Morel Omelet

As soon as the dew was burned off I went out and got enough morels for breakfast. Took over an hour to make, as I wanted caramelized onions. A large three-egg omelet which provided a left-over piece to have on a sandwich at lunch. McGuane's new book of short stories, Crow Fair, is wonderful writing and quite comic. Read it today and started the new Llosa. Edited myself for a couple of hours. Feeling a bit cooped-up I went for a late afternoon walk and the light was extraordinary, walking back home, eastward, everything was perfectly lit and vibrant. I had meant to think about something specific (reviewing the way I spent my time, I had some questions for myself) and I ended up walking around like Sherlock Holmes with a magnifying glass. Blackberry leaves unfolding, buds on bushes I couldn't identify, the sound of water, in a small rill. Forgot, completely, what I had been thinking about, which I think was the point. When I get back I finish a small pan of short ribs of beef. I'd been cooking them for hours, after the stove died out, and I wanted to heat them one more time, so that their grease could mix with the beans. With bitter greens and a creamy blue-cheese dressing, this is a very good meal. I'm careful not to spit on library books and I only rarely leave a note, but this time I'll probably have to pay damages. I got a little on it. McGuane makes me laugh. I got my taxes off in time, I got a hair cut, and I was laughing, about the state of events. I needed to pay a couple of bills (I only have a couple) and go the library, where some books were being held for me. One of them, on head-cheeses and sausage, I've been looking forward to. B's brother Ronnie has promised me a couple of rabbits if he gets a share of the pate. A rabbit and morel pate sounds wonderful. Scott had made an excellent tomato and pasta soup at the pub, so I had a bowl of that, with crackers and a pint of stout, then came back home the long way around. Elevation is a major factor in the changing seasons, the chokecherries and the redbud, down at the river, are far along, but up here, on the ridge, a thousand feet higher, cards are played closer to the chest. A great many things, as it happens, are conditional. If this, then that. I zoned out, wondering if I'd learned anything. Not really. I can dry cast and put a fly right where I want to, I can handle a sling-shot. I can saw a cut, on either side or the middle of a line, determine what is plumb, and act accordingly, but all I've learned is to keep my head down, and focus on the task at hand. Read more...

Storm Damage

The driveway took a beating, but going outside to pee, in the clear light of morning, the sassafras and the oak are budded, and I need to leave early, to look closely at the wild black walnut grove that I pass on that trip, to see if the buds are emerging. The walnuts are extremely careful, so their actual growing season, at this latitude, is only four or five months and the buds are tightly protected. A park ranger stops, wondering what I'm doing with my pen-knife and a magnifying glass. Taxes done and I'm getting a few bucks back, I should never have to file again. A celebratory beer at the pub, chat with the staff, stop at Kroger, where, by the gods, there is a large package of short ribs of beef reduced in price, $3.07 for nearly two pounds. As soon as I get home I brown them in bacon fat, then bed them in thick slices of onion and bring chicken broth up to the bottom of the ribs, cover the pan tightly with foil, put on the lid and let them simmer for a couple of hours. While that's cooking I make a pot of baby butter beans with onions caramelized in diced salt-pork. The best side-dish of the year, and the short-ribs are so good I want to call Linda and tell her about them, but I'm pretty sure she has a performance tonight and I wouldn't want to take her off point. Only passion fuels passion, everything else is pornography. Egrets fucking is not a pretty picture. Anhingas. Dugongs. Most of the adults in West Virginia. Shoot for a wet spot, but it might as well be an arm pit. I was looking down today, and I already had collected $1.42 in change, before I found a wad of bills, $110, squeezed out of some tight jeans. Since the advent of skinny jeans I've found quite a bit of money in the Kroger parking lot, between parked cars. I can picture the physics of it, getting into or out of the car. Not unlike rocks coming to the surface in plowed fields. Cory was back from his flash trip to Florida and we talked about the great salt marshes in southern coastal Georgia. I quoted a passage from Sidney Lanier, The Marshes Of Glynn, and the room fell oddly silent. I admit that the rhymes are rather harsh, but these are the first lines I ever memorized for pleasure. I always thought I'd end up pulling crab pots in those salt marshes. I love the smell. Poling a shallow draft boat up a tidal creek is a great way to spend your time. Watching an osprey take a mullet. Watching otters play. Frying fresh fish for dinner. All the disturbance down at the lake, rebuilding the dam and overflow, has vastly extended the range of cattails. Spring cattail shoots are better than wild asparagus, with a nod toward a fruity vinaigrette, and the sure knowledge that you can gather a meal in just a few minutes. Food, fuel, is almost never the issue, what is at stake is your soul. I flip through the deck, the tarot of the moment, and I advise you to cook some greens. Read more...

Thunder Storm

Years since I've seen so much lightning. Rolling thunder, driving rain. No way to sleep, so I got a wee dram and rolled a smoke, sat on the sofa and watched for several hours. Epic fireworks and sound, I saw lightning hit a tree. The power went out, but it didn't matter. I wanted to see what the water had done, so I drove into town. The overflow at the lake was running full and Turkey Creek, below, was in full spate. At the race track the water level was up eight or ten feet (the top of the refreshment stand window) and the Scioto was roiling into the Ohio. A spectacular display of power. I went to the library and everyone was talking about the storm, got the new McGuane and the new Llosa. I had dawdled at so many places it was after lunch time and I was starved, stopped at the pub, and the special was a fried oyster plate, expensive, for me, for lunch, but I knew it would serve me for dinner too. A glorious surprise. I love oysters, have raised them and harvested many bushels, and these were very good. I have to go back to town tomorrow (I know this is terrible planning, but I needed a bit of the outside world) for my HR Block appointment with Ruth and if they're still serving oysters, another round. I got the bi-annual haircut today, and Mr. Bender trimmed my beard and eyebrows; his task, I told him, was to make me more presentable, I had been scaring small children in the supermarket. It's warm enough, when I get home, that I heat water and take a bath in the sheep-watering trough out on the front deck. It feels great to scrub off the winter layer of scales and flaking skin, dry off, then rub lotion into my feet and legs. The left-over oyster plate, with some English cheese and pickles, makes a lovely dinner. I'll take some grief about my spruced appearance at the pub, but I haven't felt this good in several months. I start a laundry basket of winter things that need to be washed and put away, then cull through clothing, things I never wear, that need to go to the Goodwill. I need a heavy wool shirt, the Black Watch I've been wearing for 15 years is worn through at the elbows, and I need another twelve-pack of black cotton socks, but my demands are not that extreme. That we are not virgins. That the ruts in the road are quite apparent. Maybe you've never had sausage gravy on biscuits. Heaven forbid. Where I come from, gravy was a beverage. Red-Eye gravy was a staple in my youth, Mom made it with just the flick of the wrist. Her version was black coffee in pan drippings from breakfast ham slices. A vinaigrette among the thickened gravies and sauces, thin, greasy, and salty, but on an opened, hot fresh biscuit, it is divine. I was spoiled early by good home cured hams, and, perforce, as they can't be found anymore, I've been a life-long student of curing meat. You start with salt-pork, it's hard to screw that up, then move on to Canadian Bacon. Eventually you build a smoke-house. First thing you know you're curing elk hams for Jewish friends. It could be a business, right? Antelope jerky. Eggplant chips. Shade-grown kale shoots dried in the mid-day sun. I got my hair cut, my beard trimmed, I threw away that shirt that was a disgrace; moving on, I notice that I'm using last year's calendar and it doesn't make much difference. You either add or subtract a day, it doesn't matter, except that they don't sell whiskey on Sunday, which is stupid, but easily avoided. Once or twice in fifteen years I've thrown myself at the mercy of whatever might be in B's cupboard, usually Elijah Craig; though once, in a snowstorm, after I had hiked through a crystal jungle, he sent me home with half a bottle of Woodford Reserve. Just after dawn two Red-Headed woodpeckers fly in, working the dead-bark spots on the hickory trees. I love the way they cock their heads, listening. Read more...

Breaking Bud

Conducting a funeral service for the dead fox, it is a male, and probably the father of the kits I should see later in the year, brings ashore a raft of thoughts about death and dying. Fittingly, it's spring, which provides a nice dynamic. I take him down the logging road and slit him stem to stern, so he should be quickly consumed. A good documentary for Swedish television, or wherever that was that everyone watched an eight hour train ride. Imagination pales in comparison. Almost anything might be a good sign or a signal. In the pile of my writing B gave me, there's a section, 20 pages, single-spaced, 42 lines per page, that I actually numbered and stapled together. I'd don't remember collating and stapling copies of this, though I do remember writing it. It was a hard winter and my feet were cold, Black Dell and I were getting along. She allowed me some liberties. I could take her boots off and stroke her ankles, but she knocked my hand aside if I ventured above her knee. Rolling thunder moving in. Rain starts pattering the leaves. When the house starts shaking I turn off the lights and go take a nap. It'll either be better or not later. It's right on top of me now, with lightning, I'd better go. Such a storm. It blew a gale and rained in sheets. The power flickered but stayed on, and I stayed curled on the sofa, facing the bookcase wall, remembering other storms. A thunder and lightning snow storm, with Glenn at the church in Yarmouthport, and one evening in Utah when I cowered under an overhang, eating trail mix and fully expecting to die. Ball lightning rolling up a Ponderosa Pine. When the squall passes it's so quiet I get up and put on some music. The Dead, Ripple. Ozone. Sitting on the back porch, a wee dram and a smoke, the past becomes a dream. Sure, I know I'm guilty, we're all guilty of something, but that doesn't mean you have to stop looking. When I was in town the other day I stopped at the Second Street Dairy Bar and got a footer, sauce, mustard and cheese, and some onion rings, went below the floodwall and watched the river flowing past. Barges pushing upstream. More rain. The river is high and the huge sandbar, just downstream from where the Scioto enters, is no where to be seen. Flood watches everywhere. Pretty good mess of morels and I just have them on toast again, with a pair of frog legs I picked up out of the stranger items frozen case at Kroger, rolled in seasoned masa and fried. The stranger item case, where I always look, is where they keep rabbit, cooked crawdads, duck, and various offal. Many pates had their origin there. First big morel day, I'm going to make one, with veal liver, morels, and ground veal. I need to get a few things in town and get my taxes done. I'm getting whatever I paid last year back, and I was thinking about buying a good bottle of wine and making ox-tail soup. I have an oxtail in the freezer that I need to cook. With roasted root vegetables and a salad of bitter early greens, it could be a decent palliative against the cares and fortunes. Read more...

Mussels

About twice a year, in the seafood section at Kroger, they have two pound net bags of mussels. I do cringe at paying eight bucks for a little bag of mussels, when I've collected hundreds of pounds for free, but I'm a long way from the sea. I got a bottle of dry white wine and a bunch of watercress, a small loaf of French bread, and one of those little jars of artichoke hearts in oil. Only one of the mussels fails to open, and I enjoy this meal as much as any in recent memory. Down Crow Pasture, where I had seeded mussel beds and oyster beds, where a tidal creek (Sesuit Creek) flowed into Cape Cod Bay, and where I often walked, I carried little beyond a flask and a lighter. I'd weave a crude grill from green willow twigs, build a small driftwood fire and roast shellfish until they opened. I always carry a small bottle of hot sauce. You roast them deep side down and use the flat shell to dig out the goodness. At home I make a dipping sauce of reduced butter and wine, but on the beach I just slurp the briny liquid. There's a dead fox in the woodshed, I saw it today when I walked in from the Jeep. No blood, no sign of damage, just a dead fox. Not my fox, this is a male and the ears are different. I'd like to skin it out, salt it, stretch it on a board, maybe use it for the ruff on my winter coat, but my tendency is to just bury and forget it. Mussels and a dead fox in the same day. Go figure. I assume a prime mover who has it in for me. I've certainly offended the gods. Why else would I have another flat tire? Morning walk, looking for morels, and I find a few small ones, enough for breakfast. I would have ordinarily left these for a day, but the turkeys would get them. After breakfast (mushrooms on toast, with a side order of soft scrambled eggs) the day is given over totally to the book B got for me, Harrison's The Raw And The Cooked, which I had somehow missed. It's a wonderful and quite comic food book. Articles from a food column, sundry other pieces about cooking game, overeating, hunting, fishing. Highly recommended. Outside one more time, in the afternoon, to take a bit of air. The leaves are matted and the fragrance is of fecund ground. The Red Maple buds have broken. The squirrels seem to have gone crazy. B noted the other day that they are a one-hit wonder, their trick is that they can do a 180 degree turn faster than any other creature. It's their main survival skill. I've fallen into a pattern, where when I get up to pee, at four or five in the morning, I just stay up and either read or write. At five this morning I could hardly wait to get out of bed, brew a double espresso, and start reading the Harrison, waiting for enough light to hunt mushrooms. Thank god I picked up a back-up pound of butter. Read more...

Library Service

B calls and he has a book for me that I'd had him get through university channels. I told him I'd pick it up tomorrow, when I figured to be off the ridge anyway. Maybe another footer and onion rings. A little celebration. A glass of bubbly. I'll probably eat left-overs and read all night, which seems to be a pattern. It's quiet at night, especially when I kill the breaker for the fridge. Duane Allman playing lead for Boz Skaggs, Sweet Release, then Robert Johnson, Come In To My Kitchen, I look up from my reading and grin. Wormed through another winter. And it wasn't bad except for the six or eight times I thought I might die. Twice, once when B and once when Emily dropped me at the bottom of the driveway I could tell they were concerned. Old coot slogging up the hill, but I make it to the print shop, and sit in the doorway until I recover my breath. The last hundred yards is easy, after a break, and I can start a fire, heat a cup of cider. Nothing equates to pulling up a chair next to the wood stove, thawing your hands and feet, and staring into the middle distance. A wee dram for my troubles and I usually roll a smoke. All winter I sleep on the sofa, so I can feed the stove, but in the spring I move back upstairs, which entails moving all of the winter clothes. Ash and cobwebs have taken over the house, and I need to clean out the shop-vac before I tackle the corners. Cleaning the shop-vac is a truly awful chore. The foam filter and the paper filter are thick with crap and that has to be knocked out, against a tree, and the dust is horrible. Usually penitents are eliminated at this point. They either have allergies or an aversion to beating anything against a tree. I boil water and gird my loins. Spring cleaning. I had no idea I was such a slob. Read more...

Turkeys

There must be a spring hunting season for turkeys because I've noticed pick-up trucks at all the pull-off places in the forest. I often hear them going to roost in the evening. They piss me off, eating my mushrooms, but I love watching them; large serious birds scratching through the mast. Just at dark the three crows are back, and I take them their slops: table scraps and a couple of mice. I have an on-again, off-again, relationship with a fox, and once a week or so I fix dinner for three crows, otherwise I'm almost normal. I was watching eight turkeys today, six hens and two drakes, or six hens and two toms, why are male turkeys toms? And they were tearing up the leaf-litter where I'd spread a few cups of dried corn. Turkeys don't fly very well, they're almost flightless, they'd rather run off into the bushes. They'll fly if they have to, but only a hundred yards or so, and you can track a covey of them all day. I'd vow it's a good way to spend your time, tracking birds. A young turkey, head-shot and plucked while still warm, makes a fine meal, crisp skin and gristle sucked off the bone. Only, of course, if I had accidentally killed a young turkey. Or as Ms. Rawlins might have cooked a pea-hen that might have tried to cross the road. Birds are really dumb. Jeep killed grouse are a staple of my diet. Pluck them while they're still warm, grill them on a rack or over an open fire, and suck the bones. Bird marrow could make you light enough to fly. Marjorie was pre-feminist and on point. She, and MFK Fisher laid the ground-work. A patchy day, then all gray. I went for a walk of long duration and short distance, looking for morels, finding a few; then the afternoon and evening reading a pretty good novel, Too Cool, Duff Brenna: then making rice and having the chorizo mix on top of that and eating a lot of it. I wished I'd had a big old-vines zin but I made do with whiskey, tempered with a maple-sap icicle. Nothing if not resourceful. I have to say, a bowl of this Pecan Rice, with the chorizo and caramelized vegetables, is very good. I vow to eat a salad tomorrow, or at least an avocado. Or maybe an artichoke. At least a pickle. Read more...

Water Use

Rain for 36 hours, five or six inches, flood watch until two tomorrow morning. Power went out and I took a nap, awakened by the fridge and lights when the it came back on, got up, finished a mediocre Randy Wayne White book, wrote for a couple of hours. Pretty much the story of my life, except that I didn't get outside today. I see some green leaves though, Verbena probably. The ground is saturated (I did have to go out for a minute, to dump my piss-pot) and the fire danger has gone from Very High to zero. They post the fire danger on a sign outside the Forest Service headquarters and I see it whenever I go to town. And the flood zones are always the same too, they close off the river end of 139; and the exit west, out town, involves a slight detour. Detours, like failure, can be a good thing, anything that focuses your attention. In the afternoon I rebound a couple of books, which took several hours. Binding books, I think, is not unlike carvings spoons, or any of ten thousand trades... making pickles or maple syrup... Jesus it's raining hard, I'd better close down. Intense. It lasted for maybe five minutes. Then another squall. I crawl under a blanket and listen to the rain in the dark. Awake with an agenda and head to town. Stopped at the hardware store (the kitchen drain), then the library, a pint at the pub, talked with TR; B had asked me to stop by, because in his move he had discovered a few hundred pages of my work including The Snake Story, in its most finished form. Another copy of this surfaced in Texas. And there was a section of the big book I had been writing about building this house, the lost manuscript. This section started at page 302, single spaced 42 line pages, the attention to detail over-the-top, and I could almost reconstruct what I was feeling then. I remember how I solved a problem. The most elegant solution usually involves the fewest pieces. A hinge can be reduced to a piece of leather and four nails (I use the term 'nail' loosely) or just being wrapped tightly with monofilament or even rawhide, which we all know, shrinks when it dries. Securing my place in line. A meaningless conceit. Some other view. You just buy out the opposition and serve them a tuna-noodle casserole. I don't know why people trust me, but they do. I think it's because I don't raise any red flags. Also, I'm a good listener, though I do walk away from stupidity, and, rather obnoxiously, often supply the exact word someone else is looking for. Hardly surprising, since I spend 10 or 12 hours a day parsing meaning from words. A beautiful day lures me outside and I walk around for several hours, squeezing buds and tasting their exudations. I make a small salad with willow buds and a great dressing of walnut oil and apple cider vinegar. First morels, and I make a spectacular dish of caramelized onions and red peppers, mushrooms, and chorizo sausage. They had discounted several packages of ground pork at Kroger and I bought them all. Sausage is a attitude. I add a squirrel I inadvertently killed. The devious little fucker was trying to build a nest in the soffit and I shot in his direction, just to run him off, he zigged when he should have zagged. Braise that in wine and herbs, mince, and add to the pork, scramble this with eggs, toast with a very bitter marmalade; a brunch, with a double bourbon laced espresso. Strikes me as rather high on the hog for someone in my circumstance. If I accepted a job at Harvard, it would have to be with the understanding that I could kill those fat squirrels on the common. Another book I want to write, Cooking On A Hotplate, or Camp-Fire Cooking, which might be just about technique. The truth is, cooking a Cut-Throat trout on a stick, is a very simple thing to do. You gut it, put it on a stick, and hold it over the fire until the skin is crisp. The last bite is usually fried fish-tail. Among the initiated fried fish-tail is absolutely sacred and holy. From what I understand of any sacrament, this (or there) is where we test the water. Read more...

Seasonal Weather

April rain on the back of March wind. I had to shut down while a squall line blew through, spitting hail, a patter song on the roof and deck. Very intense for ten minutes, then it dribbles rain for the rest of the day, while I drink smoked tea and research the long-eared white people building ziggurats in the Andes. A phone call from an old high school flame, I couldn't believe it, she'd tracked me down via my posts, to which she had been alerted by another former classmate in that network of those people who do that. I'm not hard to find, evidently. She got a phone book online. She'd been reading me for several weeks and it had surprised her, the person I had become. When she knew me, I was supposed to become a lawyer and then maybe a politician; and that didn't happen, I didn't even attend my graduation because I already had my first job in professional theater. Harder rain, and the wind is a muted roar, rolling thunder to the south moving toward the southeast, well away from me. She wants to know how I got there. The where of that is fairly nebulous. Later, after an entire day spent reading, I make an excellent stir-fry with sweet red peppers, mushrooms, and some beef tips, on a bed of pecan rice. Rain hammering hard on the roof. The driveway should be fine and this could be the last threat to egress because the trees will be leafed-out soon and then they drink all the moisture. Between showers I'm outside walking around, rolling thunder to the south, and I'm feeling good, having survived. Only three trips out and in that were remotely dangerous and I can avoid even those in the future, with a little more care to the larder. I'll want more acorns next year, and an additional sack of cornmeal, a few more cans of things I can eat without thinking, but I got it almost right this year, a combination of tinned sardines and South American corned beef. A small freezer stuffed with soy protein and greens. Rice and beans. I cut a deal with a pig farmer so that I end up with quite a bit of sow belly that I can turn into salt pork. Chewing on pork rinds is probably why I didn't seek higher office, it's hard to trust someone who drools. So much salt and so little substance. Still, if it feels right, you should probably see where it leads. Might well be a dead end, but you have to open all the doors. Someone, B I think, said something about responsibility. Everyone hit the exits. 42 trampled to death, 84 drowned when the ferry capsized, and a muffled cry goes out, "my dear sir, what about my check?" Frogs and crows, and mice that I microwave, I swear, I have no vested interest in this. My other self argues that I knew all along, but I'm sure I believe that; I'm just a simple guy, looking at trace tracks, most of them deformed by melt. The real world is just a construct. The wind is blowing. Leaves dancing. I finally just have to retreat, it's all too much, really. Read more...

Problem Solved

I always feel stupidly bright when I accomplish anything that had seemed impossible given my abject lack of knowledge about electronic devices. I now have an extra modem, which is fine, but the old modem wasn't dead. The problem was the fact that there's a new area code here, and we have to dial an area code for even a local call. AOL didn't pass that information along to their equipage. I found that I could manually insert the area code into the call number. Problem solved. I still need new equipment, but I have some breathing room. Picked up the new modem in town, lunched with TR; and Aaron, one of the staff at the pub, wondered about my lousy Internet connection and how that affected my access to porn. He had those of us eating at the bar in hysterics. Amazing what the difference of a few days make. There's suddenly so much green, the lawns down near the river especially. I'm nearly rear-ended, slowing to gawk. I become a road hazard this time of year. The farmer who raises corn in the big bottoms along Rt. 125 had plowed and harrowed those fields and I stopped to look for arrowheads. Quickly found a couple of nice bird points and a core that looked like it was being worked into an axe head. One of the bird points is quite small and very beautiful. After I get my paragraphs sent I celebrate with a sardine sandwich (a thick slice of onion, wasabi mayo) and a bottle of Zin. A Ravenswood Old Vines that is huge. Over the top, fruity, dry and tannic. I like a big, bold red with sardine sandwiches. The porn conversation today threw me for a loop, I didn't know it was such a given. I've bred so many animals, birthed so many babies, and wiped so many asses, I'm not much interested anymore. To be fair, to be with another person involves giving up yourself, some of the time, and I don't seem to be willing to do that. Not that it was a conscious decision, but at some point when and where I would take a walk, what I would stop to consider, the nature of things, became much more important to me. I treasure good conversation, but I really like being in the woods alone. It's not something you could easily fake. Nor that stupid smile on your face when you build a perfect fire to get you through the night. A matter of course. Read more...

Nothing Special

I'd just rather be left alone. I don't really like the way world operates, and I prefer my own system, where you throw out a baited hook and see what bites. My system has been proven a failure many times. The poplars are budding. First buds on the tips of blackberries in the sunshine. It's so beautiful outside, and I have a lovely walk, looking at buds with a magnifying glass and eating a few, to see what they tasted like. I carry a cup with me, because there's crystal water coming out of every cliff-face. The miniature flowers are coming out. You have to get down on your knees to see them clearly. Rodney did a good job on the driveway wash-outs. He's a chatterbox, but I can deal with that to get some things done. He's had an interesting life and tells good stories. A college degree, but he chose to move back here, live out in the country, on a few acres in a run-down house. Whatever the labor statistics say, unemployment in rural Scioto county must be 25%. Welfare and cutting firewood, dealing pain-killers, growing a little weed, robbing your neighbor, whatever it takes. Upper Twin is a tough nut. Hardened locals working hard to eat potatoes. It's obscene, that the coach of the basketball team makes four times more than the president of the university. Ten times more. I love soccer, don't get me wrong, but a 120 MILLION dollars for four years? Even if you have to walk with a limp the rest of your life you could afford very good take-out, have sex with an Argentinean model, or just bring the goats down the back way into the milking barn, studying, all the while, the way runoff was digging channels. I was looking at some sticks in the grader ditch, the way they blocked the flow; I poked them with my mop handle and they were sucked immediately out. I have a certain technique when it comes to clearing culverts, I allow the water to do most of the work, and I'm good at this. TR said the modem should be in tomorrow. That last cold snap brought another wave of field mice inside, so I set out all the traps and built my ingenious bucket trap over at the pantry. Cantilever out a shingle-shim and anchor it with a can of tomatoes, put a dab of peanut butter on the end and put a five gallon bucket underneath with an inch of water in it. This works amazingly well. Got me thinking about cantilevers, which I immediately started reading about. Galileo explored the structural mechanics in the 1638 book Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences. I built a very nice house in Mississippi, from a modified pole barn design (the posts went from five feet in the ground to the roof line, 36 feet, 8x8 treated Yellow Pine) which is a design Frank Wright called a vertical cantilever. Late afternoon a serious wind comes up from the NW. Even the heavily stayed stove pipe above the roof, triple walled steel, moves back and forth a bit, enough to make a sound. Let's see, I can't control water, I can't control air, and I sure as hell can't control those slanted shafts of light that break through the clouds. The house shakes, straight line winds on the ridge top; it's warm though, and light enough to read. Later, I steam an artichoke and eat it with a pesto mayonnaise. I put the leaves in a bucket to rot, I'm pretty sure I can make paper from the fiber. I fed the crows a couple of micro-waved mice, they're terrible house guests, but they do love a warm mouse on a windy, early spring day. You could argue that I indulge myself too far, or indulge them, but the fact is that I'm going to the outhouse, and I have some dead mice I need to get rid of. What better way? Read more...

Visitors

Rodney stopped by, after a day of working down at B's place, shoring up a loft and then moving piles of lumber. B had told him that I had some work for him, and he's going to dig out the lower ditch and catchment. He thinks he can do the floor insulation work in a couple of days. This is a great boon to me, and critical to my plan for the future. Take the load off a bit. First time, though, that I've paid someone to do something for me that I was capable of doing myself. TR ordered the modem and it should be here Tuesday or Wednesday. B came over with the young couple who might move into his cabin. Earlier, Rodney had been in the house. They were all impressed with the beam-work and the staircase, more than impressed, they were incredulous. I pointed out mistakes and apologized for the mess. All of the clothes I wear in the winter are piled on chairs and the end of the sofa, there's oak bark everywhere around the stove, the cobwebs, thickened with fly-ash, control the corners of the ceiling, and I'm quite disheveled, personally, as I was up most of the night, finishing a Sandford novel and writing for a few hours. I finally took a nap just at sunrise, but there had been so much stimulation that I didn't sleep well, and then the sun was in my eyes. A monster breakfast, then another cup of coffee, reflections on social integration, a short walk to check for early morels, then I turned on the seat heater and drove across Rodney's repair of the driveway several times, to pack it down. I almost drove into town, for a footer and onion rings, but I went back home, ate olives, cheese and crackers, a tin of sardines. I felt like I had talked to enough people. I didn't have anything to say, and I was tired of listening. It takes several hours for the ridge to settle back to its steady state, sound and activity set up a vibration, and it takes a while before the birds resume mindless chatter and the squirrels start chasing each other again. Saw an odd bird today, that I couldn't identify, yellow and orange with a black band. I was going out to the compost heap, I had ashes to dump, and table scraps, and the fox was watching me from the edge of the woods. The bird swooped in and both the fox and I snapped our heads up at full attention. I think it was an Oriole. The fox was spooked, ran off into the under-story, then stopped, gave me that regal profile for just a second, and disappeared. Excellent idea for a very short film. Or maybe a part of something, a sequence of very short parsings. Tom O' Bedlam, Emily's dash, Pound and his endless striving. I'm content with a wee dram, and later, the halo of a moon, hung above the clouds. Read more...

Maple Blush

One of those days that start fairly warm and just get colder all day. Rain in the morning, supposed to be snow after midnight. Lovely outside in the afternoon, because the Red Maples are budding out and the and the sides of the hollows are fully flushed. A haze of color. I scarify a few of the branches to get some sweet icicles for making cocktails. McCord has become big in Europe and they're shooting a movie based on his novella. Wonderful stuff. B is feeling good about his work right now, and the work on his house. I need to do some spring cleaning and spend a couple of days doing yard work, muck out the outhouse and dump the composting toilet, and then I'd feel ok about my place in the grand scheme of things. Being focused generates heat for me, allows me to survive a cold spell. Sometimes I have to put my feet in a pan of warm water. I hate cutting off toes with pinking shears, especially my own. I always use dental floss, to sew up anything, my thread of choice. Dental floss is probably the greatest discovery of the last century. Birth control and dental floss. Wind energy and solar panels. If you could bleed off even a small percentage of what happens on the surface of a leaf, you could power the world. Which we could; but there are those vested interests, the Railroad Barons, who stand to gain a fortune. Asses the situation: everyone sells out, it's only ever a matter of price, I could do cost-stress-analysis on this, but it doesn't seem worth the time. What I really wanted was a cheese omelet, a couple of sausage patties, and a piece of toast with marmalade. Keep it simple. I spend several hours, most of a day if the truth be known, thinking about the standards of society. I'm not a good example. I've known that for a long time, but it's not something I dwell on. Yes, I don't have any money, but everything I have is paid for; I don't have any debt, and I can eat well off the land, if I need to. The last two winters, when the hammer was down, I just retreated to my personal tree-tip pit, a burrow I favor, lined with blankets, where I can stay warm enough and read by the light of a candle. The only threat I pose is by extension. I'd walked over to the graveyard, from where I could see another hollow, and it was blushed in Red Maples. There are dozens of places I stop, when I'm walking in the woods, stumps that I remember, places where I roll a smoke, maybe take a wee nip. It's not a standard I'd apply for other people, I don't even apply it to myself, I just try to stay warm and have enough light to read. I need a public library and a food market where I can buy a few things that I don't find locally, but the blush, of that hollow, was a wondrous thing. Being deprived of color for so many months. I could easily draw meaning from that. Red seems like a great celebration. That phenomenon when ice crystals appear in the air looks like glitter. Though glitter is much more difficult to clean up, ice crystals sublimate, but glitter is insidious in the way it inhabits nooks and crannies. As I understand it, they don't put modems in computers anymore, and even if I did upgrade my equipment, I'd need to have an external modem. I've noticed that there does seem to be a weak signal here now, which there never was before, and the guy at Radio Shack mentioned a signal amplifier. I, quite literally, don't know what to do. The foundation I propose, which might be called "Help For Addled Writers" would step in at this point and provide the necessary hardware, or software, or whatever. Dental care, new glasses, a more recent dictionary. HFAW, if I'm elected, would erect huts, in various locations, where idiot writers could wash their hair. And they'd have technical help, for those who never developed beyond the pencil. Free drugs for those that qualified. A certified person to trim fungoid toenails. Free boots, free shade-grown, organic coffee beans, that have passed through the digestive track of a Wombat. Free whiskey and tobacco. A cave for every hermit. Aluminum foil helmets and body armor. Amor. I swear. This budding is particularly important, because it marks a year in which I completely stepped aside. Not so much a retreat as a complete disengagement. Or, rather, being fully engaged in the present. Having no fixed course beyond the things that are necessary, and taking the time to look closely at anything that caught my attention. And I feel fully employed, reading for six or eight hours a day, looking out the window, removing a conjunction and adding a comma, rubbing that itch in my back against a door-jam. And eating well, marrow bones and morels, force meats, various greens cooked with salt-pork and onions, beans, of course, in their endless variety, and hot fresh cornbread. B was talking about ceiling trim, and I explained my theory that no one ever looked up anyway. They don't look down either, other than to assure footing, humans tend to look straight ahead in a fairly narrow band. The height of a door is generally six foot eight inches, the frozen ground is right in front of you. Let's say you're six feet away from the door. Your vision might encompass 90 degrees, one quarter of the known universe at that moment. It's difficult to determine what's real. Read more...

Off Ridge

Following my best advice, if I can get off the ridge and back up, I take advantage. I needed to go to the library and I wanted a steak and sweet potato for tomorrow night. No one was at the pub, so I watched half a soccer game and talked with the help. The museum was hopping, an all day kid thing. Too much going on for a conversation with TR, so I stopped at Kroger, then stopped at the Bridge Carry-Out for cigaret papers. The back way home takes me right by B's place, so I had put a small pack of his in the Jeep, to give back to him. Stopped and talked. It was so nice to get back to the ridge, a small fire in the stove, heat some left-overs, I just wanted fiction and a lap-robe. I read through a heavily illustrated edition of Jules Verne, the French love him, and Poe, go figure. We're meanwhile stuck with Sarte and Camus. It doesn't seem fair. Which ever way I might mean that. I had to go eat, a great meal of potatoes and sausage and eggs, and when I went back to writing I couldn't remember which side I came down on. I packed up my day pack and took a long walk, west and north. The red maples are starting to break out. It's lovely in the woods and I stop, whenever I find a stump, and sit still until the natural sounds restore themselves. In the early afternoon, I break out of the forest onto Upper Twin several miles up the road, hike back to the driveway, then up the hill. I was wasted, rolled a smoke, got a drink, and sat on the back porch for a long time. Birds, a few frogs, the wind in the trees. I had to take a nap before grilling a small steak and cooking a foil-wrapped sweet potato in the coals (I just cut them up with a knife and fork, put on a couple of pats of butter, a dusting of powdered Ancho Chile pepper) and eat at the island. I have one of the track lights positioned for reading at the island, and I spend quite a bit of time there, trying to read and eat at the same time. My equipment, such as it is, is not working. The exterior modem (# 7) seems to have died, so I won't be able to SEND, and exterior modems are getting difficult to find. Cory, at the pub, said he thought he had a couple, the point is that I have to upgrade my whole system. But I can't, because of the trees, and the fact that I do actually live in the boonies. When those companies call now, with their offer of free connection, I tell them to send their best person. Consider it a challenge. Sure, we can drop some trees, line of sight, true north. I might choose to be connected. I'd like to be better connected, actually; faster, able to open files. I feel like I'm wading in molasses right now. I need a better computer, and printer, because I need hard copy, and I need a couple of basic lessons in creating files and storing data. I'm such a fucking dunce when it comes to almost anything. I can read well, and take good walks. I did quantify the scale by which a couple of crows can totally screw the sound environment, the Beery Scale, and I've been written up in a couple of journals as someone you didn't really want to meet. Bridwell, yeah, I remember that guy, I'd cross to the other side of the street. I'd heard his kind had congress with goats. It's supposed to snow again, it can't last, the way the ground has warmed, but it could look very nice in the morning. Steak and sweet potato two nights in a row. I have to solve this modem problem which means another trip out, talk to Cory; if he doesn't have one, his brother will, or one of them will know where I can get one. The classic snipe hunt. I'm strongly motivated to stay in touch and I don't really know where that comes from, there's no real moral or ethic in my background, I can't even claim to be a failed Lutheran. And I only keep contact with a diminishing group of friends. I'd rather just read than talk to some idiot. All day on the elusive modem hunt, and there was not one to be found. The guy at Radio Shack said that I could order one from Wal-Mart.com but that no one carried them anymore. Lunch with TR and Anthony, and Anthony, reading my growing frustration, bought me a beer and a cup of soup; then I actually went to Wal-Mart, where I never go, and the guy there verified that I could order one. Stuck behind a wreck, I had plenty of time to curse my lot in life. A valve-stem leak in one of my new tires, so I had to stop and get that repaired; I just happened to notice, coming out of K-Mart, that the tire was low. K-Mart did have a shelf marked Modems, but there was nothing on it, and that's as close as I came. I'll get TR to order one, and have it delivered to him at the museum, then I'll have to go back into town to get it. The logistics of living in the woods: and any kind of hardware is the worst, because you always have to go into town twice. I've re-purposed a great many things to avoid the extra trip. I could write a book on the history of the hinge. Fortunately I have left-overs to eat, so as soon as I get home I get a drink and sit on the back porch. Spending an entire day in abject failure is a good lesson in humility. So I'm days away from any solution and there isn't anything I can do about it. I could probably drive a hundred miles and find what I needed, but I don't know where to go or what questions to ask and I don't want to drive a hundred miles anyway. When I'm forced by circumstance to write a longer paragraph I tend to brood too much. Open-ended deadlines, and I can spend a very long time considering a comma. If anything I'm even slower than before. I can still write a four-sentence hour, which I consider a goodly pace, but anything is likely to distract me. Consider my sources. Today I was reading Eyal Peretz, Literature, Disaster, and the Enigma of Power: A Reading of Moby-Dick, and I'm several hours into this, the identity of Ismael, what Pip might be thinking. Flotsam in an endless sea. Another modemless day. Warm, but big winds and another cold front with snow moving in tonight. In preparation, I cook a pot of beans, get out some candles, fill an oil lamp. Blowing like crazy outside, a few rain drops, and it must be 65 degrees. Fickle. A small walk, to look for early morels, but there's so much leaf-litter blowing about I went back home, made a pot of smoked tea, and reread a book, Lonliness As A Way Of Life, because it's the book that turned me on to Peretz. There's a great discussion of the movie Paris, Texas, which is one of my favorites (it has a great soundtrack, Ry Cooder), and many things that I need to reference. The leaves are fairly dancing outside my windows. I called B at the college, to get him to get me a book through University Library Loan, and he invites me for dinner to meet a young couple he's befriended. If it doesn't start raining I'll go down. B's a good cook, and the conversation is always lively. TR told me yesterday that his Cincy musician friends think that I'm a fictional character. A construct, to hang his composition on. Zack, based there also, said that, no, he'd met and worked with me, and that I was a real person. I attest to realness. I feel like I'm here, or there. An inch worm, swinging in the breeze. I write all afternoon, the rain holds off, and at five I headed out to B's. Kinsey, I think was her name, I forget his. B made fried eggplant (which he does superbly) with a peanut sauce and a very good sweet potato/apple/ginger dish. I hadn't had a social evening in quite a while, many months, and it was nice to hear other voices. I still got back home just before dark, rolled a smoke and poured a wee dram, a liberal wee dram, and thought about human nature. This young couple, just starting their way, wanting to put experience ahead of money. Which is the way it comes down. B has offered them the cabin, to try an alternative lifestyle, and I don't have any objection, as long as we can hammer out a driveway protocol and they don't bother me. Be kind of nice, actually, to have someone within hearing of a gunshot. But they have the wrong vehicle and I don't think they can do it. Living without running water and no electricity is a big hurdle. You are immediately cleaved from most of the population. When the mosquito larvae squiggle in my wash water, I strain everything through an old tee-shirt; I boil the water when I make noodles. I make good coffee. This water that was passed through Jefferson's bladder. Read more...