Crossing Shots

Rodney called and I tried to tell him that I didn't need a buddy. A difficult but interesting conversation because he was drunk and deep into his personal hell. I hate this shit, but it is interesting. I'm fine with myself, I know the chinks and voids, and I try to never offer advice. Usually I mumble, little more than nothing, a smear of butter, a hint of exotic marmalade. But the endless cascade of hard times wears on me. It bores me, actually, I'd rather be pilloried, drawn and quartered, whatever. D had already called, so I felt like a phone junkie. Never could get back into my groove. Had a drink and listened to Bach, turned off the lights and sat in the dark, got into a non-thinking mode. The light rain helped. More light rain in the morning, enough to prelude a trip to town, the weather sounds better for tomorrow. I'd started smelling something dead, but I can't find whatever it is. Probably dead mice in the walls. The smell always goes away after a few days, but I have to look under everything, under the house, behind piles of books, because you're not supposed to have rotting animals in your house. They mummify, actually, with that death mask on their face, and even a small mouse can look quite vicious. I had to laugh, I was completely disheveled, in my bathrobe and slippers, I'd started the espresso maker, and I went outside to collect enough morels for an omelet. I'd seen a few, breaking ground behind the shed, coming in yesterday; but the very idea that I could go out in my bathrobe and slippers and get morels for breakfast seemed like a big deal. It wasn't a big deal, it was merely a matter of putting things together, morels, omelet, coffee, hungry. In our film Basho is a bum, wearing layers of clothes, puts on the coffee, walks a hundred feet from his back door, in his fucking bathrobe and slippers, and harvests morels for breakfast, he doesn't say a word, the soundtrack is the usual subdued TR, a duck egg we had watched Basho/Bum steal from a nest becomes this fragrant omelet that steams in front of us. Two takes right away, one is that he's a total fake, the other is that he might be the real thing. Trip to town, low on supplies, skipped the library because I'm expecting Thoreau's Journals; at the pub the main cooler, with six of the taps (including the Guinness) was being repaired, so Cory gave me a bottled beer. The books were in, and cheaper than expected, $50 for the two-volume Dover reprint of the 14 volume original, printed four pages to a page, 2,000,000 words. I'm in deep clover for the next year. Way oversized, heavy hard bound books, I'll have to read them leaned from lap to desk, which digs into my thighs and makes my feet fall asleep, so I have to get up fairly often, stretch, take a walk, eat something. This works well for me, a trip to the woodshed, sweeping snow off the back porch, getting a drink, rolling a smoke, then reading for another couple of hours. As a sidebar I was cooking red-beans and rice, the entire concept of red-beans and rice has changed so much in the last twenty years. These 'red-beans' might actually be crowder peas, and then the rice. I think the best rice in the world is being grown in Louisiana right now, and I fully embrace it; the red-beans I'm still tracking dow.