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
