Vertical Integration

I used to know the rules, but, at some point I stopped paying attention. Diana noticed I was confusing the possessive, and reading back, I see she's correct. But walking over to Kroger yesterday, I found a small book, Webster's Concise Dictionary of Grammar ("clearly explained entries with examples") and I intend to get back on track (grammar is the train, syntax is the track). I'll task Sara with proofing "Modified Chevron" because she's a stickler for detail, and Glenn, ditto, because he made the book possible. Warm day, mid-fifties, and I walk over to the graveyard. Months since I've been there and the declivities are darkened pools of rotting leaves. Found one of those 60's office chairs, steel frame with barely padded arms, brown vinyl, and a barely padded seat, in the dumpster behind the bank, and I hauled it over with me. As I usually visit the dead in the afternoon, I found a good spot to the west of the graves, that gives nice slanted light and better reveals the contour of the ground. Counting graves is an ancient sport. A single crow joined me, singing a discordant song. I already had an ashtray over there, a coffee can half-full of sand, that I kept next to the stump where I used to sit. The stump had rotted, and been torn apart, probably by the bear, and I needed a place to rest my sorry ass and roll a cigaret. At first having a chair and ashtray at my personal cemetery seemed a conceit, but now it seems perfectly normal. I went back, a second time, as the sun was setting, and it was a great place to have a chair and an ashtray. The second time I carried a small flask of whiskey, and I was enormously content, the way the light was playing, warm gullet from a shot of spirits, a cigaret, my ashtray. I'm sitting there, this is all true, with my legs crossed, my head and shoulders bent slightly forward, watching the play of light on a particular leaf in the declivity that is Maddy Blevin's grave. It had an oil-like sheen that was fracturing into a prism. Quite beautiful, in a simple way. It has happened before, that someone would stumble across me when I was doing something that didn't seem quite normal, watching tadpoles or imitating a fox, so, naturally, a deer-hunter comes up from behind me. He coughed, to announce his presence, though I knew he was there, and asked what the hell I was doing. I didn't feel like explaining myself, so I just quoted Emily's last words, got up and headed home. He called out that he hadn't meant to disturb me and I called back that the damage had already been done. A mug of silky squash soup, saltines with a modest pat of butter on each one. Buttering saltines is a tricky art, but I've mastered it, through due diligence and many failures. A degree in theater prepares you for almost anything. A DVD of the Emily project should be available soon, Glenn thought it might take a month or two to edit and splice the sound correctly. He'll probably post it on the web site (ridgeposts.com) and you can download it there. However that happens. I'm blissfully unaware, we could be an inter-net sensation and I wouldn't know. Plink, a penny in the well, as Bill said, after that it's anyone's ripple. I erred on the side of roguishness. Not a bad place to be. I live among relics, books, and pieces of stone that are flaked into use, so the desire for something to be useful is the only criteria. Books totter and atl-atl weights hold down the loose papers. Too much history. Dick and Jane went up the hill, enough said.

Tom

You would assume copulation, but it's more confusing than that. Assumption is the greater part of valor.