Locally Heavy

"No there there" is a phrase I heard twice on the radio today, used in the sense of 'nothing of substance there', I think. TR, D, and I had a going away party for D at the pub for lunch. The place was fairly crowded for a Saturday, and the two of them were very funny. We were sitting at the bar, and the four people at the table nearest us were entertained enormously. I was a bit distanced, because I know what D leaving means for the museum, and because I'm losing the thumbnail on my right hand (I caught it, literally, between a rock and a hard place), and I was fascinated by the girth of one patron who seemed to be too large for any of the chairs. But I guess that a lot of that mass is malleable and can form it's self to a given chair by squeezing the fat into other areas. To a certain extent, it must be true, because his ass was too big to fit in that seat. If this is true, when they did liposuction, they should seat you in a normal theater seat and take away anything that doesn't fit. Left work early, because of the impending rain, and right now it's raining as hard as I've ever seen it rain. Spring thunderstorms carry so much energy, someone needs to look into that. Storage of energy is always the problem. Another storm moves through but it's to the south and west and doesn't pose a threat. I lean toward a very large flywheel, hundreds of thousands of pounds, that turns an alternator that charges a battery, using the movement of trees as the powering device. I've worked this out. Everyone needs to plant four Lombardy Poplars, they're the best for this, and buy my simple manual. I'm not kidding, but I've not written that book yet, the way the trees were whipping around last night, we're talking millions of units of stored energy, like catching a lightening bolt in your hand. Took out the electricity again. Back on this morning around three. I was sleeping on the sofa, the fridge and kitchen light snapped on and the computer sang out "Please Wait", which is my usual wake-up call after a power failure. Normally I get up and write for a couple of hours but I was up late last night reading by headlamp about Robert Johnson. Slept in this morning, and after a second cup of coffee and a lovely omelet with morels and caramelized shallots, settled back on the sofa to read Ian Rankin's newest book "Standing In Another Man's Grave". Mid-day I take a decent walk along old logging roads and find a few morels but they're getting harder to see as the ground cover becomes more dense. The miniature Iris are beautiful things; and there's another, even smaller flower, blue blossoms, with flat petals, that grows no more than an inch high. We were all, the three amigos, pretty funny yesterday. TR was talking about 'show' birds, pigeons, especially; one breed he likes, because they have little feathered booties and a crest of feathers that curve over the top of their head, like a hat or crown. But then he added that pigeons were the messiest of all birds, and he hated mucking up after them. D and I looked at each other, with a look that said "if you don't want to muck out birdshit, don't raise birds" but neither of us said anything. I'm familiar with bird people, I've known a lot of them, and almost was one myself, but I got to where I couldn't stand the smell of eviscerating birds. One of the Bridwell Compact Milking Barns I built in Mississippi was for a family that raised everything: rabbits, turkeys, chickens, quail, goats, mules, steers, Black Mouth Curs (a dog used for hunting wild pigs, which the family also raised), bees, hogs; and they had several small ponds in which they raised catfish. There were a lot of kids, and they all had their chores; it was cool to watch them, doing their assigned tasks. The way you manage the logistics of getting the chores done is a fascinating subject, I used to be good at it, but I don't pretend anymore. I can still install a show with the best of them, but I expect the art to be delivered, and I don't like driving trucks. Just so we're clear, there is no way I can do what D has done, I'm not allowed to access a keyboard, but if I had, my only recourse was to imagine what was said. You, and your various devices.