Self Conscious

I don't know why it happened, but I was listening to Beethoven, the last string quartets, and I was crying, they were so incredibly moving. I had the thought that music, like smell, was capable of cutting to the core. I knew there were many things at play, my circumstance, Dad dying, the onset of winter, the fact that my body was failing; global warming, melting permafrost, rising sea-level. Reading today that if the temps rise four degrees most of coastal China is under water, several hundred million people, makes Middle East Migration look like a walk in the park. My redoubt is well above the high-water mark, I protect my boundaries with a potato cannon. Thanksgiving meal was excellent and filling, and I have pecan pie for breakfast. Three kids, eight adults, three dogs, lively conversation; great family with excellent communication skills. I stayed a couple of hours, got home before dark, and had a stiff drink to transition back to ridge time. Big moon rising. Warm enough, with no heat, to crack open a window and smell the outside. I mostly sat on the porch at B's, which was very nice, the comings and goings, chatting with people that went by. I try to interact with people four to eight hours a week, to keep my finger in the pie, watch ESPN at the pub, for thirty minutes a week, to know what sport is in season, engage innocent civilians in conversation. One of the places it happens for me is the line at Kroger, I'll help an older person unload the bottom of the cart and we'll talk about cabbage or pickled herring. I hate the whole Salvation Army gauntlet I have to run, getting out of the store; they now have a group of clearly autistic people, wearing felted antlers; and those fucking bells, that drive me crazy. A flock of turkeys work across the yard, two mature females and about 18 yearlings. They're so loud I can hear them in my closed up house, and their path of destruction through the understory is not to be believed. They scratch and peck at everything. I've watched their feeding habits for 35 years and it never gets old. Interesting to note that for 35 years I've lived in places where I could watch feeding wild turkeys out my window. Zoe's former husband, Josh, still part of the family, was at the dinner. He was reading "The Cistern" and had questions for me about how I could be so open in my writing. There was an interesting woman, Worms, sitting in on the conversation. She's from the music scene in Athens, Ohio, and used to a much more manic environment, considered this laid-back family holiday dinner to be a respite from her normal life. I explained to her (and Josh, but he had to run off to prevent the twin boys from destroying something) that being in the company of any other people, even this laid-back family affair, was pretty extreme for me; that I usually went four or five days without seeing another person, or talking to anyone. She wondered how that was possible, and I told her that most of my endeavors required solitude. Even the one-mile drive home mediates outside and inside. When I'm back on the ridge, with a wee dram and a smoke, I can breathe a sigh, and settle. It sloughs off, the layers of the outside world, like cold on a frigid day, when you peel off layers and stand close to the stove. (I spent an hour on the word 'slough', and made a couple of notes about things I need to find out about.) I spent hours reading literary criticism, the Post-Modern Canon, then a thriller Jana had recommended. A good day, I'd judge. I didn't drive anywhere: if I don't leave the house I save $20; that's automatic savings based on a yearly average. If I stay home I save twenty dollars, if I go out I spend money on lunch and things; gas, a beer at the pub, a milk-shake at the Diary Bar. A great day, actually, because the second hour of Science Friday on the radio, is a replay of The Ignoble Awards, which is my favorite award show. I was drained of energy, from being around people yesterday, fell asleep on the sofa, and woke to rain, a patter on the roof. Poured off some wash water (for doing dishes tomorrow) and cleaned the crap (power plant ash and leaf-mold) from a bucket so I could collect some clean water. I'm fairly obsessive about water use. I use 365 gallons of wash water and 100 gallons of drinking water in an average year. I carry all of this by hand, mostly in pickle buckets. A mathematical friend was visiting once, in Mississippi, and he estimated I had carried a million pounds of water. All of it, isn't that the way, uphill. Good springs are always in a hollow. I only know of two exceptions, one is an artesian well on a back road into Utah, and the other is a spring that flows at several gallons per minute out of a cliff-face outside of Moab. Truth is, I've been obsessed with water use for a long time. I can't even remember when I first realized that shitting in water was a dumb idea. Now I just keep a trenching tool at hand, and a roll of soft paper.