Farm March 2017—Outhouse Edition.

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I.      Wood for which the flames to lick...

Farmhouse fajitas, nachos, Helm at the helm, old time music, fiddles, a nearly full moon, clean cool air.  Chucking my banana peel toward the brushline, cabbage shards.  My nose is cold and runny.  Hat on, hoody, vest, thermal, two pair sox, crox.  Hot dog on the stove in foil this morning, baked potato on and then in the stove last night.  Splitting wood, getting wood, arranging wood, burning wood.  Excursion to Iberia via Brays Church Road, church there at 42, Mount Gilead, cemetery too.  Pastures, cows, farm dogs just chillin not chasin.  I cut up a fallen ash that wasn't nearly as dead as I thought, somehow still going at a forty-five degree angle and living on and through the v-trunk of another tree, maybe the second hickory species here, without shaggy bark and difficult to split—pignut?  The four horses are still here, two white, one black, one...Appaloosa?  I thought that word and then Helm said that word so it must be so.  A sparse, low fog rolled in.  I spoke of Misty at Chincoteague, we talked about wild horses...


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NOLA, February 2017

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I.  Strep To.

Who wants to riverboat gamble?  Bramblewine, Charley Pride, kiss an angel good morning.  At 4:35 a car on St. Ann honked, a woman whooped and I coughed this cough I've got, craning for health, for a clear cranium, for enriched uranium, for heavy water—Enough.  It's not a cough I've got but a sore throat and a wicked one.  All my life I'd hear about other people getting strep throat and I can't recall ever having it myself...until now?  Dunh, dunh, dunhhhh!  I have been under the weather for weeks and now I'm in New Orleans, Louisiana—what am I doing here?  Sipping room coffee at five a.m. because I can't sleep and my throat hurts and I don't have my trusty foam contour pillow, upon which I have grown heavily reliant.  The day will unfold, though, and it might just get better.  The only tool of destruction I have here is the liquid—no grass and no pills.  I have a legitimate chance of remembering the good time I'm going to have out there on those patchworked cobblestone streets in this old amorous city on the river...


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2017, Year of the Flying Squirrel

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2017.  Year of the Turd.  That's pretty crude, I can do better.  OK.  2017, Year of the Flying Squirrel.  I like the idea of a flying squirrel, they have pluck.  No wings but they make do.  They fly somehow anyway, though not as well as a bumblebee.

I've heard references to 2016 being a bad year.  Because of Trump?  Please.  My dog died—or, rather, I had my dog put down.  I invited some horrible woman with a needle to come into my house and kill my dog.  If 2016 was a bad year it was because I had to make that hasty and rude introduction with death, the reaper.  Or for the people in Aleppo was 2016 a bad year.  It was a bad year for the people who lost mothers, fathers, daughters and sons, brothers and sisters, wives and husbands, friends they have known for most of their lives...


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Trip Up East 2016

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September 3, 2016.

He and I are laid up, stuck, at Lambert.  Our flight was scheduled for 11:05, pushed back to 2:25p.  The plane is detained in Oklahoma City for maintenance.  There was an earthquake north of there this morning, about seven o'clock.  Some in St. Louis—my mom—said they felt the tremor.  B and I were running, felt nothing.

I went and got us coffees, long line at Starbucks.  There is TV noise, there are children, there are many aboard the blunderbuss of airport confusion.  The board is clean except for our flight.  Bad luck, bald luck, bad eagle.  It's been awhile since I've had an unpleasant flight experience, not since a layover in Miami coming back from The Mexico in 2010.  I can't recall what amount of time that required.  There's a lady from my eventual flight on her phone, talking away.  One call after the next, as if her talking keeps the phone charged.  She's telling people the flight was canceled, and rescheduled.  Not true.  Alarmist.  Unruly kids, agitated mother.  I'm not long for this seat...


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Untitled Late 2016

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1al Qaeda in the desert magrebtrump in the desert casinohail red hail black hail brightalt right alt country control alt delete2I used to write likethis in bed, in thedark, by sense,umami, inhalingthe darknostrilI used to have somethingto say, now I amquiet, in fear ofthe fashion police,the reprimanders,They know I'm wrong,not my-self,bag-eyed,trumpet-minded,stuck in my throat,brisk on … Continue reading Untitled Late 2016

Trip Up East 2011

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October 3, 2011

10:55 eastern time.

I have moused this little notebook from a cupboard at work.  The market is bouncing again this morning: first down 95, then up 30, then down 90, now down 62.  The S&P 500 is at 1125.  I will wait until it hits 1080 to buy again.

My dad and I leave tomorrow to travel northeast.  We will fly into Boston, spend one night in Ludlow (MA), drive up to Vermont for the Contrary Opinion Forum (three nights, Tues-Thurs), then return to Ludlow for four more nights.  B—and my sister!—fly into Hartford on Saturday the ninth.

I am worried that the market (1) will fall—it's already been such a crummy three-month stretch; and (2) will hit my buy tripwire while I'm gone.  I am also worried about ongoing furnace and AC installation/replacement while I'm away...


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The Ones that Needed Telling (Spring Farm 2015—Thursday Only)

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I was my usual, edgy self Thursday morning.  The night before we ate sushi, the maguro and the sake both so...not just good...better than good: exquisite.  I had two of the big Sapporo, from glass though they are better out of those cold, impenetrable cans.  From there to Walgreens.  I bought a six-cans of Modus and a twelve of Kraftig.  The plastic six-ring holding the Modus cans together failed and two of the six Modus skittered across the floor.  My instinct was to exclaim, "I'm not drunk!"  B will want me to say Walgreens was her idea, and it was.  Dierbergs, earlier, had been a warm beer can fail.  For camping I want to start out with warm cans.  If you have more than about one-and-a-half your expected first-night's volume of beer taking up room in your cooler you aren't packing the cooler efficiently, I have realized...



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Air Methods

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He had asked her to help him get a few rocks for the fire.  He had concocted what sounded to her like an elaborate idea for what she knew he was envisioning in his head would become not just his best fire yet, but the ultimate fire—a perfect fire, the perfect fire.  He had brought with them a bag of sticks he had picked up throughout the neighborhood in the weeks leading up to this little trip.  He was adamant about kindling and newspaper and turned up his nose at lighter fluid.  She appreciated the purist in him, theoretically, but every once in a while he was craft a fire design that choked on itself, smoking a lot, but never really becoming a fire.  Lighter fluid, for him, was just too easy.

They scavenged rocks from remnant fire rings at various vacant tent sites not far from the cabin.  He expected her to know exactly which rocks he wanted her to pick up.  But she didn't know, how could she inherently know something like that, what were his criteria?  Who knew?  She stood there, perhaps with her hands in her pockets, looking off at the river, as he tried to get at least two rocks in each hand.

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Meramec Cabin

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6.11.16.

It is just shy of three in the morning on Saturday.  I am here with B and our dog June.  It was warm out yesterday, 91° or so, and it'll be warm soon enough here again today.  I've got the AC going, set to 74° but the thermometer I've got has it at 75.9° in here.  We brought a box fan along with us, and that's going, back in one of the bedrooms where B and June are sleeping.  I couldn't really sleep or I just don't want to sleep.  I like being awake when everything else is so quiet.  I can take a nap today if I want.

We've camped here in the Park a couple of times before.  This time we wanted to bring June and stay in a cabin.  I can't sleep even a little at these temps in a tent.  It's a little buggy in here.  I know it's not a hotel room but within minutes of getting into the cabin I noticed a large spider clinging to the wall between the door and the sink cupboard...

Full travelogue here...

Portland

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I.  Sitting in His Apartment.  

I have my old things, my talismen, my curios and artifacts, croutons of life dropped along the way, telling my story.  Roy does, too.  I can spot them, uncoached, in this two-bedroom place of his and Joyce's in Portland, a.k.a. Fog City, Raintown, CoffeeShopLand.  Cronos the dog is eight.  He is mellow and sweet, curled up on his pillow, waiting for the others to rise. I was there on Shenandoah in St. Louis the first weekend Roy had gotten him.  I've always thought Cronos remembered that, held an affinity for me because of it.  Or maybe he's just a sweet happy dog who can love everyone without condition or reason.  

Roy's got a few of our paintings.  A blind portrait I did of him in November 2005 (I just checked to see if the date was on the back, otherwise I wouldn't've known it).  Then there's the collaboration he and I did in his Allen apartment, a painting we dubbed "C.E. Gogh," consisting first of a sketch he did of me, with us then painting in the room scene all around it.  In that painting is a table and one of a set of four orange chairs that Roy has had forever, and which are here, having meaning to me but appearing to be underemphasized...    

Full travelogue and more photos here...