Two Birds

One wasted person. Not the way to start a day, two trips down and up the driveway, first with loppers, to clear the arched brush and examine the extent of damage, the second with a shovel to clear fines where they clog the grader ditch. Between trips I cook a mammoth breakfast, slab bacon, potatoes, eggs, fried tomato slices, toast. The shoveling is very difficult, because it is below the level of my feet, but the lopping had warmed the muscles enough that I didn't pull or pinch anything. Three crows watch me from a shattered oak in the hollow, either shouting encouragement or laughing at my folly, I don't speak enough crow to know for sure. If I ever had another pet it would be something from the Corvid family: sensible birds that avoid extraneous effort and don't care about their appearance. I'm not one for preening. Must stop at the lake because the overflowing napp is significant and shaking the ground, I get too close and lose my hearing for the entire drive to town. Make a note to ask Barnhart, the music guy, if there are some cheap waterproof pick-up microphones we might use to get a sample. It's an interesting sound which at first seems like a drone, then becomes composed of discreet sub-sounds. Subtle variations. I'm a Change-Ringing, Bach kind of guy, but suddenly I'm hearing Philip Glass and actually liking it. Nothing says you can't continue to grow. I never did any Wagner, but I wish Sarah Caldwell had done the cycle while I was in Boston, I listened to the overtures today and was completely blown away. They reach deep into the collective unconscious. Music and probably dance strike us with no mediation, I've learned to look at things with no mediation, what I think of as a base line. There must be some calibration, you have to allow for some variation, nothing is ever the same. I have previously stepped foot in these waters and I noticed it was never the same, not exactly, always slightly different. I could slide my card, punch a code, but what is actually going on? My address stays the same, a drop-box in Queens. Only the names are changed.

Daft electric grid and I couldn't Send, then forgot this morning, fixated as I was by another large breakfast, finishing the new Lee Child, vacuuming dust bunnies, shave and a sponge bath. Garbage Day at the museum, full-tilt janitor mode, finally getting shed of the last, two-party, weekend. Another clogged toilet and I want to post a memo to the staff that shit doesn't clog toilets, paper does, but can't decide on the wording. Sara asks me about doing a show of my Salt-Works Press books and I think that might be interesting; talking letter-form with D, off to grad school next month, and I mention several ephemeral projects we did with the press, where letter-form was exactly the issue. We once printed poems, in non-toxic berry juice, on cabbage leaves and served dinner to a select few. More than once launched messages in bottles into the Gulf Stream, posted laminated water-proof poems on trees in the state forest, sent an edition of styrofoam heads out into Cape Cod Bay with a meaningless page of text embedded in their skull. We weren't thinking, we merely did whatever. I'm guilty, I never had an office job, but I've tried, always, to stay foot-loose. The time I don't spend doing yard-work is more important to me than all the tea in China. And it's worked for me, next time I call rooster, you'll hook up the plow. I don't watch my backside, skinny and useless, I wonder what the next thing means. Nothing prepares you for what you actually confront. I scramble to make sense of myself. I know we all do, the nature of reality is so strange, that you ended up here. Suddenly you find yourself onstage, explaining something, or worse, down at the station house, bailing out a friend, answering questions about where you were when. D rescued a kitten that had been dumped in a window well, this goes to show you what I mean, and it was cute, as most young animals are, baby goats, for instance, are to die for, everyone suddenly talking baby talk. And because it was the day we premiered the movie, the kitten achieved a certain status, The Premier Kitten. These things escalate, first thing you know, we're booking a ride to get the cat to NYC where it might live the life to which it isn't accustomed, red carpets and such, cans of tuna and a litter box lined with cedar shavings. I don't object to things, generally, and I don't object to this small cute orange critter escaping his/her fate (we think it's female) which would be probably a feral existence, in the woods, until something ate her, a red-tail hawk, maybe. You can take the cat out of the country. Phone line is down somewhere, so, again, I can't Send.

Now I can, get this off and start all over again.