Regaining Balance

Had to get my license and the new sticker for the Jeep, and needed to go to the library. It wasn't supposed to rain before the afternoon, so I went into town, took care of business, stopped at the pub, the special was tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, which was perfect because I hadn't eaten in 24 hours. Can't believe I passed the vision test at the DMV, I don't think they set the bar very high. But I'm good to go, for another four years. Sushi for dinner, with a very good tomato. Loren wants to come out on Sunday, and I tell him sure, just bring a bottle of wine. I'll cook a chorizo stir-fry and some rice. Tomatoes and mozzarella with balsamic. Jimmy Dean now makes a bulk chorizo which isn't all that good, although any chorizo is pretty good scrambled in eggs with minced peppers, some fried potatoes, a piece of toast with a wonderful dab of bitter/sweet marmalade. Brenda calls and we have that awful conversation about the "arrangements". She sounds good though, and we actually have a couple of laughs about stupid family moments. New VA cemetery outside of Jacksonville, and this is a good thing, because one of things not covered in pre-paying, is that of the actual digging of the hole and the refilling is not usually covered. They can't predict what it's going to cost. Digging holes can be expensive, $2,000 to $4,000, which is a joke, but everyone has to earn a living. And the VA pay for the digging, and Dad's getting the whole honor guard thing, which I think is lovely, folding the flag, taps, rifle shots. Always scared the shit out of me, being at one of those, many of which, being a military brat, I attended. There are several guys in the military who do nothing but play taps, and other guys, who have their laundry done by other people, not to cast aspersion on Thoreau, who do nothing but shoot blanks in the air. Glenn talked about ritual, and of course it is about that, and that might be all it is. Hard rains all afternoon, the leaves are turned inside out, and when I go out to pee the ground is whatever that next stage after being saturated is called. Fluid. Barnhart calls, and he thinks I should find some old modems, the US Robotics, model 5633, at yard sales or on Ebay, and just keep working the way I do. I like this alternative, and Michael agrees to order a used unit off Ebay for ten bucks and if it works we'll corner the market on model 5633's and I'll be cool. Barnhart's Mom is giving him a lot of shit about not getting me connected, and the IT guys all think this would be the simple solution. Get his mom off their backs. Bound to be thousands of these 5633's out there, in boxes in the cellar, out in the garage. Black Dell hisses, she could have told me that. Listening to some early blues, Son House, then some John Lee Hooker, who well might have had the greatest voice in the history of mankind, that deep baritone thick with sexual innuendo. When he sang with Bonny Raitt it brings tears to my eyes. I respond to music in ways that make no sense to me. I was listening to Beethoven's last string quartets, and I'm what? a share cropper's son? I never went to Yale. But this music over powers me. The entire endgame is revealed, that deaf motherfucker knowing exactly what he wanted to say. We should be so lucky. Some southern belle heard Sidney Lanier playing the flute, and he lived for a few more years, Jim Crow and all that crap, all those thousands of people dead, clearly slavery was the issue. The only time I ever almost lost it, drifting down a stream, Dad was sculling and there was another person, a cousin, in the middle seat, I always sat at the back of the pirogue, and Dad sculled from the front, and this particular cousin was really offensive. I wanted to smack him up the side of his head with my paddle, but Dad was kind, we drank another of those insipid Natural Lights, and talked about other things, otters and alligators, and the occasional reference to crimes against nature. They buried Dad today, Brenda said it was lovely, and Mom thought it was lovely, and everyone was impressed with the Honor Guard and the shooting. Wake at Brenda's house. Several of my friends, from high school were there, looking for me, Brenda gave them my number, so I look forward to a couple interesting phone calls. I'll have almost nothing in common with them anymore, but it'll be their dime, and I don't mind the occasional how-have-you-been conversation. In the middle of a day when I'm seriously considering commas, I often need a break. It's been raining forever, another flash-flood warning on the radio, and I just hang around, reading. Light stuff, mostly, but then some recipes from Provence, and that gets me started reading about various beans. Samara calls and I get her up to date, then Brenda called, then I ate a bowl of blackberries with plain yogurt. I started making yogurt again, because it's so easy to make, and milk, really, wants to clabber. Yogurt is the gateway to cheese, the gateway drug. I still make a couple of cheeses, when milk is on sale, and cook down the whey (all of the milk sugars) into a Norwegian cheese that's great on toast. I have to go to town, to get supplies for cooking and eating with Loren on Sunday, but I blow it off for a day. Didn't feel like being around people. Dad being buried on my birthday hit me like a brickbat. No logical reason, but it does make remembering easier, when two events happen on the same day. Not sleeping, so I made a full breakfast, bacon, potatoes, a cheese omelet, toast with seedless blackberry jam, one in the morning, and reread a Dorothy Sayers novel. More rain and flooding. Finally fall asleep on the sofa with a large book on my chest, "The Art Of Falconry". The radio was still on, when I got up to pee, mild but complex jazz, Bill Evans maybe, I roll a smoke and listen in the dark. There was no music around the house when I was a kid, maybe something on Ed Sullivan after we got that first Black and White, until Brenda got a record player and started buying 45's, then Elvis, and even Mom listened. Dad didn't listen, he'd read his westerns after dinner and go to bed, get up early and drink coffee while he read the sports page and then the comics. Rain, again, but light, and it's a pleasant sound. I'm guilty of abusing a couple of cast iron skillets and I recondition them, which takes most of an afternoon; scrape them and clean them, then re-prove the porous interiors with walnut oil. I have an eight ounce bottle of walnut oil that I bought ten years ago, so this isn't an expensive treatment. I used lye and rubber gloves to get the skillets down to base metal, then washed them in several changes of water. Treating them just requires that I sit at the island and don't start a fire. I rub the outside of them with peanut oil, cure that, then heat some oil, cool and reheat a few times, then rub the inside with pig fat and bake it in the oven. The simple test is just cooking a codfish cake, if it's the best thing you've ever eaten, and if it doesn't stick, you might be on the path. I remembered I'd bought a pound of thick-cut bacon (I wanted to fry some green beans with bacon) and I cooked some for a peanut butter and bacon sandwich, thank you Elvis, it put a smile on my face; and I laughed out loud, for the first time in a week, watching a raccoon defending the compost heap. Almost back up to speed but for the lingering void. Melville addressed this. How alone we actually are, somewhat lacking in the simple joys of brotherhood. Then those French guys, after WW11, then all the competing stuff since. Frankly, I can't keep up. I'm a great reader, and I still can't keep up. I'd rather watch the butterflies; in passing, it's good to know that even the common moth is 74% protein.