Stairway to Heaven

I've been reading so much, recently, about language and thought in the fourteenth and fifteenth centauries, the Humanists, that my poor brain is spinning. I have a penchant for pursuing subjects, though they tend to be more tangible, consider my opus, my canto, Of Foxes And Frogs, which is quite literal, to say the least. The first thing Gutenberg printed was (were) indulgences. The Catholic Church was a folly. You could buy a Cardinal, being Pope just required having a lot of money and being ruthless. John XXIII, was de-poped, or deposed, in 1416, the last Father Of The Church to be cast out. Religion is all about mediation. A Diet Of Worms. Luther and Calvin loosened the reins. I don't have a stake in this, I don't believe in anything. Following Lucretius. The atoms that are me become the next thing. Rot, and become part of the natural world. For now, I have to take off my sweatshirt, the house is too warm. Even a small fire is more than enough. Not dying is relatively easy: you just avoid conflict, keep your stove-pipe clean, and eat greens. The ticking of the wood-stove is a stairway to heaven. A random staccato beat. Crashed early last night, so the fire went out and the house was cold when I got up. I started a small fire and set about the cold weather routine of filling the kindling bucket and hand sawing some small sticks. A walk along the ridge top yields an armload of branches that I can break into more kindling. Rain changing over to snow is the forecast, and much colder. A flutter of bird activity including two Pileated Woodpeckers that swoop about from tree to tree, tilting their heads in that way they have, listening for bug activity under the bark. I love watching them. In fact, the entire forest is astir. Looks like everyone got the memo that the weather is changing. I brought home a pretty good pile of left-overs from the party, enough that I can just graze for a couple of days, supplementing the roast beef and chicken satay with sweet gherkins, black olives, and those small grape tomatoes that are sweet and delicious all year long. I have a little row of foodstuffs at the island, and every time I get up from my increasingly tattered writing chair, I eat a few items. I have to turn off the radio, I can't even listen to Terry Gross, whom I normally love, because listening sub-plants thinking, and I'm deep into myself right now, wondering if I should go one way or another. Dissensions like the one I face right now, whether I should go into town, so I can help with the clean-up, or just stay on the ridge, where I'll likely be snowed-in for a day or two, figure prominent in the framework. I choose the ridge, fuck a bunch of politics. I'm sure your grand-babies are the cutest ever.