Jack-Hammering

Brain dead. They've been jack-hammering in the alley for the best part of two weeks and we're all sick of it. D, TR and I at the museum today, and when I finished my work I headed home early. Stopped at the library and Kroger. The foster kid from up the creek, was waiting at the bottom of the driveway, needed to make a phone call for his Dad. I told him he couldn't do this all the time, that I lived in the woods for a reason. I don't think he understood. He couldn't understand why I was going to spend Easter alone, hadn't anyone asked me over for dinner? I told him I'd trained my friends not to ask, which further confused him. Then I laid out the stats, there are 168 hours in a week, and I aim to spend 120 of them by myself. Without television, listening to very little music anymore, rarely talking on the phone. Reading, writing, editing a book; I don't know where I got certain information so I'm fact-checking myself, and it's slow going, because I read so much, it's difficult to remember where I read something. Brought in a large and very nice artichoke for dinner. A tricked out sauce from pouches of condiments I found at the museum. I love artichokes. They always make me want to make paper because the fiber is so wonderful. Strong and breaks down beautifully. Paper-making and movable type is the beginning of the Renaissance. Threatens the status quo, up until then, the church ran everything, the pope was more or less god, you could buy indulgences. I think that's the first thing Gutenberg printed.. Indulgences. I do listen to the radio for 40 minutes, I'd heard that Robert Earl was going to be on "Mountain Stage" and I made a point to stop whatever I was doing and, get a drink and roll a smoke. I blast the music very loud. So much better than a jack-hammer. Some nights in Utah, Robert Earl saved my life. His plaintive voice and straight-forward lyrics. That period, not a shining time in my life, I marvel I made it through, I'd wake up, in my mummy bag, someplace far up the La Salle Mountains. Start a fire in the rock lined pit, heat water for a pot of coffee, and wade upstream in frigid water, looking to catch two cut-throat trout for breakfast. I'd stagger into town. Moab, Utah, is a strange place, prophets wander in from the desert. There are road-cuts, notched into the butte faces, that are virtually impossible. I have friends who live there by choice. My fear of falling eliminates that for me. I can't do it anymore. Sometimes I have to sleep on the floor, because I'm afraid of falling out of bed. Last night, for instance, I was so tired, physically whipped, I read for a couple of hours, started this paragraph, but I knew I needed to nap, and I made my down pallet on the floor; as soon as it was dark, I nodded off for a couple of hours. Best sleep in days. Rain woke me, I remembered I had a couple of empty buckets and I put them out to harvest rainwater. Easter Sunday, I think I'll wash my feet, take a sponge bath, wash my hair. Staccato drumming. An early breakfast of baked beans and a fried egg on toast. I don't know what it has to do with resurrection, but this time of year I often get a very nice frozen rabbit from France. They're a bit pricey, but absolutely sublime. Usually six pieces, and I dredge them in a highly seasoned flour, brown them, put them on a bed of onions, celery and carrots in a cast iron pot with a close fitting lid and cook them for 40 minutes or an hour, take the meat out, deglaze the pot with whatever wine is kicking about, reduce it. The Easter Bunny makes a very fine meal. For some reason I always have this with saffron rice and an Old Vines Zinfandel. Force of habit. Allows me to remember some things. Once, in western Colorado, probably up the Cimarron, laying a dry fly gently in a backwater, I hooked a large trout. I was fishing with the lightest possible gear, two-pound test invisible monofilament on a rod that could best be described as a twig. I knew I couldn't land the fish, but I let it play out all the backer line from my reel, knowing the weight of the line on the water would resist a few leaps, which it did, and it was beautiful, a four or five pound trout, conspiring to spit out a hook. Be still my heart. It sometimes happens that you're with another person when a singular event happens, and you both see the same thing, a sparkle of light, the angle of repose, a nugget of gold; but it's more often, in my experience, that I'm alone, walking somewhere, and some trick of light will reveal the other side. I have stumps where I sit to consider this shit. I'm adding a stump, where I often want to stop, half way up the driveway, doesn't matter if it's covered with snow, because I just sweep it off and pull out my foam pad. I'm prepared for almost anything. Song birds singing in the dead of night.