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.