Out of Sorts

I wrote a book of that title once, being a list of sorts I had found or seen in a catalog of sorts. Odd bits of type to the printer. They were the source of much amusement. I've always liked a good list. I did a nice broadside once that was just a list of 126 cooking implements that was titled Professional Cookware, and it was actually quite funny, and not only to me, other people laughed out loud. The sorts book, read again now, reads like a diatribe against oppression. There's a strong cadence, in reading these pieces, that gives them the appearance of making sense. The book was punctuated which only enhanced the effect. The cookware piece was just three columns, no punctuation. Another completely rainy day, almost cool enough for a fire. The dripping is incessant and I usually love it, but it bothered me today and I wanted to escape into fiction. Reread Richard Powers' Orfeo, a wonderful, masterful book, and I remembered he had gone on at length about the Messiaen. A great choice. I made a grazing station at the island, cheese (a double cheddar), some pickles, some kim-chee, some crackers, and some of the pretty good Wisconsin pate. Drank hot tea, walked over for a sample, read a chapter. Repeat as necessary. I switched to whiskey late in the day, fried some potatoes, roasted some tomatoes. Later I made an omelet with the left-overs, the last of the pate smeared on toast. I spent some time trying the find out why a male swan is called a cob, and a female called a pen. Sortes is that divination where you open a book and put your finger on a line. Homer or the bible usually. I got stuck in the letter 's' and read a piece about Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale (suede was originally undressed kidskin, used for gloves, made in Sweden), and Swedenborg was a wacky mystic. Gusting wind was blowing crap around, leaves and dirt and ragweed pollen, but it was nice to get outside, take a walk. The smells are amazing. Green and fecund. After the first couple of fires in the cookstove, the house smells pleasantly of whatever I'm burning, and I love that smell too, bacon and tobacco and leather, a sassafras log; but I do love the way the forest smells, right now, early fall, green, but starting to decay. I've always loved the smell of rotting plant matter. I killed a bunch of spiders today, I didn't want to, but they were set to birth thousands more spiders inside my house, and I just wasn't ready for that. I vacuumed them up. I'd been watching them for weeks, I greatly admire their due diligence, and the geometry, the way the webs cleave space. But I don't want spiders running everywhere. In so far as I have any control. I run my anti-cricket campaign in the spring, I have a tennis racket to deal with the bats. I barely hold my own, but that seems to be good enough.