Some Questions

How do you deal with the dead and dying? What do you say to the living? Is there a simple response to the idle question 'how are you doing?' Can one pone of cornbread possibly be better than another, when each is made exactly the same way. Yes, of course, everything is always different. Hey, just saying, the process changes. The exact temperature of a cast iron pan, the precise amount of buttermilk, the relative humidity. The nature of things is that they change, that water in which you place your foot. Running downhill, I stay ahead of my mistakes, easy enough, if you keep moving. Dancing the scree, we call this, staying one step ahead. whip-o-wills be damned. Something I wanted to say, but I've forgotten whatever it was. About staying the course, bearing the curse in mind, slipping on the loose shale. All the explanations are full of shit. The Diet Of Worms is a bunch of smug assholes deciding what we need to hear. I don't buy it. The fucking equation is shot through with holes. What I believe is blackberries setting fruit, because there's been enough rain. The honeysuckle is blooming on Mackletree, and it smells wonderful. I've never felt more special, than to not have air-conditioning and drive slowly, with the windows down. Does smell really matter? I'd argue that it does, but I'm an empirical guy, always looking for blackberries on the cane. Simple cause and effect: rain, open ground, it might be a good year. Talk with Glenn about the movie we're thinking about. We have to do this. Docenting the rain. These appear to be mere puddles, but if you look closely. Looking closely is the key. You start to notice things, and the view changes. Simple Venn Diagrams become a pattern. Kaylee's ass becomes one of the wonders of the world. Like that. Kim was here last night, on his way to an F1 race in Montreal. Met at the museum, I'd gone to town to do my laundry, then ridgeward, where he parked the rental car at the bottom of the hill and we drove up in the truck. The laundromat was a laugh, 13 other people there, all ages, and all of them seriously obese. Seriously hot day, 95 degrees, so I spent a couple of hours at the museum, in air conditioning, watching Hulu and finishing a decent book on language and the printed word. I made us a good dinner, ribs and mashed potatoes and slaw, then we talked into the night. He actually had a couple of small drinks, which I don't think he ever had. Brought a bottle of Jim Beam Black, for me, and a couple of bottles of his brother's mead. Kurt is a home-brewer like Marilyn and I used to be, cases of something coming out of the rotation every week. This batch of mead is labeled 520, being the 520th five-gallon batch of alcoholic beverage he'd brewed. I'm probably close to that, but I never kept very good records. He knows what all of them were, too, which is amazing. All my notes might fill one of those horrid spiral notebooks that catch of the edge of your pocket. But for years I've just used a folded piece of paper. I'm precise in my folding, I may be one of the best folders ever; and I always have, in my pocket, a sheet folded to eighth's, and a pen. I could make note. But I don't, very often, keep any record. Mostly there are lists, of things to get,or things to do, maybe the occasional word that caught my fancy, sometimes a mention of some process that I wanted to know more about. Every day is a mind-field. Where to take the next step. Linda intimated, by something she didn't say, that it was possible to make sense. I accept that as a given. Otherwise there is no reason I'd be spending this time writing you. I really must justify my existence, however weak the framing. You mean more to me than I mean to you. I see that. Makes it hard to talk directly. You with your puppets and me with mine.