Extreme Event

Five o'clock in the afternoon, B had walked over, so that we could chat about his new/old house project, and the snow had slackened. He had driven out this morning, and back in this afternoon, and we were having a wee dram, to celebrate the fact that his new place was completely rewired, new breaker box, new wire, every switch and socket replaced, and that it had only taken two days and cost less than a thousand dollars. Clearly a sign that he was anointed, which I was telling him, when it started snowing like there was no tomorrow. First you couldn't see across the hollow, then you couldn't see the trees that are thirty feet away from the house. A complete white-out, B springs up, to run and get his vehicle to the bottom of the hill, and I retreat, to my chair, to watch out the window. It's 31 degrees, and the snow is wetter than this morning; it smears like icing on the northwest side of the trees. It doesn't last long, the event, maybe thirty minutes, but it's very intense. Like being strapped into an intricate leather device with some extremely flexible partner. Maybe not that, exactly, but something close. Another inch. Linda mentioned Shuffling Commas was a good title. Yesterday's post "The Wittgenstein Plumber" must have read well, I don't think I've ever before gotten five favorable reviews for a post. It took me all day to write. An eight hour paragraph, a day at the office, or, as my cousin Jackie would say, the next time I call rooster, you'll hook up the plow. She talks like that, the language predicated on colloquialisms, a patois based in the delta, almost unknowable in its complexity. I read the newest Ian Sinclair novel the other day, and some of his Scot's English feels the same way. I know the language, but I'm a little unsure exactly what's being said. There are days when almost everything sounds like a existential koan. Maybe it's just a product of spending a lot of time alone and not hearing other voices, but when the first voice I've heard in days asks, "Tom, are you ok?" I have to think about my response. It's a complex question, though it might not have meant to be, in which case it isn't, though it might still be to me, even though it was meant pro forma, it sounds like something quite profound. Several hours spent thinking about 'seeming' and 'being' . I took a nap in there somewhere, and when I woke up, kick-started the fire in the stove, fuck a bunch of cold, and went out with a broom to sweep a fucking path, goddamn snow anyway, a kind of mediation between me and the world. The path doesn't even go anywhere, just a feeble attempt to clean off the steps so I can go outside and pee.