Was first use of papyrus leaf to make a list? Or take a note: need more papyrus leaves. Schedule to get in step, behind, ahead, pending completion. Immense relief comes when checking off as done. Is anything ever put away for good? Rotation. Daybook Bore. Nightbook Boogie. “riverrun, past…”
To store for milk and sundry. Person in crisis sitting on sidewalk out front near bike rack yelling to himself, at some invisible interlocutor. We’ve seen him here before, the same, the deepthroated yelling, the fraughtness, agitation, distress. As we’re leaving, he’s now up and pacing, head down, still talking, loudly, totally absorbed. Back and forth, turning sharply, about face.
Midweek, 95 degrees. Clear bluesy blousy skies. Long days. Evening playing guitar out in driveway area converted to sitting-out space under Japanese Maple tree planted 30 years ago. Now lovely shade canopy. But last night upstairs late fan whirring in window begins to pull in some smokiness. Days of daze and haze. 83 degrees in the upstairs rooms at lights out.
Bedtime reading Elizabeth Taylor’s “A Wreath of Roses” (1949): “From the cottages all along the village came blurred and muted wireless music. Some of the doors stood open to the scented night, revealing little pictures of interiors, fleeting and enchanting, those cottage rooms which Frances loved so dearly, with their ornaments, their coronation-mugs, their tabby cats. Night-scented stocks lined garden-paths, curled shells were arranged on window-sills, and on drawn blinds were printed the shadows of geraniums or a bird-cage shrouded for the night” (62).
Trip to Ledding Library with Susan and girls. Lovely library. Natural light, high open beam ceilings, glassy views out of water, trees. Purchased Rebecca West biography (Victoria Glendinning, Knopf, 1987, out of print) for $3 at little discards storeroom. I read West’s early, short novel “The Return of the Soldier” (1918) not too long ago – astonished. This bio vintage hardback page quality seems hardware hard to find in new books these days.
Quiet up and down block. Hear apples dropping soft thud and roll from neighbor’s gargantuan tree partly overhanging patio and grape pergola. Loaves and fishes and apples. Hang blue sunshade under pergola to catch apples, casts sealike glow to patio.
Another neighbor calls to ask if we heard man screaming down on corner this morning. No. Later rumor suggests sounds heard might have been car with worn belt.
The way to read Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is syllabically. If you try to gloss over you’ll be swimming against current. Few pages per day recommended dosage, length of afternoon nap, with similar benefits. “Ukalepe. Loathers’ leave. Had Days. Nemo in Patria. The Luncher Out. Skilly and Carubdish. A Wondering Wreck. From the Mermaids’ Tavern. Bullyfamous. Naughtsycalves. Mother of Misery. Walpurgas Nackt” (229).
Stopped by a favorite thrift store. Price increases. $20 for threadbare basket sitting out on sidewalk. Might have been good for picking up apples. Store crowded. Do most people stop at thrift stores for same reasons? Which is to say, no reason. Irrational. Don’t need anything, certainly not a basket in which to put nothing.
Brobdingnanigan sinkhole in front of Ascension Church on Belmont yet to be filled. Now part of East Tabor landscape, rerouts now new routes. News reports PBOT blames supply lines. Meantime our suggested nickname change from Portland’s City of Roses to City of Potholes continues to be ignored.
Recurso. Chores. Make coffee (French Roast). Water outdoor flower pots (red geranium, red yellow orange marigolds, pink violet impatiens, pale and maroon fuschia, pink and pink-white hydrangeas, neon begonia and coleus). Clean indoor cat litter box. Take out garbage, recycling, compost, and glass (a bin for each). Try to keep qwip down so others can steal more sleep. Finally cool come morning. Sounds off. Eat banana with coffee. Fresh water for cat – she waits for me every morning, meows – less I run off? Walkabout with coffee. Check messages. Glance at news, weather, reader. Pray. Dishes. Laundry. Set windows and curtains and fans to ward off global warming effects within house. Life of Riley. Fourth wall in place.
Friday mornings on schedule yard maintenance team down block disturbs peace with gas powered leaf blower. Aggressive sound, animalistic shaving at awful speed, fan whirring like hurricane wind. Poor leaves, debris shifting one side of street to other. Nature combed. Then again, after it’s all over with, seems quieter than before. Reminded of ancient sage in Greek play saying: “Bite your tongue, get a cinder in your eye; when you feel good you feel nothing.”
Time Travel. All of me, why not just come home with me! Cant you see how Comely that wood bee? All of us, all the time, on the way, day by day. Traveling space time. Gravitas of re-all. Notta nostalgic book review, but how did it make you feel, reading? No pages to turn, that’s how far we’ve traveled. Travailing. Tri-veiling: Anamesacara; Anacaramesa; Mesaanacara; Mesacaraana; Caraanamesa; Caramesaana. Trinity. Loops, String Theory. Fictioner than strange. “Oh, you don’t know the shape I’m in.” Shapeshifting. Transmogrification. And a Maria all very getty honey.
From The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday, 15 July, 1660: “To my Lord’s [Mountagu, Earl of Sandwich] dined all alone at the table with him. After dinner he and I alone fell to discourse, and I find him plainly to be a sceptic in all things of religion, and to make no great matter of anything therein, but to be a perfect Stoic.”
Not too stoic here, neither too libertine nor epicurean. Utilitarian? Friend who’s always asking questions. No idea what becomes of answers. Another never questions anything except to advance his own schadenfreude (harm-joy) attitudes. Reminded of Samuel Beckett’s comment, can’t listen to a conversation for five minutes without noting inherent chaos. To Opine, city in forest.
End here for time being. Undam tide; free tied. To store yesterday with Zz for Chromebook. Over decade old Old Mac Apple (speaking of apples) stopped updating. This Chromebook cat’s pj’s! Light, nimble, quick. For some time now have been using phone and tablet to type without keyboard, with benefit of slowing down riverrun thoughts into paperlike writing, better for poetic flows, slow like a stream, backwater eddy. Circular billow. Need keyboard though for longer pieces. But who will read? Type like the wind! Original plan for ongoing writing then to post Field Notes once a week, but now realize such a post far too long for the common reader, our wood bee awe di dance, awe dire, awe dear, audire – to hear.
~ ~ ~
The Coming of the Toads 