Realative Terms

I only wear that funny hat because my ears get cold. I don't care what I look like. Actually, the highlight of the day, two things, stripping out of and then stripping out again to redress in dryer-warm long-underwear. One of the great experiences of all time. Warm long-underwear might be better than sex, better, even, than split-pea soup. A skiff on the ground and flurries. I look like a bandit, with a facemask and muffler, when I go outside for a taste of fresh air. Not a walk, just a few minutes in the elements. Table manners, which have always been an interest of mine, are a code of conduct that allow us to eat with other people without cutting their throat with our steak knife. I can be an acceptable dinner guest, but when I'm alone, which is most of the time, I often eat right out of the pot or pan, wiping up the last of any given meal with a crust of bread. Dirty dishes require wash water. The average US person uses about 100 gallons of water a day, in the third world this goes down to maybe five gallons, I use about two gallons. I've kept track of it for years, because I have to handle every ounce of it, more than once. It's not a big deal, even if it means melting snow on the cookstove. Fill a pot with snow, two minutes with that specialty tool, a dust-pan, let it melt, and you have hot water. That Latin treatise, Aqua Fervens, Mare Est In Turba, which I made up, as a source for spurious quotes. I have to laugh, I had an argument with Patsy Sims, the brilliant and extremely literate director of the MFA program in Creative Nonfiction at Goucher College, about the nature of truth. We disagreed. She really held to the idea that a specific thing had actually happened. Which I find to be bullshit, on closer examination. How could you ever know? I get the argument, but I don't buy it. Every single fucking event is subject to interpretation. I might have thought one thing and you another. There's no control on this, a nurse on the ward that records time and temperature; at best there's a running commentary. ESPN and endless playbacks. The last time I was at the pub, eating a bowl of stew, watching my weekly highlights, there was a play, NFL playoffs, the Cowboys I think; the other team threw a pass and it hit the defender on the back. At first it was ruled "pass interference", which was over-ruled on replay. The actual event was caught on camera from three or four different views and yet three or four different commentators argued the call for half an hour. I think the corrected call was correct, but I don't actually know the rules. The only time I ever played a round of golf, Michael had to tell me what not to do. You can't ground the club in a sand-trap, you can't move a twig that moves the ball.