Pain

Windrows of blackberry canes. The death of a thousand cuts. Only myself to blame. It's a nightmare, bleeding from ten thousand punctures. I moisten a paper towel with alcohol and wipe my forearms and the towel comes off pink. That's good, pink is better than red. Pain is a referent, ask Kim, the one-armed brick layer. I was hurting last night, muscle sore and pricked; so I self-medicated and listened to the radio. I'm not sure why I don't like Blue-Grass music. Too Rococo. But I was off in my head, most of the evening, considering my most recent failures. I didn't have any beer, and I needed to get my mail, so I drove down and over to B's place (a mile) and took him a book to read (he'd already read it), got a beer and talked for just a few minutes, as he was on his way to a music gig. It was refreshing to get off the ridge, to see the roadside flowers, especially along the grader ditch that becomes Upper Twin Creek. B had turned me unto Bergamot, which is blooming now; and there are five or six other 'tea' plants growing along the drainage. I don't drink as much tea as I do coffee, but it's nice, mid-winter, to have a taste of summer. What I do with the chicory roots is scrape them, trim them, cut them into chunks, and put them on a cookie sheet. They're usually fairly dry, hanging from the beams, because I dig them mid-summer, when I can Identify the flowers. Then on those fall nights, when I let the fire die, I put them in the oven overnight, to dry completely. The next day, I start a fire, get the oven hot (450 to 500 degrees) and pull them out just as they start to blacken. Run them through the coffee grinder. So many of the things I do are based on a woodstove that's going non-stop for more than half the year. Cooking something that requires twelve hours is not a problem. Probably not cost effective in the modern world. I don't cook pot-roast anymore, the last time I made it, there was a shooting. I should tell you about this sometime. The people that know me cut me some slack. Life is like that restaurant, where they serve you what they think you should eat. I'd better go.