Tullamore Dew

Barnhart and his son Alan were up in the late afternoon with goodies. The Tullamore, stinky cheese, a wonderful Hungarian sausage, crackers, and a huge book of recipes with great photography. Probably spend tomorrow with the book. Mike's Mom sent it, and it is incredibly lavish and so large it has to remain flat. Glad I got out this morning, a nice aimless walk, because after the guys left it started raining a bit. Cold rain. I ate salami and cheese, with crackers and a few other things, reading, with a dram of Irish, at my desk. Eight to ten hours a day, that's where I am. I walk around, I go outside, maybe I cook something. I made very simple egg noodles, rolled out the dough with piece of closet rod, which has been my rolling-pin for twenty years, sliced it into strips, cooked it (quickly) and served with browned butter. It was great. You can't miss with this. I do a version with reconstituted jerky and greens that is a great main course, but I love it as a side with a game dish. The Gorgonzola brought that to mind because Marilyn used to make a cheese sauce for noodles that absolutely smelled like dirty sneakers. It's amazing the way smell brings memory. It just happens, no mediation, your Grandfather's hat or your Grandmother's kitchen. All the senses, actually, the way they can rivet us in memory. The crows were back and I wondered where they've been. I micro-waved a couple of mice for them, and they gave me a raft of shit. I don't know why I continue this relationship. I listened to a couple of the Cello Suites, with rain drops on the roof dripping an off beat, and read a long convoluted novel, Gibson, and that made me think about several dozen things. Flitting things, but I was chilly, for one, so I went over to make a fire, go through the entire ritual, every time, being very careful. Looking around, while I'm starting a fire, I usually assemble the components for the next fire, a kit, as it were, because I have to hang around the stove to adjust the dampers until a serious fire is going. Once I've put on a big log, and damped the stove down, I can go to sleep, run some errands, split some wood; no longer need to watch the fire and it is perfectly safe, which is a good thing, since I live in a wooden house that's stuffed with books. New Year's Eve, so I go ahead and cook a pot of Black-Eyed Peas, with smoked jowl and onions, cook some rice, make a pone of cornbread. I'll eat it tomorrow, as is traditional, but I'll also eat it tonight. I might venture into town on Monday, and get there fairly early because there should be some discounted lamb. Nothing on the agenda until then but just staying off the roads. Out here in the county (especially on Forest Service roads) the good old boys tend to drive aggressively. They'll probably have sobriety check points on the major roads, but if you learned to drive on them, you can get just about anyplace on Forest Service roads. Another aimless walk, I'm getting good at these, and looked at and dissected several oak galls. I always taste them, the trapped liquid, with the tip of my tongue, because some of them are very sweet. Some of them aren't, but you can spit, take a sip from the small flask of apple brandy, and move on to the next gall. When I get home the peas are done, and I eat a bowl with rice and a wedge of cornbread that I split and toast with butter. The janitor again, Janus, January, looking both fore and aft. I did spend the day with this lovely book of recipes. A couple of the oyster appetizers sounded very good. I had the book open on the island, while I was caramelizing a large skillet of red peppers and onions. No plan for the vegetables, just that the stove was going. I could make a pasta sauce or a soup, a sauce for game birds, or a side dish for venison medallions. Right now, I'm going to pound some veal chops, and roll them into birds. Read more...

Slightly Pissed

Wind-surfing on commas that might be suspect, on exact words, layers deep into consideration of my meager box of misshapen pearls. I don't argue for this life, when I think about it, it's actually stupid. Knowingly being placed in a difficult situation. Oh, I have an idea, why don't you do it with one hand tied behind your back? And I certainly don't claim anything positive about my lifestyle. I'd stopped down at the print-shop, I often stop there and roll a cigaret, and I was thinking about how we follow the path we choose. Baked beans on toast is an easy meal, and in the larder of solo around-the-world sails, it figures prominently. I've studied the manifests. Beans on toast is a mainstay, which leads to a consideration of rigging, which was always Boston harbor; you built the boat and they rigged it in Boston. You don't want to even imagine the rigging involved. Ten thousand ropes and all of them with different names. On the USS Constitution, a crew of 300, you were paid twice as much if you knew what each rope actually did. The crew on a nuclear carrier, stationed in the Persia Gulf for six months of sea duty, numbers 3,000, and I can't wrap my head around feeding that many people. I got to town, a few more books at the library, then a stop at the pub, where I picked up the giant pot roast, and the guys in the kitchen insisted I take a second one, so I end up with 30 pounds of meat, frozen rock hard, and Justin buys me a beer. Stop at Kroger for whiskey and back-up supplies. Feeling quite accomplished with the day, I stopped at B's, to get the meat in the freezer and he grins, hefting the haul. It's a strange full-circle, because Jenny's husband, Scott, had ordered this very meat for the Garage Cafe, now closed, just before he parted ways, because the owner was impossible to work with, and Cory, at the pub, needed to get it out of his freezer, because they had no way to cook it, so he gave it to me, and I thought, immediately, about B's Sunday family dinner. As it happens B calls Scott, and Scott agrees to cook one of said same roasts for the family feed. Which will leave another roast, slightly smaller, that B and I agree to cook together for yet another meal for a group of people yet to be specified. Probably the fringe people, ourselves included, who could use a hearty meal. B needed a break, from hauling wood, his wood pile is impressive by any standard, and these frozen slabs of meat are impressive, even by our standards, so we had a cup of coffee and talked about happenstance for an hour. I took all of his books back, cleared my slate of anything left to do, keep it simple, haul wood and carry water. My girls called, they were together, just getting home to Denver from the holiday at grandpa's house, so I talked with Rhea for the first time in months. Samara and I talk fairly often, every couple of weeks, and it was nice to get updated on both of them. They both appreciate my sense of humor, if only because they've adjusted to it over the years. I'll try and get out there, in the spring. Samara's mate is also Scott and also a chef and he had confided to her that he would let me cook in their kitchen. That we could cook together. One thing the two Scott's hold in common is an incredible ability to chop things. I thought I was pretty good at this, but I'm in the minor leagues. Samara's Scott sent me a knife-sharpener. I had to laugh, but I took his point, sharp knives are safer. I can hear Paula Poundstone objecting in the background, wondering why anyone would fund a research project that was based on how sharp a knife was. If the going got tough she'd just use a cleaver, failing that, an electric chainsaw, or some yard implement. A snow-blower or a stump-grinder. Later, wrapped in a stadium blanket, drinking a wee dram neat, and rolling a smoke, I wondered if any of it made any difference. I won't be around to suffer the consequence. I'm deep into this, my world, and how small it is, in the cosmos. Mostly I try to stay to myself. The deer no longer fear me. Read more...

Food Writing

A nice score at the Goodwill Bookstore earlier this fall. One day a month they have an all the books you can get in a bag for $2 sale. A food person must have died, because there were a great many food books, and I picked up several for my winter reading pile. Today I was reading the memoirs of the chef Pierre Franey, followed by a book of his recipes. Le Pavillon, NYC, 1955. Excellent reading for yet another rainy day. Flash flood warnings on the radio, but Jesus, this would have been several feet of snow. A can of soup and crackers is as far as I get into preparing food, but I am thinking ahead because it looks pretty certain I'll get into town in the next few days. A ham and bean soup, for sure, and everything to make a stew. An extra smoked jowl, for a pot of beans to eat with rice. I have an enormous variety of beans and peas right now. I didn't go out of the house today, but I did think about a pot of heirloom cow peas that I'll be cooking sometime this winter. I have two heirloom bean/peas, the other being a Black Crowder pea that makes absolutely the best pot-liquor. Thinking about this, I must have raised fifty different beans and peas over the years. Everyone in Mississippi saved a variety or two, Lady Peas, Cow Peas, a dozen different Crowders. I've loved almost all of them. Pink-Eye Purple Hulls, and ripe but green Pinto beans (which cook very quickly and are completely different than dried Pintos, which I also love), and various of the small African peas that require children to shell them. I'm totally immersed in the history of French cooking in America right now, because three of the books from the Goodwill concern elements of it. Before Julia. Jefferson, over the years, had three French cooks. I slept in Tom's room, for the nine months that I worked on his father's place. A very cold house, unless you burned a cord of wood a week in the two fireplaces. One would need a hired hand, or a large family, to do all the things that needed to be done. Just to get from one place to another. My new, prioritized list, is topped with a back-up battery for my head-lamp, and a bag of those sweet potato chips. Sweet potato chips, or beet chips, and a hoe-cake smeared with butter. Some gherkins, cracklings cooked in an omelet, maybe a very sweet pear. A strange but interesting tip: when using canned broth (as I do quite often) add a jar of strained baby food. It comes in glass jars and has nothing added. When it gets cold, I often drink hot broth and it's amazing how much better it is with an added jar of baby food. B had mentioned a pounded veal roll-up his Mom used to make. She referred to them as 'birds', and I actually found, yesterday, a recipe for Veal Birds. All my years of reading food books and cooking and I had never run into that recipe before. And what does the 'divan' in Chicken Divan mean? It's the only recipe I've ever found that uses that term. I suppose it could be someone's name, as in Melba Toast. Got out for a walk between rain squalls and it's been so warm the ridge had that fecund smell of spring, which will freeze and be gone in a week or two, but it was strange smelling such a smell at the beginning of winter. This entire walk, which covered maybe half-a-mile and took over an hour, I was smelling everything. Deep-freeze winter kills almost all smell, except what you generate, burning a sassafras or cedar log with the door of the stove cracked open, or cooking something. If you cook onions for a very long time, way beyond being simply caramelized, you end up with a dried condiment (which I store in baby-food jars) that is very good on anything. A powdered onion essence. A spoonful on a fried egg is a total transport. It's raining harder, I'd better go. Read more...

Grooming

Rain all day so all those new drone owners will have to wait to play with their toys. I was up so late that I slept in until my sister called with the Mom update. Hash and eggs for breakfast, then read books about food all day, making a few notes on where to find certain information and posting it where I keep a few recipes thumb-tacked to the wall. I love John Thorne. Too rainy for the usual holiday walk. I cycle through and clean another of the five-gallon buckets, filling the stock pot with wash water. Wash dishes, then myself, get an early dram, and finish another Elmore Leonard. Get everything out for dinner. It takes ten minutes to prepare and fifteen minutes to cook, and I cook it on a hotplate because it's too warm for a fire. Oyster stew is one of the great things in the universe. I steam them just to get them starting to open in a little wine and clam juice, shuck them, strain the broth, heat milk and cream (1x1), never boiling, slide in the oysters, add a walnut of butter, and simmer until the edges curl. This takes about four minutes. I roll up the flounder fillets around the crab-cake filling, secure them with carrot spears, put a dollop of mayo on each, salt and pepper. I would do them in a hot oven, but braising in a skillet with a lid works fine, a little wine and clam juice. They cook maybe eight minutes. I spent a lot, for me, on this meal, $14.60, but I'll get a second meal out of it because I only used half of the oysters and cream, and only ate two of the four roll-ups. The Brussels Sprouts were wonderful, but I only ate half. Retired to my chair with a glass of whiskey and rolled a smoke. I'm too self-satisfied, I feel like I must be missing something. Like the other foot is sure to fall. Since I didn't start a fire, I just store the left-overs in the oven, and marvel that I cooked such a fine meal on a hotplate, and that I have a perfect brunch, waiting for tomorrow. Rain is forecast for days. In other years this could be several feet of snow. Usually it turns off cold by the first of the year and everything freezes, and I haven't even put on long underwear. Still, 60 tough days coming up, the dead of winter, and I need to be ready for that. I think I am, I don't think I've missed anything, but our interaction with the world is fraught with confusion, and we never know what anyone else means, nor exactly what we need. We cooperate, build things, but we're separate monads. I read a surprisingly large number of recipes for beaver and beaver tail, because Hal and Ronnie, both on the creek, trap in winter. Beaver is actually quite good, almost as good as woodchuck, and much better than muskrat. Passed the evening, slept to the rain, then today dawned with much more intense rain, and I continued to read food writers until I was forced to make another one-serving pot of oyster stew. This is always made in single servings. I just micro-waved the roll-ups, and dampened them with some of the braising liquid. I forgot about the Brussels Sprouts, and ate them as a separate course, with a butter/lemon sauce that was excellent. I should be able to get out and in, between downpours, in the next few days, and I have a list of things where I've dipped into the 'backup', and I need to get a new backup. A priority of things, actually, because some of the things don't require immediate attention, salt or toothpaste, for instance, but other things, like eggs and cheese, require more immediate attention; further prioritized by weight, whether or not it's something I actually need to carry up the hill on my back. If you limit yourself to seasonal produce and a small piece of meat, you hardly notice the load. Some shrimp for a fried rice isn't much to carry. Barnhart and I discussed fried rice, when he called today, to say he would hike in as soon as conditions were favorable. Since he has a book for me, and usually brings a bottle of whiskey, I hope it happens soon. Also, of course, the conversation. Sitting around the fire, talking about when the elk crossed the river, when the Larkspur (or whatever) was blooming. I'm blessed with very bright friends; we can talk music theory or Italian cooking, song birds or the toppings we prefer on a pizza. I do or not even have to know what day it is, which most people need to know; it doesn't matter to me whether it's December or last June. Read more...

Mere Decoration

Got back up at one this morning, to do some writing, and the power went off. Put on my headlamp and rooted through the candles, lit an oil lamp for my desk, and a couple of candles at the kitchen island. Just enough light to see and pour a drink. Candles have become decorative objects, not designed to be burnt. Utility candles at the hardware store are, actually very good designed candles, the wick size perfect for the diameter. The power was out until five, and I read the entire time, and developed what I think of as the headlamp headache. Still, this book on dogs B lent is quite good. How Dogs Work. The candles at the island were terrible, the two I replaced them with were also terrible. Big Lots candles are mostly what I buy, because they always have a lot of them and they're cheap, but they're usually crappy. This is actually ok, just to have a light at the island, if I burn it in a saucer to catch the inevitable dribble. It was, again, completely overcast, and without power it was very dark and completely quiet. Fairly windy, with the rain, but the candle flames burned straight and true, yet another testament to the new floor insulation. I want to write a piece on silence; I'd probably title it On Silence because I'm so fucking literal in that regard. Being alone, and silence, have become very important to me. Barnhart emailed that he wants to come out because he has a cookbook from his mother (he reads her my paragraphs over the phone) and a salami he got at Trader whomever outside Cincy. We share a taste for exotics. Be great to see him as he is both extremely bright and quite funny, and I do love old-world salami. It coats the tongue like mutton fat, eat it with gherkins, anchovy stuffed olives, and a ripe cheese. I was thinking about the difference between Hoe-Cake and Corn-Pone. The Hoe-Cake is just cornmeal and boiling water cooked on both sides on a bayonet held over an open fire. I love origin myths. A flat rock is better. That whole bayonet thing is bullshit. A squashed canteen is better than a bayonet. I have a very good baking sheet made from a number ten can. A tinker, after all. Ear-marked as homeless, but that's mostly a product of dress, what you look like, what I am is even simpler than that. Read more...

Hard Rain

Staccato drumming becomes sheets of rain. TR would reproduce this sound with lentils poured unto a cymbal. It sounds like compressed language to me. All the water that ever was, what we have now, filtered and re-filtered. Condensed and sublimated, frozen and melted, shaken or stirred, it all moves back out to sea. My piss as well as yours. Clouds, rain, various salts as a by-product, the world is a closed system. I give it my waste and I expect tomatoes in return. Good sleeping. Clearing off by mid-morning, so I went to town, library, Kroger, and I was sitting outside the pub having a cigaret when a middle-age couple stopped, she was finishing a cigaret, complete strangers, and they bought me lunch and a beer. I'm sure they thought I was homeless. I was looking a bit ratty. The staff got a kick out of it, most of them have been to my house, most of them for dinner. Stopped down at B's on the way home, and he had a couple of non-fiction books for me to read. One of them is a study of dogs, the other a book of crazy questions with closely reasoned answers. I got three fictions at the library, to read over the holidays, and the big double-issue of the New Yorker arrived and I'm saving it too. The seafood delivery at Kroger is early tomorrow, so I need to zip in and get my oysters, before the crowds. Kroger is probably the busiest place in town. Stopped at the museum and looked at the new shows, chatted with TR and Emily. B said he'd been reading non-stop, resting, after teaching five courses for a semester. Resting, for him, means he only hauls wood for four hours a day. There was a pile of books, next to his reading chair, and he was looking a little homeless himself, a bit stove-up from getting most of next year's firewood, and in his work clothes. We talked about books for an hour. Later, back on the ridge, sipping a wee dram, thinking life is good, the house is warm, I'm comfortable in my skin. I have a dozen books to read, and oysters coming in tomorrow. Squash and onions put away in leaves. Trial run of a dish for Xmas. The menu is Oyster Stew (interestingly, in the fish section of Kroger a I'm now known as the guy who gets oysters on Thursday, and my dozen is now 15 or 16), flounder roll-ups stuffed with crabcake, and roasted Brussels Sprouts. Since the crabcakes are already cooked and the flounder fillets are thin this will cook very quickly, so I make one for lunch. As a test. I fix it closed with a spear of carrot, salt and pepper, lemon juice, then braise it (with a lid) in butter and a little white wine, pan sauce. It's very good and incredibly easy, I could make this for 50 or 100 people easily. The produce guy gave me a bag of Brussels Sprouts. There was another vegetable we cultivated in Mississippi that I've never seen in a market, a trick I learned. We raised a lot of cabbage and it was a long growing season, so after cutting off the heads, I'd cultivate around the base and feed them a little manure water, many of them would re-sprout little miniature cabbage heads, larger than Brussels Sprouts, sweet and succulent. We called them Cabbage Sprouts, but they probably have a actual name in France. The good news is that The Salvation Army bell-ringers will be gone in a couple of days and the cashiers at Kroger can take off those dumb hats. The long-range forecast says I'll be able to get to town next week, before New Year, and stay off the roads during the peak DUI season. The holidays are more an obstacle than anything else. I usually just go for a walk, open a bottle of wine, and cook something. Read a book. Maybe I'll wash my hair. If it rains on a holiday, I might take a sponge-bath. Usually my older daughter calls, and we talk about theater and live performance. Read more...

Shortest Day

Mac set me straight, I just didn't know the dates, that we had already started gaining light in the morning, we start gaining evening minutes 1/4, though they are ever slanted and feeble. I got the house so warm, that after I cleaned up, I had to take a nap, and when I woke up to pee, the house was still warm, despite the fact that it hadn't been above freezing for days. They had spray olive oil at Big Lots and it was cheap, so I bought a couple of cans, hold that thought; I found a nice broiler pan in the dumpster at the college, and I had cut out the bottom, to make a sheet pan, hammered over the edges, and though I'm not a tinker, it was nice work. I had talked, several times, with Linda, about baking kale chips. It all came together. The pan is now cured a lustrous black, and when I'm cranking the cookstove, the oven is very hot. Kale, some sea salt, a twist of black pepper, and a light spray of olive oil. I move my reading matter over to the island, so I can monitor things, eat cheese and olives, and kale chips. I favor those olives stuffed with anchovies and ripe cheeses, but it's the kale chips that put this over the top. Reread Girty before I give it back to B. A very fine book. Rain moves in again and the day grays down, even the crows have holed up, wherever it is they do that. I thought about going to town, for a little conversation, but after the rain set in I elected to stay home and read. Let the fire go out, because it warmed to over 50 degrees, which will be the low tonight, and over 60 tomorrow. Unreal. I might go to town tomorrow, to see the new exhibit at the museum, and I do need a few things. Almost out of kitchen matches, which happens to me every couple of years, three boxes of kitchen matches last a long time; and I need to get another log of cheese because the bread surfeit consumed a lot of cheese. And I might as well pick up the makings for a pot of something. Lamb stew maybe, or a small roast I could turn into a stew. Rain into the dark and I never do get outside, never say a word to anyone, think that, maybe, if I do get to town, I might make a seafood stew, because I can't do that if I'm trapped on the ridge. Thorne has a very interesting chapter about the West Coast take on fish stew and I lean toward that approach. Fast and carefree. I make a very good version of this, with whatever is locally available, crawdads and catfish, perch and crappie; a little olive oil, a can of roasted tomatoes. I feel like such an idiot, a friend was visiting, and I was cutting an onion from the leg of a pantyhose. He wondered why I didn't just tie them off, with a strip of cloth, and reuse the panty hose. So elegant I was dumbfounded. I told him I had been too dumb to see that. Clearly, I had assumed too much. Keep it simple. Read more...

Night Sky

I generally use a piss-pot when it gets cold, but I do like to get outside to pee, to smell the air. Half a moon and a couple of stars, nothing like a western Colorado sky, but it's just fine. I roll a smoke, before my fingers freeze, and get a wee dram, sit on my foam pad on the back porch. Small change in the coin of the universe. A train, across the river in Kentucky, always throws me into country song. I have my Agnes hat, my fingerless gloves, I could pass for homeless. Black and white bath robe, some gray where they cross, even this limited world, the ridge, is too much to process. Much warmer in the house this morning, the stove was still warm (800 pounds of stove), and I relit the fire to start heating water; dishes, then sponge bath, the hair wash. Bring in some wood, big breakfast of refried grits with eggs and toast, finished the Elmore Leonard novel that fell out of my hands last night (Be Cool), and thought about physical stress, designing a railing for the back steps. It's all in my head. Maximum stress would be me carrying an arm-load of firewood in the snow and the steps are iced over, if I slipped and crashed all of my weight into the railing. The railing for the house stairs is a curved Dogwood stick, a nominal three inches in diameter, that is actually only secured at two points. It runs for six steps, and has saved many a drunk. I have the rail itself, for the outside railing, drying under the house, though I'll bring it inside for the winter, a beautifully curved branch of Slippery Elm; but I need two posts, and I want them to be Osage Orange. Then I think about extending the railing, with another stick, going right to the back door, where there would be a covered shelf, where I could put down whatever I was carrying, to get out my house-key. I can spend hours thinking about these things. The mice keep coming into the house in droves, my little plastic-drawer morgue is overwhelmed. Last night I heard a trap go off, and then a mad scampering. I didn't get up, I was warm, and in the middle of a dream, fuck a bunch of reality. This morning I was looking for the trap, which I finally found, several feet away, behind a piece of cast iron I'm restoring. It was empty, the mouse had not been killed, or was going to die in my walls. Your basic spring-loaded mouse trap is a good piece of design. Usually it breaks their little necks. They rarely escape, like this little devil, to stink up my house for a week. I found the Slippery Elm stick on a walk a few weeks ago, went right back home for one of the bow saws, in order to cut it. It's a perfect symmetrical curve, 180 degrees in eight feet. Lovely. I'm trying to cure it with the bark on, because it would be so much better for gripping, so I'm giving it a daily spray of poly-glycol, to replace the water in the cells. I read about that somewhere. Finally finished the rest of the day, looked up some words, wrote for a while, stared out the window, and the house was warm, very warm, so I stripped down for the sponge bath and washed my hair. It feels good to get clean, I'm dirty so much of the time. I figure to get into town one more time, before Xmas, get a dozen oysters, maybe some lamb shanks, a few crab cakes, have to listen to those Salvation Army bells one more time. Read more...

Roasted Parsnips

Just a week more and those crazed bastards with their fucking bells will be gone. I just want the days to turn around, I'm tired of losing light. Got up to pee and stoke the fire, the oven was hot, 400 degrees, and I thought to roast some root vegetables. I had some beets, some turnips, and some parsnips. I cooked the beet and turnip stalks in chicken stock with minced salt-pork, then added the greens, cut all the roots into bite-sized pieces, and tossed them in walnut oil with salt and freshly ground pepper. Died and gone to heaven, and the parsnips were incredible. Snowing at dawn and quite cold, completely overcast, looking like a backlit scrim on an empty stage. Very still, when I first went out, but the wind picked up during the day until it became a low roar. Read an Elmore Leonard in the morning, drinking tea, and watching the snow drift down. All afternoon I wrangled commas, stopping for small bowls of fried rice. Ran into Cass at Kroger yesterday, we know each other but have never had serious conversation, he bikes out this way and I gave him directions to the house, told him I'm usually home. He's a very bright guy, and his wife is a painter, they both listen very well and have interesting things to say. Fairly rare at this point in time, and I don't object to having new friends, I just choose more carefully now. Being alone is better than being with most people. Even when my construct topples, it's interesting. Cass may have been a counselor of some kind, he uses language in a considered way. I have a language bullshit detector and there weren't any flags. Supposed to be twenty degrees for a couple of nights so I let the fire go out, so I can clean out ashes, and I need to bring in a couple of armloads of wood. Eat left-overs, split kindling, wash dishes, and I want to wash my hair but it's just too damned cold. Tomorrow, with a clean stove, and an early start, I'll get the house warm enough for a sponge bath. After I got the stove cleaned out, I built a fire, butter wrappers and cash register receipts, some dry thin oak splits and some wood that had been in the house all summer. Very hot very fast. A testament to the new floor insulation that seems to have blocked air infiltration by 50% or more. A good test will be tonight, below twenty degrees, and I'll put a last log on before I go to bed. See what it's like in the morning. I'd make cornbread but awash in breadstuffs right now. Cory gave me a bunch of stuff from the pub freezer, artisan sour dough, bagels, and I'd just bought a loaf of my usual multi-grain, so I'm eating a lot of toast. Cream cheese and roasted kale, extremely bitter marmalade, peanut butter, and seedless jam. Read more...

Stone Cold

Rain hard enough to wake me and the house is cold. It warmed to near 60 degrees yesterday and I'd let the fire go out long since. Crashed on the sofa, woke up dehydrated and starved, the temps had dropped down into the 40's and it's only getting colder, one of those cycles where one night's low is the next day's high. Snow tomorrow. Pretty well set. A very nice omelet of tenderloin tips, fried with onion, and some goat cheese. Park my old Selma, Alabama, rocker near the stove and read an Elmore Leonard while the house heats. Bath-robed, head-lamped, chuckling at some very clever dialog; if anyone saw me, they'd haul me away, but the truth is, it's three in the morning and the driveway must be as slick as goose shit. The cheese aisle at Kroger always deserves a glance, because it's well stocked, but this region is not very sophisticated in its taste for cheese, so I get some good things quite cheap. Goat cheese, some Irish butter that is exceptionally good, and one of my favorite English cheddars. I'd also picked up some pork loin chops, so I could make a large pork fried-rice. Gene Pitney on the radio, I remember that song, "Town Without Pity", a movie? My connection to popular culture has pretty much evaporated, I find it difficult to talk about games. Went for just a small walk, down my path on the logging road, where I've flagged a few things I want to remember to notice. Hard rain sweeps in again before I can get back to the house. Very cold rain and I get soaked almost instantly. I had a clothesline strung up in the girls old room because I'd washed some underwear by hand, so I stripped down in there and hung everything up. A full body rub with a bath towel is a great thing. Move my reading matter (an offprint of a long article about building Viking longboats) over to the island so I can start caramelizing an onion and a red pepper. I like to take forty minutes to do this, a large pat of butter in the 10 inch cast iron skillet, a wooden spoon; I stir, as Alicia pointed out, with my entire body. I'll have $6.54 tied up in this meal, and I expect it would feed four hungry people. I eat it out of a bowl, with a soup-spoon. Which makes me laugh about a piece I've been considering, the working title is A Brief History Of Eating Utensils; right now, I think I'm spending too much time on the fork. Now that the leaves are gone, I have to wear my long-billed sword-fishing hat because my writing window faces west. The library called and they were holding a couple of books for me, so I zipped into town, got the books, perfect timing with snow forecast, stopped at the pub. Cory wants me to take some stuff from the freezer (they're changing out appliances) and one thing is this huge brisket, 12 or 14 pounds. I know just how I want to cook it, a low-heat smoke that'll take about twenty-four hours. I wish I had the grill I finally had fabricated for me in Colorado, but it was lost in the divorce, and I wonder how I can trick that out. It's all about controlling temperature. Try these socks / they might keep your feet warm / good luck on staying dry. The hardest part is just staying awake. Read more...

Sorting Facts

Store bought crab-cakes. It seems sacrilegious. But they were cheap. I bought them to make a stuffing for some pounded tenderloin rounds. Working off of a recipe B remembered his mother used to cook. All I brought home was the idea for a dish, but I was in Kroger and there were these remaindered crab cakes and I thought they might make a very nice stuffing. B's Mom pounded veal cutlets (cutlets is a cute word, the diminutive) but I work best with pork tenderloin, and her stuffing would never include crab or oysters. I use paper plates, as my cutting and pounding surface, on an old, horribly stained, synthetic cutting board, because paper plates are quite sterile and I don't have to wash them. If you don't have running water, washing things is a big deal. I can usual buy 100 paper plates for two bucks at Big Lots. Following multiple use I burn them in the stove. After extensive research, there should be a drum roll, I can honestly say that these tenderloin enchiladas, braised in wine, are one of the best things ever. You might serve this with a red bell-pepper, stuffed with dirty rice, and wilted greens. A piece of bread, to soak up the last of the juices. Following my winter protocols and as it was a lovely day, I went to town; library, Kroger, a beer at the pub. Cory sat with me at the pub, he's after me to work for him during the week, he needs someone to open the place. I told him I just couldn't do it, I couldn't be dependable anymore. All I cared about was reading and writing and cooking; he's also a cook and I told him about the enchiladas. He was intrigued with the crab-cake stuffing. They still had two packages (of two each) and I didn't know what. I never cook stuffed birds, cook the stuffing as a side, always with an onion and something citrus in the cavity of the bird, but I'm thinking about de-boning chicken thighs and pounding them out, rolling them around a crab cake filling, securing them with celery spears, and braising them in a old-vines zin. It's just an idea, so far, but even just an idea and I can see the presentation, two of these seared and braised, rolled thigh enchiladas, topped with their fried skins, surrounded with roasted root vegetables. I'm pretty sure it's going to be good. Long slanted days as we edge up on the shortest amount of light. I feel this in my gut, the way I start gaining minutes of light, even though January light is feeble. But right now we're in the shortest days of the year, Basho seeking his hut, carrying an armload of wood, a squash, a handful of rice. There are conflicting reports about almost everything. Cold dawn, and supposed to snow Friday and Saturday. I meant to bring in some wood today, but it was warm, and I was so comfortable, curled up with a mug of tea, that I read through the morning, a book of geomorphology essays. Waves deposit fines differently than streams. Some people don't like The Grateful Dead. I feel sorry for them. Those people. Robert Hunter is the great unsung hero, wonderful lyrics. And Phil Lesh on bass, the brightest among them. I listen to The Dead all afternoon, playing back-up for Dylan, "I Shall Be Released" and "Knocking On Heavens's Door", "Hey Joe", Jesus, I jump out of my seat, "All Along The Watchtower"; I'm not even strong willed, I always give up without a fight, and I would never contest any asshole that he knew more than me about whatever it was. Read more...

Domestication

The inadvertent shepherd. Quietly amused. Three foxes now, waiting for apples. I take that to mean they're all female, as the males tend to wander off. The apple thing seems to have affected the family dynamic. I don't want to be an agent of change, but I like watching them. This morning the two young deer (I haven't seen their mother in a while) are rooting through the leaves for anything green. They're playful and a bit plump, putting on their winter coats. I don't go outside until they've wandered off, down the logging road. A lovely walk, clipping brush, mostly green-briar and young sassafras off the driveway. The sassafras smells wonderful and I pulled a few roots, to dry over the stove. There's been a particularly vicious pack of dogs recently and I don't want them around, so I've been keeping a shotgun propped in the corner. I want to kill the alpha male of that group, an awful pit-bull with a mouth full of teeth, and I feel terrible that I want to kill a specific individual, but I've whacked him several times with the slingshot and he doesn't seem to get the point. Better he shouldn't pass along all those aggressive genes. Sunday afternoon, I listen to a couple of cooking shows on NPR, humming that cowboy tune "I see by your outfit..." steam another sweet potato and barely sear a small strip steak. I'd made a hot vinaigrette with bacon fat, balsamic vinegar, and a little mustard, use it to wilt a mixed salad then slice an avocado on top. Wilted Lettuce was a favorite salad around our house. I didn't realize we were poor until we weren't anymore. Career Navy paid ok, and Mom was a great seamstress, later, after I left home, she was making costumes for strippers and doing quite well. Poor meant eating a lot of cabbage, fried salt-pork, and greens, but I liked all of those things so I never felt deprived. Sweet potato patties with butter and a dollop of molasses. And my obsession with cornbread certainly dates back to the fact that there was almost always some left over, and you could smear it with almost anything. Canned tuna or sardines in oil, with slices of fresh onion, are my current favorites. "Pone" is Powhatan for 'something baked' (John Smith, Virginia, 1612). Variations on corn dishes were things like ponipop and apona. From the quotes in the Dictionary Of Americanisms I can almost reconstruct some recipes. Actually, I've eaten most of them. A soup of cornmeal and corn, johnny-cake, a pemmican, hominy. Raining again, so I cycle through some wash water, and spend the entire morning referencing 'pone', which naturally leads to several other things. End up having to put away a few books after lunch (hash and eggs) because I've clogged my walkways. In the afternoon I read an Elmore Leonard, drank several cups of tea, grazed on pickled things and cured meats. A wonderful horseradish mayo that I had on crackers. I love setting up this little buffet, where I have to get up and walk over to get a bite or two. Read a chapter, roll a smoke, get a drink, look out all the windows. Big winds and the rain is fairly hard at times, the driveway is vulnerable, because the green is gone, with its ability to soak up acre feet of water, and all the run-off forms channels in the ruts. Sometimes makes it difficult to make it in or out. And the rain, Jesus Christ, it went on forever. Another mouse, I can't believe it. Read more...

Hauling Ashes

It's strange here, the way the rain is spaced out over the year. I haven't ferried in wash water for over two years, and that's with only keeping twenty-five gallons on hand. I don't shave anymore, but I do keep my dishes clean and wash my hair once a week. Coffee, brushing my teeth, and cooking I use the filtered water I buy at Kroger, for 39 cents a gallon, maybe two gallons a week, but I can always melt and boil snow if conditions require. I made a great ham and bean soup with the smoked jowl, dried onions reconstituted in sherry, some dried herb from my secret stash, it's wonderful. I'll be digging those bean skins from behind my molars for hours. A good conversation about failure on the radio. I've always been a fan of failure. At the end of my building career I could spend several weeks designing a staircase and then realize it was possible, but that I wasn't capable of building it. The last couple of staircases I built, I just spent my time letting the materials do what they could do. More difficult than it sounds, because we always want to impose our will. I collected an extra five gallons of wash water because it's supposed to be above 70 degrees Sunday and I'm imagining a good wash and rinse outside, before I don the longunderwear and start eating raw blubber, and that great rotten shark we keep for guests. A good conversation with Linda, she's my best reader, and we always engage. She was harvesting the last of the kale. I envy her that. I was reading about field amputation during the Civil War, fucking Jude had sent me this book years ago, and it's incredibly gross, so it was nice, to hear a friendly voice. Linda thought I did well as an isolate, no more melancholy, or sentimental than I needed to be. Something between a sputter and cough. I pride myself on that. Hawking lugers. I have a land tax bill to pay, six months for $163.00, and I need to get that done before the end of the month because I might not be able to get to town later, and a vehicle insurance payment that is almost the same, and then pretty much nothing. Taking advantage of the warmer weather I haul ashes and decide to work the compost pile tomorrow. I need to deal with shit. Run the composting toilet through its cycle, shovel out the outhouse, then turn the compost pile on top of it. A project that will end up taking most of the daylight. Needs to be done twice a year. If I stop at the museum and use the bathroom, even with their state of the art low-flow toilets, I double my water consumption for that day. Pork-fried rice for dinner, five small loin chips for $2.34, so for about five dollars I get three or four meals, and it's good, I'd feed it to anyone who was hungry. It has all the sophistication of Spam, but it's hot and filling. If I'm busy with something, that's all I want, a casserole, or something I can eat on toast. I'm so easily distracted, it's good to have a clear path to a safe spot where I can get a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of tomato soup. The cookstove is working nicely, with a cleaned stovepipe, and the smoke-chase, that heats the oven, as clean as I can get it. And I have ashes, for the compost pile. Replete. I've been eating a lot of sweet potatoes in several different ways, and it was too warm to waste a fire, so I steamed one, in the microwave, and had it with butter and cream cheese; polenta, with slices of home-cured pork. Eat with my right hand only, so I can hold a book in the left. I have a rock I use to hold my place, if I have to use both hands for something. Then you have to clean your hands and start over. At the Quik-Stop they have these breaded and fried potato wedges, four for a dollar. I'm not exactly addicted to them, but it's close. I get four of them (a full Russet potato) then stop at the Buckeye Dairy Bar for a small vanilla shake. I'm trying to bulk up, the winter, hibernation, but I keep forgetting; when I remember to stop at the lake, mediate between town and ridge, eat some potato wedges and slurp a milk-shake, that the transition is easier if you stop and breathe slowly. I drink milk, I eat potatoes, I'm a naturalized citizen. I'm whitish. Nobody's one thing. Ted Crews is a fucking idiot. Read more...

Too Cool

Three freezes in a row and the bugs are gone. Took me a while to realize how the silence was different. Barely below freezing when I go outside to pee. No stars, and I can feel the moisture in the air. A buck snorting, down the logging road, and something on the compost heap, but I don't turn on any lights, go back inside and get a drink. Light the votive candle I keep on my desk so I can see well enough to roll a smoke. The candle doesn't even flicker, which is a good thing, means there's not a lot of air infiltration. A testament to the new floor insulation is that I don't need to start a fire and I haven't started wearing long-underwear yet. You probably don't need that last hyphen, long underwear, but it dances close to what I think of as the pantyhose precipice. At some point it becomes longunderwear, which actually sounds Icelandic. Which amuses me, and I like being amused, by the way words work. Eat more tomorrow, man the barricades; my plan is to eat breakfast, drink some coffee, and read an Elmore Leonard novel. For lunch, I'm thinking sardines on toast. And for dinner a braised veal shoulder with roasted parsnips. Pull the plug, I have to go, too many plates in the air. The perfect burrito probably exists. In the infinite burrito, string theory, alternate universes, black-holes, everything makes sense. Incredibly dense fog this morning that actually hung around for half the day. When I first got up visibility was about fifty feet, it settled right in with a strange blue-white light that seemed to come from everywhere. Reading about tidal bores and the various attempts at harnessing that force as electricity. A book on tides I'd picked up at the Goodwill. The idea of 'tidal nodes' has bothered me for decades. I've camped on the Bay of Fundy, with forty foot tides, and lived, as a kid, in Key West, where the tide was often measured in inches. Clearly a dynamic involved, but I had no idea what it was. You can imagine the scene: a madman (you can tell he's mad because he's in his bathrobe, his hair, greasy and in much need of a barber, has not been combed for days) flat on his back, playing with an inflatable globe, reading a book about tides. I begin to understand the movement of large bodies of water, I'll never understand it completely, not even close, nor do I care to, but I did want to understand the basic elements. For various reasons, and you can read about it for days, the effects and rotations when you spin a large body that is mostly liquid. The beach ball helps. American Veal is a meaningless phrase, young beef would be more accurate, a cow you didn't have to feed through the winter, but I've been eating a lot of it because it's remaindered. And sweet potatoes. Jesus god a steamed sweet potato, with a tablespoon of hot bacon fat and a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper, is at the very pinnacle of human experience. Read more...

Cleaning Game

You dress a squirrel the way you take off a sock. Like a rabbit. It's easy. I'd picked it up off the road, head dead, and dressed it out. I had a smoked jowl, so I minced a couple of slices and browned the squirrel in that, then added some wine and cooked it for an hour, thickened the gravy, left-over beans and rice. A smallish squirrel, I eat the whole thing, holding out just enough to make an omelet. A small squirrel makes a very nice hash. Almost anything makes a good hash. I made a duck hash a few years ago that was so good all three of the guests at dinner proposed marriage. Jerky was finally on sale and I bought a couple of packages because I want to develop a stew I can make from all dried ingredients. I want some more tinned fruits, pears especially, and grapefruit; and dried fruit, I love dried bananas, mangos, and raisins. I'll make a holiday pot of grits. A fruitcake polenta, with brown sugar and cream. What is this, the seventh of December, 2015, I just caught the fattest mouse I've ever seen. It's like the Sumo wrestler of mice. I'm used to skinny country mice, and it's a real shock to see one so fat. I cut open its stomach, to see what its been eating, same as, grass, grass seed, seeds, nothing from my shelves, I checked everything in the pantry and nothing had been broken into, though I do want to double-protect some beans and rice. The cheapest way I've found to do this is to buy those old stamped-metal kid's lunch boxes and double bag the beans inside. I ate some black beans recently, an heirloom, that were five years old, cooked them for an extra hour and they were excellent, with fried salt-pork and cornbread. The sauce was divine, pot liquor, Dad always called it, kicked in the ass by cayenne peppers, and emulsified with pork fat. A specific against any disease. I was a little unsettled, when I woke this morning, by the sight of so many cobwebs in the slanted early light, so after coffee and breakfast, I do some house cleaning. Then put away a few books, which brings back to mind why a particular book was out and what I had been reading. It's a wide range, and I just graze. Reading one thing side-trips me onto something else. Mac, who fact-checks me, said that I was correct, that 'set' was the longest entry in the OED. I pick up a lot of facts, but I'm seldom all that sure of my sources. I can't stay current because my connection with the outside world is so tenuous. Literally, a land-line that is so weak I can't download anything, nor search for information. Sometimes I have to make things up, to account for an almost impossible coincidence, and the explanation might well be based on faulty communication. Harbor Patois can only get you so far. At some point, you have to learn the language. I tend toward pointing at things and indicate chewing. I'd thought hunting season was over, and rifle season is, except for December 27-28 (a bonus season), but bow season is open until February 7. Ran upon a bow hunter today, who set me straight on the various dates. He was a little pissed that I'd ruined his afternoon hunt, but I explained that I was on my property, and, in fact, so was he. We had a nip from my flask and I told him there were a couple of strong rubs out to the south and west. Good will, and don't block the driveway. If someone blocks me in, when I'm parked at the bottom of the driveway, I get quite upset. IT'S MY FUCKING DRIVEWAY. Or words to that effect. I've been known to push vehicles out of the way. Glenn sent me an inflatable globe beach ball and I've been playing world geography. This is a great item (five-year old and up) because you can recline on the sofa and study it and it weighs almost nothing. The best toy I'm gotten in years. I can look at migration patterns in three-space. God bless football season because the nacho cheese was on sale, buy one get one free. I normally don't buy this stuff, but I got a bag of vegetable chips and a jar of olives. It was a delight. Sweet potato chips are a wonderful thing. Just got in an afternoon walk before it started raining again, which is why I'd gone to town, so I could mail my couple of bills and resupply in case the weather turned off bad. I didn't need anything, other than some library books, but I bought a few things, some tortillas, a couple of very hard avocados, another dozen eggs, a back-up for the back-up coffee and creamer. Potatoes, and thou, beside me in the wilderness. Read more...

On Polenta

Enough left-over grits to make two polenta patties. Caramelized an onion and some peppers, topped with some hot-pepper chutney. A cheap but decent Zinfandel. A nice quiet evening. The new Salman Rushdie at the library, another Elmore Leonard, the new John Irving (though I skipped several of his recent books), and another book about bronze. Went to town, to chat with TR for an hour, and to see some new paintings at the museum, Todd Reynolds, our local favorite, and Fatima, doing some interesting portraits. Stopped at Kroger and bought a few things, a smoked jowl, some fruit; on the way home stopped at B's and he took a break from rolling rounds of firewood down the hill beside the barn. Handed me a beer, and we talked about books for an hour. He loaned me two, one of them Girty, by Richard Taylor, which I'm especially looking forward to, real events fictionalized, and in this case the actual events are also documented in a history that should be available locally. In so far as history might be accurate. The fiction might be more accurate, the past at two removes. Edward Gorey told me once that he read everything as fiction. A good rule. In praise of John Thorne, I have to say, he is the very best food writer around, keeps it simple, and takes it right out into what you might do with a specific dish. His recipe for a sandwich of refried sausage casings is not only hysterical but quite good. I eat cleaned and washed and boiled and fried intestines, it doesn't mean I'm not a nice person. It's interesting that when I get off the ridge, the logistics involved, deciding to go, cleaning up a bit, making a list, gathering books; and then the physical act of driving and talking with people, saying things at the library or the check-out line, visiting with friends; then getting back home, I'm exhausted. Also starving, so after I start a fire, I scramble eggs on top of fried potatoes and sausage. I have five books I want to read, and the only question is the order. I'll read them all in the next five days. It's funny I would even know the numbers on this, but someone asked me, and I said, of course, I'll get back to you. The library keeps a record, I note what comes in the mail, I know what I buy. It becomes a habit. Over a ten year period this number was 1.1 books per day. Including laundry and occasionally using a bathroom in town I use about two gallon of water a day. When I start keeping track of something it just becomes routine. The number of orange cars (which is on the increase), or the number of fat people that are actually wider than their shopping carts. You should never be wider than your shopping cart. Space is expensive in a super-market, so the aisles are just wide enough for two carts to pass, an extremely fat person can actually block an aisle. I had to U-turn, detour around the coffee aisle, go through the dry cereal, and come in from the other direction in order to get my Black Silk coffee, because a large person was checking their list. Gave me time to check out the seafood section where I found some lovely scallops on sale. I like these lightly seared, with lime juice, usually, but these were so large, I cut them into quarters, browned them in butter and served them on wide egg noodles. The little demon on my shoulder said I was cheating, dumb little fucker, confused appearance with intent. I look like a hick, sound like one when I put my mind to it; if you wear Carhartt bib overalls, you can be accepted as part of the fold. A sweat stained John Deere hat admits you to the inner circle. Doesn't actually mean I am a hick, whatever that is. B said that Ronnie had made some hominy and I'm anxious to try some of that. Succotash. A Seneca or Shawnee word for 'good dinner' or more likely a euphemism for something involving a sheep or goat. Slaking corn in ashes isn't that far of a reach, when you consider the early kitchen. A corner of the cave. About 40,000 years ago we discovered that if you left a hole, for the smoke to get out, you could sleep through the night. About that same time we discovered ham. Salt, Jesus, I've been reading about salt for weeks. It's the only mineral we eat directly. It draws out moisture. That first dude, that smoked a salt-cured ham should be awarded a Nobel Prize, Big Head White as far as I'm concerned. I had a couple of pieces of his ham, late one night, we were following his hounds, and it was the best cured meat I'd ever eaten, a crust of bread and a mustard sauce that was perfect, maybe a hint of horseradish, and a salad that was mostly wild greens, watercress, and dandelion tops that I harvest from under the leaf-litter. Read more...

Canned Ham

First solid freeze of the year, and a couple of more nights down to twenty. The ground stays white with frost until nearly noon. I just stay indoors and read another Elmore Leonard novel. I get one every time at the library, and hope to read them all this winter. Raylan this morning and it was a very good read. If I had a TV I would have watched that series. I understand Leonard was a script advisor. He's good, his dialog is superb. When it finally warms a bit, I go out and split some wood. This time of year I start a lot of fires. Science Friday, my favorite radio show, they were talking about clocks today, and trying to measure very small increments of time. I completely spaced out, thinking about time. Keeping time, making time, marching in time; mostly what I use is duration, how long do you cook this, how long before it gets too dark to see where you're going, is the cornbread done? If I need to be someplace at a certain time (which doesn't happen that often any more) I listen to the radio, and I have a couple of friends I can call to ask what day it is. There's a good blues show on the radio, Friday night, so sometimes I leave the radio on, so I don't forget. Usually I turn it off and forget, but I remembered tonight and got this great Australian blues singer and guitarist for a solid hour. He does a cover of Lennon's "Come Together" that's fantastic. Electrified acoustic; then a drummer, mostly with brushes, a bass, and a muted keyboard to do a few more numbers. I love the shouted band-leader moments. The key-board player is fantastic. But this dude, the guitarist, references everyone. I wish I'd made popcorn. Jeff something, I never did get the name, I couldn't actually understand what they were saying, they went from a Hammond organ to a grand piano. "Messing With The Kid" was terrific. I kill the radio (I have a remote) and sit in the dark for a while, still hearing the music. Takes a while for the quiet to settle. Put on my headlamp so I could get a drink and roll a smoke, think about the blues, all the miles between here and there, dead dogs and dead pick-up trucks. It's amazing how visceral the effect. The real world comes knocking. It's not depressing or anything, just gut-wrenching. Out of my daze, the house is cold, so I build a fire: a single butter wrapper to start some fat pine then some small oak splits then serious stove wood. It takes an hour. I'd bought a canned ham, I hadn't bought one of these since I was in college, I was in the canned meat aisle at Kroger and saw them. A perfect solution, for the ham and bean soup, when you found yourself snowed-in. I have canned and dried beans, onions and peppers, with a canned ham and cornbread I'd be good to go, also there's a lot of fat, which would be good for cooking potatoes. The weather forecast is good, so I can get another canned ham, and decide to do a trial-run. First I fry a couple of slices with eggs for breakfast, then I scrape off the surface fat into a skillet for later use, then put together a soup that can simmer as the stove cools down. Beans and rice, a few roasted greens, just a twist of sea salt. When it gets more solid, you serve it on toast. Spam and a bagel, two bits. Right. Read more...

What Enables

I was walking west on the main ridge, to which I'm one of dozens of lateral offshoots and the next place is a trailer home down in a hollow. I don't know these people at all and they keep very large dogs, I don't know what they are, Siberian Bear Hounds maybe, but I had the wind and I'd wanted to look at their place for years. It's a marvel, I could tell, from driving by once in a while. Everything they've ever owned is in the yard. Dead vehicles, washing machines, every plastic kid's riding thing ever marketed, bright colors faded in the grass; dish washers, entire collapsed storage sheds, dead mowers. It's a field that extends several hundred feet in every direction from the trailer. It's unbelievable and comic, but it's difficult to get rid of things when you live deep in the country. Quite the opposite, you actually acquire things: a better sofa, a mattress, two chairs that are similar, and the old shit is relegated to the pile. I burn what I can, legs and frames, but there's all this other shit, dead toasters, waffle-irons, unfinished puzzles. I get Booby to come up with his back-hoe, once in a while, dig a hole and bury everything. The best trick, though, and there are a couple of examples of this within a few miles, is to just abandon the trailer and move in a new one a hundred yards away. Presto. It's difficult to get rid of an old trailer, you can sell all the scrap metal, burn the frame, and be left with a chassis that is often used as the frame for a small bridge, but they're a pain in the ass. Never live in a structure that can be broken into with a can-opener. They aren't even attached to the ground, they're designed to blow away in high winds. Stuff the working class in shipping containers and call it good enough. The weather reports are vague, but I do my morning routine, coffee, an egg on toast, then clean up a bit and head to town. The library first, where I get a bunch of fiction and a book on bronze, then the pub for a draft and a sample of the new soup, a pumpkin, roast apple, bacon thing that is pretty good. Kroger, where I back up my drinking water, back up my whiskey, buy ten cans of Mandarin Orange segments; and on the way out of town I stop at Bridge Street Liquors, buy extra tobacco and papers. I'm pretty well set. But I know I've forgotten something. Phone was out and I couldn't send last night, or this morning, or whenever it was, then I got side-tracked by the bob-cat, because it was the wrong time of day for her to be out. She seemed to be headed toward the graveyard. I begin to think there's an animal condominium over there somewhere; I know there's a rattlesnake den, the fox den, and I can imagine a great warren of tunnels in a primitive graveyard so long abandoned. There's a scene in "The Wind In The Willows" where Mole and Rat, and then some Hedgehogs, all crash at Badger's place. Mid-winter snowstorm; and the description of all the food at a late night supper and then at breakfast the next day is splendid, funny and mouth-watering. Reading some Marjorie Rawlings, and a book of her recipes. Then I read her letters to Maxwell Perkins. A couple of gunshots stir me outside. It's another gun week for bucks and I've posted a note for myself to stay out of the woods, I have an orange hat and vest that I wear to go to the woodshed. A nice pot of Great Northern beans and a pone of cornbread while I read about black bears. Sitting at the island, eating a simple meal, it's quiet, there's no media of any kind, once in a while I hear the wind. Occasionally I'll hear a helicopter or a small plane using the river as a route to Cincy, and now that the leaves are fallen, I hear trains in Kentucky. A log-truck, laboring over the gap; anything walking on a bed of leaves gets my attention. The senses are extended when you flush a grouse, or come home and there's a bear under your house. Listen, I have left-over beans, and cornbread I can toast, and nine cans of Mandarin Orange segments. I ate one can within minutes of getting home, a can of orange segments is in no way either a metaphor or an allegory, it's just a tin of fruit. As you might imagine, I chuckled all afternoon about that. It's a can of fucking fruit. The new rule is that if you're black and seventeen you can be shot sixteen times. I just want to bury my head in the sand. Read more...

Shawls Appear

The first shawls appeared in Paris after the Egyptian Campaign. The year they shot the nose off. I'm a little punch-drunk, more rain, and in the last two days I must have read for twenty hours. Reading The Arcades Project, for the book geek, is better than catching a marlin. The fines of a fertile mind, all the dross washed away. End of the day I have piles of books, empty bowls and mugs, leaves tracked in with an armload of firewood, and I'm still wearing my bathrobe. A particularly successful day. I wasn't disturbed by anything. What I mean, after the fact, is that nothing, in 24 hours, had interrupted what I was reading or writing or thinking. I'm so not connected it's a marvel even to close friends. It started raining harder, two in the morning, and I thought about taking a bath tomorrow, so I consolidated wash water, cleaned a couple of buckets (rain-water buckets always accumulate crap) and set them out. Wet Dog Syndrome, I have to shake it off and dry by the fire. One reason it would be difficult for me to be in another relationship is that she'd have to deal with her own water. Her water, my water, maybe we'd go in together on the wash water, but if you don't have a tap, water is a critical issue. The laurel, not unlike holly, seals itself behind varnished leaves. It's all about water and anti-freeze. I have a shawl, it's a tattered thing, but I like draping it over my head when it's cold and I've washed my hair. You could be arrested. Shawl in public. How would it sit, in the Texas pan-handle, that you couldn't wear a feed cap? Relaying signs. The third base coach telling you to bunt. I don't pretend to make sense of this. Later, on reflection, I see how I might have thought something, but it's clearly nothing, a mote, a prismatic phenomena, maybe a spider web, or a drop of water on a leaf. Another full day of rain, another day reading. There's a photo of Baudelaire by Nadar from 1855. He looks like the stoner he was. Hashish was readily available from North Africa (it's been found in Egyptian tombs) and its use was prevalent. So much water I cycle through another bucket so I can clean it for winter. It's an odd bucket, black, with a black lid, and it holds six gallons. I keep it full on the back porch all summer as a passive solar heater for bucket-baths. Cashmere was a big thing in Paris, 1855. Cashmere shawls. You can't help but picture it. Hugo, Balzac, Proust, the coffee-house scene. Two miles outside of town, the rest of us are living on potatoes, and rough beer because the water is polluted; but in town they have carriages and use forks. It doesn't seem right. Read more...