Hard Listening

Pretty sure it was Roy Blount Jr. used that phrase, talking about music he made with some other writers. An evocative turn. I love his writing, and hearing him on the radio. My southern side. Where, when you asked someone a direct question, instead of an answer, you got a story instead. My cousin Jackie, for instance, you tell her you're going to the store, and ask do we need a loaf of bread, she responds with an elaborate tale about Jasper and Eli, Pocahontas, Tennessee, in the 1930's, and you glean from the story, that, yes, in fact, we need a loaf of bread. In the deep south, there's a resistance against saying anything directly. Like it's more responsible to elude to something, as if to say. Jackie speaks in a patois that is graced with nuance. It's difficult to understand sometimes, but always worth the effort. Elliptical. The last funeral in Mississippi, Aunt Pete, at the graveyard in Pocahontas, I was talking with some distant relatives, I had to be careful about my word choice, because I didn't want to appear a jackass. Michael, who'd taught me to shoot, black walnuts at a hundred feet, stepped into the conversation. He mentioned a particular day when I had been on my game; a matter of luck, shot a running squirrel in the head, occasionally you get lucky. Satisfied that the leak has been repaired, and the damaged ceiling has dried, tomorrow we start repair. Scraping the rotted plaster. It'll be a mess. I took in a set of clothes that will go directly into the trash when we finish the job, and a set of painting clothes because all three pair of newish black jeans currently in rotation are too good to sacrifice to painting a ceiling white. I have a laundry basket of dead and dying clothes that I wash one last time and store there. I've never washed a pair of my insulated Carhartt bibs, they are what they are. I need to buy a new denim shirt, and a pair of work jeans with a hammer loop, for installing shows. After the holidays. You couldn't pay me to go shopping now. I'm trying to figure how much whiskey I'll need to survive. It's a complex algorithm. I've decided to just make a bean soup in the crock-pot and maybe buy a couple of avocados; depending on what the weather does, I'll go for several long walks, stay in the woods for hours. I don't buy Christmas, the whole idea makes me want to burrow into a culvert and die. Those fucking bells, where the Salvation Army has encamped, at the exit from Kroger, drive me crazy. Normal people wearing Santa hats. Doesn't it seem weird to you? Way too much wasabi with the sushi I'd brought home for dinner, I was cursing like a sailor and loving it. Wasabi inspires expletives. Especially if you're sitting at the island. reading a "New Yorker" and not paying too much attention to the volume of fork tine quantity coming to bear. Some bites, the tears are streaming down my cheeks. But my sinuses, it must be said, are clear.