Night Noises

Sleeping badly, that recurrent dream concerning very rickety scaffolding, and there's a noise outside that brings me to full consciousness. I had cleaned out the fridge, turned over most of the stove ashes and organic matter in the compost pile on top of it, but an enterprising pair of raccoons had scented out the left-over ham and bean soup and were making a meal of it, when the four young dogs that belong to the foster kid up the road, sauntered up the driveway to see what mischief they could scout. Young dogs are no match for veteran raccoons. Animal rights groups wouldn't like this high-light film, but I figure the dogs have got to learn, and just hope one of the coons isn't rabid. I have a new bucket of throwing rocks outside the back door, but the problem with throwing rocks at four in the morning, is that there's no way to warm up. No bull-pen. I don't throw with great velocity (58 mph in high school) but I'm incredibly accurate throwing rocks or shooting a sling-shot (my weapon of choice) out to about fifty feet. I've thought about writing the history of the sling-shot, but I'm guessing someone has already done that. Anyway, I swing my arm around a few times, and step out with my best LED flashlight in my left hand, grab a rock and let fly with my right. I hit the brindle pup in the belly (I feel bad about that) and she lets out a squeal. There are six animals and they split off in six different directions. They make a horrible ruckus in the leaf-mast, but it fades quickly into the distance and silence returns. A normal night-time silence which isn't silence at all but a kind of buzz of potential. Sometimes I think I can hear the moon. Below freezing, but no wind, so I go put on my bathrobe and get a drink, roll a smoke, sit in the dark, on the back porch, the stoop, and consider the nature of things. Half moon at a rakish angle. I'm careful with my ash, a coffee can of sand. And I sit there until I'm so cold my teeth chatter. I just want to feel alive. Come back inside and the house is so warm, I stoke the fire and put on a kettle of water so I can shave. Small mercies. This is way it goes. You just do what you have to do. I think I'm cool, I don't feel any particular guilt about anything, but there's a nagging sense that I'm failing at something. I don't have a significant relationship, I spend my nights alone, I microwave frozen lasagne; still, in my defense, I'm not harming anyone. Managed to get back to sleep for a couple of hours. Haul trash and re-cycling, docent a college group through the Carters and dazzle them with stories. They've been assigned a two page paper, to write on any Carter painting and seem to think it's a chore. Two of them stay after the rest leave and I take them down to the library. I told them to come back over and I'd show them some of the good stuff from the vault. Spent most of the afternoon working on the floor in the Richard's gallery, where we'd repaired the ceiling, a real mess. Sharee started bringing in art work for the high school show, which will go in that gallery. She apologized for being early with the work (wasn't supposed to there before Friday) but she had some helpers today; I gave her some shit about it, joking around, and the helpers had no idea, for a while, that we goofing on each other. Didn't have to stop anywhere, I had left-over lunch enough for dinner. Half a Rasher, which is an 'Irish' BLT made with a smoked Canadian bacon, not unlike what B and I both do with whole pork loins, several small roasted potatoes, which Barb allows D and I to substitute as a side with anything we order. I knew there was whiskey enough, and tobacco, at the house, so I drove down the Ohio, then all the way up to the house, along the creek. It's beautiful, green, in patches on the ground, those first miniature Iris, I don't know what they are, purple, very small, growing in disturbed soil. This time of year, I become a fan of color, burned out on black and white, though I always enjoy the sharp contrast of winter. The way you feel alive. In all honesty I sort of like not knowing. It frees me up. Whatever that tense is. Conditional. If I had ever been to a gym. There's a place where a small creek flows into Upper Twin and the creek-bed is eroded down to shale, which stair-steps down to grade. A lovely triple waterfall that catches the afternoon light; a hap-hazard orchard, in a little piece of bottom, where a house had been, only identified by a bank of daffodils; I find a pocket of morels that takes my breathe away. I have them on toast, with a fried egg, and break out the dryer, because there are too many to eat at a sitting. Too many morels is a state you strive for, most of your adult life. This year, the leaf-mat is fearsome, but I notice cracks in that layer, where mushrooms seek light, and I harvest very pale morels that are so sweet and earthy that they make me cry. I'll leave you with that.