Rain Stoppage

It rained so hard from nine last night until three this morning, that when it stopped, the silence woke me. Then the frogs and bugs raised a mighty chorus. I went outside to listen. After about ten minutes, everything went quiet again, as the next band of rain moved in. It became apparent that I wasn't going back to sleep, so I got up, made an omelet and drank a glass of juice, collected fifteen gallons of wash water while I ate an early breakfast. Anticipating a good harvest, I read some mushroom recipes. I want to stuff some, with goat cheese and shallots, I want to make a soup or stew of some type, and I'll need a list of ingredients that I'm missing, for the next time I go to town. Straight-line winds, I'd better go. Intense, I never lost power, which is impressive, because the wind must have been blowing at 50 MPH, the house was shaking, I'd already put on my LED headlamp, but it was gone, as quickly as it had arrived. Thank the gods. I don't have to go out tomorrow, someone else can clear the deadwood off the road. I don't mention almost everything, I'm not political, and I don't give a shit about who sides with who. Rain again, I think I'll go take a nap. Tomorrow I fully intend to eat like a king, cut some blackberry canes, clear a path to the future. For now, it's enough to put my down pallet on the floor. More rain. Then a break, I went out and quickly got half-a-pound of morels. Fried a patty of my stone-ground whole corn polenta, topped with morels in a butter sauce. Good way to start the day. Read for a couple of hours, an old paperback John D. Mac Donald, when another line of rain sweeps through. Thunder, I have to close down. I need a tablet with a keyboard and a battery. But I did cut some blackberry canes, to clear a path to another area where I wanted to look for mushrooms. Radio says widespread flooding, so I skip going to town. Slice and pound out the last of the pork tenderloin, make a stuffing of butter-fried morels and goat cheese, with shallots and mint. I have to fry the medallions for a minute on a side, to firm for rolling and finish them in the toaster oven. Superb by any standards, you could serve these at any restaurant in the world. If you're making home-made polenta, clean everything right away. It's cementious. Went for a walk, after dinner. Leaf-out is exploding: this rain, and the green wall between me and the world, is exploding exponentially. At 25% leafage I can barely see the other side of the hollow, two weeks from now, I won't be able to see 25 feet. First there's rain fog, everything is obsrroutched. Call it what you will. Read more...

Reading Brewer

Dictionary of phrase and fable. Romulus killed Remus and his 'father' Mars carried him off in a fiery chariot. Ops was the Sabine fertility goddess, wife of Saturn, became Rhea. Turned on the radio, to catch the weather. It's supposed to rain for several days, storm fronts, wind, possibly damaging, and hail. B has to go to town, it's the end of the term, he has to collect and grade papers, so he can get me a bottle of whiskey. Otherwise I'm set. It was nice yesterday, sitting in chairs spread around a trestle table loaded down with food. Listening to casual conversation and not saying much. Looking around at the buds and the newly unfurling leaves. Several very good naturalists, a couple of historians, not a group you would necessarily imagine congregated in a pasture, eight kids splashing in the creek. When Drew arrived, with his boy Henry, and another watermelon, the kids all went apeshit, and B carved the new melon into eight pieces with a pocket knife. The kids had watermelon up their noses and dripping down onto their tee-shirts, and there was a bonfire, burning sticks from the yard, in a ring of sandstone collected from the creek bed. The creek was convenient for washing. An afternoon in the country. I was introduced as a friend of the family. Good to be called a person, as I've been spending so much time alone I had begun thinking of myself as what Michel Foucault calls "the author function". The term redneck came up and several people looked to me for a definition, and I told them what I knew from various American Unabridged sources 1. An uneducated farm laborer (usually from the south); and 2. A bigot, usually from the rural working class. Source, American, 1820. It, oddly, doesn't appear, in my two volume Dictionary of Americanisms. But Brewer has an interesting entry. Rooinek (Afrikaans 'redneck'), the name given by the Boers to the British in the South African Wars (1881). A certain literalism in both cases, sunburn. Imagine those pasty white necks that came from an island that never sees the sun, ending up in South Africa. It takes me several hours to tease this out, checking references, going to the 11th Britannica, getting a drink, talking to myself, taking a walk outside between rainstorms. Tomorrow is going to be a big morel day, one of my patches had a dozen or more peeking out of the ground, including a large one that I must have missed the other day, because it's the size of a small banana. I left them all, because the turkeys must be nested up against the rain. A gamble I'm willing to take for twice the yield tomorrow. I was seeing the mushrooms very clearly today and that bodes well. They're difficult to see until you see them. Bird event of the year: I had trapped a few mice and on my daily venture to the outhouse, I tossed a couple on the roof, thinking to give the crows a treat. Heard the crows later and went over to the back door. The crows were perched in trees, complaining, and there was a beautiful Sparrow Hawk, on the roof of the outhouse, tearing a mouse apart. The Nature Network, I watch this channel all the time, go get my binoculars and pull up a stool. I'd rather read Brewer, or watch a Sparrow Hawk, than attend an event of any kind. I can't judge, anything is questionable, but relying on a reflected image might be enough. A terminal mass. Mess. A terminal mess. Wait, I remember talking about this in my sleep. Read more...

Lamb Hash

Sounds like a Nick Adams story, but I actually learned this dish from a Basque sheep-herder in western Colorado. They free-range cattle and sheep, in the spring and summer, on the Uncompahgre Plateau, usually without much supervision, but the years I lived there, the ranchers kept a old Basque guy, Ramone, up on the plateau in a small Air-Stream trailer because the State Wildlife people were doing a survey of bears and mountain lions and had closed hunting on those species. Our ranch was the last canyon before the Uncompahgre, so it was sort of an extended backyard, a million acres or so. I'd take him a pint of whiskey and a pouch of chewing tobacco, and we'd talk. I'd accumulated quite a nice little herd of sheep, at that point, and I didn't know what to do with them. They'd just wander off and find a way down into Spring Creek Canyon, and they became mine because no one ever came looking for them. A good part of my cash flow, and I do love cooking and eating lamb, and even, heaven forbid, mutton. The definition of a lamb, at auction, is a sheep less than a year old. Ramone was very old, and toward the end, I'd kill a lamb for him, butcher it out. He had a small Servel gas refrigerator and he could keep meat in a brine for several weeks, some of it he dried. But my favorite was the hash he made from the trimmings and the little bits of meat that cling to the bone. Mince a medium, smallish potato, set it on to fry in a mixture of lamb fat and olive oil, mince up the left-over lamb, half a small shallot, some fresh mint. Form it into a patty right in the skillet. This is best topped with a duck egg and a lot of black pepper. If you have morels, just brown them in butter and pour on top. The wild turkeys eat morels and I reloaded a couple of shotgun shells with rock salt, to put the fear of god in them. Cosset and fettle. Furze. Reading the London Review certainly keeps me running for the dictionary. Not running exactly, stepping over would be closer to the truth. The dictionary table is adjacent to my writing table, but I have to stand up and step over. I stopped at a junk store on 2nd street because I saw a music stand in the window. Got it for $5. It's an old one, and the lips are higher, and I installed it at my left hand and put an unabridged Random House on it. It's heaven. I keep some reading glasses and an LED headlamp right there, on a candle stand I made from a hickory sapling and a couple of slabs. Getting close to perfect here, lamb hash and a dictionary at hand. The birds are going crazy, goddamn Goat-Sucker woke me before dawn, then they all jump in, a dozen melodic lines, and it's another day. B came over and reminded me that he was having a cook-out at his new/old place down the road, so I went and spent a couple of hours with the Richards clan. Spend the evening reading about various extinct languages, refining my imagined migration sequence that ends on Easter Island. I should write this up, because I have all the correct books out, spread everywhere right now. This could be the libretto, for the opera that is on the stage where the actual opera happens. Rednecks drinking in the dead of night. While the basis for the Argonauts is right there in front of you. And tin was like gold, without it you couldn't make bronze. The first big leap, pouring molten metal. Then you want to just get it as hard and stiff as possible. Go ahead, joke. I could have made a fortune, but I choose to let the soft green take the stage. I don't have anything to say. I'd avoid any easier solution. Making hash is about right. You might cast iron. Read more...

Libretto

The soprano, laments, "I know he's fucking the waitress at the Dairy Bar." Black-out, curtain. Act Two, night, a flickering fire, tree-frogs, shadows on the scrim, voice-over describes a fox hunting voles. B came over, bringing back a book, we talk about cooking lamb. We're on the same page, one to one, the usual elliptic conversation. In an hour we manage to discuss a dozen things, specifically don't talk about others. A wee dram and silence. Waiting, waiting, waiting; then we talk about pumping water. I've studied water. That strange guy, with a beret, on the other side of the spillway. Patterns, habits, channels; they bear something in common. I used a word somewhere and it's completely changed my meaning. It happens. When you pay too much attention. Bare. The thread B said I usually found. I can't attest to that. Mostly what I do is flush steers out of hollows. It's not that difficult, once you get used to it. Pile driving man. At this point, I only do the difficult, everything else is pap. Read more...

Bouncing Balls

How long can you play at that level? Where you spin plates on sticks and carry on a normal conversation at the same time? I'm done with games. The remnant of that conflict defines the known universe. I can juggle most of this, what you are, what I am; it's in the ebb and flow that you're revealed. Jesus I just lost a page of writing, I hit the wrong combination of keys, or something, and everything disappeared. I had taken a long walk in the woods, I was looking for mushrooms, I was thinking about the bear. The road home is historically difficult. I had a leftover grilled lamb shoulder chop, and I just nuked it and left it in the microwave, then I made a sauce from chicken stock and bacon fat; thickened and mildly spiced. I'd never had lamb with a morel sauce, though I once prepared woodchuck loin with morels, for five friends, so there were six of us there. I won't embarrass them with names, but it was a very good meal too, and I'm struck with the number of people who claim to have been there. Slips into the pluperfect. The plate was still hot, and the meat, and, really, you could serve a morel sauce on goat turds, and it would be fine. Read more...

Thaumata

The marvels of spring. Town is fully green and there's a beginning blush on the ridge. Picked up a load of my stuff from the museum, lunched with TR, stopped and talked with Terry about cooking a meal at his new gathering place, went to Kroger for whiskey and sushi, and beat a path for home. Came the long way around, all the way up the creek, stopping often to look at flowers. At the first ford the miniature iris are blooming. It's one of my favorites, like looking at a regular blue-purple iris through the wrong end of a telescope. Nearly swooned at Kroger as the lamb is hitting the remainder bin. This will go on for a couple of weeks, as some of the cuts are vacuum-packed. Bought a couple of packages today, shoulder chops, which I like to marinate and grill; picked up some baby turnips, which I'll cook with their greens and finish in a skillet with butter and peppers. In the not yet remaindered lamb section (looking at future meals) I noticed there were a great many smallish boned roasts and I imagine cutting one of them into steaks that I can pound out and roll around a stuffing. Rice, chorizo, roasted red peppers, whatever, I can make a stuffing out of tree bark. The Post-Easter Lamb Season. Next year I need to over-winter a mint plant, but in the here-and-now I found a patch of watercress in the creek, and that will go well, I think. TR and I talked about the opera we seem to be working on, and an odd thing happened. We'd stopped in the alley outside the back door of the pub, they have a couple of chairs there, and a large ceramic vessel, half-full of sand, that serves as an ashtray. So I usually stop there, and smoke a cigaret I had rolled waiting for my change at the bar. If TR isn't in a hurry (he's often in a hurry) he'll take a chair, and we'll talk. I'd spent many hours in the past week thinking that if there was a opera it was Appalachian in some fundamental way, Sacred Harp, snakes, stills in the hollow. And TR says, out of the blue, that maybe it should be an Appalachian Opera. Rings all kinds of bells for me. She, the soprano, is mother nature, merely going about her business. I start hearing it in my head. On a roll. Eating and sleeping, sure, I can do that, as teasel is my witness. Sense, it seems, is a relative term. Read more...

Reconnected

Good to get those posts out. I wanted to read them, but I didn't want to take the time with just a taped repair. Besides, I can print them here, once TR gets me hooked up. I'm so far behind. I need a better printer, and I need someone to show me the way to operate a vending machine. I keep getting something I didn't ask for; it's strange, what you end up with. Every hollow has a name. The phone guy asked about mine, I told him it was Low Gap and we talked about that for a while. He was enjoying his trip to the country. Asked for a drink of water, ended up coming inside and having a beer. He sat on the stairs, he couldn't believe them, kept asking how I had come up with the idea. I tried to explain how you just let the materials speak, and I could tell I wasn't making any sense to him. He allowed as how he had never seen so many books in one place before. I told him I was a writer, books were my stock in trade, and he asked some questions about how I ended up here. I explained how the combination of cheap land and no building codes was a powerful incentive. Led to a conversation about lifestyles. He asked about the driveway in winter and just shook his head. As it turned out, it was this small connection, thirty minutes of conversation, that insured he would find the problem with my phone, do a temporary repair (I told him that my land-line was critical, and that my readers surely thought I had died) and insured that the line would be replaced tomorrow. Not bad, though it did take ten days. Still, it is the end of the line, such that everyone and everything takes precedence over Low Gap Hollow. I heard that guy eats roadkill and sucks water from the rocks. Wouldn't want him near my daughters. With all, it's better to be considered slightly crazy, most people leave you alone. I do lick rocks, to test their salinity, and I eat roadkill because it's free protein. By my standards, everyone else is crazy. These first Red Maple leaves are so soft, like velour, they make me forget everything. Fritz pulled his pipe from his pocket. Fade to black. Read more...

Somewhere Quiet

Windows open, and the susurration of wind in the tree tops is a pleasant sound. Lonesome train across the river in Kentucky woke me, sometime after midnight, but when it fades out of hearing, the silence, once I kill the breaker for the refrigerator, is almost complete. I sit in the dark more than I ever used to, but it's not depression, it's more of a reverie. A kind of meditation in which you see yourself from a remove. When you stand back, careful not to step on the bodies, and examine what it is, exactly, that you've done. You can always argue that you were on the wrong foot and it caused a stumble. I don't need an excuse anymore, I just poke around. If you call rooster, I'll hook up the plow. Further, despite some bad reviews, I'd call that last effort a success, if I understand that term correctly. Fuck a bunch of bilge-water, not winning is better than winning. At least you learn something. Also, and I can't help noticing, history has a way of repeating itself. God, I can't believe who I used to be.The world, right? What passes as the world. Still no phone, and their self-imposed deadline is tomorrow, and, of course, it's supposed to rain. My old buddy Poggio Bracciolini showed up again today (that's three times in a year) in the London Review. In a piece about a book written about a book that doesn't exist. De Tribus Impostoribus or "The Atheist's Bible" which labeled as imposters Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. Despite not existing it still made the Vatican's Index Librorum of books you shouldn't read. This was the gold-standard of publicity, in the early years of printing, as soon as a book made the list, the guys in Holland would print copies. Everything was printed in Latin. Starting a rumor that someone was the secret author of De Tribus was serious scandal and Poggio's name was mentioned. He had written a couple of books, one of them a book of jokes about monks. He hated monks, called them stupid and dirty. This from the number one papal scribe for five Popes. Then, unbelievably, in the late afternoon, I'm reading an essay about the loss of handwriting, and Poggio is mentioned again, as having had a beautiful hand. Which he did, and the way his pages looked affected early printing: page lay-out, the lower case, the look of the thing. And I've looked at his actual writing, with a magnifying glass, I know the direction of the strokes. And he's mentioned again? Poggio? He was my secret. I thought he was my secret. Finally, the phone company guy, Matt, shows up. He asks some questions, agrees it's their problem, then takes apart the NID (Network Interface Device) and gets back to the bare wire. Still dead. He has some sort of resistance reading thing and, after hooking it up to the bare wires, says that the problem is 1730 feet done the line. I tell him that would be down on Upper Twin. We'd both looked at that section of line and it looked fine, but he'd said he'd go see. Phone rang just before five and he'd found it. It was in the middle of the span between two poles; too much slack in the phone-line and in the big wings 10 days ago, that the line had blown upwards and touched the power lines and it had burned right through the top of the phone line. You couldn't see it from the ground. He said he'd get them to put in a new section of line tomorrow. He'd essentially taped the wires back together and he thought it would hold for the night. I'd better send now. Read more...

Fish Hook

TR met me for lunch at the pub. Then back to the museum, he was staff today, and I sorted my emails and pulled out 29 pages that I needed in hard copy. TR copied them to his computer and told me he'd have them for me when I next came to town, Tuesday or Wednesday. These are the post museum pages, and I want to read them closely because I think a couple of them are pretty good, and I might want them at Chautuaqua. The phone is still out, and I had, actually, hopes it would be restored when I got home. Now, they won't get to it until Monday or Tuesday. The crew down at the dam were all gone, the holy weekend and all, so I parked and walked over. The cores they've drilled out are beautiful, the only things I ever covet are always very heavy. They've brought in many tons of stone, medium sized pieces of limestone, maybe a cubic foot each (SG 2.61, 163 pounds), and I can only imagine that they're going to use it as rip-rap, below the curb, which breaks the flow of water over the spillway; and now, through these nine (not seven) holes, they intend to control the flow of water. I wish them well. My only attempts at controlling the flow of water failed miserably. Simply said, you can't do it. Water does what it wants to do. Drainage is a simple algorithm. It's strange, standing in the bed of a drained lake. Apocalyptic. They must have just released the fish, down Turkey creek into the Ohio. They've have to completely restock. There are a great many things on the bottom of a lake, and it's interesting to poke around. Quite a few sneakers, and in the middle, a very large tire, which may have been placed there, almost surely was, as a spawning bed. There are a lot of tires, a few stumps, car bumpers, a couple of refrigerators (I don't look inside them), and a uniform spread of silt. It's instructive to stand in a drained, man-made lake with a dam, and think about erosion. There it is in front of you. In the course of time, this silt will be deposited as a fan, in the Gulf Of Mexico. It might again see the light of day, but that might be 500,000 years in the future. In the mean time, what am I supposed to do? I could write some ugly notes, because there are people I don't like. Newt, for instance, and was there ever a better name? But I'd rather watch the greening. The poplar buds are opening, and those first red maple leaves that are yellow-green. In my fall line, you see a lot of that color. Read more...

Relative Value

More and more farmers are using a no-plow technique, drilling seeds. Compaction becomes an issue, but they deep-till every once in a while, and broadcast a cover crop. A local farmer still plows and harrows, so I can walk the furrows, looking for points. After the ground has been broken, and there comes a rain, the artifacts stand proud. Slip into this, the way things change. Look at the arrowhead, the way it's embedded in the clay. Not unlike finding a morel in the leaf-litter. What you see is what you get, B showed up with his guitar slung over his shoulder. Means, I know, we'll hear a song or two. Most of my friends play the guitar, the double bass, keyboards, brass, or drums. I never found time for it, though I wish I had. The time was there, of course, but theater took all of mine, from when I was 15 until I was 30, then it was printing, and building houses; nary a break until I signed off at the museum. A biography that reads like a joke: "what a long, strange trip...", but no regrets, or not many, at any rate. I like who I've become. Ankle deep in London Reviews, reading about Saussure, Derrida, and David Foster Wallace. Not only reading about them, but reading them. I read for six or eight hours a day. Marveling at text, the way it seems to mean something.. You base a belief system on what seems authentic, and prance off, into the wood. But I'm here to say, if you could just cut the whip-o-wills from the sound-scape, I hate the repetition. I might be able to go back to sleep. Morning birds, is that a... Read more...

Troubleshooting

Have to solve the phone problem. I need to know the problem is not from the box to the house, because then I know it's my problem. My actual phone could be dead, so I can't rely on it to test the system, so it's off to town, where I get a cheap Princess land-line for ten bucks. If the problem isn't my phone, at least I now have a backup and they're getting hard to find. After lunch with TR and a stop at the store, I finally got back home, giving it 50-50 it's me or them; hoping that it's me, because I have a new phone and enough phone-line to run a new service. But alas, even the new phone, plugged into the test slot, gets no dial tone. It's them. Which means I have to go back out tomorrow (but only as far as the Qwick Stop, where there's a phone) to call them. They'll probably send part of that hot-shot crew that was out here just a couple of months ago, replacing my feeder line and feeling great about the overtime. I looked at the line, going out and coming back in, and couldn't see the problem. But now, and that was the point, I knew it's not my problem. Another hard freeze tonight, then warming right back up. A cycle designed to drive you crazy. Terry wasn't around, so we couldn't talk about me cooking for his cronies; and I didn't want to be in town, so I just bought some groceries and went home. Had to stop at the lake because it was gone. They'd drained the entire thing (this has been going on for weeks) so they could work on the dam. There's always been an emergency overflow system in place, essentially a sluice-gate and a ditch, and what they seem to be doing is building the emergency overflow right into the dam, which involves drilling seven three foot in diameter holes, at two different levels, completely through many feet of cured concrete. This involves a very large crew and a great deal of equipage. Must be costing millions, seriously. They have a crane, of course, because the cores, after they've been drilled out, with the largest diamond bits I've ever seen, and the largest drills, using the largest generators, must weight thousands of pounds. Concrete, specific gravity 2.37, weighs 148 pounds a cubic foot. The pieces are three feet by four feet and three feet by five feet. It's four in the morning right now, and I can't do the math, but I suspect they're very heavy. I watch for a while, admiring the logistics. The lake bed, much shallower than any of us (the watchers) had suspected, is a revelation. A wrack field. As soon as it firms up there are people out there with metal detectors, and clipboards. I hate those motherfuckers with clipboards, but someone has to keep track. I've spilled in enough rapids to know what to do, keep your legs in front of you and stay flexible. Where the water wants through, there's always a channel. A fitful night, bad dreams I don't remember, so O got up just at dawn, made a coffee and fixed a huge breakfast. A small remaindered strip steak, the last of the first morels fried in butter, eggs over easy, toast. Nice way to start a day. Ranching in Colorado, I had a small steaks of many sorts, we traded beef and pork for elk, lamb for antelope, and I had them for breakfast routinely. I've always loved breakfast. Probably haven't eaten a thousand omelets, but I bet I'm getting close. I clean up, a little personal hygiene, and after reading for a couple of hours (I was in the middle of rereading The Friends Of Eddie Coyle, where Higgins creates a world in dialogue, it's quite astounding) got dressed and headed out to find a place from which to call the phone company. Going out Mackletree the first two miles is wilderness, and I always drive it slowly; hated making this trip, didn't want to leave the ridge, figured I'd go to the pub and use the phone there, and just as I broke out of the forest saw Emily, on horseback, talking to the man of the house in the first place on the left. I knew him, to wave to, but we'd never spoken. I stopped, to say a few words with Emily, I explained why I was going out, and the guy said I could use his phone to call the phone company, though it was a cell phone and I have trouble with them. My phone problem, I'm assured, will be fixed by next Tuesday. I'd now done, I thought at the time, everything I could do, so I just turned around and went back home. Redbuds and those few fruit trees that might survive, they don't need my help. Read more...

Red Moon

Shafts of light from behind broken clouds, then the moon, replete. Stable and haloed. A big round rock in the sky. Things that spin tend to end up round. As witness I call an oblate spheroid. Abrading toward roundness. It could be that my phone is dead, and I don't have an easy way of testing that, and not my service. I buy cheap phones at Big Lots and they serve my needs. Ten bucks and tax. I don't know if it's even needed, where John Wayne comes in and kisses the horse behind her ear. I don't want to read too much into that, what you do in your spare time. Spare Time? Are you kidding me. The good news is that next Sunday is Easter, and the day after that lamb will be on sale. I can't plan ahead, because I don't know what cuts I'll be getting, but I do know I'll be eating lamb next week and that puts a smile on my face. The phone is still out. It's very quiet, the muffled silence of snow, when I wake before dawn to pee. The house was cold, and I built a little fire, before I went outside. It was beautiful, in the beam of my LED headlamp. Soft white on the soft greens buds and unfurling leaves. There was not supposed to be any accumulation, but there's two inches and it's snowing hard. Still, it was seventy degrees yesterday and I know the ground is warm, it can't possibly linger for long. Decided to stay up, rather than crawling back into my down bag; made a double espresso, rolled a smoke. I think about the opera TR wants to do. I think about a book of mine I'm editing, then I think about writing you. Morels and a fried egg on a bed of polenta. The weather has certainly affected my harvest. The watch-word on a really brutal winter, is that you're going to expect an equally brutal spring. I have to think about that. One thing leads to another. We nurture the delusion that we control events. I'm planning a meal for twelve, a mental exercise, thinking about cooking at Terry's. He specified ribs for the first meal. A simple menu: ribs, roasted purple potatoes, coleslaw, a bread of some kind. Several rolls of paper towels. Cooking for twelve is completely different than cooking for two or three. The scale of it. So I think it through. It's fun, and interesting, imagining the things that could go wrong. And you know things will go wrong, it's the way of the world; maybe you can contain the damage, or maybe you can't, but there will be a misstep along the way. Someone stumbles, someone falls. Olives and grapes in the grout joints. Free me Lord, oh free me. It's all bullshit and I don't want to be a part of it. Everything is mostly normal, when it occurs to me I could say anything, if my tongue wasn't tied. Read more...

Breaking Bread

A companion is literally "a person with whom we share bread". One great aspect of reading a lot of London Reviews is that I have to use the OED more often, because it's my only British English dictionary. I bought a strong pair of reading glasses that I only use for reading in the OED, which allows me to keep both hands free (I can make a note, for instance) for getting a wee dram and holding my place. The Latin word for hearth is focus which strikes me as perfect. Thunder storms in the late afternoon, but I had heard about them coming, on the radio, so I set out earlier for my morel walk in the woods. Leaves are happening, in the under-story. I carry my clippers, and a small yellow mesh sack (or bag or tote) so that any spores would fall to ground, and I do find a few mushrooms, enough, I think, for a sauce. When I buy one of those shrink-wrapped pork tenderloins, I cut it in half before I refreeze it, so that I can cut out the largest possible medallions, which I often pound out and stuff. I'd made a very good red onion jam. I rolled a couple of enchiladas, and covered them with morels, drowned in butter. Listen, these were very good, fantastic Who would have thought, that using a pounded tenderloin steak as a tortilla, could yield such a reality. String theory. Different universes. I read a couple of pieces out loud, to time them, and reading them out loud is the final test. I needed to time them, because I'm only supposed to read for 30 minutes at Chautauqua, and I wanted to hear the words; and reading them, I realized how oblique I'd become, not that I meant to, I actually try to be clear. Phone has been out again, the last two days. I went to town and the phone company trucks were lined up on Mackletree. This cable serves five houses. The next time I can post, that post will have cost the phone company a whole lot of money. They'd probably pay me to get a dish. Town was quite lovely, everything in bloom, the hedges filling, daffodils, a big magnolia over on fourth street. A simple agenda, an hour at the library, stop at the pub for a pint and a sandwich, then swing by Kroger for whiskey and some foodstuffs. Came home the long way around, so I could drive slowly, with the windows down, smelling the green. Stopped at the ford, went back and forth a few times, to clean my undercarriage, then parked in the middle of the creek, and rolled a smoke. Deafening quiet at first, then you hear the creek, then the forest sounds: the wind in the leaves, birdsong, branches rubbing against each other. The longer you sit the more you hear. Mahler, right? The phone is still out, so I can't send. Five of the last seven days I haven't had a phone. What passes as service. I spend $80 a month to stay connected, and I'm not connected most of the time. There really must be a better way. Maybe we could just exchange cards, dance a waltz. I can't believe I still don't have a phone. I've checked my end, and it's definitely their problem. I'll have to go out on Tuesday and try to find out what's going on. I'd go out tomorrow, but it's actually supposed to snow. Those weightless little pieces of ice that sometimes condense out of a blue sky? I had been trying to remember the name, I believe they're called icy spiculae. I'm sure there's an Innuit word for it too, and I seem to remember a one-word name, probably German. This cold snap could prolong the morel season, which would be a good thing. Reading the London Reviews I read an ad that said "The Curious Incident Of the Dog In the Night Time. " Kim gave me that book years ago, had been turned into a play. Read more...

Walking Riverbanks

Don't get me started. I know everything is unfinished. A specific entanglement, where wrack had collected in some tree trunks. I felt the need to poke it with a stick. In this case, some large sticks, trees, actually, had lodged between three trees forming a triangle about twenty feet on a side. The some medium sticks got stuck in, then the whole pile built quickly, as the flood-water receded. The entire debris pile is maybe eight feet high in the center running smoothly down to the ground, maybe 40 feet in diameter. A handsome thing to the wrackologist in me. The usual river stuff, 75% of it, but always the other 25%. Mostly wood, beautiful, in all sizes, mostly debarked and polished smooth; doll pieces, balls, lots of plastic, various pieces of rope, and all the other detritus that finds its way into feeder streams along hundreds of miles of bank. I'll go back, when it dries out, as there were some nice pre-cut firewood rounds, but they weigh about a hundred pounds each right now. A long slow walk in the woods, looking for morels, and I found a few. The leaves on the blackberry canes that are in the open, are unfurling, and the Sassafras buds are swelling. Morels on toast with a cheese omelet. I do seriously love mushrooms on toast. Just butter, salt and pepper. Put on some grits in the crock pot, so I can make some polenta. We have to start thinking ahead here. Be good to have a pork tenderloin in the freezer. Things on which morels could be served. I make a pate, from morels, ground chicken, chicken fat, butter, and various other things, that has the mouth-feel of avocado, and sends your taste buds into overdrive. I don't use it as a weapon. But I always keep a meat thermometer in a holster on my belt. Read more...

Not Close

She had asked if I wasn't bored, spending so much time alone. The beginning of morel season? I do have to go town, I think Terry wants me to cook next week, and I'll need to know what day, and how many people, then decide on a menu. But for the nonce, I am fully occupied. Got to town. Portsmouth is 1,000 feet lower than the ridge, so the trip is like traveling through two weeks of spring. Spent an hour at the library, got an oil change, did my taxes, had lunch with TR, picked up supplies; sit in the parking lot and pay my four bills, writing out checks and filling in my return address on a library book, stop at the Post Office, then wend my way home, pulling over often, because everyone goes faster than me. I stop for mushrooms. I stop to look up words in the unabridged dictionary I keep on the back seat. I often stop at roadkill. I actually own one of those orange plastic cones they set out, and a vest that makes me look like part of the clean-up crew. I've never been questioned, so far below the radar, that even had my name been mentioned, it would have been dismissed, out of hand. It's good to be unknown. I can dodge almost anything, it's a habit. Flying shit is a matter of course, what you do is duck down and protect you flank. B came over with a pile of London Reviews. He runs some ideas by me, concerning the remodel of the old house he'd bought down the way. We've both done this our entire lives, reconstructed places that were built of left-overs. We talked a good bit about a table/counter he wants to build, using end-grain poplar for the surface, because he loves the color, but it's a terrible wood to use in that particular way, because the sap-wood is so punky, and he doesn't want to use epoxy, which is what I'd probably use, to get a hard flat surface. At some point we were talking about the grain of wood, the way the heart stands proud of the sap. B looked at me, we were having a wee dram, and said, across the top of his glass, that he knew I would know what he was talking about. Circles where I travel, that's high praise. Read more...

Nothing Gained

Wade in the water. Slog through leaves up to your ankles. I'd be lying if I said I don't miss it. Another day of rain and I don't have to leave the house. The thing about having thousands of books is there's always something to read. The phone is out again, the fire-dead trees on Mackletree are falling at an alarming rate. All the locals carry a chain-saw in their truck, it's free wood after all. The white oaks seem to have been the most susceptible to the fire. So many dead trees still, and where the State Forest sold clear-cut rights, the under-story will explode this year; it'll be fun, watching and exploring, and there shouldn't be many bugs because of the hard winter. I spend the day reading about table manners, Margaret Visser, and Levi- Strauss, make a few notes. Did I mention that male crabs are "Jimmys" and females are "Sooks"? The babies are spat, in keeping with exoskeletal terminology. Sooks are preferred, because of the roe, but the meat is equally sweet. More rain and big winds. I had to sign off for a few hours. An intense squall line and the power flickers out. I just sit in the dark for a while, then get my LED headlamp and continue with my reading. The house shudders in the gusts and I feel like I'm on a boat. If the rain stops, and it's supposed to, with this wind, the driveway would be fine for a trip out tomorrow, and that would be a good thing because it's going to rain for the next few days and I'll need coffee and cream, whiskey and tobacco, and another trip to the library. It's good, as they say, to get your ducks in a row. Phone was out for two days. Didn't make it to town, because I found the first morels of the season. Just a few, but enough to saute for an omelet, with a fried shredded potato patty and a piece of toast, it is breakfast for the gods. The last trip to the Goodwill bookstore I'd made a good haul. Non-fiction, a history of butter (with a couple of chapters on magarine), a history of lemons, and a history of chickens. When I finally looked up it was late afternoon and the phone was working, though its ring was sickly. It was an old friend asking if I was ok, that I hadn't posted in a couple of days, and I told her that yes, I was fine, but that my phone had been out. She buys her morels, at a farmer's market in Seattle; early in the season they're $30-35 a pound, later they drop down to $25 a pound. I tell her to stuff some, with herbs and goat cheese, and to use shavings of hard cheese on top, to melt, and hold them together. There's a history of rice, too, but I'm saving it for tomorrow. I do read ahead. Rice paddies can be very old, the system of leveling, and containing water, goes back a very long way. The Siamese attacked the Cambodian capital, Ankor, in the fifteenth century, and they didn't want to take the time to tear down a city built of solid stone, so they just trashed the irrigation system, it had been in place for a thousand years, and malaria immediately killed off fifty per cent of the population. Everyone else fled to the mountains or the coast. Fickle as we are. You make a judgement call, you can either do this or you can't, and you run off into the underbrush. Read more...

Down Crow Pasture

In the later years on Cape Cod, I'd just slide the skiff into the water, a flat-bottom pirogue with lots of rocker, I could pole this boat in two inches of water, and visit the tidal creeks. I'd seeded beds of shellfish that no one else could access. I was a student of tides, knew that at three o'clock, Sunday afternoon, I could harvest oysters, and planned my schedule accordingly. The Cape, at that time, 1970, was virtually deserted in the off-season. I worked all summer at the Playhouse, house-sitting in the winter, and ate free seafood twice a day. One winter I had a pet Harbor seal. Down Crow Pasture was a walk Ted (my first partner, the first print shop in his mother's basement) would take almost every day. Down to the end of Sesuit Neck, where Quivet Creek found the bay, then around the beach and back to the shop. Maybe five miles. In those days we were eating a lot of hallucinogenic plants and producing beautiful books; the halcyon years when the National Endowment for the Arts was giving away money, before Jesse Helms shut down the show. There's a lot of work involved in hand-setting, treadle printing, then hand-binding a book; but having a press, the ability to print any damn thing you pleased, and do it nicely, is a great liberty. Why I remembered those walks, now, is questionable, could be one thing or another, I'm not qualified to say. There were some large glacial erratics; we could hunker down, in the lee, and smoke a joint. I often collected debris. I've always been interested in debris. Several winters I didn't even have a car, never left the village, just walked everywhere. Once a month or so, someone would be going to Boston, and I'd hitch a ride, so I could hit the used book stores. People would visit, it was Cape Cod after all, and I'd take them on a beach walk, we'd collect dinner. I'd started cooking by then. I remember having a couple of dozen quahog shells that I used to cook Clams Casino. I'd make these from chopped razor clams and they were excellent. I'd cook them a dozen at a time until we were ready to explode. Wild berries for dessert. At some point I became known as a good cook, I am a good cook, but it's a grain of salt, actually. I'd usually rather have beans on toast than fuck with anything complicated. The heel of winter grinding me in. What about those odds? I'm still alive. Read more...

Howling Wind

You could tell, by late afternoon, it was going to be one of those nights. The rain cleared out and the wind picked up a full gale. I sent a post, then closed down operations, curled up on the sofa with a flashlight at hand. I'd filled one of the oil lamps and had several utility candles in holders. Reading a food book by Bob Shacochis and he quotes, at the beginning of a chapter, Guy Davenport, and I recognize the quote, from an essay about Levi-Strauss: "Eating is always at least two activities: consuming food and obeying a code of manners." Which could just as well be a quote from Cicero. A ruckus at the compost heap, so I put on my LED headlamp and grab my wrist-rocket sling-shot. There's a rabid coon, atop the pile, foaming at the mouth, and a circle of dogs. The dogs run off as soon as I come out the door, but the coon just bares his teeth. I dispatch him with a ball-bearing to the head. I don't know enough about rabies, but I don't think I want other animals eating the corpse, so I carefully bag the carcass in several layers of plastic. I'll bury it tomorrow. A deep hole and no last rights. Not unlike what I'd wish for myself. When I get back inside, I get a wee dram and roll a smoke, happy to just be alive. Not raining, for the first time in several days, and a lovely morning for a slow drive down the creek, to watch spring unfurling. The red maples are beautiful, the red-bud, the green poking through the leaf-litter, and forsythia in bloom. It's always cool to see the riot of daffodils where there used to be a house. In town the Bradford Pears are blooming. A draft and a sandwich at the pub. TR is a funny guy. After he learned that I had a large vocabulary; he joined the group of several people who ask me if I know what a certain word means, and about half the time, I don't. His word today was ocothorpe, which I didn't know except that it was eight of something. It's the # sign, the actual name. Charlotte's at the museum and I get her to open the vault and watch while I take my two boxes of "valuable" books and what must be 1500 manuscript pages of writing. I'd found another box of 500 pages (from 09 and 10), and there's more than 1000 pages on my desk now. The Thomas Wolfe problem Maxwell Perkins faced with "Look Homeward Angel", way too much material, listen, I've been on both ends of this horn. Read more...

Self Conscious

The color returns. The west slope of the hollow was awash in light, and I stopped to roll a smoke, sat on a stump and considered the alternatives. When I'm fully and completely on the ridge, a state of grace, the world of commerce pales. Dripping rain means I can collect water and wash a few things. Endless rain, the patter on the roof, I collect enough water for a full bath in the sheep-watering trough, and wash my troubles away. If you have running water this probably isn't a big deal, but five gallons of hot water is a big deal for me. Rained hard all morning, harvested enough rainwater to refill all my containers, power was out for several hours, but there was light to read, so I read three Elmore Leonard novels, early ones, three novels in one volume at the Goodwill for $1.49. Eat the last of the ribs. When it stops raining late in the afternoon, I go out on the back porch, sit on my foam pad, roll a smoke. There are buds happening, there are squirrels eating buds, the buzzards are back from wherever they go. Big winds tonight, but the clouds are clearing out, so I should be good to get to town, go the library, get whiskey and supplies for the week ahead, need to. Have lunch with TR, and take a load of stuff home from the museum. I need to get the Jeep an oil-change, I need to get my office Mac out here and get a printer hooked up, I'm lost without a printer because I need to look at hard copy; and I need a hundred pages, printed in twelve point type, to use at Chautuaqua. What's the phrase, delayed gratification? Read more...

Minor Mess

More rain, which is a good thing because I used a lot of water yesterday, and I must have had a wee dram too much to drink, because I don't actually remember going to bed. Obviously I ate ribs, there's a plate of bones on the island. The dish-drain is mounded with bowls and storage containers, the bottom shelf in the fridge is no longer sticky, and the produce drawer is outside in the rain, with solvents, in an attempt to get rid of the black tar that is the end result of moldering carrots. I didn't put them there, I never use that drawer because it's hard to open, this is clearly a case of some goddamn vegetarian setting me up for a fall. And the sauce is fantastic, overtones and undertones; a bit sharp on the tongue, which I quite like, then exploding into tropical fruit. The kitchen is a mess, another round of dishes, but I had dined well, and I ask no more than that. Just before I went to sleep, I see later, when I go out to pee, that I had placed a couple of buckets under the drip-edge, so I build a fire and heat some water. Four in the morning, scrubbing pots and pans. What could be more natural? Hoot owl singing in the dead of night. Creaking, as your bones, but a message, nonetheless. Red-Bud across the hollow. Noticed it at sunrise today, a pink blush, across the way, and now, later the same day, a flush of red maples. I called B at the college, and told him to come over and get some ribs for his dinner and he said he would. When he did we talked about food and cooking, and food writers, about my potential gig as a once a week cook. What I might cook. I reminded him of a leg of lamb he'd cooked years ago, maybe eight pounds, pierced with garlic and marinated in blackberry juice, that was one of the great meals ever. We talked about how you could closely approximate any given meal, pounded pork tenderloin medallions, stuffed with apples and pickled ginger, a game hen stuffed with morels and acorn mush, or a simple catfish, poached in white wine, with a rosemary sauce. Read more...

First Ribs

All that talk about cooking and grilling with Terry yesterday got me thinking about ribs, so when I went to Kroger after chatting with him, I picked up a slab of Baby Backs. Woke up this morning with an agenda. Three things: clean out the fridge, awaken the sauce from under its layer of pig fat (the famous sauce confit), and cook a slab of ribs. I put on water to heat, for cleaning containers and jars, and composted the solids from the fridge, but I also keep bits of marinade and interesting liquids for adding to the sauce. I put the liquids on to boil while I went about the composting, covering it with a goodly layer of stove ash. Removed the plug of fat from the two jars of sauce, and threw them onto the compost pile, added the sauce to the pan of liquids, brought it to a boil again, then pulled it of the heat far enough that it just barely bubbled. I pasteurize it this way three or four times a year, keep it under a layer of pork fat, and keep it in the fridge. I believe it's ten years old now. Rinsed out the jars with pomegranate juice, added a healthy squirt of lime juice, everything is good in the sauce, but no tomatoes; it's more of a fruit and chili thing. If I'm going to be cooking for other people, I extend it out with red wine and a bottle of stout, a blenderized onion, tamarind paste, then reduce it back down. I like it to be fairly thick, like cream, but not as thick as something that would be classified as a Bingham fluid, like ketchup or mayo. Wash dishes and sterilize the two jars for the sauce. I had over-wintered a quart and a pint, but I figure to end up with over two quarts, since, at the end of cooking the ribs, I add all the liquids and fat I've collected, from the cooking process back to the sauce. My syastem is odd but the product is incredible. Either come up with or buy a decent rub, add some instant espresso powder, and, you know, some wild fennel pollen. Read more...

Breakfast

"I like bread and butter, I like toast and jam...". Fucking Phoebe in the under-brush. I eat a bagel, smeared with avocado. A walk, I need to go to the library, and I need supplies for the next week. Stopped at the pub, for a draft and the excellent "Tom's Mac and Cheese" (bacon and jalapenos). The former bosses were there, with the ceramic artist currently on display, and it was very cordial. Mark asked how the writing was going and I told him I was reading a lot and he rolled his eyes in envy. Driving out I saw Terry (a board member), in his future coffee shop, where he wants me to cook. Stopped and talked with him for an hour. He was thinking once a week, which I said is what it'd been thinking. Maybe starting in a couple of weeks. I can cook whatever I want. He springs for it all. There's a bat in the house, I always hate this, I go get the tennis racket. Usually I can shoo them out the back door. Cooking for Terry's cronies once a week could be cool. They're mostly well-heeled, a lot of them on expense accounts, and the tips could be good. When these people eat my cooking they're going to fall over in their chairs. Terry gets fired up. A job in which I work one day a week sounds about right. I need the world out there, a little sliver of it, to hear other people speak the language, and watch them move about, informs me. Here's how it goes. That second comma ago, though the last comma does come into play later, completely floored me. I was thinking about the whole concept of parsing time. Punctuation keeps the beat. It's raining, louder than it was before. Nothing pushes you further from the truth. Read more...

Corn Bread

I wanted corn bread but it was too warm to get a fire going that would heat the oven to 400 degrees. Months ago I'd found a generic six-inch cast iron skillet at the camp ground down at the lake. The handle was broken. It fits perfectly in the toaster oven. It needed cleaning and curing. I cleaned up the jagged break, then cleaned it in lye water, rinsed and rinsed (I have a lot of rain water right now); started a small fire in the cookstove and heated it slowly, wiped down with walnut oil. After a couple of hours, I re-treated the inside with hot chili oil. At this point I had been working on a broken skillet all day, but I was ready to make a pone of cornbread. One cup of Logan Mill yellow cornmeal, one egg, one teaspoon of baking powder, one half teaspoon of baking soda, enough milk to make it barely pourable; pre-heat the skillet (this is critical), add a teaspoon of bacon fat, scrape in the batter. It should sputter a little bit. Excellent result, except that I underestimated the heat that could be contained in a cast-iron skillet and managed to burn a ridge across the fingers of my right hand. "Ira furor brevis est." Horace, anger is a passing madness, or something close to that. Doesn't put me off my feed. I immediately ate half the pone with butter. Felt I had spent a positive day, in that I can now make cornbread year around, which I find interesting, that I hadn't done before. Right, ok, we've been here earlier in this argument, what you do and do not do. Time factoring. It's April now, which means nothing, actually, except that the sun rises and sets in a slightly different place. When I was a young writer, I preferred writing against a blank wall, now I prefer windows. Go figure. The world opens out. Read more...