And I Didn't Get To Be The Penguin, EitherI was given cause to attend the local home improvement megalopolis today. I have complaints. My shrillest and most general complaint is that there are now no longer local corner hardware stores, but this is not really the fault of the local home improvement megalopolis; rather, this is a product of a certain way of doing things with which we have somehow become fond. I can't really fault the symptom for the disease.
Nor is it the particular fault of any given local home improvement megalopolis that I feel unease when in them. All of the folks at ours are reasonable and helpful and kind. The places make me nervous in part because I am usually only there if something has (or is about to) go very, very badly. They also make me nervous because particle board is heavy as hell.
Today, I was helping to return shelving units made of same, and heavy were they, too. There was some confusion to the color scheme of the finish, and so some had to go back. I helped bring them back. We were told we could exchange, so to the corner with the shelving we went. At this point we were faced with a deep, thin shelf of boxes, of which we wanted two, which were at the back. We discussed it. We made plans. We shifted this and hefted that, and clambered into the shelving to pull out the dusty ones we wanted.
I spent the evening in a home improvement center with seventy-two pound boxes playing Sokoban.
The Low CircusI have been noticing the squirrels lately. The squirrels have been worth noticing, if only for their pigments. There is at least one up by the Bishop's house that has fur of deep ebon, and dark and shiny eyes. I think there may be two. Over by the dentist is a squirrel with brick colored stripe running down its back, lighter when in full sun (yes, it was a squirrel - I am certain of it). They are fascinating when they move, darting here and there with the astonishing ability to stop with nearly birdlike precision, skittering across the grass and up the tree in a strange sequence of stop motion and frenetic blur.
I have been seeing rabbits, too. Mostly I see the backs of them, and the color scheme has been somewhat monotonous (if not otherwise puffy and cute). Whatever they do to keep themselves from my eyes works well: I never see them at rest, only running. It is much harder to watch them run than the squirrels. They move on the same haphazard path with, if anything, more energy. The problem is that they never stop. It seems impossible that they do not all end their lives smashing full tilt into the side of something not five minutes after they learn their legs. Somehow, they turn in time, faster than I can follow.
The topologies of this place sometimes lead to dead spaces. We try our best to drape the straight lines of roads over the hills around here, but sometimes the hills fold so that large sides of hills fall useless to everything but trees and leaves and trash. If I am careful I can sometimes see dragons on those landscapes, curled here and there in between the tree trunks, scales blending in with the leaves in unraked heaps. I never see them move. They only move when they know no one is watching, or when everyone is.
TenseI am sitting on an edge. I am sitting on an edge that is as easily discerned from five feet away as it is from low earth orbit. Here in this part of the world (I have talked about this, I think) two rivers come together and mix, heading out from where I am and mingling westward.
It is still somewhat unpleasant down here. The paving is awash with mud and other junk from the recent flood or floods. There is the odor of old water in the air. The rivers are quite flat. The throaty rumbles of trucks in low gear cut across the space, calling out on either shore.
It is the nature of this media to say what I see as I see it; present tense is often the rule. It is not true now, but it will be true later: I will not have been here anymore.
All DebtsThere are four one dollar bills on my desk. The first one (San Francisco) has 256 written on the obverse in red marker, in a looping, flourished hand. I am not sure what is meant by the number. The number is written upside-down. There are two pinholes in the bill: it may have been stapled to something.
The second one (Richmond) has been altered by color. Washington's cravat and his hair have been carefully colored in with pink highlighter. The artist has been kind to the gentleman, and in the coloring has given the man a bit more hair than he ordinarily has. Above the portrait some pink ink has been smeared across "States".
The third bill (Chicago) is old for a bill (1993) and shows it. It is faded and thin, natted on the top edge, and suffers from wrinkles. The cloth feels soft under the thumb. I do not think it possible to lay it flat upon the table. On the obverse in the left margin a careful hand has written 98104 in a permanent blue ink.
The forth bill (New York) has no irregular distinguishing marks at all, and I do not know its story. I do not know its story yet.
Cum Gladio Et SaleAs the weather has turned cooler, it is not so strange to have rain on some days. This morning at breakfast Marco looked up from the paper, and told us this: "rain today." It has not come yet, and I have already taken my walk, so I am happy to sit here in the warm and dry comfort of the study and read my book. Juliet clears her throat, and I look up to find her beckoning to me, holding a socket wrench. I put the book down. It is usually best not to deny her when she is holding tools.
She leads me upstairs to her room. From the doorway, it looks like a giant fist has come down from the sky to shatter her things, sending them into the corners to pile up like sand. I look again: the explanation is simpler. She has taken her bed apart. She tucks the socket wrench in with her waist, and picks up a piece of bed, a slat of smooth, honey-colored wood. She hands it to me, selects her own, and leads me back downstairs.
In one place on the lee side of the house, the porch and roof bulge a bit, bowing out to create a round and sheltered space. We spend a half an hour bringing pieces of her bed down the stairs and out into this place, stacking them neatly against the wall at her direction. We spend another putting it all back together: the massive headboard, and the carved footboard, and posts, and the canopy rails. She brings me back upstairs a final time to fill her arms with bedding, and to fill mine with pillows.
As we make the bed, it begins to rain.
Juliet pulls me under the blankets. We have been working, but it is cool out, and it is cooler still under the fresh sheets. We settle together into the pillows. All around us has become rain, and now rain and wind, whispering to us in swirls. The roof protects us from this, but it seems a fragile defense. The weather stomps and shakes at us now, only paces away, and we pull the blankets tighter. It is the house that shields us, I know. With the wind shadow we are dry in the soft bed, and we are getting warmer from each other. I mean to ask Juliet something, but she puts fingers to my lips.
"Hush," she says.
LuxThere is a candle burning on my coffee table, in my attempt to use up the various candles of the house. It is a stacked cake of a candle. There are three ardent layers of brown to it, all piled up in a pleasant little glass jar. There is a coffee theme to the odors that are supposed to be thrown off by the thing. They are listed on the side in order: hazelnut, irish creme, swiss mocha. The candle does not smell of too much beyond sweetness and wax, now, and it has burned well into the second tier. This is likely just as well.
This is a candle for magazine ads, not coffee tables. I imagine much work was done in an effort to formulate waxes so that candles of this sort would burn evenly and true, picture perfect flat down to the last dreg of wax and molecules of mocha odor. This candle is not doing that; a cape of wax still climbs one side, while the other offers a murky window for the light to flicker through. I sometimes snuff the flame with the supplied lid, but there are plastic bits to the lid, and I wonder if I ought to. The wick does not burn well, and the lip of the jar is rimmed with candleblack. It is an imperfect candle.
It remains, however: the candle is a candle. The light makes a cheerful dance in the glassware in the kitchen. It flickers and ducks into corners of the room, casting shadow behind the walking sticks. It holds its own against the reading lamp. It is welcome.
The Long StairsI am most of the way up the stairs. Mr. Shen is at the top of them. We have been here this way for a little while, now, but I have not minded. I had come up to see him, and to find out how he has been doing since the laboratory. He caught me here, nealy at the top of the stairs. I do not think he wants me to come up.
He nodded patiently as I asked my questions. I find it easy to talk to him, sometimes. I do not know how long I have been standing here on the stairs, giving him little details of life in the house, and how the air in the woods in changing with the season. He is a good listener. He is quiet.
There is a cough from below. I turn, and at the bottom of the stairs in the light of the second floor stand Juliet and Marco. Marco is wearing concern on his face, and Juliet is wrapped in a soft blue blanket she is holding tightly to her chest from beneath. The blanket rides together on her shoulders to make a collar, and a fold of blanket has been pulled over her head, covering some of her hair. Marco has an arm around her, which makes her look smaller. Her eyes are bright.
They beckon me down. The third floor seems darker. I turn back to look, but Mr. Shen is already gone.
At The Very Least......I have a new answering machine message.
HalfI have discovered a problem with finding delight in plain glass tumblers. I speak here of simple things, with straight sides of clear glass. They are round, or as round as can be usefully made, and the curve fits well into the hand. They have heavy bases that warp the world a little when the drink you drink is done. I do not have a problem with the delight; the problem is no one makes them any more.
They come close to plain these days, but only close. There are clever glass honeycombs in the base, or the sides have a waviness to them that beds light in the liquid. There are traces of tint in the glass: a sober responsible brown, or the cool depth of cobalt. It is somehow out of fashion to make a plain glass these seasons. There were once several sets of good simple juice glasses in the cabinet; I only have one left from the last batch. All of the others have been broken, and I cannot find them to buy them again.
The new glasses would not match anyway. Instead, I am building a haphazard cupboard of singletons. I ask that they be clear, and that they not be too strange in shape. They vary mostly in architecture, and some vary quite a bit. Some are stout and thick, able to survive the long fall off the counter. Others have rims and walls so thin that I think I might shatter them if I pour the water too hard (but they never do). Looking ahead, I expect the collections to turn with time, as old favorites find the dustpan, and new additions appear to replace them. It occurs to me, too, that the problem of replacing by sets is nicely avoided.
On most nights, I fill them with water. On some nights, I fill them with wine.
The Evening's ConsumptionApples: braeburn apples, crisp and wet. They are heavy in the hand, and have a light sweetness. I should peel them, but I am lazy, and hungry, too.
Cheese: cheddar cheese. And old one, creamy and tense. I take big bites of the apple, and then nibble bits off of a fat chunk of cheese. The cheese fights through the apple and coats my tongue.
Water: good water, clear and cold. It has been sat out for a day, to calm it. I have put it through a filter, too.
Eggs.
The eggs are made in something of an error. I was given enthusiasic advice: add cream cheese to scrambled eggs just as they begin to set (with a little butter) in the pan. The more air in the cream cheese, the better; look for the little tubs of the spreadable stuff. The cream cheese will take up heat, making it harder to overcook the eggs, and the cheese itself will be an excellent indicator as to when the eggs are well and ready: the whole mass will rise up in the pan, and turn fluffy and cheesy.
(Or, to put it another way: "you will know when the eggs are done when they explode!")
This is not what I have done. I misremembered the ingredient; instead of cream cheese, I came home from the store with small curd cottage cheese. The glorious part is that it still works: as the eggs (in a little butter) begin to set, add a dollop of cottage cheese and stir. Keep stirring. The eggs will get wet a little, then set again, and when the curds have mostly (or completely) disappeared the eggs are done. Scoop them out and eat them up. Scatter salt on them, and perhaps pepper. Eat them up.
As I am out of Grape Nuts, there is no dessert.
Door HangerMarco is balancing the doors of the house. He has tools with him in a large canvas and leather bag, and the bag keeps them quiet. He has oil in a can. He has toothpicks he is using to seat screws when they have bent away the wood under the dull brass hinge plates, as he needs to. When he has to take a door down, he calls to one of us, and we help him wrestle it out and against the wall. He clucks as he inspects the lintel.
He is not done until the door swings free and true. He checks the jambs that they all catch the door well. He listens to the hinges. The foot board must clear the rug. He is careful, and uses a spirit level when he needs to.
He is not done until he can push the door closed with a careful finger, and have the weight of the wood carry the well oiled lock past the lock plate, settling the door shut with a quiet click. He smiles at this. He moves on to the next one. He has many more to go.
Let Us Speak SofterIt is important to have a bowl of glass. Heavy glass, if one can. It should be clear, or perhaps cobalt, and should be shallow rather then tall with a rounded rim. Put it in the refrigerator. Let it get used to it in there. Keep grapes in it.
Fill a glass pitcher with water. Again, let the glass be heavy, if one can. Let the water sit on the sill in the open pitcher until it sweetens, then in it goes next to the grapes.
Do these things on hot days, in the morning, before the air has sweat and teeth in it. Then, when the dog's heat comes after the sun has finished standing up, fetch the bowl, the grapes, the pitcher, and a pair of drinking glasses. Step outside to the chairs in the shade with the table between them, and put the things down on the table. Sit, and pour water into the glasses. Pour water over the grapes, to remove their grapey dust and make them shine. Drink the water, and eat the grapes with fingertips. Move as little as possible. When the grapes are done, rest your arm so that your fingers lay carelessly in the cool water. Save the second glass for when someone comes.
We are far from summer's heat, here in this little part of the world. It does no harm to plan ahead.
SconesEvery once in a while, I take a swing at biscuits again, and remember all the things I've forgotten about biscuits (there was a carton of cream in the fridge, egging me on). There is the trick of using soft wheat flour, but I have all purpose flour. There is the sifting step, which I ignore at my peril. There is the meticulous measuring, which I sometimes do not do, and I should really know better, because that kind of dangerous living should only be practiced after years and years of abusive experience. I commit the first and last sin of baking: tweak all the variables at once and see what happens. I ended up with some scones.
They are light, and they are fluffy, and they are tender, and they have caught a terrific amber from the oven and the rock. They taste too much of baking powder (my problems with salts continue). They are not: very good.
I have more cream, though.
SconesI am being much more careful this time; The sifter has been out, kicking up clouds of pleasant summer dust. I am measuing twice, checking twice. Cutting only once. I am doing some substitutions, true, but they are gentle ones, and I do not think harm will come from them.
We shall see.
SconesBatch two came out well. I think I have learned some things.
Put down the weird wire thing, and make anything with a motor in it go far, far away. The way to cut the butter into the dry ingredients is with two butter knives at cross purposes, over and over again. It takes a little time, and it's a hard process to see happen, but I cannot come to a better result by any other method. I make it a bit easier on myself by starting with thin slices, shaved off the end of the stick. Having something pleasant in the stereo helps things along as the butter gets nipped to pieces in the flour. It's worth the time it takes.
The sifter is important. Use the sifter. Be decadent with the sifter; shake out the flour and the soda in the country dances of the Spanish countryside in years of old, kicking up great gouts of flour that mote the air of the kitchen. Beware nationalists throwing lit tapers about.
Taking the sugar out of the dry ingredients and adding honey to the wet does not harm the scones much. Add as much honey as one would sugar, then half again as much. Adding honey does give the scones cause to brown faster in the oven, though. For the next round, my attempted solution for this will be to lessen the ferocity of the oven somewhat. I think with the rock, they will still turn out nicely. The rock is effective stuff.
Getting better. Still have cream left. Will try again on Monday.
The Quiet CrowsJuliet has taken ill.
It is not a severe condition. She seems a little pale, and she feels a little weak. She looks small in one corner of the expanse of the sofa, and smaller still against the pillows and piles of blankets. We have tried to make her comfortable. Marco looks worried.
I was reading to Juliet earlier, but she has closed her eyes, and I have stopped. Jacobo is with us in the room, bent over one of the side tables and working on some tiny mechanism with delicate tools, squinting with the tight, bright pool of light thrown down by one of the reading lamps. He is singing a little song:
snip, nip, the wick trimmers come
He is singing it to himself. I do not recognize it.
Yesterday I had been reading to Juliet, too. I was tired, and do not remember falling asleep. I was brought back a little of the way to waking by Mr. Shen, who waved to me as he shuffled past us from the kitchen. A minute later he had done it again. I think I may have dreamed it.
All content under copyright by the author. Dancing is permitted. The strange deltic glyphs in the sand under tidal flow are a pleasure to watch in their deepening. Offer not valid in Kansas. We put it down and then we lost it. It all happens in the corner of the eye. Commentary accepted at pen@goob.com, although the traps are agressive and the pointy bits simply drip with dark liquour. We have a dog, but we do not own it. Thank you.