Change Ringing

Cool enough that I can start a fire, roast some vegetables, beets and turnips, a potato, an onion, the vague taste of dirt but in a nice way. Sweet and down low. I don't understand the implications. There's a charm in repetition, like a cheap toy in a box of cracker jacks, it doesn't mean anything, it's just a token. Unless you subscribe to that pesky notion that everything means something. A pain in the ass. That's not a bell it's a fucking woodpecker, the drumming search for bugs beneath the bark. Not a high-school lover but a mangled pillow. Wake up, get a grip. I recognize that guitar, it's Clapton playing Robert Johnson, "Crossroads", you're granted these moments, if you leave the radio on and go to bed. I don't fall for bullshit, usually, but Bach, early in the morning, is a revelation, Double Round Bobs like you wouldn't believe. The extra trip into town was mostly about collecting another load of wood, Osage Orange, serious winter wood. I wish I could play the piano, there's a song in my head that I can't quite access. Nothing prepares you for the late nights, you grasp at straws. It's enough to say you keep your head above water, but we all recognize failure as a clear and present danger. Drowning is a state of mind. Just before you go under, something reminds you of something else and you remember that night on the beach. Maybe it wasn't that important, but you remember. Happens to me all the time, I'm walking down the street and suddenly I'm somewhere else. One thing leads to another. Bach, I think, is the source of everything. Listen closely. It's merely change-ringing, but with that added kick, us talking directly. I admit to nothing, I merely keep the channel open. A janitor after all. Tracked down a cheap copy of "De Re Coquiaria", a cookbook by Apicius, the famed cookbook of ancient Rome, good recipes, though they do seem to have used garum (a sauce made by rotting fish in barrels and pouring off the liquid) a bit too freely; on the other hand I put anchovy paste in almost everything but in almost homeopathic doses where it tends to act like a natural MG and doesn't taste fishy at all. Seriously, keep a tube in the fridge and add a little squirt to any soup or stew, pot of beans, anything, it's amazing stuff. I sometimes spread just a bit on grilled meat. I never tell anyone because anchovies get a lot of bad press. I love anchovies, smelt, any of the very small fish that can be eaten bones and all. I've dined on minnows on more than one occasion and once, other than crackers, they were all I could find to eat. I'd gone deep into a wilderness area and was so sure I'd catch a mess of native cut-throat trout that I'd only taken a tube of saltines, a small skillet and a baby-food jar of bacon fat. Talk about over confident. I ended up making a kind of net from an extra tee-shirt, dragging it with a stick upstream and getting quite a few fingerling trout. Way too small to clean, I just ate them whole, fried, on crackers; oh, always carry hot sauce, Tabasco makes a little tiny bottle you can refill with your sauce of choice, I'm into the nether regions of hot sauce, I actually have a shelf labeled "Sauce Too Hot To Use" and I occasionally use one. I don't foist this on anyone else, heaven forbid, but I do, on occasion, make myself sweat. Habits die hard. I feel it purges my liver. I base this purely on speculation. I speculate more than I know. I wish it wasn't so, but there it is. I'm only always guessing. The world itself is such a mystery. I'm afraid to go outside to pee, or do anything. You know more than me.