Considering

I don't think of myself as laid-back, I think I'm almost manic. It's almost tomorrow and I haven't finished yesterday. Whip-o-wills clamoring, a faint light in the east, I must admit to another day. Birds drive me crazy, the concept of song. Bach gets it right, the fugue state; Miles Davis, "Kind Of Blue", Greg Brown may be our best current song writer; and this time of year, you'd be a fool to not listen to new leaves in the wind. Up at four, Little Sister had treed a coon, I had to walk her down the driveway, to give the coon a chance to escape, then feed her an extra meal so she would forget about the whole thing and go back to sleep. Knowing there is no chance of further sleep for myself, I read a while, then reread and edit myself. Several things make me laugh out loud. I've laughed a lot in the last 24 hours: being with Liz and D, then laughing at myself. The bad humors are migrating north, where they can suffer the black flies and mosquitos that grow to the size of small birds. In the glooming I find a wonderful sense of centeredness, the me, sitting in this chair, that is experiencing this dawn. I mull it over, with a bowl of cheese grits, and a first cup of coffee, spiked with a shot of whiskey, to make the transition from night into day. The issue of solitude came up with Liz, she wondered was I lonely. The easy answer is no, I don't miss the ten thousand compromises that compose a relationship. I've always been eccentric, and it's getting worse. I live in a narrow world, in many ways, but it allows me to open out (Olson) which feeds me what I need. The mandate, from early on, was to tighten the loop, eliminate everything possible. Still, there is compromise; working full time, in town, no place to pee but the urinal in the Men's Room, I'm using more water, because I have to flush. I hate flushing. A waste of resource. Almost sunset, the wind sprung up from the west, and the saplings danced; you had to be there, but it was just me, and a dog that wondered what I was watching. Brisk wind in early spring and the new leaves look like satin, glistening in patterns. A shimmer. The last couple of miles, into my place, was so intense, I had to stop several times and clean the windshield: the world explodes, and you're doing what exactly? Nothing means more than the natural world. What you see is what you get.