Broken

I don't know how I got to this place. AOL wasn't working correctly and I couldn't get to my working file because the toolbar was covered with an error display warning. I finally found my way around the problem, but I don't remember how because I tried a dozen ways. It took most of the day. Finally, just as it started raining, I found my Write Mail file, which is mostly where I work. With it being a weekend I got an early dram, rolled a smoke, and toasted my success. I missed the farmer's market, though, and I needed tomatoes, so I could continue the run of BLTs. I can always beg a few tomatoes, down the creek. Skipped lunch, reading a Peter Robinson novel and fiddling with Little Dell, Took time out to search through all the new material for words that related to dell. Turned into quite the chore and I ended up with over 50. B wrote a nice poem, a few years ago, nailing down various degrees of dellness. I was thrilled when I found Write Mail, the other end of the thread, and I immediately put it in my favorite file, Mail Waiting To Be Sent, where I now let a paragraph sit for a few hours, then go back, delete the last line, and Send. I should start saving the deleted last lines in another file, a manuscript called Deleted Last Lines. Such a realist. I had left-over shellfish, so I made a simple stew, minced onion, clam broth, a few oysters, some mussels, a diced potato, in a shallow bowl, on toast. This was quite good. Finished the Robinson novel, looked at some pictures, I'm outside during the gloaming, the low clouds underlit, text book alpenglow. Two times in two days, I swear, Hopkins has come up in a major way. B was looking at the ruts in his driveway, holloways I said they were called, and he quoted Hopkins. It's not that often, in your life, that you have Hopkins quoted at you, then he quoted Chaucer, and I knew what he was referring to was that last sentence in the prologue. The holloways. Still raining when I got up to pee, and it was so peaceful I stayed up to read. Dawn brought a breeze and the leaf-fall increased. First cool morning and I hadn't put on any clothes, other than my boxer-briefs and a tee-shirt, so when I went out to drink a cup of coffee and have a smoke on the back porch, I took my stadium blanket, to cover my legs. Soon I'll be wearing trousers. A sure sign the seasons are changing. I love sitting on the back porch with a morning cup of coffee, looking in the opposite direction of the rising sun. The slants of light. It has many names. Tree-rain in the afternoon. Aunt Sadie fixed the best sweet potatoes you've ever eaten, boiled until almost done, then fried in bacon fat, drizzled with sorghum molasses, until they caramelize, served with Jersey butter and fresh-ground black pepper. Sweet potatoes are cheap, right now, so I make some of those, and a fried cream corn from sweet corn sold out of a farm wagon on the side of the river road, a sliced tomato on the side, with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Eating high on the hog. I go for days without eating anything not raised between me and town, a 17 mile Venn circle. Almost every possible edible plant within that circle. Bitter greens you cook with salted pork; day-lily pods, raw, with a sharp vinaigrette. Something dead nearby, I can smell it when I go outside. Back inside, I was staring out the window when a shadow swept across and it was the sanitation detail: two buzzards. Thank god. Whatever it is it's to the north of the house, so I'm downwind. A nasty smell (and smells rarely bother me) and I'm pleased that the professionals are on the job. When I send this paragraph, I'll have to take Little Dell in to the professionals, and have them remove the display from in front of my toolbar. To the radio, for the first time in days (I did stay up to listen to a blues show the other night) and I was surprised to hear the phrase "faith-based" so many times within an hour. The news, such as it is, is all terrible, and it's depressing. Sat outside; life lesson, when perplexed take a cup of coffee or a drink and sit outside. There's a invasive tree, in the hardwood forest, the Royal Pawlonia, with very large leaves, their survival characteristic is that they shade everything else out completely. Black Walnut roots exude a subtle poison, a pesticide. A squid and its ink. I don't comb my hair and wear tattered clothes, and it's a good disguise, most people leave me alone. The people that know me value my conversation, and I don't care about anyone else. Fuck a bunch of profiling.