Finding Fault

I was in dreamland, deep into a fantasy that involved crows and the end of days. I was cooking for an impossibly large number of people, and some of them were irate that the portions were so small. Just getting to the scene where I gave a stump-speech about how everyone was too fat, vitriolic and impassioned, when there was a noise outside that brought me to full consciousness. What? I had new batteries in all of the flashlights, looking ahead to winter, so I had good light. I had buried a bad melon in the compost pile, and covered it with ash and soot from cleaning the smoke-chase in the cookstove. Two coons were digging it up and hissing like maiden aunts. It's comical. SNL material. I don't pretend to know why a particular thing is funny. To me. It's always so personal. In my artificial light the coon's eyes are bright red. Quite bright. Redder than anything you've ever seen. Intense, like that. The wind is blowing through, so I open a couple of windows, to clear the air. A new "House Organ" today and there was that piece by B about his encounter with a snake. It's a good piece. Being well and truly in the moment. I long for that. Of course everything is always up for criticism. Managed to get back to sleep. Stopped for gas on the way into work and got a sausage and egg biscuit and a pint of chocolate milk as part of my campaign to gain some weight. I wasn't looking forward to painting so many of the Carter walls, but I'm glad, now that they're done. They look so much better. Should be able to hang those walls on Tuesday and Wednesday, Sara gets back Friday, then we set and hang the big show downstairs. D spent most of the day cleaning floors. He's good, he uses a Sailor Stroke, which is an almost perfectly horizontal sweep that covers nearly eight feet. I told him that I'd get to the floor before the opening of the Portrait Show, but he was appalled at how dirty the main gallery was; TR swept, dusting out the corners, D mopped, and I painted walls. I still have the entry and signage walls to paint, and I don't know when I'm going to get to them, next Saturday probably. Difficult driving home, the slanted fall light was so intense. I got a pair of really cheap dark sunglasses because the transition between light and shadow had become so extreme that I almost had a couple of wrecks, saved only by the fact that I was only going five miles an hour. The dappled light on Mackletree was blinding. I stop at the lake almost every day, and clean the windshield, what Harvey said, "nothing furthers, everything gains" seems to apply. I don't know anything for certain, I just feed stale crackers to the geese out the truck window. Maybe not the smartest card in the deck; geese, I've learned, are violent, but I have to recycle all this stuff. It's a matter of not wasting food. The wind was blowing so strongly, gusting, that it made driving difficult. A white-knuckle affair, and I was glad to get off the state roads, onto county meanders that trace the bottom of hollows, underneath the wind. Driving across Kansas once, in a rental car, I had to stop and buy some bags of cement, to add some weight to the rear end. Don't even mention Wyoming in the spring. It's unbelievable, the way the wind sweeps across the high plains. There's always something. Wherever you are. Lake effect snow, or tremors from below, it's the local events that call attention. Best scenario, you merely respond, step out of the way of a lava flow, move to higher ground, whatever's required. I once avoided an ugly incident by just pulling my feet up on the table. That things should be so simple.