Another List

Today disappeared. I remember starting the day, driving to town, watching a huge 'V' of geese winging south, starting on the list from Saturday, and adding more things than I accomplished. Frustrating. Astraddle the ridge, I don't worry that much about what I get done, drift off into the middle-distance. I can't remember where we put the microscope we found in the basement at the museum. I need to bring it home, there are some things I want to look at more closely. I think about making a model of the last house, but it would be easier to just build the damned thing out of my head and call it the model. I'd need the one and two-faced logs from the bone yard at the veneer mill, critical structural elements, and maybe free for the hauling. Booby would haul them with his log-truck for a couple of hundred bucks. I could probably build the place for 5 grand, scrounging everything. Do the roof in car hoods. Maybe less windows, certainly less windows, I am a fool for windows, in this house they probably cost me a cord of wood a year. So, 900 square feet, 10 foot bays, 9 of them, no interior walls except for bookcases. Realistically, I'm not going to do this, but I like to have a purely mental project going, something to think about. I built this place, where I currently write, without ever drawing a set of plans, if there was a next one, the last house, I'd let the materials completely dictate what could be done. I've been doing that for twenty years, but never so completely as happened on the stairs here. Where the materials just took over: stand out of the way, buddy, we've got some work to do. Sometimes, when I'm clicking on all cylinders, language takes me there. Diana sent some Emily along, the Emily Project groweth, the Lord knoweth. Tonight the sunset was spectacular, orange and yellow and blue, god, it filled the sky. For 15 minutes I thought I was going die, systemic failure, too much beauty, this was off the scale. I rolled a smoke and took a drink out back, set on the steps (at least iconic) and watched the setting sun. Emily would strip everything bare, not quite a pole-dance, but Jesus, did she have to say that? And, of course, she did. Now I get it, what she meant. It's only taken 40 years. Hey, in own my defense, I was fencing and cross-fencing a very large piece of real estate at the time, I'm hardly accountable for my own actions, digging holes, stretching wire. I have a huge amount to do tomorrow. Suddenly everything. This may not be an accurate sampling, but what I've noticed is that everyone sits on their ass until the last minute. Christmas shopping, I don't know what they're doing, I don't give a shit, what I want is for my part of this to run smoothly. Annabelle Lee. John Lee Hooker. Leeward. A progression that gets us through. Call it what you want, I call it a fall-back position, when I have to call it anything, and I choose not to name it, nor call it's name out loud. We heretics have our standards. I, for instance, don't like clowns. Phone line down again and I can't Send. Think I'll go eat dinner again, these crab cakes are exceptional. Overcast at dawn with just a slice of sky at the horizon, six inches, with your arm held out at three feet, extreme shafts of orange. This phenomenon is oddly repeated at sunset, and something I've never seen before. I drive along the Ohio for 7 miles on the way home, and the slit of sky allows the shafts of light to hit the edge of Kentucky, the lower terrace, right down at river's edge. It's late in leaf season, but it's Kentucky, and protected by the river, there is a band of golden trees that stretch for miles. Intense orange-gold. I have to stop and watch, knowing these fall aspects of light are short-lived. For maybe five minutes Kentucky looks like the promised land. It might be, I don't mean to sound facetious, I've never lived there. I'd never spent much time looking at illuminated manuscripts either, but D is thinking about Letter Form as his thesis, so I've been doing some research. That period between 940 (the Irish monks) and Gutenberg's 42 line bible, 1456 (we know the day exactly, we know who was there.) The Gutenberg Sidetrack. I meant to mention, what I thought I was going to say, was something about emergent naturalism in the later Middle Ages, especially as depicted in illuminated manuscripts. I love this stuff, I go after it like Kim goes after bricks. What happens in the Initial Letters become paintings, and we have good provenance on these books. Papyrus doesn't hold up well, north of the Med, so they were diligently copied on vellum. Ten thousand thoughts, I might pursue one or two. What I've learned, as an indicator: nothing ever was. 'I did it because I could' might be an excuse. The whole problem with this examining-things-closely concept is that you have attention. I wonder how they address that. Anyone who might be judging your progress.