Domestic Economy

I reuse paper towels, generate almost no trash, compost my shit, and don't have running water. I darn my socks, and have a clothing budget of maybe $50 a year. I only go off the ridge once or twice a week (by the time winter is over the average will fall below once) and my average food budget is $3 a day. I've never played a video game, and haven't been to a movie in twelve years. I haven't had a TV for twelve years. I've read 15 or 20 thousand books. Looking at the sun sometimes makes me sneeze. Amanda asked me about my life. In real time, I couldn't find a copy of Farina's "Been Down So Long..." which I wanted to reread, and I remembered I had a first edition in the box of books I'd put away. It's a pristine copy so I put on museum gloves to read it. Farina was famously killed via motorcycle on the night of publication, and Pynchon dedicated Gravity's Rainbow to him. Wildly comic. I was looking for the passage about a tripped out meal that ended with a dessert of blue pears, then reread the amazing section of Pynchon about the banana breakfast. This led to Dinesen, then some Jim Harrison. I got side-tracked by frying a large pan of potatoes with chipotle in butter. Simple pleasures. I had to take a nap, and when I woke up I didn't know if it was night or day, 6:20 and barely light, but I didn't know if it was morning or evening. It's not so easy to tell, sometimes; if it's overcast and the light is dim, I have to listen to the radio to tell, and if the power is out I have to watch for a few minutes. I can't escape the image of this dumb shit reject who can't tell sunrise from sunset. I re-treated a couple of skillets; retreat, and think about rereading Zenephon. D said there's a new sporting goods store in Chillicothe and I have to get up there, I need new rubbers for my slingshot, and I'm interested to see what kind of dried eggs they might have. Camping food has improved dramatically in the last decade, now you just add water and end up with beef stew that is better than anything you can buy in a can. It'd never bought much of anything in cans before, but now I do, for the winter larder, and the cans bothered me, as trash. I started cutting off the bottom and flattening them, and I'm using them as shingles, to protect the windward side of the woodshed. I peel off the labels, to start fires, and the cans are a uniform gray. They'll rust of course, disintegrate, but I don't care about that, oxidation is entropy in the field. I just like that I don't have to throw them away. Even an old shoe can yield a couple of leather hinges, there's a Treatise I'm not sure I wrote, The Gate Swings Both Ways, which delves into the particulars. It's actually a simple piece about gates, but it seems to imply something more. Janus, or some fucking thing, looking backward and forward.