Working Day

Very hot, over a hundred. I got a few things done in the morning, then headed to town with more recycling. On the way into town, on 125, I was behind a flat-bed truck with a Ford 8N on the back. They pulled in at the chop-shop junk yard and I followed them, to look at the tractor. Good old boys and we shot the shit for a while. 8N stories. The new owner had paid a $1000 for this old tractor (1954) which is more than it cost new, and it needed to be completely rebuilt; but it had been stored out of the rain, and he was a happy man. Cory put the Olympics on for me, instead of the Little League World Series, so I could actually watch an event. I'd heard highlights on the radio. I watched a couple of heats of the women's 50 meter freestyle, explosive, and they all finished within a second. Sliced roast beef was on sale, so I bought some of that, thinking a couple of thick roast beef sandwiches, with lettuce and tomato, would be good. Spent some time reading at the library, they have comfortable chairs spread around, and the AC is very nice. It's so hot, by the time I get to Kroger, even the clerks are bitching about the heat. Going home, I have to lean forward, so I don't stick to the seat. It's too hot to even think. Below ten degrees or above a hundred, all you can do is get along. A very large rattlesnake dead on the road, and I stopped to pull it off so that the crows could eat it in peace. Going through the forest, this time of year, the dappled light, with more slant, is almost blinding. I did go for a little walk, to collect some mushrooms. I'd gotten my weekly oysters in town, so after I'd cleaned and sliced the mushrooms, and gotten them tucked away in the dehydrator, I roasted the oysters over a wood fire on the grill, then following Rowan Jabcobsen's lead, had them with a dab of lime slurry I'd made in the freezer. These were so good they made me laugh. Stripped down to my boxer-briefs and a tee-shirt cut off at the neck and sleeves, dirty hair whipping around my face, grilling oysters; then setting up the meal, the oysters on their metal-roofing pan, the chilled bowl with the slurry, at the island. Standing there, doing a little jig of appreciation, eating oysters on the half-shell with a dollop of cold tartness. A dram of the malt. Where do you go from there? This work-a-day writing I do is of little consequence, what I read hardly matters, and I certainly misremember almost everything. Close friends forgive me, actually I'm given a dispensation I've never understood, that I could know or have known such a wide range of people. I don't understand the phenomena exactly, but it has to do with breaking bread and good conversation. Oysters and Glendronach doled out in healthy splashes, a lengthy discussion of Emily's sexuality. If I've had enough warning I make a pate so we can feel above our station. Four poets, eating oysters, eating pate, and dancing a jig. Otherwise I don't need company, I don't understand the compulsion for connection. I could play the loser father in any Pinter play, or the bitter son, but I don't need to talk about meaningless crap. It's so quiet, when the AC kicks on, I'm already asleep. Fuck a bunch of basil.