Water Use

Rain for 36 hours, five or six inches, flood watch until two tomorrow morning. Power went out and I took a nap, awakened by the fridge and lights when the it came back on, got up, finished a mediocre Randy Wayne White book, wrote for a couple of hours. Pretty much the story of my life, except that I didn't get outside today. I see some green leaves though, Verbena probably. The ground is saturated (I did have to go out for a minute, to dump my piss-pot) and the fire danger has gone from Very High to zero. They post the fire danger on a sign outside the Forest Service headquarters and I see it whenever I go to town. And the flood zones are always the same too, they close off the river end of 139; and the exit west, out town, involves a slight detour. Detours, like failure, can be a good thing, anything that focuses your attention. In the afternoon I rebound a couple of books, which took several hours. Binding books, I think, is not unlike carvings spoons, or any of ten thousand trades... making pickles or maple syrup... Jesus it's raining hard, I'd better close down. Intense. It lasted for maybe five minutes. Then another squall. I crawl under a blanket and listen to the rain in the dark. Awake with an agenda and head to town. Stopped at the hardware store (the kitchen drain), then the library, a pint at the pub, talked with TR; B had asked me to stop by, because in his move he had discovered a few hundred pages of my work including The Snake Story, in its most finished form. Another copy of this surfaced in Texas. And there was a section of the big book I had been writing about building this house, the lost manuscript. This section started at page 302, single spaced 42 line pages, the attention to detail over-the-top, and I could almost reconstruct what I was feeling then. I remember how I solved a problem. The most elegant solution usually involves the fewest pieces. A hinge can be reduced to a piece of leather and four nails (I use the term 'nail' loosely) or just being wrapped tightly with monofilament or even rawhide, which we all know, shrinks when it dries. Securing my place in line. A meaningless conceit. Some other view. You just buy out the opposition and serve them a tuna-noodle casserole. I don't know why people trust me, but they do. I think it's because I don't raise any red flags. Also, I'm a good listener, though I do walk away from stupidity, and, rather obnoxiously, often supply the exact word someone else is looking for. Hardly surprising, since I spend 10 or 12 hours a day parsing meaning from words. A beautiful day lures me outside and I walk around for several hours, squeezing buds and tasting their exudations. I make a small salad with willow buds and a great dressing of walnut oil and apple cider vinegar. First morels, and I make a spectacular dish of caramelized onions and red peppers, mushrooms, and chorizo sausage. They had discounted several packages of ground pork at Kroger and I bought them all. Sausage is a attitude. I add a squirrel I inadvertently killed. The devious little fucker was trying to build a nest in the soffit and I shot in his direction, just to run him off, he zigged when he should have zagged. Braise that in wine and herbs, mince, and add to the pork, scramble this with eggs, toast with a very bitter marmalade; a brunch, with a double bourbon laced espresso. Strikes me as rather high on the hog for someone in my circumstance. If I accepted a job at Harvard, it would have to be with the understanding that I could kill those fat squirrels on the common. Another book I want to write, Cooking On A Hotplate, or Camp-Fire Cooking, which might be just about technique. The truth is, cooking a Cut-Throat trout on a stick, is a very simple thing to do. You gut it, put it on a stick, and hold it over the fire until the skin is crisp. The last bite is usually fried fish-tail. Among the initiated fried fish-tail is absolutely sacred and holy. From what I understand of any sacrament, this (or there) is where we test the water.