Leonid

Writing in a vacuum. Linda sent a quote, Emily in a letter " Amherst has gone to Eden, and the moon rides like a girl through a topaz town." Now I ask you, what, exactly, was she saying? We can parse meaning. Tonight, for instance, the moon is lovely, but so bright, above stick trees, that I miss most of the show. Passing through the tail of a comet there should be fireworks, "like a girl through a topaz town." But I can't swear to anything. If my Dad had invented pencils, or I was allowed free reign for or any other reason, to just sit, bundled like an Eskimo, to watch shooting stars. There are times I get her, understand what's being said, and in those moments I'm knocked out of my socks; revelatory impassioned bursts that occasionally make you trip. Stumble. You know what I mean. Though meaning is a difficult concept. When Emily says "topaz" for instance; I have to hit the books. What color, exactly. Emily's Imagined reader. What is Eden, how does the moon ride. I could lie. Uniquely trained, in fact. But the truth is no stranger than fiction. Assuming there is a truth. Yes, sure, what we're left with. I'm just saying; I have to go. Sort out what you need. Modigliani was called Medi, short form of maudit, the cursed, because he lived a sort of crash and burn lifestyle. That info from Asher McCord. I have enough readers now, that I can ask almost any question in my postings and get an answer. I mentioned squalene (an oil found on the sides of human noses and in shark livers) which is used as a lubricant in clocks and watches and TR said that it's also used by musicians to lubricate parts of certain instruments. Then synecdoche came up in a conversation about words that are difficult to pronounce, and my definition was almost letter perfect. Bastion (sp?) came in to the museum to deliver D a copy of his book, a very interesting and edgy creation, and we talked about Steam Punk. His book is in that genre, people morphing into machines. Then he mentioned he had been at a party last weekend and was talking to a guy who had, written on his arm in Sharpie, "Google Tom Bridwell". TR was at the pub the other night, mentioned to one of the waitresses, that we had spent the last hour at the museum that day, reading the dictionary, which she found odd, and TR told her I was a writer, and the other waitress, Lindsey, told her that she had just recently read a year of my postings and that I was really good. I have no way of knowing how many people read me, seems to be expanding daily, and what's strange is that I don't communicate with that many people. Get an email or two or maybe none on any given day. In the snail mail department I get almost nothing except my three bills (credit card, electric company, and the phone) and otherwise just piles of crap about supplemental health insurance, and offers for more credit cards. I field maybe a phone call a week. I talk to myself more than everyone else combined. Where I live is incredibly isolated and of difficult access, I've only ever known a couple of places that were more difficult to achieve. Was not my intention to make things as hard as possible. I liked the ridge, it was beautiful, it was a watershed, and the head waters of a lovely creek, what's not to like? Thinking back, working on Thomas Jefferson's father's house, isolated and alone, in a place where I knew no one, set me up for this solitary lifestyle. And I wrote well there, under those circumstances, and I wanted to keep doing that, which required enormous blocks of solitude. Isolation works best for that. And the fact that there were no building codes. My kind of place. Where the toxic sludge washes into the fields, where we raise soybeans for the government and get paid even if the crop fails, hard not to get political, but I operate on a level where morals still matter. I couldn't help but notice Linda had great ankles, and TR poked me,.knowing my affinity for ankles, and he had noticed them too, maybe noticing ankles is important. Maybe your response is being charted.