Leaf Fall

The ridge is starting to look a little ragged. Some color beginning to show. Whenever I glance outside, or glance up if I'm outside, there's a leaf or two falling. Still gorging on vine-ripened tomatoes. Grilled tomato sandwiches with goat cheese. Cold tomato sandwiches with slices of sweet onion and mayo. In my head I'm already making the transition to a post tomato diet, essentially beans and rice, with enough fried salt-pork to keep me in cooking fat, cornbread and biscuits. I make my own loose sausage, from discounted packages of ground pork, to make sawmill gravy. Rain coming, so I waste a few gallons of water soaping twice and rinsing, and throw away the last tee-shirt, not to be laundered again, a horribly stained and thread-bare thing that not longer resembles an article of clothing. I wear it (them) at the end mostly as a place to wipe my hands. I can usually buy used laundered white tee shirts for fifty cents but on the one day a month they do the bag sale I can usually get a year's supply for two bucks. These are not only my filters but actual tee-shirts. I can wear them, until they disintegrate, then compost them (I only wear cotton) or cut them into sizes that fit the various devices I've developed to filter one thing or another. I'm not kidding, of course, which means I must be crazier than a June Bug. But, of course, I'm not. I ring bells on the sanity levels, but everyone is texting with their thumbs in a way that I can't approximate, and I wonder if collecting dead butterflies is really the way to go. I'd go along with it, for the color and shape, the disinformation, butterflies are master of misinformation. The rear is often the front. I meant to get some more work done outside, but last trip to the library I'd picked a copy of Murakami's first two little novels. Spent most of the day with them. Billy Bragg singing "Ingrid Bergman" then Patsy Cline. Left-overs for dinner, reading recipes, sitting at the island, not quite wallowing. One passage in the Murakami that strikes me is a piece of dialogue between a pinball machine and the narrator. I talk to my espresso maker every morning, when I'm planning my day. Make cryptic post-it notes. It can't hurt to think you exert some control. Despite the fact that you don't, actually. Stay in one place long enough you just become "post-hole #4284". Twenty-one, three times seven. Probably doesn't mean anything, but I couldn't help noticing. Rain started before dawn, a lovely sound, and I stayed awake but fell into a dream-like state. Mind wandering. Remembered several things that I had been trying to remember, where a quote had come from (Jim Harrison), where I had read a certain recipe (for pig ears); the state of wandering continued until I got up to make a cup of coffee, when I had to engage the 'specific task' elements of thought. I let my mind wander quite a lot of the time. In many ways it's what I do, what I enjoy doing. Watching trees stress under wind, I think about boat-building, which leads to thinking about how fundamentally different Viking long boats are from the USS Constitution. Leads to outside-in versa inside-out, leads to nature versa nurture; which leads to hauling out many books and pretty much wraps up the day. The weight of the rain was enough to release a great many leaves, and a small percentage of my view is a bit more open. In a couple of places I can again see the opposite side of the hollow. The fact that it is a hollow at all brings up the concept of drainage, and I think Glenn's theory, that it's ALL about drainage, is probably correct. I don't know where the Romans got their lead. I need to look that up. Electron Tunneling has come up a few times recently, and I have no idea what that is. I don't understand String Theory either, but I do get that analogy of different slices from a loaf of bread. I hesitate on the question of infinite. The same old argument, if you take infinite far enough it becomes finite. I doubt that's true, I have a realty in which the finite and the infinite can graze peacefully, like sheep on a verdant slope, it's unlikely I'll get a grant to listen to birds after a rain storm. We're so arrogant. As the dominate life form, we call all the shots. I don't want to know what I could make happen, I want to know what happens. The entire argument of finite versa infinite involves a concept of God and mediation, a pope or some tablets; the commissioner of the NFL, making 40 million dollars a year (a good job), making pronouncements as if he knew what he was saying. All of this crap-talk, people in very expensive suits directing what we should believe, I find to be unbearable bull-shit. A walk at dusk, an attempt to calm my rather rabid response to some poor soul asking money for the Police Benevolent Fund. I had read about this particular fund, in, of all things, some right-wing garbage I had picked up at the recycling bin. It was printed on newsprint, which I needed to start fires, and I love nothing more than reading something that gets me irate when I'm starting a fire. Get a start on the day. But I followed up by reading about funding and telemarketing. The Police Benevolent Fund spends ninety two and a half percent of it's income on raising money and salaries. I'm curious about The Red Cross and Haiti. Almost everything is corrupt. Everyone cheats and steals. Read Melville's The Confidence Man, or Conrad. Listen to Robert Johnson. Even Emily was flipping events to suit her fancy. I called Joel, to get his address because he wanted a copy of The Cistern, and the only copy he found on line was $65 and I had dozens of copies. His memory is better than mine and we laughed about that whole sick crew, Cape Cod, 1969. The only time I was ever questioned by the FBI. I think we were working on the M O Bates house, Les would ring out with the submerging submarine klaxon, when the owner drove onto the premises, and everyone would yell Master Bates, Master Bates. Ralph, who seemed to be in charge, was the funniest person I've ever known, and I've known the funniest minds of my generation. No one holds a candle. Fucking language is fucking idiom. Nothing means exactly what is said. A red herring for instance, or three sheets to the wind.