Soundscape

A disturbance in the night. Something woke the dog and she woke me. Probably not nothing, but nothing I can see. 48 degrees at 2:42 in the morning and I can't get back to sleep. This is when I need a hobby, like tatting or something, knitting, instead I take my haunted soul outside and stare at stars, then go back inside and roll a smoke. Nothing is an empty field. An intellectual construct. I stack boxes, mop floors. It keeps me focused on the thing itself, which is an ephemeral puff of smoke. I'm fine with that, the delicate nature of things, but I hate not sleeping. One more night alone. One among several thousand, so it shouldn't be a surprise, but I'm feeling lonely right now, and the darkness spreads like a pool of coolant beneath a punctured radiator. Bill Evans raises my spirits, then I listen to a Bach partita. I'm about to lose my mind. Nothing makes any sense. Miles on trumpet someplace in the distance. Edgar Meyer transposing the Cello Suites to the double bass. Buddy Rich. The incredible way things progress. The ongoingness. Finally get back to sleep. Before I went to bed I changed the water on the acorns, took them out of the crock-pot and started a batch of grits; before I went back to sleep I started a small fire in the cookstove and put the acorn pieces in the oven to dry. Slept well, the second time around, got up, made a double espresso, ground the acorn pieces to a coarse meal in the little food processor I got at The Goodwill, mixed it into the grits in the crock-pot. Took out maybe three-quarters of a cup, mixed in maybe half a cup of grated cheddar, nuked it while I fried an egg. Lots of fresh ground pepper. Excellent. I make a cucumber-yogurt soup for later, cucumber, chicken stock, water, yogurt and dill. Having a merry old time in the kitchen, I cut up three onions and caramelize them, 45 minutes stirring onions, then watching carefully, continue cutting them until they dry out almost completely and dissolve in your mouth. I'll crumble these on the soup. I took out a measure of the onions at the perfectly caramelized stage and had them on toast with another egg. I want to make a country pate, the ultimate finger food, but I don't have the things I'll need: I'll have to get Ronnie or Bear to get me a couple of squirrels. My favorite pate is 1/3 squirrel, 1/3 chicken livers, and 1/3 mushrooms, as the major ingredients, with onion, garlic, a stick of butter, a little nip bottle of brandy, pine nuts and a touch of nutmeg. The light has become slanted and flirtatious. I walked down, then back up the driveway, watching the light and smelling the desiccation of fall. Dried leaf dust, what charred pollen is still around, the various scat I can't identify. The world was fresh for me. A good time to take a walk. But I did have to blow my nose when I got home. It sounded like a trumpet, and that reminded me of other sounds. I was in the marching band four years running, in undergraduate school, I played the tuba, maybe I thought I'd marry a blond from the upper mid-west,  but I ended up with a large horn and no friends. Go figure.