Cleared Out

Cleared out and exhausted. Did my laundry and got home before noon. Started a little fire, split a little wood, made scalloped potatoes as I had stabilized the oven temp at 400 degrees burning small sticks of red maple and letting them almost burn out. Potatoes need 35 minutes, there about. Having a clumsy day, running into things, dropping, spilling. The potatoes are good, I fry a small steak. Nice to be back in the presence of the stove. Saw two movies on Hulu during the past week. "A Simple Curve", nice Canadian award winner, about a handmade furniture shop, father son thing. "The Wooly Boys" about a couple of old sheepherders, Peter Fonda dies. If I wrote, like I know I should, in Word, then export from there, I'd have a better record and I could just file everything by date. Eliminate titles completely. Down With The Aristocracy. Yes, all the low lands are flooded, water everywhere. All the drainages are swollen and clogged. Tis the season. We've haven't seen the end of it, more big rains in the forecast. The ridge is good, the driveway holding. I actually drove up in two-wheel drive without a problem. Surprised to see a dusting of new snow from yesterday's flurry. Never even stuck in town, the surfaces still too warm. Manage to get the house fairly warm, maybe 60 degrees, before dark. The moon, not quite a ghostly galleon, more like an ad for a high-tech kayak, a narrow crescent, but in that phase when it looks like a boat, dips down into stick trees. Nice thirty-second commercial for a small boat-building company would have it in the background. A picture, you know, all those words. Cleaned up my act at the museum, brought most of my stuff home. Pegi's getting assistant soon and I've been using that office to write in, so I brought the first pile of books and papers home. I have to keep everything sorted in piles to correspond with co-equal piles, here, now, home, where I am. Armload of books that I didn't have an immediate place to put; so I piled them on the island, knowing I'd have to do something with them before I fixed dinner. Force my hand, so to speak. One of the few systems that works for me. It would dodge the issue to say I was 'Old School' because that implies a campus or process of thought. Empirical measurement works for me too, I'm seldom without a tape measure. Since I've been smitten with Specific Gravity, the last couple of years, I always want to know how large something is, so I can calculate its weight. Tables, and formulas I use for this, I keep as loose sheets, folded in half, held by a rubber band. It's always under the top book on the southeast corner of the book-table behind me when I write. I need to get it a box, because it grows; a book sized box, then it could not only carry its own, but function like everyone else in that particular stack, carrying the load. Something about the ridge, always gets me thinking. The absolute solitude is a factor, the fact that you don't speak to anyone else, and look out every window on a completely barren landscape. Complex, but a good period, the way thought collapsed in that last sentence. Sometimes I is unavoidable, if you're being honest. You can be honest in other ways, but we're not talking about that, we're talking about being true to yourself. Whatever twisted monster that might be. You and your broomsticks. You and your pom-poms. You and your cheerleaders in short skirts. I'm not that kind of guy, usually. I don't need the press, trying to stay under the radar, and that means not getting arrested for anything. I've got red-herrings and false identities backed up. This me could be a surrogate me I'd planned months ago, to make you think a certain way. Probably a ruse. Which finials as the rose, by any other name. Commander Jack smashes through the optically perfect plate glass, snatches the painting, and is away; even though we're watching we marvel at his dexterity. No one should be able to do that. Pour cleanly from a bottle when his daughter's climbing an un-climbable face behind us. but now we have to get down. Raising kids is never easy. The rules change all the time. What you can say, what you can do. Almost nothing, really, a jump-start at best. Get you on the way. Slip Basho in your backpack.