Darkening Green

Surrounded by a darkening green. Big dark line squall in the weather direction this morning, shaved quickly and badly, made a double espresso, got down the hill before it rained. Almost to town the first drops hit like golf balls, didn't last long (never does when the raindrops are large) but intense. Over to Kentucky for a can of tobacco, then below the floodwall. Should be able to haul a load of wrack firewood next week, river dropping quickly. A dead dog as wrack, stank, I poked a hole in his belly, so the birds could clean things up. Serious janitor day, broke out the Geerpres Floor Prince, cleaned the building from stem to stern, stocked the bathrooms, cleaned the theater, cleaned the classroom. Big street event Saturday and the organizing group is using our kitchen to prepare food for massive grills that the hospital provides for these events. Great grills, I don't like gas, otherwise superb. Three feet by six feet, well-fitting full domed lids, smoke stack. Bentleys. Women are often surprised when I engage in food-talk with them, strangers I mean, people that know me aren't surprised by much. They're doing tenderloin ka-bobs and what sounds like a really nice spicy rice pilaf. A lot of nice fruit, a case of organic baby lettuce, bags of celery hearts. Reminds me, I have to rejuvenate the sauce this weekend, I'm getting sloppy, lax, the sauce is seven years old and rib-season is before us. There was an argument, no, not an argument, a discussion, between two of you that concerned me, and a third party sent me some of the emails. I was quoted, and the discussion was about an imagined line between fact and fiction. If you have to ask, maybe that was the point. I quoted MFK Fisher in the kitchen today, but no one was there: "But for a few hours, while I was writing about horny cats and aching bones and nosebleeds, and all that clutter of life, I was stripped of banality, and I wrote simply in my native tongue." There should be a play, this is a great role, four of them, actually, roles, because what I see is the story told in four stages, four women, each of them does twenty years, learning as they stumble. It's probably a film, I've started seeing that way. Even though I'm not a visual person, though, of course, I am. My language says what I am. Look at the last posts, see what equates. I have things to do. I walked in the burned zone this afternoon, it's amazing, the way things grow, after a fire. The green is so intense. There's a lesson to be learned. Thoreau said, in his journal, after he'd burned the woods, that fire was a natural thing; and it's true, that if you build a base of kindling, and hit it with a spark, it will flame. Then there's succession. The natural world is prepared for casuistry. Shit grows. Is actually enhanced. So green. I'm wordless.