Death Watch

My sister calls and she's pretty calm. Dad's been moved into a hospital bed, full time oxygen, and free-choice morphine, and she tells me to come down now, while he's still lucid. They give him a couple of weeks, a failed artery and a faulty valve. 24 hour nursing because he blacks out walking to the toilet. I have a couple of things I need to do, get an oil change, touch base with B and TR, then I have to get down there, to relieve Brenda; but I'll be gone for a while. Sis is having a talk with the hospice nurse tomorrow, and I couldn't leave until the next day anyway. This promises to be dreadful. What you do is make a list; people that have to be notified, bills that have to be paid; you go to the library, to return books and get a book-on-tape, clean out the fridge, cancel all engagements. B will agree to collecting the mail, TR can inform local concerned people on my whereabouts. I'll have the drive down to compose my thoughts. A eulogy for Jack, BJ as he was usually called. I called him many things, but "Pop" was probably the most common. What do you call your father when he's gone most of the time? It's the mother, of course, who raises you. From whom all life-blood flows. He was only ever a mythic image. Might have been the father, the timing works; "Out Of Africa". Look at the evidence, we're cannibals. Read more...

Beyond Understanding

How or why my phone would be restored at midnight on Sunday is a complete mystery. I only know it was because I check the damned thing whenever I get up for any reason. I suspect someone is fucking with me. The dial tone is strong and welcome, none of the usual static. It's too late to call anyone, but I sure think about it, just in terms of hearing another voice. Thank god I don't know anyone in Australia. I could call Kim, he actually would just wake up and tell me about his physical therapy, he's a rock that way, but I don't want him to worry about my sanity. Several of my close friends have been worrying about my sanity, with good reason, I suppose. Not that I'm any different, but that I had been out of touch. Not even that I had been out of touch, which was purely technical, a bad connection; as that I felt a disconnect, didn't feel anything: oh right, the world. I needed to know it was possible to call someone, even if I never did. I feel better, having a dial tone. I can call for help. I don't usually bother, but it's nice to know someone is waiting in the wings with a Subaru wagon. Supposed to be nice for the next week, cooler, and no rain. Work to be done. I need to read less for a couple of months, then I can read all I want, which is usually four to six plus hours a day. If I work two hours a day, outside, that would be about two weeks in two months, and would pretty much batten down the hatches. Fussy as a hen with one chick. Next time I call rooster, you'll hook up the plow. Runt pigs suck hind tit. I always liked them, though, brought them inside and raised them on goat's milk. Having pigs in the house was contentious. People took offense that I was caring for orphan pigs, and that the kitchen smelled of pigshit, but you raise a orphan that way and you have a friend for life. I was free-ranging, by then, having discovered that mast, acorns mostly, was the meal of the day. Still I like to call them back, in the evening, circle the wagons; and my pet pig calls the other, a rabid coon; her cry shakes the night. A vegetable stew. Read more...

Field of View

As the leaves fall the field opens. In places I can see across the hollow. George calls, in route to Charlotte; he'd been crewing on a sailboat down in the islands. Now that I have a phone I need to call my daughters, and I need to call Kim, in Tallahassee, to check on his shoulder injury. B has himself nearly squared away, down at the house. He still views electricity and running water as acts of god, beyond the pale, but he got the insulation for his ceiling and he's got it under control. We're both survivors. You figure things out or you die. I spent the afternoon cutting dead young poplars and hauling them to the woodshed. I can make a fire of these. With a single butter wrapper and a smashed pallet I can get us through the night. Good thing I came right home, finished the paragraph in process, and shipped off the pieces I had stacked, because before I could make any calls the goddamn phone was out again. Who's the patron saint of phones? I need to sacrifice some chickens or something. It's the season of acorns falling. I wear a foam pad inside a feed-cap, but a direct hit on any part of the body is painful. A bumper crop this year, and the squirrels are going crazy. Everyone is citing the Farmer's Almanac, the acorns, the caterpillars, saying it's going to be a brutal winter. It's difficult to imagine it being more brutal than last year. Easier, actually, for me; I'll just stay home now. I have a back-up juice, a large tin of coffee, one of those powdered creamers, ox-tails and livers stashed away. Some rice. Not bad work, if you can get it. Two guys from the Guinness dealer were at the pub, there'd been two bad kegs, one was flat and the other skunky. They poured off a pint of the replacement, and left it sitting there. Cory gave it to me. Stopped in the Forest, at one edge of the Big Burn from a few years ago, and found some mushrooms. Stirred a grouse hen. When I got home I made a great stir-fry with shavings of beef and the mushrooms on egg noodles, ate a small avocado with lime juice, a piece of bread. The cacophony sets up outside, a wall of cicadas and the cry of a Whip-O-Will. What's to believe or not believe? I have this chorus, echoing in my head. The natural world is actually quite loud. The wind blows, the acorns fall, sometimes I wear earplugs. You learn to roll with the punches. Orange over night, yesterday was yellow, first major leaf-fall day, brisk, with a gusty wind, fucking acorns sounding like machine-gun fire on the woodshed roof, leaves whipping about. Perfect penultimate day of summer. The wind is in the tops of the trees, they dance like a flapper in a fit of estrus or a young buck in a field where does have peed. A fragrant and vibrant day. Rattlesnakes actually do smell like cucumbers. I saw a mature male headed for the burrow today, they over-winter in the cemetery, in Edna Blevins grave. I looked at Emily's handwriting for several hours, on the back of envelopes, finally just sighed; a last wee dram and rolled a smoke. Tomorrow is just another day. Read more...

Back Online

Another eight posts from Tom all arriving at the same time, following a period of disconnectivity. Hard to be a wired in southern Ohio apparently. Read more...

Guest Quarters

I've slept here before. The wallpaper was different, the mats hung in a different pattern, but I recognize the room. Right. My living area, and I'm sleeping on the sofa. Disoriented, coming out of a dream, I have to shuffle through memories to remember where I am. Go out to pee. A few stars, no moon, very dark, the porch light is a beacon. I didn't want to stay up but I stubbed my toe and that startling pain made me get a wee dram and roll a smoke. We all know pain like this, pain lower case, that disappears after a few minutes, but it's enough to startle you and you're suddenly awake and there's nothing you can do about it. Some times I fire up Black Dell, but usually I just read fiction. Late at night and it is very quiet, the ridge sheds everything. The benefit of claiming high ground. The cold falls off, the sound, water, and you're left with almost nothing, stick trees and a gray horizon. I like it, the fact that it is a challenge, that I live or die by how I conduct myself. Went down to see B, to have a beer and discuss a book about the British WWI poets. The phone guys were at the bottom of Mackletree and they had found the problem. 24 days! No more than in the door and my sister called from Florida. Both of my parents are in bad shape, but they are 96 and 87, they've been married for 71 years, and the clock is ticking. Dad is blacking out and Mom can barely get to the bathroom, both of their hearts are shot. Dad has already fallen a couple of times. The writing on the wall. I'd better go, ship this off while I have a line. Read more...

Structural Integrity

I woke up thinking about a specific building problem, a complex dream. I was building a Cubist house and couldn't figure out exactly how the load was to be carried. One way or another, you have to carry the roof load down to the foundation; you can buttress, you can king-post, you can throw in some kickers, but you have to carry the weight. Otherwise the whole thing falls on your head. I built a roof in Utah, a hyperbolic paraboloid; concrete is an amazing product, if you can support it until it dries. Water is the issue, it's so goddamn heavy. My favorite way of building is to choose the high ground, so you controlled drainage, mound up the dirt as a form, then dig it out, after the pour. No windows, one door. Another alternative is to just build a barge, and when the water gets high you just float downstream. Build well-anchored flexible houses that bend with tornadoes. Yeah, I said to Michael, Peregrine hawks, they nest on top of the Masonic Lodge. As far as wether or not we could construe meaning, I'm at a loss. Twenty three days without a phone and then I lose power too. It's a beautiful cool day, just a light wind, and both the phone and power are out? Am I wrong to be paranoid? Ended up spending the entire day reading about what you might call "vernacular" architecture and building techniques. I love this stuff. Building with rammed earth, burlap bags dipped in cement slurry, clay blocks, bags of sand plastered on both sides (I saw one of these, a restaurant in Moab, Utah, very nice), bamboo reinforced concrete, wattle-and-daub, post and beam, the list is endless. Move to a new place and everything is different. What the first people anywhere do is determine what local resource can provide shelter, then grow enough grain to make whiskey. It's the American way. Corn is most easily transported as high-proof liquor. And as Bob D said, everyone wants to get stoned. Read more...

Wasted Day

Into town again, to call the phone company. Had a beer and talked with Cory about his honeymoon. Went to the library. Found the Kimchi at Kroger. I knew they had moved it. Kimchi on scrambled eggs for dinner. I'm afraid they're going to have to replace the entire phone line through the State Forest, four miles of which would be for four houses. Can't be a high priority. TR was at the reception desk at the museum and we chatted, then Kroger, then stopped down at B's house to help him lift his stove into position. Lift, because he wanted it at a cooking height. We talked about Guy Davenport. Everyone should read all of him. One of the truly great minds. No mail, no phone, but at least, as TR pointed out, my driveway is passable. Small favors. B insisted that I take back the Emily Dickinson book, The Gorgeous Nothings, the beautiful facsimile reproduction of poems and fragments she had made on the back of envelopes. Neil had sent me this book, now one of my cherished possessions; it's in her hand (which I find maddening) and slams you into the real. The introduction is by Susan Howe, who is the go-to Emily person, and it's the real deal. Emily stripped bare. When it first arrived I took a week off work and submerged myself in it. I may have eaten some bread. Emily was a baker. I loaned the book to B, and he kept it for months. He gave it back to me in a reluctant manner. I'm rarely affected by anything so strongly, but when I got home, and was eating Kimchi on scrambled eggs, I had the book propped open in front of me. When did she die? (Though dying is not the issue.) 1886? I think 1830 - 1886. I have a rubbing of her tombstone in front of me. Dear sweet Emily. Called back. Examine that. Like dealing with vapor. Lunch with TR, and Brandy from the accounting office where TR's Mom works. Spirited conversation. I like Brandy, she's extremely outspoken. Called the phone company again. Stopped at Kroger and found a pound of Mozzarella remaindered for $3, and a package of remaindered chorizo, also for $3, four meals. When I got home I made a large bowl of vine-ripened tomatoes, with the cheese cut into bite sized pieces, and a dressing of balsamic with walnut oil and black pepper. Pan fry the chorizo. A side of Kimchi and the tomato salad. An excellent meal. With the Kimchi, $1.75 a meal. The ground acorn and cornmeal breakfast costs me almost nothing and I can still have a foot-long hotdog for lunch and come in for less than $3 a day. Linda and I had talked about that, back when I had a telephone. She knew I could do it, eat on $3 a day, just wondered how I'd go about it. For years I ate for nothing and turned a profit, now I buy most everything, except for what I scavenge. My filtered water costs me less then six cents a day, coffee, brushing my teeth; and I need to set aside two dollars a day, to cover taxes and insurance. Parting shot, I was walking away, TR said he might stay for dinner. Devious bastard. I knew he wanted to stay for dinner. I told him, yeah, that was a good idea, maybe we could talk. Read more...

Ferae Naturae

Just at the crack of dawn two ferocious dogs got into a fight at the compost heap. They looked rabid but I think had been rooting around through the stove ash. Big dogs, I don't know what kind, large hound size but built more like the Black Mouth Cur, often used to hunt boar in the south. Still a big deal along the Mississippi and especially on the islands. I never went on a boar hunt, but I built a barn for a guy who raised the dogs, and trained them to catch piglets, so that he could raise them, and sell them to hunters. The dogs were bothering me, I don't feed hummingbirds anymore because their fighting bothers me; and I hate to be bothered, so I went out with the wrist-rocket sling-shot and ran the dogs off. A man deserves his peace. A person sub-serves to the need at hand. You cut off the bad, there's no reason to carry dead weight, and just get on with where the sun rises and where it sets. If we look at the history of moonlight closely, there's more than a hint of an imagined supernatural. Things look different in the dark. I was reading today in a book, Early English Text, translated from the Old English. Tough stuff. Bringing that much older oral tradition into a codified form; a rough and tumble tale. Shadows on the cave or castle walls, open fires and pitch torches. Enough to put the fear of god, any god, into you. So you buy the package. The whole traveling cirque. Belief systems further no gain. Right? Read more...

Fluttering Leaves

A lovely walk, cool morning, an old thin jacket over a tee-shirt. A light breeze and the leaves were rattling. The grouse were about. There's a family near the print shop, where I often sit on the front stoop and watch the world, that hardly pay any attention to me. I've held several of the yearlings (until the mom gets pissed at me), and I wonder where they will spend the winter. This time of year, there's always a falling leaf within your field of view. Totally quiet is an artificial construct, only achieved in a padded room inside a padded box. I've done that and it's interesting, but what I mean by quiet is only sounds of the natural world, which some times is loud enough to wake you in the night. Even in the deserts of Utah, where it is very quiet, you can still hear the raptors and the rock slowly abrading. Natural silence is actually quite noisy. Ronnie gave me a bag of blemished tomatoes, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to cut out the bad parts, and I make a salad with mozzarella and an old balsamic. I forget how much I like this. Sunday, so I read for eight hours, with an hour break to listen to America's Test Kitchen on the radio. A cooking show I enjoy because it's nuts and bolts. B said my fucked-up phone is causing me to write chapters with my paragraphs, which I suppose is true. A cluster of paragraphs could be a chapter, you'd need to define three or four of those words. John Thorne wrote a lovely piece about a sandwich he made with sausage casings. I make a gravy sandwich, usually with a slice of onion, that several people think is the best thing they've ever eaten. But then, I'm a student of gravy. My Mom made a red-eye gravy, from ham drippings and coffee, that was one of the best things I ever tasted; poured on fried potatoes, it would make you sit up and take notice. Read more...

Cooler Weather

Got up at four, cool inside, needed to shut some windows and get my lightest blanket which is actually a single, heavy flannel sheet. I love the way it feels. Went outside to pee and shivered for the first time this season. Getting on. Realized I was completely awake. Turned on the radio and got a wee dram, rolled a smoke and listened to some hard-driving African rock. Black Dell was on, the phone was still out, so I wrote for a couple of hours, which, in this case, was four sentences, three commas, four periods. Shaved, took a sponge bath, then managed to get lost, taking forest service roads into town. Lost is relative, right? I knew I was heading east, eventually came out on Cary's Run Road in a place I'd never been before. I knew the river was to my right, so I went that way. Dead reckoning is fine, if you're not pressed for time. B and I once drove home to the ridge, from Bowling Green, Ohio, only on roads that had three numbers, without a map. A lovely drive. I was early for lunch, nonetheless, had a smoke outside the back door of the pub, watching the breeding pair of Peregrine Falcons wheeling overhead. What beautiful birds. They have a nest on the roof of the Masonic Temple and have the pigeon population well under control. I was sitting there, staring up at the birds, and a guy came out of the pub for a cigaret, I loaned him my lighter. He asked what I was looking at and I pointed out the falcons. He had a degree in birds, as it happens, and we talked about climate change. Everyone is saying that this next winter is going to be severe. A severe winter is days below zero, one to ten of these is acceptable, more than that, you just walk around with a bison pelt over your shoulder, waiting for the worst. I have a vested interest, perishable goods, myself., everyone else too, but can't speak for them. I start a fire and huddle close to the flame. Tree tip pit at the edge of tomorrow. First fire of the year, and I mostly just burn paper and cardboard I'd stuffed in the stove all summer; it draws nicely. Old bills and bank statements. I throw on a few sticks of sassafras, to hear them crackle and pop, and it makes the place smell good. I sat with Ronnie, at the farmer's market, and all the pretty women stop at his table. It was fun, but I couldn't see the point. Retired to the pub, where I was the first customer, and Lindsay poured me a pint. Chatted with the staff, until things got busy, then TR came in, flopping his hat on the counter, which is his way of saying hello. I nod toward the empty stool. Read more...

Damp Morning

I wasn't going to make the extra trip to town, to call the phone company, because I'm going in tomorrow to lunch with TR. Got up early and turned on the radio, then went back to the sofa and slept through the news. I'd dried a couple of Boletus, they look like jerky; reconstituted a small hand-full in sherry and soy sauce, fried them in butter and made a superior omelet. Dawn walk down the logging road, and everything was so wet that I was drenched from the knees down. But, as Michael said the other day, the snakes are moving back up to the ridges, and these first cool mornings of fall are a safe time to be out in the woods. The spring, but especially the fall, is the time for gathering roots, so I meet some interesting people, out in the forest. People ask me what I do with my time and I'm hard-pressed to answer, mostly what I do is just listen. I can always retreat, I have a back door planned, but it's hard to disappear. Someone in France emails someone in Otway. And there are cameras everywhere. I went down to explain the phone situation to B and we talked about books for an hour. There are only a half-dozen people in my world, maybe less than that, with whom I can instantly engage. The dome and the truss both solve the same problem. Spanning a space. Do you ever make pyramids with your fingers? It's always my first step, when I'm solving a construction problem. Roll a smoke, get a wee dram of single malt, I favor Sheep Dip, because it has that raw edge of American whiskey, then configure my fingers to carry a load. It's just a game I play. Cat's Cradle without the string. Given that, the way we fiddle, how could you not discover the truss? Clearly a triangle solves a great many problems: span, load, your view of a tidal estuary. When I get going, it's hard to stop. Read more...

Hard Rain

Two or three in the morning it started raining hard and I had to pull up out of deep sleep to close some windows. Brought in two buckets of rainwater and put out another, the new one, still smelling strongly of pickles. I love breaking in a new water bucket because for a couple of weeks I'll smell so dill. It's truly amazing how that smell lingers. Parts per million. I make some ice-cubes I can smash up for a dirty martini. Finally I get up and make an omelet, cheese, avocado, and tomato; several pieces of toast, a big mug of tea, reading Marjorie Rawlings, South Moon Under, her first novel, 1933. A great read, southern gothic. Lant(ry) and Piety. Letting the language speak. I think she also had a novel called Dark Bridwell but I've never found a copy. Goddamn phone is out again. I shouldn't complain, it did work for 24 hours. Rained most of the day and my wash water supply is topped up. The leaves are clean and the poplars starting to yellow. Generally, the black walnuts are the last to leaf-out and the first to change color. Some very fine Boletus mushrooms, young and firm, steak-like. I fried a batch in butter and had them on toast. Earthy and excellent. After five the clouds start breaking apart and the forest is shafted in light. It's so beautiful that I nearly fall over when I go out to pee. It's that time of year when acorns start falling, when one hits the woodshed roof it's like a gunshot. It's so quiet, reading by an open window, I often hear them falling through the canopy and thumping to the ground. I do usually hear the school bus, laboring over Low Gap, 3:40 on school day afternoons. I never hear it in the morning, when sound weighs heavy and collects in the bottom. I feel benighted to be above the fray. Other advantages are that you can run about naked and cover yourself with clay. I took a vow of silence, but I can tell you that very little of what you read is actually history. Almost everything happens under the table. Or that history is just another fiction, constructed after the fact. Reconstructed. Everyone lies. Advertising is our bane. I listened to a spot on West Virginia NPR. I get Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia Public Radio, that seemed to be arguing that coal fired power plants were fine, as long as they employed people. The senior Senator added pork onto pork, I can't believe it, the way duration becomes the standard of excellence. "I've served the great state of West Virginia for 32 years..." and this is all about burning a very dirty product. I retire with my umbrellas intact. Read more...

Strange Day

The phone is back. A note on the door from the phone guy, when I finally got home. I had to do my laundry, and I seem to have lost an electric bill, so I needed to make a call; got that done and stopped at the pub for a beer and a giant pretzel. Anthony was there, with the other instructor from the ceramic studio. He bought my beer and pretzel, then we were sitting outside so I could smoke, catching up; a friend of mine, Jacob, showed up and he and Anthony bantered like professionals, so we went back inside with him and had another beer. Back outside for another smoke and goodbyes, and Todd walks up with his model from the nude drawing class. Demands to buy us another beer. Another very attractive woman joins us. My favorite waitress, Steph, grins at me and shakes her head. I felt fine to drive, three beers over a four hour period, and I was fine, it was a nice drive, windows down and those parched and dusty smells of fall, whatever those pink fronds are, blackberry canes reaching 12 or 14 feet, curved like scimitars. I know it's not a joke, but I have to laugh. A Rabbi and a Fundamentalist Preacher go into a bar. You've heard this joke before. It's so good, to be back in contact. I had the thought that it might have been a complete construct; you and me and what I might have imagined. Delirium, from the verb delirare 'to swerve from the furrow', a delirus was a person who couldn't plough straight. Now I'm back on track. Into town, again, to have lunch with TR and the resident scholars. They're curious about my winter preparations and I tell them I have a list. Michael understands that it will actually be easier for me to just to stay at home, and I work on the list for the larder with that in mind. While it's on my mind, The Defenestration Of Prague, 1618, Catholic members of the Bohemian National Council were the dudes thrown out, but it was a castle, and there was a moat, they escaped with minor injuries. I always imagined them smashed on the pavement. This is why I read everything I can. There was another defenestration, 1630 or so, and now I have to find out where that one occurred. It was probably a badge of honor to be thrown out a window, as long as you knew you'd end up in a moat. Imagine the publicity. You're the guy they threw through out the window. The leaves are falling, and so are we; crocodiles don't have tongues so they can't actually speak, but they roar their displeasure through the hummocks. Roaring is just expelling some air through your mouth, what it means is subject to questioning. But I'll tell you this, when an alligator breathes his fetid breathe on you, only can't bite off your leg because he has a mouthful of rabbit, then you've come to know the real world. A rattlesnake on the driveway, small change, I stamp my feet and he goes away. Read more...

Tom's Phone Service Has Been Restored

News Flash: Tom is back online. The following eight posts arrived in my inbox today. Enjoy. Tom est en pleine forme, comme ils disent en français. Read more...

Saving Grace

Stayed home all day, on the off-chance the phone company might send a person out. They didn't. Missed lunch with TR, missed Cory's wedding; went down and chatted with B for an hour, had a beer, took him a couple of books and praised the installation of his stovepipe within the brick chimney. Very nice job. His nephew, Bear, came over and cut the difficult hole into a curved surface where the thimble goes through the wall. Used an air-powered tool with a small diamond blade. Those of us who like to solve problems always admire the work of other problem-solvers. Most of the plants and most of the trees are looking the worse for wear. Even the road-side daisies are yellowing and browning at the tips. I have a list of things I need to do before winter, two dozen or twenty things, most of which will take a day or less, and it's not even officially fall. I can do this. Plenty of time, and it's easier, holing up, than actually dealing with the world. Various saints keep popping up, the far left is littered with the bones of martyrs.

Plenty of time now,
the crows parading vespers,
to question what is.

At the limit of understanding. "Cudgel thy brains no more about it; for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating." Hamlet. I spent some time trying to track down the origin of 'deadline'. One story is that outside the fence at Andersonville there was a line drawn in the dirt, if you crossed it you got shot. Speaking of dead and dying, it is said that Aeschylus was killed by a tortoise being dropped on his head by an eagle passing over. I saw a seagull drop a snake into a crowd of tourists once. A very funny scene. I made a pot of greens, mustard, kale and collard, with a chunk of salt-pork and onions, I serve this with vinegar and hot sauce. Make a small pone of cornbread in the toaster oven. I might grill a pork-chop, if the spirit moves me. Usually I just sop up the juice with the cornbread, and call it a day. Read more...

No Show

Of course the phone company doesn't show. At five I went down to tell B. We drank lemon seltzer and talked about books for an hour. He, naturally, knows everything about English history and assumed that I did too. He was actually a little shocked at this hole in my education. I'll read up on it this winter. It's not a subject that ever interested me before this latest Richard III book, now I think I would find it interesting. Also, I want to reread Guy Davenport's fiction. And Basho's winter haiku. Another day, and still no phone; I'll have to go to town again, to call them. I'm getting pissed. 'End Of The Line Blues." I read a book about hunting man-eating tigers in India, 1920's - 30's, and found it quite interesting, some of the named tigers killed hundreds of people. Hundreds of people. We can identify a particular animal by the pug print. The two fictions I got from the library fail to interest me, so I read an old book (1949) on word origins. I'd been studying the word 'gerrymandering' because it's much in the news locally, as I'm sure it is everywhere. Criminal, to put it mildly: the group in power arranges boundaries so that they stay in power. Fuck your republic or whatever democracy, it's where you draw the lines. Elbridge Gerry, when he was governor of Massachusetts, around 1800, created a voting district that looked like a salamander; no, he said a 'Gerrymander'. He was elected vice-president in 1812. Cory, from the pub, is getting married Saturday, and he wants me to be there; the service and the reception are at the lodge, in the State Forest, which is only a few miles, as the crow flies, from my house. A bit more difficult to navigate by road. Looking at the Forest Service map, there are three ways I can get there. Coming home, I decide, I'll come the long way around. The short way, Mackletree, then Route 125, is seven miles; the long way around, out Upper Twin, then back down Route 125, a mile or two longer. Overland, on the newly reopened back road, which is a great drive (though it takes forever, if time is a consideration) switch-backing through the hollows of Sunshine Ridge, you can easily get lost. I think I can attend the wedding, have a free meal, maybe abscond with a meal in my pocket and have a couple of drinks on someone else's tab. I just need to get home safely. You'd think I was a nut, the way I plan my retreat. Lamp Black Road, Jesus, I remember everything now. They opened the road up because some rich people needed to haul some logs out. Making money, paying dues. Still no phone so I go back into town to call the company. I talked to a lady, Becky, in Texas, and she was texting the dispatcher in Ohio and I was on hold for quite a while. She's hesitant to tell me that the repair has been rescheduled for the 13th, which means I will have been without service for 20 days. She has no idea why and is extremely apologetic, promises to get my bill canceled for the month. She also promises to try and get them out here sooner. She advises me to get a satellite dish. Stopped at the pub for a beer and two of my readers were there, they were glad to see I was alive, and recommended that I get a dish. There seems to be a consensus. If I dropped my phone, and dropped my AOL account, it would be a wash, everyone says my service would be better, and that I would avoid these depressions where I have dark thoughts about what I'd like to do to the local Frontier company boss. I'm on the phone for 27 minutes, which is a trial for me. I don't do phones that well, except for a couple of close people, and the filler music was awful. Becky is married, has a couple of teenage kids; her husband is in the oil business, and they like Texas. She was appalled at my phone service, I explained about being at the-end-of-the-line, and how I was used to it. Came back home the long way around, because I'd rather be behind a school bus than meet one coming the other way on winding back roads. It took me just over an hour to take three commas out of that last sentence. When I'm writing, I use commas to mark a phrase, but often the thought goes on and a comma is no longer needed; but I put one there, in the act of thinking, because I don't know where I'm going. I did get behind a school bus, so I pulled into the creek at the first ford to let it get a couple of miles down the road. I was sitting on my hood, rolling a smoke, when a park ranger stopped to see if I was ok. Yes, I told him, just fine. Ginseng season opened September 1st, and we talked about that. There's a buyer that sets up at the west end of town, in the parking lot of the Bridge Street Carry-Out. There's a fair amount of money involved, and it's all cash. Ginseng is the truffle of mid-America. You can still earn a living digging roots around here, if you don't require much of a living. I don't sell ginseng, but I do dig the occasional plant, dry the mandrake-like tuber, and chop it into a pint of whiskey, age that for a couple of years and take a sip as required. I use it as an anodyne against whatever ails me. I need to harvest a couple of roots this year, to put into the rotation, and I know exactly where they are. The bank side of the driveway is terrain I know very well, and ginseng is a lovely little plant, those distinctive red berries, the seeds, that you never noticed before, become neon. Seriously. Read more...

Clearing Brush

Before it got too hot I suited up, jeans, long-sleeve canvas shirt, gloves, work boots, and clipped away at the brush behind the woodshed. I'll work on this, in the cool of the morning, for a week or two, bleeding from a thousand cuts. 50% is blackberry canes, and you can't not be pricked. I wipe off with alcohol, then take a solar shower, sit around in just my socks until I'm dry enough to get dressed; a pair of thread-bare Dockers and a tee-shirt with the sleeves and neck cut out. Not a fashion plate, but I never claimed to be; and I'm clean, and the old clothes are clean, and I smell like laundry detergent with a hint of musk. I have to muck out the out-house, and dump the composting toilet; I have some work to do on the driveway. Lord knows there are things to be done. But I got started, and that was all I intended. I've been reading and writing for months, and I've got to bring my body back up to speed. Thunder and more rain, it washes away the heat haze and the dust of late summer. The colors are vibrant, a few sumac leaves are bright orange, a few sassafras leaves are red, a few poplar leaves are yellow. John Lee Hooker in the background. "This is it, pretty baby...". He has the sexiest male voice in history. When he and Bonnie Raitt sang together, you couldn't cut it with a knife. Ran across an interesting book, Fuck Places, (I wouldn't make this up) which talks about the various spots where people might go for a tryst. It's a very funny book and quite serious at the same time. Where might two gay guys, both married, with a throng of earlets (it's a British book) go for a tumble in the back seat? Sociology looks to me like an interesting area of study. Not that I know that many Earls. It's good to get my lazy ass moving, it's good to be a little sore. A fine dinner, left-over steak and the other half of a baked potato. Whenever I bake a potato (wrapped in foil, right in the coals) I cook the largest one I can find, so I can get two meals, same with the steak; and I hoard left-over gravy like a crazy person. If there's anything left after that it becomes hash. I'm known for my hash. People fly in. Read more...

Nothing Serious

Early morning rain, such a lovely way to come to consciousness. Slightly dark, sunrise still half-an-hour away. No wind as the tops of the trees come into light (the clouds had opened, as they do, right at the horizon). The rain comes in dribbles and drabs. This year's crop of squirrels are being frisky, so I make a double espresso, roll a smoke, and watch them until it's fully light. I made hash from the last of a London Broil, with a perfect egg on top and considered the new pile of reading matter. Sunday is reading day, after all. Actually, now, any day is reading day, but Sunday is specifically dedicated as a reading day, and on a good one, I'll read two books, usually one for pleasure and one for research. One of the books B had passed over to me, Unruly Places, is actually the second book within a week that I had heard a review of, on NPR, and read within days. It's a good book, and I recommend it, not that he's a great writer, Mr. Bonnett, but that the subject is so interesting. Places that aren't on the map. I have my own list of such sites. A friend in the BLM turned me onto a place, deep in the southern end of the San Rafael Swell in Utah, where nothing had been disturbed for a very long time. I was the first ever white man to scale down a cliff face to look closely at an eagle's nest on a particular ledge in western Colorado; I've survived many nights, well blow zero, by collecting all the dry wood within easy gathering and drying my socks over a fire at the mouth of a cave. I know what it takes, but I don't want to expend that much energy anymore. I'd rather sit very still and watch the wildlife. Birds are good, they hop about on two legs and sing. And the fox has a grace that shames most of the people I know. Read a new book on Richard III, and after a long period of saying he wasn't so bad, new material indicates that he was very black indeed. Shakespeare's Richard. Interesting times, the 1480's. Richard's battle-axe was actually a battle-hammer. Because of the armor, you bruised your opponent to death; killed his horse then beat him until he couldn't breathe. A small head was preferable because it smashed the armor in, where a broad blade would just bounce off. What it looks like is a twenty ounce framing hammer at the end of a 30 inch iron handle. I'd never seen this weapon before. If someone is coming at you with a sword you break their wrist. Then you indent the sign of the cross on their chest. We've come a long way. Boys from Iowa, collecting Viet Cong ears. But the whole "process" is remarkably the same: you collect the sap and boil it down, you end up with syrup. We're all trailer trash. Read more...

Farm Fresh

A simple fish stew. In a deep pot brown some onions and garlic, dump in some tomatoes, half a bottle of a nice dry white wine, drink the rest, chunk in some pieces of firm fish and add some cleaned mussels. Everyone gets a loaf of bread. Don't tell anyone you're filming. Over cognac, later, we talked about the way we wanted to be remembered. I remember saying, that I didn't want anyone thinking that I knew anything about anything. It's a fall-back position. They usually let the stupid guy go, because he can't advance the case. Usually I play the part of the stupid guy. It works for me. Standing in the background and sounding simple. It's not that easy. Lunch with TR tomorrow, but maybe not; he's worked so many extra hours he deserves a long week-end, and I don't have a phone, so I can't call, to verify. I'm going to town anyway, to see Ronnie at the Farmer's Market, get a few local tomatoes, I need bread, and whatever else is on the list. I'm making a great open-face sandwich in the toaster oven right now. A piece of pre-toasted bread, topped with a can of sardines, a couple of slices of a very good vine-ripened tomato, some goat cheese, a sprinkling of basil, some kosher salt and a twist of pepper. Your wildest dreams. I make it a habit, to eat this well every day. Almost every day. I made a list. Headed off to the farmer's market, and ran into a street fair. Labor Day parade. Can't tell you how much I hate this shit, but I know all the alleys and I squirrel around, found a parking space, and retreated to the pub where I drank a slow pint and had a large glass of water, then hummus and pita chips. TR was at the museum, he hadn't made lunch because he had to drive twenty minutes around the parade (the parade was almost two hours long) and we talked for a while, sitting at the front desk, until the road was clear and I could make it to the library. I found a couple of things, fiction, to leaven the biography of Faulkner and this continued reading I'm doing on cave art. Got what I needed at Kroger. Stopped at B's place for cold seltzer water and he had three more books for me, I had one for him. His phone was out too and that places the problem somewhere on Mackletree, because the last line forks at the bottom of the hill, over to his place and up to mine. We are the end of the line. I looked closely on the way out and the way back in but there were no dead trees, I could see, that might take out the service. The line has been repaired so many times, 28 junctions in two miles, that it looks like a knotted string. A knotted string can be quite telling, like notches in a stick. That's what I'm saying, meaning accrues. Eventually you have sheep to trade for shells with holes in them. One way or another, you keep track. Survival comes down to bookkeeping. Read more...

Starting Over

This loss of phone service is a pain in the ass because it makes it difficult for me to stop a paragraph. Then they start to get unwieldy and I lose my train of thought. The light today, though, definitely marked a new phase, therefore a new paragraph. I was walking down the logging road thinking about cooking ribs at least one more time during the grilling season (there will be remaindered ribs after Labor Day) and I was enjoying the entire process of imaging who I might have over, what I might cook, and wether or not, between us, we might be able to buy a good bottle of wine, a Ridge Zin, or a Frank Family Farm Cab. Walking along, absorbed in myself, the lambent light (the third definition is "patches of bright light, radiant") and I came head to toe with my timber rattler. Yellow as a young girl's summer dress. I'm pretty sure it's a female, they present a specific body shape. We look at each other, I wish I could do that with my tongue, and she's not coiled so she can't strike. Me and the snake. We consider our various avenues of escape. I just start backing up, glancing behind, and she slithers off in the opposite direction. Most of the Cotton-Mouth water moccasins, the older ones, come at you with vengeance. Rattlesnakes just want to go eat mice. Read more...

Hybrid Forms

Abortive, actually. This time of year, I start noticing them. The failures. Mushrooms especially; they go off genetically, very quickly. I had to run into town for a few things, and ended up having a beer with my fireman friend, Josh. He's interesting to talk with. He listens to books, but doesn't read much. He's listening to Poe right now, and we talked about that. It seemed to me that listening to Poe might be a very good way of reading him. Sidney Lanier. Has anyone ever recorded those? I run my errands, stop at the library; I have cream, and some other things that need to be refrigerated, so I went home, first, and put things away, then headed down to B's place for a beer and conversation. When I got back home it was 83 degrees inside the house, so I turned on the AC and went for a walk. Black Dell balks at anything over 79. It's a riot of color right now, all the weeds and wild daisies. B said he loved preparing for winter, that it tied him to the place where he found himself. I agree with that while I smash an oak pallet into kindling. I have two 35 gallon trash cans, both salvaged, that I can fill with kindling, and on the way home I had stopped at the paper re-cycling station near West High School and taken a tidy bundle of newspaper, tied with jute, for starting fires. I don't read the paper, I'm remarkably uninformed; most of the news I get is at least a year old. I stop, to read an article in a sheet of newsprint that I'm using to start a fire: pain-pill doctors, abuse culminating in murder, what football team might go to the state championship, and I'm at a total loss. It doesn't integrate into my life. I'm trying to figure out where the crows roost at night. What caterpillar becomes a Luna moth. Whether or not I should be worried about not changing my socks every day. The world, off the ridge, is way too busy. Phone was out yesterday when I got home and it's still out today, but I certainly wasn't going to town two days in a row. I'll go in tomorrow, to call the company. I checked my extra phone in their transfer box and it's definitely their problem. I charged the cheap cell phone ($10) but I don't have a signal, not that I expected one. My travel expenses finally came in from Chautuaqua, over $300, so I can afford an extra lunch in town and still put $200 in the bank, which will cover the actual expenses. Lovely. I'm being encouraged to make another country pate, even to the extent of other people offering buy the $20 or so of ingredients that I'll need. B would even come over and wash dishes, which is a large part of it; but I'd rather wait a few weeks, until I can fire the cookstove. I begin to see pieces of the west face of the hollow across the way, through where the leaves are thinning, and the angled light is a beautiful thing. I wanted to call Glenn, before he and Linda retreated to France for the grape harvest, but my phone wasn't working. Live at the extreme edge, 'live' works well in that context. These groups, living on the open plain, in huts of mammoth bone, lived right at the edge of the retreating ice. Oaks had returned (the ultimate survivors) and the critters that ate acorns, and the critters that ate the critters that ate acorns, and the critters that ate both the acorns and the critters that ate the acorns. A killing field. Thousands of skeletons. Tens of thousands. I have to take a break. I was hungry, and the last time I was at Kroger, in the remaindered bin, there were a bunch of cans of Spanish sardines, lightly smoked, in oil. I love sardines. Made a piece of toast and dumped the can of fish on it, topped with chopped onion. This was bar food in the Combat Zone in Boston. The loading doors of our theater opened out into that colorful district, and the stagehands frequented a place just across the alley, "Zekes", often even during a show, between cues. The Stagehand's Special was a small glass of beer, Genny on tap, (25 cents) and a sardine sandwich topped with a slice of hot yellow onion (75 cents), they sold a lot of these. Sardines, in their little flat cans, come in cases of 96 units (24, 48, 96), and they went through five cases a week. My open-face sandwich is a homage to those days, but I use a sweet onion now. It's so good I want to call a revival, a tent service, maybe save a few pagans. When I go to town tomorrow, to call the phone company, I'm going to buy all the rest of the discontinued Spanish sardines, 50 cents a can, as a memory aid. I don't care if I smell like a cannery all winter, there's nobody around to complain. Tom? Sure, I knew him, he smelled like a horse-shoe crab in heat. Pulling teeth to get through to the phone company, then on hold forever, finally the poor guy, Chris, said that, because of the holiday weekend, they couldn't get out here until next Wednesday. A week plus without a phone. My readers will think I'm dead. Oh well. Used TR's phone at the museum, chatted with him for a few minutes, then came right back home. No beer at the pub, no lunch, pissed at the phone company and wouldn't have been good company. Besides, I'd been to the library and had a book I wanted to read, another old Elmore Leonard I'd missed. It's very calming to read a decent book at a single sitting. Left-over steak and baked potato for dinner. There's less chance three points could be in a straight line, much less four. First you'd have to believe your level or transit as being absolutely (and I don't believe in that) accurate; and then the curvature of the earth, and the curvature of space-time. I'm sure there's an algorithm. The Fuck-Up Factor looms large. But I just lean back in my chair, and all I can see is confusion. Read more...

Gavotte

A festive jig. A keg of Christmas ale. Credit where credit is due. One of those early fall days, clear and cooler, a brisk breeze all day, and the leaves are starting to fall. It's a dance: the leaves on the tip, then branches, then whole trees swaying. A small moon, centered above, and there is no sound, other than bugs and frogs. I think I invent my world, but there it is. Again. Listen. Nothing that isn't part of the natural world. Laundry, for instance; I fold my underwear, therefor I exist. Miles leaves out almost everything. The beauty of it. I was reading some recipes from Marjorie Rawlings' Cross Creek Cookbook which led to rereading her Cross Creek, both of which I love. I love her like I love MFK Fisher. Reminded me about a letter Maxwell Perkins had written to her, so I had to reread his letters to find it; and suddenly the day was over. Still no phone, which seems ridiculous even by my standards. Two weeks of nice weather and they can't send someone out? One of my readers, Michael, the Music Guy at the university, ask me what was up with my writing, why there wasn't any. I explained the phone situation. He said he was only asking because he always called his mother and read her the day's post, and she had called him because he hadn't been calling. He recommended that I get a satellite hook-up. Easy for him to say, but I'd need to get new equipment and learn a new system. I can do that, I remind myself, but it's still intimidating. I do have to live in the world. I'm not often horribly inappropriate, but I do have a streak that compels me to say what's on my mind. When it leads to words, I'm at a distinct advantage, just because finding out about words was always so important to me. A military brat, you moved around a lot. I always had a dictionary. And all those Classics Illustrated comics probably had an influence. But I never wanted to wear a cape. I was just trying to follow the plot. Read more...