Dawn Wind

The Rains Of Appalachia. Started before dawn, sometimes just a drizzle but a couple good downpours. In my Goodwill bag of books was a McGuane I'd missed, Nothing But Blue Skies, which makes a good rainy day read. Knew it was forecast, so when I fried potatoes last night I fried a bunch extra, so that I could eat fried potato and onion sandwiches. I made a pesto mayonnaise to go with them. God, I love these sandwiches. A marketing call from a septic tank enzyme company and I laughed out loud, as I explained that I didn't have running water, no flush toilet, and no septic tank. We chatted about composting toilets. D called last night but I couldn't talk because Rodney was sitting here with his (actual) tale of woe. He said he'd bring the whiskey next time. Tales of woe are wearing me down. I made a great frittata with morels and spinach, and a little chopped watercress I'd found in my adventure yesterday. I topped it with a caramelized onion and a butter sauce. The butter sauce was particularly good. The cold nights have sent the mice back inside and I trapped two last night that had been attracted to my left-over fried potatoes, and fed them, fresh, to the crows when I went to the outhouse. A general merriment. I live to please my crows, they're way better than dogs or cats. They're not subservient, and I view that as a mark of respect. Had to sign off for a while, big thunder storms moving in from the NW, lightning, thunder, sheets of rain. Then some hail, which was very exciting and sounded like small caliber gun-fire on the roof. The electricity was still on so I played the pirated tape of Sara's Royal Hunt And Storm, big music with a point to make. It's kind of thrilling, thunder and lightning and opera being played quite loud. Another very dark storm moves in, but it's a little south of the ridge and I'm not concerned. Then I do get concerned, when a cell centers right on top me. I saved, on the computer, then dove beneath the covers. Slept well and woke recovered, we're all Irish, more or less. Read more...

Tax Return

Not that much, but $294 is a nice windfall. I put two hundred in the bank, had a nice lunch (fried calamari) then went to Kroger. Back-up bottle of booze, then a start on the larder for next winter, cans of tuna and sardines, cans of Mandarin orange segments in light syrup, 10 cans of baked beans. For tonight a got a nice discounted strip steak and a bottle of decent Zinfandel. Like an idiot, I forgot to take the laundry to town. I might go back and do it tomorrow, it depends on how long I read and write later, and the weather forecast. Scott is making some very fine soups at the pub, and his version of chili is quite good. It's striking, the difference in elevation between the ridge and town. The ridge is maybe 10% leafed out, but when I go over the Scioto, the Red Maples, which don't seem to mind being flooded, are fully expressed. So verdant, that soft green of early spring. I went below the flood-wall and poked around in the debris field. Plastic soda bottles as far as the eye could see. There's easily enough timber, caught behind the trees on the First Terrace, to build a house. There was a 12x12, 20 feet long, poplar, and I coveted it. I had no immediate need for it, and, saturated as it was, it probably weighted a ton. I looked at it for a while. There's a complex algorithm for where things are deposited in the debris field. Specific gravity, the angle of repose, how quickly the watershed is draining. But the real reason to go below the flood-wall is to look across at Kentucky. It's beautiful, lush in chokecherry and redbud.To my credit, I don't take any wrack home. I did reposition a Barbie and a Ken doll so that it looked like they were having sex. I got a little lost, looking for mushrooms. I'd parked on a forest service road and rambled of into the woods, got turned around and had to walk out to Upper Twin, then back in on the two-track. Nice walk. Thousands of miniature flowers. I was seriously lost for 36 hours once, in Utah. I'd hiked in to look at some odd rock formations. A day-pack and a couple of quarts of water. Probably 30 miles south of the LaSalles, and it was a landscape of bald domes of some granitic rock left standing when the softer material had washed and blown away. They were pretty far off the beaten trail. It hadn't seemed necessary to carry a compass. Late the next day I finally found some cows, and backtracking their ruts, a large holding pen, then tire tracks, then a ranch. I got a kind of hero's welcome, as I was the first person to ever arrive from that direction. Unfortunately they were Mormon, so there was no shot of bourbon to celebrate. But I did have a nice dinner, a bath, and a clean bed. When they dropped me off, the next morning, near to my truck, Cyrus (Myrtle and Cyrus) said to me that I well should have died; that we had driven 21 miles, as the crow flies, and that I must have walked 30 or 40 miles to get to their place. He slipped me a bottle of whiskey, and wished me well. Read more...

Moby Dick

What happened was an acquaintance called late last night with some questions about the book. I knew right where my Modern Library copy was, with the Rockwell Kent illustrations. I answered his questions but didn't bother putting the book away. Other than a nice walk to gather mushrooms, I spent the entire day reading Melville. Two lovely Goldfinches in the blackberry canes today. The canes are leafed. The birds were so yellow, I lost my place. Last night's left-overs on toast for breakfast (potatoes, chorizo, eggs). I had one last beef filet wrapped in bacon in the freezer, so in the interest of rotating my stock I got it out, before my mushroom walk, which is being a little cocky. But I did find a nice mess of them in a classic morel situation. You see one. You don't move. You stare at the ground for at least five minutes, then you harvest six or eight, then, being incredibly careful about where you step, you move eight feet. I cut them off right at ground level and flick off any little bits of leaf-mold with the tip of my knife. I never wash them. Before I put one in the little mesh bag I keep tucked under my belt, I thump it once or twice, to spread the spore. Sliced and fried in butter, then add a small spoonful of bacon fat, salt and pepper, and thicken. I often add finely minced shallot. This is the gravy of your dreams. Starting in High School I realized people from New Jersey or New York, when I started having friends stay over for dinner at Mom and Dad's, hadn't been raised on gravy. I went over to their houses too, but a dry pork chop and unseasoned peas never really caught my attention. In our poverty I was use to crab-boils, fried fish and hush-puppies, salt-cured ham slices with red-eye gravy, and vegetables that had been slow-cooked with salt-pork. Try this. Get a bunch, one each, of collard, mustard, and turnip greens, chop them, wilt them in a cup of white wine, fry some salt pork with an onion, add that, add a caramelized red pepper, cook off the moisture, roll them into balls; to be Jewish is dumplings, roll them in breadcrumbs and fry them. Chicken soup is well and good, but a dumpling is concrete evidence. When Ishmael woke with Queequeg's arm around him. When Charity lowers in a boat, heading back to Nantucket, she is the last female we see, other than Starbuck's dreams, but even Ahab had a wife and child. It's not the moralizing or the archaic language (though I do enjoy them) but the ballast that draws my attention. The try-works, the jaw-bone of a sperm whale, the absolute craziness of three years at sea without the sight of land. I wouldn't rule out anything, but I can't imagine compromising my position when it comes to just kicking back, putting my feet up, and reading Lorca in the light of a sputtering candle. It's strange, the satisfaction I draw from reading poems late at night. I read Birchard, or Skip Fox, B or Stephen, it's passing strange that I know so many poets. And stranger still that I actually understand what they're referring to. I think about transparences for a while. I'm trying to be clear here.The gel is 'bastard amber' a pinkish earth-tone that makes everyone look younger. Read more...

In The Rough

Pick a spot almost anywhere, build a crude shelter. Take care to influence your local environment as little as possible. There are codicils and protocols. It's fine to rake out small natural dams that form in the drainage ditch or even to drag branches off the path you use to access the outhouse. I finally got around to reading the several different versions of the snake story. All of them, I admit to writing, or I admit to probably have written; a couple of them, I think were ghost-written. It was a real event, but recounted in different ways, depending on the time available or the interest. I was listening to Ronnie tell a story recently, I'd heard the story several times earlier, but I was mesmerized by the telling. All those aspects that come into play, animal magnetism and tone of voice, and the story itself, the context. More rain, I feel guilty, so much water. I replenish my wash water, do dishes, take a bath, launder some underwear and socks. That early evening mist/fog thing, when the ground is saturated and the air is saturated, and the vapors hang around like in an English film. I read Gretel Ehrlich today. A wonderful writer. The attention to detail. A walk, between squalls, to collect enough morels for dinner. Mushrooms in milk gravy on a pounded veal chop. I thought seriously this afternoon about building a summer kitchen: a grill and an oven, with a roof, a smoking chamber. A raised floor of stone. A place where I could safely cook a brisket for 20 hours without wild critters getting to it. It's an interesting design problem, and I spend hours thinking about how I might build it. One could form it up, the guts of it, and pour it in special concrete, or lay in special bricks, the various dampers would have to be fabricated, but I know a guy who works in cast iron. I have to go, the trees are laying down, but we should talk about this. Bathtub gin and that silly parrot; I told you early on to be careful what you said. I view nothing as a good thing. Wait. If they had promised me a cherry Danish, not that they would. Rodney called, late, and I didn't want to talk, he needed someone and I wasn't that person. I don't want to talk about silly mistakes. I'd rather sink into the woodwork. Read more...

Compost Frenzy

Cleared a path out to the compost heap, then turned the pile, dug a hole in the center and buried organic waste, covered that with the stove ash then a goodly layer of green matter. The bob cat at 11:20, then a pack of feral dogs that I ran off with the slingshot around midnight. The alpha dog is a pit-bull cross that I will surely have to kill. I got a large bag of clear tinted marbles at Big Lots for $2, a year's supply at least. A Neco Wafer at 25 feet is a very good target. One summer I dated the Neco heiress. Her family had a compound on the Cape and flew down, in their seaplane, on week-ends. It never was going to work out, but it was fun while it lasted. I went quail hunting with her father once, on a farm outside of Marshfield. He had really good dogs, raised, kept, and trained by his dog guy, who made a small fortune selling young trained dogs. We were working through nice cover and flushed a large covey. He hunted with a beautiful double-barrel Parker and I was shooting a Sears pump sheet gun. When the covey flushed, he brought down two birds, one with each barrel, and I happened to catch two birds crossing and brought them both down with one shot. It must be noted that I had never done this before (or since) but I had heard that it was sometimes done. Good eyes and quick reflexes. It almost made up for my not going to Harvard. Sometime later, after two, a huge male raccoon becomes king of the hill. I can see the glowing eyes of a possum at the edge of the woods. There's a lot of hissing and snarling. I didn't actually turn the compost heap and clean out the refrigerator for its entertainment value, but there you go. The coon, having burrowed through the ashes, looks very old. I throw out a couple of firecrackers to run everyone off, maintain a modicum of control, but I'm left with a shy grin. Either Jack or Jim, John or Jose. Jesus is a pretty common name. Stove ash, maybe a dead chicken, some greens, you end up with top soil. I mention the chicken because I took one off the road recently, which isn't that odd except that was in the middle of nowhere. Middle of the state forest, miles from any chicken coop. They still fight cocks around here, and it's easy enough to imagine a few escapees breeding for one or two generations in the wild, but feral chickens are a stretch. They're so stupid. Still, you think about the difference between domesticated and wild turkeys. The fighting cock blood line comes from Malaysia where there are many more predators. Both the pheasant and the rainbow trout are introduced species. It's possible that the Ridge Hen could become a game bird. Not unlike Guinea Hens, where even the breast is dark meat; the chicken thighs, as Harrison says, of yesterday. I much prefer dark meat. The flavor, plus the fact that it's cheap. More rain, it's already tomorrow, I need to sleep. Read more...

Sweet Spot

It's so quiet in the early morning, three, four or five, read for a couple of hours, then nap, then breakfast and coffee. Stopped down at the lake and watched the heat releasing into the air. The state income tax return was in the mail box, so I thought I'd buy a decent bottle of whiskey and some groceries. Sampled a nice tomato bisque at the pub. Picked up a small strip steak and an avocado. High on the hog. And a great dinner, in the half-dark, reading with a headlamp. Lost a couple of hours looking for a very small screw, before I remembered I had a back-up screw, and repaired my reading glasses. I didn't even need to do this, because I hardly ever use those glasses anyway, unless I'm looking something up in the OED, I was looking up "settle", and I needed the glasses. I could use the magnifying glass, but I always get distracted, looking at dead bugs or something. The screw isn't exactly the correct size, and these are cheap glasses, ten bucks at CVS, so I melt the socket with my Bic lighter and jamb the screw home. It works well enough, though I can't close them up anymore, and put them, opened, on a dictionary of Americanisms. As expected, a good frost in the bottoms but not even close on the ridge. Cold air falls and the ridge top soil is already warmed. I'm in the market for a decent probe thermometer that I could use to chart soil temperatures. Surprise visit from a Colporteur handing out copies of the Watchtower. We shared a few laughs about access. I suppose life is somewhat easier if someone else dictates your mission. I made a small mushroom soup (two servings, both of which I promptly devoured) with just morels, chicken stock and shallots. I added mushrooms, fried in bacon fat, until I couldn't add any more and still call it a soup. This was so good I had to stretch out on the sofa afterward. Served in a fairly flat soup bowl on a couple of toasted slices of French bread. I rarely eat a whole loaf of French bread before it gets stale, so I freeze slices that I can pop out and either fry or toast. Things on toast have become 40-50% of my diet. One virtue is that I can easily eat with one hand and read with the other, and another is that I eat right out the skillet and don't have any dishes to wash. I have started spring cleaning. I started a pile of clothes that I need to take to the Goodwill. Clothes accumulate around me, coats and sweaters, and I wear things out. My mother always said I was 'tough on clothes'. I assumed it was part of the mandate, fibers abrade, knees and elbows develop holes. But she said it was more than that, she said I often slid into third when I could have gone in standing up. First, I like the dust cloud, and second, I actually like the abrasion, where ass meets the ground. Forces you too remember later. I'm pretty sure that was my point. Peter Piper. Tom 'O Bedlam. I have to laugh. I like being invisible. Steph said she thought I should be banned. Maybe so. I know I like hiding under the cover. Are you fully informed of your rights? Read more...

Desires

The wind over the top. Turn off the light and listen. Either Anthony or Joel said something about sleeping alone. I tend to wad a blanket between my knees and pretend there is another person. Usually I save myself then awake confused. Sometimes the idea of other intrigues me, but usually I realize I wouldn't want to be, in any way, predictable., and I can no longer deal with compromise. I can barely live with myself, and other people scare me to death. I was in the middle of a harrowed field, looking for flaked stone, sipping from my flask, not a threat to anyone, and the owner appeared, asked me what I was doing. I had to think about that. I showed him a few points I'd found, walking along the furrows. He took me to his house, for a drink and coffee, and showed me his collection of artifacts. It was extensive. We spent several hours talking; two guys in bib-overalls discussing Wittgenstein. He knew who I was and where I lived and gave me the history of the small church that used to exist one hollow to the west of Low Gap, the dead of which populate the cemetery on my property. More rain and the trees are loving it, every living thing sucking life from what has died and what has re-condensed. During all this spring rain I try and not feel guilty. I use less water than anyone I know but I still feel wasteful. The fate of the planet is an algorithm that involves water, and it's companion, drainage. Fucking driveway, I swear to god, I'm sick of it. Three places need to be raked out and re-channeled and there is a ton of dead leaves that need to be removed. If it's not one thing it's another. Butterflies all around, having a tough time in the wind. Turned on the radio to get a weather forecast and the water level in the Ohio has gone down ten feet in just two days, which, I figure, must be a lot of water. And it's supposed to get cold, but stay dry. The hickories are budded, and the tops of the oak trees are casting pale color. Just in time to start preparing for next winter. When those packets of instant rice or noodles are ten for a buck, I buy them. I recently acquired another large tin (a dumpster in town) that is dedicated to ramen noodles and instant mashed potatoes. I lived among survivalists for many years. The gamut from Mormons to Native Americans, and I learned to plan ahead. I have to close the house back up, against the chill, and it's so quiet I listen to all of the Cello Suites. Computer off, refrigerator off, phone unplugged, all the lights off except for the tell-tale on the radio/CD player. I crank the volume pretty high because I like to hear all the extraneous noises. It's a transport, to listen to Bach for a couple of hours. It allows me some limited insight into the concept of being "born again". Music, or art generally, Color Field Painting, a good production of a decent play, a totem pole, whatever pulls your crank, whatever pulls you out of yourself. I'm fortunate, I think, sitting in the silence, that I've known a great many people that were very good at what they did. Very good. And I'm humble, or reasonably humble, that I'm actually still alive.

Tom

No, wait. That wasn't where I was going. Words get the better of me. Often, the next day, everything looks different. The sun might be out, or the scent of jasmine in the air, something catches your attention, and you forget everything else. Partial Knowledge, PK: we see a lot of this; they seem to be looking for a free meal. B says we should feed everyone, no matter what. Off the record, I agree. Read more...

Cold Again

Chance of frost for a couple of nights. With the forecast rather vague, I went to town to get a few things, coffee and cream, meat and potatoes, water and juice, rice and beans. Excellent corn chowder at the pub, a pint of bitter, and I came home through the forest, stopping and looking for mushrooms. Found a few, but this cold weather will set them back. Soil temperature is everything. I set aside three little beauties that I want to stuff with cheese and shallots. I'll have a few on toast tonight, and have enough left for an omelet tomorrow. Stopped at the library and got some fiction and a book of David Mamet's essays. A woman I know in town brushed by me, eating at the bar, stopped and gave me a peck on the cheek, she said that I looked like a skinny mountain man and smelled terrific. This is good to know, the smell part, because I don't pay a lot of attention. I need to do my end-of-winter laundry and put things away, but I blow it off until my next trip to town. The Redbud is peaking right now, and there's one stretch on Mackletree where there are a dozen bushes in maybe a hundred feet. Takes your breath away. I stopped at the ford, drove backward and forward a few times, to clean the undercarriage, then stopped midstream, rolled a smoke and stared at spring coming on hard along the creek bank. A spray of miniature Iris in the median, a small white flower I've never identified. It shouldn't frost on the ridge, the cold air will sink to the bottoms, and I'll just wrap up in a blanket and turn away from the light. It's easier to just turn your back. More fucking rain, I can't believe it. They should pipe the Upper Mississippi into the mid-west, let it flow down to the Rio Grand, turn it into another California boondoggle. Seriously. The beauty of a water pipe-line is that even a catastrophic failure is just a mud-puddle. I do some calculations, using my hollow as a base line (the math is specious) and I figure that if they all got low-flow toilets and stopped watering there goddamn lawns, I could supply Bakersfield with water. Storing energy, in freeze-dried water, could be the wave of the future; and I'm working on a simple method to capture lightning bolts using pulleys and trees. The rigging would be no more complex than a three-mast clipper, and there would be all of those low-paying jobs, ready about, hard a-lee. Read more...

Spring Winds

All day storm and the partially leafed trees are fairly dancing. The first leaves are so tender they twist and writhe. Soft green. This front came in from the south, which is rare, and I feel like I'm seeing things in a mirror. Most of the day reading essays about the period 30,000 to 50,000 years ago and the fall of the great Neanderthal nation. Mid-day I steamed an artichoke and made a nice mayonnaise for dipping. It takes two hands to eat an artichoke, plus it's a damp and spattering dish, so I didn't read (I read at almost every meal) and just sat on my stool at the island and watched the rain. Rain on the window / changes the way I perceive / green in the hollow. An old friend calls, and I ask her to call back in five minutes, so that I can take something off the stove (onions and red peppers I was caramelizing toward an unknown end), roll a smoke and get a drink. When she calls back I'm well situated to listen. I could tell from her tone, in the first call, that I was going to be listening. Which I do. Another failed relationship, the abject fear of being alone, the cat has a tumor, the neighbors make a lot of noise. More germane, the wind shakes the house. I have windows opened, on the leeward side. I don't want to be pitch-poled in the night. Me giving anyone advice about a relationship is a joke, my track record is questionable, and I do actually want to be alone most of the time; it saves having to explain myself. Thunder, I'd better go. Slept very well and woke to an odd dream involving a pig that could write. Starving, so I fried a large skillet of potatoes and had a huge breakfast, with enough leftover for a folded fried potato and mayo sandwich for lunch. With a slice of onion this is an excellent sandwich and I've eaten them my whole life, standard fishing fare. Mom would fry them the night before and we'd take a quart of them in the cooler, a jar of mayo, an onion, and a loaf of white bread. In later years, when there was a bit more money, we'd also take sardines. Eating in a small boat, staked over a bream bed, are some of my happiest memories, though there are a great may happy memories. It seems almost criminal to have been raised in a functional family. To go fishing once a week (at least) and spend vacations with relatives in Tennessee and Mississippi, who always had, or lived close to, a stocked farm pond where the cows and mules would watch us for hours, chewing their cud. Another rain day. I think about the past, for a few hours, and it's like spreading out a reading of drift-glass. Then read a small book, 1885, about eating insects. Locust and grasshoppers are 50% protein, alfalfa hay might be 20%, a T-bone steak is 14.7%. Locust and grasshoppers are vegetarian. Consider the chicken, or the pig. Consider sucking crawfish heads, which most of us from the deep South do. You take your L/G and pull off the wings and legs, pinch the head off and most of the viscera pulls away. Grill them over a hot charcoal fire until they're crisp. Whatever dipping sauce you prefer. I like just dipping them in soy sauce. They need the salt. First Whip-O-Will, and I can hear the frogs down in the bottom. I'd forgotten how noisy spring evenings could be. Read more...

Nuts and Bolts

The small feeder creeks are truly lovely, flowers and grass on the banks, the shrubs, the wild fruit trees in bloom. It takes me a couple of hours to get seven miles through the forest. In the loop back home, I could have stopped at the Dairy Bar and gotten something fried for lunch, but it's Friday and I'm sure Scott has made a chowder at the pub, so I detour into town for a pint and a bowl of soup. Excellent decision, because I get a free sample of a very good melon gazpacho. I'm going to stop reading about the early Catholic clergy, because they're such arrogant assholes. Indulgences are bad enough, but declaring that rabbit fetuses were not meat is a stretch. What? They turn into geese? And another thing I'm getting sick of are basic mistakes, in main stream successful fiction, about building techniques and nomenclature. The best non-fiction writers, McPhee, Kidder, Barry Lopez, don't make dumbass mistakes when it comes to specific detail. But even very good writers of genre fiction, Lee Childs, John Sandford, Thomas Perry, don't know squat about construction. And it's such an easy problem to correct, you buy a carpenter a case of beer and talk to him for a couple of hours. Pisses me off, when I'm reading along, good plot, good characters, the psychological profiles are believable, and suddenly I'm confronted with the impossible description of something. No, I think, you couldn't do that, even in fiction. Plywood comes in sheets, not boards; it's a 2x4, not a 4x2. Almost nothing is built on eight foot centers. I spend an hour or so putting away books, then another couple of hours reading in books that I found while I was putting books away. This is just one of the weak links in my system; another is staring off into the middle-distance. The word 'blue' doesn't occur in Homer. Red, of course, and the wine dark sea, but evidently you don't see blue unless you have a word for it, otherwise it's just white or maybe green. Post modern, the Allman Brothers, "Blue Skies" and, of course, "Judy Blue Eyes". I'm thoroughly engaged by blue, and the blues for that matter, so I tend to see things as black and white and blue. For ancient Greeks it was black and white and red. This might mean something or it might be bullshit. Cones, and the perception of color. A prism shows you a limited scale. The colors you can see. There might be more colors than that. I read recently that we hold a hundred or so colors in our short term memory. Phlox and Chickory, or a very small iris, Jenny called it a Miniature Iris, are all clearly blue. A prison tat, using a Bic pen, or a glimpse of the ocean at sunset. Read more...

Leafing

Amazing. Rained off and on all day, sometimes hard, in sheets that swept across the ridge. My favorite Gunter Grass is probably The Flounder, I need to reread it. I got a little work done editing, actually inserted a complete sentence that was needed by way of explication. Usually, my close readers tell me, they can follow my jumps. Just now, for instance, I went outside, between showers, to collect enough morels for dinner, which I do in about eleven minutes. I knew this small patch was ready to erupt, because I'd noticed some leaves pushing up. The new leaves are breaking out, there's a faint blush of green against the sky. The oaks are holding back, but the maples and the poplars are right on the edge of exploding. The Bradford pears are blooming, they're pretty, but I don't like them. I do like the way their leaves just shove the blossoms out of the way, creating a rain like snow, and the trees go from white to red to green. The Redbud is coming on and it's a lovely thing to see. I need to get to the library again, I need to spend more time when I go there, and check out more books at a time. That would be part of my strategy for leaving the ridge less often. If I have enough interesting reading matter, I can weather almost anything. It rained hard enough that I shut down everything and sat in the dark, listening. Fell asleep, then woke when the rain stopped and flipped the breaker for the fridge back on. Cool enough that I need a flannel sheet as a blanket. I read about Southern trees for an hour. I might have to drive out tomorrow and look at the trees. It's a thousand vertical feet down to the Ohio and the flora is quite different down there. It's makes for an interesting time lapse trip. I'd dug just a couple of sang roots (as it's called around here) in the fall, and I remembered them. They were dry, and I rubbed off the dirt and skin, then sliced them very thin with a sharp knife, put them in a nice whiskey bottle with some grain alcohol. A sip of this, when you're embedded in snow, can be just the thing. Starting to get some things done, sharpened the clippers, bought one of those little testers that's tells you if an electric line is hot, and a new outdoor light for the back door. I need to be a plumber for a day and an electrician for a day. I have everything I think I need, for a couple of repairs, but in my heart I know there will a trip or two to the hardware store. When doing anything trips to the hardware store are inevitable. I sometimes stop, even when I don't need anything in particular, because I like the staff, the free popcorn; and just walk up and down the aisles, picking out a few things I might require in the future. Hardware stores are cool, especially that peg-board where they hang specialty items. Coffin locks and repair links for chains. I sometimes buy a piece of hardware just because I like the way it looks. I might not even know what it does, but elegance is apparent. The first ballet I saw, I was a junior in high school, but I'd skipped a grade, so I was young and stupid, was a revelation. "You mean, Sir, that my ass is a commodity?" No doubt exchanged on other exchanges. I come down strongly on the side of those who just want to be left alone. It's my body, I'll do with it what I will, I will not have some white slimy ass hole, male, telling me what I can and what I can't do. My sister flagged me down, from her golf-cart. She has good taste in pottery. Read more...

Scavengers

I'd found a dead dog on the road, a fat female Beagle, and I'd been reading about the eyesight of birds. Put it in a garbage bag and took it home. Thought about cooking the loins, using a recipe called "Dried Dog" which actually sounded rather good (a Chinese recipe), thin strips of meat, dredged in salt and spice, dried in the sun, then reconstituted in a stew, but she was a little ripe. I was interested in how scavenger birds found dead animals, so I built a crude shelter that hid the body from view. I didn't open up the carcass, which I usually do with roadkill, and just put the body under a scrap plywood roof, downwind. Interestingly, the vultures were on site within a day (smell?) but they couldn't find it. Within three days it was gone, no blood-print, a coyote (I could see the tracks) had hauled it back to her den. It's a good mom, I think, who takes her kits a dead Beagle. Stopped at the lake and picked a mess of cattail shoots, they're very good with mushroom gravy, you just peel them and steam the cores, salt and pepper; a quick sauce of morels in brown butter. I'm spoiled, when I think about it, the way I eat. Linda called, and commented on that very fact, that I ate very well, and didn't spend much money in the process. This, of course, is a product of not having much money and still wanting to eat. Contain your desires within the possible. Rice is good here, or a pot of grits, if you're Irish, a few pounds of boiled potatoes. Mixed greens cooked with salt-pork. Corn bread with cracklings. In a land-mark decision, snails cooked in sea water. It's a pain in the ass, eating barnacles with a straightened paper clip or a safety pin. The Pennsylvania Dutch call scrapple pawnhass, which has become my new favorite word. I made excellent scrapple for years and it was always in high demand. Sliced and fried it's a breakfast food of the highest rank. When I first made some for my friend Roy, in Mississippi, served with a little maple syrup, he swore it was the best thing he'd ever eaten. On one memorable occasion, he and I served it at a church fund-raiser in Babylon (the Black enclave of Duck Hill) and it became very popular. I was free-ranging hogs at the time, so when he got enough orders, whatever time of year, he'd come over and we'd kill one, skin it out (for the lucrative bonus of cracklings) and make 200 lbs of product (20 pounds of meat, 7 pounds of cornmeal, various herbs and spices), and we'd both make $100, which seemed like good money in that time and place. It was almost all profit, because he grew the corn and I had more pigs than you could shake a stick at. His friend, at the mill, ground the corn, Cecil, a black man in whiteface from the dust, after hours, did the grinding. We'd have to buy a small tank of gas, to fire the grill where we were making cracklings and lard, buy some salt and pepper, and we'd drink beer, very good beer that I'd brewed, and when Roy got a little drunk, we could talk about racial inequality. This was my Masters Degree in Sociology. Read more...

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...