Memory Lane

Simple pleasures. Soaking in a stock tank in the Utah desert, preparing a nice meal for people you care about, or walking about in a habitation that is a thousand years deserted. Reality is seldom what it looks like, nor what we remember. We re-imagine particulars: who was actually there, what was actually said. You always think of the best lines later. Understanding something that happens, a single event, something that occurs, is not actually all that easy. Perceived history is a fiction. It's a fabrication based on a few facts, a specific gun, some fingerprints; in court it comes down to the best lawyer, and by then we're several steps removed. I thought it looked like him or her, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, it could have been a UPS driver, there might have been a van, I think it was brown. Reasonable doubt. If, for instance, your witness is color-blind. Or is just reasonably paranoid and perceives a moving hedge as a human being under a cameo tarp and kills a neighbor feeding his cat. It can happen. I keep track of esoteric deaths, it's part of what makes it fun to be around me; read about a researcher in Finland who froze to death, trying to hibernate. Brown might well be the new gray. Just saying. Skiff of snow this morning, lazy flakes falling. I listened to the news and weather, decided I could get to town. Library, then a pint at the pub. I liked the fried rice so well I got everything to make a shrimp version. Shrimp have gotten bland, so I got clam juice to cook the rice. Firewood tomorrow. Plenty of reading matter. Tomorrow night, after firewood, I'd like to clean up. You spend a day working on firewood, it's easy to keep a good fire going with chunks and butts and knots, so I should have the house quite warm by the time I come inside and peel off a couple of layers. Steak and eggs for dinner, I have it planned, while I heat water for washing. It must have gotten a bit above freezing today, because most of the snow was gone; the Jeep, with new tires and shocks, fairly danced up the hill. I added to the larder many packages of Louisiana rice and bean mixes. The red beans and rice is quite good, two meals for a buck. Five pounds of black beans, because they do make a superior liquid, and some beef shanks that might make a chili. Trying to think, I've got sixty hard days ahead of me. I need to get back to town Monday or Tuesday, lay in some more supplies, I keep forgetting things and have to start another list. I had long since decided to let the fire die, I needed to clean out the ashes, and I can be cold for a while, but I opened junk mail and It caught, in the stove, from a few buried coals, and the first thing you know I'm feeding a fire. Biscuits are easy, I cut them with a tattered tin implement a great aunt gave my mother. Sentiment. You could do as well with a water-glass.