Relative Experience

Early morning patter of rain on a metal roof. Something Whitehead said, in "The Function Of Reason", that it, reason, restrains the aberrations of the mere undisciplined imagination. I consider myself a sort of lay expert in matters of undisciplined imagination. Maybe it's just acid flashbacks but I really do spend more time, now, sitting on a stump, marveling at the interconnectedness of things. Dog seems to understand that I also have a relationship with fox, or fears that I'll stop feeding her mashed potatoes dressed with bacon fat, and there's a delicate balance, a quivering sub-text, where none of us know what's going on. You can lie all you want, but truth will bite you on the ass. Despite apparent transparency almost everything is opaque. Even the frogs are a mystery to me. Experience teaches I know almost nothing. There's a painting, a reclining nude (there's a name even for that), that hangs in my house, I look at it several times a day, it's always fresh, I never see it the same way. Like that stream, never the same way twice. Never, even, once. The Greeks are important because they first posit the questions. The questions are the same. Why do you? What do you? Why? Crocus were blooming in the bed outside the post-office, they were beautiful, lovely spring color after a brutal winter. My expectations aren't very high, I want to do the dishes, wash my hair and shave; my goal is to not make waves and be in the moment. When the days are short, you start and stop in the dark. Everything else is gravy. Daylight is a blessing. Back to sleep for a couple of hours, up at dawn, and the house is warm enough to wash my hair. A second cup of coffee looking at maps. I've got to go to Western Colorado for Samara's college graduation. Rhea graduates high school the following week. I can't possibly stay for both, and I didn't attend my own high school graduation, I was already a week into my first season of professional theater. I'll fly Rhea here, to spend a week with me, as a graduation present; I think she'll go for it, and everyone here wants to see her. She held court, in the library at the museum, the last summer she spent with me, and everyone fell in love with her. She can help me carry firewood. She might end up here, after I'm gone. She could live this life. No one else would want to. The girls could probably sell this place to either a wealthy hunter or even to the State Forest, as it is an in-holding, they'd want it bad. I've been doing more research on body disposal. If you will your body to a medical school, as a cadaver for dissection, they pay all expenses and you end up with the same bucket of ashes. You don't, someone else does. I'm leaning in this direction. Eliminates that whole mortuary thing. After the whole evisceration and cremation, at a raucous party, when the frogs were fucking, and the Grateful Dead were blaring, they could spread my ashes on the compost heap. The algorithm that results in the least possible bother. Maybe there'd be a bidding war, for the body of an aging hippy who had smoked pot almost every day for 45 years. You never know. I might be worth more dead than alive. My great failing, in chess, is that I don't see far enough ahead.