ON a dark and stormy night, an Irishman, a Chilean and a Russian walk into a bar…
Story goes downhill from there.
I rode up Tuesday, back home yesterday. Saturday was the only real work day. The plan had been for three of us to be there starting Wednesday, then the forecast called for a three-day downpour (which never happened), and business matters were keeping Jonny in Rhode Island anyway.
Having had an idea this might happen, I brought three books with me instead of the usual one or two.
Jonny got to Vermont Friday evening, sans Eduardo, so Saturday was pretty much it. That said, we got quite a lot done. There might be 2 hours of work left to do on siding.
Finished up the last bit of roofing; the roof over the door to the studio apartment at the top of the outdoor stairway on the back wall.
We ran after supplies at our favorite one-stop shop. Not after whiskey; we’d been working on ladders all day so naturally we’d been loaded since breakfast. But we did re-arm and shoot up the town a bit, this until the sheriff pulled up and said where do you Rhode Island jamokes think you are?—New Hampshire!? There’s no Live Free or Die in Vermont!
Quite a powerful electrical storm came through overnight Wednesday, tremendous winds from the south. It blew over a beech tree in front of the lean-to where I was camped. Not a big tree, maybe 14 inches in diameter.
It got hung up in a beech next to it.
It’s set to fall in front of the lean to instead of on it, much appreciated, Mother Nature. It may find its own way to the ground; if not, I’ll take it down the next time I’m there with a chainsaw.
Beech nuts sounded like hail on the metal roof all that dark & stormy night.
Found a rock with fossilized plants…
And what I think must be the cranium of a raccoon…
Setting up for my after-dark, in-the-woods navy shower.
I pour a quart of water into a bucket, add a little unscented liquid soap, scrub head-to-toe with a washcloth then hold the plastic jug upside down over my head for a bracing 2-gallon, cold-water rinse. I haven’t howled back at the coyotes yet but I will cop to the occasional gasp.
After all the sweat, salt and dust of the day, it feels good to sleep clean.
Burgers at day’s end Saturday…
Our actual business at the trading post…
Brand new his & hers. Plates are said to be in the mail.
That’s about it: nothing to report on the other thing. I assume no news is no news, or good news, or nobody’s in a hurry to tell me I might just as well start smoking.
As for the Irishman, I never did get to Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds, one of the books that went north with me in a saddlebag.
Did get to the Chilean… Neruda.
And the Russian… Dostoevsky.
His Notes from the Underground, 1864, cited as the first existentialist novella ever written. Is it merely that? I’m going to be thinking about this one a long time.
And file this under coincidence, but in today’s Phantom strip our hero has a line fully apropos of the Russian’s Notes.
He lets it slide in panel 2 and there takes Savarna’s question as intended.
For that moment in panel 1, we see him thinking at the crossroads of existentialism—what is, how we actually are—and epistemology, what it is that we can know. Any reader who sees that will understand it as part of the ontological through line in this tale; mere man at the uncertain center of obscure machinations: prophecy, fate, destiny, free will, no free will…
Mike Manley’s at work on the seventh and final chapter in the Wrack and Ruin series. On the chapter’s closing day, the Phantom has an idea how the eternal question gets answered for him.
Tony DePaul, September 11, 2023, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA
Glad you were able to get away; get a little work done, a little reading, and of course chase all that down with a Guinness (one of my favorites, had one Friday night). I’m praying you don’t get any bad news, and none at all would be fine too. It’s cool how you weave your philosophical wanderings into the Phantom script, or maybe it’s the other way around?
Maybe you can shoot a thin line up into the Beech and then drag a heavier rope up with that, pull the uprooted tree sideways and let it fall (use one of the four-wheelers)?
I’ll give that a try, Will. Thanks. Avoid a potentially surprising felling cut on the smaller tree. 🙂
After working hard all day, it is amazing your mind can still process even heavier reading material. Though an ice cold shower is said to awaken dormant brain cells… must be true.
Very true! Without the cold shower I’d probably be asleep before I had the screen zipped behind me.
Did have one night where I was out at 7:30 and slept until 6:30. And all I had done that day was paint a door. Other nights I’d read until 9, sleep until 1 or 2, read another hour then back down until 5.
Beech makes great firewood, just let it age a few months.
Truly nice bike. I’ve wondered, with your fascination with two wheeled adventures, why Heloise or Kit have not had and off adventure of a road trip on an iron horse. TGWW survival was sort of prophesied. when 1st illustrated it appeared that the gun belt, presumably old school heavy leather, had taken the round first. If it was a ricochet and already slowed, a subcutaneous wound would result at best.
Did you get a laugh out of Babudan’s comeback on the spent-bullet theory?—“Nonsense! The gods are with us!”
I wrote a Phantom motorcycle adventure or two on the overseas books in the 90s, the Johnny Hotwire thing. It’s a crusher, though, to ask an artist to draw a few hundred motorcycles. Mike’s really done yeoman’s duty on Wrack and Ruin, the military vehicles & all that. It eats so much time. To make up for that a bit, the final chapter should be a breeze for him. Almost no vehicles, no weapons…
Notes from the Underground now on my to-do list. Ever-growing list.
I know what you mean, Joe. They’re stacking up here… I keep trying to get to Foucault’s Pendulum (Umberto Eco), The Labyrinth of Solitude (Octavio Paz), and, just to mix it up, Time Reborn, by the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin.
It’s good to have a diversion at times like this. Yours seems like a rather healthy one. In the past I have been distracted by the model railroad, but now it’s Covid-19. I don’t necessarily recommend it, but it sure did take my mind off other health issues. I hope you’ll be sharing pictures of the finished product one of these days.
Oh, no! I’m sorry to hear that, Jim. I’ll bet it definitely does focus the mind.
Here’s hoping Patty didn’t go through it as well.
Patty did catch it, but she wasn’t hit as hard. Neither of us had trouble breathing, so we were “mild” cases. I’d hate to have a moderate one.
That is a fantastic fossil, by the way. I’m envious.
Hi Tony,
Yet another fine post that covers a lot of territory, from existentialism to epistemology to ontological through lines! I need a Guinness!
Ha! Me, too… Thanks so much for reading, Tim.