Insatiable

Eating at a record rate. Bottomless pit. Everything in the fridge, then a nice breakfast to top things off. One thirty in the morning and I'm wiping egg yolk off my chin and laughing at my appetite. I almost make another pan of biscuits before I just call it quits. Enough already. Leave something for tomorrow. Ambitious plans, maybe lunch at the pub, work on the path down to that dead oak, something hot and filling for dinner, read a while, write. The way my time is constellated. I need to get below the flood-wall, see what's washed ashore, walk the debris line and poke among the rubble. It's what I do. Get back up and don't build a fire, seems warm, is, because a burned a large Osage Orange knot in that early morning stoke. Excellent. Suit up and cut half the Mackletree wood, bust it in half, then off to town to get a few things, wash socks and underwear, stop at the library, the liquor store, lunch at the pub, D comes in, he's letterpress printing at a shop in town. Go visit the shop, to check the facilities, and it's almost exactly like the shop where I apprenticed, filthy, ink everywhere, always amazed me that anything clean could come out of such a place. Odd phenomenon, hard freeze while the rivers were high, and then the water receded leaving sheets of ice draping every hummock and bush, it's lovely, stretching across the soy-bean fields to the Ohio. Stop at the lake to examine the rotten ice. On Mackletree I pick up two boles of white oak that I can barely lift, I'll have to split them to get them home from beyond the puddles. I need to stop and get one or two of these every day, I can depot them at the bottom of the hill, and bring them up on a moment's notice when the driveway is snow-free and frozen. Split the wood I cut this morning and it's beautiful solid-heart red oak. I feel better about my wood supply. Easily a cord of pre-cuts, just sitting there, on Mackletree; I still will cut a path to the dead chestnut oak, but the almost emergency edge is taken off. This new oak is so straight-grained that I can split it with just the hatchet, kneeling on my prayer pad of foam. Life is good, I'm warm, and there's a pile of wood. I reconfigure my ingredients and make a large casserole of ground chuck, egg noodles, tomatoes, onions, peppers, all cooked separately, then baked under a layer of cheese. Sinful, but very good, and filling, which is the point. Glenn and I used to eat something like this, at a bar/restaurant where we had poetry readings once a month, The Binnacle?, back on old Cape Cod. Where I met my future and now past wife. Recipes are a kind of memory, reconstructing history by tastes. What it sounded like. Squealing rats and raucous crows.