Off Ridge

Following my best advice, if I can get off the ridge and back up, I take advantage. I needed to go to the library and I wanted a steak and sweet potato for tomorrow night. No one was at the pub, so I watched half a soccer game and talked with the help. The museum was hopping, an all day kid thing. Too much going on for a conversation with TR, so I stopped at Kroger, then stopped at the Bridge Carry-Out for cigaret papers. The back way home takes me right by B's place, so I had put a small pack of his in the Jeep, to give back to him. Stopped and talked. It was so nice to get back to the ridge, a small fire in the stove, heat some left-overs, I just wanted fiction and a lap-robe. I read through a heavily illustrated edition of Jules Verne, the French love him, and Poe, go figure. We're meanwhile stuck with Sarte and Camus. It doesn't seem fair. Which ever way I might mean that. I had to go eat, a great meal of potatoes and sausage and eggs, and when I went back to writing I couldn't remember which side I came down on. I packed up my day pack and took a long walk, west and north. The red maples are starting to break out. It's lovely in the woods and I stop, whenever I find a stump, and sit still until the natural sounds restore themselves. In the early afternoon, I break out of the forest onto Upper Twin several miles up the road, hike back to the driveway, then up the hill. I was wasted, rolled a smoke, got a drink, and sat on the back porch for a long time. Birds, a few frogs, the wind in the trees. I had to take a nap before grilling a small steak and cooking a foil-wrapped sweet potato in the coals (I just cut them up with a knife and fork, put on a couple of pats of butter, a dusting of powdered Ancho Chile pepper) and eat at the island. I have one of the track lights positioned for reading at the island, and I spend quite a bit of time there, trying to read and eat at the same time. My equipment, such as it is, is not working. The exterior modem (# 7) seems to have died, so I won't be able to SEND, and exterior modems are getting difficult to find. Cory, at the pub, said he thought he had a couple, the point is that I have to upgrade my whole system. But I can't, because of the trees, and the fact that I do actually live in the boonies. When those companies call now, with their offer of free connection, I tell them to send their best person. Consider it a challenge. Sure, we can drop some trees, line of sight, true north. I might choose to be connected. I'd like to be better connected, actually; faster, able to open files. I feel like I'm wading in molasses right now. I need a better computer, and printer, because I need hard copy, and I need a couple of basic lessons in creating files and storing data. I'm such a fucking dunce when it comes to almost anything. I can read well, and take good walks. I did quantify the scale by which a couple of crows can totally screw the sound environment, the Beery Scale, and I've been written up in a couple of journals as someone you didn't really want to meet. Bridwell, yeah, I remember that guy, I'd cross to the other side of the street. I'd heard his kind had congress with goats. It's supposed to snow again, it can't last, the way the ground has warmed, but it could look very nice in the morning. Steak and sweet potato two nights in a row. I have to solve this modem problem which means another trip out, talk to Cory; if he doesn't have one, his brother will, or one of them will know where I can get one. The classic snipe hunt. I'm strongly motivated to stay in touch and I don't really know where that comes from, there's no real moral or ethic in my background, I can't even claim to be a failed Lutheran. And I only keep contact with a diminishing group of friends. I'd rather just read than talk to some idiot. All day on the elusive modem hunt, and there was not one to be found. The guy at Radio Shack said that I could order one from Wal-Mart.com but that no one carried them anymore. Lunch with TR and Anthony, and Anthony, reading my growing frustration, bought me a beer and a cup of soup; then I actually went to Wal-Mart, where I never go, and the guy there verified that I could order one. Stuck behind a wreck, I had plenty of time to curse my lot in life. A valve-stem leak in one of my new tires, so I had to stop and get that repaired; I just happened to notice, coming out of K-Mart, that the tire was low. K-Mart did have a shelf marked Modems, but there was nothing on it, and that's as close as I came. I'll get TR to order one, and have it delivered to him at the museum, then I'll have to go back into town to get it. The logistics of living in the woods: and any kind of hardware is the worst, because you always have to go into town twice. I've re-purposed a great many things to avoid the extra trip. I could write a book on the history of the hinge. Fortunately I have left-overs to eat, so as soon as I get home I get a drink and sit on the back porch. Spending an entire day in abject failure is a good lesson in humility. So I'm days away from any solution and there isn't anything I can do about it. I could probably drive a hundred miles and find what I needed, but I don't know where to go or what questions to ask and I don't want to drive a hundred miles anyway. When I'm forced by circumstance to write a longer paragraph I tend to brood too much. Open-ended deadlines, and I can spend a very long time considering a comma. If anything I'm even slower than before. I can still write a four-sentence hour, which I consider a goodly pace, but anything is likely to distract me. Consider my sources. Today I was reading Eyal Peretz, Literature, Disaster, and the Enigma of Power: A Reading of Moby-Dick, and I'm several hours into this, the identity of Ismael, what Pip might be thinking. Flotsam in an endless sea. Another modemless day. Warm, but big winds and another cold front with snow moving in tonight. In preparation, I cook a pot of beans, get out some candles, fill an oil lamp. Blowing like crazy outside, a few rain drops, and it must be 65 degrees. Fickle. A small walk, to look for early morels, but there's so much leaf-litter blowing about I went back home, made a pot of smoked tea, and reread a book, Lonliness As A Way Of Life, because it's the book that turned me on to Peretz. There's a great discussion of the movie Paris, Texas, which is one of my favorites (it has a great soundtrack, Ry Cooder), and many things that I need to reference. The leaves are fairly dancing outside my windows. I called B at the college, to get him to get me a book through University Library Loan, and he invites me for dinner to meet a young couple he's befriended. If it doesn't start raining I'll go down. B's a good cook, and the conversation is always lively. TR told me yesterday that his Cincy musician friends think that I'm a fictional character. A construct, to hang his composition on. Zack, based there also, said that, no, he'd met and worked with me, and that I was a real person. I attest to realness. I feel like I'm here, or there. An inch worm, swinging in the breeze. I write all afternoon, the rain holds off, and at five I headed out to B's. Kinsey, I think was her name, I forget his. B made fried eggplant (which he does superbly) with a peanut sauce and a very good sweet potato/apple/ginger dish. I hadn't had a social evening in quite a while, many months, and it was nice to hear other voices. I still got back home just before dark, rolled a smoke and poured a wee dram, a liberal wee dram, and thought about human nature. This young couple, just starting their way, wanting to put experience ahead of money. Which is the way it comes down. B has offered them the cabin, to try an alternative lifestyle, and I don't have any objection, as long as we can hammer out a driveway protocol and they don't bother me. Be kind of nice, actually, to have someone within hearing of a gunshot. But they have the wrong vehicle and I don't think they can do it. Living without running water and no electricity is a big hurdle. You are immediately cleaved from most of the population. When the mosquito larvae squiggle in my wash water, I strain everything through an old tee-shirt; I boil the water when I make noodles. I make good coffee. This water that was passed through Jefferson's bladder.