Deep Silence

Something woke me. I was napping on the sofa, after reading and writing, and it was so quiet I was sure it had snowed. Put on slippers and a robe, went outside to pee, and it was so still I sounded like a mule pissing on a flat rock. The air was heavy but it didn't smell like snow, not humid enough. Cold enough for hoar frost and a full moon behind layers of cloud so there was dull gray glow. Pleasant. I cracked open a bottle of Irish whiskey and got a wee dram in the glass I favor, rolled a smoke, went back out and sat on the stoop, a foam pad for my bony ass. I had been dreaming, I remembered, about that time my sister stepped on a moccasin that would have bit her, but had a frog in it's mouth. Dad had shipped over and we were spending some time in Tennessee. It's very vivid, in memory; my favorite cousins, a stock pond where we caught the same fish over and over, Aunt Sadie frying sweet potato rounds in bacon fat. Memory often comes from a specific smell, or from hearing a specific sound. Sitting on the back steps, I lost track of where I actually was. I propped the door open and put on the Cello Suites. This usually works for me, in terms of bringing myself back to normal, but occasionally Bach, with his change-ringing, takes me further out. I sat there until I was shivering against the cold, finally came inside and nestled under a blanket. Low thunder. Excellent. A storm would be good. I could hole up and read about the 14th century, butterfly some tenderloin slices and stuff them with wild mushrooms. Dealer's choice. High-Low splits the pot. In the parlance, I'm all in. My sleep habits have gotten wacky. I was having a large breakfast at 3:30 this morning. To town, to meet TR and see the new shows at the museum. Drew did a great job with the historic photographs show upstairs. Odd thing about the trip was that the driveway has completely disappeared under many layers of leaves. I know where to drive, but especially coming back in, it was comical. The Miss Ohio pageant is at the university theater, this weekend I guess, and the judges came into the pub for lunch with last year's queen, and I saw several of the contestants around town. Of a type, a kind of plastic ideal of beauty. One thing though, they really know how to apply makeup. Twenty years in theater I know good makeup. I never worked this pageant, the years I was at the university, though Leo always asked me to; there were plenty of eager seekers for my job and I found the whole event depressing. Picked up a few more things for the larder. A pint of ultra-pasteurized half-and-half with a long shelf-life, an extra dozen eggs, a loaf of bread for the freezer; I'm waiting for butter to be on sale, so I can buy a couple of pounds. I have beans, I have rice, and now I have this Tuchman person that I have to read completely.