded, as the Olmec faces were, but there are a few of these heads, carved from three or four foot boulders, large heads, a few that are oddly elongated, and that form is repeated on Easter Island, so his theory was that some Phoenicians, told about this large body of water not that much further west, fuck you Balboa, went to have a look. If you were a sea-faring kind of guy, and they were, first thing you'd do is build a boat, and set out now upon the sea. You couldn't not. Got as far as Easter Island, denuded it in a generation, and had no wood to build another boat. Google Map, I think that's what it's called, was a trip, once D located the heads, we could see them, from satellite, then a plethora of information, yes I had remembered that many of the heads had a different stone cap, a piece of several tons, that they moved from one side of the island to the other, and somehow lifted and fitted to sit on top. I could do this, I think, with a lot of dirt and infinite man-power, but they made it a science, funny heavy red hats on elongated gray heads. We've shot ourselves in the foot, in terms of the natural world, all we can do is stack sandbags and hope for the best. Let's stack some stones and be remembered, all I want, is to get home to you. I don't want to crow but I had Duxelles On Polenta tonight, and it was off the scale. I thought I was dreaming, that we should be allowed anything so good; I did throw salt over my shoulder and bow to the east. What I did was heat bacon fat until it sizzled, browned three-eights inch slabs of corn-meal mush, and topped it with this exquisite hash. It's not really brain surgery, I thought we were clear on that, I cook seasonal meals. Big winds, gotta go, send you tomorrow. Howling all night and very warm. Some things I need: a small air conditioner for my computer, a new microwave, an old TV so I can watch movies late at night. Really don't need anything but a very small fan and a bowl of ice to keep my computer cool enough to write you. I can bake potatoes on the grill, I've missed almost every movie for the last twenty years, but, but Liza and Glenn have gotten me interested in film and I feel a need to study the medium. Sara says there's an old TV in her basement I can have, and D says he has a small air conditioner; maybe, now that we're in the next century, I can enter the last. I'm not a Luddite, really, but I tend to rely on things I can assemble from materials at hand. Habit, and financial constraints. Not a complaint, just an explanation. Lambent. Radiant, but lightly so, slanted sunlight through cobwebs in the corner of the barn, like Venus, hovering before sunrise. I shouldn't be up, I need to sleep, but there I am, watching the light unfold. Not a position, but where I find myself. Now, thinking back, yesterday, coming home, there was a fire in the State Forest and I was concerned, until I stopped and wet a finger, realized it was blowing away from me and didn't present a threat. Radiant sunrise and I want to listen to music, the Cello Suites, Bach in the morning, and I listen, attentive, to the first movement, but I have to turn it off because I can't think, it sweeps me away, there is no way I can write and listen the greatest music in the universe. I can only be engaged by one thing at a time, in my heart of hearts; I can juggle when I need to, but when I'm paying attention, there is only one thing and it precludes everything else. In the zone, I'm not answerable to anyone else. I'd like to think I was, but there's a history here, and it indicates I tend to drift. It's fine with me that that happens, there are times I don't need an anchor, I'm comfortable with drifting, the drift itself is often what I'm about. I don't recommend anything, though I am a recent fan of carrot juice. Something Sara said, reading back over myself, I may be easier in smaller doses. When I write longer blocks I feel like I'm channeling Gertrude Stein. There are so many things to say. I filled the humming bird feeder and there is immediately a fight. Hummingbirds are beautiful but they suck socially. My fall-back position is that I don't feed anything, but I have a compost pile and I can't control that. (Yo, Tom.) So, really, everything is out of control. I see by my drinking that I have to go to town before Tuesday. I make plans. I'm always on time. Speaking of prisms, when was this, a couple of days ago, I was vacuuming dust bunnies, and a spider web sparkled in the light. E. B. White, how could you not. I needed to prove I could go on. I assume I'm part of your diet. Nothing is the same, everything is part of something else. It's fractals that make the point, look closely.