Saturday, June 27, 2020

And So We Played Golf and Everything Was Back to Normal

Me yesterday on Cornfield Hike



  • We're exploring the Shaeffer Farm mountain bike trail maze, in Moco but State Park land, mountain biking clubs built and maintained, very excellent, why did we not do this before?
  • We tried twice before a few years ago, on weekends, good weather weekends, see the trail in above photo, two-fifths of the twenty plus miles of Shaeffer Farm are that narrow, some steep, blind curves, the people who bike here know how to bike, I've nothing bad to say about the bikers, it's their park, but the two long ago weekends we spent diving into briars to avoid being hit kept us away until now
  • so weekdays now, saw NOBODY yesterday, was medicine
  • Six mile long Yellow Trail passes through a half mile of cornfield, what's almost head high now was only knee high two weeks ago
  • The trails weave around working cornfields and up and down densely green and steep and wet and gorgeous wooded stream hollows, the most consistently spectacular woods in Moco
  • Boots get wet, streams need fording, there are no bridges, no stepping stones, wear old boots
  • Driving home my 2013 Subaru hit a milestone at River and Falls stoplight




  • More of that magical learning more about something the bigger its smaller gets, this hiking Moco
  • Agnothesia: n. the state of not knowing how you really feel about something, which forces you to sift through clues hidden in your behavior, as if you were some other person—noticing a twist of acid in your voice, an obscene amount of effort put into something trifling, or an inexplicable weight on your shoulders that makes it difficult to get out of bed
  • If I didn't keep two cemeteries on the blogroll I may have missed Dictionary's first post in nine months, I email now and then old buds blogdead, hibernating, sleeping in blog purgatory, crickets 
  • Hiking with Earthgirl best medicine yes, stirred life in the blog's mortuary medicine too, my annual June flu abating, thanks for tolerating, angry aggregator returning, plus this weekend's forgotten band:




 






IN THE ROUGH

James Tate

Hovering over me all night was some kind of spirit. I didn’t know
who or what it was, but it made me uncomfortable. When I got up in
the morning, I felt drained and beaten. I looked around, but there was
nothing there. I needed something, but I didn’t know what, a rock, some-
thing to bang my head against. I drank a glass of water, then another
glass, then another. Then I felt a fly buzzing inside me. I needed to
kill it. I stood on my head and managed to spit him out. Then I walked
into a wall and fell down. I lay there for a while dreaming I was
in a bumper car, banging this way and that. Then I stood up, shaking my
head. I walked to the couch and sat down. Everything was clear and
bright. I was OK now. I looked out the window. A dark cloud came over.
I sat there twiddling my thumbs. I knew I was supposed to do something,
but I couldn’t remember what it was. Oh, yes, I was supposed to buy my
mother a birthday present today. I tried to think of something. I could
buy her a parrot, or a monkey, or a snake. None of them seemed right,
because my mother had been dead for ten years, or was it twenty? Oh well,
forget about the present. I was supposed to do something else, but what
was it? I was supposed to go to work, that’s it! But what was my job?
I didn’t know. A carpenter? A plumber? I didn’t think so. I went
back to twiddling my thumbs. I was pretty good at it, but nobody was going
to pay me. I decided not to worry about it. Maybe I was senile. I knew
my name and address. I didn’t think so. I knew my mother’s birthday.
I was an out-of-work genius! There was a knock on the door. “Hello Jack.”
“Hi Bob.” “Have you got your golf clubs?” “Oh yes, I’ll get them.” And so
we played golf and everything was back to normal.

2 comments:

  1. Trail looks inviting! Thanks for link!

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  2. cornfield, what's almost head high now was only knee high two weeks ago

    the sound of corn growing is crackling noises - see a time lapse video

    https://www.agweb.com/article/this-is-the-sound-of-corn-growing-NAA-ben-potter

    and still speaking of agricultural issues, as caitlin johnstone does in the free speech and free range eggs piece linked here, eggs i have purchased from costco since the plague started have no claims about 'range' on the label - they are asserted to be cage free, vegetarian fed, no hormones or antibiotics, 'certified humane raised and handled'

    admittedly, spouse and self no longer even try to be vegan - we still aim towards lacto-ovo most of the time - and we persist with the almond milk and the 'smart balance' margarine

    and speaking of costco, their president has a very nice way of saying 'wear a mask, you stupid assholes!' - he puts it quite politely at https://www.costco.com/coronavirus.html


    tate's poem 'in the rough' strikes me as in some ways the opposite of his 'behind the green door' -

    https://beforenine.blogspot.com/2015/12/james-tate.html?m=1

    one possible use to which such poetry can be put is as a step along the journey to explore the territory of one's agnosthesia

    missus charley and i watch k-dramas* on netflix - a good one can be a step along that quest as well

    *yesterday we finished my mister - the lead actor also had a starring role in parasite, the first non-english film to win an academy award for best picture



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