A Start

A caterwauling, a scream in the night. Incessant rain, though just before sunset I could almost see shadows, so I thought the clouds were thinning. A wonderful cycle of tree-rain, and I was nodding to the beat, heating the last of the left-overs thinking about how left-overs were probably leftovers now, the way two words become hyphenated, then become one word. A migration of meaning. I'm so hopelessly out of date I still use an abacus to balance my check book. I'd decided to take a nap, then get up later, read and write when it was cooler and Black Dell wouldn't require freezer packs and a personal fan. I'd made an excellent omelet or frittata with the leftovers, rolled a smoke, and was settled back with a wee dram of Irish. Sitting in the dark, as is my want, and I had heard stirrings in the leaves. I'd turned the compost heap, with a great load of produce from the dumpster at Kroger, the last of the stove ashes and gleanings from several cast-iron skillets. Attempting to create order within my limited frame. The clear and present danger was that every animal within a square mile would converge on my compost heap. They do, of course, and I get to hear an incredible chorus of animal sounds. The dogs grumble and the cats whine, the bear seems to be off somewhere, but the rabid coon makes me uncomfortable. I finally go out and decapitate it with a brush hook. Being the Lord High Executioner carries a certain weight, and I don't consider lightly any of the heads I've rolled. Nowhere near the record, Henry the Eight's guy chopped off three hundred in just a couple of years. I started up, when the sound erupted. I knew what the sounds were, and I wasn't threatened, I had my sling-shot, fuck a bunch of meaning. But I started up, jumped, you might say, when the cat sounded. You might reproduce that sound with a cello. TR tends toward lentils on a cymbal, but it woke me from a fine dream where I was walking on some perfectly flat salt plains. Key West, for instance, is a tidal node, measured in inches, the Gulf of Mexico pulling against the Atlantic, as apposed to, say, the Bay of Fundy. Camped somewhere in Nova Scotia, Bear Creek, I think, and I had to retreat to higher ground. This was nothing like that, but it reminded me of the panic, starting from dead sleep. Starting from a deep sleep, bolt upright, Jesus fucking Christ, be still my heart, and it's just a couple of animals fighting over my trash. Knew I wouldn't get back to sleep. I couldn't remember the name for those pieces of real estate, often triangular, trapped between exits, entrances, and highways, so I called up the Highway Patrol and talked with a friendly officer who said that he had been taught (in Highway Patrol school) that they were called gores, which leads me to gusset, which leads to pleat. A gusset requires an extra piece of material, a gore is just a pleat. I remember seeing the word in Barry Lopez's (as editor) Home Ground, and there it is. This is such a grand book it usually takes me an hour to put it down. I resist the temptation to go on with the H's. I meant to go to town today, talk with TR, pick up some some things at Kroger, but I got sidetracked. An interesting radio show about high school and college debating, a field in which, before theater, I was an actual player; and Ralph Stanley died, at 89, sounding better as he got older. I took a little walk, gathered a few chanterelles, made a duxelle, read a piece about casting bells (four parts copper, one part tin) and then a long piece about British change-ringing. Too hot for Black Dell, so I take a nap then get up after midnight to write. I run a little 8 inch fan on Dell's backside and some of the deflected air blows in my direction; the windows are open, but it's a dead still night. A low temperature of above 70 degrees and it's difficult to get rid of the day's heat. First Luna Moth of the season, scares me half to death, banging at my window screen. It's a beautiful thing and I watch it for the best part of an hour. They love Passion Fruit, and Ted and I, in the first print shop, which had a green house, had let the vines take over the place. Open the vents, this time of year, and in they'd come. We had to cover the ink-plate on our press, to protect it from moth shit. When I write at night, I have the light of the screen, and a seven-and-a-half watt compact bulb, lighting the back entry; when I go out to pee it looks warm and lovely. Life in the country, an oil lamp burning in the window. I know it's a false sense of security, but I enjoy the luxury, what I consider the luxury, of just sitting back, having a drink and a smoke. Listening for the wind. More often than not, I'm rewarded for just listening. For just looking too. A Gallery Forest overhangs a creek or a road, the branches might intertwine into a canopy, so Mackletree becomes a tunnel. For a mile, at least, it's completely canopied. The white oaks are all gone, mostly gone, there are some seedlings, several bad years, frost, FROST, fire, and they went off, what did Wayne say, like Roman candles. That dry bark torched the forest; in these hardwood forests, fires are usually on the ground, but this one escaped. They stopped it, finally, right at the bottom of my hill. Cicero was beheaded? I make a note to look into that.