Good evening, gentle reader.
It’s been rather an odd day here in Green Hell -- both uneventful and hectic in the paradoxical fashion in which only a truly fucked-up, topsy-turvy day can be. For all that I’m sufficiently benevolent (when I’m not pissed-off, that is) to hope that no one else has ever had such a day, I’m also sufficiently pessimistic and cynical (perhaps the combination of the two should be read “realistic”?) to suspect that we all have.
The day began uneventfully enough: Up at “zero-dark-thirty”, a brief period of calisthenics to get the blood flowing (“..stiffen the sinews, summon the blood, and lend the eye a terrible aspect!” as the Bard himself once wrote) and then attending to some neglected correspondence.
Following this, it was off to work -- late again, in true “Bob Cratchett” fashion, for all that I’m sufficiently lucky not to work for a “Scrooge”. “Work” is the active word here. Having violated the dress code through a misunderstanding, and having been late, as previously mentioned, I was certain that karma, the Norns, or simply Divine Justice would “have its way wif’ mah punk ass”, and indeed one or more of them did. The less said about it, the better, although I completed all my appointed tasks and then some.
My morning ritual, which I observe with a studied fastidiousness akin to that of a properly executed Japanese tea ceremony, went by without a hitch. Said ritual consists of smoking a cigarette on the loading dock and having “breakfast” (a bottle of SoBe, in whatever flavor strikes my fancy-- when they come up with one called “white lightning”, I’ll be happy as a pig in shit) while “psyching up” to face the day. After this, an exchange of pleasantries and a brief chat with one or two of my favorite coworkers, one of whom compared my “breakfast” to a urine specimen, and it was time to get crackin’.
It was a typical Saturday, which means I’m still recovering and would rather not piss and moan about the specifics at the moment. As usual, I had “brunch” (a can of tuna and a liter of water) and lunch (120 cal worth of beef jerky and another liter of water) in the shade of my own “pre-verse” version of the Bodhi tree, which grows on an island in the parking lot.
During this time, as usual, I smoked a few more cigarettes and pondered the more important of life’s questions, such as: “Who did, in fact, put the ‘bop’ in the ‘bop-she-bop-she-bop’?”
“Will we ever REALLY know who put the ‘ram’ in the “ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong?”;
“Could the bastard who put the ’dip’ in the ’dip-de-dip-de-dip’ and the person or persons unknown who put the ’shoo’ in the ’boogedy-boogedy-shoo’ be one and the same?”
Not arriving at a single satisfactory answer during either of my fifteen-minute respites from “the grind”, I unceremoniously shoved these “doo-wop koans” into the back brain, heaved a sigh, looked around to make sure no one was watching, adjusted my “unit”, which had gotten into an uncomfortable position within my overly tight jeans, and trudged my way back to the biometric time clock.
A friend of mine stopped in to do some shopping while I was catching up on backstock, and the visit served to make the last hour of my shift pass more quickly and pleasantly than is usually the case. We discussed the possibility of working together again in the near future, and my more restless side hopes it comes to pass, as boredom and I get along about as well as prolapsed hemorrhoids and sandpaper underpants.
Having completed all my scheduled chores a bit ahead of schedule, I was given a pat on the head, a lollipop, and permission to leave early. I headed off to the package store, windows rolled down, stereo blasting, and enjoying the hell out of myself. Caught up as I have been in a cold, dark mist of retrospective gloom, I’d forgotten just how damned enjoyable it can be haul ass down the road on a sunny, Southern afternoon with Chuck Berry’s “Maybelline”, “Thirty Days” and other such venerable but ass-kickin’ classics stabbing Jacob’s ladders of simple happiness through the convoluted storm cloud of gray matter that abides beneath the “vault of heaven”.
The drive, short though it was, took nearly fifteen minutes, owing to Saturday afternoon traffic. The better for me in this case, and fuck the price of gas for a while. All the more time for me to snarl “Before my time, but I been told/ He never come back from Copperhead Road” along with Steve Earle, to “hillbilly headbang” along with the ferociously joyous backbeat of “Thirty Days” or Johnny Horton’s “Ballad of the Reuben James”, and for the hair on my arms to bristle like the hackles of an angry dog at the sound of the Chieftains’ version of “Lilibulero/The White Cockade” or Nanci Griffith’s “Ford Econoline”.
Damn, but it was good to be alive!
Upon returning home, I cracked open a well-deserved cold one. A “quick fix” of Sibelius and a bit of Dvorak, and some talk of birds and Buchanan with my father. I’d seen a turkey buzzard on my way home, and could hear them croaking to one another not far from the yard, so the former of the two subjects, at least, was still on my mind. We both agreed that the turkey buzzard is probably the most loathsome of all birds, at which point, he related a bit of his hawk-watching.
Apparently, the Tarsiva (sp?) he takes for his cancer wasn’t affecting him as nastily as usual, as he was in a very good mood, and far more talkative than has been his inclination of late. He told me that the hawks had been “scoring” an appreciable number of rodents, and I was hardly surprised. With the exception of a pair of chipmunks of whom he’s become fond, he has no truck with rodents of any sort and didn’t seem the least bit displeased over having seen the hawks attending to their work.
I’ve long associated Daddy with a hawk, owing to the shape of his nose and a few other physical features. I have a photo of him, as a matter of fact, taken in the gardens of the palace at Schwetzingen, Germany on a bright, summer afternoon in 1982. In the photo, he’s wearing a pair of shades, and this, combined with his posture and the angle at which the sun shines upon his face, makes him look more like a bird of prey than anything else.
The photo is almost a study in the “abstract archetypal”: all beak, grotesquely dilated pupils, and a peculiar “relaxed tension” of a sort seen just before the bird’s wings snap open and it takes to the air. Needless to say, it’s one of my favorite pictures of him.
I associate him with hawks for a different reason, as well. Some years ago, one such bird had chased a group of finches onto his screened-in deck, through a slit in the screen. The finches were panicky, while the hawk (being larger and having suffered some “impact-trauma”) was somewhat confused, for all that he was perched upon the back of a chair and rapidly regaining his bearings. Having no knowledge of falconry at the time, I was at a loss. Daddy, bless his heart, was not. He’s as fond of birds as was his mother, and perhaps as knowledgeable of their ways. He directed me to cup the cornered finches in my hands very gently and let them out through the slit in the screen.
When I’d done this (there was a bit of eye-rolling on his part at first), he went into the kitchen and then returned to the deck with a large, black Hefty bag. He then swept it over the hawk, carried it outside, and released it without harming it in the least.
“What the…. How the…?” I sputtered.
“Easy, stupid. Once you cover their eyes, they go passive. Everybody knows that.”
My sire stands corrected, as I suppose. Not everyone knows that, although I do now, and I’m glad.
Promising peas, parched corn and hominy, I excused myself, charged into Green Hell and “got all Bachman-Turner Overdrive on its ass”. Nothing like fresh air, blue skies, white clouds, golden sunlight and golden libation to lift my spirits when they need lifting.
In many ways, I’m an uncomplicated, elemental creature, and my pleasures reflect this fact. My joys are often as simple as my woes are complex. “Squish- Fu” and Scotch “ghosting” their way across sunny lawn. Petting friendly dogs and learning to field strip yet another piece in the peace and quiet of a faraway motel room. Meeting people I’d known only by their styles of writing, and putting faces to the names and words.
Bodhrans, bullfrogs and bulgogi. “Red is the Rose” sung on a summer‘s eve. Thinking of these things, I took a deep breath, planning to roar. The olfactory wave of roses, honeysuckle, seasoning wood, bursting pecan hulls, cut fescue and still-damp red clay were like “nitrous” to me. The roar circled a time or two and then unceremoniously dropped to the lush grass and clover with a purr of pure contentment.
It doesn’t take much for the “associative thinking” to kick in, and as I exulted in this feeling of sunlit liberty, I began to miss a favorite cousin of mine, even as the words of an old Irish tune made the trip from one ear to another: “ …and although that we are single and free/we take great delight in our own company/and we have no desire, strange faces to see/for all that yer offers are charmin’…)
I put the final touches on the second of the new raised beds, harvested the remainder of my now thoroughly desiccated corn, and combed the various members of the marigold family that have taken over a large part of green hell since last year’s experiment in mixing the aesthetically pleasing with the practical for specimens suitable for “redneck ikebana”. I determined that in two days or so, they’ll be ready to cut and arrange, and I hope to be able to post some photos.
As I’d fasted like a bulimic anchorite during the day, I was able to treat myself to a calorie-dense dinner of kielbasa, potato salad and real Suth’n macaroni and cheese (with crumbled bacon and hot pepper sauce) before playing with the flintlock kit for a while.
It seems that a small but nevertheless appreciable amount of metal will need to be removed from the breech end of the barrel in order to fit it to the stock properly. Glad I “splurged” and bought the assortment of files instead of only the one I thought I’d need. The older I grow, the more I come to trust that “inner voice”.
I’ll need to remove a good bit of rust from the barrel, in addition to shaping it. Fortunately, the bore is in perfect condition, which spares me a bit of heartache and grief. It also spares the world as a whole a torrent of barely articulate but voluble profanity.
I’ve decided to solve the current problem, prevent similar problems in the future, and give a nod to historical pseudo-accuracy by browning the barrel. Should you turn on your television set within the next few days and see a breathless reporter screeching about a multi-megaton blast (courtesy of Al-Qaeda) ravaging the northern third of the state of Georgia, please don’t allow “Shrub” to declare himself Messiah-for-Life. Said event will have nothing to do with “turrisses” or “eebadooa”. It will simply indicate that I fucked the process up in some way. It’s been known to happen before, after all…
And so went another day of “livin’ la vida Bean”. I hope your day was equally enjoyable at the very least, gentle reader.
Good night and God Bless.
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