Severe Clear

Intense blue and the sunlight on the snow is so bright it's hard to stay outdoors. I come at lunch with a slight headache, decide to make a simple onion soup. Caramelize two yellow onions slowly (40 minutes), add a can of chicken broth, simmer together while I toast a thick slice of good whole wheat bread and grate over it, in a bowl, some Jack cheese. Not really kosher but excellent on another very cold day. Suit up one last time, split kindling, cut small stuff for starter sticks with the bow-saw, enjoying the effort, heating myself nicely. Read food essays through the afternoon, put away a few books, go through some cryptic notes and annotate them, while they're fresh on my mind. My usual notes are one or two words, which need context even for me to remember what I was thinking, which I can add, but only on the day they're written, often even the next day, they're more like disembodied words than the observations they actually are. A lovely afternoon, a little warmer, above freezing tomorrow. Reading John Thorne and intrigued with a Newfoundland set of recipes that parallel New England clam chowder. Fish and Brewis (brooze) and I have the basic ingredients. Fry a couple strips salt-pork, minced, boil a large Yukon Gold potato not quite all the way to doneness, slip it from its skin, cut into half-inch slices. Take the scrunchions (the rendered bits of pork) out of the cast iron skillet, save most of the fat for other uses, lay in a bottom layer of potatoes, the cod fillet on top, salt and pepper, dotted with butter, in the oven for maybe 12 minutes, and when it comes out you spread the scrunchions on top, if you live alone you eat this right from the skillet. In this weather, probably a good idea anyway. I have enough Number 6 cast iron skillets, serving as country ramekins, to serve a party of four. A really simple dish but damn it is good. Potatoes and cod, married with fat, is one of those great combinations. When I got up to stoke the fire this morning, I baked a tube of those Pillsbury breakfast rolls that come with a little tub of icing, decadent, but I'm trying to gain weight, and had the last two for dessert tonight. I don't have a sweet tooth, but the sugar was oddly satisfying. Easily converted fuel. Watching goats browse, I realized that if you were sensible, you ate what you craved, your body knew what it needed. Everything in moderation, a little of this, a little of that, but what you need. I talk to myself constantly, I'm in tune with this dialog, but even so, I often don't know what to say. Often left at the back of a room raising my hand in confusion. It isn't easy to navigate these waters even with a decent chart. And there is no decent chart. What we still have is a map that is marked with whole sections labeled 'there be dragons' or bears or something. You make what sense you can. Read more...

Last Call

Where do crows go at night? I've never seen a crow's nest except for that small platform high in the rigging from which you spy either land or a whale. Winter schedule, I stoke the stove and go to bed early, get up and catch the fire early morning. It's 10 degrees and falling, no wind, the cold is a blanket that hugs the ground. When I go outside to pee everything is fractal and crisp. I think this storm has passed to the south of me. Breakfast is in order, the first of many at odd hours. Get the stove cranking, might as well eat breakfast. Potatoes and eggs and toast at three in the morning is a fine thing, a last drink and smoke, or maybe the first, it's hard to keep track. Nora Jones sounds good, this time of night. Ain't no use in turning on the light. Don't think twice. My precious time. It's all right. Wrong. Snowing heavily when I get up, go right back to bed, thereby not dealing with the cold-house problem. But I need to dump ashes and knock down the stovepipe, so sleep an extra hour. When I bring in the first armload of frozen wood, I have to start a fire, then outside again, to work while the house heats. 48 degrees inside, 5 outside. Work outside for a couple of hours, in 30 minute hits. Cold, frozen feet, I finally come in for good, eat a large breakfast, with biscuits. I saved out one of the five biscuits, rolled it out as a piecrust and made a very rudimentary sweet potato turnover. Burned my tongue. About 4 o'clock I had the house warm enough to shave and clean up. A sliver of clearing sky in the west makes a spectacular sunset and twilight, orange and yellow through stick trees. Burn a lot of wood on a day like this, and there have been a lot of days like this. Got my electric bill for the first of the two coldest months of the year. I have two little portable oil-filled electric heaters, and at least one of them was going nearly all the time, still the bill was just $112, which is enormous for me (usually $35), but as it is the total heating bill, not all that bad. Can greatly improve the tightness of the house, now that Child Support is over. Buy a pancake compressor and trim out the doors and windows; a case of spray foam to seal the rigid foam between the joists in the floor; a finish floor, maybe finish the siding. No apologies for being lazy, just that I only had $25,000 to build this place, which is $19.29 a square foot, and I had five months to do it, mostly solo. It's sloppy, but most people like it. Fits me like a glove, but it isn't finished, and it isn't tight. If I improve the functioning of the house, and streamline the firewood system, I think I'm good to go for a few more years. Then I might need a four-wheeler, and pay someone to cut firewood. Pegi said something the other day, I just blew it off, that I was the most fulfilled person she had ever met, that I was doing exactly what I wanted to do. I thought about that today, freezing my ass off, and she's correct, I am doing what I want to do. I don't exactly enjoy freezing my ass off, but it is a real connection, not something fabricated electronically. Mostly you set the thermostat and pay the gas bill: in the real world someone cuts trees, mines coal, enriches uranium, something to generate heat. I most admire the Arctic Indians, ice is a great insulator and a seal-oil lamp might keep you from freezing, barely, but that's enough, to survive. Read more...

Cold Wind

Up at 1:30 to stoke the fire and I know it's cold because my moccasins stick to the porch planks. At least the footing is good and I don't have to worry about falling. Bathrobe over merino wool sweater and long-johns and Linda's hat, still my breath catches. No new snow, though, and my plan for later looks good, drive in with wood and water, some treats to ameliorate the harsh weather, maybe a bar of chocolate. Survival isn't really an issue, but it's damned uncomfortable, the high plains in winter, a sod shack, burning cow chips. High in the art of suffering I have little patience with anyone else and their various complaints. It's a blessing that I live alone, not responsible for any other, because I'd have to listen to their bitching about why we couldn't keep the house warmer. Listen: driving by the wood dump, where they pile wood chips toward mulch, on the way home today, I was thinking, I could live there. It was smoking in the cold, generating heat, and I could burrow a hole and wrap myself in a space blanket. Cold wind and snow. You could hardly ask anyone to join you there, you'd be alone, but probably survive. My lonesome grave. Whiskey has wrecked my body, but it makes no difference. The sun don't shine any more. The rain falls down around my door. What a pale cold moon. Human kindness overflowing, I think it's going to snow today. The winds of change, Willie Nelson, the water six feet high. I'm as happy as a man can be, sail away. Come on up to the house. Got back to sleep around 3:30, then back up for good at 6:30. Forecast says snow, but not until after midnight, not supposed to get above freezing for 4 or 5 days, very cold. Driveway is frozen hard so I walk down and drive up with Mackletree firewood, 5 pieces 30 inches long 12 in diameter, off-load them about 50 yards from the house because of the puddles. I have issues with the puddles and if I broke them up now they'd freeze into a jagged mess, a danger to tire sidewalls. Drive back down, stop on Mackletree and get 6 more pieces of wood, go work at the museum for a few hours, sanding the patches, knock off after lunch and do a large shop at Kroger, pick up my gallon jugs (Green Tea gallon jugs are the absolute best and strongest, I fill them, for 39 cents a gallon, at Kroger, osmose filtered) of drinking water, head home. Less than twenty degrees and overcast, the driveway is solid, back in to where I dumped the other wood. Two trips with groceries, four trips with water, then 11 trips with firewood, take the truck back down, walk back up, roll a celebratory smoke. Restocked but forgot the bar of chocolate. Cut and split some dry oak beam ends I had under the house, great wood to have for really cold weather because they peg the stove quickly. I'm set, I think. Hope to get out again tomorrow so I can help D cover various openings and cases with plastic, as the inside repair we farmed out, water damage, the drainage issue, is supposed to start Tuesday morning. Someone screwed up and got tomatoes on Pegi's Subway, she's allergic, so I have that for dinner, macaroni salad, and an avocado with a few drops of pumpkin seed oil (great stuff) while reading the new Elmore Leonard. Giddy with accomplishment. Like I said, a resupply like this is a random window, I might not be able to drive in for another three weeks; not that is would be a disaster if I couldn't resupply, but I drove in 120+ pounds of stuff, every pound of which I didn't have to carry up the hill. Now I can carry in just a small pack for several weeks, and my menu planning is done. I'm what you might call front-end loaded on breakfasts. I should generate enough bacon fat, during this next cold spell, to see me through the winter; and enough ingredients to make several casseroles. Solid winter fare. Ricked the new firewood under the shed and I'll cut and split it next chance I get, probably bring it all in the house, rick it up under the stairs and in front of the patio doors, because it's frozen and there's a lot of surface moisture. I need the moisture in the house. The bark and sap-wood are mostly gone but it will still be a mess, firewood is messy, but for the million or so BTU's, I'll sweep up after myself. Temps are plunging, it'll be close to zero tonight. I'm dressed oddly, but I'm comfortable in my skin. The world as I know it. Tammy, at work, was matchmaking, wanted to set me up with someone, and I thought about it briefly, but I couldn't live with someone, now, I've forgotten how to compromise. Relationships are all about compromise, and I'm not putting that down, I'd love to sleep with another warm body, but I can't, because our agendas don't mesh; I get up to pee or stoke the fire, maybe get another drink and roll a smoke. My world. Which I struggle to maintain. What I accept you probably wouldn't, inside the house maybe the low forties, the high thirties, you have a thrermostat, right, can adjust the heat. I build fires as a matter of course. Read more...

Water Everywhere

The county under flood advisory, the Ohio out of its banks and the Scioto way spread into the bottom land. The debris fields will be enormous. If I don't post for a few days it means an ice storm. We're right on the edge, calling for snow here, but parts of Kentucky get freezing rain first. I could do a year without an ice storm, lovely as they are. Carried in another large pack tonight, figuring meals in my head. Trying to get the kitchen sink area warm enough to shave and take a sponge bath. Took down all the hanging hardware from the Circus Show, a great mound of stuff, more anchors than I've ever used before, tie-off cleats, for god's sake, every 'J' hook in town (two holes drilled in the top of the leg, the hook hangs perpendicular to the wall, we use them for paintings that hang with 'D' rings) and the usual assortment of improvised hangers. Need to spend a day sorting. Board Meeting today, with Pegi and D attending. Budget stuff. Pegi was a nervous wreck. D was dressed sort of fancy. After the meeting we conferred about the roof drainage, accepting a bid to do what I first proposed; and here we are, after years of thinking about the problem, probably going to fix something that had really seemed unfixable. Maybe everything is fixable, if you throw enough money at it, but this isn't even going to cost that much, a few thousand, a bargain, I think, considering that it completely changes the drainage of an essentially flat roof behind parapets. The problem was so complex, it took years to get all the correct information. There was so much miss-information, so many mistakes had been made, so many people had just their own small involvement, knew nothing about nothing. I think the power company used the storm drain as a chase for some cables, capped it with concrete, we know now the interior drain (the main drain, the scupper is purely overflow) goes nowhere. And that's the water that ends up in the basement. I know it is because I poured some dye in at the top of the interior drain and I couldn't get down three floors before the evidence was transparent. I remembered the last foundation for a house I built in Telluride, we no longer had a plumber who set sections of pipe through the foundation walls; we had a guy who could drill through anything, and the plumber came later. It's a better system, really, if you know someone with a really good set of drill-bits. You drill the holes where they need to be rather than where you imagine they should be. I manage tense well, for a white guy. What is normal? Lost power, but it was back this morning. I think I lost a few lines. I do the Send Later thing fairly often when the weather is bad. Down to single digits tonight, and for several days, so when I get home from work today, I split out some very dry starter sticks, to expedite certain and fast fires. Should be able to drive up tomorrow morning and unload some dead red oak, then again tomorrow night with water and supplies. Carried another heavy pack in tonight, in case things get out of hand, extra juice, makings for a meat loaf, half-and-half, an extra pound of coffee. I eat salads, often, for lunch at the pub, so I don't have to carry in leafy greens, which often don't survive the trek. I often wrap an avocado in bubble-wrap. And think I'll probably pick up some very hard ones tomorrow. The way this goes, that I can likely get in and out twice tomorrow, and that well might be it for February, everything else I'll carry on my back. Also, I can get another load of the red oak. Here in the heart of the hardwood zone, so much wood is wasted. As predicted, the ice-storm dead trees from the last several years are threatening the phone lines on Mackletree. The phone company hires a couple of locals, or just as often the next guy that comes along with a chainsaw, cuts up the offending tree and tosses it onto the verge. Nobody wants to lift something too heavy, so they conveniently cut it into perfect pieces, Pre-Cuts (Kurt and Kim call them, and I love the name) and don't want or need them. I can easily get next year's firewood from a two mile stretch of road, and I likely will, but I'll still drop a dozen young trees, 30 years old maybe, because I need to drop live trees if I want to coppice; which I see as a kind of social security, where I could go out, slightly demented, with just a bow-saw, and make my nut. I sometimes burn furniture. Had to say that, because there was a chair, next to the shattered chest, it was ash, and broken, so I burned it. It made me laugh. Call up the chairs. I might start buying chairs, at auction, as a kind of insurance policy. Sometimes they're really cheap and a hardwood chair, on a cold night, is a definite perk. If I had bought all of the oak school desks at a recent auction, millions of BTU's for 50 dollars, I'd be a rich man. As it is, I slog through the snow, what are you going to do? It's the sound of music. I enjoy slogging through the snow, it's a part of my life, you see things and court frostbite, you make a miss-step and you probably die. Authentic, but in a minor key. I don't exist to be challenged, I live the way I do because it satisfies some fundamental need. Break it down, you either want to take care of yourself or you want someone to take care of you. I'm a little testy because even the way I go out of town is flooded and I have to seek another route. If I can just get home, I have a meal planned. I know I can start a fire. Fuck the world, its various demands, I'm a monad of the particular. Even that sounds heroic, which I don't mean at all. Ed Sanders wrote a great poem about shooting rats at the dump, which is closer to the point. I have to go, it's getting very cold, I'm considering hibernation.
Read more...

Enough Already

The snow that was supposed to accumulate to less than an inch finally tapered off at six inches. My road is closed, and Pegi called to say that a semi is jack-knifed at the junction of Rt.125 and 52. I sweep a path out to the woodshed and split enough Sycamore to fill the boxes. Tomorrow is likely to be ok, but then much colder and more snow. Work on the path down to the dead oak, then driven back inside by swirling snow and obbligato wind. In the winter mode of shaving at night, because the house is too cold in the morning. Putting some books away, I came across John Thorne's "Mouth Wide Open" and spent most of the day rereading his delightful essays on various foods, had forgotten the lovely piece on grits. He uses a very small crock pot, one-and-a-half quarts, and cooks them overnight, which I can certainly understand, because they are a pain in the ass to cook properly. Still, for me, fixing them on the cookstove, is the way to go. The stove is going all the time anyway, and after bringing the grits to a boil and putting them on a corner of the stove, raised on a trivet, stirring whenever I get up from reading or writing, which I do often, works very well indeed. I have a serving right when they're done, one way or another, then fridge the rest. They keep very well, and a few tablespoons, nuked, with a fried egg on top, is a great winter snack. I did a batch today, with the last of the acorn meal, using half chicken broth (one can of broth to a can of water for a cup of meal/grits) then discovered, and shocked, that I was out of butter AND cheese. I fried the egg in extra bacon fat, the gods forgive me, and it was so good that I immediately had another round. Fortified thus I bring in several armloads of wood, and, as I'm suited up, go for a walk down the logging road. Blood markings around a spot where the fox killed some little something. My three crows show up from nowhere, I didn't see them coming, establish their command post near the outhouse, then follow me on my walk. I think I'm on the Bird Channel, the way they comment. It's like they're interviewing me, I tell them to fuck off, but in a nice way, and they add a coda in a language I'm don't understand. There are two Pileated Woodpeckers working several trees over on the power easement, and I have a favorite stump at the top; I'm carrying the small winter-walk pack, so I have my foam pad, use one side to knock the snow off the stump, then sit on the other side and roll a smoke. I look in the pack, because I'm not really an orderly person, and wonder what I had put there, and added to over time. Mostly never use anything but the foam pad, but a list of things in the pack is interesting. Everything given to me by someone else, I bought none of this, the heat pads activated by flexing, the power bars, a space-blanket, a bar of chocolate, the box of matches sealed in wax. I don't know, I think you live in your world and I think I live in mine. Everything is relative. I'm amazingly stupid when it comes, when it comes to what anyone means. You and whatever. I assume you as a matter of ways.You and me, babe, the various byways. I could assume I meant what I thought I was saying. Read more...

The Race

Knew weather was moving in this afternoon, so stepped in up a notch. Had to take the truckload of drinking water back to the museum, where they won't freeze, I'll bring them home one or two at a time. Library, Liquor Store, home, where I carry in two gallons of water. Outside I split kindling and small stuff. I'll only use pine for kindling from now on, stove is too efficient, and I have to damp it down before the pine is burned as starter sticks, and end up with too much pitch. Poplar is perfect for small stuff. Oak, of course, works for anything. Fill all the boxes, cut everything in the shed, bring another rick in from outside. Temps falling, sleet makes walking treacherous. Take the last of the rainwater inside. Start a fire (the house is cold already) put water on to heat, go back out and start cutting a path to the standing dead Chestnut Oak, which will see me through the year. I put it at about 150 feet from the driveway, estimate between 50 and 60 carries. It's a perfect harvest, no branches, but the top is split into three-tine fork, two 12 footers and a 16, six inches tapering to four. Maybe a cord of wood, maybe not quite, and exactly what I need. Sleet changing to snow and the wind picks up, swirling flakes. I got the path a quarter of the way in just an hour, but it's snowing hard and I'm dirty again, and I'm hungry. It's beautiful out, a quick inch of snow, but my feet are cold. The snow sticks to everything because everything was wet two hours ago. So white, so perfect, so very like a whale. Ablutions, then I am, by god, seriously hungry, and I make a chicken noodle dish, using canned chicken, egg noodles and chicken broth, a few other things, that I serve myself on a bed of mashed potatoes. It should cover the bases. For dessert I have cheese grits with a shirred egg and a piece of toast with butter and jam. I'm worn out. I feel like I need to sleep for the rest of the winter, individual muscles in my hands are sore, there's a muscle in the back of my right thigh that wants to cramp. I feel good, actually, beat, but actual. Good enough. Read more...

Rainy Fog

Visibility down to 100 feet, nothing stirring, rain all day. Harvest rainwater, and as this is the last day above freezing in the long-range forecast, heat the house and put water on for a bath, shave and hair wash. Put the pot on the edge of the stove and go for a walk during a lull. The low-lands are flooding, but I should be able to get out tomorrow. I make a list of my needs then cross out half of the items as not absolutely necessary. Haven't driven up to the house in so long, weeks, that the larder is slim, I'm out of onions, for instance, but cook a small pot of black beans with dehydrated onions, garlic and dried herbs that's really quite good. Need to carry in some eggs and dried milk and I could live on cornbread and beans for a very long time. Rikki Lee Jones on the radio, what a voice. I was listening while I put books away, there were 50 on the coffee table and the piles had become precarious, problem is that when I put something away, I almost always pull out another that catches my eye. No net gain here, but I do end up with a new sequence of reading. All non-fiction, I get my fiction from the library and most of it, recently, has been crap. Even the newest Ian Rankin fell apart for me, typos and factual errors, doesn't anyone proof-read anything anymore? Winter, living alone, bad weather coming, I have piles of wood inside, I have piles of clothes on handy chairs, an assortment of hats and mufflers on the dining table, my winter tools leaning against the wall near the back door. Now that the girls are gone, I need a smaller house, something I could heat with a light-bulb. A cave would do, except for the books, and I need the books, but I could fit all my necessary things in 900 sq ft and without an upstairs, though that would deny me a staircase. I do love building stairs, and it seems to be a discipline I understand in a fundamental way, the last several sets of stairs I've built are very nice. Mine, here, blow out the stops; after years of having built them, they still take my breath away. They were the final brick, really, in the chain of reasoning, that allowed the materials to speak for themselves. You need a certain competence with tools, but that's rote, you can learn to run a saw; the rest, the larger part, is paying attention to what the material wants to do. I think about doing a Staircase Show with Pegi, how her girls could slink between the treads. Mountaintop coal removal is a joke, the overburden has to go someplace, you block drainage and something backs up; the classic case, you fuck with nature, and she bites you on the ass. Read more...

Headway

Just a few hours in the closed museum and I make enormous headway against the mess. Get the floor cleared, a rough cleaning, but all I care about now, because I need to make more mess before the restoration is complete. I shuffled the list of chores, needed to create the semblance of order, before I could move on. When building a house, the final couple of hours are dedicated to cleaning (on my job-sites) because it makes progress possible on Monday morning. When I was stage managing, last thing I did every night, before setting the ghost light (all theaters leave a light, always a bare bulb in a shade-less floor-lamp, in the middle of the stage every night) was vacuum the floor of the set. A poke at order. Lunch with D at the pub. I'm so politically incorrect discussing some things that bother me, that it bothers me. I'm more concerned about where this new batch of moisture hits the dip in the jet stream, which is either just south or north of me. Columbus is going to get hammered, but that's a hundred miles away. Latitude and altitude. Attitude, for that matter, but we don't need to go there. I'm willing to pay a little bit more for subsistence if I don't have to talk a line of talk. I'm willing to pay for my independence, a coward in so many ways, I never confront anyone, I'd rather wear overalls and look homeless. Because of the dry-skin-splits I have to change fingers, and I make a lot more mistakes. Typing has never been easy for me. I can build a house, from found materials, but I never learned to type. My hands, right now, are beat to shit, I can barely write my name; every time I pick up something, I consider what I expect my fingers to do, whether or not they might reasonably be expected to do anything. When you live close to the ground, nothing prepares you for winter. Everything is always a surprise. The simplest act becomes a chore, but sometimes almost nothing becomes significant, poignant (as Tommy Smothers famously said, 'pregnant with feeling') in ways we don't understand. Coming home, driving over the Second Street Bridge across the mouth of the Scioto River right where it joins the Ohio, something was happening. I always drive this stretch slowly, looking closely at where the rivers merge, usually looking down, where the different colors swirl, but something catches my eye up in the air. A ragged crow, coming in for a sloppy landing on one of the streetlights, no one behind me, I have to stop. There's a single crow on every single streetlight as far as the eye can see. A small thing, and it doesn't mean anything, but it stands out against the gray. Contrast. What we notice. The rest of the way home I'm attentive to the color of roofs, the tops of trees, clouds. Usually I'm looking down, where my feet fall, or at eye level, where a twisted leaf or a burl makes me curious. Looking up is a revelation, the fog rising as smoke on the hillsides. Even when words don't make any sense what we see does. When the world is called up yonder I believe. A crow can do this, a beaver, a kingfisher, the break of light on a piece of ice held in shadow. The visible world is a wonder. I'm speechless. Walking in tonight, there was a deer on the opposite slope, aware of me and me of it. We were both being careful. She would lift her front paw and stamp it delicately and I'd take a couple of steps. Richie Havens, open tuning, over the top. If I had my choice between money or fame I'd choose neither. One thing for certain, I'd be splitting wood, a matter of course. A satisfied mind. A murder in the red barn. Is that blood on the trees or merely fall? Murder in the red barn. Tennessee Jed. Won't you carry me? It's all Jamaican. Patois. Read more...

Sara Calls

Goddamn fingertips are dry and splitting, and I've just put ointment on them when the phone rings. I miss it on the first couple of rings, slip sliding away, but it's Sara from Hilton Head. I gain enough control to tuck the receiver between my shoulder and ear and wipe my hands on my overalls. My Professor of Ethics, at Janitor College, Sir Goodly Weightless, told a great story, and I don't know if it's true, about how the side of a boat from which things were unloaded was the port side, and the opposite side was starboard, because of the view. Probably bullshit, but it's great to talk with Sara. I think she's concerned that her show is safely on the ways, which I assure her it is, duly launched and on the road. A show you originate is a lot like a baby, there are concerns. What about the car-seat? Is everything strapped securely? Another reason I had to take today off, yesterday, just to let my brain rest. The quality of mercy. I'm listening to the Bach Cello Suites transcribed for double base, haunting, I think probably the greatest piece of music ever, it draws my heart strings. No mediation. Me and God directly. Edgar Meyer might well be the greatest player of music in the history of the universe. If you listen closely to this transcription, it is a transport of joy. Mary Gray called from Columbus, thinks she is missing a painting, I remember the packing so completely, I'm able to say with absolute confidence, that the watercolor is in the bottom of the box that had the Kuhn "Ringmaster" on top. The museum is a mess, barely got started cleaning today, remove hardware tomorrow, get started on the patch and repair, then paint the whole damn gallery. Figure to work a couple of hours with D tomorrow, shop, hike in supplies, then cut some wood. Sunday I can split in the rain, under the shed, Monday too. I love my new way of splitting, kneeling, with the Estwing hatchet and a little sledge hammer. Completely saves my back, and it's meditative, I can watch for the fox, I'm closer to the ground, not nearly as much lifting. A small group of geese, I had stopped at the lake on the way home, looking closely at the overflow, feeding the ducks, considering vibration, and this haggard band flies over, seven birds, in a very bad 'x', looking like they want to land. Looks like they want to, they drop down, then flap up again and continue south. In a few minutes, they're back, but still don't land. Then a third time. Finally, I think I must be in their spot, or something, and leave. Fuck a bunch of birds. Someone had cut a tree that fell across Mackletree, stopped and loaded four 24 inch boles maybe 18 inches in diameter, all heart, dead red oak. If I can drive in tomorrow, a possibility, I'll bring in water and wood and go back for another load. Logistics. Living remote carries its own set of rules. What do you need, in what order, and how much does it weigh? I brought in some dried beans, pintos and great northern, a pound of smoked jowl, onions, several artichokes, whiskey, juice, cream, an acorn squash, some key lime juice and a pie-shell. I'll make sense of this later, over pie and coffee. Read more...

Hard Put

Exhausted, I sleep a few hours early, then get up to eat again, and stoke the fire. The same thing, really. I was burning body fat I didn't have, so I'm eating an extra meal, now, later in the evening. Something based on mashed potatoes or acorn meal, a few pancakes with an egg over easy, three crab cakes, a protein shake with a banana, a cold can of pork and beans right from the can. This isn't a pretty meal, or even anything I'd describe at length. Tonight I killed off the pate, with enough cheese and crackers to slow a horse. I'm eating a lot right now, 3 or 4 thousand calories a day, as I've said about living in Telluride, eating until I get tired of chewing. And it's still not quite enough. Fighting the cold, climbing the hill, requires energy, and something must be burned. I'm hitting my stride, walking up the driveway this afternoon, with a light pack, thinking life was easy, this is all you have to carry. I'm stronger now, than I was a month ago; and I love this feeling, that I get every year, that I can do this, live this way. That my body acclimates. I know what to do, and I know how to do it, and I'm careful. I can't afford damage now and you should see how careful I am, walking down with my mop-handle, my crampons. Someone tried to drive up the driveway today, the evidence is clear, they hit the first stump and slid into the ditch. I just read sign, a simple pilgrim, looks like something happened. Finally got back to sleep just before dawn. When I got up for good, I called Pegi at the museum, begged a personal day, desperately needing to clean house, wash a few things. Must have burned a cord of wood in the first three weeks of the year, and that makes a mess. The cold weather, then that ill-timed function, then getting the show wrapped and delivered, I let everything else slide. Spend the morning vacuuming corners, get outside and split some wood before the afternoon rains. Clean out the fridge, heat water, do dishes; heat more water toward cleaning myself, by mid-afternoon I feel considerably more human, less a pariah. Jumping tenses, a product of leaving the computer on and joking notes throughout the day. Remembered things are often past. Right now I'm making grits, slowly, and stop to remember something, I forget what, get up and stir the grits, remember what it was. Rolling out of Columbus, the form of that landscape, glacial sediment in rolling piles. Kame. An hour long discussion of Darwin on the radio and not a single mention of Alfred Wallace. I can't believe it. Cheese grits and biscuits on a gray rainy afternoon are fine things. For 4 servings, grate in half a pound of sharp cheddar, add a couple of tablespoons of butter, a dozen grinds of black pepper. Usually plop a shirred egg on top. I do these in a funny little cast iron skillet that I think are sold as novelties, mine holds just a single large egg, is well seasoned, requiring just a dab of bacon fat to do a perfect egg. I find I can control the consistency of the yolk better this way than frying. If the oven is too hot, I do them on the corner of the stove top with a few drops of sherry and a cute little Pyrex lid that must have been with a dish, at one time, that was also a joke. Or maybe not, I don't know a lot about the history of dishes. Well, that's not quite true. It could have been the lid for a ramekin. Do ramekins have lids? At any rate it fits the little skillet quite well, and I can watch, which is critical, if you're after the perfect egg. John Thorne has an excellent essay on toast in "Mouth Wide Open", a book I strongly recommend. Rain coming in from the wrong direction, which explains why it's rain. I put out my buckets, amazed at how primitively my water collection system has devolved. When I finally get a roof on the back porch, remember that February is my first month of not paying child support, the entire water collection system will be upgraded. The problem, in this zone of ice and snow, is gutters. They rip away, under shear weight, when ice or snow releases from the enameled metal roof. I know I can build a 12 foot section of gutter, the width of the porch, that would be almost indestructible, and it would gather water from 300 square feet of roof, which is enough for my needs. I don't know the algorithm and couldn't do the math anyway, 300 square inches of roof, 40 inches of rain a year, and I'd be able to harvest the rainwater without getting wet. This a nod toward aging. As required, I could eventually rig this with a set of pulleys, so that I never actually had to lift the bucket; lower it onto a dolly and wheel it inside. The Cadillac of water collection systems. The wind is confused, and the direction of rain swings around. It's somber out, and gray. My sister wonders why I live this way, there's nothing I can say. Just because. Read more...

Welfare State

D and I were out back, having a smoke, busting our asses to get this show packed, and the welfare boyfriend shows up, bumming a cigaret, which he can't roll, because he cut his finger on a broken crack pipe. If we understand him correctly, he's hard to understand; he can't believe he actually has to work nine and a half hours a week to qualify for his disability check. I want to just shoot him, but D rolls him a cigaret from my tobacco and we go back inside so we don't have to listen to him mumble. I don't trust someone who isn't willing to work, call it profiling or whatever. That was Saturday, I think. Today, James and I had no problem getting the rest of the show packed, load the truck tomorrow, then off to Columbus. The gallery there is in a state building, difficult of egress in these times, but they have a truck elevator, which should be cool. Probably get home late tomorrow. Late this winter, early spring, I'm going to drop 6 or 8 smallish trees, all oaks, all right on the upper reach of the driveway, so an easy carry, cut them to length, and wall the woodshed with them. I'll cut them before the sap rises. I'm going to build that saw buck I was imagining. Save my back. Picked up another couple of pre-cut pine boles, at the Wood Dump, for next year's kindling. I want 3 cords of oak, and whatever else I can scrounge; I burn about 4 cords a year, I think, but the way I work wood, I've never really known, and I'd like to know, more precisely. In winter I can hear the trains in Kentucky, across the river, maybe five miles, as the crow flies, and it's hard not to make up country songs. I had a good one going today, the refrain was "but she left me, and took my truck, and I don't know what I'm going to do..." and I'd plug in stanzas depending on what I was doing at the moment. Some of them were very funny and I wondered at my ability to amuse an audience of one. My sister calls and we talk about the mental and physical condition of the parents, what would be best, what could be done; they're 90 and 85, and my brother, 54, lives at home, runs all their errands in exchange for a free ride. It's complex. On the one hand and on the other. Rain changing to something frozen. Better shut down, likely to lose power. Did, outfoxed that bastard. Went to bed early got up early, off to the museum. D already there with the truck, smaller than we'd discussed, but the only other option was a 28 footer. Load up the 14 footer carefully, and it all fits with room to spare, off a bit late, because of the care in loading, and miss breakfast. Stop in South Bloomfield, eat an early lunch on the fly, get to the gallery maybe 12:30, unload in less than an hour, talking Mary Gray and Stephanie through the awkward bits of the show to install. I expect numerous phone calls and may have to go back up. The dolls and animals will be a problem for them, they weren't for us, because installing our permanent artifact collection has made D a master of mounts. With several different thicknesses of brass wire and Mapp Gas, he could articulate a skeleton, make a dead person look alive. The dolls are not in good shape and need supporting in several different places. Always hesitant to offer much advice, because as a Preparator myself, I don't want much. Solving the problems is part of the fun. A winter nose drip like I've never had before, a clear liquid of which I'm not even aware until I drip on my shirtfront, while I'm seriously talking with the Director of the State Gallery in Columbus. I just looked at it, then back at her, mentioned the great unwashed and how I was one. D has things to do and I need to clean the stove and get a fire started. We bail Columbus in a hurry and head home, no stops, no savory delights. Good coffee at one particular Quick-Stop. We have stopped, I think, at every place you can stop between here and Columbus, and this place takes there coffee seriously. A treat we allow ourselves. I notice we have a shorthand way of communicating on this trip, and others that we've made dozens of times. A particular outcropping, a stone foundation, the way the Kame forms the landscape, the glacier stopped here, beyond is outwash, almost nothing is said. Sometimes just a nod, pointing a finger at something that wasn't there anymore, quoting a dead poet, referencing anything we had in common, establishes a more common bound more quickly. I don't try to make friends, I have enough already, not that I'm a closed system, but I'm comfortable in my skin. Someone gains admission, they're part of the crew. I don't even understand what the process is, the social dynamic. You include and exclude people based on something. I posit nothing here, I only know I do it. We all do. I have to go nap. Read more...

High Water

Even my little Low Gap Creek is running hard, Mackletree Creek near escaped its bound. The lake is still iced over, but at the spillway there is pressure enough to lift the edge for the napp to run free. Turkey Creek is running spate. A lovely thing, this time of year, wherever sandstone pokes out from a hillside, are frozen cascades. Percolating water hits a solid stone layer and seeking release, migrates sideways until it finds daylight, then freezes. Hundreds of these on Route 125, especially on north facing slopes, from large icicles to masses the size of a VW bug. Got to the museum in time to spirit the dioramas out of harm's way. Did a small laundry, socks and underwear, shopped; left drinking water and juice in the truck at the bottom of the hill, hoping to drive it up tomorrow morning while the ground is frozen. Harvested enough wash water yesterday to last for several weeks. Simply must stay at the museum tomorrow until the last of the paintings are wrapped. Road trip on Wednesday to Columbus, might end up going back and installing the show there. Would enjoy that, actually, but don't want to be away from the house in bad weather. The Director there, Mary Gray, is a sweetheart, and I'd love to work with her. It's right downtown, where all the pretty women are, and near The North Market, where the ethnic food-stalls draw me like a moth to flame. There was a duck in my mailbox, I assume either Shane or Bear left it there, and I make a small pate with it and its organs. Thank god I finally remembered to get saltines. I eat a lot of saltine crackers, with cheese, sardines, black-bean salsa, avocado, peanut and other butters, but I have a plan for this pate. Our light-bulb salesman, Andy, who keeps us supplied with excellent hot sauce, brought D and I, on Saturday, a wonderful Jalapeno Jelly. The plan is to open my last Ridge Zinfandel, sit at the island in my bathrobe, and pig out. The pate is fantastic. I skinned the duck, saved the heart and liver, then baked it with just salt and pepper and a little glaze of orange juice and butter. Cooked a shallot, minced fine, in butter; cooked the liver and heart, in butter, a small can of shiitake mushrooms, cooked in butter; deboned the bird and added that. Glenn had brought a lot of different single-malts when he was shooting the movie, and I saved most of the bottles because they're really nice, and there's always a drop or two, left in the corner, so I added the collected corner drops. There isn't a lot of this, less than a pound, I think, and I won't share it with anyone. It's so good it makes me remember things that didn't happen. With a dab of the jelly, every other cracker, I'm in an altered state. This is one of the best things I've ever eaten. I packed it into a tomato soup can, I'd saved the lid, so I put it on top, then a rock, to compress it slightly. Cut out the bottom of the can and pushed it through, then I can slice it to fit a cracker. A very good Brie and the jelly, some olives. Died and gone to heaven. I limit myself to one of the four tubes of crackers. It seems wrong to enjoy a meal this much. With all the suffering in the world. But I've earned that, really, in the trenches. My footprint is small, I use less water than anyone I know, I harvest heat from a woodlot I manage with a eye to the future, I don't hold this as any standard, it's just the way I want to live. I need to know where my dinner comes from. The mailbox. Cheese grits and duck pate. It's not that I would die, if I didn't have such careful readers, but I wouldn't be as comfortable. As I am, as I find myself, watching winter unfold. Read more...

Byssus

The wrapping for a mummy. How I felt this morning. In the throes of dream, I'd wrapped myself so completely in my bedclothes that it took a few minutes to sort things out. Sound of rain on the metal roof, and I'd gone back to a fitful sleep. Finally get untangled and out of bed, raincoat over bathrobe with rubber boots to get an armload of wood, start a fire, set out a couple of buckets to harvest rainwater. A lay-about day. Barry Lopez essays, coffee, bouillon. Gotta get some low sodium bouillon, this stuff is killing me, I don't have much of a salt habit. Boil some rainwater, to replenish the drinking water supply. This is good clean enameled-steel-roof water, and the roof has been scoured by snow. Even clean snow is fairly dirty, because every flake seems to crystallize around a bit of something, and water, reclaimed that way, needs to be filtered through an old tee-shirt. This roof water is clean. This time of year, when I can get really clean water without filtering it, I fill the 35 gallon trash can that is a feature of my living room. It sits in front of a set of patio doors, rendering them useless, gathering whatever stray BTUs might be around. None of the three sets of patio doors on the 'front' of the house are useable right now, except in an emergency, when you'd just knock the clutter aside. One is blocked by pieces of the Wrack Show that I want to hang across a section of wall, high up; another set is blocked with firewood; and the third set has always been blocked by a chair and a spool table laden with printed matter. I don't go out on the deck in winter, the light is better out back, and I have to go to the woodshed anyway. There's a blues song in there, if we could just add a dog, or a lost love, the sound of a train, some counter-point. I have crude diversion devices, to funnel water off the roof, broken bits of gutter, actually, but they serve me, my modest need for water. Direct the flow, it's all you could possibly do, study the gradient and predict what might happen. Kick up a few berms as if they might hold. Seek higher ground. Melting snow plus frozen ground, then rain, means flooding, no place for the water to go. Realize I need to get out, stop at the museum and move the diorama boxes safely against a wall, because the rental folks, from the rehearsal dinner gig, will be collecting their stuff, and they don't know art from a hole in the wall. No big deal, and besides, I need to wash socks and underwear. Buy a steak, makings for a salad, maybe an artichoke. Tuesday we have to wrap 12 paintings, but that shouldn't be a problem, then Wednesday truck the show to Columbus, Thursday and Friday I can vegetate, split wood, take several walks, center myself for whatever is next. I think there is a break, time for gallery repair and repainting almost everything. Mindless activity, essentially. Patch and repair requires little thought. It's hard to express how thrilling it was to get the dioramas safely packed. One of those magic moments where all your training comes to bear. It was a treat, working with D and James on Saturday, what we accomplished is beyond the pale. I can honestly say I have never cut foam more furiously. Folk art is always horrendously constructed, designed to fail, the dioramas are no exception, small figures held in place with spots of glue. But they are beautifully packed, and baring a wreck, will survive another couple of venues. You send an opera to Seattle and a week later you get a note saying it was the best packed show they had ever received. Yes. Because we receive shows and I know what I expect. I'm usually disappointed, but that doesn't blunt my expectation. Packing shows is an art; working well with someone is a gift. Making music, for instance, and you realize you want to fall off the beat, and that other person, or you on another track, understands. I hate myself sometimes, when I just don't get it, but I love the way I can occasionally solve a problem. Me and my mummy. Those byssus, by the way, compose most of what we have of Sappho. A fragment here and there. I don't have a clue, really, why I keep on, something about the next dawn, fresh light, a new thing I might learn. Read more...

Unsung Payment

A suggestive illustration in the dictionary sparks lively debate. Rotten snow makes access questionable. Careful decoration, modest makeup, and the right pair of boots might keep you awake. A heartfelt response. Maybe not heart. Maybe you lead with your sex, as if it was most important. A joust. An interface of lances. My spear is bigger than yours. It's a zit, pretty baby, everything is illusion. The merest teardrop of reality is a staged fake. Nothing is what it seems. Stoke the fire, go back to bed. Almost overslept because of the overcast sky but got to the museum right on time. A critical day, D, James and I absolutely must get all 13 dioramas, and the pesky triptych packed. None of these have any box, crate, or packing. We bought UPS Store cardboard boxes, stout ones, 275 pound crushing strength, in a couple of different sizes, had 10 sheets of half-inch foam, and a large supply of ethafoam scraps. Wrapped the triptych, then sandwiched it between two sheets of ethafoam, reinforced the corners with heavy cardboard, then wrapped completely around with that stretchy clear stuff that sticks to itself, it's called something clever, like Flat Twine; good stuff, we're fond of using it with blankets when we return art. The boxes are sold flat, so we have to assemble them, tape them into shape, and that's as far as we get before lunch. I'm concerned. But after lunch, after we had devised a strategy, we were a packing machine. I cut the foam, D did the assembly, James fetched. I cut 78 pieces of foam to fairly precise measurements, D would line the box with the pieces, put the diorama inside, then cut ethafoam blocks to hold it rigidly in place, James would hold the folded cover in place, D would tape it, label it, draw the necessary arrows, for orientation, and write large that this box was not to be tipped or tilted. James would have already retrieved the next unit and D would give me my numbers, so I could have the pieces precut. The first one took an hour, the last one took 15 minutes. We got them all done and were amazed, it had really seemed impossible, and suddenly it's done. We're so good at this, D and I work so well together, and we keep the banter going. It's one of the great jobs ever, handling art. And someone has to do it. A skill set. Sometimes, like today, it's as if my entire career, a strange and winding path, had prepared me for doing this. I don't subscribe to any higher power, cream rises and shit flows downhill. The temple of the destitute. Mostly everything depends on specific gravity, which is to say, drainage. But we pretend to exercise control. With our locks and dams. Cancer going to get me or the left foot will. It's a dead heat. The walk up, tonight, was treacherous, I hate rotten snow, even crampons are no assurance. But I have a pack full of food and I am very careful. I want a large drink and a simple meal, I would get to my house if I had to crawl. The three crows are at the top of the hill. I want to ignore them completely, but they're not having any part of that, they squawk a hallelujah chorus, they control the ridge, I'm the interloper. It's good to be put in your place by a bird. Makes you more aware of the world. The actual world. The real world. Where you melt snow and gather acorns as a matter of course. Read more...

Not To Say

It didn't occur to me that anyone would take offense. I assumed we were after the best interest of the museum. Thank god I have this civil side that prevents me from killing people. I shock myself, sometimes, with my ability to be polite. What it boils down to is a very strong desire to avoid prison. Checks and balances. I often simply walk away from situations where I might become over-animated. I can do something, here at home, a great many things, for hours on end: watch tadpoles, explore communication with a fox, talk to crows, and temper is never an issue. I'm a good worker, fuck, I'm a great worker, talk about bang for the buck, but I don't suffer ignorance lightly. I don't think my job is in danger, Pegi and D both value what I do at and for the museum, but when Trish, the office manager, took on a second welfare lady, and I finally got back to museum, I still haven't used up my extra time, I didn't use two weeks of paid vacation last year and I haven't used any this year, one of the welfare ladies (I need a word for this position that isn't profiling) is actually doing childcare for the other one. This is a loop I don't want to be in. Kids are great but business is business. Now there are two people who are supposedly filling my shoes as janitor, not large shoes, 11W, allowing room for winter socks, but nonetheless, you'd expect the floor to be clean. I'm not a teacher. I have no patience with someone's inability to learn to do something. Shit, or get out of the way. Maybe this is a product of being a military brat, the attitude, but I always make my bed and sweep the floor I walk on. Swab the decks. I don't need more bodies, I don't want to instruct anyone on how to handle art, I just want the space to do what I know needs to be done. Fucking wedding receptions. A world in which this is even mildly important. I don't buy it. I can accept that flicker of red where a pileated woodpecker enters the frame, but tying bows on the back of chairs is a waste of time. I'm so not a Romantic. What are you doing, first, and second, what do you mean. Today was better. James and I set-up to wrap and crate in the gift shop, on D's advice (I had to call him last night and vent) I ignored everyone except Pegi, who was enormously solicitous and sent a memo to everyone that any events would need Staff Meeting approval. Managed to get half of the remaining half of the show packed. I actually do stop and find a few things for the groom's mother, Nancy, she's sweet and it's a big day for her, when I left today, she fawned over me, said I had made it all possible. At one point she came over to where I was working, and almost in panic mode asked if we had any small clear xmas lights. I thought for a moment and said I'm look, James looked at me and said wanted to see me pull that particular rabbit out of my hat. But I remembered the Hospital had left a bunch of stuff after their xmas party, if I could just remember where I had stashed the box. I found it. James was amazed, and Nancy professed love for me. Halfway home I remembered I've forgotten my groceries, including dinner. Don't even consider going back. I've got three left-over biscuits, I'll split them, toast them with cheddar cheese on top, and make a simple cream of tomato soup from a can of stewed tomatoes. When I catch these tomatoes at Big Lots, two cans for a dollar, I buy six or eight. A superior soup is just a can of them, some basil, salt and pepper, run through the blender, heated with cream. I often have sour cream around, so I put a scoop of that on top. I make a decent borscht in much the same way. Canned beets. Mostly I hate cleaning the blender, but I have that down to a science and I rarely cut myself anymore. It's above freezing! My drain is open again. Walking in, this afternoon, on several inches of rotten snow, was a question of balance. I was carrying whiskey and tobacco, and I very much wanted to get home, start a fire, have a drink and smoke, so I was very careful. There was a deer on the opposite slope, tracking me, felt less fearful as I moved up and away, and I was able to watch her for 30 minutes. Mostly she ate whatever leaves came in her line of sight, her tail flickered whenever a branch broke. I have a card, punch-pinned to a post on the stairs, that says just "Fridge" which reminds to flip the breaker back on for the fridge, because I often unplug the phone and kill that breaker when I'm writing at night. I've always done this, but less frequently, now I do it all the time. It got to the point where I'd be thinking about something, and the phone would ring or the fridge would kick on, and I'd lose my train of thought; excuse me, I can fix this, an easy correction. Turn everything off. I'm worried about packing the dioramas, we need to average one per half-hour, but it's a bell curve, or whatever, and it would be ok for the first one to take an hour, still, I'm watching the clock here. Don't like to, but we must. We must needs be expeditious. Have to be. Figuring I'll go in Sunday and pack the last crates. Might ship Monday, but someone points out it's a National Holiday, more likely Wednesday, when the weather is supposed to get bad again. Nothing is ever easy. Read more...

Fiasco

I got so mad this morning I used some very colorful language in a loud authoritative voice. No one at the museum had ever seen me upset before. I got out of theater because I was forced into a position of using my temper as a management tool. I was supposed to have all day to crate paintings for the Circus Show to travel. The museum is rented out for a wedding reception tomorrow night. The decorating committee arrived at 9 this morning, tables and chairs arriving soon after, bad enough, but they wanted all the art off the walls. Why would you rent an Art Museum and want the art off the walls? Who agreed to this? I ended up spending the entire day moving everything, all the crates and boxes that we had brought up from basement, into the library, moving all the dioramas into the Board Room, moving my job box and packing supplies into the upstairs office common space. I couldn't talk, I was reduced to sputtering. All day, I didn't get a single thing packed. Pegi was upset, and this will never happen again. We're an Art Museum, not an empty meeting hall. After my tirade, I was very nice to everyone, the decorating committee, the staff, even instructed the groom in the fine points of taking down panels, thank god he was a strapping lad. I'd never taken down panels without D: they're heavy, awkward (eccentric in center of gravity) and therefore dangerous to move. One of them was where the piano player was going to be, and the other one blocked the flow. Fuck me and the flow. I pointed out that the Scheduling Department didn't understand what was happening on the ground. Even if I had been allowed to pack crates today, where would I have put them? We generally stack the packed show in the middle of the gallery, to get a feel for its size, so we know what length truck to request when we rent. Packing trucks. I've packed a lot of trucks. You have to visualize the load. I love this stuff, fulfills a need I seem to have for ordering at least one thing in my life. Doing something well speaks volumes. We also have a residency now, a wood carver working with six kids downstairs, six kids using sharp chisels and mallets, and I tried to keep an eye on that. By the end of the day my little brain was fried. I forget to go to the store, I forget to get booze, but when I get home, I have a pot-pie in the freezer and a really good wine I'd been saving. Small graces. I pop the cork as soon as I get home, to allow this cab to breathe, nuke the pot-pie, while I change into mufti and slippers, start a fire, roll a smoke, check my mail. It's a life, you know, what are you going to do? I have to laugh, I'm sitting at the island in my bathrobe, eating a pot-pie and drinking an extraordinary wine, and seriously considering meaning. I certainly admit I'm a fucking dufus. I couldn't keep the beat if you piped it into my brain. I often don't know which side my bread is buttered on. But this was a really good dinner. I'd bought some hard avocados on sale and one of them was ripe, I'd made a pan of biscuits, the wine was great, and the pot-pie was perfection. I can feel the fat coursing through my veins. I go back for a biscuit with butter and jam. Read more...

Just Ash

Midnight, and the house is finally warm enough to wash my hair. The critical issue is wether or not it freezes before it dries. Transpiration. Same as it ever was. If you lived in a place cold enough you might not wash your hair until spring, fuck convention. There are real concerns, dying of frozen head. Everyone at the museum is hurting, Pegi and Tammy both fell in the ice. The sky is falling. The power of not knowing. I'm better prepared for the worst because I expect it, the cause of various effects. I have coffee and cream, sausage and eggs, bread and butter, some dried beans. How bad can it really be? Unsung swan song. Read more...

Packing Art

Making up for lost time. We'd have been even faster, but we improved on all the packing for items sent here for this show. We roll the canvas banners on archival tubes, we alter some of our shipping crates for the Carter paintings. All museums do this, you can always take a crate that's too large and fill the extra space with ethafoam blocks. We pack the two Cleveland Museum paintings in their over-kill crates; one weighs 180 pounds for a painting that weighs 28, the other weighs 220 pounds for a painting that weighs 42. These could survive any accident up to train. I have to make a few pit-stops, but we work hard all day, sore feet and legs from the ceramic-tile-over-concrete floor. I actually sit and rest a couple of times, which I rarely do. Thinking about a bench, for the driveway walk, there's a place halfway where there's room enough. I could keep a foam pad on a shelf underneath. I quickly design a Universal Driveway Bench in my head, think about the construction. From a recent dumpster, I have some offcuts of treated stock. 8x8 legs, with a 2x8 shoe on the bottom of each, to spread the footprint. The actual seat could be anything, a beam offcut, a plank from the river, a flat rock; cross-brace the legs in some clever way, using bolts, I think, because I could loosen and tighten them, infinite adjustment. I think you would expect Infinite Adjustment with a Universal Driveway Bench. Reading about the high Arctic, as I always do this time of year, I wonder how I might accomplish the bench with caribou antlers and walrus rawhide. If the seat even needed to be secured, I'd do it from underneath, so there wasn't a hole that could fill with ice. As I think about this, I see there are several models, even within the field of Universal Driveway Benches. There's the clinker-built model, that works fine, but you have to physically make adjustments. There's another model that uses the Mar's Rover technology and it costs a lot more. I could make a few calls, but I guessing $250 million, for, really, a top of the line bench; or I could build one for nothing, which would serve equally well. It was great getting out today, I needed some contact, and solving these puzzles of packing with two bright guys is a fucking treat. One more cold night, then balmy. I consider my wardrobe. I need to get to the laundromat. I start considering a raid for water and dry socks. Take a few scalps, the legend grows. It's all bullshit. I was ever looking for a safe place to sleep, denning up with whatever fat I could muster, curling into a fetal position, and sleeping for a couple of months. I certainly wasn't trying to make a point. The most sensual thing that happens for me, is I slip into my down bag, under a down comforter, and I'm warm, and don't care if the rest of the world freezes. Read more...

Recovering

That was really strange, bad intestinal business, hit after dark, finally just went to bed, up a couple of times in the night. A bit better this morning and much better now. Mostly read today, staying hydrated, a couple of ventures out, but feeling quite debilitated. Rarely sick in that way. Don't really remember the last time. Still lovely outside, but getting close to melting temps, tomorrow and the next few days should be a mess. Hard slog in the mud, light packs, something every day; after we get the show packed, I'll need to make a frozen-driveway run for drinking water, either early or late one day, in and out before it thaws. Just another way circumstance dictates. Life ruled by a driveway. And that stomach thing, I thought the coon was still good. By their stomachs they are ruled. I envy serious predators for their ability to process carrion, so much marginal food goes to waste. Very still, even the frozen last leaves, clinging to a White Oak I can see out my window, are not moving. The current indicator for wind. I gave up on the sock, it always froze and sagged. Told you nothing but that it was cold, which was not the information you were after. My wind-indicators are different every year, usually the frozen leaves of a specific tree, but sometimes something artificial I might rig, to watch how ice behaves. This year I have loop of clothes-line, tacked to a couple of trees, with nylon drops every 2 feet, 6 inches long, I just wondered what they'd do, how they'd collect the ice. It's not even science, just a sideline. Fucking whipped, I have to go to bed. Read more...

Done

Exhausted. And I forgot to get one of those large pot pies with 50 grams of fat. Had to get to town, snow forecast for the afternoon, so I got up and out early, no problem, the roads clear. Stop at the lake and it is frozen solid with a smooth even coat of snow, except for the several polynyas, open leads, that will persist until temps stay below zero. Usually open water where Mackletree Creek comes in, and one other spot where something thermal, a hot spring? keeps the water open. The crows and ducks are happy to see me, with my fare of stale crackers from the museum. Stop at the bank, go to the library, buy whiskey, fill the truck with gas, over to Kentucky for tobacco and papers, then Kroger, where I buy almost too much to carry. Juice, bouillon cubes, sausage, eggs, bread, cream, coffee, egg noodles, several dry soups, butter, cheese, tinned Mandarin Orange segments (to which I have developed a jones), and a large bar of dark chocolate. On the way home I stop, again, at the lake, to organize my load, pack the pack. It's too much, really, a full backpack, maybe 35 or 40 pounds, plus a canvas bag I must carry in one hand, with the eggs and bread. With crampons and a walking stick, I feel like a Sherpa heading toward the pass. Soon as I get back to the house, I dine mightily on sausage and eggs and toast, a mug of bouillon with a pat of butter melted on top. Can't believe I forgot the pot pie. Cut a bunch of wood, split some, move another rick under the woodshed. Bring in a few arm-loads, and that's it. I'm done. I'm rarely so completely physically exhausted, every muscle group pleading for sweet release. I allow myself an early drink, whiskey and frozen maple sap, and collapse on the sofa. I think I'm ready for the week ahead, 8 days to pack the show, truck it to Columbus on the 20th. Everything in due course. My hands are cramped, my shoulders are sore, I'm bleeding from several minor wounds, but I feel great, I've done what I needed to do, and to hell with everything else. Mica snowflakes define the air. The world is muffled under a blanket. Nothing moves. The last monk comes in, with his burden of firewood, shakes off the snow and laughs. The crow, he says, told him he was a fool, but he already knew that, and had to laugh. At Janitor College there was a really cool instructor who, essentially, taught plunging. He'd studied in Germany, a bright guy, lost his dissertation down a storm sewer in Berlin, so never got his terminal degree and was always a bit edgy about that. Still, there were several plunging techniques that were named for him, the dude was a legend. Plunging 411, the final, he was famous for creating extremely vile clogs. You either sink or swim. Bad analogy. You either clear the clog or end up up to your neck in shit would be closer to the money. But visiting with him was a real treat. Mica was his name, why I remembered him, and he had a kind Polish-Country-Zen thing which hung around him, that you could actually feel. Fucking Mica, offed himself as a protest against salt and sugar levels in packaged foods, flaming himself off a ski-jump into a fiord in Norway. To vary my diet, I have the chili on cheese-grits. Excellent. Read more...

Coons

Fates conspire. Two in the morning and a God awful noise. I cleaned some nameless leftovers out of the fridge yesterday onto the compost pile and there are two coons squared off over frozen bits of soup. They hiss like cats. They woke me just in time to catch the fire, before the house gets really cold. Fortuitous. It's 6 degrees, no new snow, clear as a bell; I'm in long underwear, bathrobe, gloves and a hat. James McMurtry, "No One To Talk To When The Lines Go Down". Robert Earl. I love the radio in the nether reaches of morning. It's like another person without all the problems that would entail. Have to laugh, the coons, in the beam of my flashlight, do look like bandits. A cartoon world. Supposed to get almost up to freezing tomorrow, 28, 30 degrees, fucking balmy. I need a bath. If I get to town, the museum is closed tomorrow, I could strip down, wash my hair, scrub my privates; more snow forecast, but changing to rain by Wednesday. Subject to natural forces. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. It's not supposed to be easy, an old logging road will always be overgrown with various vines, thorns that scrape any exposed skin. A little blood is not a big deal, scars are a rite of passage. I have a constant burn, at the base of my right thumb, where I always bump the hot firebox with my hand, rearranging burning logs. You'd think I'd learn. But no. I managed to hit myself in the forehead with piece of wood yesterday, in an incident I should have predicted, but I was in the throes of an internal dialog, considering the epistemology of something else. What we could understand about the behavior of another species. What, for instance, the fox might make of my doing something. I had jammed the wedge in a piece of Slippery Elm and stood up to strike it fully with the maul. I knew there was tension but I thought I was exempt. I underestimated the tension. When I released the confused grain, with a mighty swing, one piece, released, struck me between the eyes. I set back on my heels, blood running down my nose. Who would have thought. I like being cold and hungry, to a certain extent, it keeps me alert, and centered. But I don't like being stupid, which I manage with great regularity. If it had been the wedge I'd be dead. Stupid. Never underestimate kinetic energy. Wood cut under tension. One thing about living alone is you don't have anyone else to blame. Whatever you have to lose is your own fault. It happens all too often, you don't pay attention, you're buried in the detritus of the past. I don't mean that in a personal way. History is a fact of life. Hard times. Not hard to find. That bottle-neck slide makes it easier. Rooted in the blues. I need to nap. Read more...

Ice Crystals

My Dad was ninety yesterday and won't make any extreme efforts to stay alive, nonetheless, still alive. Still cooks breakfast, always his specialty, for anyone around. Rereading Zane Gray. Mom must be 82 or 3, she's lost track, nobody knows, she might as young as 81 or as old as 85, she says she's lost track, but I think she knows. I go out to get an arm-load of wood and ice forms where my nose drips. Near zero, I know from experience, but calm. Winter camping, I can always retreat to my down bag, sleep through the worst of it. Ratified. Who I am. Slept too long this morning, this weather is tiring, and didn't catch the fire, had to start all over. When I get it going I go outside and split more pine starter sticks and kindling. Cut and split some Sycamore. Brunch of cheese grits with acorn meal, biscuits, cup of tea with a slug of whiskey; finish "Arctic Dreams" and start rereading "About This Life", I'm a Barry Lopez fan. McCord mentioned Christopher Smart, especially "Jubilate Agno" and I'm sure I have a copy somewhere but I can't find it. During the course of looking for it, I count 250 linear feet of bookshelves, and there are thousands of small press books still in boxes. Before I change out of insulated boots, I don sunglasses and walk out the logging road to the south. The sun is so bright on so much snow, the shadows so distinct, it's hard to tell what's real. I sit for so long, on a stump I frequent, that I'm in danger of frostbite; no chance of fire, I take off my gloves and roll a last smoke. Two crows, ragged and raucous, wake me from my reverie and I slog home. The house is a mess, the sawdust and leaves that I track inside; I sweep a few places: where I change footgear, where I perch at the island, where I place odd chunks of wood to thaw in front of the stove; but it barely makes a dent in the extent of mess. I'm dirty, but it's too cold to even consider cleaning myself. I need to go to town tomorrow, carry a heavy pack up the hill, cut the rick I've stacked under the woodshed. These are mandates, not negotiable. Lopez recounts talking with an Eskimo hunter, who, when asked about religion, said he didn't have any, what he had was fear, that the margin of error was so small. I know what he means. If this weather were to continue, I'd be forced to shoot a deer, and I know where they are, so it's not a logistical problem for me, where to build my stand, or anything like that, I'd shoot a doe bedded down, because I know where they sleep, and there'd be none of that adrenal panic that taints the meat. I've shot more sleeping deer than anyone I know, a brain shot with a .22. I'm a merciless hunter when I need to be. The last deer I killed was from an upstairs window in my house, right through the screen. Fuck convention. When I told the last Board President, I thought he was going to choke to death. I had to tell the story several other times. Then it become a 'set piece', a routine, and where is the reality in that? Classic, right? I spend the rest of the afternoon thinking about that. When I make something out of whole cloth, it might be more real than the closest observation. Read more...

Agape

Cold like this, it's best to shed any impatience. Napped early yesterday, got up, stoked the fire, then back to bed, let the fire go out before dawn. Got up, cleaned the stove-pipe, knocked pitch from the spark-arrestor cap, an awkward job I manage by leaning out an upstairs window and poking it with a bamboo pole. Finally get a good fire going, suit-up and get outside. Bring in several arm-loads of wood first thing, frozen and so cold that it brings down the temperature in the house and creates chilly air currents. I do this first thing, so that I'll be outside, raising my body heat, while the wood comes to room temp. Supposed to be really cold, probably zero here, 10 degrees in town, so I cut and split some very dry oak beam scraps I had stashed under the house, put them in a separate pile for late-night -- early-morning fires. I cut some very dry Osage Orange (from the Wrack Show) for night sticks. Decided on chili, which I'll eat on a bed of mashed potatoes, and I've got some lamb shanks, four of them, which I put on to cook in chicken broth, early; salt and pepper, several large dry various chilies. I stir them whenever I come inside. A pot of black beans cooking on the stove too. Mid-day I have to raise both of the pots up off the stovetop because I've gotten it so hot (the oven was spiked at 600 degrees, no telling how hot it really was; I knew a guy in West Virginia that hand-made knives and he annealed them in his cookstove) for which I use those 'eyes' that hold pots on a gas range. They may have another name, I'm sure they do, but the used appliance store where I buy mine calls them 'eyes' and that's good enough for me. By 1 in the afternoon I'm done with working outside. Plan for tomorrow is to cut and stack another outside rick into the shed. Five inches of new snow, on top of a slightly compressed five inches; I sweep a path to the woodshed, a path to the outhouse. The seat for the outhouse hangs from an 'S' hook, from a beam near the stove. Thank you, Mister Buckeye. Come inside, take off the outer layers, don the bathrobe over Carhartt bibs and long underwear, a second layer of socks and over-sized fleece lined slippers. Ready to tackle the chili. Quickly shed the bathrobe, as it is really warm, standing over the stove; then the hooded sweatshirt. I might chill the pot of shanks, let the fat congeal and save it for some other project, if I was cooking this for guests, but I want fat in my diet right now, so I don't remove any (in fact, I cook the onions in bacon fat and add that too) in this process. Strip the meat from the bones, add it back to the broth, add the beans, the onions, some diced tomatoes, several chili powders. This is really good stuff. Tomorrow, it will be terrific. That's the wrong word. But at least frightening in its food value. Served on mashed potatoes. Nothing surprises me anymore. Read more...

White-Out

Just a little new snow this morning, storm delayed. Get to the museum, open up, get the mail; bills for the month in the mail, final child-support payment. Go to the UPS store, to check on boxes for the diaramas, and on the way back it starts to snow. I don't even think about it, stop at Kroger (never walk up the hill without carrying something) for some canned chilies, some rice, some southern-style frozen biscuits Mom turned me on to. She says they're ok, which is high praise from a world-class biscuit maker. When I get to the bottom of the driveway it's snowing hard, the walk up magical, still a bit of sunlight bleeding through and there's a mica-like quality to some of the flakes. I stop, mid-slog, and hold out my insulated black-gloved hand. The frozen stuff is actually in several forms, lovely flakes, some tiny frozen balls, some flat stuff, in between. It's the balls that are acting like mica. Unload, store things away, then suit-up and go cut a few sticks, split a thin twisted round of Red Maple. Snowing harder, I finally get too uncomfortable and go inside. Colder temps coming, so I let the stove burn down, before stoking again, divert the smoke directly out the stovepipe. A good cookstove allows a setting, with its two dampers, that allows the cook to clean the smoke-chase and only get slightly smoked himself. I dump the ashes, and clean the chase, all into a two gallon galvanized pail, with a bent bail, that is perfect for this job, because its height wedges under the skirt of the stove and minimizes mess. Talk about a mess, the house is a disaster. In a fine way. Clearly, someone lives here. And judging from the neatly folded piles, he wears several different outfits. And I'd say, from a look outside, that he'll need them all in the next few days. Not exactly a blizzard. I can't keep the floor clean, I'm in and out too often, tracking wood-chips and frozen leaves. The frozen world. I have to take a last walk, before I change clothes and cook three crab cakes, while I'm still well-suited. And it's beautiful, and so dry, the snow just brushes off. It's black and white and gray, the world, it's not either-or. I ate, I shaved. I think I need a nap. This life is exhausting, I stopped at CVS and bought a wind-up alarm clock. I have to keep the home-fires going. I hate the ticking of a clock, so I'll sleep on the sofa, and put the clock upstairs, I just need the alarm, to stoke the stove. One stick every two hours will keep the house warm enough and doesn't require adjusting dampers. I'll need to dump some hot ashes, but I have a system for that. Read more...

Mercy

Another brutal day but I had to get to the museum, touch base with D, and a meeting with several board members and a couple of construction guys to see what we might do about the rather serious roof drainage problems. Before I left home I brought in arm-loads of split wood, split some more, and split pine starter sticks. Roads not bad except for Mackletree through the State Forest, but that section of road is so lovely, even after the big spring fire, that I don't mind driving at 5 mph. A congregation of turkeys, more than 40, working the mast, and I stopped to watch them. I could have killed one with a slingshot out the truck window. When they're aggressively feeding they sound like a young war. Another snowfall (it's never really stopped completely) forecast for tonight, so I brought home another large pack of supplies. Probably can't get to work tomorrow, so plan to make a soup of some kind, start rereading Lopez, "Arctic Dreams", and the usual, melt snow, chop wood. My system last night was perfect, for the weather, went to bed early, got up at 2 and stoked the fire, cranked up the computer, answered a few emails, had a scant drink and a couple of smokes, maybe wrote a line or three, there might be a really short post, don't remember whether I sent it or not, or if it's in Mail Waiting To Be Sent, a file I love, or maybe I just love the phrase. When I think about doing a book of postings, that's always the working title in my head. Coming home there was another flock of turkeys in the remains of cornfield, just before the turn-off onto Mackletree. Sleek, glossy black against the snow. If I make the squash soup, I'll have to use evaporated milk, but I've been wanting to try that. We canned goat's milk, in Missip (essentially the same process) and it made a superior custard. I brought home an avocado, so not local of me, but I needed a treat, and better it should be an avocado from Mexico than a piece of candy. Soon as I had a fire rekindled, I ate both halves, with lime juice in the hole. Small pleasures. I don't cut myself much slack, but about once a month I am going to eat an avocado. Maybe twice a year I eat a good bar of chocolate. I love Key Lime pie and I might make as many as 4 a year. I don't have a sweet tooth. For reasons I can't explain I put a scant teaspoon of sugar in my first cup of coffee in the morning, none, after that. I make 5 large biscuits and sausage gravy for 2 of them, have a third with butter and wonderful berry jam. I'll toast the other 2 tomorrow. This weather isn't so bad. Once, in Telluride, it didn't get above zero for several weeks. That was tough, this is merely inconvenient. We have a show to pack. Read more...

Decked Out

Done for the day. Found the shaving and hair-washing sweatshirt, so I can clean up a bit. Melted snow from dawn (the latest of the year) until late afternoon, 30 gallons of snow for 3 gallons of water. Pegi called from the museum and told me not to come in, even the main roads snow-covered and dangerous. I told her to turn right around and go home. Serious weather, cold house, start a fire and suit-up to go out. I figured to hand-cut wood for today, and fill the wood-box for tonight. Keeps me warm and gives the house the illusion of warmth. Not supposed to get above freezing until next week. It's rough going, the house is a mess, tomorrow's list is even longer. I'm going to bring everything that's split into the house, rick it up, so it can warm up. Then split rounds, all the while cutting enough wood for tomorrow. It's important in this weather to make one of the last chores of the day choosing all the sticks to start tomorrow's fire. I have a staging area. Make sure there's paper, in the proper slot of the top apple crate I use for storing miscellaneous kitchen stuff. I tend to start a better, quick, fire, if I pre-assemble the components. Need to get another cylinder of propane for the torch, another good way to start an important fire. Sometimes you don't mind messing with it a bit, maybe learning something, a new combination, but cold mornings, you want a fast fire. Today went well, I don't mind the weather, as long as I'm home: track up the house, in with frozen wood, out with the bucket to bring in snow, the kettle on the stove, burn another odd knot. There's a rhythm to it that pleases my physical self, even the discomfort is only marginal; throw on another caribou skin and it doesn't matter that much if it's cold inside. I have some outfits, now, that I never would have imagined myself dressing up in. They work, they're not interested in fashion, and, as long as no one sees me, I'll probably not be arrested. What's the charge? "Writer Apprehended On Snowshoes, In Bathrobe, With Funny Hat." I'm not saying we profile, but there I am. I put both palms in the air, my little hands are clean, I swear. It's the world that's ugly, the cultural world, the natural world is fine, almost ok, struggles against what we throw, craps, waits for the paper-work, and survives in the occasional bird-song. Sounded like trumpet to me. I'm almost completely lost, when I strike an old logging road, with which I'm not familiar, but leads to a drainage I recognize. Close enough. I know where home is. Don't go walking after dark, unless you're sure of your space. Rather than disturb sleeping dogs I'll cut to higher ground. I know where I am, now, that nameless ridge to the north and east. I must have crossed the road, lost in thought, but I know where I am, and in some ways, that's all that's important. A scant thousand steps away. Buck up. The worst is yet to come. The consequences are merely that the house is cold, and I'm used to that. High, wide and handsome. Suits me to a tee. Nuke some chicken broth and get on with your life. That's not an angel, just another mouse caught in a trap. Don't make something out of nothing. Jackson Browne has a nice voice, a certain strain. No way you could be prepared for what actually happens. Usually I wouldn't answer the phone, but for some reason I did, and it was an old friend, we talked, as if no time had passed, but of course, time had passed, and I had no idea what was going on. An intervention? Who would know me well enough?Elvis Costello, "Ship Of Fools" sail away from me. It's later than I thought. I have to go. A date with a sleeping bag. Read more...

Philosophy Now

When you reach a certain degree of cold, all bets are off. What did Wilder say, "pass up the chairs." One thing I like about these new writing gloves Linda sent, is that they're not alike, the cabling is different. Eccleptopia. Nothing is what it seems. I found a trail of lobate sassafras leaves that looked like deer tracks, but they were merely leaves. We leap to assumptions because we want things to be true. After a day starting at zero, climbing to less than ten degrees, a day that starts at 20 seems almost balmy. Three goals today, shave (in a very cold house, I find the sweatshirt I surgically altered last winter), a quick run into town (I need the extra hike-in to carry supplies), and chainsaw a batch of doubles, so I have pieces that just need splitting. More snow, but it's fairly dry stuff and the roads aren't too bad. More tonight, more tomorrow, more the next day. Fortunately, we have a while to pack up the Circus Show, which might be necessary. Much worse than today and I just can't make it in. I was in 4-wheel drive the first five miles, out to Rt.125. I use 4-wheel drive much more here than I ever did in Colorado (above 6,000 feet). Picked up a couple of pot-pies, I can handle the fat in this weather and I love them, comfort food. This is brutal weather, most especially if I leave home, so the next four days will be a trial. Flushed a grouse, walking down, and it surprised me so much, wrapped as I was, and wrapped in thought, that I stumbled and almost fell. The truck was buried, and the heater has decided to not work. Runs fine, and there is that. The only vehicle I passed going out was a propane delivery truck and we both came to a complete stop, then crept by each other slowly. These are not even secondary roads, and the only set of tracks is right down the middle, because you can't really see the road, so when you do pass someone coming the other way, you have to kind of feel for the edge. With the propane truck, I end up off on the verge, but it's frozen solid and I'm in 4-wheel drive, so it's not a problem. Town is nearly clear, by comparison. Reverse the trip going home, I stop at the lake and shift into gear, feed the despondent ducks, huddled in the shelter house, and drive at a sedate 10 mph the last five miles. Passed no one, backed up into my spot, shouldered a maybe 20 pound pack. It's like that temperature thing. I'd much rather carry five 20 pound loads, than four 25 pound loads. If I'm carrying a load I stop an extra couple of times, there's always something to see. I often stop and read track, sometimes I almost understand, a story in the snow. The house is cold, but I kick the fire up and still have some cutting to do outside, and I just walked up the hill with a pack, so I'm heated, you know, warm. Hermeneutics is important, but firewood is critical. I'm just saying. Read more...

Later

Wearing this many layers, I have to start unbuttoning before I even feel the urge to pee. A guessing game. Some squeals, death by night. I don't even go see what. Something met its match. Zero at dawn, I scramble to get started, dump ashes, knock down the creosote, brew coffee, wrap in a blanket over my bathrobe, curl up fetal on the sofa, finish "Suttree". Cheese grits and left-over toasted biscuits for breakfast. Brutal outside, 4 degrees and windy, I have to wear a facemask, and the brimmed insulated Gortex hat with earflaps, even thus, my time outside is limited to short walks and trips to the woodshed. Dabble in Proust, madman in his cork cage, but what a style. One of my favorite phenomena happens, sparkling crystals in the air all around. They're almost weightless, so drift about. Tiny drops of moisture pulled out the air by the cold. So beautiful, filling the hollow. I think I once knew the name for this event, but I've forgotten it. Last time out for the day, I was walking toward the afternoon sun and didn't have my sunglasses, an instant headache, and I turn right around, to get back home and self-medicate. By 4 o'clock the house is almost warm, and I can shed the blanket. I finally get the stove to spike out (the oven thermometer goes to 600, the stove weights 800 pounds, a lot of stored heat) with a mixture of Osage Orange and Red Maple. If a day starts at zero or below, I don't intend to do much. Mostly I shuffle between the island, close by the stove, and the dictionary table, at the other end of the room. Today I look up 14 words, check 3 Greek mythologies (fucking Dahlberg), and spend at least an hour rereading definitions in "Home Ground", my pick as book of the decade. A great day, fairly normal, for a day I allow myself to take almost completely off. I thought about going to town, carrying a load of supplies up the driveway, but blew it off, when, at 2 o'clock I looked like a rag-picker. I don't need to improve my appearance until late tomorrow, and I need to work wood again before then, get set for the week ahead, packing up the Circus Show for a trip on the road. Then a 3 week break, during which I need to do considerable patch-and-repair, repaint the main gallery. Tomorrow is the latest sunrise of the year. Things will resolve themselves. They have a way. As mere mortals we have no mandate to know why. A game, played above our heads. To a large extent, you are what you think. I look a little strange, but I feel ok, the fact that I dress oddly doesn't mean I'm crazy. What is crazy, anyway, compared to anything else? I balance a bare life at the edge of survival, I'm not even making a point, I melt snow to make coffee as a matter of course. Melted snow makes great coffee, why would I not? I use Red Maple ice-cubes to flavor a drink. You wouldn't want to be here. Read more...

Cleaning

I gave myself a vacuum cleaner, and I vacuum whenever I can. When the dust reaches terminal mass. If you live by wood, if you live by wood then a fine ash settles everywhere. I repeat myself. That last armload of wood turns into an adventure. I want to roll a smoke but my fingers don't work. This happens if you live alone and don't give a shit. Both upper arms are sore, Eric Clapton playing John Lee Hooker. That's something. I roll over in my sleep. If that then this. No one should live this way. I'm wearing knit gloves as I speak. My outfit is a joke. I look like a nut-case, but I'm fine, beneath the disguise. Ani DiFranco. I hurt, but because I hurt I am alive. Hold that thought. Hey Joe. John Lee Hooker, "Black Snake", then Ray, I guess. Doctor John. It's all over now. Cold. Didn't get above 15 degrees today and colder tonight. I spent a few hours outdoors, came in made another pot of grits with acorn meal. Cheese grits, with chilies, is fast becoming a favorite food. Out the window snowbirds attack the sumac heads. One patch of blue opens in the overcast, sunlight on falling flakes is prismatic. One last walk. The word barren comes to mind. Harsh, stark, and barren. Drifting snow shows graves clearly, I count 19, but don't trust that, my count is always different. The next hollow over, the one I think of as Church House Hollow (because there used to be a church there, something fundamental, with no mediation between the believer and God), is almost completely obscured. I sit on my foam pad, on a stump, with my gloved hands tucked under my armpits, and consider the frozen world. Even wearing insulated Red Wings, my feet are frozen, my nose is dripping a clear liquid that freezes on my bibs, my ears are cold even under Linda's hat. Realize I need to get home. Inside, it might be 60 degrees, but probably not, I strip off a few layers, warm my hands over the stove until I can roll a smoke, retreat to the sofa with a blanket and read a few chapters of "Suttree", holding the book against my knees with a gloved hand. A bare existence. Chicken broth, with a slug of whiskey. I open a can of pork and beans, heat them on a corner of the stove, eat a small can of sliced pears while the beans heat; again, I don't use a plate, eating right from the cans, like a character in fiction. Someone's eccentric uncle. I don't correspond even to myself. The wages of independence. If I die before I wake, my soul to take. I make some biscuits because I want a vehicle for butter and jam; they're good, but not as good as my mother's. Something to do with working the dough that I don't understand, the intricacies of pastry. I understand the theory, but my hands don't get it. I make 5 lumpy biscuits, and while they're baking, I make a sausage gravy; 2 biscuits with gravy, then 2 with butter and jam, the can of beans. I can't think beyond that. I'll go to bed early and get up early and start all over again, I don't know any other way. Take the hand you're dealt. Something like a Miles Davis tune, where you just bleat once in a while. I love Miles, don't take me wrong. A bleat is often the only response. I notice I grunt more often, as I get older, I don't know what else to say. The wind is a whisper in the trees. Time invents itself. Read more...

Frigid Beauty

So lovely, cold, but no wind. I work outside for hours, with various hats, depending on how much heat I need to lose. Finally take my 'SIMPLE' cap out to the shed so that I can easily switch on and off with a watch cap to keep my ears from freezing. I hate to cover my ears, because I can't hear. Pileated woodpeckers all day, two or three of them working the neighborhood. Little snow birds are out and enjoying the day, if their song be measure, as much as I enjoy mine. A walk-about, out to the graveyard, forlorn, on a day like this. Back home I make a quick dozen cuts with the chainsaw, doubles all, gives me 24 rounds to split later, put the chainsaw away, noisy bastard. Split a bit more, but both arms are cramping just a bit. Bring a few more doubles to the shed, broom off the snow, put away the tools. Coffee, a serious early dinner of meatloaf on a bed of mashed potatoes, with mustard greens, tinned, from a small producer of Southern Food in Columbus. I meant to make biscuits, but I forgot; a heel of sliced Multi-Grain, serves as trencher. I stay suited-up, because I might want to go back out later. Comfortable in myself, a little dirty, a little sore, needing a shave, ready for a smoke and a drink. Need to get another armload of wood, for in the morning, but that can wait. I'll wear crampons for that last trip and be very careful, the back porch is a sheet of welded ice. Need to get a bag of road-salt. Should be able to drive in one day next week, cold enough and the snow is dry. The augury of things. The face that might appear in a split of poplar, the smell of piss when you split Black Oak, a flash of red in your peripheral vision, the way you pronounce Louisville, or New Orleans. My resolution is merely to survive, I have no expectation; I'd like to get some things done, but I probably won't. I'm like that rag-picker in "Suttree", living under the bridge, starting fires with packing crates, eating road-kill, and eventually freezing to death. A certain legacy. You die, someone finds you, they bury a body. What does existing mean, exactly? Not-dead? Listen, I put on crampoms, and go get an arm load of wood. Reality is such a problem. Could we just see into the future? Read more...

Serious Weather

Half-a-day at the museum and I manage to be late for that. More snow, then above freezing for the last time in the coming week. Mackletree is a sea of slush, takes me 30 minutes to go 5 miles, but I need some supplies and I might not get to town for a few days. Back-up whiskey, back-up tobacco, makings for a cream of squash soup, cream. When I get home the driveway is a mess, crampons and a heavy pack. The freeze-thaw slog. It'll be hard again tomorrow. The lake should freeze this weekend, highs in the low 20's, lows in the 10's. It was above freezing for several hours today, and there was a major occurrence of what I think of snow-fog. Evaporation, to a limited extent, the air being so saturated that the new vapor only gets 20 feet in the air before it falls back as drops. But it's a dense fog. Lovely, the way it hangs in the hollows and softens all the edges. The walk down this morning was treacherous, the layer of snow was separating from the frozen driveway, every step was an adventure. Truck covered in wet snow. The remaining ducks, and they live here year around, have taken up residency in the Park Shelter. I always stop at the lake, to re-pack my backpack, in winter, because when I park at the bottom of the hill, I want to hit the ground running. Get home. I have no stronger, what? intelligence, response, than that. Of course the power went out. No back-up heat, crank the stove, layer on clothing, move over to the island, light the oil lamps, a few festive candles, rereading "Suttree". One of my all time favorite books. Stoked the stove one last time, crawled into bed, long underwear, socks, and a wonderfully soft merino wool sweater Steph sent, along with several others, in her campaign to keep me from freezing to death. Out of bed at dawn to start another fire, cup of coffee, suit up, and outside to split kindling while the house warms. Brisk 15 degrees. New Year. A round of pine, maybe 20 inches in diameter, I reduce to small stuff for starting quick fires. I don't burn any pine, usually, but it does seem a good solution for starting fires for the next frigid week. Back inside for another coffee and cheese grits with acorn meal. Power's on. I'll send this and start another later. Read more...