Full Moon

Fucking ruckus. Two Whip-O-Wills, bad enough, then a pack of dogs tree a opossum on the compost heap, and she, of course plays opossum: there's 'fight or flight' and there's just playing dead. Drives the dogs crazy and I have to go out and throw a couple of rocks. I need a stethoscope, but I finally find her heart beat with my fingers and it's very slow. I put her on the roof of the outhouse, where, I figure, she's safe and I can go back to bed. The moon is full Thursday and all the scuttlebutt is about a 'pink' full moon that proceeds an eclipse. I don't know what that means. Why would light be refracted a particular way? It might be meaning, but it just might be happenstance. Pink, in my experience, is usually artificial, just saying, watch your flank. B came over, and we discussed a meal we might make for our dear friend Howard and a French crew that are interviewing and filming him for the release of a book of his in France. They'll be here a couple of days. I'm going to do a whole pork loin, marinated in cranberry/pomegranate juice with chilies, dry it real well, dampen it with maple syrup, then roll in ground nuts, sage leaves, some bacon barding, brown it on all sides, then wrap it in foil and cook off the heat (on the grill) for maybe an hour and a half. Roasted root vegetables, bread, the sauce. See what the French crew thinks. We could do a morel risotto, if Jenny comes over (she loves Howard, as do we all) as she is the morel queen. A nice creamy risotto might be better than the roasted vegetables. I've found that good old yellow Spanish onions caramelize the best. Sweet onions, which I love, are mostly water. I only mention that because I now caramelize the onions and garlic for the risotto. I can spend an entire afternoon making one of these; but it doesn't matter, if all I'm doing otherwise is reading a book. Not like it's lost time. Mostly I'm sitting at the island reading a book. I have a magnetized timer that I keep on the door of the fridge, to remind me when to stir, and I have a bookmark. What I think of as a 'closed system', and I make more risottos than your average guy, so I probably know what I'm talking about. Took three art history classes through the museum today. I was good, better than these students suspected I might be, in that I engaged their attention and drew them to some attention of detail, but I wasn't better than average, which, quite frankly is a place I desire to be better than. I'm not sure that's a legal usage. Mac mentioned the "conditional" and I had to laugh, of course it is. D was teaching, Trish was off, taking the 17 year-old step daughter to the doctor (due next week), so when Pegi left at four, I was the only person there. One of the art students came back, to ask questions about a specific Carter; they have to write a paper. She had picked the painting called "Chickens Through The Window", and I know a lot about that particular painting. I had her madly scribbling notes for half-an-hour. Had to stop at Kroger, for whiskey; and I thought they might have some Kim-chi, for which I had a hankering, but alas, no. Maybe Howard, or Glenn, who's visiting next week, can bring me some. When the skies finally clear, after midnight, the almost full moon pokes through the ether, beautiful and transiting my writing window. End of the day, I'm exhausted. The drive home centers me back in the natural world. The Red-buds, around that last curve of Upper Twin, are flagrant. They prefer open light, so they thrive on the verge, and there's a run of them, leading up to my mailbox, at the bottom of the hill, that would make you weep. All winter we survive a deficit of color, then this: what dogwoods remain, the Red-buds, and the crest of a pileated woodpecker.