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New Orleans Winter
I've been tempted these last few sunrises to use the word "suffused" in part of the description of what's happening to that westerly Rappahannock back drop but tempted is as far as I'm going with it.
Sometimes I talk to people around here. I asked a person the other day--does it get cold in these parts?, they said nah.
Okay, let me start over, I'm from a subtropical climate, does it get cold around here? It's the last day of September and it is forty something degrees. That seems a little cool to me, or to be more exact, like an average winter day in New Orleans. It feels good though, so far.
Yesterday evening I went over for the first time to the local art gallery/video rental store, talked to June for awhile. She only has a few DVDs, mostly VHS, but I got this one with Juliette Binoche called Code Unknown, French film I guess, and it bugged me at first, the way they cut the scenes up, and it had that French interconnectedness thing going on, like when Linklatter? did Slackers everyone was comparing his style to some French film maker(s), it wasn't like Slackers, Code Unknown wasn't, but anyway, the scenes fade to black except it's not really a fade, it's abrupt, and stand alone as vignettes, but also, more or less, tell a connected story with groups of characters connected by blood or marriage intertwining themselves with other groups, except for the one kid who can't get past the door code--he is disengaged from the group. And the deaf children. The deaf children, even in their group, seem disconnected from everyone else. So in the end, I dug it. Kind of reminds me of that German writer J in Jersey City turned me onto, only I cannot think of that German writer's name. But the theme, I can tell you, is isolation.
Okay, I need to start generating a little heat, ciao for now.
Motion
It takes a while to get used to a new place. Some places leave you alone (New Orleans) and some places don't (everywhere else).
Last night's overhead canvas at dusk was a black and blue Pollack with a slice of moon.
I'm not sure what to focus on.
Ima go through the motions though (motion one--get out of bed), see what happens.
Zen Methodism
I was long done with thinking about dogs, freaky or otherwise, when that cute little black puppy with floppy ears lifted his head from the grass growing alongside highway 211 and oblivous, I mean completely oblivious to oncoming 55mph traffic, I mean as if this little black puppy was operating in an entirely different dimension, he puppy galloped onto the road, me the leading vehicle.
I was hoping to give the puppy quite a bit more consideration than the puppy was giving itself but I had to check the blindspot for motorcyles before changing lanes to the left and the puppy was now like playing chicken, running head on to my truck.
Lucky for the puppy's soft little skull I had a free lane so puppy lived. At least as long as time measured by my rear view mirror allowed. The Porsche behind me was similarly cautious, it's engineering wasted thanks to the many state troopers who patrol the scenic 211.
Now on 211 business, just up the road past the Chevron, I saw a giant black Labrador up in the field with the cows, only it turned out to be a baby Black Angus. I was a ranch hand for awhile. I was in that capacity once told to catch and wrestle to the ground a day old calf and it proved to be much more difficult than you would think. In fact, I failed at it.
There are no cows on this property but this morning it smells like cow waste up here. And I'm not sure but there might be a little eau d' Herman inside of up here at the big house. That's the problem with a big house, it's hard to pinpoint exactly where a cat may have peed if indeed a cat did pee.
I'm going to do a paragraph on sheetrock now so you all can run along if you even made it this far. It's not going to get any better, I'll just be talking about sheetrock.
Cancel that sheetrock. I was thinking about church again, as a pasttime, just for a little passive intellectual stimulation, but passing the Catholic church up 211 across from the gun store I noticed all the men going in wearing suits, which you'll say, sure, no big surprise, but in New Orleans I had noticed, passing churches on my Sunday morning drives, that people were dressing very casually up in many of them churches, even shorts and tennis shoes some people were wearing. But I'm a retired zen Methodist, so maybe I should be looking elsewhere than Catholic. The Episcopals have a nice building up on Gay Street, I think, in town here, and the Baptists have that really nice building with the bell tower that overlooks, among other things, this property, and the pool. Which is why you can't swim naked during the day here. There may be other reasons you can't swim naked here but I have not fully explored what they may include.
It could happen that I'll be getting bored soon. The idle mind is the devil's workshop?
Almost October
So right now I'm avoiding that trip into Warrenton for supplies, some of which won't be available and some of which I will forget. Make a list? Forget about it. I'll just forget to put something on the list.
Coming back from Sperryville just now, sated on the Egg McRae and some sort of cream cheese filled pastry, it's a little foggy out, and I become momentarily lost even though it's a straight shot. That one-two punch of not knowing where I am or who I am is ok by me but really we should all make sure we are buckled up.
I saw Leaving Las Vegas for the first time last night. What a great, sweet, brutal love story.
I lost my cell phone a couple of weeks ago. Then, or before that, my Internet connection got queer on me. Now my home phone 99*7 has gone queer and will fall into that category of things I need to attend to but probably won't. I have been for awhile not crazy about phone communication but really had started to embrace the cell phone, and except for it not working within a ten mile radius of these two houses out here I would rush out and buy a new one. I'll put that on the Warrenton list: find Sprint store in the land of Cingular.
It's almost October and I have to start making some decisions about my future.
Library Walls
Yesterday I planted a sign in the grass by the gravel driveway. On the sign, which was made of brown cardboard, I printed BIKES, and then an arrow pointing to my garage.
I was most of the day up at the big house negotiating with the electricians, who wanted to cut another hole in the ceiling just because one of the ceiling joists they were trying to run wire through had a quarter inch steel plate sandwiched in between it. I called them damn sissies, chew through it with your teeth I implored, but in the end I gave in, said, ok cut another damn hole. Then I went and lovingly washed the old dried crusty wallpaper paste off of the library walls.
Later, as the clock wound down, I wandered down the hill in search of beer. In my open garage were seven boxes (thanks cookiejack) and in each box was a different used bike, each totally cool in it's own right, one or two much better than the others. I put the Italian one together first and I don't know which of its 21 gears I was using but driving up the gravel drive and then coasting back down through the grass, was, while not better than sex as I remember it, still was much better than some other things that aren't quite as good as sex as I remember it.
It's time for Herman to go outside.
Another boy, young man really, that I know from New Orleans, has gone to jail. I didn't see it coming. It's a very tough city though, for a kid to grow up in, and stay out of trouble. It is more than unfortunate that the most successful boys club in New Orleans is the parish prison at Broad and Tulane.
I have one more bike to put together, then I'll head off to Sperryville for that Egg McRae sandwich, maybe a pastry too. Probably should haul some trash today, put those headboards on the beds, fine tune the bikes, clue in the local bank to the PO Box, and finish wiping all that crap off the library walls.
Cheesecake
Uh, For breakfast I've been hitting the dessert case at Rae's Deli, Sperryville VA., pretty hard. Today I had another variety of cheesecake. Thank you Rae. Electricians are here, and some AC/Heat guys. And I'm supposed to be painting, so bye.
Again
I am without Internet connection, yet again. At the Rappahannock Library, on a Mac, dial-up, not overly convenient, but very nice this particular second, good thing I have so little to say. Thanks NYkers for the fun last weekend.
Bee B-Gone
Yesterday, out on the farm, legs hanging over the back porch, I was telling Dave about this miniature bee that stung the beejeezus out of me while I killed time on a Georgetown nature trail the day before. A few seconds later, the very same type of bee is hovering right near my bare foot and I said, a bit over-excitedly, that's the one, that's the same bee!
Dave did not hesitate. He picked up his bb gun ( a bb gun for every camper, that's our motto at Mt. Prospect Farm), cocked it, aimed, and fired. You can argue 'till you're blue in the face that this may not be something to be proud of, but Dave put a bb right up that bee's b-hole, direct hit.
If you need someone to argue with, I'm here for you.
Catbox Fabricator
Although I generally eschew the “writer” tag (when it is applied to me) I must accept it and its baggage while I am actually writing because technically I am a writer while I am writing.
Although I generally cringe at the idea of a writer working on his “craft” I sometimes aspire to being somebody who has a craft to work on.
It is said, by writers and people who talk about writers, that a writer only has one or two stories to tell and it is those one or two stories that he will tell over and over, banging his head against the wall of self-deprecation because he can imagine the story much better than he can tell it.
So I have this story I have told several times now over the last week, mostly verbal recitation but also written once to a friend in Oakland, and it is about my life as a catbox fabricator. I sit down to write about something else, or while standing up, or sleeping, or eating, or walking, or talking and thinking about sitting down to write, and I cannot think of anything to say because I cannot get past this one story, the story of my decline; or is it an ascension? that has me falling off the high horse of idealism.
My previous lifestyle, in New Orleans, although undeniably too cloistered, too “all by myself”, perhaps not rich enough, and needing some improvement, was at least simpler (and therefore better)? in the sense that I didn’t have to tell too many lies to maintain it. I was what I was and that’s all that I was. And Shorty accepted that.
Now by “lies” I am not talking about the stuff of Peyton Place but more the stuff that just might fall under the category of mis-communication or lies of omission, or lies of convenience. I have slung the meaner, more accusatory word “duplicity” around while talking about this idea, mainly because it’s hard not to consider the global situation right now and how that lying we grownups all accept as somewhat necessary has gotten us, as a country, into, I’m sorry but it’s time to complete that “high horse” metaphor above–a heap of shit. At one point I was putting myself on the other side of the fence from it, duplicity that is, implying that my ideals protected me from such weak behaviour.
All that though was before I became a catbox fabricator. Before I took that paint stick and made cat prints in the fine, deodorized sand of expensive cat litter to hide the fact that I had been keeping Herman outside all night, providing him, although against the wishes of his owners, with an autonomy I thought he might like.
That feeling, brief though it was, of satisfaction, at the realism of my fake cat prints and the added sense of job well done at the authenticity I created by flicking some litter onto the floor, was the beginning of my remaking from whoever the hell it was I brought here. Slim, are you still with me?
Anyway, it could be said that I am happy, much as I am capable of it, and Herman, who now spends his nights up on Christine’s bed, seems really happy too.