Rapt Attention

Bob Dylan? I tripped over my own feet going to make a cup of coffee. Such a strange step for the Nobel committee to take. I kept the radio on all day, to listen to the various commentaries, and heard a great many snippets of songs. A thousand songs in a lifetime. What Dylan does is make the lyric line important, complex, surreal, and with the taste or smell of the actual world. Enough always to know we were on the same page. Also, I've always liked odd voices. Any more though, I just want a very quiet place to pursue my interests. I don't listen to much music, mostly I stare off into space. Or just read, the last couple of days I've been reading Richard Russo's Everybody's Fool, and I enjoyed it. Took a few pages to get into the dead-pan humor, then I was gone, two days reading this book, and doing nothing else. Reading slowly, because I liked the language. I had to get out and make a run to Blue Creek PO for some packages and since I'd be off the ridge I went to town. Portsmouth and Blue Creek are in opposite directions and I enjoyed the outing. A hand- knit sweater from Jude, books; then, at the pub, I got a free beer, a mistake pour, then a second one, another mistake. The dirt race track outside of town is hosting the Dirt Track International Championship, and there are maybe two hundred RV's parked in Boone Coleman's soybean field (post harvest). The liquor store, where I buy tobacco, is right across the bridge, and they're doing landmark business. The track is in the flood plain, across the Scioto River from town, and when they're running it sounds like a young war. I hate the noise. When I got home, after two midday beers and lunch, I took a nap. Mice woke me up, running around. They're moving inside and I get up to prepare my defenses. I set out six spring-traps, baited with peanut butter, but I don't set the traps, to let the mice get the idea that the trap is a feeding station. Since I'm up and moving about, I start a small fire in the cook stove. I'd picked up some remaindered cod fillets, $1.43, and poached them in clam broth, made a small batch of instant mashed potatoes because I needed a binder, minced a small onion, formed a patty. Fried in bacon fat, with an egg on top, this is excellent. A spoonful of salsa, a piece of toast with bitter marmalade, and thou. Not to be flip, but I don't give a shit about the rest of the world. I have my own prefect to advocate. At dawn the crows are back, they know that I have mice for them, warm, fresh, and local; they view me simply as a guilt ridden human. Which, I suppose, is probably true.