Howling Wind

You could tell, by late afternoon, it was going to be one of those nights. The rain cleared out and the wind picked up a full gale. I sent a post, then closed down operations, curled up on the sofa with a flashlight at hand. I'd filled one of the oil lamps and had several utility candles in holders. Reading a food book by Bob Shacochis and he quotes, at the beginning of a chapter, Guy Davenport, and I recognize the quote, from an essay about Levi-Strauss: "Eating is always at least two activities: consuming food and obeying a code of manners." Which could just as well be a quote from Cicero. A ruckus at the compost heap, so I put on my LED headlamp and grab my wrist-rocket sling-shot. There's a rabid coon, atop the pile, foaming at the mouth, and a circle of dogs. The dogs run off as soon as I come out the door, but the coon just bares his teeth. I dispatch him with a ball-bearing to the head. I don't know enough about rabies, but I don't think I want other animals eating the corpse, so I carefully bag the carcass in several layers of plastic. I'll bury it tomorrow. A deep hole and no last rights. Not unlike what I'd wish for myself. When I get back inside, I get a wee dram and roll a smoke, happy to just be alive. Not raining, for the first time in several days, and a lovely morning for a slow drive down the creek, to watch spring unfurling. The red maples are beautiful, the red-bud, the green poking through the leaf-litter, and forsythia in bloom. It's always cool to see the riot of daffodils where there used to be a house. In town the Bradford Pears are blooming. A draft and a sandwich at the pub. TR is a funny guy. After he learned that I had a large vocabulary; he joined the group of several people who ask me if I know what a certain word means, and about half the time, I don't. His word today was ocothorpe, which I didn't know except that it was eight of something. It's the # sign, the actual name. Charlotte's at the museum and I get her to open the vault and watch while I take my two boxes of "valuable" books and what must be 1500 manuscript pages of writing. I'd found another box of 500 pages (from 09 and 10), and there's more than 1000 pages on my desk now. The Thomas Wolfe problem Maxwell Perkins faced with "Look Homeward Angel", way too much material, listen, I've been on both ends of this horn.