“I was trying to catch up after missing a weekend with my “Great States” American Lawn Mower Co. manual reel mower, & the clover was definitely giving me a run for my money. How much money? Well, these mowers only cost about a hundred bucks. And if you’re handy with a weed whacker, Japanese serrated sickle & Fiskar’s brand scissors, all combined, you can create one classy, hand-crafted, artisanal lawn. Yeah .. maybe... I guess I’m outing myself. Because I do look forward to spending my weekends, unless presented with a significant blip in the cosmic plan, dealing with grass & stuff in the yard. I was genuinely psyched today, upon waking, to bring a lot of cardboard to the transfer station. But I’m not entirely unthinking. I’ve had some untrammeled time on my hands, driving up and down the river road lately. Mindlessly tuning in and out of an audiobook, passing legions of knotweed, feeling twinges of sadness around cars tucked into rural hiding places, and the realization that not everyone wants to get to know me. I’ve embarrassed myself pretty good, here and there. Maybe I’m still trying to rescue critters, which doesn’t quite mesh with romance ... but is more often about burying something or laying some mistaken notion to rest. Am I just a thinly disguised undertaker? Here only to see things explode & self immolate? Is my cat trying to tell me something, as he trots into the house with another dead carcass? Is this why I love dirt so much? No matter. I just have to remember how great it went yesterday, filling up a woodchuck hole while discussing it, respectful of rodents, as much as was possible then reflecting on the “No Shooting” sign about muskrats, as being oddly related, maybe. We’ve seen a lot of death & destruction from the weasel family, for sure, and some game playing with cats, who either get eaten, or befriended by neighboring rats of all stripes. Speaking of rats, I’ve found myself inordinately involved with YouTube breakdowns of psychopathic behaviors, lately. Experts, hands down, who have risen to the apex of interrogation technique. Sure, maybe I don’t need any technique, per se. Just to live a little smarter, right? Don’t bed down with liars. Keep your four directional senses, cued up to “Start” at all moments. Don’t let your guard down. Take a big, big drink, whenever you can, of the unmitigated honesty of land. Land that sweeps up on a windswept day, off white caps, & dark water. That feels clouds doing things, even odd things, that capsize into waves of air shifts, that support the sleeping masses. Where straight talk still exists, where we can still catch uncensored conversations; walking in for a coffee at the shambling Ripton store, or the old Hancock Hotel, if it’s after 10 am. Or the lost decades, of pickup cafes & bars, now gone. I wish I could find myself, a random friend, like I used to. & that some stranger would buy me a pint. But that was then. Now we think the top down order is telling us something we don’t already know. We follow fads, & virtue signal, without question. But it’s way worse than that. It’s way worse, to have stopped dreaming into what we used to know was pure Vermont gold, so much stronger & more healing, than headlines, or fear.”
