The Season

Wind and bird-shit. You sit in one place long enough. I start a small fire to leech some nuts while I crawl under my house. Never underestimate the janitor. Rule One. I listened to the cello suites, Rostropovich, over the course of a rainy day, rereading sections of the excellent book by Eric Siblin on the suites. There's a transcription of the 5th suite in Bach's hand (called the most beautiful flowing hand in music) for the lute. We actually don't know which was first. Change the water on the acorns. The yellow ones don't seem as bitter. Anthony and I were having a beer the other day and there was an ad on the bar TV for the USPO Flat Rate Boxes. I recounted that Joel had sent grits and corn meal in one. Anthony immediately thought about things you could ship. He thought we should cast a block of lead the size of the box. I still have the one Joel sent and measure it, do the math. Cast lead specific gravity is 11.55, a cubic foot would weigh 708 pounds. The box would hold a piece almost exactly a third of a foot, so a 236 pound block. I don't think they'd take it. I heard the lute version (Sylvius Weiss) and it is amazingly lush compared to the spare 5th suite, especially as the final suite is so ecstatic, so glorious. But I love the 5th too, because it always reminds me of change-ringing. I decide to put some books away and it leads to the usual mess of getting more books out than I actually put away, leading to a net gain in clutter and a day in which I manage to read for eight hours. Hey, it's raining. I only go outside to pee and then feed the dog. She's very confused about being a mother. Raising hundreds of pigs, I never had a confused mother, but the two or three times I've been around a first-time dog mother, they've been too inbred or something, they just don't get it. I spend half-an-hour in the dirt explaining nursing techniques. I think Little Sister gets it, but I'm not sure. Raining hard, I may miss a day of work because of bad driveway, though I could probably get down in four-wheel low. I choose to not use four-wheel low, except in emergencies, you need to draw the line somewhere. I can always reread "As I Lay Dying" or one of those gothic early McCarthy's. I need to cook something I can eat for the rest of the week. Essentially, I blew off the entire day thinking about the difference between the 5th and 6th Cello Suites. A straight line journey. From the inside.