Surrounded By Words, Small Town

I've been in this same small town for a long enough time that I can hardly remember a damned thing about how it all started out, and how I sort of grew into it, and how, in the pinball way that life sort of happens, it ended up like it is now. The house on Rutherford sits forlornly cold, as I deal with trying to make a living and being self employed, and last i was there, my neighbor Rusty said a homeless guy had been living in one of my sheds, and he had to kick him out, as he was busting into his chicken coop. The guy said, I'm homeless, and Rusty said: man, you cant eat my chickens, you have to leave. Rusty is the ex-soldier that got shot up by a child soldier in Sierra Leone. Not someone I'd want to cross, but a very nice guy. Except he hates Africa.

I've been in this town so long that everyone I know seems old and I can't recall how it looked when I got here. And there's like this new layer of people growing under it all that I don't even know, that i see all around, and they are newcomers, maybe, but i have no idea. I don't even really care. Maybe my brain has solidified. It doesn't really search out much around here, like it used to. Maybe the sap of the place isn't sustaining any longer. I wonder about it- where are my people? Where do i belong if not here?

Some of this is with the death of my father, and watching my mother dwindle. And suddenly seeing that the roots of my ancient family- all here since the 1800's, barely, are nearly done. Not that there was ever an empire much. But its a new feeling- suddenly seeing age- and wondering what the next turn might be. I became a carpenter once, because, well,  Jesus was, seemed noble, and moral. Subsequently, I think i learned he was more like a joiner- a cabinetmaker. Not the same thing as strolling about outside in all sort of weather pounding nails. He worked in a shop.

In any case, its why I ended up here. And now, its like the fire has dwindled down, and lots of folks I know I sort of don't connect with anymore, and don't see ever, And so-well- it makes me wonder.

I grew up somehow with this high bar, and something about being successful. But the message was, as I think my family couldn't afford much monetary success, that success was about being happy. Be happy, and all else is unimportant. I heard it a ton of times. Unfortunately, i ended up with a lot of my mother's family genes- not that happy- and lots of expectations. I don't mind- and I am not complaining about it- I think its like a reoccurring theme in what i write- i just have to fit it into what I see now. Next stage. Also, birthday coming up. So I assess. Then damn it, Spring and I forget it all again.

Today I bought: The Curves of Life, an old book on spirals, and Pembra Chodrons book about Not Falling to Pieces, and a book about The White Nile and all those stalwart bearded dudes who "found" it, (and I, late at night, with my Atlases laid out trying to understand where the heck they went and why it took so long), and a stack I cant recall right now- and it's a comfort and a delight- to be surrounded by words. And its sort of a swirl of words, talking here, waking up in the morning, figuring it out. Or really, not, and never, figuring anything out.

I

Not November

When November comes, I know I have a lot to contend with, and now, its November, and each November I meet has something different to grapple with. I take my pills, and try to be aware of the way that rain and dark, and all the events around me, elections, hurricanes, the way it feels like descending into a tunnel, with leaves swirling about, and poignant beauty, and thick dark clouds, but still- there is the dark, and sometimes drinking more than I should. I can't help it. I love the dark, love rain, love a storm, love wind, and the way it all hunkers down around a fire and all beyond the fire is dark and wet and blowing.  But I know that about this time, in the last 20 years,  a switch goes off, and I look out at living and why we do what we do, and what its all about, and what the heck it is we are so gung-ho to achieve, and how it is that I can live fully, live right, live so on my death bed and looking back I don't say- well, I'd do it different if I could do it again. And it overwhelms me, and I don't want to get out of bed, but I can't sleep either.

I was driving down the woodinville-duvall road on Monday, through that archway church like passage where the maples arch over the road in big dripping moss laden branches, and suddenly a waft of missing my father arose. Just a scent, a short, sharp pang. Some one said there might be a hole, and I couldn't see how that would ever happen. I was done. Then suddenly, i felt the hole. And could feel the sad, tearing up side of it all, and the abyss of not seeing him, arguing, relying on, talking to, of him. And it just felt like an early pang. And later, waking up at 3, I felt it again. And I thought, this might be tougher than I thought. I need to be strong.

Living is not predictable, one doesn't seem to go from A to B. But always from A to some other letter that wasn't even in the equation. And there you are, at F. Or P. And thinking, what happened to B? But there was never a B, and B was only an expectation based on a very limited understanding of how the universe really works. So you deal with F and think, well, F, what do I know about it. What can I do about it. Why didn't I know about it?

I figure I have 10 or 15 more years of work I have to do. Being productive, making some sort of income. Then, well, I don't know. I scramble. Lots of folks I know now will be gone, so I guess its hoping I have a positive attitude and have some sort of dignity and a good attitude about finishing up without having done much. Not like my dad, who got to talk to, and irritate, his progeny on his death bed, But alone.

But really, I know, there's no shout-out enlightenment, or some clarity beyond what i have now, or had, that will happen. What i have now is what i will have in my last minutes: sort of a bewilderment and panic, and hope, always, that i don't need to worry about it right now.  That when I wake up, and have some coffee, and check my to-do list, that it will all fit into place.

I wonder about being selfish, of not knowing what it is to have kids, and to put one's children ahead of one's own interests. And i wonder how it is that living a more honest, sober, positive life might look like, and how it is that I could manage to lean on the rudder and turn this boat. I never really get a sense that other people feel the same way, it always feels like a race of different creatures, each with a different passion, and different way that the world fits them. So i write, knowing full well that its like this tiny, private world I share with few, if any, and likely, is way down the list of common human experiences.

I called my mother tonight. And told her about this story about this toughish bartender up in Index I'd heard, who went to this other bar, and sitting there nursing some Scotch and a beer, this couple came up to him, and said, OMG, we know you, what are you doing here? don't you remember, I'm Scott, and this is my wife Mindy... OMG, its so good to see you, and this fellow turns to them, looks them up and down, and says clearly: I don't need any more friends.

Now that just made my ole mom laugh and laugh. Same as it did me. It was sweet to hear her laugh. It actually sort of shocked me, as I don't know I told the story as well as I could have. But it made her laugh, and when its your mom, and she's laughing, well, enough said, its not November, or any particular time.

Tiny Bits

Suddenly, sort of, there's rain. I woke to it on the skylight,tapping hesitantly,  and now, late evening, it's like this encapsulating mist. I walk in it to the corner bar. (it is, in fact, a bar, and on a corner. Where an old apple tree grew, which I recall. And a concrete stair that went nowhere, to a house long gone).

I didn't get the roofs built that I had hoped to, and I remain undecided on what it is I am putting on these roofs. I recognize, with some pain, that this is a core embarrassment for me- my lack of decision. I see it one way, a metal roof, than another, then consider the cost, then try to figure out what would look best, then it blossoms, explodes into options, alternatives, cost implications. I remain:

undecided. With rain pending. With things half done.

But in the end, if its not what looks right- what feels right when its up there-I'll feel I didn't consider enough. I wish it were more automatic- to know instantly. But I am indecisive, and know that what feels right one day will feel wrong the next, that there is no real center. I see it in all parts of life. Its a lesson I know from doing art, from pouring effort into something one will scratch out, or hate the next day, and I know it from age, knowing that surety at any point in life is an illusion, at least for me, and anyone akin to me.

Not knowing what sort of roofing material to put on a roof, even knowing that it won't matter in the long run, even knowing that no one I know would ever worry about, or think about how a certain roof will feel when one looks up at it, is like this burning metaphor for me, of why it is I remain on the shelf I was set to cool off on. That's a pie metaphor. I don't doubt that there's a reader out there that might feel the same, but really, I think they are far and few between. Never met one. You- who read this- have you ever met your doppelganger? Someone else who feels your weird brand of feelings?

I am tearing off joists. I see Rusty , the vet wounded in Sierra Leone, feeding his chickens. Suddenly, my lovely 70 something neighbor Sylvia is there, and I hope I wasn't swearing at something when she was walking over, which I sometimes do. But she says she hasn't come over in awhile and she wanted to see how it was going. I say- I saw your grandson, he just walked through my yard a half hour ago- bearded,. Smoking.. Sullen. Shy. He pointed at your yard and said, that's my grandmother's.

She said, I'm not sure who that was. I said, he had a black beard and said he lived with Chris. She said. no, Chris's wife just left and no one lives with him, and I have to take care of his son. I say, well, I didn't catch his name, he didn't say., he pointed at your house and said it was his grandma's. She said, I'm not really sure. Was it a big guy?

Jeez. That's how evolution works. We don't recall in either direction. Where we are going, or where we are from.

I  hung some artwork at Lee's tonight,. River paintings.  Two days of a show. I wish I was a great artist. Instead, I pour out what I know and make 50 bucks if a painting sells. That's OK in Paris, if you're Gene Kelley and its 1949. But hell, go out and eat dinner and it costs 50 bucks. Or close.  I trade my seeing, and ability to see the curve of a landscape, for some sweet potato fries. And its a fair trade, we are all in it together. But really? What survives from ancient times, when we just started out to be who we are? Business Plans? Football scores?Politics?

No. The gentle thickening curve of a horse's head, the trace of a crooked hand, the ancient pounding weight of a long dead bison- the image, the symbol, that made us who us is. And I, painter of rivers., get to say: well, how about it? What really matters

I looked at my paintings all lined up on a wall. Some better then others. "Better". I don't know. It's what I have to share, and even I don't know what is is I share. Nothing. The cook and the bartender here are comparing quarterbacks or something. I am clueless. The cook holds up his fingers, five, and says something like, well, you got so and so, and live drive so and so, and then you got, and the bartender says, yeah, oh I love it. And the cook says, yeah, he's got the wrist, and yeah, its awesome.

Oh yeah. Ninth inning. How is it that I have no idea of what they are talking about,? And... dont really care.  Even a little tiny bit.

On Our Own Islands

I spent the sunny late afternoon in Carnation, hustling among the dry leaves  and brown grass to get something done that i could check off my list. Which I keep in a notebook and diligently update. I pulled apart the roof on building three, with this idea that I would then run it all through a planer and make it look pretty and put it back up. Instead, I got these deep splinters in my fingers, and the wood looked bad. It was stamped "economy sheathing", and it must have been  made back in the 50s.  But terrible. Cracked, knotty, rotten. I stepped back and thought, I am going to pull this building down and to heck with it. I'll build something better later.

I stood there awhile and just stared at it. Every thing I tear down here is one more reason I shouldn't have bought the place. But its complicated, I had to, and now its like I probably spent too much money. Son of a gun. 

My neighbors see me standing there and invite me over for a beer and some meat. She's just unemployed, and he's disabled somehow, which involves a limp. She worked for years in the North Bend liquor store. They smoke these cardboard looking cigarettes that cost two bucks a pack. I like them both- I tend to like neighbors in general I guess. They are going to lose their house in January and have stopped making payments, though they have lived there for 40 years. She says she wakes up in the middle of the night with anxiety about the future. I tell her, isn't it funny how when we start out in life we have no idea what the future holds, but we have no anxiety. But we do when we get older. She says, when we were young we were sold a bill of goods: get married, buy a house, it will all be ok. And then it isn't. I think about that, but I don't really believe it, I liked my insight better.

She's on husband three. He has tattoos and keeps the yard neat, and keeps 4 rabbits. I tell her- you're sort of a maneater, aren't you?  She lets out a line of smoke into the evening, and says: sort of.

I tell her, well, I'm officially unemployed today- I lost my job after 20 years. She tells me a little about how the benefits work.

Great, its like Im now part of the family. I drink my Iced Beer. And there is this little puppy running around that they feed from the table. We're outside, and its a perfect late afternoon, and they have spent the day cutting up the junk wood I threw in their yard a few weeks back. How is it that this is the sort of place and people that I like best?

My very best pal went to the State Fair this year and said- isn't it funny how there are Golden Retriever People, and Labrador People, and Long Haired Cat people, Short Haired cat people, Hamster People,  Rhode Island Red people, and Holstein people, etc, etc.. and they are all different, and all have their shared passion with people who keep the same animal, but it seems like that's the entirety of their word and interests? And nothing else matters?

Well, I paraphrase, but its true. He and I are bee people, and I personally. don't care much for dogs. But love cats. You, reader, I am sure love dogs. Most people do. Well. Whatever. I used to want a yellow one with me in my truck but just because I thought it would be a good look, and nice to have unconditional love from something that wasn't your mother. I no longer feel that way. I don't want to have to walk something.

I've been reading Lewis and Clark's journals. They'd trade beads for like 40 dogs, haul them up the Missouri in canoes (feed them what?) and - well- bonk them on the head and eat them. Like the Indians did. Good dog! Yum, Bad dog, yech.  Sort of this waggy tailed, trusting, friendly snack. Lewis had to eat roots, as he couldn't abide by it. But everyone else could. No complaints. Hard to imagine this friendly barking food source following you around and able to "sit".

You wouldn't find a cat abiding by that arrangement.

 A dog in an Indian camp growled at Clark and he paid two Indian woman to kill him, throw him in a fire, and serve him at a banquet. They grabbed him by the paws and did so. Everyone, except Lewis, eating roots, had a great time. Or mabe that was Francis Parkman, I am reading them at the same time.

That's a digression,. I know. My point was going to be opposite to the John Donne one, about not being islands, because really, we are islands, entire to our selves, but it so happens, that there are other people living near by, on other islands with similar animals, and we compare notes about how to train them, or eat them. But still, we sit on our own islands, with our own animals prowling about.

Block

I got up to course three in an afternoon of block laying, but did not quite complete it. It got dark, i couldn't see any more.

 I love concrete block. Its modular. It makes you think when you lay it, but exercises your muscles. Its heavy. You can drink beer, moderately, when you lay it. It looks good, like a hand was involved, not like concrete. There is skill involved, its nostalgic, no one does it anymore. And, its like anyone can do it, its cheap. But most of all, it feel solid, and organized, and roots a building into a pattern that connects to the ground. Because, there is a pattern, the pattern of the grout, that some unknown fellow- and I think that's probably the case, I don't know of any girl block layers (must be a few)- tooled the joint.


It can be done well, or poorly. I feel like I am about in the middle. I want it to look good, but have to really focus to get it perfect. Which i never do . Which, I guess, is one of its charms. Its always about compromise.

It relates back to the pyramids  I guess. Something fundamental about something big made out of individually placed small things. If the pyramids were just big mounds of concrete, well, it might be amazing, but only like a highway overpass is amazing. There's no hand in it, no humanity.

Of course, concrete block has a bad name, and is a favorite of shopping malls. I don't know why, it must be economical. But in small doses, like a house, I like it. Feels modest. Feels homely. Feels  like a fellow could do it on his own and no one could say otherwise.

#3 rebar

I can hardly read this screen as i write, as i dropped my laptop and it busted the screen and there are cracks with big leaf looking things everywhere.

i spent the day in 90 degree frigging heat digging and cutting and hauling 94 pound sacks of cement. Hot. But I like it. I layed in the forms, and bashed my head a bunch of times, and hornets and flies and heat were crowding around, and i couldn't always think straight. but i just kept at it. So i got most a footing leveled and built, and i should be able to dig some sand up tomorrow, and finish leveling the forms, and start mixing before noon and pouring in forms.

A sack of cement- not concrete- is 94 pounds, That's pretty heavy for an old guy. Its that weight because its a cubic foot. And to make concrete, it will need two more CF of sand, and three more of gravel, and some water.  And all of that will make about 4.5 cubic feet of concrete.

The city of Carnation is on a river bed. So my property has a lot of sand and gravel under it. I found a patch of sand, not bright white sand, but good enough, and i have spent hours sifting gravel and cleaning it. So i think i can make about a yard of concrete. Plus, I can make gravel, Then all I need is about 6 sacks of cement, at 9 bucks a pop, so its a yard of concrete for about $63. I've been telling people $40, but i don't' know where i got that. Its pretty cheap. but i need to review the numbers.

Starting to sift and clean gravel from the site

My source for clean sand is about 5 feet down

I also bought 3/8" rebar (#3) rather than #4. Way cheaper, like a dollar a 10 foot stick.  Rebar is low grade steel, about 40 KSI, which is a measure of its tensile strength ( it can handle 40,000 pounds per square inch of section). Code calls for #4 bar, for a house, and recent code bumps it all to 60 KSI, which no way can you bend yourself, its way to tough. I figured, how is this going to fail? Is it really possible that a 3/8" piece of steel will fail? Under a storage shed? So what?

That's not how most people think. My feeling is that they overdesign, want it way bigger than it needs to be. I ve seen it plenty. My feeling is that every time i can save a dollar, i have to work that much less to earn it, and things are way over engineered anyways, just to CYA. I doubt this building will fail due to my wanting to save 50 bucks in steel.

its not a house, when i get to building the house foundation, i will use #4. But i dont know why.

Lttle Hornets, Sting Your Fingers

Back to working on the house. I pulled off shakes today on an out building, scraping away heaps of ant pupae, the ants pack into the shelf that the tops of shakes make. And i got stung, first time in my life, by a mud dauber. They move fast, and shot down onto my finger, and it hurt like hell. Maybe no worse than a bee sting (of which i have had many, a few weekends ago 10-20 in a day). But it made me wary, partially as the wasp, unlike a bee, didn't die, but went back home as quick as it came down.

 I drove up a truckload to my mother's, who needs kindling, and my nephew is supposed to remove the nails and stack it. I expect it will rot back into the forest floor. All my neighbors in carnation took some. Kindling is a great commodity, poor people take it seriously.

Last night I fell asleep in a chair. I woke at 4 AM. I was thirsty. Its been hot. It seemed odd, like something an old man would do, and I watched it get light and made some coffee and read about the Korean War. It made me tired. Something seems to be changing.

I went to a yard sale on Kennedy Street. Its a steep street south of town where Peggy and Bill Breen used to live, old liberal rabble rousers, now dead.  The old man died a few weeks back, like my dad. But he had better stuff, and I bought a bunch of old tools and a floor jack and a bunch of pulleys and a tripod and the guy gave me a bunch of wood for free. From my dad i got a rusty old drill. From someone else's dad, I actually got stuff i could use.  I found a stack of old family pictures and gave them to the daughter. She appreciated it, as she hadn't been told about the sale and came to find a whole bunch of strangers going through her family albums. So she was glad to recover some of it.

I drove up and down the valley 6 times today, on various errands, and all the way to Snoqualmie. Its as pretty as it gets, and this is the best time of year for grass and rivers. I'm thoughtful today, looking at people, wondering about what its all about, wondering how it is I am going to manage. Wondering how it is other people- lots of them- seem to do pretty well and the whole thing- life and kids and jobs and the earth in general, seems to fit them. Some not, but there seem to be fewer than them.

Its introspection, though i guess putting it in a blog where people in Russia might look at it, is extrospection. Or International Introspection. I introspect, lightly, move around in my head and talk as i drive, and try to get to brass tacks and table rasa and see things for what they are, not what i think they are, or what them to be. I know time is short, and i don't want to fool myself. i do, of course, intensely.   I do have this faint feeling that I'll never see anything truly.

Today I thought- what are the great forces at work in a person's life? What's the driver? What is "fulfillment"? Why does it seem like it works for some people right out of the hatch, and not for others, and we get stuck with that? What is music all about and how come it can move me so much? Why do i like how grass looks with light on it? Or a curly river? What the heck is sex and intimacy and loving somebody really about when in fact, we die alone, and never really know somebody else? What sort of animals are we? What the heck, after 52 years of kicking around, kicking the tires, do i really really know? Anything?

I seem to gather a heck of a lot more questions than i ever do answers. Like little hornets shooting down to sting you on you fingers. Painful. No recourse.