To Build A Connection
In Charlottesville good health and ravenous hunger waged war and I like a spectator miles away at Bull Run waited patiently for a winner so I could get back to pretending I have not a care in the world. Good health fought admirably but lost and at the drive thru window waiting for KFC chicken strips my unhappy cat shit in her carrier. There was little doubt that this would happen before our destination was reached. The man up above slid open his window and I rolled down mine and the animal aromas--of those butchered and fried and those simply car sick--mixed. Would you like some sauce with this? he wanted to know and not ever before having had the chicken strips at KFC I was uncertain how to answer. He did not know that I wasn't a regular customer so he answered "all of them" when I asked what kind do you have. This was like being at a hardware store before the recession dealing with an experienced clerk playing hard to get and making you sweat for not knowing what sized basin wrench you wanted. And my mind went blank as I stared stupidly off to his left but finally I chanced humiliation and blurted out--sweet and sour? He nodded and I was good to go.
I had some good luck yesterday with a plumbing project here in Fence Post. There are some things that aren't that hard to do but which still require a certain confidence and level of experience and I was lacking in both with regard to sweating copper pipe. But I made a few practice sweats and then I just barged right in and after more than one trip to the woeful and inadequately supplied big box hardware store I've got some new plumbing under the sink and a new faucet to replace the one that was, I am sure, over thirty years old. As is my custom after modest successes I rested on my laurels, and today did nothing.
Rereading Call of the Wild for the first time in 35 years though is quite pleasant and poetic and brutal. Even the predictable parts are rendered so finely I find myself caught up in the suspense, though truly there should be no suspense, on account of I know what is going to happen. I suspect the ending, which I can vividly remember from childhood, is going to, if not make me full out weep (not to say I'm ruling out full out weeping) at least instill in me a sweet and sublime melancholia. Although one I am sure to recover from rapidly so as to move on to more productive endeavors.
I am reading on the Kindle given to me by Mr. BC. For 5 bucks each I acquired a good many collected works, including pretty much everything by Jack London. So that five bucks buys his generally accepted five really good novels, about twenty more novels, of which at least one, The Abysmal Brute, is not terrible, and hundreds of short stories. The 5 dollar collections also include an author's biography that, while not comprehensive, is a good place to start if you are curious about the author's life. So that's what I was doing when I decided to stop reading, and write this. Reading biographical material on Jack London. I didn't get anywhere near the parts about his unattractive political views or the plagiarism charges or the questions about his racial intolerance. I only made it middle way through the first page where it suggests his place of birth may have been near Third and Brannan Streets in San Francisco. And I have connection to that area, which I have referred to before, but which I only now realized, and it is at Second and Folsom in San Francisco. Only not really at Second and Folsom but near there. So that it is possible that London's boyhood home and the place where I camped on my 21st birthday are actually the same place. Which is to say that it may be that Jack London's birthplace is now under the on ramp to the Bay Bridge. And one of his more famous short stories is To Build a Fire. I built a fire under the Bay Bridge.
So I had a moment there where I felt connected. Which is the goal.
View current page
...more recent posts