Marginally Better

Start a day with a couple of hours shoveling heavy wet snow, and breaking up the ice underneath where people have walked and the rest of the day is a piece of cake. Pegi had a performance tonight and two tomorrow, she asks me to please stay at the museum so I can lock up and look after things. Fine, I say, but I really have to run out to the ridge tomorrow for a couple of hours, make sure things are ok, get some clean socks. Getting colder, again, and the roads are terrible. As soon as the show was over tonight, I sent her home and dealt with the adrenalin crazed, sugar fueled cast. Finally got everyone out of the building, did a little clean-up. Need to haul trash tomorrow, clean a bit more, and restock the bathrooms. My floor is again a mess, what with road-salt footprints and cupcake icing in the grout joints. D and I talked logistics today, as the two main shows come down at the end of the month, another comes in for upstairs, the downstairs is black for a month, for major patch, repair, and painting. A long list of things that need to be done. Care and feeding of your facility. I miss the ridge, the wildness of it, not the brutality of the life, but that sense of being deeply embedded in the natural world. I've lived that way for so long, so close to the edge, that I'm accustomed to whatever degree of discomfort, in exchange for a life in which there is no mediation. A classic debate, the pope or bishop or landlord tells you what you can or cannot do, as opposed to doing what you damned well please to do, with the attendant dangers. I thought this hiatus would answer some questions, instead, there are only more issues. After all these years alone, I have trouble compromising. I'd rather die in a tree-tip pit, heating beans in a can, than listen to a sermon. After work, before the evening performance, I go over to the pub for a pint. Lively conversation. Astra is a thing of beauty, the way she moves breaks my heart, when she pops Isaac with a towel, I think, oh please, step on me.