Feeling Good

Something about just getting it done. Getting the Jeep down, getting what I needed in town, hiking back in, getting a good fire going, making a meal. Simple stuff. And the birds were out in force. I tend to forget myself, in the midst of the mundane. I clear snow off of stumps and the edge of the print shop stoop, so that the next time I arrive at one of those places, there's a dry spot to park my ass. I want to build a crude bench halfway up the driveway, so I'd have a place to sit and roll a smoke. The tendency is to be in too much of a hurry, getting from one place to another. It's always best to slow down. When I walk in, with a turnip and a parsnip, I'm not trying to make a point. It's just that the last time I had them, roasted with clarified butter, salt and pepper, they were very good. I fall into my below zero survival mode, eat early, crank up the fire, read for a while, take a nap, then get up after midnight, nurse the fire, and write for a couple of hours. The second sleep is good for dreams. I usually get up the second time, stoke the fire, then listen to NPR until I get pissed enough at something to throw off my blanket, turn off the radio, and make a pot of coffee. I reread what I was writing, add or subtract a comma or two, have a first cigaret, and consider my breakfast options. Like John Thorne, I cast a wide net for breakfast. I seldom put left-overs away at night, when it's this cold, so a breakfast hash with a fried egg is fairly common. As mentioned often, an egg yolk is the perfect sauce. Grits have become a fixture. Grits, with a sausage patty and a cheese omelet is more often to be dinner. I just ran out of squash, rescued from the Thanksgiving displays, just before the first hard freeze, and I'm very fond of half an acorn squash, stuffed with compote or berries for breakfast. Biscuits and gravy if there are left-over biscuits. Toasted corn bread with molasses. I still have a steak and a pork tenderloin in the freezer and it's almost March. I need to get out next week, because I'll need almost everything, but I'm pretty secure right now. One of my new rules is that if I extend myself physically, splitting wood or walking out and in, is that I just take the next day off. I might read Ezra Pound or Levi-Strauss, Gunter Grass, or Delillo, I might take a walk and get completely sidetracked by a narrative I create (at zero degrees all narratives are suspect), or cook marrow bones because of some atavistic desire. The hours slide by. An acquaintance asked what I did with my time. If she had to ask, she couldn't possibly know. Well, I spent several hours thinking about cannibalism in North America, then I thought about ground water contamination, then I thought I'd better pop the Chorizo into the freezer so it would slice more easily, listened to early blues while I chopped onions.