Balance Disruption

Something's off, ear infection or water on the brain. My sense of balance is generally quite attuned, I move well for a man my age, so this attack of unsteadiness is surprising. I retreat to the sofa, after boxing the armload of wood I'd gone outside to fetch. Nothing serious, but I have to think about it, consider ramifications. I read a novel by Andrew Vachuss, "Haiku", which I quite liked. Good timing, because it is a book about a band of disjointed homeless guys and therefore germane. In light of the vertigo, what I need to do is watch my feet more closely and not stare into the middle distance when walking, spouting meaningless tautologies. I shoot for a kind of vertical integration in my life, where things relate, so I might not draw enough distinction to the details that make me say something. I don't have to, with you, you know me, so I tend toward leaving out connective tissue, when I'm writing; when I'm cooking, I leave it in, because I love the mouth-feel. Like tripe in that Mexican soup. One of the things that draws us together is that we've all failed, we've all known failure. If you haven't you're lying to yourself. It's really the only way you learn. Failure is a good thing, it highlights shortcomings. And it's good to know where you're weak. Like Harrison, I had a good arm, but I never could hit major league pitching. Have to go to bed, not feeling right. Beautiful dawn, a band of blue sky an inch high, straight as a ruler; by the time I eat and suit up, the clouds are gone, I have to take off a layer. I feel great today, a good thing because I have much to do. I split kindling, hand-cut starter sticks, then chainsaw for a couple of sessions, another fire of knots all day. I re-organize the remains of the Wrack Show one last time, make room for some serious wood. There's a stack of pre-cuts from the wood dump, Ash and Red Maple, I bust them a couple of times and take the pieces to the shed, they're quite dry, just a little surface moisture. The Ash splits like a dream. The Red Maple pieces are not very thick (6 inches) because the damned things are so large and someone had to move them; I roll them like wheels to a flat spot in the driveway and bust them in half just to move them. I remember collecting these, I rolled them to the truck and they were higher that the tailgate, so I was able to tip them into the bed of the truck without ever lifting the whole weight. The only way I could have gotten them, because I can only easily carry half of one now, and they're dry. A surprising amount of wood under the shed, busted into large chunks. I can split for 30 minutes when I get home from work. At this point, after a late lunch of sardines, pickled jalapenos, cheese and crackers, I suit up in my motor-pool jumpsuit with velcro closures at wrist and ankles, crawl under the house, repair and redo some insulation. If I can lure D out here for half a day, I could finish the final layer of dense foam and never have to do this again. But I'm good, now, sealed against temps in the teens by Thursday. And I am quite dirty at this point, had been heating water on the cookstove: shave, sponge bath, hair wash. It was just getting dark, everything on the day's list is done, and I was clean. Opened a decent Zinfandel, pan-fried a nice T-Bone, roasted some small root vegetables, couple of turnips, a potato, the smallest acorn squash I could find, drizzled with walnut oil, salt and pepper. There's a wonderful sense of well-being, working hard physically, cleaning up, eating a hardly meal. There are times it feels good to be a little sore, to see a very clear connection between labor expended and your life. I don't know what disrupted my balance, but it's nice to have it back. I think it's raining, then realize it's one of those winter flies, trapped under my reading light lamp-shade. It's important to keep your balance. I watched a gorilla, once, at the Jacksonville Zoo, walk around and around in circles. It bothered me for days. I'm oddly easily upset, you'd be surprised, what set me off. Sometimes it's almost nothing, some lichen on a rock, a flood of krill, a really bad piece of reporting, and I'll rip someone a new ass. Nothing is worse than misrepresentation, and few things more instructive. Like I was saying, failure is how we learn.