Day Two

More mist, thicker overcast, but warmer, so I heat some water and take a sponge bath. It starts to rain and I'm struck with the amount of moisture there is just hanging around. I had some ground pork in the freezer. I buy it in pound packages, on sale, in the varietal meat frozen-food case, so I can make chorizo mid-winter. I like to fry this, broken apart, with a diced potato, then scramble in a couple of eggs, a small can of chilies. It's always at least a meal for two and the leftovers are a good breakfast rolled in a tortilla. The mist hangs around all day, there's no place for the moisture to go. Several cups of tea while I finish with a couple of books, then put away a few because the piles were getting dangerous. Little Dell is very quiet, about on a par with a Servel gas refrigerator, like a sleeping dog breathing. It's so quiet, that I sense a car on the driveway, before I actually hear it, a vibration. Oh fuck, I say out loud, first thing I've uttered in days, and it's a former cast member from a play I directed, with a friend. They bear a bottle of decent single-malt and I knew my day had slipped away. The day, at any rate, that I had nominally planned. There were some essays I wanted to read, and before I put on clean socks I wanted to trim my toenails; it doesn't sound like much, but it was a plan. The friend was interested in building and he was impressed with my knowledge of loading, we talked about deflection and dead weight. He was surprised to find me here, knowing what I did, collecting oak galls. I made them crab meat omelets, with toast and marmalade. Then made them coffee. They finally left so they could get down the driveway in the light. It takes me an hour to still my thoughts. When I go to town, I have the drive home to settle down; when I'm on the ridge, the interruption, especially unannounced, seems so total, that it takes me a while to remember what I was thinking about. Sometimes I never do find the thread. I don't write at the pub, or anywhere, other than a few extremely cryptic notes that later make no sense, because I can only build paragraphs looking at them, for long periods of time, without interruption. Even when I cook, when I'm by myself, it's the same monolog going on. My pork fat and your chicken fat going to set the world on fire. Doctor John. I may have confused the lyrics. After dark, it's rain in waves, this could have been several feet of snow, and it is supposed to change over, but not until tomorrow night, which might provide Barnhart with a window to get out with the modem. I read a Tony Hillerman novel, because I know the country he talks about, and he's one of the only writers that seriously talks about water use and that strange sense of Navaho time. The wind is a small roaring, not yet a train in Kentucky, but a noticeable sound. That clicking is just the stove cooling off. Don't pay it any mind.