Another Event

James, being generous, predicts that I shouldn't get over five inches of new snow. I need to clean the fridge tomorrow, later today, and boil some drinking water. I have everything to make a risotto with butternut squash. I could eat that for days. I certainly could cook a pot of beans and make a pone of cornbread. I brought in some mustard greens tonight, they weigh almost nothing, I have an idea about cooking them with a few strips of bacon, some chilies, an onion, and lots of garlic. Greens From Hell. I need to work up some wood, mostly to get outside. One of the best things about living alone is that you don't have to explain yourself, monad of the particular; you dance by yourself, in a corner, running a riff that either someone gets or they don't. The only reason I understand anything is that I happened to be there. I'd rather not, what I'd rather is just be alone. The snow is falling. The visible becomes less visible. Good call, getting home, I can burrow under down. At dawn, only three inches. Start a fire, go outside, scoop the canning kettle full of snow, put it on the stove, and go back to bed. Very tired after a difficult week, I sleep until after 8 o'clock, get up, scoop more snow. I need to do a smallish hand-wash, some socks and underwear. Start a second kettle (3 gallon stainless steel soup pot) of snow melting. The first hot water I use to wash dishes, clean the sink, scour the drain-board, then I put clothes in the soup pot, with a modest dose of detergent, keep it on the stove and stir vigorously with a large wooden spoon. Repeat with rinse water, then wring everything as dry as possible and hang on coat-hangers from cast iron skillets hanging from a beam near the stove. Not only do I thus generate clean socks and underwear, but add precious moisture to the air. I continue melting snow, use the next batch for a sponge bath, and the one after that to soak and clean my feet. Then clip my toe-nails and slather on more of the arnica ointment. This stuff really works, the swelling is down, the bruising is diminished; a small bit of flex no longer makes me cry. Other people tell me I have a high pain thresh-hold, I don't know, I have nothing, internally, to compare: when I encounter pain, my eyes leak and I swear a lot. I think of this as a normal response. My Dad was a Navy Hospital Corpsman and he always took care of minor injuries, took us to the Base Hospital if we needed stitches or that wonderful codeine cough medicine (I loved the taste, and it made the Classics Illustrated comics come alive), so I have a kind of mental triage chart that I use when I damage myself. People ask me if I've been to a doctor and I usually say no, I haven't, because I know there isn't much treatment for a lacerated iris, or a broken toe. Ok, sure, it's going to heal crooked, but I'm not a foot model and it doesn't matter; I might need wider shoes, so what? those are available. Petty concerns compared to what's outside the window, stark winter snow and dark trunks: the branches are a crazy quilt. It's only a matter of weeks before the frogs will fuck again, and the seasons will turn over again. And then there's the show. I left, yesterday, before the opening, as is my want, I rarely attend openings, now. I used to dress for them, and attend with a frozen smile, but I longer do, now I just go home and build a fire, get a drink, and write you. I'm happier than I've ever been. A bird flew into a tree outside my window, a male Cardinal, and the color was so extreme I almost cried. I reread a book today, a reprint, 1998, from a 1903 original, "The Riddle Of The Sands" Erskine Childers, one of there great books ever. I often leave, just when things are starting, a matter of habit. It's up to you. Formerly, I thought I had some control; evidentially not.