One Week

Hello darling, back home after spending the day outside at someone else's property, lovely wooded acres. It was interesting to observe the men collaboratively discuss the process of what needed to be done to shore up the house's foundation, all talk of jacks and 4 by 4s and 6 by 6s and impassioned disagreements back and forth, arguments, considerations, weighings, agreements. I stood by for some of this, observing. I barely understood what was going on, honestly. At one point it looked to me like they were trying to nail or screw this big long board to the foundation. They were complaining about how the screws wouldn't hold. So much effort, plus discussion. Then, minutes later, they're trying just as hard to take the same board off. I was like, I thought you were just trying to get that board on. That was then. The mysteries of foundation work. I looked up at the sky, my pant leg, my muddy shoe, the trees, listened to the light banter of the men as they toiled.

The guy whose house D's working at gave me an empty bottle that I guess got dug up in the process. It's grimy from being in the earth for who knows how long, a century or more. It's a soda bottle that reads, Edward Risedorph, Registered, Kinderhook, N.Y. He told me it would be hard to scrub clean, he's right, I washed it in the sink and it's cleaner but still grey.

I was going to roast chicken for dinner but realized that I have livers, recently thawed, collected from chickens past. So dinner will be liver and onions sauteed any old way really, because I don't have a recipe, except that I expect it will involve butter, cooking the onions first, and being careful not to overcook the livers - which, as I think of it, may be a cooking tip that I picked up from your mother. I have that idea from somewhere - yes, I think her (or possibly your father?) - that sauteed livers are great, as long as they're not killed by overcooking.

Can you tell that I'm tired and on my second glass of wine? And by the way, in the course of free-associating through all of this, I have so been enjoying (as always) Jerrice's show, and all the beautiful songs, and maybe it's my tiredness (though I fell asleep for a few minutes outside on that porch) but I've been hearing my name a lot or so it seems in them, plus the songs speak to me directly...

Ah, also mashed potatoes for dinner. Already peeled, in a pot of salted water. Let me go turn on the flame. All my love to you in Nirvana, Arcadia, wherever you are... Te amo.