Mental Construct

Looking at photos of these domed huts on the plains of Russia. The framework is intertwined mammoth tusks. Intricate and surprising. An ivory house, covered in hide. Probably hides on the inside too, against the brutal winter, heated with an oil lamp. No trees, no wood. The remnant of a small fire place, probably burned dry mammoth dung to heat the morning gruel. One of the structures used 157 tusks in its framework, 80 mammoths. They must have had a pretty good system. Also a pretty good tool kit. Probably had bear-skin rugs on the floor. If you ever wear rabbit-skin booties, you'll never look back. Linda and I had talked about this, the way we're attracted to comfort. Increasingly, it seems. I'd rather not dwell. Snow in the forecast, so I start planning a last run into town, green bananas, hard avocados, some of those grape tomatoes, which I enjoy at almost every meal, with blue cheese dressing. Back-up eggs. I picked up the O'Brian books at the museum and I've stacked up in a new pile next to my desk. I stacked them in order of composition. I've read many of them, but not in order, so I immediately sit down and read the first one again, to enter that world. I love this world, the food, the rigging. On even a minor ship-of-of -the-line there are hundreds of miles of rope. The French always shot for the rigging, the English shot for the hull.