Sideline

I'm hard-pressed to describe the difference between sleet and hail. Frozen rain that isn't flakes. Later, I have to take out the compost, and wash some dishes, I'm melting snow toward that end. I need to take a sponge bath and wash my hair. Meanwhile I just research things within my purview. At five in the morning I turn on the radio, to listen to the news, but quickly turn it off, because it's so invasive. I toast a couple biscuits, make a mushroom and cheese omelet, settle back with my lap-robe pulled tightly around my legs, reading about dust. I need some kindling and I have a piece of fat pine in the shed. Shards of fat pine approach fusion. I can deal with that later. A day or two reading, what fun. My best reading companion ever was Glenn. We lived together in a couple of places, an old church, and a house on the herring run in Brewster. We could both read for eight hours, any given day, and we'd run into each other, going for a cup of tea and have conversations, then go right back to our reading. Now, of course solo, I read all the time that I'm not doing something survival oriented. Holed up like this, I read two books a day, and additional stuff, reviews and poetry. I was looking for something today, and I didn't find it (some Paz essays), but I did find a book of McCord's, Maps, from 1971, and rereading it was a transport. I've always loved his work. Get up, stoke the stove, take a nap, eat some black beans on toast, it snows some more, I give the crows a toasted biscuit. They think they've died and gone to heaven. Later, it's a cold moon over stick trees. One thing you learn, winter camping, is to curl into a ball and cover your face. Snow is a good insulator and a couple of dogs don't hurt. It restricts movement, but you can live with that. The plus side is you don't freeze to death. I have to get outside tomorrow, I'm going a little stir-crazy, and splitting wood for an hour would be therapeutic and I could probably write it off on my taxes. If it's very late, I might hear an owl.