Degree of Difficulty

The pilgrim's lament. Not that I pretend, any longer, to do things that I can't, I gave that up years ago. I'm like a turtle with a mission, or a snail on a quest. My skill set allows for survival in a variety of environments. I've learned to live with being uncomfortable for long periods of time, not scratching under the cast with a coat-hanger, accepting the itch as a fact of life. There was a kid at Janitor College, a nice kid, but immature and lazy, Bordon Wainwright; he was young, maybe 17, and he'd fucked up so often that his parents just wanted to put him somewhere. Janitor College as Trade School. It doesn't work that way, though; if you're raised in a penthouse, you don't want your name on your pocket; on the other hand, if you come up through the ranks, having your name on your pocket is pretty cool. I generally use the name Frank, it's a habit, more than anything else. A straight-forward name with little room for doubt; looking down I see KNARF, which confuses me for a moment, and then I realize how I'm looking, what I'm seeing, and everything falls into place. Right. I knew that. Bordon had a problem with alcohol, he'd drink antifreeze; took a header off Storm King thinking he could fly. My past is littered with failures, which is fine, success teaches you nothing. Now, I understand, there are glider suits with wings, that allow a limited flight, Bordon was not so lucky. If the pilgrim be serious, approaching the cave, he would genuflect and pray for salvation, maybe walk on his knees. Penthouse, by the way, is what elevator people call the elevator room on the roof. I was a little late for work, I gotten up at 3:30 and written for an hour, but we still got the print show hung below lunch, which is quite remarkable, even for us. I'll do the labels tomorrow, and we can light it when D's back on Thursday. Lunch was a hoot today. Barb had said yesterday that they'd have a couple of new items for us to sample. Soon as we came in the door, they called back to the kitchen that Tom and D were there and Billy cooked us up the new items. A variation on the Sheppard's Pie with chunked meat instead of ground beef. Very good. Then the new fish dish, which is a couple of fillets of pollack, greed beans with bacon bits, and roasted baby potatoes; I told Billy to try a smear of mayo on the fillets, a trick I learned from Marilyn. Barb and the staff hovered around us, as we tried the potatoes several ways. It was fun, a free lunch and a doggy bag for dinner. I have free food coming out of my ears. Lynne even left me a butternut squash, which I will turn into a cream soup. I'll peel it and core it and roast the seeds, eat them while steeping the chunks, salt and pepper, a goodly sweet onion, caramelized in butter, in chicken broth, add half a pint of cream and blenderize everything to a perfect consistency. I usually eat it with buttered saltines and an old vines Zin. To say I'm not picky hardly addresses the case, but this is very good, and so easy. I steal butternut squash almost into winter, before they rot, everyone with their fall displays. This year I target MacDonald, and the huge fall display at Tim Horton. Enough squash to last me through the winter. I just have a hole in the ground I cover with hay, none of it costs me anything but a few minutes of my time. I thought about Linda talking about eating cheaply. I have the same eight dollars in my wallet I had four days ago, and I haven't spent a cent on food. I will have to buy yogurt and juice. Found a rabbit on the way home, a perfect kill, run over on the head, and it was still warm, so I pulled over, to field-dress it, and one of the rangers stopped, to see what I was doing, they all know me now, which is a good thing, and he asked me how I was going to prepare it, and I told him just dredge it in sour milk and masa, fry it in walnut oil, and eat it with your fingers. Fuck a bunch of civilization. When you have the move down for skinning a rabbit, it's sweet to watch, like taking off a sock. I can skin and eviscerate a rabbit in two minutes, I usually take longer than that because I'm interested in the contents of the stomach and I have to get out a magnifying glass, and I separate out the heart and liver, to make gravy. It's interesting that I always carry a very sharp knife with me, so I can open up the stomach of any dead animal I find. I'm not sure it means anything. It'll be cool to see Glenn next week, for him to see what we've done with Emily. I think he'll approve, the way she pays attention to the music. He'll agree, I think, that the music is her subconscious.