Mud Season

It seems early for mud problems, but carrying just a few loads of wood, I break through the leaf litter to the underlying layer of top-soil and clay. It's a mess and I track it into the house. Nothing to be done. I recycle old tee-shirts into mop-cloths. I let the tracks dry, sweep up the solids, then wipe down the residue. I'll repeat the sequence hundreds of times this winter. Keeping house. Breaking dawn finds me deep into concerns about a particular comma. Half-way between a wee dram of whiskey and that first cup of coffee, I opt for rolling a smoke and having a wee dram. I don't have a fixed schedule for how I interpret events. Mute stratified colors are a good way to start the day. A little bird-song. Some grits. I start almost every day with some grits and a fried egg. Staff meeting, and I can tell that I'm going to be at the museum more than normal in December and January. Everyone is taking some time off, Mark and Charlotte have a week of driving to get the Renaissance show back to the lenders. And someone will have to be in the building, when the painting crew is working, most of January. I believe that will be the Facilities Manager. I have a lot of walls to paint; but when I'm there alone, I need to read myself, and edit. We're getting new computers at work, a whole system, and maybe I can start dealing with all these files. A couple of people came in the museum today, to tell me what a pleasure it was, to have heard me read on Sunday. They seemed a little surprised, that this writer person, whom they knew in a different context, was actually the same person. Jenny, who is running the event (first Sunday readings through the winter) wants me to come back this same winter. They liked me. Push comes to shove, it's nice to be liked. What I noticed was that there were three places where I didn't make any sense at all. I think it's because I wasn't reading it correctly. I'm usually careful with text. Actually, I'm always careful with text. And it threw me, when I wasn't transparent. Two of them, I teased out afterwards, but the third just doesn't make any sense, whatever I meant at the time. As I think about it, it's amazing that are only three minor glitches in an hour of text, fifteen pages. Not acceptable, of course, but I hadn't even read over those pages before Friday. I had made a couple of corrections (in both cases marking out words) and I stumbled a few times, in the reading, getting the emphasis correct, so that the sentence did what it was supposed to do. But, by and large, I was coherent and remarkably calm. If I can read sitting down, it's easier for me to stay centered. The audience is more comfortable if I'm comfortable. Late in the reading, Ronnie called out from the bleachers that I should tell a certain story. This happens a lot for me, people want to hear a specific story that I might not have written down. I'm a good story-teller, and it's easier, actually, than writing. Writing is difficult, because of all that punctuation, if you're telling a story, you just pause, and there's a cadence that's established fairly quickly. A rhythm. And you roll with that. I like to improvise, the narrative is never the same way twice. Case in point: the story Ronnie wanted me to tell. It was a real incident and I can approach it from several different angles. The nature of loss, the futility of labor, getting on with your life.