Mushrooms

It's not a cultivated look in the sense of looking your best, but it is a studied approach to living in an area where ticks are a serious problem. I have a couple of pair of pants, Dockers, and several tee-shirts from which the arms have been cut off, large white socks, and a Red Sox cap, that have all been treated with a chemical I don't want to know about, that actually keep bugs away. Bright colors help, white or yellow tee-shirts are best. I tuck my pant's leg into my socks, I tie strips of old tee-shirts around my upper arms and neck, I sprinkle myself with kerosene as if at a christening. I look like the rag-picker's grandfather. That guy in Iran that's never taken a bath and smokes goat turds. Not someone you'd bring home for the holidays. But it is sensible dress for picking blackberries or poking around amid the under-story looking for mushrooms. I do pretty well, several Boletes and enough Chanterelles to dry a batch. I made a very good mushroom pate (mushrooms, onion, butter and apple brandy). Later, rolling a cigaret, it was difficult for me to imagine a better life. I could have more of something, I suppose; another drink or another smoke, more pure iteration of the point I was supposed to get. I make a great garbage hash with a browned butter sauce, I understand that 'union' and 'junction' are related terms. It's a plumbing thing. And marvel that I eat so well. Nonetheless I look like nothing so much as a mendicant with a bowl, begging rice. I don't care what I look like, I'm after blackberries and mushrooms. Getting unsuited, checking for ticks, getting something to eat and drink, getting clean, putting on clean cotton clothes; a foray into the jungle is stupid at this time of year, but I wanted more dried mushrooms. Also, I was hounded by the idea of what a wimp I'd become. Even just a couple of years ago, last year, I was hauling large heavy rounds of oak from one place to another. I don't think too much about this, moving shit from one place to another, because it seems what I've been doing my entire life is just barely clearing a path. Just and only a way to get around fallen trees. Basho, with his stick, looks for purchase among the rocks.

The early insects
and the birds, my god.
Only the owl speaks
the truth.

First let me say, I feel just like a normal person. I stuff squid, I do a few things with pounded tenderloins that you might not have thought of, but I'm actually one of the "Good Old Boys", no shit. The National Institute Of Standards. B walked over, after some wood-type at the print-shop, his ex is doing some collages, and we talked easily, as we always do, about books and foraging. He's going after blackberries this afternoon, and we talked about ticks. I'm not going out, Joel sent me a book on American Terroir and I thought I'd settle in with that, and I found an old Thomas Perry novel at the library that I hadn't read. Tons of left-overs, and I have to contain myself against making something new. I do fry some potatoes, just because I have a skillet with bacon fat and a large Russet potato that's been steamed. Anything is better with fried potatoes. Joel calls and gives me shit about falling out of contact, but I explain the problems. He said he'd start looking around on his end. I'm thinking about borrowing a signal, several friends have mentioned a stew can wrapped with copper wire, but I'm so far from any signal. I'll get this straightened out, I got the vehicle insurance paid, and the land taxes paid, a new license and tags, reconnecting is at the top of my list. B walked over and Joel called on the same day, wondering if I was alive, and I have to quash that rumor, that I might have been dead. Joel laughed about that, that we were both still alive, it's so counter-intuitive, by any other test, we should have been the first to go. Now we just talk about cooking seafood and avoid philosophy. Head to head I'd put a good crab cake up against any fantasy.