Thinking Back

Disconnected. The way I feel. High Summer and the bug-noise is extreme. Cool enough, three in the morning, that I could shut the windows, to block the sound. I went outside to pee, and was struck with how quiet it fell when I opened the door. It only took 30 seconds for the chorus to resume. Skinny white guy is not a threat. Turn on the radio get a wee dram, ponder the finite within the infinite. A call tonight, someone else had died, and I realized this was not going to stop. At some point I'll die, a four in five chance I'll be alone, and it would be several days before the body was discovered. Not that it matters. An organic shell we inhabit, but it is just a shell. No word, I think, enjoys as many spellings as 'Catsup'. Every few years I make a walnut catsup that is to die for; but it involves a great many pots and pans, and I need a lot of water to clean up. The blender, for instance, is a bear. I remember one night, we were sitting in the dark, discussing Thoreau, and Peter said to me that we should all be so moral. Listen, I've saved the sauce, and the sink is clean, there's not much more I can do. Charlotte started the day vacuuming concrete dust from the velour backdrop in the theater, Mark started painting the stage and stage floor, they both finished the day painting the outside wall of the projection room. TR and I embarked on cleaning the basement hallway, then he left and I kept at it. Three mop-buckets of water to get up the concrete dust there. More of the same tomorrow. Dirty business, but it has to be done. TR and Megan got Mexican for lunch, and I had them pick me up one, that I would eat for dinner, because I went to the pub and had their wonderful chicken-tortilla soup for lunch, and I knew I wasn't going to feel like cooking. Ate the lunch as soon as I got home, because I had to turn on the AC for Black Dell; rice, refried beans, eggs scrambled with chorizo and corn tortillas, salsa and some of Andy's Serrano pepper sauce. As an appetizer, I had a wonderful low-acid orange tomato on toast, popped in the toaster oven to melt some hard cheese on top; so with the same appetizer, I should have left-overs enough for another night. I love it when that happens because it means I could start writing as soon as Black Dell was ready. I wouldn't say she rules my life, but I do tend toward her mandates. One strange thing. I was coming home, the long way around, because of the bridge being out, so I have to drive this extra six miles, west, into Adams county, even though I want to go east, to Portsmouth. This geography is a product of hollows and ridges, the limited number of ways you can get from one place to another. There were five crows, clustered around a road-kill raccoon, and when they squawked off, I was left with an imagined narrative.