Still Later

I just compose blocks of text. It's what I do instead of otherwise having a life. Never fails to engage my attention, or rather, I don't do it unless it engages my attention, I read, instead. Reading usually leads to writing. A pretty simple way to order your life, if you don't mind being alone for much of the time. My friend Kim, who also lives alone, works a job, always has a building project, plays guitar and writes songs, carves incredible spoons, and is the construction-site dumpster diving champion. Boggles the mind. I used to be more like that, but the last ten years I've narrowed it down to working at a museum (handling art), reading and writing. A minor in cooking. Linda sent me a couple of emails, she reads me closely and I value her opinion. Liked a couple of lines and shot them back at me. I had to read myself, to find the context, and I hadn't read back over anything for a couple of weeks, so it was like reading someone else. I quibbled with certain punctuation marks and questioned whether or not some words might be deleted. Less, of course, being more. Opens out, as Olson said. There was a cricket in the house and this I cannot abide. I intend a live release but if I have to kill the fucker I will. A cricket, in the room with you, is worse than a Whip-O-Will outside the window. I make a point of finding the damned thing before I get a drink. Perform a live extraction. I'm proud, you know, that I can still do that, catch a cricket and release it without any broken legs. That smell permeates everything. A stink bug, right? You touched it, didn't you? Found it on the way to the cricket and couldn't resist. Fucking stinkbug and you actually engaged the fear and flight program. Where I simply left, the next train going anywhere.You see the choices.