Thursday, November 14, 2013

Snow, Cold

We did get snow Tuesday morning, temperatures then and today barely above freezing, night-time lows right at twenty. Lost power Monday night, so stayed in town last night, and I'm glad I did. Went over to the pub and John Hogan himself was there, he bought me a brandy, and we had a great conversation. Tuesday, after the staff meeting, TR and I put away chairs and racked up tables, cleaned up broken glass (four wine glasses), and unclogged the drains in the sinks. Today I mostly dealt with garbage. It wasn't a bad day, because no one messes with you when you're dealing with garbage, but I was ready for it to end. I wanted to get home, start a fire, make some notes for my talk tomorrow night; so I begged-off an hour early and came back to the ridge. The driveway is compacted dense stuff, and it holds heat, but the north facing sides of the hollows are deep in leaves, which allows air circulation. It's much colder, and there's an inch of snow. I've thought about moving into a cave. It wouldn't be about making a point, or saying anything, it would just simplify be about my housekeeping. You don't expect much from a guy that lives in a cave. It's my fall-back position. Anabasis, imagine that. The bench mark, for the dead Latin language, is Cicero; I don't know what the bench mark is in Ancient Greek; I read Hesiod, often, that gnomic quality sucks me right into the narrative. I wish I were more of a linguist, but I have to rely on someone translating Greek into Latin into Italian into English. An imperfect science, it's amazing we can communicate at all. It's such a basic human need. Fall into winter. The test is you find yourself alone, a desert island, and you need to make sense of that. I make a nod toward meaning, then go to bed,. it all only apparently makes sense.

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