Fog

A giant rope of fog on the Ohio, about half-way up the towers on the new bridge, so maybe 150 feet in the middle tapering down as it approached the banks. Very thick. Walked the debris line and found some interesting sticks. Saw a squirrel get hit by a car on my way back to the truck, took it down to the river and skinned it out; a meal for the dog, maybe two meals if I make a gravy and add some egg noodles. Still no one to feed her while I'm gone. Spent another afternoon photographing the permanent collection yesterday, then several hours in the vault today, identifying pieces. When this chore is done, I will have seen and handled every piece at the museum. An extremely attractive young woman in the museum today, with regal carriage, and, of course, she was one of Pegi's girls, from the Cirque program. Posture should still be taught. And Rhetoric. Fencing was a required course at Janitor College. The reasoning, quite zen (and correct) was that after a day of crawling in boilers, sweeping, mopping, looking down for loose change, you needed to stand upright, get centered, and breathe with the various organs aligned. I wasn't very good with the foil, too much lunge for me, but I was hell with the saber. Not much of a poker, but I'm a mean slasher. Harvesting sugar cane and harvesting tobacco are a lot alike. You bend, and with a very sharp implement you cut them as close to the ground as possible. Very like a janitorial position. Oops, this is one of those places, when if you talk off the top of your head, there are a great many directions possible. Maybe I should say janitorial posture. But that bifurcates too, two to, which reminds me of a certain ballerina. But that's another country, and besides, the witch is dead; or whatever those lines are. I can't make any sense, sometimes it's maddeningly just beyond my grasp. Just now, I was putting together a ham and bean soup, lots of onion and garlic, in the crock pot, to cook overnight, and I thought: I still read Levi-Strauss, knowing, as I said it out loud, that I was at least two schools behind: I still cook, and gather at least some of my ingredients. I hate to even mention, I had some morels in a thickened gravy, tonight, that were Best In Show. When I cooked the egg noodles for Little Sister I cooked some extra for myself. Despite what the dog thinks, I am not here merely to feed her, I have my own needs. I wish I remembered how I made the gravy, but I was already writing you, and I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. It was a butter sauce and I thickened it and added some things. Some fresh dill, because I had some, a few drops of hot sauce, I don't remember which one, I have an arsenal of hot sauces.This meal was so good I remembered past lives. Phone out, so no SEND. Loaning out an iconic Carter watercolor, "Jesus Wept", so I rummaged around and found some wrapping materials. The woman that does some of the cleaning used the wrong stuff on the upstairs bathroom floor and left it slicker that an ice-rink. I had to mop twice with cleaner, then four rinses, to make it less deadly. Sartre said that is only through the consciousness of the reader that the writer can regard himself as essential to his work. I was reading Sartre, sitting outside at the Dairy Bar, waiting for my monthly footer (sauce, mustard and cheese, standard hereabouts) and onion rings, when a local walked by and asked if I was a preacher and I asked him why he thought that. He said, well, you was reading a book. Structuralism attempts to articulate the codes that govern various kinds of communication. Roland Barthes, maybe quoting Saussure. I didn't tell the hillbilly that. Just an enigmatic negative. When I get home I have to feed the dog before I can eat in peace. She enjoyed the squirrel and noodles. And I enjoyed my footer and rings, eating with just my right hand, holding a book in the left, "A Perfect Red", sent to me by someone, a history of the cochineal red. Excellent non-fiction, sticking close-by her subject. Amy Greenfield. Saving a book sent by The Utah Kid for the trip. It's a huge thing, two generations of Amazon ethno-botany. I may buy an inexpensive camera, take some pictures. I don't have a single picture of the houses I designed and built, or just built, from architect plans, in Colorado. Some very nice places, running from folksy cabins to high tech Telluride. I don't have many photographs of my life after Cape Cod, 1978. I don't think there's a single shot from the 10 years in Missip (I built three houses there, six barns, dozens of out-buildings), and I didn't take a single shot on the Vineyard. Other people have photographed some of these places, it would be possible to reconstruct a time-line. I'm still on this track, even though it was not the question, about the missing year 2007, the track was interesting speculation. I've left a trail, not extensive but it exists. I've planted more trees than I've cut down, that has to count for something. I use rainwater for most of my needs, and pour it back outside; compost everything and assumed responsibility for an overly frisky dog because there was food going to waste. It's not that I even think about it, living lightly on the world, I do it without thought. Little Sister will certainly eat the bones so I cook the squirrel forever, then add the noodles and thicken the sauce.