Place Names

Sand Gap, Sandsuck Primitive Baptist Church, Dead Man Hollow, Whiskey Run, Murphy's Kill, Lucy's Crotch (I lived there once, a tight bend in a tidal inlet), Wood's Hole. Get the Raven map for your state and pore over it with a magnifying glass. Words signify. Naturally. Reading some off-prints D made for me, his current syllabus, I'm struck by the mortified language. I can usually figure out what's being said, but it's a pain in the ass, and I'm a good reader. I read a 20 page essay about paired vowels and I think about Melville. Linda mentions that morels are $60 a pound at the local whole foods store in the twin cities. Which makes me an extravagant eater, any way you slice them. Barnhart's son likes them better dried and reconstituted. I think the flavor is intensified that way, but I like the mouth-feel so much, when I just fry them in butter, serve them on toast. I'm old school, I guess, military without the bearing. I believe in discipline but I don't go to the gym, I find the driveway serves me well enough. One of those Sherpa guides has climbed Everest 13 times, twice in one season, you should talk to him about conditioning. I don't do mountains, but I understand the attraction. Every single place has a name, every serac and crevasse. Human nature, naming. You call a place something, because you need to refer to it. That place I spent the night, Low Gap Hollow, or any of a thousand other places, each with a name. Sandsuck. You could call places 1, 2, or 3; A, B, or C, but it helps the memory to give them a name, anything, really. That-Place-Where-The-Muck-Was-Very-Thick, tadpole puddle, a particular rock that you always stepped on with your right foot. It just took me two hours to start this paragraph for tomorrow. Even time is a relative thing. Depends on how fast you're going. I tangle with meaning on a daily basis, it's part of what I do, teasing meaning out of almost nothing. Had to put a bowl of ice next to the computer and blow a fan on it last night, so today I re-installed the window air conditioner. Heavy old bastard, nearly threw my back out getting it in. Computer is happier though, and I'll be able to get the house a little more comfortable in the evening. Slept fitfully last night, sweating under a ceiling fan, finally got up around three to start this post, went back to sleep on the sofa. After I got the air conditioner installed I collapsed on the sofa again, read in Thoreau's journals, maybe dozed for a few minutes. White noise. Between the computer, the air conditioner, and the fridge, there is no outside world. I'd forgotten. I've ever only had air conditioning for a very few years., The last two years in Missip, when Marilyn was pregnant and Sami was an infant; then last year, and now this year here, when D got tired of my bitching and finally brought over this monster old unit and installed it. When I turned it on today, the thermostat read 96 and now it reads 84, I'm more comfortable and the computer is quieter. But I'm severed from outside sound. I don't like that feeling, which is why I only ran the damned thing 13 times last summer. I hate being cut off from the outside world. The natural world, I mean, the outside world is an other thing. Bugs, birds, and frogs; small mammals moving in the underbrush; the world I know is tied to hearing certain things. The soundtrack, right. We should talk about the smell-track later. I have a theory. Of course I have a theory.