There is Peterson’s Guide To Fishes and Barry Lopez’ book, About This Life that I have not read, and also the heater ticking on beside me. A small oil-filled upright space heater. The temperature still keeps flirting with negative numbers.
The walls are cut open, drying. The floor is buckling more. Little uneven peaks and valleys; so many hours of sweat and effort to lay it all in place. It makes me bite my lip to thinks of what's ahead; ten days living somewhere else. Some other floor put down.
Now T brings up up chai with frothed milk and sugar, and on the windowsill there is a candle, shining its light from a mason jar, and fame burns steadily and low. Ben Webster plays "That’s All” on the sax so perfectly I want to dance and laugh and cry, all at once, those tremulous notes saying more I can ever do with just these words.
The dog shows up, her yellow tail wagging temporarily at my knee, before she goes to find the softness of her bed (I am always ending up with pets like her: too outspoken, too independent, too much like me.)
around here