Accumulated Words

I collect words during the week, on a folded piece of paper I nearly always carry with me. Sometimes I can't read the notation, exactly, and I get side-tracked. A word jotted down at a stop light or a particular adjective, noted atop a washing machine during the spin cycle. So I'll be looking up ingenious and spend half-an-hour with ingenuous. Sometimes I remember the context, but mostly not, the words just become a palpable thing, in and of themselves. The other part of the algorithm, is whether or not I'm interrupted; a phone call, or a visit (doesn't usually happen, but still a part of the equation) can easily break the train of thought. Then, later, you're wondering why there were fourteen dictionaries scattered about. Like an event had occurred and you hadn't noticed. An orgy or something. Forget everything you know. Start all over again at the beginning, you were sequestered in a corner, talking string theory with a physicist from Pasadena, she intimated time travel might be possible, if you could avoid the various pit-falls, the grand-father problems, and what your daughter would say to you. I just mediate. It's a cool supposition, what I think happened. Nothing a stick of butter couldn't fix (my Mom's solution to almost any cooking problem). That you might be the alien. Just supposing. I could drown you in butter, and the problem would disappear. Foe confit. The fat from ribs is always a pale orange, from the various chilies, but I prize it for it's flavor. And I love when it penetrates everything, like the smell of cabbage. Sagacious, salubrious. salutary. Embrocation, emetic, emollient. Diminished chords seem to be saying something. Who is that, singing in the background? What a voice, flitting around the edges, almost blue. I met her once, at a coffee shop in Ojai, she was having a problem controlling her kid, we smiled over waffles. Rikki Lee Jones. Electricity was out for several hours this morning, and the phone has been out since last night, so I couldn't send this. The little cans of baked beans were on sale, and I had bought ten of them ($4) a week or so ago, so the fall-back meal is beans on toast, sometimes with an egg. I harvest enough rainwater to shave and wash my hair. B comes over and we discuss mostly painters. Side-bars into Drought Stress Analysis, maenads, magniloquent, maladroit. We dance around a great many subjects. Standard. Drill-tone. I have to go.