Riddle Me

The library copy of The Riddle Of The Sands is a nice 1998 edition, Seafarer Books, and I picked it up to reread a few passages. Of course read the whole thing. Quite remarkable for 1903. Tautly told. Rowing the dingy through the fog, 14 miles, and hitting the mark, is excellent writing. I first read this book when I was in college, on the recommendation C P Lee in the only writing class I ever took. Also read Baudelaire, for the first time. The last ten years, Walter Benjamin, and Baudelaire are always setting out, as are about 100 (or more) other books. The ones that take my fancy. Half of these could be put away, passing fancies, but the other half will stay through another rotation. Tomorrow it's rubber gloves, cleaning the kitchen sink and drain board, all enameled cast iron and I decide to make a trap for the over-sized sink drain, I'm tired of cleaning out the drain-trap. A conjunction and a comma have almost equal weight: it's all about inclusion. When I'm writing at manic speed, a rate of a sentence every five or six minutes, I can often write 42 lines in four hours. I often use a conjunction, then go back, delete it and add a comma, then go forward with a conjunction; writing is a lot like laying bricks. Since I'll be in gloves I might tackle one of the cast iron pieces of cookware, wire brush and lye, to break the scale, then scalding water, before the curing process. It's passing strange that all of the corn-stick pans I've ever seen, cast iron, of course, make seven sticks each. I have four of these, so I can serve 14 sticks at a time, every twenty minutes, two in the oven, dump two pans onto a towel, and put a teaspoon of bacon grease in each depression, put in to pre-heat. I was once told, by a former CIA agent, to make another round. Somewhat more than a request. Twenty minutes, in a pre-heated pan, these are so good, so crispy and sweet, there have been marriage proposals. I brush those aside, I'd rather be alone. I have to make two skillets of these, 14 sticks, with the one cup of cornmeal recipe I use to make a small pone or 14 sticks or six muffins. I don't do the muffins often, because they crumble and there're hard to eat, but corn-sticks, with a stick of butter, I could eat these all night. I've done an interesting study, of a cross-section I draw at random, and they'd rather eat corn sticks than do almost anything else. Ben, from Montana, thought that corn-sticks were better than sliced white bread.