What

Something woke me. A pair of coons, fighting over pork-chop bones. I run them off with a couple of rocks from the pile I keep inside the back door. I don't mind them turning my compost, but when they fight, they hiss and squeal like tomcats on the prowl. "Like a girl through a topaz town." Coming home, I was struck with that slanted fall light, the patterns of highlight and shadow; blinding, actually, sometimes. At the lake, enough wind to ripple the surface, the light was slamming the far bank, and it was, if you will, topaz. Yes, I thought, she had simply looked out the window. I'd bet that poem was written in October or November. Minor epiphany, probably a chemical thing, beta-carotenes or that last drink, an acid flash-back, a premonition. A cut, across my right little finger, brings me back into the tangible world. I'd spun off there, into the ether, but suddenly I'm bleeding, which concerns the real; rock and drill, as Ezra said. It's a minor cut, but I don't know where I got it, and I have to retrace my steps, to find where I hurt myself. Sometimes, when I'm writing, I scare myself, when I say something, then realize what I've said. I keep thinking I'm not making any sense, then realize I am. Consciousness is confusing, just when you think you have a handle. Given my parsing, which is what she taught me. Consider the dash, what it means; in the fasicles she varies the length of the dash, mere, what? certainly not whimsey. I had a great Maine Coon cat for years, she'd go for long walks with me, roll over and play dead when she wanted to be carried the rest of the way home. I made enough money being an Equity Stage Manager during the summer to set type and print the rest of the year. Long walks on deserted beaches. Wrote a novel one winter, which I destroyed and now wish I hadn't. It was a meta-text before there were such things. Concerned the exploits of a Steam Punk dancer, before there were such things. Agreed to go in Monday as a free painting crew from the hospital is coming over to paint the downstairs bathrooms, before the hospital Doctor's Party on December 1st. I thought the bathrooms looked fine, but I'll take free painters any day. That will be Sara's last day before she and Clay leave for the winter at Hilton Head, so she's going to come in and rearrange the Carter paintings, change some of them out. Then I'll re-hang everything the old way (I'll leave up all the hardware) until I can strip everything down, patch and repair, and repaint some walls during the January break. We usually don't have a show in January, in the main gallery, so that we can do some serious facilities maintenance. The place gets beat up. D owes me half a day, for the various times I've ferried him, so I'm calling it in, first decent day when he's on break from the MFA program, and we'll re-insulate the other half of the floor. We did the first half in four hours. I have a disposable HAZMAT suit I can duct tape at wrist and ankle, I'll crawl under, do the measuring and installing, all he has to do is rip the rigid foam to width, so I can trap the fiberglass in place. Excellent system, air space between, seal the edges with expanding foam; I have the money to do that now, I never did, before. The new socks are a treat. I was early at the museum, to shave with hot running water (I'm a cheap date, what can I say?) and the town was like a stage set, completely deserted. They had brought out the nightlife, what passes for real, and it lasted for a while. Then you're alone again. Examine that. If I had students I'd tell them to look at anything closely. What Olson advised me, what Ed Dorn brought into the cannon. If you read, you should be able to tell the wheat from the chaff.