Not Knowing

It shouldn't be viewed as a systemic problem, usually we don't know what we're doing. Missing a piece of the handle assembly for the jack, and I don't have a manual so I don't know where to put the damned jack anyway. Sleet, again. I call B at the college and he says he'll get me whiskey and tobacco, and drive them up. He locates the spot where the jack goes and I trick-out the jack handle with a pair of vise-grips. Tomorrow is another day. Cut some starter sticks by hand. I want to get the oven hot enough to make cornbread tonight. It's nice to get shed of my outer layer, start a fire (I'd let the morning fire go out, to dump ashes and check the smoke chase) and get back to my books. I just want to hibernate. I've gotten it better, for this winter, meaning a little more comfort with a little less effort, and I can move strongly in that direction for the next few years. Be better prepared. Keep rock salt for the back porch. Cook a pot of beans. Keep wood at all stations of the cross. It was warm over by the stove and after making cornbread I just stayed there, eating small portions of bean soup on toasted slices, read another Thomas Perry novel and went to bed early. Woke to dense fog, steady drizzle, and the sure knowledge that I wouldn't get off the ridge today. Settled in with tea and Anthony Burgess's Earthly Powers. Drips all day long, can't see across the hollow, can't see fifty feet. Ghostly. Several times I suit-up to go outside but the rain is cold. One more day of bean soup. I feel like I'm inside a cloud, which might actually be the case. Rare for it to stay socked-in all day. Two hunters showed up, mid-afternoon, looking like wet dogs, asking for permission to go hunt down the hollow from the graveyard. Two guys with orange vests and hats, and guns, I tell them, sure, to go ahead, that they'll intersect a path that'll lead them back to the driveway. They came inside for a few minutes, to warm their fingers, I was a little paranoid, but they were cool; they knew who I was, admired the stove and the stairs, and were completely mystified by the walls of books. I made them a cup of coffee with a shot of whiskey, for which they were grateful. Well shed of them, but the interruption wasn't all that unpleasant, which leads me to the thought that I need to get to town, have a conversation with TR, talk with the crew at the pub. A good thing about being holed up on a Friday afternoon, though, is Science Friday on NPR. A very good interview with a curator at MOMA about current electronic art. Then a nice piece about absorbing fats. Which led (who knows?) to a consideration of storing corn as whiskey, on my part, which led to the rest of the evening. I do wish I had a faster connection, I could research things much more quickly, before I forget what I was trying to find out. I do get side-tracked easily, but it's a process I enjoy. Trying to remember what I was thinking about.