Rolling Thunder

Rain before dawn, settling in steady, thick overcast, no light to speak of. Loki and his bowling ball, the thunder starts, then some lightning. I make a mug of tea and a pot of rice, sometimes the sheets of rain are very loud. Local flooding, they're already saying; of course there will be local flooding, look at the fucking map. Frozen ground and added water. But I am more than fine, I have a hundred books I want to reread, a hundred I've never read before and enough food to feed a small army. I'm good. I had to shut down, as the mother of all storm fronts moved in. Several hours of crazy intense rain, lightning all around, thunder shaking the house. Spectacular display. I fear the driveway is taking a hit. It's amazing how violent one of these storms can be. I got up and gathered my kit around me but never did lose power. It was difficult to read so I looked at pictures, prehistoric art, then Modigliani's last nudes, then study the Laretto Staircase again. Around six, still dark, it rains HARD; I know the drainage in my immediate area, know where there will be flooding, know that it drains quickly. Even when I do lose power, and then the phone, I still have my little camp stove, so I can make oatmeal and brew a cup of tea. 60 degrees, and I don't want to build a fire in the stove. Spent the day reading about tides, tidal bores, and nodes, where there aren't any tides. I have to resort to the headlamp often, because the overcast is so thick. Power was out for 12-15 hours, and now the phone is out, so I can't send. Snow again in the forecast, so I make a list. The driveway took a beating, and Mackletree, through the forest, was strewn with branches. Not much standing water in the hills, but Turkey Creek was running spate, and all of the low farm land is flooded. I didn't need much in town, but sampled a couple of beers and ate a bowl of potato soup. Picked up some fried potato logs and a milkshake on my way out of town and stopped at the lake. I was thinking about tremendous amplification through resonance, the failure of some bridges, the walls of Jerico, The Grateful Dead playing at Redrock. The noise of the spillway is overwhelming, you feel it in your feet, so I didn't notice a young couple, walking up to see. He was German and she was French and they were traveling about, having attended a wedding in Columbus. We hit it off, talking about various aspects of the natural world. I told them I lived only a few miles away and they should come up for a bottle of wine and some supper. Surprisingly, they agreed, and they had a rental Jeep that could handle the driveway. They were shocked by the driveway, and then by where and how I lived. Fritz said that the driveway reminded him of the goat-path to his Grandmother's house. Marie asked about the organizational system for the books. I made them a crackling and cheese omelet that would raise the dead and we drank a very good old-vines zinfandel. I wished them well, on their tour of America. Phone is still out, now in the third day, but it's only bothersome because people will think I died. Which isn't that different from that I had died. Secluded site, a recluse, who's to know? Barnhart's mother would ask him, several people might call B, I'd be found, either alive or dead. In the meantime it's gotten cold again, so I build a fire and get out the electric lap-robe; when the oven's hot I make a Key Lime pie and eat half of it. A little snow, falling slowly. It's so lovely, I have to stop what I'm doing and just watch. The phone, irritatingly, rings off and on, no dial tone, so they must be working on the various connections, I finally have to unplug the damned thing. Totally involved in a history of Ohio geology. At some point I got out the Raven map, Landforms And Drainages Of The United States, which I have to unroll on the floor and weight down with rocks, and I'm on my knees, with a magnifying glass, examining the Ohio basin. This fascination with maps goes way back, family trips when I was a kid, maps were free at gas stations. A map isn't the terrain, still, they are endlessly fascinating and often quite beautiful. And maps are text, like music is, or paintings. Tonight I was listening (again) to this Finnish Opera, wondering how music could so directly affect our emotion. It has to do with mediation, or the lack of, and expectation. The Christian church charts this drift, less and less mediation until you end up with a hermit in a cave. No pope, no Archbishop of Canterbury, not even a preacher, just a tinny voice in the back of your head arguing good and evil. I'd noticed a blush of green, not when I looked at it directly, but out of the corner of my eye. I think it's the Virginia Creeper, whatever that vine. The blackberries are beginning to stir. Daffodils, down by the river, I was shocked. The bamboo has grown a foot. Pines are shooting out their candles. It occurs to me that I should look for artichokes at Kroger. When they're cheap, I like to buy an armload, and eat them twice a day. Right now I'm enjoying avocados because they were suddenly 59 cents, the bright green ones, smallish but perfect for me. I bought the ones that were rock hard as avocados ripen after they're picked, and I've been eating the softest one every day. Mostly just lime juice and a little hot sauce, sometimes I make an open-face with cheddar and avocado. I'd been reading so much about burial ornament that I decided to make a primitive "bow drill" and try to drill a hole in something. This attempt took all of a day. I had a long leather shoestring I'd saved from a dead pair of work-boots, and a short walk produced a bow of oak branch. There are two main problems: holding the top of the drill bit, and stabilizing the piece that is being drilled. We've been drilling holes in shells and rocks for a long time, and I assumed I could learn how. You need a rock with a concavity, for the hold-down rock, not hard to find, and for holding the work any triangle will hold a piece, with a couple of pins. In just a few hours I manage a hole. A little bleep from the phone tells me it's re-connected. I'd better go send.