More Rain

Hard rain wakes me, staccato pounding on the roof. The Allman Brothers, Statesboro Blues. A deep, thick black, the shades of hell; I have to find the edge of the back deck with my toes so I don't piss on my feet. So dark I can't see my hand. Cave dark, but electric, then lightning blinds me and I stumble back inside, grasping familiar handholds.The power goes out and I light a candle, make some illegible notes. Hen scratch. Just something I do, it doesn't make any sense. Pegi is so stressed she asks me to do the impossible and I agree that I can, but wonder if I should. Life assumes the guise of a country-western song. Harmonics, a high soprano on top, almost painful. I plan breakfast, I can't get any further than that. A cup of coffee and maybe an omelet. Most lyrics are insipid, I have to turn off the radio before I throw something across the room. Rhyme is a useless device, keyed to an oral tradition that's been dead for several hundred years. End rhyme. Internal rhyme is OK as long as you make it subtle. Send somebody, send someone. You'll never win, if you try. Love lost. I can't turn it around. What you see is what you get. I just walk in the woods, listen to the bugs and birds, it's a solace against, or maybe with, the rain. Picture in a frame. Father's Day ushers in with a bout of hard rain just after dawn. Still no power, so I rolled over and went back to sleep. Got up when it was light enough to read. A Henning Mankell novel. "The Troubled Man" which is a good way to pass a rainy day. Power comes on about mid-day, 1:12 actually, as I had to turn the computer to reset the clock. Fried a potato patty, and made a frittata with leftover veggies, a big wedge of Cincy toast. In a lull, on a trip outside, I find the first ripe blackberries, the earliest I've ever harvested. A nice bowl with a little brown sugar and cream. Wrong time for me to eat, three in the afternoon, because I probably won't eat anything else today other than some olives and cheese. Another hard rain at five. But no lightning, so I just SAVE and keep the computer on. Samara calls, they're all at the Telluride Blue Grass Festival, getting situated to listen to Robert Platt, talk to Rhea. They both sound great and I get off the phone oddly disconnected. Me, I mean, not the call. The girls are good to me, they understand why I live like I do, understand my commitment to reading and writing, but sometimes I get off the phone, I don't field a lot of calls, and I feel there's a world out there, that I know very little about. On the other hand I'm not a total recluse. There was a janitor at Janitor College, Utah, that lived in an artificial cave he'd fashioned from scrounged bricks. Crazy as a loon, but he was a good janitor; no one, ever, found out anything about him. No paper record, nothing. Wild child of the plains; and when he died, my senior year, there was no one to notify. He caught a drunk freshman, falling out a dorm window, and was killed by the impact, the drunk lived. Such are the wages of sin. I was assigned to clean out his den, because I had befriended him, taking him the occasional bottle of whiskey and plug of tobacco. He stank, lord knows he hadn't had a bath in years, and he was pricky, taking offense at everything. His cave was a model of organization, all of Faulkner and Hegel. Can't argue that. And some letters he'd written to an estranged sister and never sent. It's possible to know way to much about someone. Utah harbored feelings for a certain stripper. From the record I can't ascertain if they actually fucked, certain recordings indicate they did; but that could be a red herring. Every record can be altered. Really, I don't know anything about you, and your fucking questions.