Teetering Piles

Books are out of control again. I was staff at the museum today, but had the morning free to read and pulled way too many books off the shelves, everything I could find on Prehistoric Art, mostly large-format with color plates. Bad books to put on the tops of piles. Several seand one minor disaster when I got into a reverie over the subtlety and ambiguity in a pair of painted lions from Chauvet, reached for the magnifying glass and knocked over a pile of twenty or so that I had mindlessly stacked in a sort of inverted pyramid, caught Archeology Of The Eastern United States on top of my bare foot and thought I might have broken something, just a contusion but I'll limp for a couple of days. There's another pile that scares me, a kind of Goldsworthy thing I started at the base of the stairs, thinking to move something else upstairs, another subject or auuse I'm taking in books at a greater rate than I'm getting rid of them. If I built one more house, the 900 square foot pagoda design that I dream about, it would be a library with a kitchen. Two Boletus mushrooms I harvested today, between them, weighted over three pounds, Boletus Edulis, a really good mushroom, I like to dry them and use for a Risotto mid-winter. I cooked a portion, then browned some shallots, made a thickened sauce with chicken broth and browned flour, added the shallots and mushrooms, great spread for a small grill a portse, bread to sop. Christa is on the desk today, she's cute, those deep-set Appalachian eyes that have seen too much too soon, and I read a new novel Lauren sent from Utah, Truck, Michael Perry. Funny book, reminds me of myself. Almost too glib, but like a good shortstop he digs it out of the dirt and fires a strike to first base. My case is well rested, I recuse myself, I'd like to sit on the court, but I choose to sit of the roof and watch the ether. This composite is real thin 0 byou, uy, , but,b utever can be seen. I'm always that awkward other person, I've looked at the clips, I know what I think I see, but I'm not a decent bottom line either. Less like a pop-star and more like a bunker. There were some compromised dynamics. You thought, you knew, but what did you know anyway? Life, as we know it, is a crap shoot.