Drunken Spoon

Strong sunlight, very few clouds, but the greening is nearly complete, and the light only exists as shafts and patches. Beautiful and mesmerizing. Dancing leaves. The focus is so intense. That same female yellow Timber Rattlesnake was back in the same area, so I won't be walking that section of logging road until next fall. It's so disconcerting to see an animal that's the wrong color, a black squirrel, a white deer. Reading Mark Twain for four days straight has been interesting. He was a quirky guy, and he knew how to lose money, invested in all the wrong things. Pulled himself out of bankruptcy by doing an around-the-world lecture tour, paid off his debts 100 cents on the dollar, and ended up more than comfortable, after Harper's bought out the rights to all of his books. My good friend Kim was up from Tallahassee for the last couple of nights, on his way to Montreal for a F1 race. He hand-carves beautiful spoons (of which I have several) and I had asked him to bring his tools and carve one here, with a full twist in the handle, a signature design. Saturday night after dinner, in four hours, he did just that. I watched and we talked the whole time, having a couple of drinks. He's a great house guest, bringing good whiskey and more than paying for the food; and he has his two drinks a year at my house. Excellent conversation, great company; we'd worked together in theater for years, shared stories, caught up on friends. Sunday he was slightly disgusted with what he referred to as his "drunken spoon" and spent another hour refining it. We visited B, when down to the dam reconstruction project and poked around, then went to town to walk beneath the flood-wall, to see what might have washed ashore, and recounted his coming up to lash the sticks of the Wrack Show installation together. A lot of history. Came back home the long way around, switch-back turns on a winding Upper Twin. The next force-meat I'm going to use an apple brandy, instead of wine, for cleaning implements and lubricating the blender. B was on his porch when we passed his place, so we stopped and chatted again, sat on the front porch and waved at two pick-up trucks in an hour; looked at the water system, checked out an old well. Three old guys that have solved problems their entire lives. Kim thought that B's work, on a cobbed together share-croppers shack, was elegant. We talked about elegant solutions, how we all loved them, how difficult they were to attain. I mostly listened to them talk, two of the coolest people I know; listen and learn; after Kim had gone to bed, I made a few notes. Very bright people you know have an affinity for each other. That's what this was like. I went over to the porch step and rolled a smoke, to get out of the cross-fire and just listen.