Winter Routines

Too much rain and too cold. A small steak, a fried egg, a piece of toast, no expectations, just sustenance. I listen to three of the Cello Suites, Edgar Meyer, and they are so lush, they sweep me off my feet. Annie Dillard says that most living writers live in the middle. I'm rarely in the middle of anything, usually at one extreme or the other. The rain stops, there's still the intermittent drip of condensate, from the overhang onto the front roof, but it isn't rain. It's rain-like. Drips or drops that seem like rain. Walking from point A to point B, a desire path, simple enough, but the walkway leads to a place where loud music is playing, and I don't want to be there, so I detour, down to the river, along a deserted main street, whistle mindlessly, imagining Meaghan in tattered tights. Leave the ankles out of it completely. Nowhere, the middle distance, and there's nothing to indicate direction, except for that faint trail that you'd have to have had a degree in tracking to even notice in the first place. Franklin Riehlman, who gave us an idea about the reappraisal of the Carters last summer, had aquired another Carter water-color, a nice one, "Brick Kiln. Near Portsmouth, Ohio" and since he was supposed to be the expert, did we know where the painting was painted. As it happens I do, I did some research on brick pavers a few years ago. The deposit of clay, used in all the local pavers, came from an area of what is now Wheelersburg, all the kilns were there. Clay's heavy, you don't want to move it many times. I know the painting was done in 1943, so I read his wife's letters for that year, hoping for a mention; there isn't one, but I get a sense of the times. He painted "Let Us Give Thanks" that summer, in Chautagua, that summer, when he turned the quarter, I look at it now. Here it is, part of the permanent collection, merely paint on canvas. Paint that looks like a tree.