Slippery Slope

A little sore but I get the day off due to thunder showers and general rain. Finish the history of bread (a very good book) and read some essays about Pynchon's work. Thinking about family, my father. Wish I had a phone. But then I'd have a hell of a phone bill. Watched a spider battling the elements on a web outside my writing window; a large fellow, and tenacious. An odd thing, there were no birds in Florida. No songbirds. A few crows and jays, but Brenda had extensive feeding stations, out back, where my smoking porch was located, and I never saw a single bird. Several species have all but disappeared from the ridge (the thrushes, alas) but there are still working populations. We've fucked with Mother Nature and she's coming around to bite us on the ass. Old statuary is useless against a rising tide. You might be able to use the plinths as a kind of revetment, build a retaining wall, terraced beds, massive rock steps that lead nowhere. I live in this extremely rural community. Did I say it was extremely rural? And though I've lived here for fifteen years, I'm a newcomer. No one trusts me. As well they shouldn't. I'm just a snake in the grass. Another rain day, this one heavy, with rolling thunder. Couldn't turn on Old Black Dell so I read a mystery by John Dunning about the rare book business. It's good to stop by the Good Will bookstore once a month, to get some cheap books for when you can't get to the library, and the library actually has an ongoing book sale. After six o'clock it breaks out beautiful, slanted light on colored leaves, grows very still. I quickly eat a wild-duck hash with a perfect fried egg on top, then take a wee dram and a smoke on the back stoop. Life is good. I have oak against the winter, wood I will finally dry inside, near the stove, in ricks of twenty or so pieces, and I do love stacking wood, each stack of which serves me for a day or two. The ephemeral nature of reality. The games people play, I can't believe it, I'd rather just shoot myself than deal with all the bullshit. Oak (red) has a specific gravity of .71, 44 pounds a cubic foot before you add in the water. Even bone dry wood holds 10-14 percent water. A decent day, working wood, you move a ton of it. On the other hand, you don't have to think too much: split it into smaller pieces and move it from one place to another. You can be philosophical, the conversion of plant life into BTU's, why you're so difficult to live with, the nature of grain; but you might just hum a song, the blues, anything in G, and get on down the road.