Language

Every discipline requires a certain jargon. I use a fair number of carpenter terms because I was one for so many years, ditto printing and a dozen other fields of interest. I'd like to write a book called The Plumber's Patois but it sounds too much like a romance novel. "I knew from the moment I saw his butt-crack, when he leaned over to look under the sink, that we were going to make love." Another gray day, tender spring leaves turned inside out. I did get in a little walk, between showers, came home and made a nice single serving of mushroom soup. It occurs to me that I'm incredibly self-indulgent. I don't actually deny myself anything, I just don't want much. I find that the less I desire the easier it is to get along. TR's at the museum, another lazy Saturday, and we talk about shape-note singing, about musical notation; I'm curious about this, because I'd been reading about dance notation. They just recovered an early dance, 1910, caught on early film, that they had thought was lost. No one remembered the steps. Now there's notation, and of course digital reproduction. There's a record of everything. They know when I buy whiskey at Kroger. God knows what they do with that information. You have to scan a 'Kroger Card', to get the discounts, but I always use a card I've found in the parking lot, let someone else be responsible for my artichoke hearts. I made an oyster stew with morels and it's so good I feel guilty. Anything that tastes so good, and smells so good, must, in some way, be bad for you. I had to laugh, and I don't think Thoreau was trying to be funny, but at some point he rediscovers the square knot is superior to the overhand knot for tying shoe laces. I double-knot my shoe laces. Most of us that work in the woods wear boots that have six sets of eyelets and then two or three sets of cleats that you wrap the laces around; then you wrap the loose ends a couple of times around the top of the boot and double knot it. The Woodsman's Footwear. Which, I had the thought, would be a good title for a book on bondage. Too much cordage, I think, all the diagrams of rigging, have my interest, the naming, the re-purposing of words. A stay, for instance. A marlin spike. Taking a reef in the main sail. So much pollen in the air it makes collecting rain water rather a chore. I have to cut a couple of tee-shirts into filter cloths, then strain the water into a second bucket. I have no idea why collecting rainwater should be illegal, but Mac tells me there's a bill pending in Ohio. Heaven forbid I should break a law. Protect me, oh noble state legislators, from myself. I manage to get into quite a rage which I relieve by taking my clippers and walking down the driveway, clipping green-briar where it droops into the roadway. Up on top, the last hundred yards to the house, is a complete green tunnel, the last step in the mediation between the ridge and the rest of the world. I spent the afternoon examining seedlings, oaks and maples mostly, looking at the root systems. With the oaks, these yearlings are much busier underground than above. The root systems are amazing. I clean one of these with a soft brush, and the root-hairs disappear into nothing, angel hair. I threw a golf ball, then marked off a square yard where it landed, nine oak saplings, five of red maple, ferns, blackberry canes, every adventitious species known to man. It's a marvel. With my straight spade I'd opened a trench around my nominal square yard and I was busy with my inventory when a car drove up that I didn't recognize, one of the state cops that had been out here when tractors were disappearing. He's got his lady-friend with him, and he wanted her to see my lair. We have a beer, and I'm extremely careful because he carries a gun and she's attractive, with shapely ankles.