Hard Snow

The girls are intrepid, they took off, mid-morning, to brunch with friends on the creek, said they'd probably go to town, though I can't imagine what they'd buy, and told me not to worry about dinner. Hard snow coming straight down, and I hope it doesn't impede their getting to Columbus tomorrow, and an early flight back to Colorado Tuesday morning. But they spend the evening cleaning cobwebs and throwing away more things. Samara cleaned the composting toilet. We ate a large number of Big Red sausages because they don't have them in Denver. Mac and cheese, avocado toast. Above the music they play to clean by, we catch up on our lives. Rhea became obsessed with cobwebs and dead bugs. Until they left, they were cleaning surfaces. Samara had some strong opinions about things I should now do in my life, and for the most part, they feathered with my own ideas. Hiring out the heavy lifting, a little more attention to personal hygiene, maybe a free class at the library on computer literacy, maybe a laptop with battery. Rhea remembered to get back-up batteries for my headlamp. They're thoughtful of my ways and means (we spent six or eight summers together here, so they know my lifestyle) but I'm surprised they know me so well that they can restock my larder, replace what needs replacing. They hit Big Lots pretty hard, replacing my wash cloths and towels, cleaning supplies I didn't know I needed, socks, an electric lap robe; I don't even know what else, various foodstuffs, a large bag of vinegar and salt potato chips (we destroyed a bag during a sausage rampage) so they bought a bag of them, and several other things, good snacks, they called them. They arranged delivery of a free refrigerator from down the creek. They rearranged shelves to better utilize space. They bought a small electric heater for their bedroom. They bought a new broom, a new dust pan, a brush for cleaning the top of the ceiling fan blades, enough disinfectant wipes to last a life time, a new/used wool sweater (at Goodwill) to replace the one I've worn for several winters, and a new bathrobe, so I'd have one for guests. Much affection, many hugs, and we all have lives to get on with. Samara starts a new play, Rhea has her job, and I have to go pick up some books at the post office. I forget where I was, whenever I'm disrupted, I forget what I was thinking about. Rhea smuggled in a hash-oil unit, with an igniter, and we get higher than coots. We got very funny and silly, and it was great, all shields down, talking about sex and love, rock and roll. Read more...

Identity Questions

Profiling. Because I look like the village dimwit doesn't mean I am. My drain was frozen and now I'm afraid the trap is plugged, But I can't get to it until tomorrow. The girls didn't get here today, they must be stuck in Columbus, and just before dark I see the first snowflakes. I have a bucket of pig scraps that I need to get rid of, and I hope to drive down into the forest and dump them for the scavengers to have a shot at them, if I can't get out I'll have to carry them down the logging road, which is too close to the house, what with feral dogs and the occasional bear. The timing on this slaughtering is awkward, but I think I'm clear of the mess now. I dip the skinned head in brine and hang it back up, clean some blood off the kitchen floor, bury the fouled newspaper. A wonderful slice of liver, fried in pork fat, with caramelized onions, and a fried egg on top, toast with red-onion jam, an excellent meal, reading Randall White's book on Prehistoric Art. When you posit that there was time to make beautiful things, you posit a structure: I'll give you half a seal if you carve me a fetish. I've used so much water, the last couple of days, 12 gallons, that I'm a bit concerned, and I have dishes to wash when I get the sink unplugged, and my hair to wash. Never ending sequence of things that need doing, and all of them take so much longer, working in the cold. Start a fire, melt snow, wash dishes, isn't the same as turning on a tap. More than half the year I use a solar shower, standing on a pallet, the rest of the time I sponge bath at the kitchen sink, except for one night when I rent a motel room, soak, shower, soak, and emerge a confused moth. And it's not even to make a point, it's just the easiest way for me to live. Within my means. Within my abilities. What the hell are alternative facts? I have to give up on the news again. I suddenly can't understand the language. The girls went out and partied in Columbus and just started down here at noon. I'll see them about three. Snowing but the temp seems to be about 33 degrees, I heard a few drips, but only for about thirty minutes. I take a very cold sponge bath, and can't bear the thought of washing my hair. I think I'll get Samara to buzz my head and beard down close. Easier to maintain, less water use. I actually own an electric hair clipper, though I have no idea where it came from. Jerome assures me that it would be the easier path. Lord knows I need easier. I move more slowly now, through the winter landscape. I'd needed to re-treat a couple of cast iron skillets I'd abused. I will never again scramble eggs in a cast iron skillet. I found a great 6 inch double-plated stainless steel over copper pan at Goodwill, $1, and it is perfect for so many things. I'm not a Luddite, I just live a long way from a hardware store. From any store. Leather makes a fine hinge, you can reuse nails, I start all my fires, now, with junk mail and cash register tape. When did cash register receipts get to be four feet long? Following strict protocol I can build a fire with two these and the right kindling, rarely I use a propane torch, to get things going. A good fire tonight, the girls carried in wood in the afternoon, and went shopping for me. New Boxer Briefs, some socks, they brought subs home, and cleaning supplies; after hauling wood they start cleaning the kitchen. I feel guilty, but not much, they seem to have known they were coming to do this. Foodstuffs, whiskey, snacks, they brought it all, then went to town for more. They bag up trash for a long time, then clean surfaces, then do dishes, astonishing actually, and eating the subs later, they talk about what they want to get done tomorrow, toward setting me up for the rest of winter. I get so tired, watching and listening to their banter, that I have to take a nap. It's exhausting, they have so much energy. They walked in and out the driveway twice, to ferry in supplies. They kept working, until seven, then eight at night. Their sense of cleanliness is clearly different from mine. Other of my friends would be proud of them, for cleaning surfaces I never thought to clean. They use a lot of bleach wipes. The kitchen, when they're done, is much brighter, reflects more light. They clean and disinfect the dish drainer before they'll put any dishes in it. They threw away things they considered too gross to be redeemed and replaced them, and they used a lot of water. Samara is all over my case for staying on the ridge. Argues cogently that the life is too rough, that I'm getting too old, the weather is too tough, and the driveway sucks. They both worry about me getting sick and/or falling. I argue that I'll spend more next year on help one day a week, to do the heavy lifting during the winter months, and that I am extremely careful, now, in the way I conduct my life. A trip to town every week or two, melting snow for wash water, a virtually unlimited supply of books, absolute peace and quiet. I don't see why I shouldn't take advantage for a year or two more. I'm actually very comfortable. Read more...

Wordhoard

Back into the Anglo-Saxon poems. Middle of the fourth century until the middle of the eleventh, precisely when all them Christian missionaries were bringing their messages. The earliest pieces are raw, vicious, but they mellow, over time. This is why Pound cut 25% of The Seafarer, and it was that translation (1912), brilliant and flawed, that first attracted me to these poems. I feel like I'm watching culture devolve. Comic books and buffoons. Since there's no restriction, David Duke might as well be Secretary of the Interior. I don't subscribe to anything, I get The New Yorker as a gift, I read Harper's and Scientific American at the library, where someone else pays for the heating and cooling. I always love going into the library, it smells so good and the temp is going to be about 70 degrees. Hog slaughtering time. I can tell, because when I get home from a quick trip to town (last chance before the girls get here tomorrow), and quick, to beat the rain and snow, there's a five gallon bucket with two pig's heads, a kidney, and an entire liver (huge). I slice the liver and freeze it, toward future pates. Two heads is one too many, so I call a friend to come and get the larger, then skin the smaller one and hang in the woodshed. I'll cure the jowls and make souse from the rest of it, but it won't suffer from hanging a couple of days. There's quite a bit of meat on a pig's head. I'm tempted to make scrapple, which I dearly love. That would involve removing quite a bit of fat, which I could render down. The water/mixture used for boiling down the head results in a great liquid for a pot of beans. The head from a 200 pound hog is too much for one person living alone, properly boiled and presented it would be a meal for a dozen people, with sweet potatoes and cornbread. I'd meant to spend the afternoon doing a bit of house-cleaning, but I can do that with the girls, especially if it snows. Fuck a bunch of plans. Cory, at the pub, would trade lunch futures against some scrapple, and he's much taken with my country pates. A few free beers in my future. Notice the way stress falls on the alliteration. The way it echoes. I was so involved with that rapid switch, from rapine and havoc, to something much more domesticated, that I'd failed to notice the day had slipped away. I'd be hard-pressed to make this up. Following tradition. I cook some neck bones with rice and kimchee. I saved out a slice of liver, for breakfast, by the time I go to bed I'm exhausted and I have a mess, mostly contained on recycled newspaper, that I need to bury in the compost pile before the girls get here. I'd rather pile the offal off the side of the road, down in the forest, so the crows could work through it, but it starts raining hard, and all I can think about is getting some sleep. My hands are cramped, from using a skinning knife, and I have to heat a kettle of water, to wash off the blood. I'm so tired, after midnight, that I double-check my every move, get a small dram of whiskey, roll a smoke, sit back, and think about free will. I don't know what to think. I live a fairly natural life, organic, shade-grown, and there's a pig's head hanging in my woodshed. Read more...

Fake News

Post-truth era. Even with my extremely limited bandwidth the bullshit is so deep I can't find the ground. I can barely listen to the radio, though I trust certain radio people more than I do others. I've almost never had a TV. Glenn bought one, when we lived on The Dump Road, to watch his future bride, that was forty years ago. Actually I had never owned a television, you can't read and watch at the same time. Clare brought one into the house but then she left and they changed frequency or something. I watched a little Hulu, when I was trapped at the museum and I did notice that they'd gotten much more sophisticated than the episodes of Gunsmoke I remembered from my youth. I've never gotten a paper except for the New York Times book review. I've seen maybe three movies in the last twenty years. But still, the outside world filters in, phone calls and conversation, an hour every two weeks to catch up on sports watching ESPN at the pub. Brady in another Super Bowl. I'd bet on dirty sheets later. The girls can bring in chunk wood while they're here, stack it around the stove, which would help me enormously, and maybe we'll be able to get to town. We don't play any games (except for Scrabble) but we do ask questions from Trivial Pursuit and debate the answers. My concerns were never about what we would do, they were only ever about the weather. I don't have to be anywhere, I can mope about, in my bathrobe and slippers, I might not get to town for several weeks, it doesn't matter, but for more tightly planned schedules days seem to signify. I was reading about a Siberian enclave, a couple of houses, 15,000 years old, the frame was mammoth mandibles and it was covered with raw leather, and lined with bear hides. Heated with mammoth dung and lit with mammoth oil lamps. The largest of these houses seem to be circular, about 16 feet in diameter, one of them used 167 mandibles in the frame. Locked together in a herring-bone pattern, the sophistication indicates a language, at least some nouns and verbs, to get anything done. A hearth, a bone midden, a cache protected from the Dire Wolf, and I imagine an outhouse, a small palisade of mammoth femurs. There must have been some early maps: where the reindeer crossed the river, when fish clogged the stream. Time factoring was a feature of cave paintings, a certain plant, at a certain time, in a certain place. It's interesting that the caves at Chauvet, which are older, are much more sophisticated in detail; by the time we get to Lescaux, the drawings are almost crude, we were already telling stories by then, locking knowledge in alliteration, no longer needing the drawings on the wall. At Chauvet, which was only discovered in the 1990's, they've been very careful, they don't even walk on the floor of the cave, and there are footprints of kids and hand prints of infants, a family affair. If you'd just killed a mammoth, you didn't have to worry about dinner for a few days, so you could take the clan deeper into the cave and add a glyph, yes I was here, full moon after first green grass, and the reindeer crossed the river. I read several references to ice bears (European, Lakota, Innuit) and finally realized it was literally an ice-covered bear. An armor-plated monster. He'd chosen a bad spot, poor drainage, had gotten dripped on, and was coated in a sheaf of ice. Arrows tended to bounce off. Dolni Vestonice, 26,000 years ago, was a happening place. Fired clay and woven cloth, talents to be lost for 10,000 years. Everything had to be reinvented three or four times. Cod fish cakes for dinner, just enough mashed potatoes to hold the fish in place, with some canned mixed greens I'd stewed for an hour with salt-pork and minced onion. Making cornbread I was struck with how flexible a cornmeal batter can be. I usually cook a thinner pone, at fairly high temp, but most recipes call for a thicker cake and lower temps. And I can do that, because a split wedge of cornbread, buttered and drizzled with sorghum molasses, is very good. Read more...

Laundromat

The winter laundry done. Some Spanish sardines at Big Lots. A lightly overcast day, but I can see the sun behind and I figure I can get in and out before the next round of rain. I'd taken Guy Birchard's new book of poetry, Hecatombs, with me, to read at the laundromat, but I got involved in helping a nurse fold a mountain of bed sheets. She worked at a hospice and their dryer was on the blink. We talked about caring for dying people. There were a lot of sheets (eight dryer loads) and folding ate up the entire time waiting for my wash to dry. Didn't need money, so I didn't even stop at the bank, mailed off a phone bill, stopped at Kroger, for a few extra things, an artichoke, which I was craving, and another jar of this blue cheese dressing, to which I seem to be addicted. No other stops, except for potato logs at the Quick-Stop, and when I get home I put the artichoke on to steam, spoon out some dressing into a small bowl. I can eat this, the artichoke and the potato logs with one hand, except for when I have to hold the heart to scrape the choke with the edge of a spoon. Not caring whether either is hot or cold, I take a long time to eat, reading Birchard. A very long time, because it's a wonderful book and I keep rereading parts. I've spent my life among poets, which is time well spent, when you consider the alternatives. A world of language is my preferred playing field. My cricket pitch. Warm outside, 50 degrees, and I was sitting on a stump, playing with a stick. I'd cleared a small patch of leaves, so I could draw in the dirt, and I was designing a hurricane-proof cabin. A course of speculation that allows thousands of variations: materials, attachments, form, site-specific considerations, drainage. Within this line of reasoning, a few things stick out. Design criteria, the wind for instance, let's say 200 mph, and rain, let's say an inch an hour, for twenty-four hours. You must control the high ground, rule number one, and drainage (a nod to Glenn) is a priority. I'd read for years that cow-dung was a good water-proofing, so I constructed a small test wall, flattened cans nailed to a frame of shipping pallets, collected a few buckets of manure. Plastered my test wall with shit, let it dry, and put it out in the weather. We'll see. Bovine shit is mostly fiber. In clay or cement, reinforcement plays a large part, but chemical things are happening that I don't understand. The ridge is sensitive to winter winds, so aerodynamics comes into play, ground movement (the projected failure of the Mosel Dam), an adequate foundation and attachment to the foundation become issues. I built a place in Colorado, an expensive house, on exposed bedrock, I rented a powerful, loud compressor and rock drill, and welded the house frame directly to the rock. I'm a big fan of exposed brackets and bolts. Yet another thing I love about working with natural materials is that they can dictate terms. A branch becomes a railing, or a small tree becomes a post in a house. My job is to not exert control, beyond whatever is code, and just allow things to happen. I can do a few things, twiddle my thumbs, misinterpret almost anything, shit on my ankles when I'm squatting in the woods, it's no great talent, but I can visualize how pieces might fit together. Rain again, staccato beat, I need some sleep. Read more...

Rough Language

Reading some Harry Crews and James Dickey last night, enjoying the cadence of Southern Speak. I've known so many of these people, learned so much about language. American dialects. People from NYC could not understand the people from Duck Hill. Another morning of rain, then just overcast, and I stayed the house all day. All night reading, so I had to take a morning nap, then a large breakfast/lunch; I never got out of my bathrobe. Read a Carl Hiaasen I'd missed, a very funny guy, then Davenport and Sauer essays. Don't feel like cooking so I eat left-over rice with onion and chilies. During dinner I was reading recipes for snake in a game cookbook, actually I ended up reading most of the recipes, fairly simple country cooking. I've never eaten porcupine. I had a good list, for the trip into town. The wind had blown during the night and the driveway was solid, though beat up a bit by all the rain. Evidence of trees down everywhere. Out in the country everyone drives a pick-up with a chain-saw in the back, so this firewood disappears immediately and the roads are quickly cleared. Low-lying roads had flooded, and the bottoms, where the Scioto runs into the Ohio was a vast inland sea. Too many things to do, so I decided to make a special trip to town for the laundry and a trip to Big Lots, and another trip to Kroger, because my two daughters are coming to visit, next week, and I'll need to feed them, I make some plans. Vague, changeable plans, but a place to start. Third week in January, I'm already into survival mode, and I don't want any other responsibility. Stopped at B's on the way home, to exchange a couple of books, he reminded me that my daughters are grown, and that it was their decision to visit me. Light rain falling, Trump becomes president. I read Basho all morning, with a second bookmark in the back to follow the notes. Half the book (the SUNY edition, translated by Barnhill) is notes, a literal translation of words and phrases. I get so involved that I manage to miss the inauguration on the radio. JC calls later and tells me that it really did happen. I'm embarrassed that this could actually be the case, but I've been embarrassed before by the American Politic: Viet Nam, Ronald Reagan, the Supreme Court electing a president. But this is beyond the pale. One buys elections, that's how it's done. I'm so angry I can hardly contain my self. Formerly I would have taken a long walk, but I can't physically do that any more, so I resort to cooking pig's ears. Which reminded me of cooking the shell of a soft-shelled turtle, both which end up with a product that is actually quite good and have the food value of a golf ball. I'd found a package in the frozen food case. You boil them, in an herb brine, then cool them in the liquid, skin them, cut them into strips and fry them, rolled in a spicy cornmeal. I just eat them, out of hand, but they're very good on a salad with roasted yellow grape tomatoes. Read more...

Segregation

Barnhart called and seems to have corrected my latest computer problem remotely. I still have my winter laundry sitting by the back door, waiting, but it's been raining forever, and my runs to town, limited as they are, haven't included time for the hour necessary, nor the trip to Big Lots which is right up the street from the laundromat. Shopping at Big Lots is always an adventure. You can rarely find exactly what you want, but you can find something that'll do, and the food area is always filled with odd items, discounted, discontinued, and almost out of date. I can pick up an odd-ball grazing meal, which might stretch for a couple of days, for just a couple of dollars: potted meat, cheese spread, olives, pickles, and stale British crackers. What could be better than that? A can of cold beans, or that great sandwich, I forgot to mention, left-over fried potatoes with mayo. We generally stopped a day's fishing when we ran out of food, then went home for supper. Often other people at dinner, because everyone loved Mom's home cooking; other navy people, neighbors, my sister's friends. I'd retreat to my room and read. I still retreat to my room and read. It's difficult for me to imagine what else you'd do with your time. Still, I was sidetracked today building a snare for mice. In hindsight, I can see how the whole thing happened, but I never could have predicted it. Months ago I'd found a silver necklace chain in the parking lot at Kroger and I thought about making a mouse snare. Five days into a seven day novena, searching for the dominant chord, I ended up with this extremely complicated mouse trap that would only work if the mouse was left-handed. I do catch a mouse, suspended on a silver chain, above a tripod of popsickle sticks I've glued together. Started raining again after mid-night, hard enough to wake me, and I read a book about tides. At some point I made a toasted cheese sandwich, with an English double-cheddar, and heated a can of tomato soup. Shut down the computer a couple of times, when the rain got intense, but never did lose power. The drips taper off into another steely dawn. Flood alerts on the radio. The news is all horrid, so I listen to Beethoven, the last string quartets, and write for a while. Winter dawns are so quiet, just the creaking of the woodstove and a slight susurration in the trees. I can barely hear the first train over in Kentucky, miles away and across the river, hauling coal to the power plants. It's like a Country Western song now, an MTV video in which almost nothing happens, just some stick trees in the mist. Basho:

winter seclusion:
again I'll lean back against
my old post

I had forgotten that bow season extends until February and a bow-hunter shows up, mid morning. I made him a cup of coffee. He'd heard I was eccentric. I told him it was fine for him to hunt over at the graveyard, as long as he came in from the other direction (the west) and didn't shoot me. Light rain, partial clearing, then another round of dark clouds. I reread the first Jack Reacher novel, which was a total diversion. Went outside for some fresh air, settled back inside, reading about the history of bread. A lot of bird and animal activity, during a long lull in the afternoon I watched six young squirrels and was amused at their play, later the red-headed woodpeckers were back. Lovely birds. Late dusk there's single high-powered rifle shot from a mile or more up the road. A poacher. I pretend my phone is broken, and don't call the constabulary, nothing to be gained. Read more...

Healed

Barnhart and son Alan got it worked out. I didn't understand a word they said. They got here late morning and got out before the snow set in hard. After they leave I send the accumulated paragraphs, and Barnhart fixed my AOL toolbar, so I can work the way I have for years. Sort through e-mails, delete everything. They brought food too, so I eat ham salad (a favorite) and cheese on crackers for the rest of the day, and a lot of olives. Took a break and went outside to sweep the back porch, three inches and falling still for eight more hours. Thank god they brought me whiskey. The mice are getting bold now, and I set all the traps. I hate to kill them, but they're a mess and certainly not sanitary. Temps drop all day, then dip even more as night falls. All sound is muffled. I stay up reading so I can stoke the stove one last time, then curl up in my mummy bag and sleep a few hours, warm and fetal. Ten degrees just before dawn and I'm in full survival mode, which means doing nothing but staying wrapped up, every few hours put another log on the fire. Cold enough inside that it's difficult to roll a decent smoke, but I can't see my breath and that's a good sign. I built this place for 25 thousand dollars, all the money I had, and I actually needed another 10, to finish and weatherize everything properly. Result being that I can be comfortable down to twenty degrees, slightly uncomfortable below that, and zero is a pain in the ass. Design temperature is an important factor when you build a house. It doesn't matter quite so much if you have central heat, you just pay more in winter and listen to the furnace all the time. Building houses off the grid has always been interesting to me, so many cards to shuffle, the logistics involved. Rural life is different. It's not the same set of configurations. I hear it snowing, I crawl in my sleeping bag and take a nap. Exhausted, and I haven't even done anything, I'd like to hibernate. I do, actually, for six hours and miss my wake-up call, which is based on drinking a glass of water before I go to sleep. The house is cold, but my feet are warm, but eventually I get up, put on my bathrobe over my clothes, get my great Montana house slippers, and make a cup of coffee. Build another fossil-fuel fire, spreading my footprint, and settle into reading mode until the house can heat up a bit. Then I need to eat, so I think about that, settling on hash and eggs, then realize I need to water-proof my work boots so I can get out to the woodshed. Listening to Science Friday on the radio I laughed out loud, when some guest said that Tweets were now the chicken entrails of the past. Ironic or sarcastic but it was a genuine laugh, and since I hadn't made a sound in many hours I found it interesting. Snowed-in and completely isolated. When I go out for an armload of wood I'm extremely careful. Still, I'm not sure I can do this anymore. I wouldn't mind having a bathroom with hot running water, instead of an outhouse and a kettle on the wood stove. And I've already proved I can split wood. A small house on the outskirts of a small town in the panhandle of Florida, with a propane furnace and a flush toilet would be very nice. Going outside with a headlamp and a walking stick when it's five degrees doesn't seem right. The hand you draw. I need to start carrying in frozen wood tomorrow, to get it thawed and dry, but otherwise I just settle in my nest with a mug of tea. Like Badger, I intend to eat, then nap through the day. I spend a fair amount of time reading about off-beat building techniques, it's an interesting subject. Bamboo, mud, cow-dung, tusks, bent sticks, ice-blocks, dirt, various skins, the list goes on and on because habitation is necessary. For the true hermit, a hole in the ground or a cave is fine. In Utah I found a couple places in old ruins that looked quite comfortable, a place to sleep, a place to cook, a place to shit; a night-time fire to keep the predators at bay, a bear skin to sleep under and you were good to go. I've spent a few nights in these places and it's not that bad, as long as you don't have to get up and go to a job. Melt some ice, make a cup of tea, eat a military surplus meal, and get on with the day. Gather enough wood for the next night. Keep them fucking wolves away. Bloody cold outside, near zero and six inches of new snow. I sit back with another mug of tea and design a snug little cabin in my mind, something 16 by 20 feet with just a couple of windows and a door built like a bank vault. I do the math on the footage necessary for bookcases. I'm well over 200 linear feet here, but I could do that, in a cabin, if I isolated a sleeping nook with bookcases. It's so cold the mice are going crazy, snapping traps is the story of my life. The crows, I think, will be happy. Toasted cheese and tomato soup, a dram of single-malt, later, I can hardly roll a smoke, my fingers aren't working properly, and I look forward to just climbing under several blankets. It's supposed to be a bit warmer tomorrow. Crash early and sleep long, very cold temps are exhausting. At zero degrees you can burn a great deal of firewood. Just caught the fire about four, stoked, had a smoke and a wee dram until I could damp the stove, wrapped back up and went over to sleep on the sofa. After some time I do a body check: feet are warm, legs are warm, butt is fine, torso is warm, and finally drift off. The progress of the world, let's call it that, is not based on Mad Tom's examination of his body, but rather on hot running water and a thermostat. You can shave, you can bathe. My main interest is whether or not my toes are frost-bitten. My schedule is skewed. I was rereading Guy Davenport's essay about Olson's The Kingfishers, pretty much in a trance. I made a mushroom hash that was quite good, with an egg on toast, a brown butter sauce. The sink drain is frozen, so I can't wash the dishes, but the temps are rising, and I think I can solve that problem with some hot pasta water tomorrow. I use cheap bulk paper plates (they're quite sterile) for chopping and eating when it gets cold, because I can burn them, and I don't generate much trash. Anything organic is eaten, anything that will burn is burned, still, I produce trash, and it bothers me. Glossy paper, auto auctions and the like, are so full of filler (clay) that they don't burn, and I hate burning plastic, so there's a certain amount of trash. Everest is strewn with debris, there's a collection of crap in the Pacific larger than Connecticut. Plastic bottles and tennis balls. This whole consumer economy is a dead end. I have a large supply of relishes and chutneys, right now, so I cook a pot of rice, and fry some salt-pork. I might get to town, do some laundry, go to the library. But this time of year I can't depend on getting anywhere. I don't have to get out, I have plenty of rice and beans, and a great deal of canned fish products, salmon, tuna, sardines, shrimp, eel, anchovies, all of which I enjoy on rice with various sauces. The onions have sprouted, but I have plenty of dried flakes, on to dried or canned potatoes. I still have a few winter squash, from the last raid on Tim Horton's fall display. Acorn squash that I'll stuff with sausage and cornbread, dessert squash, stuffed with raspberries. I had forgotten how good roasted acorn squash was with raspberries. Like applesauce and polenta. The wind is a full gale, it'd better go. A brief window before days of rain, so I make a quick trip to town. The driveway is a bit slick, going down, and I know it'll be dicey getting back up. Groceries, drinking water, whiskey and tobacco, a quick beer at the pub. The rain starts before I get home, stop at the mailbox and get a bag of mail and New Yorkers, a couple of books, then turn in the driveway and stop, put it in four-wheel low. A little slippage near the top, but I make it back home and breathe a sigh of relief. Re-provisioned. I puts oats on to cook, in the baby crock pot, because I want oats and fruit tomorrow. Power went out at 1:30 AM and I went into headlamp mode and read a Thomas Perry novel. I light a candle over on the stone kitchen counter, so I can see my way around. The wind is howling, shaking the house, it's dramatic. Hard blowing rain, branches flying, the trees shrieking. Too warm for a fire, so I eat a can of cold beans. Cold beans and crackers, to which I have a long affinity based on fishing with Dad, in a boat or on a jetty somewhere, often in lousy weather, because we'd heard the mullet were running, or the perch were bedding, or the bass were spawning. This all comes back to me, years later, fishing for native trout, high in the western Rockies. I carried a milk-crate, with food and supplies, in the back of the truck, a baby-food jar of pork fat, some rice, and a few cans of beans. I usually have a lemon, because there is no better dressing for a cut-throat trout at breakfast, and lemons keep very well, mid-summer in Utah. The wind dies down, the rain slackens, at 4:30 the power comes back on. I remember thinking I was on the main track here, not the false assumption that anything actually made sense. But that I was well and truly engaged in the moment, whatever it was. I know a lot about forks, but I try to not let it show, everyone hates a smart ass. Later I was considering the relative valence of conjunctions and commas. Every drop of rain is completely random. A percussive event. Don't get me started. The noise was extreme. I could hear hard waves of rain coming through the leaf-litter before they slammed into the house, the violence was startling. I was reading about a set of bronze doors in Florence. They weighed ten tons and I wanted to know how they had installed them. You have to carry that load, and it has to rotate. There has to be a lubricated joint in there somewhere. Probably not a gasket, because you'd have to lift a five ton door to replace it. Now you'd probably do this with a very hard ceramic material, lubricated with space-age bacon fat. I was interested in the way that very heavy stone caskets were slid into place. Small marbles, arrow shafts, and bacon. This got me thinking about tolerances. Thinking about tension and compression, the outward expansion of materials under load. The snap of a mouse trap brings me back into focus, food for crows dear Percy. Another morning of mist and clouds. I can't see across the hollow, steady drip of rain. A mug of coffee, and a bowl of gruel (cornmeal, oats, sliced bananas) staring out at a very bleak landscape. Before I can start a pot of beans I have to wash some dishes, deal with compost and ashes; then make cracklings, caramelize onions and peppers, take my usual reading breaks, and carry in some wood. That would be my day. I can't imagine I'd get all that done, but it's good to have a plan. Above freezing, so the house is easy to heat and I putter around, in bathrobe and slippers. Making cracklings always puts a smile on my face, remembering Mississippi. We'd kill a hog at Roy's, butcher it, salt down belly fat, and bury the hams and bacon in the first stage of cure. Then we'd make lard, rendering skin and scraps, dipping out the cracklings with a slotted spoon. Anyone who dropped by would stay, to eat cracklings and drink home-brew. No TV, no attention to outside news, just telling stories, comfortable around a pit fire. Once or twice a year Roy and I would kill a large hog just to make sausage (we had a back-list of orders) and we'd skin that hog, so there'd be a surplus of cracklings. Roy had a permit to set up his grill on Saturday, down town Duck Hill, and he'd cook to order for people and also sell ribs and chicken, and great sandwiches with his special sauce. Crackling sandwiches were in much demand. These were served as a fold-over in soft white bread. Folded-over white bread was the tortilla of the deep south. I've had turnip greens and fried salt-pork with mayo, crawdads with cocktail sauce, and many kinds of beans served that way. Roy's big seller was a ham steak sandwich, between two pieces of bread, overhanging on all sides and dripping with sauce. Bone-in, because everyone wanted that little morsel of marrow. I started helping on Saturdays, after an article came out about him in the Memphis newspaper, and we became fast friends. We shared an interest in fried fish and hush puppies; he raised world-class coon-hounds. Red-Bones and Blue-Ticks, beautiful dogs, with great deep voices. We had some wonderful times, sitting on my front porch, drinking shine, listening to his dogs run the bottoms. When the rain finally stopped, I got outside, but it was so dreary, I went back inside and read about Brunelleschi's dome, not the dome itself, which is a marvel, but transporting the materials, then hoisting them into place. The dome itself is estimated to weigh 37,000 tons, which is a lot of outward thrust, and difficult to deal with without buttresses. The problem is always the same, to carry the load down to a firm footing. There's dead load, the weight of the materials, and there's live load, three feet of heavy late winter snow, and everything needs to be factored. Decades of working with engineers and building inspectors and the occasional architect taught me to just over-build everything, I liked seeing the structural members. I've always used natural sticks, tree trunks, wherever I could, in construction. They're beautiful, and it's always interesting working with components that aren't straight. It's a look I prefer, and I wanted to build this house without any right angles, which I could do, but I was limited by time and money. It's faster and easier to frame a place conventionally, and I needed a place to live. Read more...

Garbage

Let time pass without strain. The rush of wind through stick trees. I lack the words for that sense of being well and truly in the moment. It's probably an illusion, after all, or at least elusive. Beautiful deep blue day so I take a little walk before things can change, dropping temps and snow this afternoon, then much colder. Barnhart called and the modem was in but it was too late to come out, he'll try tomorrow morning, if there isn't too much snow, and I asked him to bring a bottle of whiskey, so I wouldn't have to go to town for a few days. I do have to get to town, to do what I think of as the winter laundry, all the socks, underwear, and both changes of long underwear. Joel was giving me some grief about being an idiot, which is certainly true. I am slow when it comes to the ways of the world, on the other hand I eat more pate than anyone I know. I can date this passion pretty precisely, I was in Utah, finishing a house, living bare-bones, but once a week I'd go into Moab and eat at a nice place that served mushroom pate as an appetizer. I met the chef, got in the kitchen and watched. Simple. Mushrooms, shallots, butter and a shot of brandy. Gotta go Barnhart is here. Read more...

Day Two

More mist, thicker overcast, but warmer, so I heat some water and take a sponge bath. It starts to rain and I'm struck with the amount of moisture there is just hanging around. I had some ground pork in the freezer. I buy it in pound packages, on sale, in the varietal meat frozen-food case, so I can make chorizo mid-winter. I like to fry this, broken apart, with a diced potato, then scramble in a couple of eggs, a small can of chilies. It's always at least a meal for two and the leftovers are a good breakfast rolled in a tortilla. The mist hangs around all day, there's no place for the moisture to go. Several cups of tea while I finish with a couple of books, then put away a few because the piles were getting dangerous. Little Dell is very quiet, about on a par with a Servel gas refrigerator, like a sleeping dog breathing. It's so quiet, that I sense a car on the driveway, before I actually hear it, a vibration. Oh fuck, I say out loud, first thing I've uttered in days, and it's a former cast member from a play I directed, with a friend. They bear a bottle of decent single-malt and I knew my day had slipped away. The day, at any rate, that I had nominally planned. There were some essays I wanted to read, and before I put on clean socks I wanted to trim my toenails; it doesn't sound like much, but it was a plan. The friend was interested in building and he was impressed with my knowledge of loading, we talked about deflection and dead weight. He was surprised to find me here, knowing what I did, collecting oak galls. I made them crab meat omelets, with toast and marmalade. Then made them coffee. They finally left so they could get down the driveway in the light. It takes me an hour to still my thoughts. When I go to town, I have the drive home to settle down; when I'm on the ridge, the interruption, especially unannounced, seems so total, that it takes me a while to remember what I was thinking about. Sometimes I never do find the thread. I don't write at the pub, or anywhere, other than a few extremely cryptic notes that later make no sense, because I can only build paragraphs looking at them, for long periods of time, without interruption. Even when I cook, when I'm by myself, it's the same monolog going on. My pork fat and your chicken fat going to set the world on fire. Doctor John. I may have confused the lyrics. After dark, it's rain in waves, this could have been several feet of snow, and it is supposed to change over, but not until tomorrow night, which might provide Barnhart with a window to get out with the modem. I read a Tony Hillerman novel, because I know the country he talks about, and he's one of the only writers that seriously talks about water use and that strange sense of Navaho time. The wind is a small roaring, not yet a train in Kentucky, but a noticeable sound. That clicking is just the stove cooling off. Don't pay it any mind. Read more...

First Light

Just a slight breeze, but enough to set the last leaves chattering. Some left-over cornbread with maple syrup. Haul water, split wood. D calls and a deer had smashed through the patio glass and out through Gwen's window. A mess, as you might expect. Read more...

Dead Modem

Blackout, then a power surge. This is the sixth modem in recent memory. I don't know what to do, so I settle in my nest and read for a couple of days. It was a holiday, as usual, and a long weekend before I could make any calls. I tried everything, but I know nothing about computers. The old modems (I had several) couldn't talk to Little Dell. The secondary problem was that my AOL toolbar was covered by a display error notice, so I couldn't write. Failure abides. Finally realized that I still should be able to access my writing program, within AOL, though I couldn't send anything, because I was not connected. And I was able to, after a few false starts. Several pages of notes, but I do love working in real time. Snow in the forecast and I hope to get out before then, try and arrange TR or Barnhart to get me a modem off E-Bay. No computer store sells them anymore. I need a few things at Kroger. I rely on canned, sliced, white potatoes for winter hash-browns. When I grew them, I always had a root-cellar, now, it's easier and cheaper to buy them in the can. I made a version of the cornbread dressing for the holiday, with the tail-end of pate on toast, listened to some Bach. My sister called, my older daughter called. I was talked out, so I unplugged the phone. I'm so disconnected it's appalling, I had a couple of oak galls I wanted to dissect. You have no idea how many small wasps infect the universe. Supposed to have a warmer break in the weather, so I can make up for the trip to town I missed following the death of my modem. I knew it was going to be a pain in the ass. Like most mammals, I seek to curl-up in a corner when things don't go to suit me. Rain, too warm to snow, and it's a lovely sound in the dark. Buck deer season opened, the main season, and the woods will be alive with hunters, so I wear blaze orange even on my short walks, and make a lot of noise. Read more...

The Bridge

The new bridge was open. There must have been a penalty clause because they've still working on the approaches, but they are letting traffic through. The Jeep started fine, and the tire pressures were all good. The Buckeye Diary Bar was still open, it closes for a few months in winter, so I stopped for a milk-shake and a footer. No one playing putt-putt on the Buckeye Course and the fountain is turned off, but it's lovely, the mist rising off the river. It's raining again. An off-beat rhythm. No luck on the modem front. Back-up items, mostly, shopping yesterday. I spent some time re-organizing the pantry shelves and making a list of things I had over-looked: and extra tube of toothpaste, a battery for the headlamp, another pair of work gloves. A foodstuff list too, which can be forever tweaked. I need another back-up black pepper, because I'm soon to break into the back-up; more of the anchovies rolled around capers, another wheel of cheese that could last a few months. I need some jerky and dried fruit, but I'm good to go. Beans, rice, a few things I know to gather. I cultivate a few herbs, grow some sprouts, drink cranberry juice against scurvy. I don't know what the impetuous is to live on the edge, a certain satisfaction, maybe, my smoked mullet is better than your smoked mullet, but I do love waking to an actual day. The new bridge is not bad, given the parameters, it can carry the load of a logging truck and still appear polite. They've saved most of the slightly dressed stone from the old abutments, and several edge pieces intact (which must have been moved by the crane that set the girders) and I suspect they are to become a stone wall somewhere that money is not an object. The bridge cost 2.1 million dollars, and I argue that I could have built it for half of that, or even less, with two phones and a decent crew. Read more...

Off Kilter

A page out of the play book. I felt awful, nose dripping into my stomach and retching, so I fetched a pot and retired to my nest. Put on the kettle and made tea, heated some chicken broth. It's difficult to settle things completely but by mid-afternoon I'm onto a lime grog, thinking I might be able to eat a bowl of plain rice. Reread Isak Dinesen's Babette's Feast, a wonderfully told tale, then some other food writing, that famous meal in Joyce's The Dead. Sorting foodstuffs I came across a can of crab meat past its date, so I made a very nice crab omelet with a butter sauce, toasted cornbread with marmalade. I hadn't eaten in a while and it tasted wonderful. I'd made a small crock pot of grits overnight (god bless John Thorne) and formed polenta into a tube, the basis for several meals. Anything is good on fried polenta. Mid-winter, even Kroger brand salsa is pretty good. Hormel, to their credit, still sells pickled pig's feet in odd-sized glass jars. You must be alone to eat these, there must be a stream nearby, someplace you can wash your hands and face. Mom and Dad took over running the fish-camp we frequented (when Dad could get a tour of duty in Jacksonville Florida) for a week every summer, so that the owners could go fish someplace else. Fish-camps are squalid and wonderful places, usually a shack on pilings and a crude boat-launch, a deck, with a fish-cleaning table at the end, out over the water. There were alligators and huge moccasins, otters and manatees. The shack would be crowded with supplies: fishing line, bait, Vienna sausages, crackers, and there was a counter, with a couple of stools. At one end of the counter was a gallon jar of pickled eggs, at the other end was a gallon jar of pickled pig's feet. I'd often take one of the feet out to the end of the dock and gnaw it down to bare bone. From a pound of foot I might get an ounce of meat, but the huge and ancient gar would come to eat the knuckles.


Skip Fox's new book was in the mail. He's one of the two or three finest writers I've ever known. His language is always exciting, and his frame of reference is vast. I take a deep breath and read slowly, each page three or four times. The best writing, which this book is, require close reading. My attention extended all night, the first night with it, now I just keep it within an arm's reach, and reread a few pages a day. Almost out of animal fat, so I made cracklings, which I hope to use with a pot of beans tomorrow, and caramelized a skillet of onions that I just left on the stove. Put the beans on to soak, and it's in the bag, Mix this together, cook it a few hours, make a pot of rice, and read fucking Proust again, if that's what you want to do. I like taking a bowl of this, a turned walnut burl of a bowl, that is incredibly beautiful, and eat it with a handmade spoon that twists logic. Dead and gone to heaven. What could possibly be an alternative? I don't care if the Patriots make it to the Super Bowl.


Also, I might add, he flinched, which I think is a full point. Read more...

A Break

Walked out to where I saw three deer this morning, to see what they'd been grazing. Ferns and other green stuff buried in leaves. The leaves are so deep, there's quite an array of plants, I use a salad fork (a great tool) to clear a square yard and study the plants. Several of them are quite sweet. Made a small batch of red onion jam served on fried polenta. I spoil myself, throwing care to the wind, and read another O'Brian. Chill morning but the house is warm enough, so I let the fire go out to clean ashes, then start another. Split a little kindling and stack it on the warming rack above the stove. Vow to vacuum some cobwebs tomorrow morning, when the slanted light makes them visible. Fog rising out of the hollow that wisps away into the air. Heat death right there in front of you. All the water there ever was. I ate the last of the polenta with Spanish sardines and salsa. I don't have to go out and long-line for cod, shingle a roof mid-winter, or work in an office. If I just eat rice and beans, and don't go off the ridge, I don't have to answer to anyone. The inevitable first winter storm is forecast for Thursday so I make a final list, I have three days to get to town, and I'm sure I can do that, it's only a couple hours out of my 168. A week is a week. This is when the driveway starts getting bad, ice, with frozen leaves, and snow on top. Rain now, a run to the woodshed, take in a reef. A well-run ship barely a word needs exchanged. I'm good at coiling ropes, tying knots, I cook a mean fish stew. Read more...

Laid-By

Gray day but no rain early so I make the trip to town. Stopped at the pub for a fortifying pint, then took my list to Kroger. Picked up another smoked jowl and a few more canned goods, a large jar of salsa, too many grape tomatoes and another jar of great blue-cheese dressing, which, together, I eat at almost every meal, with a spoon, a back-up box of dried salted cod. Rain has started again, I fill my rain-water pot, from the buckets on the deck, because I need to wash some dishes, then retire to my nest and read. The Nature Conservancy calls and they want to come up and park, so they can walk the State Forest clear-cuts, looking for invasive plants. I'm not paranoid and I'm currently not breaking many laws, but why is the NC doing field-work for the state forest? I know they want a corridor opened between two state forests: the Black Bear, extending its range. I was thinking about this and dealing with some punctuation that wasn't quite right when a white pick-up hove into view, Chet, from the NC, looking to see where to park. He comes inside for a cup of coffee, so that I can explain driveway protocol, and he's completely flabbergasted by all the books. He has a master's degree in forestry and we talked a bit about trees. He agrees with B that Mackletree Road is probably named for the Sycamore, which was commonly called the Mackletree just a generation ago. We actually had a conversation about oak-galls. He asked me why I read so much, and I explained that there was a public library between our house and the public swimming pool when I was a kid, I think in Norfork, Virginia. Later, I think it is interesting, why I turned to books. First, because it is my universe, private and inviolate. A place to go, when things became confusing. Second, to focus on a specific thing, a particular play of light, what a pause might mean, that specific hole in a leaf. Read more...

Good News

I called B, to tell him that the Nature people would be in his backyard. He was as perplexed as me that they wanted to park at my place (which makes no sense). The good news was that he now had high-speed Internet at his house for $75 a month, and it worked wonderfully well and fast. I'm currently paying more than that for a system that doesn't function. I'll need to modify the way I work, but I can learn new tricks. Chet asked me how I had come to books and I gave a flip reply, but later I was thinking about that. Mom and Dad had both graduated high school, and there was a book case at the end of the hall, two shelves, three feet tall and four feet wide. My precious encyclopedia (American Heritage, as I remember) on the bottom shelf, a scattering of Reader's Digest, and a couple of other books. One of them was a non-fiction account of 84 or 42 days on a life-raft in the Pacific. I read that one about fifty times. Achieving a natural voice is a difficult thing. Simply telling stories. Dad was stationed in Norfork, Virginia, and there was a public pool in walking distance of our house and a public library between. The librarian told me to bring my Mom and an electric bill and she'd give me a card and explain the rules. After that I got my ten books a week on Saturday, when Sis and I went to the pool, got them on the way home (and stop for a coke at the bookie-joint soda fountain) and then, as now, I'd just read. I played baseball until high school, I debated, I was in school plays, gregarious and well-adjusted, but all the rest of the time I was reading. High school, I had some good teachers, one of them gave me my first collected Shakespeare and another gave me Whitman. I was coddled by English teachers and librarians because I read, then I ran into some serious readers, and I read more. Now, I pretty much read all the time, the actual world is so dreary. Read more...

Invasive Species

Tumbleweed, Cheat-Grass, Foxtail, a litany. Not to mention rabbits or pigs, that snake in Guam. The global economy spreads disease (that might not be the correct word) like rats in the stowage. Got all the wash water inside (below twenty tonight) and winterized a few places that won't be open again until March, insulated and covered the AC unit. Weather-stripping is a great thing. Vacuumed some corners and spider-webs. Made a pot of pea soup which won't be very good until tomorrow. Still, I had some, with a toasted cheese sandwich, and it was immensely satisfying. There's a lot to be said for warm soup. I added a layer of clothes today, but still no long underwear. Wearing my JC sweater, and feeling almost pampered, the house, even with falling temps, is actually warmer. If I knew what a jig was, I'd dance one. What floats. It's a great relief, having my water stowed away, a pot of food for tomorrow. That way I can get up and finish this biography of T. H. White that JC sent, I've read so many British authors and biographies, that I've started to think with an accent. I heard it start to snow, just before daylight. A very subtle sound, something about snow falling on the leaves on the deck is actually audible, Barely audible. I rolled up in my mummy-bag and went back to sleep. Flurries all day, so beautiful. I finished the biography, then the Dante book, spent a few hours reading myself closely. Change a few things, argue some punctuation. Just before dark I go out for an armload of wood, cold, blowing snow. Stack the wood, 2 by 2, near the stove. Jerome called, from Oregon, wondering if I was alive. I tend to get these calls when my modem crashes and I'm more or less completely isolated. Who would know if I were alive or not? A wink and a nod, I don't even know. I assume I'm alive because I feel the cold, surely the afterlife would have a thermostat. I've been caught, a number of places, by weather usually, tornadoes and hurricanes, a sudden cold; dance around the fire, sleep with the sheep. Read more...

Leaf Forms

Spaced out, staring off into the middle-distance. Snowflakes drifting in a light breeze, and the occasional leaf falling. Some leaves fall straight down, some float, some drift to the side. I'm don't draw any conclusions from several hours of watching individual leaves fall except that there are issues of conformation and attitude of presentation. Most of the snow is gone, sublimated, with temps below freezing, but more coming after a few hours of sunlight. My time-scale is distorted. I always carry a rigid foam pad, in the small pack I carry outside, so that I can stop at any stump, keep my ass dry, and consider the size of snowflakes. Completely sidetracked, I put a pane of glass in the freezer (this morphs quickly to two panes of glass) so I can sit on the back porch and catch snowflakes. Blink of an eye. Still ephemeral, but there's a second or two to view the crystalline structure. The fractal patterns are infinite. A wonderful conversation with JC, there is actually a world out there. I lose track. A Tom Waits cover. I'd left the radio on and fell asleep, woke up confused about exactly where I was. Edgar Meyer playing Bach. I don't trust my footing so I pee in the chamber pot, wander around, make a cup of herbal tea. The silence is almost oppressive. The blues start knocking at my door. Breathe slow and deep. Just another country song, either your dog or your pick-up is broke down, The best dog I ever had was a castrated goat, Clyde, who raised my daughters and I must admit, I occasionally went to sleep with my head on his belly. Warm and soft. Read more...

Beal Street

Electric blues after midnight. I got up to stoke the stove and I was hungry. Turned on the radio, silky, hot blues from Memphis. Made a great cheese toast topped with a perfect egg, salsa, half an avocado, and electric guitar played very loud. It's snowing again, I can hear the flakes almost sizzle against the ground. All winter I keep three gallons of wash water on the stove. There's a stone side counter, where I set it when I'm cooking, but usually it's on the stove, I can dip out hot water as I need it. I'm so careful with water it's ridiculous, but it's not a carbon footprint thing, it's just that water is heavy. Right now I have about twenty gallons of wash water, three gallons of filtered drinking water, five liters of enhanced (B vitamins) water, and several half-gallons of juice, when there's snow, I melt a gallon of water a day. That's ten or twelve gallons of snow. It's a messy system, using a specific dust-pan for shoveling the snow, stamping off my boots, but the house needs the moisture, so I don't mind making a mess. Carrying in an armload of wood every day adds to the amount of crap. I keep after this, like an old cripple, sweeping up little piles of bark and feeding them to the stove. Reading about Dante, the eternal exile, already writing on paper, 1310, earlier than I had thought. Dipping a quill into ink (oak-gall and soot) and drawing squiggly lines. What signifies. The modern world is born in the High Middle Ages. Language is codified. I always forget how the first skiffs of snow reveal old logging roads and the contour of ground. An ephemeral smear on the landscape (depending on how you define ephemeral in terms of time) that provides access from here to there. All us animals use them because it's less of a hassle. Joel called, wondering if I was dead. I hadn't posted and he wondered what that was about, he (and several other people) thought I needed to go with the satellite option. I do miss not being connected. On my terms, I don't want to be interrupted. God knows I don't need TV, unmediated reality is more than I can stand. I barely have time to read a few hundred pages before I have to get up and eat. Then it's stoke the stove, dump the piss-pot, pretend you remembered someone's name. There's a place between Monticello and Moab, way off the beaten trail where I'd found a little spring. Read more...

Pay For View

Composting has become a source of entertainment. I don't need the compost because I only grow a couple of heirloom tomatoes and a few specimen plants, to keep the seeds viable, but recycling organic stuff is always a good idea. I've done this, religiously, for forty years, but here, on the ridge, it's just a game I play with the animals. I pile it up, and they spread it out. A couple of feral dogs tonight, playing king-of-the-hill with a bob-cat. At its best, radio evokes a visual, and this is true radio drama: snarling dogs, screaming cat. I don't turn on any lights, I don't intercede, I just listen. I don't feed hummingbirds anymore, they're so fucking violent, and I do, occasionally, disperse the entire playing field with a few marbles from my slingshot. Sometimes it's just too much bullshit. Everything was frozen this morning, the leaves, crunching with hoar frost. I'd walked down to the print shop, having a smoke on the porch, when the Nature guys pulled in. They joked about my outfit and I joked about theirs. I felt like I was in a Carhartt commercial. Fortunately the conversation turned to botanicals. These guys are good, they know their twigs. I tell them to get off the ridge if it starts snowing, or to stop over for a drink when they get done. They stop over. A lively conversation. We talked about any number of things; the price of smoked tea in China, the single-malts being produced in Japan. We agree about everything, in the tangible world, this is Sumac, this is Red Maple, you can't control the flow of water. In almost every other way I disagree with them. They all voted for Trump. I'm not shocked as much as dismayed. When they leave I retire with a wee dram of whiskey, to try and make sense, but none is forthcoming. Because the oven is hot, I make a small meatloaf, boil some new potatoes; lumpy smashed new potatoes, with butter and black pepper are a wonderful thing. A small meatloaf, glazed with enchilada sauce, can be a transport of joy. With a slice of raw onion, it makes perhaps the greatest sandwich ever discovered. Read more...

Cold Snap

Reminded of other cold snaps. Ten degrees tonight, zero tomorrow. I brought in a couple of oak knots; over several layers of clothes, I cover myself with a fleece stadium blanket. When it gets cold, my nose runs, also, it's difficult to muster the energy to get to the outhouse; interestingly, cold is not an issue when doing your business. I never feel cold when I'm involved in reading or writing, it's only when I stop. I don't enjoy sleeping in my down mummy bag, though it is warm, because it restricts my movement. I'd rather sleep under an extra blanket, and poke out a toe, to see what the day might be like. And it was very cold, face-mask cold. I started a fire and went out for an armload of wood, stoked the fire and split kindling for tomorrow; I was exhausted, took a long break, while the stove heated the kitchen area, and used the convection heater to preheat my reading and writing area. A cup of tea, an omelet, a piece of toast. Then I just read the rest of the day, Wrote a few lines at my glacial pace. Took a small walk, to see what was alive. For about five minutes I was six feet away from a red-headed woodpecker, as it worried the bark away from a dead tree. The highlight of my day. I make some cornbread, because the oven is hot, with butter and sorghum molasses this is a rare treat. Simple pleasures. I actually said "tally ho" when I spotted a parking place at Kroger last week. A bad mix of weather coming, sleet and snow, so I suit up and bring in an extra armload of wood, but it's supposed to be above freezing this weekend, so I'm not concerned. I should be able to get out on Monday or Tuesday. I don't need anything, but some fresh vegetables and fruit would be welcome. I'd love an artichoke right now, or a broiled grapefruit with a little honey. Read more...

Memory Loss

The power went out twice yesterday, no warning, and I lost everything I'd written. The good news was that Barnhart called, thinks he can find me a modem, then bring it out, along with his young son who is very tech savvy. Barnhart reads me to his mom over the phone, and she gets worried when I don't post. He's helped out before. I can't believe I read all 20 of the Aubrey/ Maturin novels so quickly, but I do love sitting in the cold quiet and reading for hours at a time. A life-long habit. After a blow like this last one I like to give it a couple of days, so they can clear debris, before I venture out. The weather forecast indicates I should be able to get both out and in Monday or Tuesday. Thinking about a killer bean soup and cornbread for Christmas. I'd been reading soup recipes for hours. The best soup I ever had was at a bar in Provincetown, a chick-pea, chorizo, kale concoction. I still make it, or variations of it, quite often, for Christmas I'll make it with chorizo and cracklings, positively festive. I think about making a Key Lime pie. I do love a slice of Key Lime pie for breakfast. Any pie for breakfast is a good thing. A slice of warm apple pie, with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream, I read recently, actually better prepares you for the day. Read more...

Expectations

I never expected anything, and coming from a line of sharecroppers, I've lived on boiled cabbage and salt-pork. Boiled cabbage and neck bones is one of my favorite meals. And cornbread, of course. Up before dawn and rebuild the fire. When the overcast light develops I can see ice is covering everything. Not wanting to brave a sleigh ride down the driveway, I postpone my trip to town. I discover a package of marrow bones in the freezer, sold as dog bones, and put them on to simmer in a highly spiced chicken broth. I cook them about six hours and have the marrow smeared on toast. I'd been thinking about eating bones for a long time, actually. Mullet, pike, carp, small birds, a lot of bones. How do you deal with them? Well, you pickled them, or cook them such a way that you can eat the small bones. Shad, as another example. B called and needs a ride to town, to pick up his vehicle at the shop. We have books to exchange, I need some things in town, and the weather is supposed to be decent. I think it's been two weeks since I've ventured off the ridge. A good test-flight for winter, as it's seldom more than a couple of weeks that I can't drive out. If Barnhart and his son, Alan, can get me connected again, I'll be a happy camper. I've found that if you keep your requirements limited it's easier to get along. I'm perfectly fine with greens and cornbread, those little cow-peas cooked with salt-pork. I'd better go, the barometer is falling. Read more...

Relentless Cheerfulness

It's always cool with B. If you agree on ten, then he's there, ready to go at ten. I stopped at my mailbox, and it was stuffed, flipped through it and found the PO notices to pick up packages, drove on down to B's. He was out the door when I pulled in the driveway; hand signals that he'd walk out and chain the gate, and we're off to Blue Creek. Car chat, catch up on events, B's brother, Ronnie, is holed up writing a novel. We talked about the Nature Conservancy people looking for invasive species on State Forest land, which makes no sense at all. Who's paying whom to do what? Speculative and only mildly paranoid conversation. A light lunch and a small beer for lunch. I was ready to buy, for the company, but B took the check, because he has more money than me. Then Kroger, where we both needed a few things. We met at the exit, where the Salvation Army were ringing their fucking bells. Neither of us can wait to get out of town. Drop B off, at his garage, and make a bee line for home. A huge biography of Dante and a wonderful children's book, in manuscript, from JC; B had passed along the newest Lee Child, two New Yorkers, and I'd already started reading the ten remaining volumes of Thoreau, so I'm pretty much settled for the holiday. Whiskey, tobacco, a smoked jowl and thou. Also in the mail, some red beans from Dove Creek, Colorado, and a bottle of their hot sauce, a numbingly wonderful addition to the thousands of different hot sauces being made now. This one is made by nomadic tribes of aging hippies who walk-about in the arid landscape of SW Colorado. The stories you hear are, of course, stories. I spent a weeks in Dove Creek, we were building a small house for a couple of park rangers, and I was between lodgings. I'd stopped there often, to buy beans (it is the bean capital of the world) and shoot the shit with the staff, and there was a small motel, where they'd give me a cheap weekly rate. I learned a lot about beans. So the red beans, from Dove Creek, carry a freight of import. I was thinking about beams and ship's knees, not that my intention matters a naught, and how fact morphs into fiction. Read more...

Steel Grey

No wind, not much sound. Sitting out back, I could hear a squirrel. That dance across frosted leaves. The crows see me and start a racket, so I get them a couple of mice. Another mug of coffee and smoke on the back stoop. Damp, temperature right at freezing, very still, drifted into a middle space. My daughters are coming to visit next month, despite my pleas that they not. Rural Ohio is not a place to visit at the end of January. Every little plan can go awry. But Samara is alpha, and she had already bought the plane tickets because they were cheap. Throws me completely off my feed because I'm not set-up for major disruptions mid-winter. A can of beans and Thoreau's journals was what I had in mind, not entertaining anyone, much less my daughters. Plus the drain on the larder, not the expense, I don't care about that, but the actual inventory. I'm not actually prepared to feed other people. Nor entertain, even my daughters, because it's so difficult to just survive. D calls and he's on his way out with a load of butt rounds from the barrel-stave mill. He knew I was counting on him and I knew he'd come through. If he makes it up the driveway I'll be set for the winter. I was up all night reading about Dante's life and times. An incredible amount of speculation, as might be expected, but fascinating in regard to vernacular speech. Before he started writing Commedia he had written, in Latin, De Vulgari Eloquentia, in which he discusses the problems involved in arriving at a universal Italian. There were hundreds of dialects, some incomprehensible to the other. He'd been in exile for 13 years, wandering around the peninsula. D made it in, and we unloaded into a pile near the back door. Already split. Some surface moisture, but the house is so dry I'll just finish the chunks inside. I'll need to build a couple of crude bins, since the pieces won't stack, or just spread out a bunch on the floor near the stove. But this is truly the mother-lode for my winter. I still have seven large rounds, very dry, to split from last year, and a nominal pile of branch-wood that is very good for fast hot fires, but these are the chunks to get me through the night. I can pay Rodney or Ryan to stop by and carry in a week's supply, spread them out, and all I have to do is stoke the fire. About all I'm good for anymore. Dante died in 1321, he'd finished the last of the poem, though there's a bunch of mystical crap about the last 13 cantos. There was a daughter, Antonia, who died as Sister Beatrice in a convent. Galileo's daughter also died in a convent. An indicator of the times. A strong son is as good as an ox, a woman less so, unless she be a weaver; and dinner, of course, mammoth tongue and wild greens, or a great meal of small birds where you eat everything but the feet and the beak. Read more...

Sweet Potatoes

After-glow. Rain to set in later, and warm through the holiday. But D had made it in and out, the pile of wood was very real (I'd gone out and kicked it a few times) and I felt secure enough to set back with an early drink and toast my modest accomplishments: food and fuel. When I went out later, to survey the playing field, I felt solid in my position. D said they had a massive sweet potato harvest but he had forgotten to bring me any. Thank god, because they were on pre-holiday sale at Kroger and I'd bought some. Rain and mist in the hollows, I put on the Cello Suites (Edgar Meyer), and think about what I might cook. A sweet potato, for sure, and some cured and smoked ham scraps (Joel turned me on to these) as they're shrink-wrapped and keep forever. I soak the ham bits in milk, then scrub a sweet potato, I never skin them, and boil then simmer it for thirty minutes, cut it into rounds, and slowly caramelize the slices. Make a pan of biscuits, with Crisco, like Mom taught me. Red-eye gravy. Not a dry eye in the house. I started a pot of beans, Anasazi reds, for rice and beans tomorrow, with cracklings and fresh minced sweet onion. I'll make crackling corn bread. I'm trying to track down this folk tale of panther breath being sweet, which I've read in several different texts, but it's proving allusive. It seems to have a religious aspect. The devil? Rain all day. It didn't get fully light until noon, but it's warmer and I feel good in my skin. Days of reading non-fiction, so I grabbed a Michael Connelly out of the library sale pile, and read fiction for a couple of hours, snacking on cheese and crackers, olives, nuts and dried fruit. Not a bad way to spend the evening. Before I stoke the stove for the last time, Christmas Eve, I put the pot of beans together:, cracklings, onions, chilies, minced red pepper, a couple of cheese rinds. After I stoke the fire I bring the beans to a boil, then move them to the coolest place on the stovetop, on a trivet, so they can cook all night. My plan for tomorrow is to bring inside a few armloads of wood, eat beans and rice and cornbread, and read all of the entries in Thoreau's journals for the period around Christmas. If the weather is nice, I'll go down and collect my mail. I have to pay land taxes and vehicle insurance before the end of the month, and I can do that, even if it means standing in line. Christmas dawns gray but not as thick. It's not raining exactly. Morning coffee on the back stoop, thick dew and a slight mist through the trees. Lovely and serene. Quiet, until a late flock of ducks fly over, heading south. The beans are as close to perfect as I would ever attempt. I have a small bowl for breakfast, with a piece of toast, then make a pot of rice for later. That's the extent of my labor for the day, and I settle in with the Dante biography. I had the radio on for a while, mostly pre-recorded pieces about the year's best. I recognize some titles, but I haven't seen or heard a single thing. I don't know who most of these people are. Read more...

Load Failed

My sister called and my brother was there. I hadn't talked with him for several years, but we were right back in the thick of it. He wants me to come out west and frame a cabin for him. It would be fun, to be with Kevin and his son, Jackson, to see a legal pot growing business. And I could visit a few people. On the other hand, I don't want to leave the ridge for the several weeks necessary to drive out, frame a cabin, and drive back. The Vineyard cabin was 16x20 with a sleeping loft and two of us were comfortable there for three years. It had some nice beam work. Back then, when I applied my attention, I could do some nice beam work. With two good helpers, I could still frame and roof a cabin in a week, a skill I've learned. Bear was looking at a joint, where four beams meet, a complex junction, in this house recently. I had to think for a few minutes, to remember how I'd done it. To see it in my mind's eye. Three full-shouldered tendon joints coming together on a two-stage natural post. This would be a question on the final exam for Framing 687 Unusual Attachments, a course I might well have taught. When I was working on Peter Jefferson's (Tom's Dad) house in Virginia, I was forever trying to integrate old wrought iron into the framework. The building inspector had signed off on me, he'd stop by if he was in the area, to see what I was doing, and walk off, shaking his head. The wind kicks up, pulls me out of the middle-distance, a few dancing leaves as the ground resettles. Now the wind sounds like a freight train. I'd better go. Read more...

Completely Unorganized

The 11th Britannica is in the stair well and there's good natural light there, so I often set on a step and read an entry or two. I sit on the second step at the bottom, to get into and out of boots, and there are several changes of clothes on a chair. Thank god I had left-overs, it was sixty degrees and I never fired the stove. Beans and rice that I nuke, a split and toasted piece of crackling bread in the toaster oven. The last few bites are taken with sorghum molasses. I start getting ready for a trip to town, tomorrow, because there's weather coming and I need to go to the laundromat, also pay land taxes and vehicle insurance. I think I'll raise shallots next year, because they've gotten so expensive, and I love them. When I go to the laundromat I always go to Big Lots, right down the road, to look for things I need: utility candles, lamp oil, cheap panty-hose. The best way to keep onions is in panty-hose, a knot tied between each. Yellow Spanish onions keep best, the sugars aren't all converted. Like in Lorca, or most of the poets I read today, where there is an edge, where language confronts reality. The freeze-thaw season is defiantly in play here. I walked over to the head of the driveway and it's a mess. A temporary condition. The wind should make it passable by tomorrow. You should always poke a hole in a mouse, before you freeze it, so it doesn't explode in the microwave. Read more...

Canned Goods

When D brought the firewood over, he brought several jars of canned goods. I made some hoe-cakes and had them with home-made applesauce, an egg on top. My canning days are over, except for blackberries and blackberry juice, but I still eat a great many condiments and relishes, and try and remember which jar is returned where. Any more I just make a serving or two of red onion jam, it saves water on the clean-up before and after. I'd make more pate, but I hate cleaning up. If Bear or Ronnie call, to tell me there's a rabbit in my mailbox, it's usually cleaned and wrapped in a Kroger bag, the heart and liver are usually inside. Usually I just boil whatever it is, squirrel or duck or rabbit, in herb water with wine (a broth I need to strain and save) then I have to caramelize onions, cook chickens livers, cook mushrooms, then use the blender. A normal batch of this is about four pounds, it takes me a full day and uses five gallons of water. It's hard to justify. If you have a dishwasher, it doesn't even matter. Strange, how things are constellated. I did get to town, paid my bills, filed for my tree-farm exemption (this reduces my land taxes to $300 for the year), bought kim-chee, which was half-price because of the expiration date, which is more or less meaningless when it comes to a fermented and pickled product, had a free beer at the pub (a wrong pour), and took lunch down on the river, watching barges. They were backed-up because of some loch construction upstream. They don't anchor, but keep the monster engines going to equal the flow and provide steerage. The river-fog put everything into an impressionistic mode, Monet, in his barge period. On the way home I stopped for gas and bought a few potato logs, to tide me over, and stopped to examine several ferns. I wonder what their anti-freeze might be. On a south facing slope, they seem to do fine, even through the snow. The driveway wasn't thawed, when I got back, and I got in with no problem, chattering on frozen clay. Yet another book on Dante. Snow, they say, tomorrow, so I bring in some extra wood. Read more...

Middle Child

The frost is so heavy nothing moves. A nuthatch chipping at a sumac head is a major event. The light is slow in coming because the overcast is so thick. I know I need to start a fire, but I'm so comfortable, wrapped in a blanket, that I don't want to move. I'd put on the small crock pot, with grits last night, and I wanted cheese grits for breakfast, with hot sauce and an egg; hungry and needing to pee, I finally did get up. The rest of the day progressed from there. I packed the grits into a plastic tube, so I could slice off rounds of polenta and fry them in pork fat. I had forgotten how much I like applesauce and it's fantastic on polenta with just a dribble of maple syrup. This big Dante biography is consuming a lot of my time; the Notes are all at the back, so I keep an extra bookmark there, to track down references, and by the end of a day I have piles of books on both sides of me. Snow was coming, I could smell it, so I went for an afternoon walk. I think of woodpeckers as solitary, but there were three red-headed of them, within my line of sight at one time. They seemed so intent that I felt like a slacker. The wind picks up and I walk home. After dark the wind becomes a roaring, and I sign off. Keep my headlamp handy. This week between Christmas and New Year, we usually get some weather. After talking with brother and sister, I don't think I suffer any ill effects from being a middle child. Mostly everyone left me alone. When Dad was on sea-duty (two years of a four year tour-of-duty) I was usually around females, Mom, my sister and their friends; my brother is ten years younger than me and he was still a kid when I left home. Leaving home happened so quickly. I'd applied for some work-study program in the Theater Department at college, and the lighting designer there drafted me into grunt labor at The Cape Playhouse the summer before I actually went to college. I simply left one world for another. The first show I did at FSU was "Aida" with a cast of 100 and a revolving stage, and the first musical I ever did was "Camelot". I hate musicals, too many sound and light cues. Reading Cavalcanti (Pound's translation) with a headlamp, the sound changes, I know it's snowing. A soft shuffle. It's cave dark outside the beam of my LED, which speaks volumes about the human condition. A good covering of snow, and, once again, the contour is revealed. Not so much dawn as a gradual unveiling. Barnhart calls and the new modem will be here on the third of January, he and his son will be right out with it that day or the next morning, his Mom was with them over Christmas and she gave him a raft of shit about not getting me fixed more quickly. We talked about music, as we always do, and then some recipes, fish cakes with a mustard sauce, wilted lettuce, corn cakes with applesauce. Read more...

Low Key

Thinking about Frank Zappa. An American genius. Going out to dump the piss-pot. You don't want to spoil your bed. Since I melt snow as wash water, I dump the pot in the same place, a blackberry patch around a corner of the house. The blackberries love the nitrogen. Also, you don't have all that unsightly yellow snow everywhere, which becomes a consideration when someone is bringing you a modem. Wade not in piss, my hallowed guest. A Viking greeting. New Year's Eve, so I start a pot of black-eyed peas. I spend a day cooking a pot of peas. Caramelizing onions and red peppers, cooking the peas for several hours with pork-belly which I then turned into cracklings. I have to remind myself it's just a pot of beans. No intention of going out before next Tuesday, when the drunk drivers should all be sleeping, so I settle in with Dante. Big winds, but a nice fire, banked down, the beans back on the stove to reheat, and a fresh pone of cornbread. Dante was quite opinionated and very vicious, and he was a pain in the ass, which is why he was endlessly exiled, it's amazing he wasn't killed. He was nasty. You can't read much of this without wondering which circle of hell you might end up inhabiting. Hawking up flaming phlegm, hanging upside down with your privates on fire, walking coals that burn your feet down to the bone. It's not attractive, in any normal sense, but it is interesting. Flamingo tongues in aspic or those small songbirds that you ate bones and all. Read more...

New Year

Fog in the hollow, creeping up over the ridge. It dissipates about ten feet off the ground into blue sky. I can see this, from the elevation of the house, but when I go outside I'm in the thick of it and can't see fifty feet. Hardy breakfast of beans on toast. Warmer, so I let the fire go out, to clean the oven chase and dump ashes. I'd heated water to wash dishes. I'd gotten the Shop Vac out, to do battle with dust and cobwebs. Auspicious beginning for a new year. Not that I actually got that much done, but it was a start. Got the laundry together, so I can get through the winter, and make yet another note to pick up a back-up battery for my headlamp. I get these at CVS, but they've moved to a new and larger store and it's not on my regular route. The old CVS was just across the street from the pub, so I could order a draft and zip across the street and pick up what I needed. A battery, super-glue, some juice, and be back on my bar-stool before the head had settled. Now, I have to go out of my way. Next time I get to town I want some green vegetables, cauliflower, that I can roast. I've been eating rice and beans for a while. I was wrong about some dates, Fabriano started making paper in 1276, earlier than I thought, and Dante was already bitching about damp paper making the ink run in 1301. In many ways, cheap paper changed the entire ball game. Copies were suddenly available. Dante left copies of the work-in-progress at every convent and monastery. He was much criticized at the time, for writing in the vernacular, but everybody read the new installment. Read more...