Bench Marks

Story poles, or story sticks, a journal of the plague years, a cryptic few notes, just a sequence of stick figures on a rolled-up buffalo hide, whatever tells the tale. A record of high and low temps, a calendar of lunations, marks on a cell wall. It's history, not matter how it's framed. I was wiping off the bonnets in the artifact exhibit yesterday, looking closely at a couple of things. One was a hollowed rock that served as a small basin, a mortar, probably, for grinding acorns; and the other was a ceramic vessel, made from coils of clay, and fired. Making something out of clay and then firing it is a major leap, and seems to have happened many times in many different places. You can see how this would happen, crude huts and open fires. That little Venus with the drooping breasts and the shocking vulva, that someone sculpted as a household god might be the only thing that survives a mid-winter conflagration. Coil pots stick figures, fertility cults, caves. Not really a sentence, but my sentiments at the time. Just a janitor, you know? cleaning off the flat surfaces. I find myself going back and taking out commas, it's become a kind of game, in which I try and maintain sense with the fewest diacritical marks. Sense is relative and depends on what woke me up, a bear at the compost pile or the patter of rain on the roof. Everything is affected by everything else. Not unlike, and you could fault me here, I do tend to over-think things, when you shuffle your footsteps to confuse any pattern. Just saying. High water mark, average yearly high water, global warming. I'm glad I'm old and dying, I've dealt with what I've dealt with, shit in the toilet and vomit in the hall. Frankly, I don't know how you deal with this. I guess I'd move to high ground and keep a shotgun at hand, which is actually where I find myself. By default, not through any intent. I would always rather slink away into the shadow. Something made me laugh. That fucking janitor is a hoot. It's all my own fabrication. You realize that, late at night, and there's cause for concern. Just puttered at work today, but many things to get done tomorrow. Between now and Christmas everyone is taking time off and a look at the calendar indicates I'll be alone at the museum quite a bit. Everyone else has family close by, I generally spend holidays alone, so it's no big deal. Maybe I'll make Buffalo Turkey Wings, or maybe I'll rent a motel room, eat out, take four or five baths and watch a ball game of some type, preferably soccer, then a movie, because I haven't seen a movie in years. I like to visualize for myself, so I'd rather read a book. Talking with Cassidy today, a retired shrink, and he thought we were living in a Post Literate age, where people did nothing but text acronyms. At the pub today, having lunch at the bar, almost everyone was fiddling with their phones. I don't have one, because in the middle of a 64,000 acre State Forest, there is no reception; maybe satellite, I don't know, but I doubt that one of their panel trucks could make it up the driveway, to give me their free installation. But I do have to upgrade my computer system, because this one is dying. I'd like to be able to write when the power was out, and for me that means two batteries, because I'm very slow, I have to look at the lines as they build. Just the way I work; maybe satellite is a better option, I could meet him at the bottom of the hill and ferry shit up. Installation seems a small price to pay. On the other hand, I get nothing back from you. And what does that mean?