Miscellaneous Notes - Crap That Doesn't Amount To Anything, But Might Get My Ass Back To Writing

Just trying to get my feet back under me. On a keyboard. Ummm....yeah, see, that's the kind of thing that happens to writing if you don't for awhile. So. An exercise. Just a few chunks of random junk that have turned up.

~ 1 ~

No one wants to hear about my vacation. Not a surprise, I guess. I usually don't want to hear anyone banging on about their latest ski trip or Hawaiian adventure or whateverthefuck either. But it's my blog, so just buckle down and be advised I spent about two weeks in places like this:

Cold Swimming

Snowy July

..and found a brown bear on a logging road that we followed until he got annoyed and dove like a submarine into the deep green, almost jungle underbrush and disappeared. Then we realized how far off the main we were and decided that at this point there was no reason to not keep going, so we did. Up forest service trails and hunters' tracks to the roof of the world. All the mapping and GPS said where we were didn't exist except as a topographical elevation line in untracked mountain forest. For sure no one else existed there.

Panned for awhile, just curious whether I could find any gold. Got 15 or 20 carets of light blue sapphires and a couple of blood-red garnets at one place, pretty much industrial grade, but the grandkids will like them. I did actually turn some gold down in the stream (see below, flecks in the grams of black sand rendered from about 5 lbs of raw streambed.)

Not nearly enough to make it worth keeping or anything, but a pleasant enough way to while away an afternoon -- knee-deep in a freezing stream so crystal clear that when the trout going past in the five-foot deep pool next to me hovered in the water's current inches off the gravel bed, just watching me for a minute, they looked strangely CGI, like they were swimming in special-effects glass. Or maybe they weren't watching -- just hanging out being as lazy as me on a warm, sleepy day.

Black Sand with "Flour" Sized Gold Flecks

Enough vacationy stuff for now. A bunch of stories were brought to me during the trip. My notebook is taking quite a beating, dragged through brush and stream, sat on, walked on, half-buried, and abused, and full of hand-written notes, some of which are even readable, although rather fewer that make any sense.

So you may hear more later, as the mood moves me. For example, I have found where I'm going to spend a summer, or at least a month or two, writing sometime soon; a cabin located about 1/4 mile from an astonishingly well stocked and friendly bar combined with an erratically- and eccentrically-supplied General Store both of which are run by an old (my age) hippie, at least when he happens to be in the mood to open them. It's out in the deep Rockies, up in high country, near the end of a long road at the end of the universe (the last sign I saw said "Road Closed Ahead - No Access To Canada.")

You almost can't get there from here.

In, oh my God, so many more ways than one.

~ 2 ~

I have discovered that one I thought knew me better than about anyone, maybe doesn't. Given the horrifying things they think are true about me, a variety of otherwise utterly confusing features of our dynamic are suddenly clarified. I'm rather an embarrassment, it seems. This new insight has shifted -- something. I don't know what it is yet, or if it's just changed or if it's broken, or how important it is. But there is some more-or-less subtle shift along some fault line that I haven't identified.

We've talked some about it. There are indications, and I hope it's true, that we're just speaking separate languages, and terms and concepts that sound the same are really defined differently depending on which of us are using them. English is a bitch sometimes.

~ 3 ~

Contrary to long-held belief, making hard-boiled eggs doesn't involve boiling them. Or not much, anyhow. All my life I've tossed eggs into a pool of water in a pan, slopped the pan up onto the stove, and just boiled them puppies' brains out. After about 15 minutes, cool 'em, peel 'em, and eat 'em.

Turns out that they're vastly better in a variety of ways if when the first burble of "boil" happens, you take them off the heat, cover them, and let the borderline-boiling water cook them for 22 minutes without further heat application - then pour out the still-hot stuff and pour in lots of ice-water to stop the cook. When everything drops back to normal or below, THEN peel/eat. Makes an almost fluffy boiled egg with none of that nasty-tasting dark sulfur compound that tends to fuck up eggs made in the "boil them till they die" method.

So, then. I've learned something. They say learning new stuff is the secret of youth. Wonder what life-changing bit of knowledge I'll pick up NEXT year?

~ 4 ~

I have a blind relative with whom I spend some time. He likes cats, although he keeps them out of his house. Since he's blind, if one sneaks in it's a major hassle to find it, and when he finally does he's annoyed enough that it doesn't get to touch ground again until it's about 20' off the front porch, most of that distance airborne in a yowling furry arc. It turns out that, using that method, it's actually possible to train them to stay outside, even when the door's invitingly open.

I didn't know you could train cats to do ANYTHING, much less something that useful.

At any rate, his favorite cat is "Bunny," which is a bright golden more-or-less longhair female who distinguishes herself by periodically producing a wad of kittens. She's kind of a slut.

The other day I was visiting, catching up after vacation, and noticed Bunny wasn't around. Hadn't been for awhile, actually, once I got to thinking about it, at least a couple of weeks before I'd left.

Then I realized that he was scratching the back of another cat who was luxuriating in the attention and calling it "Bunny." It's a near-white cat, and may actually be one of Bunny's feral offspring grown large. So then -- Bunny's doubtless missing, probably yet another DOA victim of the high coyote and/or traffic density around here. But another cat has stepped up and apparently seamlessly taken Bunny's place. Which, of course, the blind guy hasn't noticed. How big a dick would I be if I pointed it out in the interest of full disclosure and honesty? And how many of you would do it anyway?

There's probably some sort of life lesson in there somewhere I'll eventually work out.

~ Wrap Up ~

OK, that's enough. Keyboard's warmed up a bit, gotta get laundry in/out, got shopping, got yadda yadda yadda - you know, real life.

Reading Cervantes at the moment (miscellaneous short stories) although I'm not sure why. As I recall from an early effort, his Don Quixote is ENORMOUSLY long and practically impenetrable. I probably ought to try it again - maybe it's gotten better. At any rate, I glanced at a couple of pages in a book I ran across in a musty book-store basement (another story - easily 100,000 books in an old wooden neighborhood convenience-storefront in a Montana mountain town about the size of your front yard,) and got it anyway. So far, not bad. I need to learn how his descriptive technique works.

Hah! That doesn't sound a bit dilettantish at all, right?

Bookstore Basement