Dead Calm

Steel gray sky. The squirrels are out, and they have way too much to eat right now. Their front paws are like human hands, and they roll unripe blackberries between them, take a single bite, and throw it away. Wasteful fuckers. B is just hot-packing blackberries right now, a kind of thin jam, which is a fine way to preserve them, but I like to put a cup in a sterilized pint jar, a tablespoon of sugar, cover them with boiling water, and process them in a canner. I can use the berries later, in any number of ways, and I have this blackberry juice, which I either use as a marinade, or drink diluted in orange juice. I need supplies, and it's supposed to be nice, tomorrow, so maybe I can run to town. Doesn't matter, actually, but I'd like to do a load of laundry, and get some seafood at Kroger, some Littleneck clams or mussels, just so I can remember what the sea smells like. And I could use another library book, something completely escapist, because I've been reading non-fiction forever, and I feel mired in my own footsteps. Reading about that period between 1400 and 1600. !400 the Catholic quagmire is still burning people at the stake, there are three popes, and only 5% of the population can read; suddenly you have paper, printing, and in 1600, Shakespeare writing Hamlet. A sea-change. The church would have been happiest if no one ever learned to read. That way, they could keep the lid on. Look at the way social media has changed the world recently, it was like that, when Poggio found the last copy of Lucretius, moldering in Germany, and made a copy for his buddy, Niccoli, back in Italy, and the flood gates opened. We're not pawns, each of us is a prime mover, reconcile that with a church that offers indulgences. I can't wrap my head around it. I can, actually: the powers that be. Take any hierarchy, give them a huge amount of money, and let them run things, see the way things go. I can pretty much guarantee you'll end up with a few very rich people and everyone else eating rice twice a day. Human nature, the way things play out. The Church Of England is a joke, Luther is a footnote, really, on the ladder toward independence. What emerges, if you allow things to flow, is a trickle of self: It has nothing to do with whatever pope, or whoever might be currently managing affairs. Thunderstorms, another loss of power. Spent most of the day reading about disasters and The Army Corp response. Interesting reading. Flash flood warnings. Seems to be clearing, though, and I should able to get to town tomorrow. The napp at the spillway will be spectacular. I was watching one of last year's squirrels (he's probably about 16 months old) slumming around on the front deck, eating blackberries, and just as I was wondering how he could walk around on blackberry canes, he got a thorn in his right rear foot. He limped out of the tangle, plopped back on his ass, grabbed the offending foot with both front paws, and pulled out the thorn with his teeth. Excellent. Just what I would have done, given the equipage. The rain has driven the mice indoors, I trap them relentlessly; and the crows like this relationship. I don't have an axe to grind. Nuclear explosions of lightening. I have to go.