Against the Current

It was moving upstream was the issue here. You'd always been able to float downstream, a log and a paddle. Whatever proto-rudder you could arrange. Marie indicates the sixth suite shoud be played on five strings. That can't be a mistake. James McMurtry, "Can't Keep My Hands Off You" out of the blue, late night radio. I love the way random comes into play. A river boat that could go downstream at 8 knots, might come upstream at 4. I often gauge the strength of the Ohio at 4 knots. Sometimes I throw in ping-pong balls and do some calculations. Another storm. Two two-and-a-half hours to get the house cool enough to turn on my computer, and now there's a storm. Save. Power goes out, the AC unit had gotten the house (that part of it where I write) cool enough that by nine, as thunder shuck the house, I might be able to write. An amazing shot of lightning across the bow, sounded like a howitzer, scalded my retinas. Then rain, as if the lightening had ripped open a seam. But it passes through quickly, on its way to Huntington. Packets, isn't a particular class of boats, size or anything else. My gleaning, for the most part, is that it was a boat that delivered mail, and they were radically different in conformation, for where they had to go, what they were doing; otherwise, because carrying mail didn't pay the rent.They had to earn a living. I forget devising. When D thinks I'm wasting time, I'm actually looking into the inner workings of early steam engines, long ago on whatever body of water. Heat lightning. The weather is unrelenting. Emily and Thoreau are correct, it is the natural world that frames our conduct. It all comes down to a dragonfly, hovering, or an embedded tick. How well prepared you are, to deal with the world. I stake no claims, I can't even climb a ladder anymore, I could only pilot a riverboat by dead reckoning. Where I thought that bar to be. It's difficult to project. I think I could have been. The past, pluperfect. An imagined past, probably, but something, nonetheless. Other than nothing. What we keep butting our head up against.