Traces

I miss-represent myself. I don't wear a coon-skin hat, I've never scalped anyone, I just walk slowly and stumble on small purple flowers, miniature violets that probably have a specific name. Even though Latin is my other language, I don't know the name. I hide in my embarrassment. Another day, another performance, you become whatever is necessary. I have to think about this, whatever is necessary. Some yard work, some reading, eat breakfast several times, collect a nice bag of morels, 18 of them, half fairly large. Three meals. Once on toast, once in an omelet, and once in herbed butter with a small steak. One-third leafed out. The Black Walnut trees are budded. They are the most careful: limits their growing season to six months at this latitude. I repair a dead chair with a miniature Spanish Windless. I like the old chair but it was to thin and multi-repaired to drill out and replace rungs, and the middle bottom stretcher was busted. I have a nice collection of bits of rope, found a piece of quarter-inch hemp and whipped the ends with a needle and linen thread, dipped them in binding glue. Used a stout little split of Osage Orange, to twist the loop tight, caught the tensioned end of the stick under the back stretcher and tied it off with a piece of twine. A dynamic system, under tension, caught in time. I looked at it for a while, it's a frozen event, with a large amount of stored kinetic energy. Chair as battery. When I was doing my Post Doc, writing my second book "The Janitor IS History", and shivering through a winter on Hokkaido, there was interesting professor, Applied Physics, Mr.Muti, small, trim man that exuded an aura of confidence. He had bungee-corded the tree-tops together and there was a weight involved, a big rock with a ring-bolt, and somehow, with a system of pulleys, this drove a belt, and the belt turned a cogged gear that engaged another cogged gear, and this huge fucking millstone starts turning. It's twelve feet in diameter, two feet thick, covered with these runes that predate anything that's that's ever been uncovered. Turned an alternator, charged some batteries. Since then, I've always been interested in very large fly-wheels. Not a very efficient system, energy loss everywhere, but it doesn't have to be efficient. All of my printing presses were powered by a foot-treadle turning (often elegant) cast iron fly-wheels. I always thought that system rather elegant. Between rounds of cutting brush today, I looked at some really beautiful letter-press books, they were a joy to the hand and eye. On my breaks from working outside, I listen to mid-day news shows on NPR until I get moderately depressed, and go out looking for morels. New green growth makes the hunting more difficult, but you learn to notice the cod-piece bulges beneath soft young leaves. I find enough to smother a small piece of meat, cooked an artichoke mid-afternoon, just steamed it, so I could eat it cold at dinner. Reading, at a meal like this, is a challenge; I have to clean my hands many times. I manage, because I'm experienced at this, reading at every opportunity. I carry a book in my back pocket because I might be caught in an elevator. I change this book every month, I don't even look, I have a pile of things, I don't want to know. I like to be surprised.