Reconsideration

A given. I don't know where you're coming from. You're The Stanger to me. I have to go sleep, but I was thinking about you. The clock tells me it's six twenty. It doesn't tell me whether it's morning or night. How am I supposed to know? I just construct lines. Nothing, really, but a vague idea. I don't expect to do anything, I'm exhausted; you should hang a show like this and then see how you'd feel. If you were younger, you might go out, to celebrate, I just hike in with a jug of cheap whisky and a can of Pork and Beans. A bunch of cheap sophistications. Feeling fiesty. Maybe it's the fact that I didn't go back to bed? There's a certain graphic quality that adheres to things. The quiet that ensues when an eagle flies down the drainage; listen, I don't make this up, I saw it with my own eyes. I've learned to construct. I have a whole world I can fall back on. That other universe. Breaking dawn, what a wonderful sight. The trees take shape. Working in Arial 10, I almost imagine I can make sense. Now is tomorrow, what Modernism is. Think about it. I just get up in the morning and it's already tomorrow. The sun clears the ridge-line and there are a lot of stick trees. Winter still, but frogs making love is the first sure sign of spring. The Church of the Holy Rood. Before the rain, I get some billets cut to length, retreat back indoors, reading about the Spanish Armadas and their lousy luck. In Ireland, a favorite way of killing survivors of the numerous wreaks, was to throw them in a bog, treading them down, then stealing their clothes and whatever else could be carried off. Lightning flashes through the cleft defiles. I shut down several times. Cleaning out the fridge led to boiling the sauce which had been stored, over-winter, beneath a protective layer of pig fat. The sauce is now at least seven years old. I break up and discard the hardened top, add some wine and boil then simmer to sterilize, and end up with one quart and one pint jars filled to the neck. Starting a new season. Raining hard now, flooding in the lowlands. Coming out of town yesterday, the floodplain was awash. Finally saw one thing I had been waiting to see (a kind of life list) and had to stop, I was laughing so hard. The quarter-mile dirt racetrack, built on bottomland, floods every year at this time, and I had always imagined boat races being held there. Here was a local, a young guy in Carhartt overalls, standing at the tiller of his battered aluminum fishing boat, with maybe a 10 horse outboard motor, racing around the track. It was great, better than I had imagined. He saw me watching, when he came out the entrance ramp after doing a couple of laps, I was parked illegally on the edge of Route 852, where it feeds into Route 52 heading west. It's elevated there and the view of the track is perfect. A great place for another set of Appalachian sky-boxes: trailers on stilts. You have to admire them, really. Out of a kind of country thrift, you eliminate the entire cost of construction. Rain on a metal roof, even buffered by an insulated ceiling is a captivating sound. Infinite possibilities. A few notes of every song you've ever heard. When it slackens it's always Bach. Usually a Partita. More lightning and I should go, but I just SAVE instead and hope for the best. Oiled my boots, didn't have any of the correct stuff, but they were so dry I just fed them some mineral oil, which was the only thing I could find. The last line of thunder showers parted at the ridge, went north and south of me. I was watching closely, the lightning strikes were so dramatic. I was oiling a boot and writing you. Devised a system whereby I could hold a boot between my legs and oil it with one hand, keeping the other free to peck away at a paragraph. In that circumstance, when I need to hit two keys, I use a pencil, held in my mouth. I live alone, no one sees this, I don't know why I mention it. I think I left Mister Dye hanging. Have to read back over the last couple of days, see what I said. Fairly warm night, I let the fire burn out, the frogs are louder than the rain. Muffled as the sound is, it sounds like migrating ducks. Happy, but frenzied. Like I was, last week, hanging that show, I hadn't worked that hard in years, didn't know I still could. My feet hurt, but I could still stand. Walking in yesterday, with a pack, I didn't even stop at all the usual places, marched right up, like a Sherpa on a mission. Not to say I'm not killing myself, smoking and drinking as I do, but I enjoy this pace, this particular cadence, that I find when I have you in mind. A silly conceit. A Folly. Raise high. Barns. The Amish. Dinner in the middle of the day. Here from Storm Central, an update, flash flood warnings in all the usual places. Even my rill will be running by morning. Not everybody owns both a rill and a graveyard. A kill and a resting place. Depends on what you name things in the beginning and how well that handle holds up. One misplaced blow and a piece of history is lost, that particular handle. I wish I had eaten more today, but I was busy reading. Thank god, what is this, the end of February, and I finally have this year's Outhouse Calendar on the wall. Sara pointed out that I'd left it in her office, knew that I didn't know what year it was. I actually did know what year it was. I'm not that far out of the loop. Though I might pretend otherwise. Think of me as a kind of fallen Eagle Scout. I was good, right up to the edge, where you had to admit a prime mover. I had to take a step back. First: I don't like being told what to do; and second: handles always fail. Keeps us re-handlers in business. That, and the fact that organic evidence disappears. Eventually nothing is left, unless you live in Egypt. Another squall line moving through. I don't feel so lucky, all best to you and yours.

Tom

I'm jammed up here,
I can't receive,
the sky is falling.