Freight Train

Now that the leaves are off the trees I can hear the coal trains across the river in Kentucky. All that country music bull-shit about trains is true. They do sound lonesome, even if they're just hauling coal to power plants. Makes me want to get a dog and cry in my beer. I make a note to tell TR about how they (trains) change the world of perception. They don't mean anything, but the sound captivates our attention. A woodpecker hammering on a dead oak tree, two squirrels running through the leaf-litter, a train far away. We don't control the world of sound. I was thinking about silence earlier, I had gotten up to pee and decided to go outside, rather than using my piss-pot, and the air was thick. A wee dram and a smoke are good to clear the palate, I can cite chapter and verse, be all and end all you're in the dark, but I like nursing a drink in the dark. It's not a lot of things you would immediately think. Nothing negative, for instance. I don't dwell in the house of the lord, or any other house, except the tar-paper shack I call my own. Listen, a Luna Moth beats itself to death against a screen outside my window: to what extent am I involved? I'm not a lawyer, but I've read enough to keep quiet. Perfect temperature for working outdoors, mid-forties, and I muddle through, working slowly. It's a lovely day and I find that I just sit on a stump for increasing amounts of time, watching and listening. Several trips indoors for hot mugs of tea, rereading some passages from the last two Thomas Perry books, a quiet smoke, then back outside to bust another round in half, and haul it in the wheelbarrow to the woodshed. Left-overs for dinner, reheated and eaten directly from the skillet. I need to heat the house tomorrow, so I can take a sponge bath and shave my neck. I need to wash my hair and get it cut. I look like a demented cave-dweller. When I was sitting in the front room of the pub, reading, waiting for the Jeep to be re-shod, one of the bankers I'd met at museum functions, and a bright guy, stopped and looked at me, "winter mode" was all he said. Yep. You see it most clearly at Kroger. Everyone has to buy some foodstuffs, so you get the random cross-section of doctor's wives, secretaries, gay male couples, tattooed machinists, and the hill people coming down for salt and sugar. I don't stand out at all. Just another hillbilly. We wear extra layers of tattered clothes when it gets cold, we often burrow into the hillside. I'm catching a lot of mice right now, which I keep in the freezer for the crows; I love watching the crows devour a micro-waved mouse, the steam rising on a frozen morning. If I do the crows a service now, they'll help me in the future, they're great scouts. Sometimes I almost think we communicate. I'm going to make a pork-fried rice, good luck with your plans.