Batten Down

A winter blow. I knew when I rolled over and went back to sleep that the house would be cold when I woke again. Sure enough. I remember camping near Mt. Washington one January. Zero degrees. One of the Hayden brothers actually shaved. Coffee and oatmeal. Taking a shit is difficult. All of the serious hikers or climbers I know squat to defecate, faster and neater, important factors when it's very cold. Not much mention of bodily functions in literature, but there is a goodly amount of food in the O'Brian novels. Pease porridge hot. And some of the Captain's meals are quite interesting, pickled penguin? various brined pig parts, plenty of grease, greenstuff and lime juice. They knew what caused scurvy at this point, stopped for citrus, ate kale. Salt-pork, salt-beef, and peas; there was a dish called "sea-pie" that was anything that had been caught, and they kept a lot of animals on board ship. One man-of-war had a designated chicken guy. In the heat of battle he would be quieting the flock. Pigs and goats were not uncommon, always sheep, when leaving a port, mutton seems to have been a favorite. There might be three hundred men on a man-of-war, at sea for six months, imagine the logistics of that. Everything in barrels, which amuses me for a while. Cheese with the port, which would have been a hard cheddar. Possibly a goat milk blue cheese. I have my reading nest arranged and it's quite comfortable, and an enormous pile of books. Moved a chair over to the entryway, so I could slip in and out of crampons, repaired the tire on the wheel-barrow, and made a cute cover for it from a tarp and fishing weights, split some kindling, Not much and routine. It's a great relief to come inside, take off my boots, put on my house slippers, get rid of the outerwear and put on my robe. Stoke up the stove, get a drink and roll a smoke. It's almost sinful, how good it feels. Read more...

Cold Wind

Brutal outside, my eyes tear up almost immediately. I thought to walk down to the mail-box, but I feared for getting back. A bit of broken blue, a few shafts of sunlight, and I think the chance of snow is gone. For the while. I had to laugh, sunlight through bare trees was blinding me and I remembered my sword-fishing cap, which has a long bill, and dig it out. Perfect, I can tilt it one way or the other and block the light. It's difficult to imagine a gallery in which there's a portrait of Trump on black velvet, or maybe not so difficult. The halls of justice. I think I'd be good judge, actually, I listen well. There are cases I'd like wade in on, but really, I'm just a fucking outrigger. I had intended to save some pate for B, and Cory at the pub, they're both serious fans, but it doesn't work out. I have a Jones for a thick layer of pate on toast, a sandwich which is about 24% fat and perfect for the season, like eating two avocados a day, or a pint of Ben and Jerry's. No intention of reading Dante again, but it's interesting to read about his life and times. He probably had a daughter, she probably died in a convent, and he did codify Italian, no mean feat, reaching for the vernacular. This period, early 1300's, though there were no paper mills, paper was being made, Dante made copies of his work and left it in monasteries. I've read about this period, 1350 to 1450, quite a bit recently, the last few years, the advent of paper and printing in the west. The hold of the church was lost. What is the church, other a crutch? The music is great, glory to god in the highest, but the very idea that there should be some mediation between me and the world is anathema. I have respect for all of this, the pope, Luther, small town preachers with snakes, but I just want to be left alone, A bowl of rice, nothing more, maybe a dash of chili oil. Read more...

Weather Change

Hard to believe but seventy degrees tonight and forty tomorrow with snow tomorrow night. The ground will be too warm for anything to stick. I thought about going to town, but I didn't need anything, so I took a small walk, through leaves that I swear were six inches deep, then read an O'Brian novel and thought about rigging. I'm agog at the number of ropes it takes to run a sailing vessel, and everything has a name. Nothing actually threatens me but the chance stumbles. Read an O'Brian all night, sleet in the morning, slept, and the temperature started dropping, the low last night was higher than the high today, a few flakes of snow. A few puffed birds peck at the sumac, the wind scatters brown leaves. That first taste of isolation. A wee dram of single-malt. The crows come to visit and I take them a mouse. I have to make a pate, to use some remaindered mushrooms and chicken livers I'd picked up, knowing that small game season was open and somebody would leave a rabbit in my mailbox. Most of the day making a mess in the kitchen. The wind is up all day 25 or 30 mph and the leaves rattle against the house. I turned on the radio, then turned that off and put on the Cello Suites, then turned them off and just listened to the wind. Excellent country pate, a forcemeat by any other name, and I'm glad I ventured to make it as it gets darker in the afternoon and I settle in with a history of the fork. Another history of the fork. Grazing at the island on sweet crisp pickles, pate on saltines, and feta, reading about forks. Called Glenn, to thank him for the books, and we talked about the medial caesura. He thought I should consider the form, considering my inclination toward alliteration. By the time I finish the second O'Brian, the night is nearly gone with temps down in the twenties. A few hours sleep and I had to get up to attend the fire. Put on the thick sweater from JC, bathrobe, watch hat and fingerless gloves. As soon as there's light I go out for an armload of wood, and the frost is so thick it's a bit tricky. I need to move the wash water inside, it's already iced-over, so I'll need to turn on the small electric heater I keep in the entry-way to break the thermal shock of frozen water and opening the door. Winter is when the back door is frozen in its jamb. My reading nest is secure, a fleece-lined alcove with a stadium blanket for my bony knees. Read more...

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. Read more...

House Rules

Especially in Mississippi it was necessary to impose house rules against bigotry and offensive language. Also I don't suffer stupid people lightly. I read late last night, plowing through the Atwood, taking breaks thinking about stage productions I'd been involved in. A large number. I've done things I can't believe now. I never did a Tempest, but I can imagine doing it. Supposed to warm up and be fine weather for a week, which is good, saving wood, and in the last firing, I made a large mac-and-cheese casserole, with bacon bits and chopped hot pickled peppers, which I look forward to eating for several meals. Simple pleasures. I think I'll blow the Thanksgiving budget on a bottle of wine and sushi, maybe an avocado. I make a mean stuffing, corn bread and sausage, but I think of it as a main dish. Stuffing, when it's not stuffed, is dressing, on the side. I sometimes make this with oysters. Sounds good. I have to get to town again soon because the rule, at this time of year, is to take every opportunity. Snow always flies between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I'm set on my reading, which is a big deal for me, and I have months of food squirreled away. I think I could, starting tomorrow, survive. I have a shovel and some seed. A digging stick, at any rate, and soil I've improved with worm casings and shit. Repaired a couple of books today, had the lovely small binding press out on the table and re-cased an old Tacitus, re-glued a couple of broken paper-backs. Made a couple of small note- books; listened to the radio for a while, until overwhelmed by the politic. I don't even use notebooks anymore, but I like making them. I have several packages of binder board, off cuts, from the last serious binding project I ever did. Twenty-six copies plus two proofs, signed copies from a dead poet. I actually took the binder-board to a serious shop, so that the cut would be exactly perpendicular. Read more...

Extremely Clear

An owl left over from the night, head on a swivel. A lovely small thing, probably a barn owl, but I don't know owls as well as I should. The feathers around the face are perfect. Make a cup of coffee and toasted a couple of left-over biscuits (butter and marmalade), take them over to my desk, and the owl is still there. She (I'm assuming) bates, flairs her wings, a spectacular sight, eventually flies away when I'm not looking. Even watching as close as I can, I miss a lot. First there is a world, then there's not. Read a long essay by Tom Wolfe on the rise and fall of Chomsky, started a book on Dante, but then turned to the library book B had loaned because it had an actual due date. Back to the Anglo-Saxon, my recreation of choice right now. Sitting out back, I was struck again with the volume of leaves. Even around the Jeep, which is not under any trees, the layer is several inches thick. The angle of repose for dry leaves is practically zero. A carpet of leaves. The library book is Hag-Seed, Margaret Atwood's retelling of The Tempest, in the Hogarth Press series of retellings of Shakespeare. Several bags of groceries, canned and dried goods, that I need to put into the rotation, so I spend some time looking at expiration dates. Discovered a great crab fried-rice recipe: you cook the crab-meat (one of those small cans of shredded meat) in the omelet and slice it into the rice. With some minced sweet onion this is excellent. A dash of clam juice, a dash of hot sauce. I spend about eight hours with the Atwood and the Yale Shakespeare Tempest, with at least another session to go. I like the Yale edition because it's easily readable, but it's huge and heavy. Mid-afternoon, I looked up and it was a beautiful day, falling leaves, pooling light as the canopy opens, so I walked down to the head of the driveway and stared across the hollow. Walking back to the house, thinking about how good the left-over fried rice was going to be, how wonderful the after dinner nip and smoke, I was grinning the whole way. Read more...

Day Off

I drank a bit yesterday, never got out of my bathrobe. Life doesn't stop and I did get to town, had a tire repaired, today; stopped for a book at the library, then just went to Kroger, didn't stop at the pub. I continue, with every trip to town, to buy a few things for the larder, stopped at B's and exchanged books, picked up some London Reviews. Phone call from TR and Glenn has sent all of the O' Brian books to the museum for me, so I'll pick those up next trip and that should top up my winter reading. I need to do my laundry for the winter, all the socks, the several changes of long underwear. I can, and do, wash these in melted snow mid-winter, but it takes all day to do a load of wash, get it hung to dry over near the stove. First hard freeze Saturday night, and that should help to beat back the bugs; first forecast of snow, I always make a last run for supplies, perishable things, and plan a few meals ahead. Sitting on the back stoop and the crows saw me, settled into the dead poplars out beyond the outhouse and went into a raucous chorus. I nuked a couple of frozen mice and tossed them over. They're so smart they amaze me: if they see me, they go into their routine until I give them a mouse. Clever. Or it seems clever. A station of the day. The book from the library was the new Sanford novel, and I needed a break, so I read it at a sitting. Grazing on anchovies and cheese and crackers. Escaping into the fictional world is such a relief. Much better than imagining the pillow fight in the White House when the Trumps take over. Read more...

Election Day

Swimming in a sea of misinformation. I had to go for a walk to clear my head. I'll stay up for a while tonight, but I won't know results until tomorrow. Election sounds, don't me started. A second cup of coffee and some quiet, it starts to rain, and after a hour, I finally have my breathing and heart rates down. The library called, with another book, and I need to get to town, I have to back up the drinking water and other liquids, and back up the smoked jowl. Samara called, to make sure I'd voted, we talked about sweet potatoes, a subject dear to my heart. In Mississippi we always raised a quarter of an acre of them, not just for the potatoes, but for the dried plants, which were excellent fodder. One shocking thing about moving to Colorado was that hay (alfalfa) could be so high in protein, while the crap we'd been feeding (Timothy) was so low. In Colorado we bought very little high-protein grain dairy feed, just enough to keep their heads down when milking (because they liked the sugar) and it made them easy to handle. One of my greatest memories of this time, the girls would exhaust their energy, racing about a pasture, and they'd go to rest on a goat's belly, and the goat would be just chewing its cud. If you've never done this, you can't imagine how completely satisfying it is to lay down in a green field, with your head on a warm goat's belly. I love the local election results. Most of the people have three names and I find that offensive. Two names is one too many. One suit of clothes, one pair of holey socks, but most of these elections are decided by a few hundred votes, 738 to 559. I knew before I went to sleep, curled up on the sofa, that Trump was going to win. I couldn't believe it, but I knew it was true. When I got up and turned on the radio I heard how bad the loss had been, both houses of congress, the presidency, and certainly that means the supreme court. Thank god, I think, that I'm old, that I've become a recluse, and only go to town once a week, otherwise this would bother me more. Read more...

Grave Goods

Coal is dead. Those jobs are gone. It's heart-wrenching, but there it is. You can put your faith in snakes or speaking in tongues, but you really have to move on. Just step off the bus. It's easy, give up everything, empty your pockets, put on a blindfold and let that old cur take you somewhere. Small game season opened, so there are people in the woods with guns. I wear an orange vest when I walk outside, not to be mistaken for a rabbit. There's a dog (there's always a dog, this time of year), a sleek Blue-Tick that begs the question about having a dog. She's clearly smarter than me, and I spend an hour with her while her owner comes to retrieve her, feed her some cracklings and give her some water. I love the hounds and curs, they're such beautiful animals. They process the world through their noses. And them floppy ears. She (Sister was her name) heard her owner's truck long before I did. Her ass was quivering. I told her to be still, in Anglo-Saxon, and she seemed to understand. Ridiculous that a dog would understand Old English but I was watching her tail, and she did seem to get the point. Tone, right? Language is largely inflection. Old guy and an old pick-up truck, I missed his name because he had a mouth full of chewing tobacco. He came in for a "snoot" of whiskey, and slipped a twenty dollar bill under his glass when he left. Sister, as I suspected, was a valuable dog, he sold her pups for hundreds of dollars each, and she had a beautiful voice. These dog guys don't so much hunt as to listen to the dogs. I used to sit out on the porch, in Mississippi, with Roy, listening to his nephews run dogs along the creeks, and he would know which dog was doing what, just from the sound. I read through a book of Chinese cooking. A couple of the seafood recipes I want to try, so I'd picked up some shrimp paste and fermented black beans. Clear sailing, in my future, I'd say. Read more...

Now Then

Inner voices. A bad dream about falling and I had to get up, to break the narrative, get a drink, roll a smoke. Dark, but I can hear brittle leaves rustling outside, then a voice. Quite distinct. "Don't mess with The Kid", like listening to a Copeland opera. I realized I was imagining, but it took several minutes before I understood I was hearing a train across the river in Kentucky. Enough leaves off the trees that the sound reaches me for the first time in months. Like those monkeys with the typewriters, given world enough and time. I've heard it all, more or less, usually it's the wind, but sometimes a train or a logging truck. In the morning light I see that everything is moving toward an old sepia photograph, an old black and white film, a scratchy recording. I think of myself as border-line normal: my circumstances are different but my concerns are similar. The laundromat, the library, the liquor store, I have to narrow my focus, like blinders on a mule. The last time I plowed with a mule, there is a record of this, the mule was smarter than me. An acre of Pink-Eye Purple Hull peas, a cash crop to sell in Memphis. One good thing about strapping yourself in traces, is that mules are slow, so you can unstrap yourself if need be. What amazed me at the time (I may have been twelve) was that the mule knew more than me. Researching boat-building and traffic on the river, falling leaves, assuming the raft (Tom, after all) and a nudge toward confusion. Read more...

Expressing Anger

Long silences. When I clear my throat it sounds very loud, and I feel like some animal other than human. It's still and quiet after the rain. I open up the house and take a mug of coffee out back, sit on the stoop. The dust is washed away and the last colors of fall sparkle in the morning light. I drift into the middle-distance, where vision blurs. Remembering the past is tricky business. Surprisingly, last time I was with my sister and we were talking about the past, we agreed on many particulars: date, location, the people present, even the general atmosphere. I was shocked that I hadn't made it all up, I was pretty sure that I had, and then my sister, who is steadfast and honest, tells me that something did actually happen. A specific thing, she did step on a moccasin and it only didn't bite her because it had a frog in its mouth. She and my cousin Jackie did humiliate me in every way possible, but it was fun mostly, except for the incident with the frying pan. T H White's The Goshawk in the mail from Jude, and a pair of hand-knit mittens. Mittens are good for reading on a cold night, you slip one off every three minutes (on average, over many years, it takes me three minutes to read a page, it varies wildly, but three minutes is the average) and turn the page. Feeling a bit out of sorts, which usually means I need to eat something. I'd picked up my oysters at Kroger, and a couple of remaindered portibello mushrooms, started a fire in the grill, roasted the mushrooms, roasted the oysters and ate them all with salsa. I've fixed variations of this meal in many places because it's so fast and quite tasty. Just before I left the west, I'd gone up into the mountains, the Little Cimarrons, to catch a last meal of Cutthroat trout, and I'd taken oysters and mushrooms. Set up camp, an oil-skin tarp to sleep under, a ring of river stones for a fire, and a refrigerator rack for a grill. Refrigerator racks are very useful, if you plaster them inside and out they're excellent reinforcement. I had a great bamboo fly-rod then, I don't know what happened to it in the move back east, short and pliable, I could use it in tight situations. I'm not even a "good" flyfisherperson, but I can always catch dinner. These small trout, you just grill them, then open them up and remove the bones in a single deft move, then eat all the rest. I can't understand English, it's so colloquial. I'm left with a language of signs. Burma Shave. Read more...

Dangerous Speech

Rhetorical lines. I have to dip into the flow once in a while, to see if the Cubs won, to check the weather. Trump is horrid. Much more exciting is that the seafood lady at Kroger called to tell me they had Wellfleet oysters AND the library called, saying they were holding a book. It's another leaf day, and they're getting thick on the ground. The driveway is slick with them but I need to get out, maybe tomorrow, though more probably Friday because it's supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow. First passage on wet leaves is almost as bad as snow. Four-wheel low and it's fine except that at the second curve you have to tap the brakes; the back end of the vehicle, because of the chamber graded into the driveway, wants to swing to the left, which puts the driver's side in the ditch and allows correction. Time for correction. You have to be completely focused here. A couple of times I asked B to take my vehicle down, he's better at this than me; now I don't take a vehicle down unless it's clear sailing. A meatloaf is a country pate. I had some time to spare, and was reading recipes for meatloaf, of which I have dozens; meatloaf, with mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy, is one of the pillars of wisdom. The oysters are good news too, because of the warm spell and the fact that I can roast them on the grill. I don't remember where I stole it from now, but having a scant spoon-full of lemon ice on a hot oyster (or clam, or mussel) is a fine thing. The mouth-feel is amazing. Smoked mullet makes a good dip. I was feeling flush, having saved a few dollars, so I bought a bag of unsalted corn chips. Pure corn. These are so good I want to become a preacher. Purslane and corn are the way to salvation. Roasted kale and sweet potatoes. Enough rain to keep me inside. Tried to read some fiction, but between not being fact-checked or proof-read, I just can't take it. So a couple more books join the pile (library sales mostly, where I don't do a lot of high grading) that I'm now calling Books To Be Read Only In An Emergency. As a balance to the stupid talk on the radio, I got down a Latin/English Cicero and read a few decent orations. He was a master at calling someone an idiot without ever being offensive. It sometimes actually sounded like a compliment. I couldn't agree with you more than I do. Cicero opened the door to stand-up comedy. Sarcasm and irony. I'm so unplugged, especially recently, that I miss a lot. I'd rather be looking at a small blue flower in the median. Or watching leaves fall. Or making a great mac and cheese with bacon bits and minced peppers. I just enjoy myself, as well as I can. Read more...

Rabid Coon

Ugly sight, first thing in the morning, mangy raccoon slavering on the back steps. Killed it with a shovel because I didn't want to blast it all over my porch. Then dug a hole and buried it, then bleached the area where it had foamed on the steps. I don't know enough about rabies. Last of the cornmeal pudding for breakfast. I'd bought one of those larger cans of tuna, so I'd have a cooking ring of a useful size for something like this and it worked perfectly. The wind picked up, the leaves started falling, and it was mesmerizing, so I gave the rest of the day over to just watching them. The first of November and the leaves fall. A lot of people blow them around, or pay other people to blow them around. I never got the point of that. I rake them into piles and burn them, then rake the ashes out; a button or a bullet, maybe, from the ashes. Occasionally I find something interesting. I was squatting at the top of the driveway, taking in the light across the hollow, when I found a perfect small (bird-point) arrowhead. It startled me in its perfection because the entire driveway is compacted fill, back-hoed from a creek, trucked and dumped, graded three or four times, and here's this perfect small arrowhead. I clean it with spit and my shirt-tail. Chert, I think, or some rust stained quartz, it's a beautiful thing. I have a little wooden box of them, I don't remember where the box came from, 20 or 30 points and a couple of other things, worked stone as they say, and a coin I found, diving in Key West. It isn't gold and it's probably fake, but I like it, dated 1731. Read more...

A Visit

Too early for anyone I know, and I could tell by the laboring engine it was front wheel drive. It's the Highway Patrol investigator, wanting what information I might have about my neighbors. It's pretty funny, because I don't know a damned thing, except that the people 2 miles west must have raised children because the area around their trailer is strewn with plastic toys. Something is going on, and I don't know what it is, a meth lab maybe, and I get the idea that I'm not a suspect. I had Dan in, for a cup of coffee, we talked about life in the boonies, and I explained that I just wanted quiet, didn't pay much attention to what happened off the ridge. I hear the occasional log truck, a train across the river in Kentucky, a medi-vac chopper flying to a Cincy trauma center. Some days I hear nothing at all, other than natural sounds. In cadence, it seems to make sense: a few bugs and song-bird. Dan had difficulty understanding why I live the way I do. I wanted to rap him on the knuckles with a ruler. If only he'd had the Jesuit teacher I wish I'd had. I ran him off, politely, when I realized he was taking up my time. I'd rather be reading a bad novel. Or just sitting on the back porch, listening to Bach, watching the leaves swirl. How many orange days are you allowed? My older daughter seems concerned for my well-being and I can't assuage her sense of loosing control. I have skimpy dreadlocks, a friend told me recently that I looked like shit. I don't know wether to take that as a compliment or not. What opens out, Olson, Creely, Dorn, is different from the inward spiral of all those suicides. Read more...