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Sun and traffic - day economy. Six a.m. drive to plywood mill. Too tired to be angry. Each day a step toward death. What is being accomplished? The small satisfactions within each day. Book consciously read. And frustrations. Package dropped, honey jar broke. One of 175 soil types. With the fifty tree species comprising the canopy under which Eric and Lisa clean their baby's face. Sun in winter, old apples. Inside the school a brilliant but rebellious history teacher is suspended by the school board. 200 students wearing armbands and painted teardrops protest. Another 400 are silent. Within each structure human dramas and routines. Nancy will not love any man who cannot do as many push-ups as she. Trees grow, porcupine scat in snow. No job, no niche, no existence. How you earn money is who you are. You are what you do to get food to eat and shelter from the winter, summer heat. Each morning I seek God by holding still waiting for the smoke to be black or white coins heads or tails wind dark or bright. Flock of evening grosbeaks nipping maple buds: the sign I need. * * * Less need = more wealth. 2/23/89. So much equipment just to sleep. More than a bare floor. Plumbing vs. wash at stream, find a log in woods. Implements of human existence unlike the deer or bear who nip buds, forage berries. I cannot eat the gum out of balsam fir or bark from a popple. I am not Wendell Berry with a wife, a farm, philosophy. I like the accuracy of counting pear thrips in maple buds. 8/bud = complete defoliation. This insect has four wings fringed with hairs and is minute, 2.5 millimeters. Two species within the genus: one with tubular abdominal segment, the other with conical abdominal segment. Sugar maple their preferred food. All I need are names. Names and habitats. Elements, products, decay fungi, egg masses. Marriage, copulation, regeneration, education. Machinery, accounting, hand tools, laboratory. I need your names and histories. Sexual histories, books read, imaginings, unrequited loves, significant landscapes, broken bones, periods of boredom, favorite shows. * * * Immediately means without mediation, intermediate moments time in the middle. Time in the middle time in the middle. I'm bummed I never saw a dinosaur, an ice age, a cave man, even missed the last world war. Thanks to paleontology, geology, archaeology, history mind equipped to take time out of the middle. It's in our DNA! Why should she love me, her tenant? Because I pay the rent on time. * * * Excellent. The white sun rose and lit the frost. Early February, late March, or in between. Birds begin discussing family. Sap starts to flow. Where the borer spirals in, it comes out wet. Birch or maple. I watched from the window. Beautiful but no desire to go out and touch swelling buds of elderberry. Is this shrub crazy? It knows what it knows with elderberry knowledge. Come Spring, so much to identify and name. Insects, diseases and new flowers. Lepidoptera, root rot, the pinks. I think I might get married too and watch the moons pass through the mists. * * * March rain. Some snow remains roads dangerous but truck deliveries must be made. The light pushing back the dark. Bark getting softer, slippery at the cambium. Sap simmering. Summer and spring are here and there although only winter birds are in the air. Some buds break swell want to turn inside out but wait knowing better. I too will not break or run early hold hope bound by ropes of discipline, experience time the magic moments to come take the last sleet and pain slap in the face glad for predictable seasons. We anticipate however drought, maple defoliation, increased gypsy moth infestations which some attribute to our existence. That may be true. Or it may be that the universe has reversed its decision on us and there's nothing we can do. But we will do what we can and some things we shouldn't because that is human. Continuing into the space inside me unconnected to the light switch, plumbing fairly independent of materials beyond food and sound. Where I pray like an oak that the light will enter me unbroken, forever and I will live the meanings in the wind. Basic necessities, wood wine and friends. And the names of everything by which we know our way.
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