Nasty Weather

Six inches of new snow, early morning to mid-day, and the town and county are out of money so there is no plowing. Everything is closed down. No one can get to work. I field staff calls. Tell everyone to stay home at least until afternoon, sit at the reception desk, read, answer the phone. It's payday, so Trish finally gets to the museum and walks over to the accountant's office for the payroll checks. The only people in the museum all day are Cirque staff to get their checks. Add bursar to my job description. Don't want to be away from the phone, so I walk over to Kroger and get a few things I can microwave and eat during the day. Bumper cars on the roadways. D gets in around 2 in the afternoon to get his check and says even the major county roads are awful. We have a smoke out back and watch cars sliding out of control. The reception desk is so close to the museum art library, I dip in and out all day. Pictures. "But what is a book without pictures? " asked Alice. One of a woman playing a kithera (plucked instrument, proto guitar) from Pompeii. Hiroshige wood-block prints including the lovely "Tree In Rain". Some Persian soft-porn, "Lovers" by Riza-i-Abbasi, beautiful stuff, miniatures. Decide Baroque is mostly an imitative mannered style. Discover that Durer was using water colors quite spectacularly (his "Hare" is incredibly realistic) 300 years before Winslow Homer. And I absolutely love David's (or one of his follower's) "Mlle Du Val Dogne". The light is fantastic. Pegi has a show tomorrow night, weather permiting, so after 8 tonight I walk over to Kroger again and get the makings for a large crock pot of soup. I noticed this morning that they had some Andouille sausage, so I make the largest pot possible of an Andouille, kale, chick pea thing, with chicken stock and chopped chilies. Instead of salt I add a small tin of drained and mashed anchovies. This is really the secret ingredient, if there is one, not at all fishy in the finished soup, but adds a depth of flavor that is pronounced. At home I keep a tube of anchovy paste and add it to almost everything. Sometimes I just eat it on crackers, pretend I'm having a meal. Walking back from that last trip, the roads had been partially melted by traffic, but now had re-frozen as black ice. Every step was treacherous. I'm good with this, it's so much easier than navigating a steep slope in the dark, with a head lamp and a heavy pack. They'd find my body so much sooner, in the Kroger parking lot, than on a hill, far away. Not that it matters. But I'd hate to be like that bloated dead critter on the side of the road that they don't discover until spring. Not my worst fear, but right up there. You live alone, long enough, you ring all the changes. Double round bob. Read more...

Cobalt Blue

Skeleton crew. Trish is out and D is off to Cincy, delivering art. Lauralee is in the classroom with a bunch of second graders, making something. Pegi is firmly lodged in her office working on the final report for an Ohio Arts Council grant. I meant to get out to the ridge tonight, but another serious storm is forecast. Pegi's husband, Steve, calls to warn us that the entire county could be under a Class Two Snow Emergency by morning. I finish the floors and start cleaning the theater for next weekend's final three shows. Walking down to Biel's, for some office supplies, notice that all the birds, grackles and doves mostly, are puffed out to the point of exploding. The Kroger parking lot is full, as everyone lays in supplies. If it is bad, in the morning, I'll make a crock pot of something, for whoever might show up. D got back from Cincy just before five, we closed up, and went over to the pub for a pint. Chatted with the owners. Everyone talking about the weather. We rolled cigarets, as we always do, just before we drained our glasses, so we could walk back to the museum, smoking, and linger a moment before we parted company. This particular evening, for reasons unknown, the sky is a deep cobalt blue. A rare color for the sky to be, hereabouts. It's beautiful, like a lustrous pottery glaze. I'm drawn to sit in Pegi's offce, in the gloaming, watch the last of the color drain from sight. When it's finally quite dark, I heat up some soup, consider where my life has taken me. Skeletal crow flies in from the forest, perches on a stop sign under a street-light, and has a few words to say. The walls are too thick, I can't actually hear him, but like Beethoven and those last string quartets, I sense what's being said. Structural cross-trees. Down-hauls, and the whiteness of a particular whale that shatters your meager boat. The luck of the draw, you alone, left to lie about it. Non-fiction is just another fiction. History is merely memory, slanted toward the victor. Or the survivor. Survival is a bare thing, not something to brag about, but a close call, lucky to be alive, you nod to various household gods, the lares and penates, Janus at the doorway, sacrifice a goat, and try to get on with your life. I've lost the thread, but I'll try to get get back to you, something about meaning. I'm suspect about my intention. There would be no reason for you to trust me, because I don't trust myself. Read more...

Being Janitor

I'd forgotten D would be full-time for a few weeks before classes resume in Athens, so was surprised to see him this morning. Very cold, single digits, a merciless wind. We go to get coffee and scones, then to the Janitorial Supply store because I really need a new mop head and a cleaning product called Damp Mop that is my favorite floor cleaning agent. The floor in the main gallery is badly soiled, from the many events this fall. D and I agreed to rent a power scrubber next month and deep clean, then resurface, but in the mean time it needs attention. Damp Mop is a powerful cleaner that doesn't need rinsing. I don't know how they do that. Spartan Chemical Company. They stick with plain names, other products include Terra Glaze (the resurfacing finish we'll use), BH-38, which will remove tar from a wood floor without destroying the wood, and Xtraction II, which will clean glue residue from concrete. I mix up a batch of Damp Mop in my rolling Rubbermaid bucket (with attached Geerpres Floor-Prince mop wringer) because a new mop head needs soaking for a couple of hours. And the new mop head is a thing of beauty, a redesigned 32 ounce Fantail Loop that brings tears to my eyes. The two sides, continuous strings, are separated by top and bottom gussets of some very heavy red synthetic material, protecting the mop itself from the bail that holds the head to the handle. The gussets used to be just wide enough to accept the bail, now, in the new and improved model, they're four inches wide. A dramatic redesign, because on the second squeeze professionals use for wringing a mop, the doubled gusset serves as a sort of top plate for expressing excess water. Very clever. Fantail, in the name, comes from the fact that every dozen strings, near the working end, are gathered together and stitched around with a muslin band. Another great advancement which adds great strength to the ends of the strings, where failure is most common. Altogether, a wonderful mop head, and when I get it mounted on the handle, before I put it in to soak, I take it upstairs to show Pegi, who allows that it is quite handsome but doesn't really share my level of enthusiasm. Civilians. The enhanced wringability alone makes this the mop of my dreams. Before I can use it, I have to collect the trash, dust-mop the bays into piles, clean ground cookies from the grout joints with a knife, and it is after lunch before I can swing my modified chevron, with the new girl on my arm. She glides like a Greek nymph at the end of my out-stretched reach; leading me, leading her, in a dance I've never done before. I surprise a couple of visitors, humming Strauss (I hate Strauss) waltzing with my mop across the floor. What conspires. A wonderful day. Read more...

Taking Notes

Any stigma serves to beat a dogma. Faulkner said about Henry James that he was "one of the nicest old ladies I ever met". Don't know where that came from, but I make a note. It was before dawn this morning, I was sitting in the dark in Pegi's office, watching the snow fall. Streetlights and snow are a lovely combination. The idea of a warm bathroom is sinking in. I suit up and walk down to Market Street for a free coffee and scone. Walk along the river, watching barges of coal pushed against the tide. A piercing wind and blowing snow. I cut across the deserted college campus, stop at the library long enough to warm my hide, then head back to the museum. " My art belongs to Dada", Cole Porter. "I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds." Mark Twain. "Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?" Harold Pinter. Too much time time in the library. Living on the ridge, zipping to town with a list, aiming to get back home as quickly as possible, I rarely spent much time cruising the non-fiction stacks. It's a treat to spend an idle hour flipping through the pages of books that might interest me. Walk to the pub for a bowl of stew and a pint. Walk back to the museum (walking everywhere) and read through the afternoon. A large salad for dinner, with half-a-loaf of warm french bread. More snow forecast and the temps are falling quickly. I'm sorry to not be at my house, but I'm comfortable, for god's sake, warm; and not preoccupied with mere survival. It's a question of money, of course, I can't really move to town before I sell my place in the country, and you all know what the market is. Glenn mentioned, years ago, and I paid it little attention, that if my readers pledged a nominal fee, a dollar a month, five dollars a month (I'm sounding like NPR here) that my financial worries would be lessened. The mercy of the court, I'm asking for feedback here. Would that be too much to ask? In many ways it seems to me it is, because I don't write for money. I write to be writing, it's the main thing in my life. But I'd like to be more comfortable, I'd like to stop abusing my body. Tell me what you think. Could I be subsidized by my readers, or not? I don't know. In truth, I don't know most of the people that read me, nor how many there are; and I'm not quite desperate here, but looking for a solution. Read more...

Sunday Morning

Very quiet of a Sunday morning. Wake up in a warm space, go downstairs to a warm bathroom (what a concept!) shave and perform my ablutions. Walk over to Kroger, where there's a Starbucks, get a coffee, sit there at a table, eating a bagel with cream cheese, reading a free newspaper. Light snow. Go to the laundromat and wash all the long underwear. Several of us there, early, needing clean clothes before the storm socks us in. Back at the museum I read for a while, then clean the theater for the Cirque matinee. On a smoke break outside, I see the cardboard guy collecting boxes at the furniture store, and the can guy spearing aluminum cans at the dumpster across the way. Sunday morning salvage. Open up the museum for the Cirque crowd at noon, walk back over to Kroger and get sushi for lunch, hole-up in the office during the performance, reading some essays on art from the museum library. Take a walk down deserted Main Street. High speed internet so I'm able to find an Emily poem I remember: ...but no man moved me till the tide / Went past my simple shoe / And past my apron and my belt / And past my bodice too, / And made as he would eat me up / As wholly as a dew / Upon a dandelion's sleeve / And then I started too. When the show is over I tell Pegi to go home, she's exhausted, I'll clean up and lock up, because, in truth, I can't wait to be in a deserted museum again. No traffic, the muffled sound of a train across the river in Kentucky. I'm not finding anything I don't like about this. No anxious driving in snow that obscures the verge, no sherpa antics, climbing with crampons and a full pack after dark with a headlamp, no splitting kindling when your hands are so frozen you don't even know you've cut yourself. Read more...

Night Watchman

Firewood this morning, cleaned house, two more ricks inside. Then bailed to the museum. Don't know what this storm is going to do. Talked with Glenn and Linda in St. Paul and they already have two feet of snow. Can't get caught on the ridge without 4-wheel drive. Needed at the museum, as it happens, go into my old stage-manager mode and solve a couple of minor problems. D is staff, and we talk about the next show he's curating. He leaves at 5 and the Cirque people arrive for their second show. I retreat upstairs, get my first edition, hard bound copy of Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" out of the vault and check some references against the "GR Companion" (Steven Weisenburger), amusing myself for several hours. When the performance is over and the people all finally gone, I clean a bit, turn off the lights, and lock up. Alone with my ward. I walk through all the galleries in a red almost darkness lit only by exit lights. Quiet and slightly strange. I set myself up in the extra office, get a drink, go outside for a smoke. Rain and cooling temps. It climbed into the 40's today, and the driveway was a slick mess coming down, a thawed layer of mud over ice, tonight it starts sleeting, changing over to snow by morning, and the temps falling to single digits by tomorrow night. A monster storm, but probably mostly to the north of here. I'm in a warm place with hot and cold running water, comfortable and not anxious about mere survival. Seems like heaven to me. Read more...

Signs

A good day. Got all the trash together and hauled away, cleaned the bathrooms for Pegi's "Winterscape" performances, cleaned the theater. D set me up so I can write from the museum. Took a few more things into town, in case I get stuck there, brought a few more things home, in case I get stuck here. Covering the spread. Went back to the library because I had already read the book I checked out, didn't realize it until I'd read the first few pages. The lesson is to always read the first few pages before you check it out or know that you want to read it again. If I want to read it again I usually own a copy. Books and manuscripts are attracted to me, stick around, papers collect in piles. A piece of paper stuck to me today, when I was walking to the post office. Came from the furniture store next door. Packing instructions, or unpacking instructions. International symbols, no words. One guy, plus sign, another guy, and under that line (of text) was another, that showed the two guys, one on each end, lifting a rectangular object. Side bar, just had the thought that I write here in Arial 10 point and I didn't notice what font and size the extra machine at the museum wrote in, so maybe a change of face. Shouldn't matter, but I'm used to seeing my thoughts emerge in Arial 10. I could change the setting but probably won't because I have a bad history of changing settings on computers. Inept in regards to most modern technology. I'm good with a hatchet or a froe. Odd that I write in a sans serif type when the fact is I much prefer old style serifed types. Would the style or substance of what I say be altered by a change of face? Yes, I think, but I'm not sure why I think that. These paragraphs are ephemeral enough without thinking they would be affected by serifs, but because they are so ephemeral, they would be. I'd probably speak with a Scottish accent, or some voice that was impossibly Italian. Types I've known and loved. Forms that have stuck with me. Writing in blocks of text, with a jagged right margin, just letting the line wrap wherever it wants to, has always appealed to me; writing single-spaced, so that a density was built-up, and the referents could build a terminal mass. Event horizon, where string theory predicts many different universes might have been born. Where did the mass for the Big Bang come from? In a very real way, we're only two questions away from infinity, sometimes just one. Rain, changing over to snow, temps dropping sometime Sunday; noon, they're saying for Athens, which is a good bit east. There's a play, a Christmas spoof, at the pub, Saturday night, I'd like to see. I might just stay over. I don't drink and drive anymore. Down pallet on the floor. Fuck a bunch of risk. I'd rather sleep in your front yard under a sprinkler than slam into a bridge abutment. The first installment of the "Night Watchman" begins tomorrow night, I can hardly wait. The trailers are vague, but the narrative seems solid. You're always in, or about to be in, the curl. It might be beach volleyball, sing Misty for me, or pouring cast iron; the important thing is being alive in the moment. Our hero, Frank Short-Pants, might argue, but he's an idiot really, soon to be excised from the gene pool. He died in that odd incident where a manatee took a man with tanks to be a mate. Still strikes me as funny. What we see. I was sure the manatee knew more than she was saying. In the old days, we just took a witness downstairs, beat them with a rubber hose, made them see what we needed them to see. Now, there are so many constraints. Read more...

Kid's Day

Seventh and eighth grade classes, bouncing around on cookies and punch. I'd forgotten punch. I felt like a hallway monitor. After they left, checking the bathrooms, discovered a mess of vomit in the men's room. He had aimed for the sink, missed, mostly. Not too bad a clean-up, as it was fresh; dried puke has certain cementitious properties that make it more problematic. Carried some things to the museum, in case I get stranded there, extra razor, wash-cloth and towel, a pillow, a blanket, a sweat shirt. Carried supplies home, baking powder, condensed milk, beans, salt-pork. Beans and cornbread in my future. Also ground beef, onions, and potatoes for a Shepard's Pie. Go to the library tomorrow. Work on firewood Saturday, then I can bail out on Sunday if I need to, take my dirty laundry with me and wash it on the way to the museum. Do a couple of episodes of "The Night Watchman". Theoretically I can access my AOL account from there, write on the computer in the extra office. A taste of life in town. Got to get D to figure out the linkup. I like the idea of writing from the museum, I've never done that. A change in habit (two nuns go into a bar...) would do me good, I think. There are a couple of singer songwriters that play at the pub I'd like to hear. Mostly I'm interested in the way I'll respond to a much higher noise/sound level than I'm used to. Florida, motel rooms with the girls, are not really a fair test, because I'm not writing. When I first started working this way, there was a very proscribed ritual, writing in that odd shaped piece that came to be known as a "Reverse Idaho"; I still get a drink and roll a smoke, but that's about the last remnant comparison. Now I write anytime of the day or night. Finish paragraphs the next day. The whole operation is looser, which I prefer; but at the beginning I needed more ritual to access the remembering. This last trip, in Florida, I wrote a piece in my head. The girls, Kevin and Karol and I, on the back porch, laughing, drinking, really enjoying ourselves. Kevin went off to play his war game, Karol left, the girls went inside to watch some specific TV show, and I was alone, in the dark. So I wrote in my head, much as I'm writing now: going back, changing words, altering punctuation, and it seemed to go fine, if I'd had a laptop it might exist, along with all those pages I've lost due to user error. Shit happens, and vomit. Maybe I need a smart phone. An electronic bulletin board. What I really need is a load of dry firewood, and a day to spend under my floor, repairing what the dog has ripped asunder. Relationships are hell. But at least you can snuggle at night. Never go to bed with a toaster-oven. Better, heaven forbid, to go to bed with a goat, than with anything that could shock you. Assuming a goat doesn't shock you. Sailors are a long time at sea, using even the vent hole of fowl to satisfy their need. I think I could write anyplace, let's go see. Read more...

Alice Quilt

I hate missing a day at work, because it throws me behind. Spent the morning getting rid of garbage and cleaning the kitchen from the weekend events. Discussed scheduling. Put the big screen up in the theater. Unplugged a toilet. Then lunch, and after lunch remembered we needed to hang the fabric show in the small gallery upstairs. Kate's residency. An Alice In Wonderland quilt, a lovely thing, done by eighth graders working with her for a couple of weeks, and a dozen small pieces of fabric art done individually by the same core group. Reception is tomorrow and Sharee came over to see the show (to see if we'd hung the show) and we had just started, but when she left, an hour later, it was all installed and we were making the labels. You guys, she said, beat anything I've ever seen. Kate had the kids sew on pop-tabs, as hanging attachments, and we hung them on small brads, mostly empirically as they were all irregular, and it looks good, a little funky, but cool. First time these twelve kids have ever hung in a museum. I suppose the reception will be milk and cookies. A large winter storm looming for Sunday night, big snow, and I need a plan, a two-part plan actually. I haven't driven in since before the trip, so I need some supplies here, to weather the brunt; and also a set of supplies at the museum, in case I need to crash there for a couple of days. The museum is easy, it's heated, there's hot and cold running water, a microwave, a computer I could write on, the library is two blocks away, and Kroger is across the street. Sleeping on a carpeted floor, with a pillow and a couple of blankets, is way ahead of many places I've slept. Navigating the edge, I set some simple goals: avoid frostbite, watch your footing. The dog was dancing a weird dervish, the last pup was dead and frozen solid under the house. She seemed to be happy that she was spared involvement. She was certainly a lousy mother. She's young, I don't fault her that, but killing your kids seems extreme. I shovel out the carcass and throw it downwind. Fuck a bunch of ceremony. Worms, dear Percy. Decide to make a kale soup and enough cheese grits to feed an army. Make a list. This is the way the world goes, one step at a time. Slightly altered, but nothing to take your attention. A good set of waves, or nothing, all afternoon. Maybe some birds singing along the riverbank. Fill in the blanks. A life worth living. Two daughters, after all. I lost the thread, I was thinking about comparing one thing to another, but it wasn't working out, I kept ending up with negative numbers. Pure thinking is hard, everything gets in the way. I dissected an oak gall tonight, looking for something I'd not seen before. I don't know that much about oak galls, and I'm not that good at dissection, but some things appear obvious. Check the number of teeth in the lower jaw-bone. I better go. I have to generate a couple of different lists. I'm sure I can do this. Read more...

Wood Work

Probably could have gotten to work, but didn't. Roads were fairly bad and I don't have my 4-wheel drive. Worked on firewood, hauling, cutting, splitting. Melted snow for wash water. Six inches of snow and temps hovering in the low teens. Broken sun, for a short while, then back to flurries. A windless, muffled silence. I split a billet of Osage orange, for some nighttime logs. A difficult wood, very stringy, very strong, very dense (.95 specific gravity) but the color was so spectacular, when I finally got the round split in half, that I just sat and studied it for a long time, smelled it, felt it. Intense orange-gold saturated color. I'm sure it contains some kind of silica, because it certainly does dull a chain. Split some sycamore, also a pain in the ass, no straight grain, but it burns well. It's a lovely wood, really, pale, pale tan, almost an off-white, with an odd ray pattern and a certain iridescence when it's first split. One length of slippery elm, not large, three sticks out of it, but I peel out some of the inner bark and chew it. Soothing, but kind of nasty. Remember Tyrone Slothrop in "Gravity's Rainbow" with his box of Thayer's Slippery Elm Throat Lozenges. Some sore muscles, working out the kinks, so I knock off about 3, come inside; snow melted into water is steaming, the stove is stoked and red-lined, I strip down and take a sponge bath, quick dry off, into long underwear. Shave, standing at the kitchen sink, staring at myself in a five inch circular mirror. This is it, pretty baby. That visage that stares back is not aware, merely reflects. All those millions of genuflecting sunflowers in North Dakota are just following the sun. Independent action isn't an easy thing. I mean that as a personal lament, more than as a criticism of anyone else. It's difficult to keep even a part of yourself free, from the influence of the media world. Even if you want to. I make a batch of biscuits, eight large ones, and eat half of them hot with butter and a jalapeno jam a friend makes. My hands are drying and cracking, but not painful yet. Hot biscuits make everything better. Hot biscuits and gravy, you're on your way. Tomorrow I need to remember to bring back in some sausage, a shaker of pre-sifted flour, and black peppercorns. Where I come from, gravy is a beverage. Read more...

Frigid

So cold I suit-up and get outside to split wood before coffee. Full set of stretches to try and prevent damage. Snowing all day, harder in the afternoon. May not be able to get to work. Winter Storm Advisory until 7 tomorrow night. At these temps though, it should be all powder. By 2 o'clock I feel a tightening in my back and shoulders that warns me to stop for the day. Late lunch of potatoes, eggs, and toast, then a wee dram of Irish to warm the innards. Cleaned the stovepipe and the smoke chase in the cookstove this morning, before starting a fire, then, through the day, stocked all the stations with wood, built a couple of ricks inside. Having forgotten to get baking powder, I make a hoe-cake of corn and acorn meal. Increasingly obvious I'll not get to town tomorrow, as the ridge is getting much more snow than forecast. I'll sharpen a chain for the chainsaw tonight so I can cut, split, and rick, inside, more of the red maple tomorrow. Hard to beat red maple for a quick hot fire. Split several rounds of Osage orange today, marginally better than even oak for holding a nighttime fire. The next three nights I'll need to set the alarm for a late night stoking. All the leaves are gone and the landscape has become stark. During a lull in the snow, I ventured out one last time, and the dog stayed home (a testament to the cold) nested in the insulation she has torn from my floor. I walked over to the head of the driveway, admiring the perfect blanket of white. Too soft to hold a print, but nothing is stirring anyway. The quiet is absolute. I carry a round of maple home, stash it in the woodshed. The trip, coming when it did, has thrown me out of step with the season. One should go to Florida in February, to remember the promise of spring. The lake will freeze over by Wednesday night, except for those few pools kept open, for a while, by some heat vented from below. Springs, probably. Even cold water from a spring is relatively warm. The remaining ducks and geese will congregate, in those open pools and leads, in a way that reminds me of honey bees in a swarm. Then the last of them will fly out, except for a couple of families of mallards that someone on the other side of the lake feeds, who take up residence under a Park Service picnic shelter. A murder of crows gathered in the snag near the outhouse, and their raucous partita is the song of the day, near the end a Pileated Woodpecker flies in and lays down a counterpoint. Cold and muscle sore, but oddly elated by the last trip outside, I roll a smoke, get another dram of Irish, and watch the snow from inside, through the various window, each of which frames a different view. I dig out the long underwear tops (I've been wearing the bottoms for days) and the down sleeping bag. I need to sleep on the sofa for the next few days, so I can more easily stoke the stove. Snowing hard now, an inch an hour, and we were only supposed to get an inch. I need to melt thirty-six gallons of snow tomorrow, into three gallons of water, and cook a pot of beans. Don't have any salt-pork, to cook with the beans, but I do find a couple of sausages in the freezer. Made a large pot of coffee, that I can reheat, mug by mug, on the cookstove all day tomorrow, as my espresso pot has chosen this opportunity to blow a gasket. High on the list of life lessons is that sophisticated equipage fails when you need it the most. Hatchets are good, hand-saws and mauls, given that handles fail on everything, eventually. I need to build a new handle on my splitting hatchet, the hard rubber finally split. It's an Estwing, and the curved metal goes all the way through the handle. Must be form fitted, not wood, and after thinking about it for a while, I decide to build up the form, off the metal, with duct-tape, and then seal it with a rubberized gripping agent. There is such a thing, I've used it before, to repair some shoes. It's very good for leather soles in winter. I'm sure I can make a satisfactory handle that'll last a few years and cost just a few dollars. Not so much the economy of any specific thing, but that I could do it with materials at hand. Important when you're snowed in and 17 miles from town. B was over, I had thought he would be, for a dram of Irish and a little conversation. We talk about our winter's reading, what we're both cooking, the history of rock and roll, the weather. When he leaves I make a nice supper of chipped beef and gravy on toast. Mom instructed me carefully on this visit, and I can now make a milk gravy that would feed the gods. Browning the flour in bacon fat is key, adding the milk gradually, and whisking it in. Lots of black pepper, a goodly pinch of salt. Ambrosia. Caramelized onions and mushrooms, added at the end, served on toast, is very good. A bit messy, but very good. I haven't mastered keeping gravy off my shirt-front. Call to order, what will you be doing tomorrow? I have to roll some logs to the house, cut and split them, stack them in the house. Not very complicated. When in doubt I caramelize some onion. More for the smell than anything else. Bacon is like that, more for the smell than anything less; just smell it, and whatever you're eating tastes better. I sometimes cook bacon just to make the house smell good, never has a strip gone wanting, but that wasn't the reason I cooked it. The sausage bean stew is wonderful. Everything is fine. Read more...

Winter Camping

What's real might inculcate what's almost real. Too much Derrida. What I mean, really. Consider you might sleep under an overhang, almost a cave, a place you might block with a fire, so wild things wouldn't eat you. A refuge. Imagine you dream, much like me or you. Scary shit, where you might fall to your death, or there are large predators that could rip you asunder. Read more...

Home Again

Two nights in a motel with the girls so I could get them off at 5:44 this morning. Snow event Saturday, so we stayed in town Friday night as well as last night. Train was two hours late, so we went back to the motel and had the free Continental Breakfast, then back to the station which was more or less like one of those rain shelters at a school bus stop. Watched movies on TV, ate sushi and pizza, laughed a lot. Great visit. They're off to NYC for a week. Stopped by the museum this morning, to check out the damage from the wedding reception Saturday, and it wasn't too bad, except for the artificial snow and glitter. Fucking glitter, man. Not much snow in town but four inches on the ridge, so I parked at the bottom and hiked in with minimal supplies (Irish Whiskey and tobacco) wearing crampons for the first time this season. Need to split wood tomorrow as temps below freezing all next week, lows in the teens at night. I'm second on the list for an apartment in the building I most desire, so this chapter in my life may be coming to an end. I'll miss the extreme contact with the natural world, but I won't miss the shear brutality of it. Beautiful though, the undisturbed whiteness of new snow in the forest. When I attain the ridge the house is so cold I can sweep up the ice and snow I track inside before it melts. Less than a week ago I was using air-conditioning and now I can't get warm. Virgin snow is eye candy, but the piercing wind I could do without. I harvest some clean snow for water. Nothing makes much sense. So exhausted I have to take a nap, when I wake up, I just catch the fire, stoke the stove, and silence reigns supreme. A new dusting, but in this cold, it's merely powder; fluff that is blown away by the first passing car. Nothing I can't deal with. Winter camping is a state of mind. Getting those elephants across the Alps. It all comes down to logistics. What you thought you meant. Read more...

Back Home

Coming back, one day driving in the rain, and the second half-day in the snow. Air-conditioner in the rental car yesterday, the heater today. Great drives, both ways. The habit of consequence. First Welcome Center, there's a little dog on a leash, peeing on one of those giant poles that carry the overhead awful yellow lights. Dropped over onto State 17 south of Savannah and it was a lovely part of the trip, air off, windows down, cd out, smelling the fecund marshes. First thing Mom asked, after the hug, was what was I fixing for supper. Most of the time in Florida spent on the back screened porch, lovely weather. I'm making some notes, the morning after I arrive there's a huge splash in the lake, I swivel around and an osprey is coming out of the water with a small bass he can barely carry. My sister comes over and we talk about the old house in Jax, where, one street over, there was a monkey, and Brenda tells a hysterical story about being on the beach with Starr Parvin, who also had a monkey. We were all at the beach one day, and Starr left the monkey with B while she took a dip. The monkey climbed onto sister's head and dug in, and she fled to the ocean to get the monkey off her back. I see a sign, on a run to the beach, that says Advanced Disposal and I wonder what that means. Watching a marathon run of NCIS with Mom and the girls and there is a very funny Fruit Of The Loom commercial with an endless clothesline of underwear. Cook, cook, cook, then eat left-overs to clean out the fridge, then make soup, then made another soup and freeze many meals for Mom and Dad. Rhea has taken to an old Polaroid camera and is shooting some interesting shots. My folks don't have, never have had, a dishwasher, and keeping up with the dishes is an endless task. Three sheets to the wind, trying to explain to Karol the way things are remembered. On the way home, falling out of sequence here, I pass the Sand Gap Baptist Church on Sand Suck Road, somewhere in Kentucky. The house is freezing when we get back to my place, maybe 50 degrees, and I can't get the it warm. The next morning I have to be at work and when I get up the house is frigid, in the 40's, and the girls can hardly deal with extremes that I've grown to accept. Troopers though, and we get to the museum. I haul away all the garbage since I was last there, prep the kitchen for the hospital Christmas party (they pay well, treat the place fairly, and Jennifer is a cute little thing), and check the several hundred light bulbs for failures since I last checked. I have to get a motel room for the last couple of nights the girls are here, because they need a shower and a warm place to sleep. I'll be gone another couple of nights. Just wanted to say. Read more...