Dead Printer

Linda is looking for the title of my autobiography. She thinks I'm starting to sound like Emily, which makes sense, since I've been reading Emily every day for the last year. All of the titles all cool, I especially like "Add A Colon" and "Delete A Word", both of which I can identify with. Identity would be the thing, right? for an autobiography. I think of it, when I think of it, as "Paragraphs From The Ridge" or as Glenn so succinctly labeled it, "Ridgeposts". Kind of says it all. My printer died last night and I couldn't make a copy of the post, but I could read it, on the screen, and I liked it. It took hours to write, all day, actually, and several meals. I fixed dinner, a nice cube steak with gravy on toast, but didn't eat it, because I got distracted by the word 'verge' then went for a walk in the dark with the headlamp Howard sent me. Several more morels. I already had enough for a breakfast omelet, so I broke out the dehydrator Michael (the music guy) had given me. His son swears that morels, reconstituted in cream, on pasta, is one of the great dishes, and I need to try that. Picture this homeless dude, in ballistic cloth climbing pants and a ratty tee-shirt (Stop Continental Drift) navigating the blackberry canes, moving in slow-motion. It's comical, but there are morels involved, and I'd rather look like a fool, and have them, than be all swank, starched white collar, never experience the death of a thousand cuts, and never eat one. Wild mushrooms can take you away. They do me. The only similar thing I know is wild asparagus in western Colorado. Wait. Certain forbs. Even Dandelions are better than nothing. Listen to yourself, you can hear the phrasing. Nothing if not wary. Just after the St. Paddy's Day celebration at the pub, I wasn't there, I don't do crowds, but I heard, after the fact, that I would have liked what I would have seen. Rather distant. Too conscionable, conditional, something. You and me, the sound of fifty pounds of dried corn being poured on a concrete stage, and her voice, in the background, calling me to guard. A harmonic, over the top, just the wind through the trees, but enough sound to make a difference. Not unlike color, this time of year. That soft green is not something you could fake. It either exists or it doesn't. A translucent thing, light shining through, maybe just a shadow, a hint of something. Or maybe more than that. I'm the last person to ask.