Thursday, May 29, 2014

Thunder Storms

Let the first line of squalls clean of the roof. Supposed to be waves of them tonight and tomorrow. I need to collect wash-water. Used a lot cleaning up the force-meat mess. Read the Mark Twain Autobiography all day. Big, well edited, scholarly book like this, I always enjoy reading the 100 pages of notes at the end. Wet and boggy outside, so I skipped the hike, read, and ate too much pate. The book's too heavy to balance on your belly for very long, so I ended up sitting in my writing chair most of the day. Cramps. At dusk I finally do go outside and walk the driveway. My caloric load and saturated fat intake is maxed out, so I forgo any further food. Continue rummaging around in the pages of text. I have all three thousand pages together now, from the museum and the pile here. I'd asked a few close friends what had been their favorite paragraphs over the years, pages I might read up north. Since they're all sent as e-mails, they're date coded. I can actually find them. This is ten years of work, and it's like a romp through my recent past. Right, right, I'd already forgotten that. Forgetting is a part of history, what we leave out. Selective memory. It's safe to say that I've forgotten more things than I remember. Reading Twain, dictating his autobiography, getting side-tracked, pasting in bits of the local post. "Politics is always local." Not that I ever talk politics. You live long enough and words change their meaning. Fast food, and gay, and libertarian; even what the whip-o-will sings. Twain had one of the first typewriters. About 1900, letters became something, text, that was typed and signed, rather than something that was written. There's a difference. Poggio, writing on velum, is not the same as a ink-jet printer. An Iris smells different than a day-lily. Ten years of applied dynamics and I can now write honestly about being attacked by a goose. Being noble is usually a wild-goose chase. I prefer the village idiot, with his incantations. Or something a complete stranger says. For my part, it's a Mocking Bird singing a Towhee song, and I wonder about the nature of reality. Dawn comes to the ridge, and the birds are singing, well enough on the ways. Read more...

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Making Force-Meat

It takes me all afternoon. I dirty every dish in the house; but most of the skillets, I clean with a paper towel and kosher salt. I try and stay ahead of the curve, still, I end up with a dishpan full of utensils and bowls. I didn't want to use all of the morels, so I bought mushrooms. Bought ground veal, bought butter, bought mixed-nut bits. I do all the cooking, and it goes on forever, on a hot-plate, because you can't crank the wood stove on a day when you're sweating. I'm good on a hot-plate. I got to the Finals last year. What you do is set up at the island, with a good book, and a book- rock, to hold the page; try and keep a finger and thumb clean, to turn the pages. I toast the nuts and saute the mushrooms, cook the veal, cook the liver, caramelize the onions. I meld them together in a twelve inch skillet with high sides, while reading at the island; then run everything through the blender and mold it in whatever containers I have at hand. If God had said there needed to be a spread, this is it. Every time I take a bite, I remember something. I've made these country pates most of my adult life. Four pounds is as large a batch as you'd ever want to make. I did, though, make another small batch of a different spread, using all the same skillets. A morel, butter, shallot, and nut version. A very small tub which I ate immediately. Butter wrappers are great for starting a fire, so of course I keep them, and I was appalled when I tossed another one into the kindling basket. Morel season will be the death of me. But going down in style. Who else, tonight, ate morel pate? After the clean-up I crashed on the sofa, intending to read for a while, Mark Twain's Autobiography, Vol. 2, a huge and heavy tome, which I actually balance on another book flat on my chest when I'm reading on the sofa; or rest it on my thighs, if I'm reading at my desk. He dictated this, inserting things as he went along, reviews, letters, short stories; it's a good read. Laborious, but worth the time. You see the person, or at least that aspect of the person you were supposed to see. I don't read for very long before I fall into deep sleep. Exhausted. Another line of thunder storms, I dodge for a exit. Almost a constant, the thunder is right on top of the lightning and the lightning is almost constant. The power is out, the phone is out, I'm reading Mark Twain with my headlamp, when the light rises in the east. Fuck me. Another day. Read more...

Monday, May 26, 2014

Establishing Shot

Layers and layers of greenery. Morning sun, slanting through, leaves pools of light. Very calm. The soundtrack is awakening birds. The sun hits a low band of clouds that flame orange. With morning coffee and an early smoke, I start reading the 2009 book by Richard Powers, Generosity, and I know right away that I'm going to postpone making pate until tomorrow. Except for pee breaks and a couple of grazing meals, I read all day. About 4 o'clock my back is stiff and I walk out the driveway, come back, get an early drink, roll a smoke, and get right back to the reading. This is what I think of as "The Pynchon Response", when I just stop doing anything else I was doing and read a very good book that is new to me. There are a lot of books out there, and most of them are dross, proof-reading no longer exists, mistakes are rife; everything deteriorates. After a hard day of reading, the days are so long now, there's still time before dark, to clean up. I have an old kettle I cleaned the rust off of, and spray painted black enamel. If I fill it with rain water and set it out on the back stoop the water gets fairly warm. A packing skid is my shower stall, I use an old metal cup as my water delivery system. Get wet, scrub, rinse. I can do this with a gallon of water. It doesn't have the grace or eloquence of showering, then soaking in a hot-tub, smoking a cigar, and drinking a Frank Family Cab '93, but it's cheap, and gets the job done. Later, cleansed of my sins, I feel lighter in my frame, and finally drift off. I can't believe I bought into the whole shoddy mess; but, of course, you have to look at the context. Tom's old mule, Frank, knew gee from haw, and it was a treat to plow with him, because he knew every turning. There's a lesson there. Several, actually. The whole issue of control. Read more...

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Off Track

Something else catches your attention. Everything is a distraction. It's romantic, in a certain sense, to take the time to get down on your knees and examine the miniature iris, and that would be time well spent, but you might keep in mind that you were on your way toward a specific task. Muck out the privy, for instance, or find a few mushrooms. I wanted to go the library, I needed some fiction, to hole-up against the holiday. Stopped down at B's place, to check the progress, his ex-wife was there, with the twin grand-boys, and they were all loping off low hanging branches. I would have joined right in, but I had groceries that needed refrigeration. It's hard, living close to the earth, she is so unforgiving. Setting romantic notions aside. Sharon and Doctor John were at the bar and we talked about head-cheese and scrapple. I'm not an alpha-male. I tend toward the distracted. It's always the choice between bowing to a higher power, to which I would never subscribe, or just hiding out in the woods. Beating sticks against the dawn. A hollow echo, a train, or coon dogs on a trail. Red-Bone singing in the dead of night. Not that it means anything. Night-time silence is a relative thing, bugs and frogs, and that occasional silence, when an owl sweeps through. I grudgingly add a comma. Assembling my tool kit for making the pate, make a list of what I'm missing, and make a run to town. Ever since B brought over the liver I've been salivating. Tomorrow we'll be making a force-meat of calves liver, ground veal, mushrooms, onions, and almonds, all cooked separately in butter, then ground together and molded. I have a local, slightly sweet Sauterne I'll use to de-glaze the pans and clean the various implements, and add that too. Lots of several peppers and a touch of nutmeg. If you like that sort of thing, this will be very good. Whenever I'd make a version of this, for an event at the museum, about 20% of the people ate 100% of the product. My Dad hates liver, but he loves it. It's never exactly the same, because the first three ingredients (equal amounts of each) are never the same. Often it's chicken livers with whatever wild game someone has left on my back porch with a note (so I'd know who to give some to) and whatever mushroom is available. A pound of each ends up being more than three pounds of product, I divide into four molds, one for B, one for Ronnie, one for me, and one for whomever supplies the inspiration, in this case B supplied the liver, so I'll split the fourth share with him. Either a bat or a bird has found itself down my stovepipe and into the stove. I decide that whatever it is, it will either find the stovepipe back out, or it will dehydrate and die. I'm not going to open the stove and let it fly out, because I've had bad experiences with that. When it finally quits trashing about, I open the stove and get it out, it's still alive, I blow off the ashes and put it on the back deck. In minutes it's gone. Another storm. I'd better go. Read more...

Friday, May 23, 2014

Reciprocity

Holiday weekend, so I went into town today, for supplies. The Richards family brought me a package of calve's liver, and, to sweeten the pot, a package of ox-tails. I love ox-tails. Marrow on toast with morels. What they request, in return, is a pate, and I forget to pick up the ingredients I was missing, when I was in town today. B's supposed to come over for a drink tonight bringing me a book he feels certain I need to read (he's seldom wrong) and I make him a note that I need another package of the liver, because if I'm going to dirty all the dishes in the house, I might as well make a pretty large batch. People are already calling and emailing that they heard I was making pate. In the early days, of my stay in extreme south-central Ohio, I'd make three pounds: a pound for Ronnie, a pound for B, and a pound I'd hoard for myself. The pay-back on this was just good-will. Now Zoe and Dawn want some, and other people, board members at the museum, folks that write books I actually like, several people that have read me for years and never tasted a single thing I'd cooked. I don't think you could understand me, if you hadn't eaten my cooking. Simple as that. Always looking for consonance. Another storm moving through, I'd better go. Read more...

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Free Lunch

Into town for lunch with TR, but he's a no-show. Watching ESPN on the flat-screen behind the bar (I only get a half-hour of this a week now) and my banker friend Tyler comes in. He's in better physical shape than anyone I know. He and his wife are both into Cross Fitness training. He's also quite bright, and we enjoy each other's conversation. He and his wife have recently finished renovating a house, and I was an advisor. He buys me a draft and lunch. After he left, I went out back, where there are chairs and an ashtray, and rolled a smoke, and TR showed up, delayed at the museum, as I had expected. We catch up, he agrees to print out some more pages for me. When I get home the phone is ringing and it's Frontier saying that the service I had already bought from them was not available at my location. This, after me warning them at least a dozen times that it was not the piece-of-cake they seemed to think it was. Now they want to install a dish. I'm having trouble nailing them down on a price. I need a few hours with a shrink. This is lapsing into the ridiculous. I have to spend some time on the phone (if I have one) tomorrow, figuring out what I'm being billed for. D was adamant though, that I had to lock in a server, before I bought any equipage. Fortunately I hadn't canceled AOL yet, but I had canceled MCI, and I thought I was going to have a higher speed connection. I have the strangest sense that I'm a switching error. I should have at least expected that no one knew what they were talking about. I hope they are recording this message. Dire Wolf. I might take their dish, because they offer me a discount, they've fucked up so completely.The woman who called, from Cincy, wondered where I lived, that the company didn't have service. She sort of knew the area, having camped in the forest. I tell her about the dam and the draining of the lake. She thinks I should go with the dish and get a lap-top. She and her son hiked in to Campsite 6, which is about three miles from the ridge, as the crow flies. I tell her to call, next time she's in the forest, and I'll fix dinner for her and her son. Despite the pleasant conversation, I'm without a connection. It's frustrating. Even the people that work for the company can't believe they sold me something they can't deliver. This a step up from denial. I was pretty sure I'd been led down a seeded path. Hash, topped with an egg, some mushrooms in a reduced butter sauce. Glad I stopped to eat when I did, a tremendous, powerful thunder storm, moved in and I had shut down. Sheets of lightning and buckets of rain. The phone came back on and I was able to call the power company about my outage. They called back to say a drunk had taken out a pole and it would be afternoon before they had it cleaned up. I was up late reading, I'd decided to reread William Least Heat Moons wonderful book about Chase County, Kansas Prairie Erth; and there's a house shaking storm, the lightning almost constant, brighter than day. We probably get four inches of rain in an hour. I had on my headlamp, and I was humming the opening of the Prelude to the Sixth Cello Suite while I lit a candle on the island, so I could pour wee drams as necessary, and lit the smaller oil lamp on the table, so there'd be a bit of ambient light, and I might not trip, or break another toe. I'm incredibly careful with open flames, and I've done this many thousands of times, I have a check-list, I know what I'm doing usually. With this new generation, they reach so quickly, I don't know. I think I'd rather be left alone. Read more...

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Square One

Nothing but defused light of early dawn. The fog obscures all the sharp edges. Widening gyre as the morning burns off. It's beautiful, the way the soft green comes into focus. I don't have an agenda, but I see the way bilateral leaves unfold. Hardly any movement, but a nudge in the right direction. All of history is contained in a poplar bud. Think of how careful she needs to be. Assume you'd bowed and kissed her toe, or whatever. I'd looked around and it wasn't a very secure position. Sand-bagged the high ground. You live on a flood-plain, you get used to high water. An in-holding such as mine, the highest point in the county, I've zero chance of flooding, sea-level would have to rise 1400 feet, but my access, down the various hollows, can often be problematic. So you lay in supplies and read, while the rain comes pounding down, hoping the driveway can handle the water. The library had called, and I'd picked up the latest Greg Iles novel, Natchez Burning, and another book, about building stills. I'm interested in making distillates from a few things. It isn't that difficult, condensing vapors that boil at different temperatures, all you need is a decent thermometer. I cob together a simple drip still, a canning kettle with an overhanging vessel (a large stainless steel bowl) and a glass container underneath. Soon discover I can distill anything. I have a rack, and some test tubes I seal with molten wax. History in a bottle. Elder Blow, 2014. Labels are important, the way they carry information. Dawn birds and the fucking refrigerator infringe on my soundscape. One bird in particular, I don't recognize, smudges in a leaden sky, it might be a Mocking Bird, fucking with my memory. Read more...

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Literary Feasts

Phone was out so I couldn't send last night. So beautiful outside. I postpone my search for a particular book of food writing (I remember buying it off the remaindered table at Back Of Beyond Books in Moab, Utah) the title of which I don't remember, but I do remember color and size. I'm sure I can find it later. Fix a quick breakfast of egg and mushrooms on toast, then head out. I stick to the old logging roads, and carry a walking stick as a nod toward rattlesnake protection. A few morels, but mostly I examined the new growth on everything in the under-story. It's incredible right now, with the recent rains, the rate at which things are growing. Barnhart was correct, a cream of asparagus soup, with morels, is very good. There are several variations on this. The last couple of years before the divorce, in western Colorado, the girls and I picked hundreds of pounds of wild asparagus. We carried aioli in little holsters, and ate the sun-warmed spears raw. I made a lot of creamed soups because we had our own dairy. It's a nice walk, and I go east instead of west, I almost knew where I was, not surprising. Come back to the ridge a long way around. If I disturb someone's dogs, I'm libel to get shot, so I go downwind and silent. When I get back to the ridge, there has been nary a bark, I'm invisible, I can escape Beagles. I'd have to click it up a notch, to go head to head with a Blue-Tick Hound. I find the book, it only takes a couple of hours, and I have some spare time, as it happens, and I just read for several hours. Great meals that appeared in pieces of writing, from Jim Harrison to A. J. Liebling. What a glorious afternoon. B comes over, for conversation and a wee dram. He thinks I should read the Golden Eagle piece first, and I know exactly which piece he means (which is passing strange, as there are thousands of pages) and I agree. He argues, strongly, that I shouldn't explain myself, that any explanation diminishes what I'm saying. I write so slowly, a process of distillation in which almost everything is left out, teasing a thread, that I lose track of time. After B leaves, I read a few pages, and realize sense is a relative term. Read, for instance, might mean either red or reed. Depth of field becomes an issue. I slip so easily into the middle-ground. A Hereford on pasture, a chicken waiting to be fried; two ducks go into a bar. No, wait. A duck and a priest go into a bar, a goose and a papal scribe, two crows and a dead mouse. From midnight until six in the morning you'll almost never be disturbed, so it's a good time to write. If a Whip-O-Will comes around, just go outside, naked, and blow off a few rounds of bird-shot. Read more...

Green Wall

I can no longer see across the hollow, maybe a couple of small patches, but they're green too. And the rain, more tonight, has everything (even the walnut trees are leafing, and they are, always, the very last, and also the slowest growing) fairly exploding in riotous celebration. Waiting in line at the liquor store I was flirting with a lesbian friend and she hit me with her purse and called me a pervert. The other customers, and the two employees, Jesse and Aaron, were in hysterics, as we put on our little performance piece. I'd already been having a good day, lunch with TR, a free draft (everyone is buying me drinks recently), and I had remembered my list, so I could stop at Kroger with confidence. Talk about inexplicable, when I went out this morning, I was driving slowly through the State Forest, looking at things, and coming the other way, at a good clip, were seven brand new Porsches, each one a different color, five of the drivers were male and two were female. What the fuck are they doing here? Training as Rally drivers? I pull over and they fly past. Maybe there's a drone and I'm a nuisance, I freely admit that I am. Seven Porsches running, six pot-holes waiting. The forest was lovely today. I took a long slow walk several hollows over, but the bugs and snakes are out, so days in the deep woods are nearly over for the year. I need B and his chainsaw for an hour or two, and I'll have a couple of weeks working up firewood, got to do some cleaning and some yard work. But first, a day off from serious thought, and read Light Lit all day, Thomas Perry, Lee Child, and had a fine time just being outside of my own head. No interruptions, the phone and power were out all day. I must have missed that storm, sometimes I just roll over, let the weather put me back to sleep. Like having an apartment over a redneck bar. You get used to it. Bacon-wrapped filets with a morel Duxelle. What'd you have for dinner? Not to rub in salt, but a woodchuck will feed a family of one for a week. When I'm making woodchuck hash, a week later, I still have the same three dollars in my wallet, that I had at the beginning of the week. It's not lost on me how this green wall descended. Green, fucking green. I have some of my best people on this. There's a tell somewhere. Look closely. Read more...

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Tree Rain

Drips and rain all day, with falling temperatures; in the thirties tonight, and at midday I have to close the windows. Tornado watch and straight-line winds, intermittent power for several days. Several twisters nearby. So much water, wide scale flooding (I'll see tomorrow, on my whiskey and tobacco run to town) and more of the same coming. In an interval I had walked outside, and it was lovely. The pollen was all washed down into the humus, becoming one with sloughed skin cells and all the other crap that makes up soil. Slough is an interesting word. Cane-pole fishing for perch, I'm pretty sure there'd be hush-puppies with dinner. I knew I would have an advantage. Sequence is important to me, I keep track of things, fat puppies are good with a nut stuffing, but I rarely eat cat. My internal clock is screwed-up. Yesterday was dark all day. Rain and overcast. Mid-afternoon, I'd been editing some recent work, paring it down, sharpening the punctuation, I completely lost track of time. I wasn't absolutely sure what day it was. Not that it mattered, You know that story about Ishi hunting the deer. Preconceptions being put to rest. I was thinking about the opera. We see the musicians, they're shuffling around, tapping things. One of them has a horn, a sax, something mournful. Our female lead enters. She introduces us to Mad Tom, her husband, and Carl, her lover; she sings about the polluted Ohio as if it was a metaphor. The chorus sings a lament, almost a blues, hoe that cotton down. The bar-tender is a trans-gender baritone. Sure, I can do this, I'm always doing things that were impossible yesterday. Note the arrogance. "I think I'd rather roll right over and die...": various variations. It sets the tone, the nature of reality. I don't care. I play the cards, sometimes I look up a word. It's not a crime. Read more...

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Catkin Rain

Stunning colorful dawn but it looked like it was snowing bizarre Frank Zappa yellow snow. I was immediately suspect, because I'd run AC the night before. A catkin fall the likes of which I had never seen before. Pollen was thick in the air. The sky turned slightly yellow, like it does when a hurricane hits. It's supposed to rain, and I hope it does, to wash the leaves clean. TR told me that they had boxed up the last of my stuff at the museum, and I needed to pick it up, so I went into town to do that. Mark and Charlotte joined TR and me at the pub. They're all very busy right now, accepting work to be juried for "The Cream Of The Crop" and I can't wait to get out of there. Stopped at Kroger and there were a bunch of those individually packed filets of beef tenderloin, wrapped in bacon, on sale. $2.99, and I bought three; I wish I'd bought a dozen, two in the freezer, and one grilled tonight, finished with a duxelle of morels. High on the hog. Explain that to your Chinese friends. A serious line of spring thunder storms closes me down. Curled on the sofa, reading Procopius, The Secret History, a tawdry tale, Theodora and the whole sick crew, while it rains cats and dogs. Wearing my LED headlamp, the batteries for which seem to go on forever. I think about batteries, now and again, the concept of storing energy. The thunder storm was shaking the house and the flashes of lightning were blinding if you happened to looking in that direction. Millions, billions of BTUs, if there was just a way to store them. Phase-change salts, pools of mercury deep under ground, very large flywheels; even if you were sloppy, wasted 80%, you could still power a small town. Big wheel keeps on turning. You'd need a really stout alternator. That's not my problem, hand it off to the engineers. They only call me in when the situation is desperate. What would you call that? A fall-back perspective? When Black Dell calls, I answer. Nothing, more or less. Rolling on the river. An innocent question becomes a serious event. The rain is still dripping on the roof, everything is a patter song. Off the beat, I'm not so sure there's a melody, but it sounds like song. Consider birds at dawn. Read more...

Wild Honey

In Mississippi, I was tearing down an old house because I wanted the cypress siding. The south wall was full of bees. It was winter, and I went in armed with a CO 2 fire extinguisher, got a few quick gallons of honey, and beat it out of there. What brought that to mind, I saw the first honey bees today, working the sassafras blossoms. I could find their honey tree, it's fairly easy, you just follow them, but I don't want to deal with bees right now. I read a great many pages of writing today, putting together some things to take to Chautuaqua. Pretty much what I did all day. Took a little walk, read a short history of vegetables. Finished eating the risotto, formed into small cakes, with an egg binder, and fried, with a lovely duxelle. These were sinful, I had them for breakfast and lunch, and had a bowl of cereal for dinner. I'll need to go to town, tomorrow or Wednesday, get the last of my stuff from the museum, get TR to save the last of my emails before I dump AOL, see if Old Black Dell can handle the transition. Probably the fittings aren't the same, and I'll have to buy a new computer anyway, and sure, I need a tablet, with a battery, so I can write when the power is out, and I need a cell-phone, so I can call AAA when I have a flat tire. Or whatever. Speaking of re-frying. Re-fried beans should always be fried into crisp patties, not eaten as baby-food. They should be fried in lard. There was a great Mexican diner near Four-Corners, that fixed the greatest re-fried bean patties ever, the pinto bean capital of the world was just down the road, Dove Creek, Colorado, and they had a free supply. Honey was also the name of a stripper I got to know in Florida. Mom had been making her costumes for many years, and we met at a fish-fry. I wasn't looking to get involved, I'd say, probably, just the opposite. We actually talked about American Tonalism, and whether or not it meant anything, she asked me to come back with her, to look at her etchings, and I knew it was a tangle. Hard rain, I have to go. The power was out for a couple of hours, and after the storm front moved through, deep silence, the smell of ozone and fecund wetness. Black Dell is wheezing and I have to turn on the little window AC unit so I can work. I hate the AC, because it severs contact with the natural world, but Black Dell and I have an arrangement. When I came back in today, after a foray to town, B's 4-Runner was parked in his space, so I parked at the top of the driveway and walked over to his place. His cabin is 'The Hermit's Dream', the perfect stage-set for an opera I have to get TR to write. He was naked, when I yelled from down the path: it's considered polite, in hill country, to announce your presence, otherwise you're libel to get your ass shot off. By the time I got to his door he'd pulled on boxer shorts. We drank water and talked about Day-Lilies. Down in town the Iris are so beautiful it takes my breathe away. I've run the math on this, and the more times you're amazed, the better. Not that it makes life easier, but that you feel alright about your self. I have to go, it's already tomorrow, and I'm not prepared. Poke me with a stick, you'll see what I mean. Where any silt settles, a delta. Honey can you bring me home. A lonely sax, a few lentils, thrown on a snare drum, sounds about right. Read more...

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Off the Cuff

Not that it matters, but I'm so good with an Ultra-Light spinner that I can anticipate where fish will be. It pissed my Dad off, that I was better at it than he was. Not that there was anything competitive. I didn't even think about that, mostly I'm concerned about localized fallout. First off, I don't want anyone mad at me, and I'd rather not accept an award (a bronze banana) come on, the water is fine, than to be so fully exposed. Line squalls. Vicious winds and sheets of rain, I finally just shut down and went to bed. Linda had got me thinking about titles. I'm usually completely literal. What you see. In order to avoid that problem, where the map is as large as the terrain, I leave out a few things. Actually, I leave out almost everything: when you look at something closely, the detail is infinite. I stopped at the job-site, down at Roosevelt lake, which is drained dry, where they're working on the dam. Huge operation. I poke around with a stick. I think I understand what they're doing, injecting high density concrete into the hollow core, and they've moved mountains of limestone. The reason I stopped, though, was because they'd drained the lake, and I could get to the cat-tail patch (far side of the lake) without getting wet. I pulled a dozen new shoots, clipped off the root end and peeled off the outer layer of soon-to-have-been leaves, and put the stalks in the plastic bag that's always in my back pocket this time of year. Usually I just cook these like asparagus and have them with a butter sauce. Instead I make a nice risotto, adding partially pre-cooked chopped cat-tail shoots and morels about halfway through, finishing it with grated cheese and butter. Better than nice, it's one of the best dishes I've ever eaten. I can make another version of this, with day-lily buds, in a couple of weeks. A warning though, the cat-tail shoots retain their cooking heat. The Elder Blow, those lovely and easily identified cymes, will be blooming soon. It's so beautiful, down in the swales; the shadberry, the dogwoods, the red-bud. Pay-back for the winter from hell. Soon as I'm done with Chatuaqua I have to fill the woodshed and finish re-insulating the floor. If I came back right through Columbus, which isn't that difficult, I could pick up a gallon of olive oil and a 20 pound sack of basmati rice, at the middle-eastern market. I want a reading program, for next winter; all of somebody, read in sequence; I have to make my bean order, the order for grits and cornmeal. Speaking freely, it's all I can do, everything is so un-predictable. I'll tell you as soon as I know. I don't trust anything anymore. A tree only looks like a tree. Not a shadow, exactly, but a representation, something seen in a mirror. And how real is that? Read more...

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Eye Training

Every spring I'm struck with the thousand shades of green. I'd walked over beyond the graveyard, to look down into the hollow where the church used to be, that serviced my cemetery. I've got a stump there, where I can sit and smoke, have a nip from my flask. There was some wind, and the soft new leaves were draping over each other, a few drops of rain, the sky was steel gray. I must have sat there for an hour, drifting in the middle distance, the oaks are leafing-out, the maples are frivolous, the Black Walnuts are finally budded. They are always the last to bud, and the first to drop their leaves, they have a growing season, here, of 90 days, so they don't make rapid progress, in terms of spreading, not like any of the oaks. Survival characteristics. I thought about the succession of plants in an area that had been clear-cut after the fire a few years ago, about how events were illusions. The past is always a memory, and the future is a projection, it's that narrow slot between, that's the issue. How do you perceive time? I don't care if I'm wrong, sitting on my stump, observing the way green comes to a hollow. Light green at the bottom, darker green as it eased on up the slope. Mountain Laurel. A town friend called and wanted to come out and look for morels. I told him to bring a six-pack. He'd never foraged anything before. We went out, between light rains, and I saw one right away, stopped him and told him he was within five feet of a nice morel. He found it in about three minutes. I told him not to move and just look at the mushroom for five minutes. Imprint a picture in his brain. That would make it easier to see them in the future. He found three more between where he was standing and the first one. I find asparagus by knowing what last year's foliage looks like. When we got back to the house, I made him morels on toast, with a butter sauce and a sprinkling of fresh paprika (another friend just sent me) and I thought he was going to swoon. After he left, I made a very quick trip into town, an hour, to get whiskey, tobacco, sushi, and an avocado. This was, again between the rains, the wind was blowing and I figured the driveway was firm enough. It was, I got to town, despite the hundreds of people on bicycles, doing the yearly run, down from Columbus (100 miles) and back tomorrow. But I know their route and know the ways around, so it isn't much of a problem, on my way out of town; until 16 of them run a red light and I'm the first car in line, the other direction; I would have been upset, at being delayed, but they were all in spandex and it was like looking at the butt parade. Not unlike what we see every day. I really try to keep a low profile. It's all up in the air. You might well imagine it's one thing , but it could be another. Just saying. Read more...

Friday, May 9, 2014

Clearing Out

One more trip should do it. Spent a hour going through things and brought another box of books home, threw away a great pile of old magazines. Winnowing the past. Lunch with TR. The library, Kroger and as there was nothing that needed to be kept cold, and it was Happy Hour at the pub, I stopped for a beer on the way home. A nice conversation with Lindsey, who graduated college last Saturday. I like her, and we talk easily about what comes next. Nobody's in the place, it's quiet and cool, it gotten into the eighties outside, and I ask her what she wants to do, now that she has her education. Training-wheel camp. She doesn't have a clue. And she knows she doesn't. Her Mom is a bleached-blond, with an enhanced body, who has done fairly well, one husband to the next. We talk about job opportunities, how you might do a dig in Mongolia, or bare your ass for an underwear shoot. Prey on the prey. It's a loop, a mobius strip, a Klein bottle. You end up being what you least imagined: the person they call when something fails. Bridges are an easy example, dams, the berms that are the foundation of the Interstate System. Borrow ponds. Barrow. Someone asked me about leeching acorns. The tannins are water soluble, and they stain the water like weak tea. When the water stays clear, they're gone, mostly. If you do this at a simmer on the cookstove, and keep another pot full of hot water, you can do it in two hours; the advantage being that they are also cooked, and ready to be turned into meal. Cold water methods take a couple of days, and they still have to be cooked and dried. I spent the entire day, using the pub as a base, to check out inter-net providers, finally, Cory, fingering his phone, said he thought I could get a deal if I just went with the phone company. Turned out to be true. Truth being relative. A few calls later and I have a high speed connection, DSL (which is what D said I needed) through Frontier, that's going to cost me $20 a month, and I can drop AOL, which costs me $35 a month. Means I'll have a new e-mail address, but I can handle that, if TR will come out and hold my hand. He'll have to set me up a new account. Spring hair-cut, short, off the neck and off the ears, the barber is quite entertaining and incredibly efficient. He was a barber in the army, Vietnam, and is about as far to the right as I am to the left, but he has the razor, shaving my neck, so I don't dispute his points. Back at the pub (a pay phone, for me, is someone else's cell) and Dr. John is there (PHD in education, an Appalachian-music collector and string player), with a woman I know, Sharon, and we talk about Roy Rogers (Leonard) because John has just finished writing a book about him. Then Andy comes in, another string player, and buys me another beer, and we talked about singer-song-writers. Andy plays by ear, and he has a perfect ear. John sings an old song "Gee and Haw" that makes no sense unless you've plowed with a mule. John and Sharon left, Andy bought me another beer, and we talked about music. I can't actually talk about music, I don't have the vocabulary, but increasingly I find myself with musical people and we hammer out a patois. 'A' natural, for instance, seems to be a base line. I knew a dancer once, who knew where she stood, the rest of the world paled; practice enough and the path becomes clear. Read more...

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Mississippi Shuffle

Mississippi delta road houses, in the 1980's, were still pretty rough, but in my education of them, I was always helping Big Roy cook. Of course I was always called Uncle Tom, or White Boy, or some such nonsense, but Roy never let it get out of hand. The music was great, and the musicians were salt of the earth. One garishly painted cinder-block road house per town, in the delta, known by the name of the town, Sidon House, Cruger House, Tchula House. That red house over yonder. What brought it to mind, the radio, that slack guitar, Mississippi John Hurt. "Avalon", his home town, and I remembered going there once, to pick up some chickens. Buffingtons, or something, they had feathers growing at their ankles, and he stopped me in the yard. I was buying chickens from Mississippi John Hurt's mother. Not only that, but as I was to learn later, he allowed that I was pretty cool, for a skinny white guy. D called up this morning, he's done teaching for the semester, and wanted to come over. He brought beer and cheese and rolls and we discussed several hundred topics over the course of the afternoon. Good conversation is a lovely thing. After he left I went out for a walk on the old logging road that runs north down to Upper Twin. There's a very good morel area there, I found a few, and signs of more coming. I don't have a kitchen scale, but I need to get one. It doesn't have to be very precise, I was just curious about the quantity of wild mushrooms I eat in a year. I'd picked up a head of celery, because B said it was good in hash, and I figured to eat most of the stalks filled with peanut butter; I disavow everything. and he was correct, it is perfect in hash, a small amount, one stalk in a serving for one. Adds a vegetative crunch. There was a package of veal, in the remaindered bin, sliced thin. I fried them in butter, with black pepper and watercress, and made a grinder, whatever you call that sandwich, with avocado, and bitter greens. I made a small hash from the leftovers, a small Yukon Gold, minced and fried, part of a shallot, a stalk of celery, and the veal. I buy local eggs, and they stand up nicely. Any of the various hashes are improved with a yolk of egg. God's own sauce. I like to cover this, with a reduction I think of as Morel Sauce. The problem is hiding the bodies. Granted, given, let's assume... Read more...

Monday, May 5, 2014

Sparrow Hawk

She was back today, I took a couple of mice out of the freezer, thawed them in the microwave, and tossed them up on top of the outhouse. Took her maybe ten minutes careful watching before she swooped, picked one up, and went to a nearby tree. She doesn't like the footing on the metal roof. A stunningly beautiful creature. Later, on a hike down to get a gallon of spring water, I find a few morels. Just heard a siren go by, down on Upper Twin, first one I've heard in 14 years. Sounds like an ambulance, and I can hear them stop at the house where that kid, Travis, lives. I'll stay out of that. Dim-witted dad and harridan mom. What a great way to grow up. On the other hand, there might be something to be said for being on your own, in a 64,000 acre nature preserve, with a single shot .22 rifle and one of those little collapsible spinning rods. You could become a Naturalist or a tracker for the Border Patrol but probably you'll end up a petty thief, with a record as long as your arm. Later, thunderstorms, and I have to save everything and close down. The power goes out, of course, and it's darker than a cave. I keep an LED headlamp on the dictionary table, but I was fascinated with the darkness, it was so complete that I actually couldn't see my hand in front of my face. When I finally do get the headlamp on, the light was so bright it blinded me. My poor pupils. If you just have a fire at the mouth of a cave, life is probably simpler. Got a wee dram and rolled a smoke, the storm had moved through, and it was very quiet and quite dark. I opened the window at my desk and breathed in the ozone and that fecund smell of rotting leaves. This time of year, I need to muck out the outhouse and dump the composting toilet. I compost all of this with dead leaves and green matter. I clipped back everything growing in one of the raised beds because shallots have gotten so expensive. I prefer shallots to any other onion, and I can't afford them, therefore I need to raise them. There was a note to call my parents, but the phone wasn't working. Mine or their's. Neither of my siblings are available Sometimes you stay in the dark. Read more...

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Spring Water

The creek bed is clean, sand and rock. I take down a shovel, and a scoop made from a half-gallon milk container with a loop of line attached (so I can hang it in a tree) and I dig out a depression right in the middle of the stream, tossing the fines aside. While the water cleared, I walked up the creek, to make sure there was nothing dead, then scooped a gallon of water into a green tea jug. Arizona Green Tea jugs are very good, I think Loren brought this one up to the ridge five years ago, or more. This time, in the seasonal rotation, back roads, I always look for where houses had been, daffodils are a give-away, the way they frame a house that used to be. There's usually asparagus; herring roe, depending on where you live, something you could eat, cat-tail shoots, or even the inner layer of shag-bark hickory. That's the chorus, "Down In Low Gap Hollow". It's perfect for the play within the opera. We can bring in trains, bluegrass, and sacred harp. Tomorrow afternoon I'm going to listen to bluegrass music, it's on both of the NPR stations I receive on Sunday afternoon. TR needs a few pages, to work up the chorus. I missed meeting him for lunch today, his bride-to-be was graduating; and the pub was overfilled, a fucking zoo of parents and graduates. I had a draft at the bar and elected to eat sushi take-out, below the floodwall. Too much. I wanted to do several other things, but I couldn't stay in town, too chaotic, slipped into Kroger and bought what I needed. I just wanted to get back home. The long way around, up the creek, so I can drive back and forth at the ford, to clean the mud off the undercarriage. A vehicle drives better if you don't have the wheel-wells caked with clay. A forcemeat is a meatloaf on its way to becoming pate. Ground lamb, in the remaindered bin, so I made a small batch of a spreadable concoction, with large pieces of mushroom and smashed almond. Very good stuff, I'd eaten it all within an hour, but it was a frightful clean-up. Skillets that had to be re-seasoned, bowls, the fucking blender. It's a pain in the ass, to clean a major kitchen mess when you don't have running water. Still, it's nice to make good things to eat, nice to go outside and pee, and it's not that bad to confront your evil demons. I have to sleep somewhere, I have to live with myself. Read more...

Friday, May 2, 2014

Following Through

Not a clue, just a noise in the dark, either a bird or a bat in the house. Turn on some lights and find the butterfly net. It's a bat, and I'm leery of them because of rabies, but I catch it, quick enough, and free it outdoors. Lovely night, even a few stars. I refrain from breaking out in song, and decide to crank up Black Dell and see if I finished what I was working on last night and whether or not I had sent it. I never know, anymore. Not much more than a running commentary, but it tickles my fancy to see what can be said. If I describe something, an act, a flower, the way the water flows over the spillway. 'Intersect the creek where the deer path crosses', for instance, was something I was going to say. Related to a specific thing, I don't remember now, exactly what. Shuck this mortal coil. It's spring, and you're still alive. What are the odds? I can't even begin to imagine. Irony might play a part. Made an excellent cream of mushroom soup. A nice walk in the gathering green. The view across the hollow is already reduced by 50%. The first tiny fruits on the blackberry canes that get the most light, lovely little things; sassafras leaves are opening (a note to myself to pick some in a week or so, to dry as filo). The texture of the leaves right now, the sassafras, red maple, even the first oak, is a cross between silk and velour. A slow saunter of a walk, where I stopped and looked and felt and smelled things. Oak galls (they have a sweet liquid in them that doesn't seem to cause any distress) and rare buds. I always carry a knife, so I can cut things open, to see what's inside. Beautiful delicate caracoles. I make a vegetable dish, that is just a little shocking, out of the hearts of bud; cooking it like I might the tight leaves of Brussels Sprouts. I love breaking things apart and making up stories; but I want to know, as a bottom line, what you meant. Could you doubt that I could swing it this way? Read more...

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Recapitulate

Down in Low Gap Hollow, hunting morels. It's rained so much that all of the wet-weather springs are squirting and leaking. Looking to get at the actual source, but the thing itself is blurred by the brimming. Should have worn hip-waders, but they'd have gotten ripped up by the new flush of green briar. These drainages, cut down through shale and sandstone, you could be looking at 50 or 100 million years. Within that context, events have occurred, we can see them in the rock. It's not a spring, artesian, that births Upper Twin Creek, it's just the seepage from a great many wet-weather leaks. What we call cap rock, those of us who dig holes, is an event, was an event. Tangled up in the time frame. It's difficult to be transparent because we keep so much hidden. After 15 years I've finally tracked the creek back to the source. Nothing if not persistent. Fox grape and blackberry canes canvas all the possible exits, you could get out a different way, an unexpected way, but it would take serious effort. Sometimes it's just easier to go back the way you came. Backtrack. It's a maze, but there's a sense to it. Struck me as funny, how easy it was to be misunderstood. I get back to the house. It's perfect, a warm dry place. I'm wet and cold, I got carried away, stayed out too long. More rain, but I should be able to get to town tomorrow, I need almost everything. Lucid, coherent, that's not the point, but it points in a direction. Still, we're left with that perplexing question of consciousness. How you fit in, the great scheme of things. I'm certainly not without fault, fried bologna sandwiches and moon-pies. Beat by circumstance. The delta blues again. Down in Low Gap Hollow, I have to say, when the wind comes howling through, I mostly just listen. There was rain-fog, today, in the trees. The air was completely saturated with water vapor. The budding and leafing trees, the bushes, the ground cover, were drinking it up; and the greening comes quickly. Nothing, then something. And the smell, the fecund, musky thickness of it; the way it plasters to the inside of your nose. We don't understand smell, the way it remembers. One thing that strikes me, not that it matters. Maybe I take out a comma and insert a period. Maybe I do nothing. That might be the correct move. Read more...