Rain Day

The day opened, early, with a volley of gunfire, then the rain moved in. I let the first of the rain wash the roof, then put out buckets, to harvest rainwater. By mid-afternoon it's warm enough to heat enough of the new stash of soft water, for a sponge bath and a shave, and since the cookstove is hot (even with letting the fire go out) I cook a potato, wrapped in foil, right in the firebox. An excellent meal that I can eat one-handed while holding a book in the other. Rereading Gertrude Stein, "The Making Of Americans", thinking about the architecture of narrative. The manuscript I'm editing doesn't actually have a plot, it's just an episodic dance. Even the characters are often thrown away after a single use. The attention to detail is a characteristic, often at very close range, with a magnifying glass, noting fractal patterns on leaves, and Brownian Motion when cream is added to a Butternut Squash Soup. A day like this, mostly curled up, with a fleece blanket over my feet and legs, and a mug of sweet hot tea with cream, I tend to get a little maudlin. Patter of rain on the roof, the smell of certain herbs, and the deep sense of solitude. Being alone allows me greater freedom of action, I can live without a clock, I can eat when I need to, I can read all night, call in to the museum the next day and tell them I can't make it to work because I read all night. But sometimes it's tough, being alone; it's human nature, I think, to want contact with other human beings. The fourth wall is fire. I just understood something I hadn't gotten before. Think about it, living in a cave, you'd want a barrier, a fourth wall, that could be taken down during the day, and fire, read Bachelard, "The Psychoanalysis Of Fire", he nails it. A productive day. The origin of drama. Don't know why I hadn't realized that before. I'm often as dumb as a draft horse, and for all their lovely fetlocks they are stupid breeds. I can't abide stupidity, but I'd like to get laid, once in a while, so I'm willing to adjust my standards. Wow, what a pretty horse. Did you build that from Legos? What did Lopez say? Something about the threshold of memory. We topple in. I might be mopping the floor, in the fashion I've designed, completely in my head, probably humming a Grateful Dead tune, watching every stroke of the mop, to see where I might need to go back over a spot. Someone will ask me about a specific painting (the word is out that the janitor knows) and if the timing is good, I'll prop my head on the end of the mop-handle and allow what I know. Some times I act dumb. Depends on my mood. I'm often distracted, arguing a point with myself, and when I'm mopping hard and talking out loud, people rarely mess with me. I meant to send this a while ago, but the phone is out. All this rain, another tree fallen, down on Mackletree, I'd venture. But I had to pee, so I just started writing on the end of yesterday's paragraph. It gets confusing, the tense. Janitor College, for instance, is always in the past, but sometimes, remembering, it elides into the present. I can exercise control, but in the interest of flow, I often just go along. Olaf The Red was a hoot, drank like he had an empty leg. We were a year apart, but we crossed over in several classes, so I knew him, to speak to, and he was always drunk, but he functioned fine, which is more an indication of modern culture than anything else. We were in a class together, "Modern Dirt, 1935 To The Present" and he didn't like the professor, a sweet little Jesuit without an axe to grind; and decided, early on, he was going to bury him. He did, which is a sad story, ugly in places, the way we can hurt other people, the way we do. But it was funny, too, which is embarrassing. I hate the fact that I've laughed at other people's failings. The anodyne, of course, is just to fail at a few things. Which is easy to do. I can't cane a chair or weave a basket.