Scuttle Butt

You hear things around the break room. Today it was a kind of heavy-footed silence, where Pegi and Trish wouldn't say a word around D. Which was good, I think, because I was expecting at least a low-level explosion of some kind, and bad, because there's a whole back-wash of resentment and the parties involved won't bring it out into plain sight. Maybe this is normal, maybe my experience, that's it's possible to work things out, is a false reading. The tension is palpable. I'm careful not to precipitate anything. Mediation is the golden mean. (An impossible sentence if someone didn't understand the circumstance.) As the official fly on the wall, I have to say, D and I were having a smoke, out back, and Trish came crashing through the door and didn't offer a word, went to her car, and drove off. It was fine, because there was nothing she could say. But rude, nonetheless. Peter and I fished all night for cod, that was the drill, occasionally one of us would say something about what we saw in front of us. I first made codfish cakes in his kitchen. He was the first person I ever met who owned Thoreau's Journals. We talked about the natural world. All day today I thought about Cape Cod, the people and the things that happened there. 1969-1979, the Cape was a great place to be, bright people, a stunning lack of law enforcement, and artists falling out of the woodwork. Certainly made me who I am. Long experimental conversations with Peter were an important building block; stretching then to his friends, an interesting lot, and the zany adventures. The central core of people I still know date from that time. A watershed of creativity. You had to actually watch where you stepped. The Wittgenstein Plumber was there, the best carpentry crew I've ever known 'Local Talent', Ralph, Les, and Juan of the two beauties, most of the important people in my life. Interesting, how a particular place at a particular time can become so important. I suspect, if you interviewed those still alive, they'd say that something was going on there/then. I let bygones be, but I still remember. Fritz with a pipe smoldering in his pocket, Ted shooting a picture of barnacles, Hypo Clearing Agent sweeping in late at night, typing in the dark. I'm oddly completely loose right now, I could morph myself into anything. I'm completely invisible at work, which is almost perfect. Watching the sunset, the wasps had died down and I pulled a chair out on the deck. The way the colors change. Make a note.