Attachments

There's a great, absolutely secure, almost completely invisible attachment called a coffin lock. They're expensive, and I was thinking about how I didn't mind, maybe even preferred, exposed attachment. Totally sidetracked. Mid-day, temps above freezing, and it starts snowing hard, large flakes. A white-out for a couple of hours. Absolutely mesmerizing. I just wander around the house looking out different windows. Listening to the drip and watching it snow just about as hard as is possible. Instant slush, several inches thick. I had a can of squid in ink that I needed to use, so I made a very quick pasta that proved delicious. Squid needs to cook for less than a minute or more than hour and I'm fond of it both ways. I was in Columbus, once, with the daughters, museum hopping, shopping at ethnic markets, and they talked me into buying a 15 pound block of frozen cleaned squid. For a while, we were the tempura capital of the world. The drip is incessant and the slush is sublimating. I finally put on some music, Bach, and just zone out. It's nice, being in the dark, remembering emotional attachments. My last Florida sweetheart, Sandy Harper, was tough to leave; I liked her a lot and loved her family, but it was already ordained that I would run away with the circus. It still amazes me that I hit the rails. By all rights I should have stayed local, but I kept meeting interesting people and one thing led to another. I couldn't say where the line lay, some where in the Back Bay, eating pasta with Beverly Sills, talking about a new (and final) opera; or that one night, when the original SNL cast, pitched their show to me. Another dawn, no rain, the snow is mostly gone, and another thaw cycle is under way. Supposed to be seventy degrees the next couple of days. When I went to sleep last night I was reading about olive trees and when I got up this morning (still on my stoking-the-fire schedule) I let the fire go out, poured a night-cap and went right on reading. Slate gray sky, and the diffused light is strange on a bleak landscape. I made a lovely jam/marmalade, red onion and mandarin orange, and as soon as I heard the forecast, I baked another pone of cornbread. No fire for a few days. I need a new grill for my grill, the small Weber I use most of the time. I figure to go to the welding shop and get them to cut me a circle from some kind of grating. A plasma cut, so there'd be no rough edges, and I could cure it according to the revised standard code. I'd hate to be a fruit grower right now, because the trees will want to bloom, but there is still a serious treat of frost. My plans are mundane, do the laundry, stop by the library; I've stock-piled enough credit that I can afford a very good steak, a sweet potato, and a pint of kimchee. If it is true, that I've survived another winter, I have only my wits to blame. A break in the overcast, some shafts of sunlight, shadows that I hadn't seen in days. Fucking crows come squawking in, they seem to be setting up a rookery over near the graveyard. Very loud, I go out and sit on the back porch, smiling at how the pristine silence can be so totally interrupted. It's like a young war. They'll be quiet after dark. The ground had firmed and I went for a little walk, checking buds. Two red-headed woodpeckers are a nice splash of color. I was composing a comic opera in my head, a sexually ambiguous rock-star was running for president, there was a great song and dance number about how not knowing was better than knowing. You can dance around that. My hero. Tom O' Bedlam. I love the apparent sense. That the fact was, a bikini model could become the first Lady.