Service

The phone rang, startled me. What the hell is that? My personal phone guy calling to apologize. He'd been in Michigan where a bunch of lines had been taken down by an early season storm, came right out and found that one of the 'splice weather housings' had become an acorn storage silo. A squirrel. I immediately sent all the posts in storage and plowed through emails. I'd made a quick run to town, to call the phone company again, and they said they thought I was restored. Celebratory pint at the pub, a jar of kimchi at Kroger. A dial tone had never sounded so sweet. I made a few calls, my oldest friends, established myself in the land of the living, and it feels good to have some connection. My tendency is to retreat, to a cave or a tree-tip pit, if anything happens. I want my back against a wall, and I'd want that wall to be solid rock. I've slept in caves many times, mostly in Utah; you build a fire at the mouth and you're pretty well protected. Dead wood is always available and any ledge is solace from the storm. One more wee dram and a glimpse of the future. Mad Tom tangles with the devil. A Super 8, Norton, Virginia, St. Elmo's fire. You can believe whatever you want. Three or four times in my varied career, things have not made sense, but generally beams fall into place. Oh. Right. She was left-handed. Like that. It suddenly all makes sense. Lunch with TR and our banker friend Ty at the bar in the pub, excellent conversation ranging all over the landscape. More rain. I forgot to go to the library, but, fortunately, I already have thirty or forty books in the winter pile, which I now keep atop the aquarium that used to house exotic frogs; on a plank, but they have a wall to lean on, so they rarely get knocked over. I bumped into the pile of Natural History pamphlets the other night. A lot of them have glossy covers and they tend to slide; it was a fucking mess that I shoveled into a corner, with a snow-shovel, dare I trip going out to pee. Two hours, the next morning, sorting things out. There were hundreds of pamphlets. Bees, butterflies, moths, bats, moles and voles, small mammals, large bugs. A certain solace in knowing what's what. I'm getting better on common weeds, but I still call things what we always called them, in the vernacular: Caxton should be placed on the same throne with Shakespeare. When I come in now, from a stint outdoors, I pick up the phone and listen to the dial tone. Small pleasures.