Edges

I don't so much feed the homeless as counsel the unrepresented. A fine line. When you're hungry, you steal food, it's a matter of genetics, nothing to do with what's legal. A loaf of bread, if we follow Marx at all, is just a loaf of bread. If I ever watched anything closely, it was the way the jug wine played out. Maybe not something to be proud of, but an image nonetheless. More a shadow than anything tangible. Something discussed over a campfire, late at night. No stranger to those conversations, I speak with a certain precision, because I've been there. Diamond in the rough is just a refraction of light, a cat's-eye marble, a sparkle, something that catches your eye. Examine that. I'll get back to you. Tangled up in blue, or as my younger daughter says (the comparative, in Latin), tangled up in glue. Nothing to do with the actual time, which passes, an hour here or there, like silent ships in the night. Maybe it means something, though I suspect the opposite, when drops of condensate fall in perfect 2/4 time. Fucking monkeys with a typewriter. Not unlike what you thought you saw, before you got close enough to see, that it was merely a shirt, not a body; slanted afternoon light, not a halo. There's a tendency toward belief, hoping a life-vest will save you, some Dutch Calvanistic sense of order in which all the ducks are lined perfectly for slaughter. I don't mean anything by that, just that I was thinking about Vermeer and the way every brick was perfect. Gives pause, not unlike that moment in a conversation where everything hinges on a word. You know what I mean. Someone says something and you assume you know what they mean, a noun becomes a verb, no problem, a gerund, right? but the ground shifts. If this then that. Not unlike a checker-board. Or a chicken with his head twisted off. Suddenly nothing makes any sense, which makes sense to me, because I'm not expecting anything, actually, just hovering on the fringe, hoping for crumbs. My life in a tree-dip pit. Remind me to tell you what I really think. Honesty is a myth. I hear your argument, but it's just a diminished chord, I know that nothing actually happened. Maybe you were looking at some pictures, maybe something seemed to make sense, the way a line was drawn; on reflection, the arm was too long, or those fingers could never bend that way, but in the moment, everything is possible. We elide into the probable. A nut-shell. Haven, be it ever so ephemeral. I'm not sure I meant that. You have to watch what you say. Got to work early so I could shave and wash my hair in comfort, the house was cold. D showed up, I wasn't expecting him. I patch, repair and touch-up paint the little upstairs gallery, as soon as it dries we hang the Memory Project, 22 drawings of orphans in South America drawn by high-school students and some of their teachers. We do the show (it only runs a month) every year, this year's is better than most. Make the labels, attach them. Light the show tomorrow. I leave an hour early, to get a fire started at home. An amazing, colorful, beautiful sunset. Pinks and oranges through stick trees. Windless, for a change. The Weghorst family, as they do twice a year or more, were hosting a horse event, must be a Tennessee Walker Society, and they were everywhere. Anxious couple of miles, at creeping speed. TR is bringing me some quail eggs, which I'll hard-boil and pickle. I save pickle juice and use it several times. Pickled quail eggs are great because you can just pop them, no biting required. I had an almost unlimited supply in Missip, after I built a barn for my moonshine supplier, who raised quail for release at his hunting camp. He hunted everything, and had a pack of the smartest dogs I've ever known, Black-mouth Curs he used to hunt wild boar on islands in the Mississippi. They'd pin a young boar live and he'd stuff it in a crocker sack, take it home and feed it out on corn. He'd get top dollar at the weekly livestock auction, mostly from hunters who'd come down from Memphis or up from Jackson to hunt boar, but mostly spent their time drinking at camp. Big Roy and I cured a few hams for him and it was very good meat, richly flavored. I'm curing a whole pork loin in the fridge now, a five pound lump of lean meat I got at the remaindered meat section in Kroger for $9.38. Breakfast meat for a couple of months. Doing a sugar cure, with salt and various peppers, going for a full cure; thin slices soaked in milk, then fried in olive oil. I've done so many, I know it will be great. It's easy, take a measure of light brown sugar, half as much salt (kosher) and half again as much various ground peppers, add a dried herb, if you want, I no longer do. Go to Goodwill and find a roasting rack, rub the loin completely, place on the rack in a disposable pan, to collect the drippings. Rub it every day, for a couple of days, then every other day, then as needed, after a couple of weeks it's done. I smoke it, for a few hours, using the Weber grill, a teeny fire and hickory chips. I just keep it wrapped, in the fridge, cut off a few thin slices whenever I want. I've never had one spoil, I eat them so quickly. Red-eye gravy, which is just pan drippings and black coffee, reduced, suits this perfectly.