Rain Delay

Needed to work in the yard but it rained all day. Spent hours looking at prehistoric art. Marshack's great book "The Roots Of Civilization" and several texts I got on inter-library loan. One of the reference librarians has started asking me questions, but my answers seem to confuse her. She asked what my specific interest was, I talked about time-factoring for a few minutes, how the seasons were depicted in certain cave paintings, how that told those early nomads when what was where. I'm so deep into this subject that it's off-putting, I almost sound academic, but that's just a product of the of the jargon. Every subject, every occupation, has a jargon, it's inescapable, because you have to name things to be able to talk about them. The first time you do something new, sailing, pounding nails, plumbing a house, little of the technical aspects make much spoken sense, there's often an entire new vocabulary that must be learned. Of the dozens of various ropes of a schooner, none of them is called a rope, they all have names. It occurs to me that I take life one paragraph at a time, almost literally. Just heard the honorable Mr. Barber, the Governor of Missip, on the radio, and the way he sounded, I'm sure I met him once, at the bookstore in Oxford Ms. Everything sidetracks. It's a hypocritical rationalization to say I got anything done today. Did make an excellent mushroom soup. I had brought in some store bought mushrooms, several varieties, crash sale, as they were well beyond their prime, but perfect for what I had in mind: a creamy mushroom soup. I barely trimmed them, brushed off the dirt, put them on the simmer in a couple of cans of chicken stock, salt and pepper. I didn't add any aromatic herb, wanted just an earthy mushroom thing. Cleaned the morels. I use an artist's brush with a fairly soft bristle. Fried them gently in butter. Let the other batch cool, I'd cooked them slowly for an hour, and when they'd cooled, I ran them through the blender, back to the pot, then added the morels (cut into fractal half-moons) and a big hit of cream. I fry several rounds of home-made polenta in olive oil, put them in the bottom of a bowl, cover them with the soup. An extraordinary meal. The soup, full of trace everything, is probably not that nourishing, as a meal, not much protein; as a first course, it would be fantastic, but you'll need a starch. I like using the polenta, because you can slice off a bite with the edge of your spoon and still get the soup straight. But you could put a grain in the soup, before the blender. Acorn meal would be good. Too calm outside, an electric smell, I may have to go, soon, but there was something else, another dream. I don't dream often (that I remember) sleep, for me, is usually a black hole and then I wake up, confront the day. I have systems and back-up systems, which usually don't include cops with funny hats. I'm still pissed. Bastard. I can drown my sorrows but how does he live with himself? A dream where I was holding on to a rope and everything below me was crumbling. I can understand being disabled by panic attacks, I can barely climb a ladder any more. I sometimes understand the content and intent of a specific dream, some things are obvious, but often I don't have a clue. Dreams are message- boards, but the notes are cryptic, almost as though they were in another language. Which they are. In. The whole spread of meaning comes into play. Look at those cave drawings again.