Gothic Folly

B calls and he has a pate for me, from Scott, so I'll go out tomorrow and maybe do my laundry and check out the new food cart. Two bacon wrapped dogs and fries for $5. I need to run out to K-Mart, while the clothes are in the dryer and buy a couple of new tee-shirts, as my summer formal wear is looking a bit tattered. I'm hard on clothes. Plus, I don't care what I look like or what anyone thinks. So hot, the last couple of days, that I've been taking a late afternoon nap on the floor, then getting up well after dark to eat and write. A few days like that every year so it's not a big deal, the same with very cold weather, you make what accommodation you need. I've started buying more books at the Permanent Book Sale the library has established in a niche off the main floor. It's always good to have twenty or thirty books in a special pile against inclement weather, especially if' they're cheap. I've soaked fish in brine, cured elk hams, buried dead sharks, and make a headcheese that is legendary in certain parts of the south. That is to say, not without talent, and Joel has always said I talk a good line. It's enough. No claim to scholarship, no particular field, but I've seldom gone hungry, and I've always had friends that would hide me, if necessary. Disappearing is a trick, Penn and Teller, you just go underground. Also, of course, I've known several hermits, and tend in that direction. You pick up their manner, stay as self-sufficient as you can and reveal as little as possible. I was building a house in Utah, 96 or 97, living in a gunshot trailer on the Navaho Reservation, and I knew no one; I loved the kids, for about six months I was the local amusement. Went down to B's and got the Scott pate and it's wonderful. I eat it on little rye rounds with onion and sweet gherkins. Very good. Having put off the trip to town, I'll have to go tomorrow: library, laundromat, and liquor; which means cleaning up and generally getting my act together. But I had started reading a book and I wanted to take a walk, down the logging road, looking for mushrooms, and that filled my day. B and I did talk for an hour, about various heating systems; and his other daughters are coming to town, so we talked about that. I'll probably go down for dinner one night, just to see them all together. My sense of time is distorted, napping in the heat of the day, then staying up through the late night and early morning, if I had broadband I'd probably watch a soccer match. As it is I reread some light fiction, then do the dishes and listen to the radio. Just before dawn I turn off all the lights and listen to the blues. John Lee Hooker. Lord god.