Half a Dozen Friends

 

Haven’t heard “Tijuana Moods” in a while and it is blasting out beside me on this birthday present I gave myself, a Bluetooth “Marshall” speaker that has real possibilities for volume.  I read this morning.  I read and I read and I didn’t give a damn about any work.  I just read Michael Cooperson’s remarkable translation of the eleventh century Iraqi poet al-Hariri’s epic work, The Maqāmāt, or “The Impostures.”  Finishing it a reread the introduction and considered the magnitude of both the original and the astounding translation into fifty different flavors of English.  And then I wrote a half a dozen friends, insisting they dive in as I needed someone to discuss this with. 

 

My legs are still sore.  My hands have a number or rough, bloody patches where blisters broke.  This as I was shoveling for hours yesterday.  I finally dug the holes and planted the four trees we’d bought on my birthday, two gingkoes and two apple trees.  It takes about six or seven spade-shoves to understand why farmers moved west out of New York.  There is nothing but rocks in this soil and it’s no small task to dig one hole, let alone turn a field into something cultivatable.  These trees all survived the widny night. 

Sitting on the porch last night.  We’re back to eating meat after four months or so, coordinating around the little one’s interest in going veg for “a while.”  The older one is still a veg and so I’m back to making two dinners, now.  For months I just walked by the meat section in the grocery, slipping out with a whole lot less having been spent.  Last night I cooked a pork loin with garlic and parsley in addition to making baba ganoush and some pre-made falafel the wife had in there.  The quick reference to the package the pork came in suggested twenty-five to thirty minutes in the stove and upon checking after thirty-five the inside was still raw.  Fifteen minutes later it was still a shocking pink.  I needed another twenty-minutes beyond that, after being cut open to the air to cook it properly.  So much food on the table, but we ate most of it. 

The little one had been at a sleep over the night before.  “What was it like?”  we must have asked in two dozen different ways.  Domesticated, it is big new, a big deal to contemplate engaging with another family’s home.  They have a television in every room.  We don’t.  They have waffles for breakfast.  We don’t.  Later that night my wife asked and I sat down to a game of chess and was quickly disposed of by a bold attack by her queen and a pair of bishops.  She seems to have mastered this attack and not for the first time, I realize too late that she has me trapped.

 

 

 

Saturday 5/01/21