Lingering Smell

A skunk smell drifts in on the breeze. A serious skunk smell that settles on everything. I don't mind it too much, strong smells, other than rotten potatoes or rotten onions, don't bother me. On the coast, a rotten whale, after a couple of weeks, smells pretty bad. I smear Vicks on my upper lip and go about my business. I've never found a recipe for skunk, but I did find a couple for fox. Both from Switzerland. One sounded good, burying a cast iron kettle in the coals overnight, with turnips and wild greens. One time in Utah, I had canned cougar chunks on rice. If I go out in the morning, and nothing is dead on the road, then when I come back, a few hours later, if something is dead, a squirrel or a rabbit, I stop and examine the carcass. I do a small animal braise, with road kill, that's quite good. And a stir fry with boned, poached squirrel that many people thought may have been the best thing they had ever eaten. Hey, listen, French Fries are important. Later, I thought about gender specific pronouns. Social norms. Spent some time going over some pages, to read tomorrow night. Thought about being out in the evening, which is not sometime I do often. I should get home just after dark, unless I get sidetracked. I can always stay at the Super 8 and take a shower. Beauty has suffered a bloodbath in Portsmouth, so many lovely buildings bull-dozed for a new CVS, a beautiful church razed to expand the Kroger parking lot. I don't even know where I'm reading, but it doesn't matter that much; I'm much better if I can read sitting down and cross my legs. I hold the pages in my left hand, and gesture with my right. It's like a puppet show. With hand gestures I can bring valence into play. This above, this below. Seeing things well right now, taking the time to notice, and not being in a hurry. I'd let the new pile of books, right beside on my left, get a little too tall, so I put a few books away and made a few notes. Which gets me speculating on what the hell I was thinking about when I had made several notes about peeing to the leeward. I think I know what I meant, but it was interesting that I thought of it then, text, sub-text; context is almost everything. It was a windy night, I'd gone out to pee. Doesn't take much of a learning curve.