Not Exactly

This for that, I see the cogs turning, but I blow everything off, to get closer to you, which might peg me, a mere janitor, looking for closure, as something I'm not. I'm not actually dangerous, unless you strike me at exactly the wrong moment. It could happen, but the odds are astronomical. More likely you'd be struck with a rock from Mars. Consider the odds. This times that times that uncertainty. I can't come up with a number, but it's certainly small, less than one, almost nothing, yet it plagues me. 2:13 the next morning I have a bowl of this chili-like substance, with an egg on top. It's really good. Heart-stoppingly good. I have to go to bed, zipped in my mummy bag, I'll probably roll off the bed, trying to relieve some discomfort; but I padded the area, where I might fall, with several layers of foam. Fuck a bunch of broken bones, I have a handle on this. I'm good, the projected snow is merely sleet, and sleet is merely a fact of life. Four-wheel low, out of the bottom, is what I do; soon as I hit the main drag, everything is clear. I kill the breaker for the fridge, less sound and more silence. Though, when you think about it, quiet is not a natural state. Maybe I should just get a good set of head-phones or ear-plugs or something. Listen to books. The wind has died down, just a susurration now, like an abandoned lamb sucking on a bottle. A last image of living with my daughters, is them bottle feeding abandoned lambs, in a pen we'd constructed of pallets, near the stove, in the kitchen of the house in the canyon, in Colorado. I can't be more specific than that. Lamb birthing season is a nightmare, blood and gore up to your elbows, and the agonizing sound of ewes screaming to high heaven. Less Steven Hawking than Dante. Which could be the point. What if what is apparently true is actually false? B came over with Josh, I didn't offer them a drink, I'm not sure whether that meant something or not. I forget how to be social, I have so few house guests. Furl your mainsails, take a reef in your jib, whatever; now that the wind has died down, you probably don't need to bother. It's tomorrow already. Rare for me, I got back to sleep and slept late. Chili and eggs for breakfast. By the time I gather up my clothes, and stop by the museum for dirty clothes there, it's after one. By the time I run a few errands, it's close to four, Happy Hour at the pub, so I kill a few minutes searching the web for more information about the Amazon Civilization (which I hope they'll end up calling by its real name if they ever figure out what that is, and lose the moniker Oz). Astra behind the bar, always a treat. A dude at the bar, now an archeologist, I've talked to a few times, comes over, he just got back from southern California, where a job outside San Diego netted him some time in a different clime. He talks, knowledgeably, about a great many things, with very little inflection in his voice. A baritone dulcimer. Being a southern boy, I tend to inflect. He remembers me from a reading a decade ago. Since then, as I think about it, I read my work in an increasingly flat way. It's just text. The reader (or listener) has to add the inflection to suit themselves. A band of clouds, down low on the western horizon, get lit from below in a magenta light that you'd never believe. It's fifty degrees, I'm outside in my shirtsleeves watching the sunset. The driveway, at the top, is a quagmire of mud. It'll refreeze, but right now the frost is coming out of the ground, and the wet-weather springs are flowing. I stuck a piece of cpvc into one of the springs and I can fill a gallon jug in just a few minutes. It's good: mineral rich sandstone water. I like to collect my water when I can, and this spring water is way better than boiled melted snow, which always has metallic overtones. I wonder about stainless steel.