Getting Clean

Coming out of town, going west on the river road, there are a few thousand people at the dirt race track (it's not a quarter mile track, I understand it's three-eights of a mile) with campers and cars completely filling the floodplain where the Scioto falls into the Ohio. The noise is deafening. Five lap elimination heats in each of the half-dozen categories that will culminate in 100 lap finals on Sunday. It's a big deal, locally, bar business is booming, and four-wheelers are in a steady line going over the Second Street Bridge to the Carry-Out for more Bud Light. It's kind of cool, to see it, passing through, it's much neater to be shed of all that pollution and be embedded in the forest, miles to the west. I have a date with a fox, or I might see a bear. If I stepped on the resident timber rattler, she'd be so slow I could grab her behind the head before she could ever strike. Not a claim to fame, reptiles are sluggish in the fall. When I kill the breaker for the refrigerator, the house falls silent. I'm working at stripping down to basics. I get, essentially, no feed-back, Linda had asked, but I still imagine an audience. They would probably understand whatever leap. I surprise myself, what I say. What I don't say. I'd like to have a magic message, but there isn't one. The future is a dismal place and I'm glad to be dying. I wouldn't wish this on anyone, especially my daughters, but they're stuck with it. However pessimistic, I sound too casual, but I can build a bridge. The elevator guys completely rebuilt the elevator. It's slower but safer. We must be right at the dew point right now, because water is dripping off the roof. A wonderful percussive sound. Mickey Hart on the back-beat. I think he's the greatest drummer ever. I'm allowed my opinion, right? That's part of the deal. By dying, I mean merely that my body won't do some of the things it used to do. I'm in decent health, take no prescription drugs, haven't been to a doctor since the incident with a rattlesnake many years ago. Still, I smoke and drink, often skip meals when I have the notion to write. The slanted light of fall through yellow leaves stops me every time. The ridgetop and the drive in and out Mackletree, this time of year, is so beautiful, I become emotionally labile watching a squirrel skitter across the road. Walking the logging roads, there's this phenomena, where a tree will give up all of it's leaves at once, and if the wind isn't blowing, they'll collect under it, like a memorial to the season passed. This is the year that was, they seem to say. Sometimes the leaves make a perfect pile, reflecting the tree's branches, a mirror image; usually the edges are strewn, but occasionally there's a fractal duplication of what the tree says. I'm not into meta-physics, or any kind of spirituality, but that nature holds a sacred place. At this point in my life, I could live in a cave. I enjoy my interaction with other people, but they aren't strictly necessary. A public library and Kroger is all I really require; a good day, I can write a paragraph. Call it a conceit, but I can write about specific things quite (really) well, 'really' meaning in the real world, the one we share. The passion. I'm thinking about Emily here, the way she hears the voices, when she picks up the mallet or touches his piano, it shatters the wall; I love the way she turns away and disregards the audience. This is very cool theater. The Emily Show might be the best thing I've ever done. I disappear completely. It's Zack and Linda onstage, god bless their souls, and from the minute the lights come up, Linda is in control, the words drive the action. What I wanted, most of all, was that connection. She looks back at Zack, and he hits these complex chords, on pots and pans, and she continues about a garter snake in the grass. I know these poems better than you can imagine, every word and every mark of punctuation, I go over them in my sleep, to see if I've missed something, but the two of them, Zack and Linda, hit every note, it's a lovely thing, to put these people together. Being a director is just letting things happen. It's a treat for me, watching them interact. TR's music is very good and Linda is spectacular, what I do is just make things possible.