Nighttime Noises

I needed to get up anyway, to stoke the fire, but what woke me was something scuffling through the leaves outside, most likely a deer, but it sounds like a smaller mammal, a coon or a opossum. I don't want to get up, it's three in the morning, and cold enough for either the witch or the brass monkey, but there is the fire to think about, so I don my new bathrobe, grab a flashlight and go out to see what's what. It's a mother coon and a yearling kit and when they look back at me, in my beam of light, their eyes are rubies. I leave them to their devices, get an armload of wood, go back inside. Cold enough that my nose-hairs freeze almost immediately and I wish I'd worn a hat. My fingers don't work and I can't roll a cigaret until I get a decent fire going. The wages of winter. Four in the morning, I wonder why I live this way, not like it was a conscious decision to suffer, more like a hand fate dealt. Mostly it's logistics, carry water when you can, keep the home fires burning, a simple enough equation; the rub is the weather, what can't be predicted. A litany of things. There are times I think I live this way so that no one else needs to, supporting one end of the Bell Curve, nothing but a statistic. Then the sun comes up and I feel I am the luckiest man alive. The world, in all its frozen beauty. I believe in something, but I don't know what it is: the way slanted light hits a frozen leaf, bird song in the gathering dawn. The world's a mess, but stars shine, nothing matters, really, but the way you feel. Finally got back to sleep for a couple of hours, then up and out, down the driveway, zip into town, lay in supplies, back up the driveway before it thaws. Emily said "To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else." I cut enough wood by hand to last a couple of days, Monday I'll spend the day at it but today I need the solace of a long meandering walk in the woods. I carry a light pack with a block of foam to sit or kneel on, a magnifying glass, a couple of acorn muffins and a tin cup to sample the various wet-weather springs. I follow several little rills to their source, one of them, at the head of a nameless (to me) hollow, looks like a bullet hole in a stock tank, squirting water. So cold it hurts my teeth. Excellent taste, sweet and slightly flinty. Sitting there on my foam, eating a muffin, sipping spring water, nothing but natural sound, next time, I'm taking Basho along. I'm out most of the afternoon, twice tangled so badly in green-briar that I had to cut my way out. Carhartt bibs and jacket turn the thorns, so I'm not physically damaged, well a few scratches but nothing serious, and they don't rip. I lose a lot of clothes to thorns, so I'm sensitive to rippage. Bibs all have a tool pocket, I'm sure it has another name, my clippers fit perfectly, no chance of losing them, and you do not walk in these woods without clippers. You could die in a briar thicket, I think, or have to cut off your arm with a pocket-knife. I drag home a couple of oak branches, dead and dry from last year's ice-storm, and finally blown free by last week's wind-storm. Break off everything I can and haul them by the butt, one under each arm, I get tangled a few times, but I've learned how to do this, I've done it forever, and I haul branches pretty well. And I make a mean bean soup, this last one tops the scale, I don't remember that much about making it, bean soup is mostly pro forma, but this one is different. Then I get it, it was thin, and I wanted a thicker soup, so I mashed a can of pork-and-beans, generic, and added them; it's the sweetness, I never would have added something sweet, never would have thought of it, because I don't do sweet. I just don't, I don't know why. Never developed the habit. I get most of my sugar from juice, to which I am addicted. The trip to town today was mostly about juice. I spent twice my normal food budget, but my pantry looks good. Concentrated juice in the freezer, I melt snow for water, and a few tins of tomato juice, for when I feel a need for that. I seem to steer increasing away from the acidic. A drift where tomatoes are used less often. I'd rather dip French Fries in a very garlic (ally) mayonnaise, than catsup. If that makes me Un-American, so be it. I had a friend once who only ate potato chips dipped in French mustard. The ways of the world are intricate. Read more...

Thinking Clearly

I've got to start thinking more clearly. Missed the boat today, as I should have just taken off work an extra hour and did the whole drinking water, heavy item shop today, as I knew the driveway would be frozen and snowless when I got home. Now I'm counting on being able to get out and in tomorrow. Never make assumptions. I'll probably be ok. Still, it was a sure thing today, and tomorrow is an unknown. This new Jim Harrison collection of three novellas is wonderful reading, "The Farmer's Daughter"; the cold woke me this morning about 4 AM, got up and started a fire, brewed an espresso, snuggled back on the sofa and read for a couple of hours while the house heated enough for me to shave. Winter mode. I'm attuned to the seasons, not through any master plan, but by necessity, the choices I've made. Sometimes even I can't believe them, the choices, and I'm forced to consider. Having Tammy around the museum is a good thing, for the museum, and for me. She almost doesn't believe me, I'm almost a fictional character in a physical workspace. She'll ask me something and I'll answer her, and she'll look at me like I'm making things up. Which I do, which confuses the issue. The temps are dropping so fast, I put the oil-filled electric heater right next to where I write, and warm my hands, so I can type. What becomes normal. I stop writing at night now, when my hands are too cold to roll a cigaret. And even then, I allow myself two failures. I love writing and I love smoking, and it's hard to give either of them up, any given night. I leave out almost everything, to say something. No great shakes. Another day. I was so pissed at Trish and Penny that I could have shot them, but I really don't want to go the prison. So I retreat to the basement, as far away as possible, so I don't have to be there, to hear them talk. I hate hearing the English language slaughtered. I'll cross the street, rather than say something stupid. The Scioto has escaped its banks, the Ohio is flooded, I need to take rubber boots, tomorrow, walk the wrack line. Nothing else makes any sense. Maybe the crows, if I understood more Crow. The river rises and falls. I merely report. High water, wear boots. Read more...

Deep Freeze

Dipping to 10 degrees tonight, so I came home early to get a fire going. Thank god for bean soup. Slow at the museum, getting the theater ready for the Cirque's "Winterscape" and talking with D about cleaning and painting the kitchen floor. It takes a beating. An edge of ice around the lake. I stopped to feed stale crackers to the ducks. Considered my movements for the next few days. To a certain extent, I have to be opportunistic in winter. Saturday, for instance, I don't really need to go to town, but I'll be able to drive up a frozen driveway, so I will go to town, back-up a few supplies, the heavy things, juice, drinking water, milk, cream, chicken stock (of which I'm using record amounts, since I started drinking so much as a hot beverage), canned things, and eggs. I hate walking in on eggs, walking in with eggs, I mean, as it's often a disaster. You find yourself standing at the sink, wiping down the 11 survivors and transferring them to another carton. Not that it happens often, but often enough that I avoid it when I can. As a special treat I'll lunch at the pub and have a beer, as they now have Newcastle Brown Ale on tap and it is one of the great beers of the world. And there's some dead dry wood down at the clear-cut on Mackletree, where the fire came through, and there's no reason not to pick some up. In the wind storm, a few large snags dislodged, and I dragged one home, after I achieved the ridge this afternoon. I love this life, rooted in the real. If you don't have a thermostat, you tend to be more engaged with the natural world. Just a comment, not an argument. I was talking with Tammy today, about lifestyles, realized had radically different mine was from anyone else I knew. But I'm not trying to make a point. I just try and be as comfortable as I can, given wherever I find myself. The soup is even better. Funny. At the museum today someone ask me about the power outage and I explained that I made soup at the cookstove by candlelight, and they asked why I didn't bring them some. Because it was so good, I said, I wanted to keep it for myself. I might take them a sample, to show where the bean soup can go, but, really, when something like this happens, you eat it all as quickly as possible, and guard your space with elbows. It's great, the best thing I've made in ages. Maybe it's the corn-sticks I made with the cornmeal Joel sent, buttering ever bite, beware my heart. Doctrine of Signatures would mandate I die on the driveway, struggling home with cream for my coffee, and butter, to butter every bite. I can't believe I write the way I do, with such assurance, I'm only opinionated if you ask the right questions. In the matter of bean soups, I am a master, I can't deny, that in any competition this pot would win a metal. Taste and mouth-feel, it's off the scale, nothing more you could ask. Read more...

Freight Train

The wind is howling, and my fingers are so cold I can hardly type. I've learned. I'm a student of wind, I've lived in windy places, I face into it, count the tears, bleeding from my eyes, multiply by three, divide by two, add a zero, then just guess, based on how quickly my nose-hairs freeze. I hold hypothermia at bay with chicken broth. The cookstove is maxed, oven temp over 600 degrees, I decide to make the ham and bean soup now, because it's so cold over where I write. I cooked a pound of beans last night, Great Northern, and had bought a pound package of ham scarps cheap, caramelized an onion and orange pepper, two cans of chicken stock. It was thin, so I thickened it with acorn meal. This is the soup from heaven, manna, it rests in your belly, still warm, saying yes you can. I had been writing longhand, the power was out, and suddenly it came back on, completely unexpected. I'd better go back to the beginning. A long and serpentine day. I've learned to not plan. Big wind storm all day, precip early and Turkey Creek is running spate. Mackletree Creek has escaped its banks and Booby's yard is flooded, it's not so much the water as his chickens that bother me. I'm going to kill that fucking rooster, that stands in the middle of the road, and defies the sure knowledge that me and my truck weigh way more that him. Stupid shit. When it's slaving over a hot stove, and that's the hot end of the house, I'm game. The oven is too hot, but I open the door and cook some corn sticks. I eat seven, the last two with molasses. Death by corn sticks. I eat what I must, mast. I make very little of this up, I mop as a matter of course. Fix a hole and the rain gets in. Finish cleaning the floor at the museum by scraping gummy things off with my knife and re-mopping, Then, I had forgotten, a local artist, arrives with two huge, heavy, pieces that we're supposed to hang in the back hallway for an Artist's League 'Art Walk' Friday and Saturday, 5'x7' and 5'x8', half-inch plywood with a doubled 2x4 frame, fuckers must weigh a hundred pounds, and they've never been hung before, so we must invent a method. We do that, and hang them, but it takes all afternoon. Outside, the wind is blowing 60 mph, bark is blowing off the trees, whole shacks are being dismantled, but inside we're hanging art, which we do very well. I know my power will be out when I get home. Gusts so hard, it's hard to drive. At the bottom of the driveway it's not so bad, but when I crest the ridge, it is fucking brutal. Hits you like a wall, and you have to reconsider everything. That nature could be so violent. Hurricane winds, I have to lean to walk. Learn to talk. Use a cane, whatever. Of course you're getting older, time passes; saw wood, carry water. Read more...

Nasty Weather

Sleet, then rain, big winds tomorrow (maybe 50 mph) then very cold, probably snow. Pegi ran me off, told me to get my ass home and build a fire. Park at the bottom of the hill and slog up, carrying extra whiskey and makings for a ham and bean soup. Finally, the hospital crew came and got their stuff and I could clean the floor in the main gallery, pretty much encompassed my day. Hoping the rain will stop before very cold temps tomorrow night, there'll be ice enough. I try to track down the Wittgenstein Plumber, to thank him for the corn products, but he's maybe living under an assumed name, I can't find him. If anyone sees him, tell him to call. I guess I could send him a postcard, but my handwriting has become illegible. Read Emily letters for several hours, yesterday, last night, and Linda is correct, about the sexuality. Having known a great many poets and read hundreds of manuscripts, I've got to say, that in a way, the style, the punctuation, could be construed as a cover for a really randy Victorian. They didn't say leg, for god's sake. One could admit an almost masturbational glee in certain poems. I'm not a critic, and a worse editor, but I'm running this over, in my mind, creating a fiction, what a novel idea. Or a film script. The wind has moved in already, that sound it makes, broken only by stick trees, a kind of whoose. Shaping up as the first tribulation of winter. I'm in better shape than I was last year, which should count for something. A different sound, the rain has turned back to sleet. Not looking good, but probably just the opposite of that, it will most likely be beautiful, tomorrow morning. Mornings are generally beautiful for me, another day, another dollar, and the fact that I walk in the real world. I wouldn't trade this for a barrel of monkeys. You accept the changes, and then you die. This is the way it's always been. I have to go down and do some damage control, holding a flashlight under my arm, because I don't want the drainage to jump the driveway. Another rut, who's keeping track. One thing becomes another. Three crows, I merely watch. Read more...

Nothing Matters

Senior year at undergraduate school, Janitor College, I was writing papers for everyone, it's how I earned a living. Three books, two hundred bucks, a black beauty, I can write a term paper on anything. I recently read myself quoted as gospel, five times removed, a turn of phrase I remembered from a paper I wrote for Joel when he was doing graduate study in Finland. Things only change in appearance, their nature is the same. A leaf, for instance, might be green and pliable, or brown and dead. Still, a leaf. There was this Janus festival every year, you walked through a doorway throwing salt over your shoulder; we carried braziers, swinging smoke everywhere. Now that I know I have to do all the parts. What if Emily interrupted you in the middle of the day? Say you were going about you business, chopping wood or carrying water, and suddenly an apparition in white questioned something you had done. Sweet baby Loraine. To round it out, I needed something more (moire) positive, like a fabric, or a way of seeing, and I was splitting wood; the grain, suddenly, made a kind of sense. Nothing matters, but occasionally something makes sense. I finally bust an obstinate knot and in the pattern of the grain I make a kind of sense. Tuesday or Thursday would be good for me. Have your people get in touch with mine. Make yourself easy. Read more...

Exhausted

More light snow but I still work on firewood most of the day, cleaning up the woodshed. Odd knots accumulate and I keep a hot fire going using chunks as small as a baseball. Slippery Elm and Osage Orange chunks burn incredibly well. Picked up a good heavy plastic trash can, with lid, from the dumpster at the lake, a 35 gallon Rubbermaid, with a hole in the bottom. Perfect chunk container. A strange beam at the bottom of the pile (should finish cutting up the Wrack Show next weekend, I am getting sorted out) that I had forgotten. Hornbeam or Ironwood or something, incredibly dense, and someone, it seems, had been practicing with a circular saw, or cutting four inch slabs from an eight-by-eight, for a use I can't imagine. I could imagine them as thick tiles, or even as an entry floor, but I don't know what they were thinking. All four sides are cut as deep as a contractor's saw will cut. On the right bed of coals, one of these slabs will burn a very long time. I cut one off today, with a handsaw, it heated my bath water, cooked my dinner, and is still going strong. Split several difficult crotches today, quite a long time with the maul and sledge and wedges. These are good logs for late a cold night. All day I'm melting snow in one pot and heating water in the canning kettle, finally stop working outside just before four, come into a warm house, strip down, and scrub every inch of my body, shave, wash my hair, trim my nails. I'm sore, mostly in my upper body, but I'm getting into shape: walking the driveway, swinging the maul. I drink a mug of chicken stock while I fix dinner, squirrel and gravy on toast. Silly bastards. I parboil the body parts, dry them, dredge them in egg and then pulverized sweet potato chips, fry them in olive oil. De-bone the meat, scrape the mast, cook them together until I can't stand it any longer, serve myself on toast. Squirrel makes good gravy. In a moment of clarity I make more grits. I'll fry these tomorrow, and I wonder why everyone thinks they're getting old, I want an acorn recipe, I don't care where it comes from. The first step is always the hardest. Read more...

Cold Blast

I get up to stoke the stove and it's cold outside, first night in the teens, back to bed, burrowing under. Clear dawn, I walk over and the driveway, frozen hard, is doable, so I clean house a bit, collect laundry, head to town. During the wash cycle I go to Big Lots and buy a few things, light things, dehydrated Asian soups mostly, because I'll be carrying everything back up the hill. Treat myself to a footer and jalapeno poppers, go below the floodwall and watch the river traffic; after I eat I walk the wrack line to see what's washed ashore. 20 oz soda bottles are the most common litter, several balls, a dead dog (black, lab-like), a section of snow fence that I almost take (the slats would be perfect kindling), an ugly end table, three foam coolers, a fair amount of pre-cut fire-wood, but I'm quite a distance from the truck. Drive home the long way around, so I can come completely up the creek that begins on my property. Upper Twin is a lovely thing, a meandering drainage over slate falls. I stop several places, then clean the undercarriage of the truck by going forward and backward over the ford below the bridge. Letting it drip-dry for a few minutes, I'm rolling a cigaret on the hood when two deer hunters come out of the woods, they're half-tanked, I roll them each a cig, and we talk hunting. They both know where I live, but I've never seen them before. Everybody knows where I live, the locals. I'm that guy that lives on the ridge. I am, truly a stranger. This area, this region of the country, is so family oriented, that I stick out like a sore thumb. I holiday alone, my idea of a good time is not going out for several days in a row. I don't even know my neighbors. It's a failing, in a way, to not be more integrated, but I'm avoiding involvement right now, I need a lot of time alone. I'm frying some bacon right now, because when you don't know what your fixing for dinner frying bacon is a good first step. First off, the house smells good, even vegetarians like the smell of bacon, been my experience they'd eat a slice, occasionally, if there was a closet close by. Spend the afternoon cutting wood and over-heating the house, drag in the sheep-watering trough and take a bath, walk around in my new bath-robe, looking like a character from Wodehouse, shouting imprecations. WHERE'S MY SHERRY? IF THAT DOG HAS MY SLIPPER AGAIN, I SWEAR I"LL KILL HIM. WHAT DO YOU MEAN MY COLLARS HAVEN'T BEEN DONE! In a British accent. It was embarrassing, really, but quite funny. When I turn on the radio later, to hear Crossing Boundaries, it's Skip James, a transport of blues. And this is where I fall, when it comes to music.They move me like nothing else.The blues. Many fish bite if you've got good bait. Mind games. I give her my cheek, we buzz. Read more...

What

I built myself a mountain, not dead yet, it's something to do. That's just the way it goes. As long as there's a road, what's that lyric, I'm a loser at the top of my game. Sins I've never confessed, I wish I was something else, but I'm merely mortal, getting older. I still carry heavy billets for hundreds of yards, a beast of burden, but I'd rather than not. Watching where my feet fall engages me completely, don't fall is the mandate. I'm careful. Expect the unexpected. You can't blame anyone but yourself. Doesn't matter how anyone tells you how you should feel. What you experience is an individual thing, hermeneutics, essentially it's you and Melville on a desert isle. "Omoo." I don't want to walk on water, I just want to not freeze to death. Crawling with Joel, under various floors, I learned some lessons, the major one being don't try to encompass more than you can encompass. I'm a fool for the impossible. Memphis in the mean time. John Hyatt, I'm sure that's Ry Cooder playing guitar. I'm going down to Memphis. Someday baby. Woke up to light snow, already accumulating, snows on for hours. When it finally stops there's just a scant inch and I go out to the woodshed, handsaw enough wood for today and the projected coldest night this season. I'll break out the chainsaw tomorrow, but it was too lovely for that sound today. Split kindling, cur starter sticks, the winter routine. Read an interesting article on proto-hominid locomotion. Odd to get visitors on a day like this, but a History Professor from the college and his small son showed up, mid-afternoon. They been visiting B, who's staying on the ridge when the nights get cold, to protect his cabin; he's making his winter wood, I could hear him cutting in the distance earlier today. It's strange, such a strained relationship, not a word in 9 months. Third time in two weeks I make a meal of caramelized
onions and peppers with hot Italian sausage, on a bed of mashed potatoes. Crab cakes for breakfast tomorrow, with a fried egg for sauce. On Cape Cod I had a fried egg on a codfish cake nearly every morning for years. I'll need to get up in the night to stoke the stove, I'll need to do this maybe 30 times in the next 90 days, and I've developed a technique, for waking, that's become habit. I sleep on the sofa, and I wake up several times every night, noise events and light events and the occasional bad dream, and I stick a leg out from under the covers. I don't think about doing this, it's become more like covering your mouth when you cough. If the leg gets cold I come to full consciousness and put a couple of logs on the fire. Sometimes I roll a smoke, turn on the computer, and start writing again, sometimes I pee off the deck and go back to bed. My life has a structure but it's not rigid. Really need to get off the ridge tomorrow, do a load of laundry, replenish the sock supply, and might be able to, if I go out when it's frozen. Hate to go down a frozen driveway, but probably be ok in four-wheel drive low, sticking to the ruts. Leave the truck at the bottom of the hill on the way back in. This snow wasn't forecast, just the cold, which is quite real, since the skies have cleared. But now we enter that period where the top few inches of driveway freezes and thaws. The ground will freeze to 3 feet or more, but I'm really only interested in the top few inches. Can I drive on it? I used to take more risks, but now I mostly walk when there's a question. It helps, I think it's just the time between A and B, the interval becomes a beat, music is all about interval. I indulge myself, from time to time, tapping a beat, it means nothing but it causes me to think. I'm not sure what meaning even is. An abstract fabrication. Aesthetics of necessity. Read more...

Much Colder

The Aftermath. Museum is a shambles, and yes, they broke the glass on one of the photos. D and I turn to, break apart their tables, bag up their linen, I focus on getting the garbage out. They've done it again, overfilled garbage bags, and I'm elbow deep into sorting things out. The basement class-room was a child-care center and it's been wiped down pretty seriously with applesauce and Mac-and-Cheese. At Janitor College, freshmen had to clean up after the senior's Janus Party, and it was good training, I appreciate that, because most of us clean up after a party or two in our lives. I do 8 to12 a year, and I am no longer confounded by how dumb we can be. I leave at 4, to get a fire started before dark, and 2 of the 3 catering parties (booze, food, equipage) still hadn't picked up their stuff. Fuck it, I've got a cold house to deal with, and I make off with half a dozen roast beef, cream cheese with chives, on bread rounds, sandwiches, and an opened bottle of Cab. Makes dinner easy in the gathering cold. Glenn mentioned that I was sounding more like Melville but I think of it as Proust, then I think he's probably correct. The earthiness, which Proust certainly wasn't. How very like a whale, which is Hamlet (Polonius, I'm pretty sure), but seems germane. Burning a lot of wood this week, having fires mornings and then again at night. I need to step up my output. By the end of Monday I want December in the bag, and at least one rick moved under cover. I only got one book at the library today and the librarian raised an eyebrow, I explained that I had some other things to do. Going into survival mode here, something you couldn't understand if you have a thermostat. I told Tammy I didn't trust people that had a thermostat, and she looked back at me, said she couldn't trust people that didn't have running water. Fair enough. I know speaking truth is a fiction, nothing is what we think it is, therefore not nothing. I'm not writing with gloves yet, so it can't be that cold. I read some Pound, some Dickinson. Read more...

The Wind

I'm asleep and this dry whisper of a wind becomes a voracious, house shaking thing. Perfect timing, because I can restart the fire, pee, get a drink of juice; not concerned, really, that I'll blow away, I tend toward overbuilding and this house could probably roll several times before the roof caved in. But the wind is a freight train, howling and shaking my timbers. I like it, I have to admit, it's so astoundingly real. That's the thing with me, I'd rather the wind, sweeping in from Minnesota, than nothing at all. When the natural world consumes you, when the wind blows so hard you're forced to consider your building techniques, when trees fall as a matter of course, then I am engaged. I, what, enjoy the struggle. In a lull, I go out to get a few sticks for the fire. Nothing is more real than the natural world. Fucking wind has gained new ground, sounds like a young war. I put a log on the fire and go to bed. Annual hospital xmas party is a pain in the ass, and huge. 177 people booked and that's beyond capacity. I fear for the art work, but I always do. We put the two Cleveland paintings in the vault because they came with a no-food-or-drink restriction. Late for work, which I seldom am, always allowing extra time for everything in case I have to stop and look at something or field-dress a woodchuck, but another tree down on Mackletree and I stopped to help Booby clear it away. Re-fried grits. Excellent. Just had a couple of rounds, fried in bacon fat, with salsa. Need to mix some acorn meal with the next batch. Buy some limes, to fight off scurvy, and I could probably live on these. Eat a few weeds. Want to make a pate for the holidays, duck, pork and chicken livers. There was a duck in my mail box this afternoon, probably Shane left it for me. It was fresh, I dressed it out and put it in the freezer. I like duck fine, I do a couple of different things with them, roasted with an orange sauce, roasted on a bed of salt, lightly smoked; but I love them in a country pate. As an equal weight to the main ingredients, mushrooms, and some kind of nut, acorns, of course, for me. I used to use Filberts, I like them a lot. D and I had an interesting conversation about nuts recently and decided we liked them all. Some shallots, some watercress (I just found some in Mackletree Creek), two sticks of butter and half a bottle of decent sherry. I'll probably put some ginger in this, a few drops of hot sauce, lots of black pepper. A wing and a prayer. For instance when I write you and am cooking dinner at the same time. I talk to myself, I talk to the stove, I talk to the wind, if it's strong enough to stir the under-story. Hermeneutics, the way things are constellated. I can't not respond. That's all this is. A response to a certain stimulus. I always suspected me, the likely target, but I knew I was innocent. Suffice it to say, I was well out of the way when the shit finally surfaced. I distance myself from disaster. Like I have in a GPD that knows where I am: I fuck that up, as a matter of course, every time I open my mouth. Read more...

Whatever

I hold my distance, I admit to anything and I always tell the truth. My guidelines, I only play by my rules. I'm a stickler for this, what might be reviewed as evidence. I'm innocent, of anything you could bring to bear. My Lawyers assure me I'm in the clear here, where things self-assembled, what we thought we meant.. Read more...

My Readers

I was having a conversation with someone, and something was said I wanted to use later, when I was writing. I cull the day, really, the way I stay sane, or at least operational. I notice there's generally a time-line. That about does for me in terms of any kind of criticism. I watch tadpoles, I watch crows, my closest relationship is with a fox, I might not be the person you could use in a study of anything. If you write, somewhere in that dynamic is the concept of being read, and the reader is critical. It's a dialogue. The Brain Trust was spread along the bar at lunch today. You couldn't keep up with the conversation. High and wild. I didn't say anything because nothing needed to be said, I've read enough noir I know what needs to be said, I understand understanding. I know a couple of minor things. Shit flows downhill, that kind of thing, I profess to nothing, merely what I've heard. Catch 22. Watch it with the zipper. Had lost touch with the Wittgenstein Plumber, Joel, a package from him today, he's still, or back in Atlanta, the box barely fit the mailbox and heavy. I'm walking in, to assure I make it to the museum tomorrow, prep for the hospital xmas party, so I rearrange my backpack to carry it. Home, I start a fire, get an armload of wood, wash my face, then open the package. Excellent larder for the pantry: a couple of pounds of good southern cornmeal, and a couple of pounds of grits. I start a pot of grits as soon as the stove is hot enough, enough to have a meal, in a bowl, grits, salt and pepper, butter, and a couple of eggs over easy. The left-over grits I'll stuff into a soup can, slice, tomorrow or the next day, and fry in bacon fat as polenta. First thing, with the corn meal, is a pot of pintos, with cornbread sticks, this weekend for sure. I have four cast iron pans for making cornbread sticks, seven to a pan. It's a rotation thing, two pans in the oven, pre-heating (you have to get them smoking, a scant teaspoon of bacon fat in each slot, or they stick like a bastard) in a hot oven, maybe 450 degrees, then ladle them half-full, back in the oven, prep the other set, ten or twelve minutes, out of the oven and the other set of pans goes in to pre-heat, while you fork the first batch out of their pan. Repeat as needed. Everyone gets a big pat of butter on their plate, and butters every bite. At the end of the meal we usually have a couple more with molasses. You can hurt yourself with cornbread sticks, buttons are popped, belts are released a notch. I was feeding this meal to some very sophisticated people on Cape Cod, Hollywood writers and CIA agents, and at the apparent end of the meal, one of the CIA agents ask if I couldn't possibly mix up another batch, because he was sure he would never eat such a thing again. Grown men weep. Because I know I will be using these corn products soon, half of them anyway, the other half I'll save for deep winter, I immediately opened a bag of each, tasted the product on a dampened (archival) finger and the corn exploded. The taste was amazing. CORN. What the hell have I been eating? Oh, right, acorn. I added a letter and was left with no taste. When I go out for the girls' various graduations, I'll make a pilgrimage over to Dove Creek, a place I duly love. Bean Country, still in Colorado, but only a mile or two from Utah. I spent a week there once, a dozen years ago, Michael was building a house somewhere, I was helping, and I needed a place to stay. The only time I ever spent living a week in a motel. I rented a trailer on the Navaho Reservation after that, with bullet holes in the walls. It was considerably better. Fuck not profiling: Navaho women, from the age of 15 to 30 are beautiful, then they all turn into loaves of bread. I think it's the blackness of their hair. When they're young, it glistens in ways you've never seen before. Some enzyme or secretion that you cease making when you're beyond child-bearing age. I'll be going after beans, when I revisit Dove Creek, to get some 10 pound bags of burlaped beans. I'm a sucker for burlap bags, I'd buy bison chips, trail mix, whatever. But the Bean Cooperative has a retail outlet in Dove Creek, and I gravitate toward the local. I need some beans. I know where I can get them. A force not to be reconnected with. Read more...

Hood Release

I love the way two word titles can be so ambiguous. D, getting his terminal degree, an MFA in Hood Release, succeeded where everyone else, including the best mechanic on the creek (who was next going to cut a hole, to get to the release mechanism) as James and I watched closely. We'd (James and I) tried for an hour last week, and were buying in to the whole hole-cutting procedure. The trick was sticking a very stout screwdriver in exactly the right place. We all suspected that, and poked around, but D found it. Now I don't really need to get it fixed, because it's my screwdriver, and I now know where to poke it. If you've ever owned a tractor, you'd know that you never get anything fixed that you can poke, tie together (baling wire, I carry a roll in my truck), or bang the side of to get going. It's a rule. I've owned two tractors, and ancient tricycle John Deere, and a magnificent Ford 8-N. A 1947 tractor, with 24 horsepower, that, with the linotype machine, rank at the top of American manufacturing. You can still get every part for this tractor, you could put one together from new parts, and today it would cost, in parts, over $10,000, that sold for $800 new, I paid $500 for mine, but that was more a token, to a distant and aging relative in the Missip years. Doc Watson's son was killed in a tractor accident, and they are common, like chainsaw accidents. Let's not think about accidents. Two quarts low on oil, which was my fear, and I had the two quarts right there, and now I can open the hood. The traditional 8-N is Ford gray, with red detail, a lovely thing. I had a great mechanic in Missip, Rip Raper, who became the mayor of Duck Hill, and he did some work on it, steam cleaned and painted it. When it came to the painting, he came over to the house, for a home-brew and a chat. Seems the actual John Deere colors were quite expensive, but he painted vehicles, and he had a lot of left-over paint, high-quality stuff, a quart of this, a quart of that; and if he could just mix them together, he wouldn't charge me for the paint. Sure, I said, what do I care what color the damned thing is. I may have owned the only purple Ford 8-N ever. Big Roy thought it was very cool, that a white boy (he loved calling me a white boy), that wasn't gay, would drive such a thing. He'd bring his coon hunting buddies over, to watch me plow a field. It doesn't seem true now, but at the time, I always had a gallon of moonshine on hand. Moonshine capital of the world, and there were three or four guys that made very good shine. Twenty bucks a gallon, usually in a Coke syrup plastic jug. Roy had the run of my house, and he knew where the liquor was stored, he'd make a high sign and I'd wave him inside. I'm disking a corn field, and pretty soon, there are five dudes drinking on my front porch, watching me disk a field. I loved it, I've got to say. It's hard to talk about the ten years there, without wrongly profiling. We lived in the boonies and didn't socialize. Is there a thread here? And how do I address race issues when most of my friends then were black. I'm strongly conflicted here, because I'm to write about that time, and about a projection I made, nothing, against a background of nothing. I only do that because I can. Words allow me that. Sometimes phrases might be questionable. We strike a balance. Read more...