Cold Vacancy

No longer actually raining, but water dripping from every flat surface. Bug noise. The occasional acorn falling. A coyote or maybe just a wild dog, some canid, stirs Little Sister from her sleep, and she wakes me with her grumbles. I long for a cork-lined vault, running water, and a thermostat. I've suffered enough that I could expect creature comforts from here on out. A crossroads with myself. I'm not depressed exactly, but not happy enough to argue. A stranger here. Isolation. You keep your distance, I'll keep mine. Life is a blues song, love lost, a train in the distance, a dog that can't sleep. Make me an angel. To believe in this living is a hard way to go. If I had my way. John Lee Hooker. Have to get up, to quiet the dog. I keep a small pile of throwing rocks on the deck and run a coon off the compost pile with a couple of tosses. Dog had an unfortunate run-in with a coon, so she just stands back and barks. Fully awake (at 2:30) I roll a smoke and get a short drink, consider my demesne. Domain. In a way, moving to town would be the conclusion of a syllogism. Acorns falling, hit the woodshed roof with a sharp report. I'd need a quiet place in town. I'm so used to solitude and quiet. We'll see what this next winter is like, buying some firewood, using more electric heat, stocking the larder, taking some time off. But I want to write more, a couple of projects that involve actual editing, and the Mississippi book, from which I recently found some pieces. I thought I'd lost the whole damned thing, but parts were published, and I found, in an old book-bag, a section, 12 pages, about Aunt Pearl, that is very funny. All true, though it reads like fiction and she really did the best fried chicken in the known universe. Even at the end, when she was buying everything they sold on late night TV, and sending the rest of her money to tele-preachers wearing thousand dollar suits, she could fry chicken. I watched her. But I still can't do it. Hand to eye there I'm not familiar with. She knew when to turn the chicken, and I was barely old enough to vote. Young people are stupid and make mistakes, there was a time I thought I knew everything. I'm satisfied now I know almost nothing.