Public Relations

Out in the woods, cutting paths to trees I want to drop. The green is coming on everywhere. A beautiful day, clear light, and I walked around for several hours, with nothing in mind. Looking at buds, smelling things. Officially morel season, as I found a couple, two weeks earlier than last year, but I didn't think to look this early last year, so the record is suspect. First two small morels, and what do you do with them? I stuffed them with Ricotta cheese, put a dab of butter on top, salt and pepper, ran them through the toaster-oven, ate them in small bites with a plain omelet and toast. Excellent meal. There will be many variations in the weeks to come. Lost a page last night to a sudden power outage, now, the next afternoon, a line of squalls. I'd taken the truck down earlier in the day, so I wouldn't have to slide down tomorrow morning, and also so I could look at the various species of very small flowers that punctuate the median and the verge. Nothing in my pack but the foam pad and magnifying glass. I only know a few dozen flowers, and I know nothing about these miniature varieties, but they are very beautiful. I was down at the bottom of the driveway, kneeling, bent over with the glass, when the local Deputy Sheriff drove by and saw me. Of course, he had to stop, to see what I was doing. He's stopped several times, over the years, to see what I was doing. I stop to observe drainage events, I stop to observe life and death, I drag animals off the road, I pick up trash. I'm rarely in a hurry, coming home or on my days off. I'll stop for a butterfly, or a leaf that looks like a butterfly. At the wood dump, one day last week, I stopped because some branches caught my eye. They were orange at the cuts, but they weren't Osage Orange, rather, some kind of fruit wood, and I don't know what they are. Dense, heavy fruit-wood is all I know, and I get a small load for either just burning, or smoking something, a cured pork loin or a turkey breast. When I got home (I'm still parking on the far side of the frog puddles) I carried in what groceries I had, fed the dog, took a hatchet and hammer back over to the truck, so I could split a piece and have a smell. Smelled wet and nutty, overtones of apricot. A good smell, earthy and masculine: the first wave, like some hickory nuts run over by a truck; then a wafting fruit smell, like blossoms on the wind. Lost loves are like that, a scent. We should talk about need. Big thunder storm, have to go. Terrific light show last night. Lost power and just sat in the dark, watched and listened. A good soaking rain, great for morel hunting. Good to see that the humidity in the museum this morning was a perfect 50%. Most art work likes 45-55% and temps between 68 and 70 degrees. Easier to maintain now that the boilers are shut down. Three flocks of turkeys on the way to work. It's hard to count large numbers of turkeys on the ground, they're always moving, but at least 75 birds. I was out early, such a beautiful morning, so I stopped and watched the flock that was in the State Forest, in the Mackletree burn area (from last year's fire), and they were easy to follow with field glasses. Doesn't take long to discern a pecking order. Still way early for work, so I do a small grocery shop, then stand around the parking lot at the museum, looking closely at the Oriental Pear trees. The blossoms are multiple small flowers in an umbel, and today the soft green (lovely color) leaves were beginning to break out behind and through the separate stalks that form the flower head. Nice. After the storm last night, the power still out, I moved a stump over to the end of the sofa, where my head is if I'm prone. I can read comfortably there now, in a black-out, with just the single oil lamp that has a brass frame behind to which I affixed a mirror. I could just see beyond the carpenter chest coffee table and something stuck its head out. A large skink but it frightened me and I threw a rubber ball at it, just to make it go away. Forgive me Father for I have sinned, I killed a Blue-tail Skink with A Barbie Ball. A lucky head-shot, a little blood, pooling from the mouth, I cleaned it up with a tissue and put the carcass and paper in a baggie. With an indelible marker, I drew a teardrop below Barbie's picture on the ball. Prison tattoo for a kill. On the way out this morning, I stopped and gave the skink to a crow. I didn't want Dog to eat it, and I usually just throw small dead things out in the yard, mice and such, but my experience is that dogs always throw-up after eating a lizard. They eat them anyway, but they always throw-up, great learning curve. First night that I have to put a bowl of ice (actually a re-usable freezer pack) under a fan next to my computer. The seasonal clothing saga. It was 85 degrees when I started writing, and I'll need to add some layers soon, but I started the evening out wearing thin moccasins, some boxer shorts and a wife-beater tee-shirt, all from Goodwill. The perfect model of a modern Major-general. The moccasins are duct-taped together. There's a picture, abstract, small, of three sails, on the shirt, which is purple. The boxer shorts are printed with hearts. If, for some reason, the medics had to come and get me now, I would die while they were laughing. But I live alone and it's a comfortable outfit, exactly correct for the specific environment. Direct TV calls, and they want to install a system. I'm sick of these calls, this one is from India, and I finally tell her fine, send the guys out. I know that I'm what the package delivery services call an "undeliverable address", I get packages tied to bushes on the driveway, no one gets to the top. If the Direct TV guys make it, I'll watch the Movie Channel, and the Cooking Channel, and the History Channel and stop writing. Verizon, all the rest of them, have only claimed 97%, and I've always lived in that remaining factor. However small it gets, that ratio between the rabbit and the snail, I'm fine with that. I can jump with the best of them, find my place, and who among them ever killed a skink with a Barbie ball?