Severe Clear

Intense blue and the sunlight on the snow is so bright it's hard to stay outdoors. I come at lunch with a slight headache, decide to make a simple onion soup. Caramelize two yellow onions slowly (40 minutes), add a can of chicken broth, simmer together while I toast a thick slice of good whole wheat bread and grate over it, in a bowl, some Jack cheese. Not really kosher but excellent on another very cold day. Suit up one last time, split kindling, cut small stuff for starter sticks with the bow-saw, enjoying the effort, heating myself nicely. Read food essays through the afternoon, put away a few books, go through some cryptic notes and annotate them, while they're fresh on my mind. My usual notes are one or two words, which need context even for me to remember what I was thinking, which I can add, but only on the day they're written, often even the next day, they're more like disembodied words than the observations they actually are. A lovely afternoon, a little warmer, above freezing tomorrow. Reading John Thorne and intrigued with a Newfoundland set of recipes that parallel New England clam chowder. Fish and Brewis (brooze) and I have the basic ingredients. Fry a couple strips salt-pork, minced, boil a large Yukon Gold potato not quite all the way to doneness, slip it from its skin, cut into half-inch slices. Take the scrunchions (the rendered bits of pork) out of the cast iron skillet, save most of the fat for other uses, lay in a bottom layer of potatoes, the cod fillet on top, salt and pepper, dotted with butter, in the oven for maybe 12 minutes, and when it comes out you spread the scrunchions on top, if you live alone you eat this right from the skillet. In this weather, probably a good idea anyway. I have enough Number 6 cast iron skillets, serving as country ramekins, to serve a party of four. A really simple dish but damn it is good. Potatoes and cod, married with fat, is one of those great combinations. When I got up to stoke the fire this morning, I baked a tube of those Pillsbury breakfast rolls that come with a little tub of icing, decadent, but I'm trying to gain weight, and had the last two for dessert tonight. I don't have a sweet tooth, but the sugar was oddly satisfying. Easily converted fuel. Watching goats browse, I realized that if you were sensible, you ate what you craved, your body knew what it needed. Everything in moderation, a little of this, a little of that, but what you need. I talk to myself constantly, I'm in tune with this dialog, but even so, I often don't know what to say. Often left at the back of a room raising my hand in confusion. It isn't easy to navigate these waters even with a decent chart. And there is no decent chart. What we still have is a map that is marked with whole sections labeled 'there be dragons' or bears or something. You make what sense you can. Read more...

Last Call

Where do crows go at night? I've never seen a crow's nest except for that small platform high in the rigging from which you spy either land or a whale. Winter schedule, I stoke the stove and go to bed early, get up and catch the fire early morning. It's 10 degrees and falling, no wind, the cold is a blanket that hugs the ground. When I go outside to pee everything is fractal and crisp. I think this storm has passed to the south of me. Breakfast is in order, the first of many at odd hours. Get the stove cranking, might as well eat breakfast. Potatoes and eggs and toast at three in the morning is a fine thing, a last drink and smoke, or maybe the first, it's hard to keep track. Nora Jones sounds good, this time of night. Ain't no use in turning on the light. Don't think twice. My precious time. It's all right. Wrong. Snowing heavily when I get up, go right back to bed, thereby not dealing with the cold-house problem. But I need to dump ashes and knock down the stovepipe, so sleep an extra hour. When I bring in the first armload of frozen wood, I have to start a fire, then outside again, to work while the house heats. 48 degrees inside, 5 outside. Work outside for a couple of hours, in 30 minute hits. Cold, frozen feet, I finally come in for good, eat a large breakfast, with biscuits. I saved out one of the five biscuits, rolled it out as a piecrust and made a very rudimentary sweet potato turnover. Burned my tongue. About 4 o'clock I had the house warm enough to shave and clean up. A sliver of clearing sky in the west makes a spectacular sunset and twilight, orange and yellow through stick trees. Burn a lot of wood on a day like this, and there have been a lot of days like this. Got my electric bill for the first of the two coldest months of the year. I have two little portable oil-filled electric heaters, and at least one of them was going nearly all the time, still the bill was just $112, which is enormous for me (usually $35), but as it is the total heating bill, not all that bad. Can greatly improve the tightness of the house, now that Child Support is over. Buy a pancake compressor and trim out the doors and windows; a case of spray foam to seal the rigid foam between the joists in the floor; a finish floor, maybe finish the siding. No apologies for being lazy, just that I only had $25,000 to build this place, which is $19.29 a square foot, and I had five months to do it, mostly solo. It's sloppy, but most people like it. Fits me like a glove, but it isn't finished, and it isn't tight. If I improve the functioning of the house, and streamline the firewood system, I think I'm good to go for a few more years. Then I might need a four-wheeler, and pay someone to cut firewood. Pegi said something the other day, I just blew it off, that I was the most fulfilled person she had ever met, that I was doing exactly what I wanted to do. I thought about that today, freezing my ass off, and she's correct, I am doing what I want to do. I don't exactly enjoy freezing my ass off, but it is a real connection, not something fabricated electronically. Mostly you set the thermostat and pay the gas bill: in the real world someone cuts trees, mines coal, enriches uranium, something to generate heat. I most admire the Arctic Indians, ice is a great insulator and a seal-oil lamp might keep you from freezing, barely, but that's enough, to survive. Read more...

Cold Wind

Up at 1:30 to stoke the fire and I know it's cold because my moccasins stick to the porch planks. At least the footing is good and I don't have to worry about falling. Bathrobe over merino wool sweater and long-johns and Linda's hat, still my breath catches. No new snow, though, and my plan for later looks good, drive in with wood and water, some treats to ameliorate the harsh weather, maybe a bar of chocolate. Survival isn't really an issue, but it's damned uncomfortable, the high plains in winter, a sod shack, burning cow chips. High in the art of suffering I have little patience with anyone else and their various complaints. It's a blessing that I live alone, not responsible for any other, because I'd have to listen to their bitching about why we couldn't keep the house warmer. Listen: driving by the wood dump, where they pile wood chips toward mulch, on the way home today, I was thinking, I could live there. It was smoking in the cold, generating heat, and I could burrow a hole and wrap myself in a space blanket. Cold wind and snow. You could hardly ask anyone to join you there, you'd be alone, but probably survive. My lonesome grave. Whiskey has wrecked my body, but it makes no difference. The sun don't shine any more. The rain falls down around my door. What a pale cold moon. Human kindness overflowing, I think it's going to snow today. The winds of change, Willie Nelson, the water six feet high. I'm as happy as a man can be, sail away. Come on up to the house. Got back to sleep around 3:30, then back up for good at 6:30. Forecast says snow, but not until after midnight, not supposed to get above freezing for 4 or 5 days, very cold. Driveway is frozen hard so I walk down and drive up with Mackletree firewood, 5 pieces 30 inches long 12 in diameter, off-load them about 50 yards from the house because of the puddles. I have issues with the puddles and if I broke them up now they'd freeze into a jagged mess, a danger to tire sidewalls. Drive back down, stop on Mackletree and get 6 more pieces of wood, go work at the museum for a few hours, sanding the patches, knock off after lunch and do a large shop at Kroger, pick up my gallon jugs (Green Tea gallon jugs are the absolute best and strongest, I fill them, for 39 cents a gallon, at Kroger, osmose filtered) of drinking water, head home. Less than twenty degrees and overcast, the driveway is solid, back in to where I dumped the other wood. Two trips with groceries, four trips with water, then 11 trips with firewood, take the truck back down, walk back up, roll a celebratory smoke. Restocked but forgot the bar of chocolate. Cut and split some dry oak beam ends I had under the house, great wood to have for really cold weather because they peg the stove quickly. I'm set, I think. Hope to get out again tomorrow so I can help D cover various openings and cases with plastic, as the inside repair we farmed out, water damage, the drainage issue, is supposed to start Tuesday morning. Someone screwed up and got tomatoes on Pegi's Subway, she's allergic, so I have that for dinner, macaroni salad, and an avocado with a few drops of pumpkin seed oil (great stuff) while reading the new Elmore Leonard. Giddy with accomplishment. Like I said, a resupply like this is a random window, I might not be able to drive in for another three weeks; not that is would be a disaster if I couldn't resupply, but I drove in 120+ pounds of stuff, every pound of which I didn't have to carry up the hill. Now I can carry in just a small pack for several weeks, and my menu planning is done. I'm what you might call front-end loaded on breakfasts. I should generate enough bacon fat, during this next cold spell, to see me through the winter; and enough ingredients to make several casseroles. Solid winter fare. Ricked the new firewood under the shed and I'll cut and split it next chance I get, probably bring it all in the house, rick it up under the stairs and in front of the patio doors, because it's frozen and there's a lot of surface moisture. I need the moisture in the house. The bark and sap-wood are mostly gone but it will still be a mess, firewood is messy, but for the million or so BTU's, I'll sweep up after myself. Temps are plunging, it'll be close to zero tonight. I'm dressed oddly, but I'm comfortable in my skin. The world as I know it. Tammy, at work, was matchmaking, wanted to set me up with someone, and I thought about it briefly, but I couldn't live with someone, now, I've forgotten how to compromise. Relationships are all about compromise, and I'm not putting that down, I'd love to sleep with another warm body, but I can't, because our agendas don't mesh; I get up to pee or stoke the fire, maybe get another drink and roll a smoke. My world. Which I struggle to maintain. What I accept you probably wouldn't, inside the house maybe the low forties, the high thirties, you have a thrermostat, right, can adjust the heat. I build fires as a matter of course. Read more...

Water Everywhere

The county under flood advisory, the Ohio out of its banks and the Scioto way spread into the bottom land. The debris fields will be enormous. If I don't post for a few days it means an ice storm. We're right on the edge, calling for snow here, but parts of Kentucky get freezing rain first. I could do a year without an ice storm, lovely as they are. Carried in another large pack tonight, figuring meals in my head. Trying to get the kitchen sink area warm enough to shave and take a sponge bath. Took down all the hanging hardware from the Circus Show, a great mound of stuff, more anchors than I've ever used before, tie-off cleats, for god's sake, every 'J' hook in town (two holes drilled in the top of the leg, the hook hangs perpendicular to the wall, we use them for paintings that hang with 'D' rings) and the usual assortment of improvised hangers. Need to spend a day sorting. Board Meeting today, with Pegi and D attending. Budget stuff. Pegi was a nervous wreck. D was dressed sort of fancy. After the meeting we conferred about the roof drainage, accepting a bid to do what I first proposed; and here we are, after years of thinking about the problem, probably going to fix something that had really seemed unfixable. Maybe everything is fixable, if you throw enough money at it, but this isn't even going to cost that much, a few thousand, a bargain, I think, considering that it completely changes the drainage of an essentially flat roof behind parapets. The problem was so complex, it took years to get all the correct information. There was so much miss-information, so many mistakes had been made, so many people had just their own small involvement, knew nothing about nothing. I think the power company used the storm drain as a chase for some cables, capped it with concrete, we know now the interior drain (the main drain, the scupper is purely overflow) goes nowhere. And that's the water that ends up in the basement. I know it is because I poured some dye in at the top of the interior drain and I couldn't get down three floors before the evidence was transparent. I remembered the last foundation for a house I built in Telluride, we no longer had a plumber who set sections of pipe through the foundation walls; we had a guy who could drill through anything, and the plumber came later. It's a better system, really, if you know someone with a really good set of drill-bits. You drill the holes where they need to be rather than where you imagine they should be. I manage tense well, for a white guy. What is normal? Lost power, but it was back this morning. I think I lost a few lines. I do the Send Later thing fairly often when the weather is bad. Down to single digits tonight, and for several days, so when I get home from work today, I split out some very dry starter sticks, to expedite certain and fast fires. Should be able to drive up tomorrow morning and unload some dead red oak, then again tomorrow night with water and supplies. Carried another heavy pack in tonight, in case things get out of hand, extra juice, makings for a meat loaf, half-and-half, an extra pound of coffee. I eat salads, often, for lunch at the pub, so I don't have to carry in leafy greens, which often don't survive the trek. I often wrap an avocado in bubble-wrap. And think I'll probably pick up some very hard ones tomorrow. The way this goes, that I can likely get in and out twice tomorrow, and that well might be it for February, everything else I'll carry on my back. Also, I can get another load of the red oak. Here in the heart of the hardwood zone, so much wood is wasted. As predicted, the ice-storm dead trees from the last several years are threatening the phone lines on Mackletree. The phone company hires a couple of locals, or just as often the next guy that comes along with a chainsaw, cuts up the offending tree and tosses it onto the verge. Nobody wants to lift something too heavy, so they conveniently cut it into perfect pieces, Pre-Cuts (Kurt and Kim call them, and I love the name) and don't want or need them. I can easily get next year's firewood from a two mile stretch of road, and I likely will, but I'll still drop a dozen young trees, 30 years old maybe, because I need to drop live trees if I want to coppice; which I see as a kind of social security, where I could go out, slightly demented, with just a bow-saw, and make my nut. I sometimes burn furniture. Had to say that, because there was a chair, next to the shattered chest, it was ash, and broken, so I burned it. It made me laugh. Call up the chairs. I might start buying chairs, at auction, as a kind of insurance policy. Sometimes they're really cheap and a hardwood chair, on a cold night, is a definite perk. If I had bought all of the oak school desks at a recent auction, millions of BTU's for 50 dollars, I'd be a rich man. As it is, I slog through the snow, what are you going to do? It's the sound of music. I enjoy slogging through the snow, it's a part of my life, you see things and court frostbite, you make a miss-step and you probably die. Authentic, but in a minor key. I don't exist to be challenged, I live the way I do because it satisfies some fundamental need. Break it down, you either want to take care of yourself or you want someone to take care of you. I'm a little testy because even the way I go out of town is flooded and I have to seek another route. If I can just get home, I have a meal planned. I know I can start a fire. Fuck the world, its various demands, I'm a monad of the particular. Even that sounds heroic, which I don't mean at all. Ed Sanders wrote a great poem about shooting rats at the dump, which is closer to the point. I have to go, it's getting very cold, I'm considering hibernation.
Read more...

Enough Already

The snow that was supposed to accumulate to less than an inch finally tapered off at six inches. My road is closed, and Pegi called to say that a semi is jack-knifed at the junction of Rt.125 and 52. I sweep a path out to the woodshed and split enough Sycamore to fill the boxes. Tomorrow is likely to be ok, but then much colder and more snow. Work on the path down to the dead oak, then driven back inside by swirling snow and obbligato wind. In the winter mode of shaving at night, because the house is too cold in the morning. Putting some books away, I came across John Thorne's "Mouth Wide Open" and spent most of the day rereading his delightful essays on various foods, had forgotten the lovely piece on grits. He uses a very small crock pot, one-and-a-half quarts, and cooks them overnight, which I can certainly understand, because they are a pain in the ass to cook properly. Still, for me, fixing them on the cookstove, is the way to go. The stove is going all the time anyway, and after bringing the grits to a boil and putting them on a corner of the stove, raised on a trivet, stirring whenever I get up from reading or writing, which I do often, works very well indeed. I have a serving right when they're done, one way or another, then fridge the rest. They keep very well, and a few tablespoons, nuked, with a fried egg on top, is a great winter snack. I did a batch today, with the last of the acorn meal, using half chicken broth (one can of broth to a can of water for a cup of meal/grits) then discovered, and shocked, that I was out of butter AND cheese. I fried the egg in extra bacon fat, the gods forgive me, and it was so good that I immediately had another round. Fortified thus I bring in several armloads of wood, and, as I'm suited up, go for a walk down the logging road. Blood markings around a spot where the fox killed some little something. My three crows show up from nowhere, I didn't see them coming, establish their command post near the outhouse, then follow me on my walk. I think I'm on the Bird Channel, the way they comment. It's like they're interviewing me, I tell them to fuck off, but in a nice way, and they add a coda in a language I'm don't understand. There are two Pileated Woodpeckers working several trees over on the power easement, and I have a favorite stump at the top; I'm carrying the small winter-walk pack, so I have my foam pad, use one side to knock the snow off the stump, then sit on the other side and roll a smoke. I look in the pack, because I'm not really an orderly person, and wonder what I had put there, and added to over time. Mostly never use anything but the foam pad, but a list of things in the pack is interesting. Everything given to me by someone else, I bought none of this, the heat pads activated by flexing, the power bars, a space-blanket, a bar of chocolate, the box of matches sealed in wax. I don't know, I think you live in your world and I think I live in mine. Everything is relative. I'm amazingly stupid when it comes, when it comes to what anyone means. You and whatever. I assume you as a matter of ways.You and me, babe, the various byways. I could assume I meant what I thought I was saying. Read more...

The Race

Knew weather was moving in this afternoon, so stepped in up a notch. Had to take the truckload of drinking water back to the museum, where they won't freeze, I'll bring them home one or two at a time. Library, Liquor Store, home, where I carry in two gallons of water. Outside I split kindling and small stuff. I'll only use pine for kindling from now on, stove is too efficient, and I have to damp it down before the pine is burned as starter sticks, and end up with too much pitch. Poplar is perfect for small stuff. Oak, of course, works for anything. Fill all the boxes, cut everything in the shed, bring another rick in from outside. Temps falling, sleet makes walking treacherous. Take the last of the rainwater inside. Start a fire (the house is cold already) put water on to heat, go back out and start cutting a path to the standing dead Chestnut Oak, which will see me through the year. I put it at about 150 feet from the driveway, estimate between 50 and 60 carries. It's a perfect harvest, no branches, but the top is split into three-tine fork, two 12 footers and a 16, six inches tapering to four. Maybe a cord of wood, maybe not quite, and exactly what I need. Sleet changing to snow and the wind picks up, swirling flakes. I got the path a quarter of the way in just an hour, but it's snowing hard and I'm dirty again, and I'm hungry. It's beautiful out, a quick inch of snow, but my feet are cold. The snow sticks to everything because everything was wet two hours ago. So white, so perfect, so very like a whale. Ablutions, then I am, by god, seriously hungry, and I make a chicken noodle dish, using canned chicken, egg noodles and chicken broth, a few other things, that I serve myself on a bed of mashed potatoes. It should cover the bases. For dessert I have cheese grits with a shirred egg and a piece of toast with butter and jam. I'm worn out. I feel like I need to sleep for the rest of the winter, individual muscles in my hands are sore, there's a muscle in the back of my right thigh that wants to cramp. I feel good, actually, beat, but actual. Good enough. Read more...

Rainy Fog

Visibility down to 100 feet, nothing stirring, rain all day. Harvest rainwater, and as this is the last day above freezing in the long-range forecast, heat the house and put water on for a bath, shave and hair wash. Put the pot on the edge of the stove and go for a walk during a lull. The low-lands are flooding, but I should be able to get out tomorrow. I make a list of my needs then cross out half of the items as not absolutely necessary. Haven't driven up to the house in so long, weeks, that the larder is slim, I'm out of onions, for instance, but cook a small pot of black beans with dehydrated onions, garlic and dried herbs that's really quite good. Need to carry in some eggs and dried milk and I could live on cornbread and beans for a very long time. Rikki Lee Jones on the radio, what a voice. I was listening while I put books away, there were 50 on the coffee table and the piles had become precarious, problem is that when I put something away, I almost always pull out another that catches my eye. No net gain here, but I do end up with a new sequence of reading. All non-fiction, I get my fiction from the library and most of it, recently, has been crap. Even the newest Ian Rankin fell apart for me, typos and factual errors, doesn't anyone proof-read anything anymore? Winter, living alone, bad weather coming, I have piles of wood inside, I have piles of clothes on handy chairs, an assortment of hats and mufflers on the dining table, my winter tools leaning against the wall near the back door. Now that the girls are gone, I need a smaller house, something I could heat with a light-bulb. A cave would do, except for the books, and I need the books, but I could fit all my necessary things in 900 sq ft and without an upstairs, though that would deny me a staircase. I do love building stairs, and it seems to be a discipline I understand in a fundamental way, the last several sets of stairs I've built are very nice. Mine, here, blow out the stops; after years of having built them, they still take my breath away. They were the final brick, really, in the chain of reasoning, that allowed the materials to speak for themselves. You need a certain competence with tools, but that's rote, you can learn to run a saw; the rest, the larger part, is paying attention to what the material wants to do. I think about doing a Staircase Show with Pegi, how her girls could slink between the treads. Mountaintop coal removal is a joke, the overburden has to go someplace, you block drainage and something backs up; the classic case, you fuck with nature, and she bites you on the ass. Read more...

Headway

Just a few hours in the closed museum and I make enormous headway against the mess. Get the floor cleared, a rough cleaning, but all I care about now, because I need to make more mess before the restoration is complete. I shuffled the list of chores, needed to create the semblance of order, before I could move on. When building a house, the final couple of hours are dedicated to cleaning (on my job-sites) because it makes progress possible on Monday morning. When I was stage managing, last thing I did every night, before setting the ghost light (all theaters leave a light, always a bare bulb in a shade-less floor-lamp, in the middle of the stage every night) was vacuum the floor of the set. A poke at order. Lunch with D at the pub. I'm so politically incorrect discussing some things that bother me, that it bothers me. I'm more concerned about where this new batch of moisture hits the dip in the jet stream, which is either just south or north of me. Columbus is going to get hammered, but that's a hundred miles away. Latitude and altitude. Attitude, for that matter, but we don't need to go there. I'm willing to pay a little bit more for subsistence if I don't have to talk a line of talk. I'm willing to pay for my independence, a coward in so many ways, I never confront anyone, I'd rather wear overalls and look homeless. Because of the dry-skin-splits I have to change fingers, and I make a lot more mistakes. Typing has never been easy for me. I can build a house, from found materials, but I never learned to type. My hands, right now, are beat to shit, I can barely write my name; every time I pick up something, I consider what I expect my fingers to do, whether or not they might reasonably be expected to do anything. When you live close to the ground, nothing prepares you for winter. Everything is always a surprise. The simplest act becomes a chore, but sometimes almost nothing becomes significant, poignant (as Tommy Smothers famously said, 'pregnant with feeling') in ways we don't understand. Coming home, driving over the Second Street Bridge across the mouth of the Scioto River right where it joins the Ohio, something was happening. I always drive this stretch slowly, looking closely at where the rivers merge, usually looking down, where the different colors swirl, but something catches my eye up in the air. A ragged crow, coming in for a sloppy landing on one of the streetlights, no one behind me, I have to stop. There's a single crow on every single streetlight as far as the eye can see. A small thing, and it doesn't mean anything, but it stands out against the gray. Contrast. What we notice. The rest of the way home I'm attentive to the color of roofs, the tops of trees, clouds. Usually I'm looking down, where my feet fall, or at eye level, where a twisted leaf or a burl makes me curious. Looking up is a revelation, the fog rising as smoke on the hillsides. Even when words don't make any sense what we see does. When the world is called up yonder I believe. A crow can do this, a beaver, a kingfisher, the break of light on a piece of ice held in shadow. The visible world is a wonder. I'm speechless. Walking in tonight, there was a deer on the opposite slope, aware of me and me of it. We were both being careful. She would lift her front paw and stamp it delicately and I'd take a couple of steps. Richie Havens, open tuning, over the top. If I had my choice between money or fame I'd choose neither. One thing for certain, I'd be splitting wood, a matter of course. A satisfied mind. A murder in the red barn. Is that blood on the trees or merely fall? Murder in the red barn. Tennessee Jed. Won't you carry me? It's all Jamaican. Patois. Read more...

Sara Calls

Goddamn fingertips are dry and splitting, and I've just put ointment on them when the phone rings. I miss it on the first couple of rings, slip sliding away, but it's Sara from Hilton Head. I gain enough control to tuck the receiver between my shoulder and ear and wipe my hands on my overalls. My Professor of Ethics, at Janitor College, Sir Goodly Weightless, told a great story, and I don't know if it's true, about how the side of a boat from which things were unloaded was the port side, and the opposite side was starboard, because of the view. Probably bullshit, but it's great to talk with Sara. I think she's concerned that her show is safely on the ways, which I assure her it is, duly launched and on the road. A show you originate is a lot like a baby, there are concerns. What about the car-seat? Is everything strapped securely? Another reason I had to take today off, yesterday, just to let my brain rest. The quality of mercy. I'm listening to the Bach Cello Suites transcribed for double base, haunting, I think probably the greatest piece of music ever, it draws my heart strings. No mediation. Me and God directly. Edgar Meyer might well be the greatest player of music in the history of the universe. If you listen closely to this transcription, it is a transport of joy. Mary Gray called from Columbus, thinks she is missing a painting, I remember the packing so completely, I'm able to say with absolute confidence, that the watercolor is in the bottom of the box that had the Kuhn "Ringmaster" on top. The museum is a mess, barely got started cleaning today, remove hardware tomorrow, get started on the patch and repair, then paint the whole damn gallery. Figure to work a couple of hours with D tomorrow, shop, hike in supplies, then cut some wood. Sunday I can split in the rain, under the shed, Monday too. I love my new way of splitting, kneeling, with the Estwing hatchet and a little sledge hammer. Completely saves my back, and it's meditative, I can watch for the fox, I'm closer to the ground, not nearly as much lifting. A small group of geese, I had stopped at the lake on the way home, looking closely at the overflow, feeding the ducks, considering vibration, and this haggard band flies over, seven birds, in a very bad 'x', looking like they want to land. Looks like they want to, they drop down, then flap up again and continue south. In a few minutes, they're back, but still don't land. Then a third time. Finally, I think I must be in their spot, or something, and leave. Fuck a bunch of birds. Someone had cut a tree that fell across Mackletree, stopped and loaded four 24 inch boles maybe 18 inches in diameter, all heart, dead red oak. If I can drive in tomorrow, a possibility, I'll bring in water and wood and go back for another load. Logistics. Living remote carries its own set of rules. What do you need, in what order, and how much does it weigh? I brought in some dried beans, pintos and great northern, a pound of smoked jowl, onions, several artichokes, whiskey, juice, cream, an acorn squash, some key lime juice and a pie-shell. I'll make sense of this later, over pie and coffee. Read more...

Hard Put

Exhausted, I sleep a few hours early, then get up to eat again, and stoke the fire. The same thing, really. I was burning body fat I didn't have, so I'm eating an extra meal, now, later in the evening. Something based on mashed potatoes or acorn meal, a few pancakes with an egg over easy, three crab cakes, a protein shake with a banana, a cold can of pork and beans right from the can. This isn't a pretty meal, or even anything I'd describe at length. Tonight I killed off the pate, with enough cheese and crackers to slow a horse. I'm eating a lot right now, 3 or 4 thousand calories a day, as I've said about living in Telluride, eating until I get tired of chewing. And it's still not quite enough. Fighting the cold, climbing the hill, requires energy, and something must be burned. I'm hitting my stride, walking up the driveway this afternoon, with a light pack, thinking life was easy, this is all you have to carry. I'm stronger now, than I was a month ago; and I love this feeling, that I get every year, that I can do this, live this way. That my body acclimates. I know what to do, and I know how to do it, and I'm careful. I can't afford damage now and you should see how careful I am, walking down with my mop-handle, my crampons. Someone tried to drive up the driveway today, the evidence is clear, they hit the first stump and slid into the ditch. I just read sign, a simple pilgrim, looks like something happened. Finally got back to sleep just before dawn. When I got up for good, I called Pegi at the museum, begged a personal day, desperately needing to clean house, wash a few things. Must have burned a cord of wood in the first three weeks of the year, and that makes a mess. The cold weather, then that ill-timed function, then getting the show wrapped and delivered, I let everything else slide. Spend the morning vacuuming corners, get outside and split some wood before the afternoon rains. Clean out the fridge, heat water, do dishes; heat more water toward cleaning myself, by mid-afternoon I feel considerably more human, less a pariah. Jumping tenses, a product of leaving the computer on and joking notes throughout the day. Remembered things are often past. Right now I'm making grits, slowly, and stop to remember something, I forget what, get up and stir the grits, remember what it was. Rolling out of Columbus, the form of that landscape, glacial sediment in rolling piles. Kame. An hour long discussion of Darwin on the radio and not a single mention of Alfred Wallace. I can't believe it. Cheese grits and biscuits on a gray rainy afternoon are fine things. For 4 servings, grate in half a pound of sharp cheddar, add a couple of tablespoons of butter, a dozen grinds of black pepper. Usually plop a shirred egg on top. I do these in a funny little cast iron skillet that I think are sold as novelties, mine holds just a single large egg, is well seasoned, requiring just a dab of bacon fat to do a perfect egg. I find I can control the consistency of the yolk better this way than frying. If the oven is too hot, I do them on the corner of the stove top with a few drops of sherry and a cute little Pyrex lid that must have been with a dish, at one time, that was also a joke. Or maybe not, I don't know a lot about the history of dishes. Well, that's not quite true. It could have been the lid for a ramekin. Do ramekins have lids? At any rate it fits the little skillet quite well, and I can watch, which is critical, if you're after the perfect egg. John Thorne has an excellent essay on toast in "Mouth Wide Open", a book I strongly recommend. Rain coming in from the wrong direction, which explains why it's rain. I put out my buckets, amazed at how primitively my water collection system has devolved. When I finally get a roof on the back porch, remember that February is my first month of not paying child support, the entire water collection system will be upgraded. The problem, in this zone of ice and snow, is gutters. They rip away, under shear weight, when ice or snow releases from the enameled metal roof. I know I can build a 12 foot section of gutter, the width of the porch, that would be almost indestructible, and it would gather water from 300 square feet of roof, which is enough for my needs. I don't know the algorithm and couldn't do the math anyway, 300 square inches of roof, 40 inches of rain a year, and I'd be able to harvest the rainwater without getting wet. This a nod toward aging. As required, I could eventually rig this with a set of pulleys, so that I never actually had to lift the bucket; lower it onto a dolly and wheel it inside. The Cadillac of water collection systems. The wind is confused, and the direction of rain swings around. It's somber out, and gray. My sister wonders why I live this way, there's nothing I can say. Just because. Read more...

Welfare State

D and I were out back, having a smoke, busting our asses to get this show packed, and the welfare boyfriend shows up, bumming a cigaret, which he can't roll, because he cut his finger on a broken crack pipe. If we understand him correctly, he's hard to understand; he can't believe he actually has to work nine and a half hours a week to qualify for his disability check. I want to just shoot him, but D rolls him a cigaret from my tobacco and we go back inside so we don't have to listen to him mumble. I don't trust someone who isn't willing to work, call it profiling or whatever. That was Saturday, I think. Today, James and I had no problem getting the rest of the show packed, load the truck tomorrow, then off to Columbus. The gallery there is in a state building, difficult of egress in these times, but they have a truck elevator, which should be cool. Probably get home late tomorrow. Late this winter, early spring, I'm going to drop 6 or 8 smallish trees, all oaks, all right on the upper reach of the driveway, so an easy carry, cut them to length, and wall the woodshed with them. I'll cut them before the sap rises. I'm going to build that saw buck I was imagining. Save my back. Picked up another couple of pre-cut pine boles, at the Wood Dump, for next year's kindling. I want 3 cords of oak, and whatever else I can scrounge; I burn about 4 cords a year, I think, but the way I work wood, I've never really known, and I'd like to know, more precisely. In winter I can hear the trains in Kentucky, across the river, maybe five miles, as the crow flies, and it's hard not to make up country songs. I had a good one going today, the refrain was "but she left me, and took my truck, and I don't know what I'm going to do..." and I'd plug in stanzas depending on what I was doing at the moment. Some of them were very funny and I wondered at my ability to amuse an audience of one. My sister calls and we talk about the mental and physical condition of the parents, what would be best, what could be done; they're 90 and 85, and my brother, 54, lives at home, runs all their errands in exchange for a free ride. It's complex. On the one hand and on the other. Rain changing to something frozen. Better shut down, likely to lose power. Did, outfoxed that bastard. Went to bed early got up early, off to the museum. D already there with the truck, smaller than we'd discussed, but the only other option was a 28 footer. Load up the 14 footer carefully, and it all fits with room to spare, off a bit late, because of the care in loading, and miss breakfast. Stop in South Bloomfield, eat an early lunch on the fly, get to the gallery maybe 12:30, unload in less than an hour, talking Mary Gray and Stephanie through the awkward bits of the show to install. I expect numerous phone calls and may have to go back up. The dolls and animals will be a problem for them, they weren't for us, because installing our permanent artifact collection has made D a master of mounts. With several different thicknesses of brass wire and Mapp Gas, he could articulate a skeleton, make a dead person look alive. The dolls are not in good shape and need supporting in several different places. Always hesitant to offer much advice, because as a Preparator myself, I don't want much. Solving the problems is part of the fun. A winter nose drip like I've never had before, a clear liquid of which I'm not even aware until I drip on my shirtfront, while I'm seriously talking with the Director of the State Gallery in Columbus. I just looked at it, then back at her, mentioned the great unwashed and how I was one. D has things to do and I need to clean the stove and get a fire started. We bail Columbus in a hurry and head home, no stops, no savory delights. Good coffee at one particular Quick-Stop. We have stopped, I think, at every place you can stop between here and Columbus, and this place takes there coffee seriously. A treat we allow ourselves. I notice we have a shorthand way of communicating on this trip, and others that we've made dozens of times. A particular outcropping, a stone foundation, the way the Kame forms the landscape, the glacier stopped here, beyond is outwash, almost nothing is said. Sometimes just a nod, pointing a finger at something that wasn't there anymore, quoting a dead poet, referencing anything we had in common, establishes a more common bound more quickly. I don't try to make friends, I have enough already, not that I'm a closed system, but I'm comfortable in my skin. Someone gains admission, they're part of the crew. I don't even understand what the process is, the social dynamic. You include and exclude people based on something. I posit nothing here, I only know I do it. We all do. I have to go nap. Read more...

High Water

Even my little Low Gap Creek is running hard, Mackletree Creek near escaped its bound. The lake is still iced over, but at the spillway there is pressure enough to lift the edge for the napp to run free. Turkey Creek is running spate. A lovely thing, this time of year, wherever sandstone pokes out from a hillside, are frozen cascades. Percolating water hits a solid stone layer and seeking release, migrates sideways until it finds daylight, then freezes. Hundreds of these on Route 125, especially on north facing slopes, from large icicles to masses the size of a VW bug. Got to the museum in time to spirit the dioramas out of harm's way. Did a small laundry, socks and underwear, shopped; left drinking water and juice in the truck at the bottom of the hill, hoping to drive it up tomorrow morning while the ground is frozen. Harvested enough wash water yesterday to last for several weeks. Simply must stay at the museum tomorrow until the last of the paintings are wrapped. Road trip on Wednesday to Columbus, might end up going back and installing the show there. Would enjoy that, actually, but don't want to be away from the house in bad weather. The Director there, Mary Gray, is a sweetheart, and I'd love to work with her. It's right downtown, where all the pretty women are, and near The North Market, where the ethnic food-stalls draw me like a moth to flame. There was a duck in my mailbox, I assume either Shane or Bear left it there, and I make a small pate with it and its organs. Thank god I finally remembered to get saltines. I eat a lot of saltine crackers, with cheese, sardines, black-bean salsa, avocado, peanut and other butters, but I have a plan for this pate. Our light-bulb salesman, Andy, who keeps us supplied with excellent hot sauce, brought D and I, on Saturday, a wonderful Jalapeno Jelly. The plan is to open my last Ridge Zinfandel, sit at the island in my bathrobe, and pig out. The pate is fantastic. I skinned the duck, saved the heart and liver, then baked it with just salt and pepper and a little glaze of orange juice and butter. Cooked a shallot, minced fine, in butter; cooked the liver and heart, in butter, a small can of shiitake mushrooms, cooked in butter; deboned the bird and added that. Glenn had brought a lot of different single-malts when he was shooting the movie, and I saved most of the bottles because they're really nice, and there's always a drop or two, left in the corner, so I added the collected corner drops. There isn't a lot of this, less than a pound, I think, and I won't share it with anyone. It's so good it makes me remember things that didn't happen. With a dab of the jelly, every other cracker, I'm in an altered state. This is one of the best things I've ever eaten. I packed it into a tomato soup can, I'd saved the lid, so I put it on top, then a rock, to compress it slightly. Cut out the bottom of the can and pushed it through, then I can slice it to fit a cracker. A very good Brie and the jelly, some olives. Died and gone to heaven. I limit myself to one of the four tubes of crackers. It seems wrong to enjoy a meal this much. With all the suffering in the world. But I've earned that, really, in the trenches. My footprint is small, I use less water than anyone I know, I harvest heat from a woodlot I manage with a eye to the future, I don't hold this as any standard, it's just the way I want to live. I need to know where my dinner comes from. The mailbox. Cheese grits and duck pate. It's not that I would die, if I didn't have such careful readers, but I wouldn't be as comfortable. As I am, as I find myself, watching winter unfold. Read more...

Byssus

The wrapping for a mummy. How I felt this morning. In the throes of dream, I'd wrapped myself so completely in my bedclothes that it took a few minutes to sort things out. Sound of rain on the metal roof, and I'd gone back to a fitful sleep. Finally get untangled and out of bed, raincoat over bathrobe with rubber boots to get an armload of wood, start a fire, set out a couple of buckets to harvest rainwater. A lay-about day. Barry Lopez essays, coffee, bouillon. Gotta get some low sodium bouillon, this stuff is killing me, I don't have much of a salt habit. Boil some rainwater, to replenish the drinking water supply. This is good clean enameled-steel-roof water, and the roof has been scoured by snow. Even clean snow is fairly dirty, because every flake seems to crystallize around a bit of something, and water, reclaimed that way, needs to be filtered through an old tee-shirt. This roof water is clean. This time of year, when I can get really clean water without filtering it, I fill the 35 gallon trash can that is a feature of my living room. It sits in front of a set of patio doors, rendering them useless, gathering whatever stray BTUs might be around. None of the three sets of patio doors on the 'front' of the house are useable right now, except in an emergency, when you'd just knock the clutter aside. One is blocked by pieces of the Wrack Show that I want to hang across a section of wall, high up; another set is blocked with firewood; and the third set has always been blocked by a chair and a spool table laden with printed matter. I don't go out on the deck in winter, the light is better out back, and I have to go to the woodshed anyway. There's a blues song in there, if we could just add a dog, or a lost love, the sound of a train, some counter-point. I have crude diversion devices, to funnel water off the roof, broken bits of gutter, actually, but they serve me, my modest need for water. Direct the flow, it's all you could possibly do, study the gradient and predict what might happen. Kick up a few berms as if they might hold. Seek higher ground. Melting snow plus frozen ground, then rain, means flooding, no place for the water to go. Realize I need to get out, stop at the museum and move the diorama boxes safely against a wall, because the rental folks, from the rehearsal dinner gig, will be collecting their stuff, and they don't know art from a hole in the wall. No big deal, and besides, I need to wash socks and underwear. Buy a steak, makings for a salad, maybe an artichoke. Tuesday we have to wrap 12 paintings, but that shouldn't be a problem, then Wednesday truck the show to Columbus, Thursday and Friday I can vegetate, split wood, take several walks, center myself for whatever is next. I think there is a break, time for gallery repair and repainting almost everything. Mindless activity, essentially. Patch and repair requires little thought. It's hard to express how thrilling it was to get the dioramas safely packed. One of those magic moments where all your training comes to bear. It was a treat, working with D and James on Saturday, what we accomplished is beyond the pale. I can honestly say I have never cut foam more furiously. Folk art is always horrendously constructed, designed to fail, the dioramas are no exception, small figures held in place with spots of glue. But they are beautifully packed, and baring a wreck, will survive another couple of venues. You send an opera to Seattle and a week later you get a note saying it was the best packed show they had ever received. Yes. Because we receive shows and I know what I expect. I'm usually disappointed, but that doesn't blunt my expectation. Packing shows is an art; working well with someone is a gift. Making music, for instance, and you realize you want to fall off the beat, and that other person, or you on another track, understands. I hate myself sometimes, when I just don't get it, but I love the way I can occasionally solve a problem. Me and my mummy. Those byssus, by the way, compose most of what we have of Sappho. A fragment here and there. I don't have a clue, really, why I keep on, something about the next dawn, fresh light, a new thing I might learn. Read more...

Unsung Payment

A suggestive illustration in the dictionary sparks lively debate. Rotten snow makes access questionable. Careful decoration, modest makeup, and the right pair of boots might keep you awake. A heartfelt response. Maybe not heart. Maybe you lead with your sex, as if it was most important. A joust. An interface of lances. My spear is bigger than yours. It's a zit, pretty baby, everything is illusion. The merest teardrop of reality is a staged fake. Nothing is what it seems. Stoke the fire, go back to bed. Almost overslept because of the overcast sky but got to the museum right on time. A critical day, D, James and I absolutely must get all 13 dioramas, and the pesky triptych packed. None of these have any box, crate, or packing. We bought UPS Store cardboard boxes, stout ones, 275 pound crushing strength, in a couple of different sizes, had 10 sheets of half-inch foam, and a large supply of ethafoam scraps. Wrapped the triptych, then sandwiched it between two sheets of ethafoam, reinforced the corners with heavy cardboard, then wrapped completely around with that stretchy clear stuff that sticks to itself, it's called something clever, like Flat Twine; good stuff, we're fond of using it with blankets when we return art. The boxes are sold flat, so we have to assemble them, tape them into shape, and that's as far as we get before lunch. I'm concerned. But after lunch, after we had devised a strategy, we were a packing machine. I cut the foam, D did the assembly, James fetched. I cut 78 pieces of foam to fairly precise measurements, D would line the box with the pieces, put the diorama inside, then cut ethafoam blocks to hold it rigidly in place, James would hold the folded cover in place, D would tape it, label it, draw the necessary arrows, for orientation, and write large that this box was not to be tipped or tilted. James would have already retrieved the next unit and D would give me my numbers, so I could have the pieces precut. The first one took an hour, the last one took 15 minutes. We got them all done and were amazed, it had really seemed impossible, and suddenly it's done. We're so good at this, D and I work so well together, and we keep the banter going. It's one of the great jobs ever, handling art. And someone has to do it. A skill set. Sometimes, like today, it's as if my entire career, a strange and winding path, had prepared me for doing this. I don't subscribe to any higher power, cream rises and shit flows downhill. The temple of the destitute. Mostly everything depends on specific gravity, which is to say, drainage. But we pretend to exercise control. With our locks and dams. Cancer going to get me or the left foot will. It's a dead heat. The walk up, tonight, was treacherous, I hate rotten snow, even crampons are no assurance. But I have a pack full of food and I am very careful. I want a large drink and a simple meal, I would get to my house if I had to crawl. The three crows are at the top of the hill. I want to ignore them completely, but they're not having any part of that, they squawk a hallelujah chorus, they control the ridge, I'm the interloper. It's good to be put in your place by a bird. Makes you more aware of the world. The actual world. The real world. Where you melt snow and gather acorns as a matter of course. Read more...