10.29.24

It is 39 degrees and if I’d rather write in warmth I must build a fire in my shed. It’s not much of a choice anymore I don’t need to subdue the excitement of a first fire that I don’t need. Autumn’s first sweater on a seventy-eight degree day no no the hand doesn’t make wonders with the pen when the temperature has gotten into the 30’s. A stump trying to move ideas across the page no that won’t do so I’ll need to make a fire. But I don’t have the luxury of time these days like I used to so I rise thirty minutes earlier well before dawn to assemble the wood and saved paper. I make the fire and in making the fire—chopping of wood and splitting of kindling and gathering it into my arms and walking across the cold grass to the shed and placing it piece by piece into the cast iron stove—there is already warmth in the blood flowing through to the fingers. And the fire ignites the ideas. And as my shed warms the ideas warm with it and I’m off for an hour or so of meditation.

     And I’m thinking of yesterday the Japanese technique of charring wood: shou sugi ban. My wife had the feeling that going to the hardware store for pre-mixed wood stain… well it’s something like the soul would be uplifted if we chose a different way: Isn’t there something natural we could use—coffee grounds maybe? And I showed her a video of someone taking a torch to cedar and that was that. And she came by the restaurant early in the day to see a charred plank of pine flooring and a charred cedar wood beam and we put the first on the floor in the corner next to the painted wall and Phil and I held the beam to the ceiling while she pondered. And that was that and now for hours a day and in and out of a week there is the scent of burning cedar and pine. And after it’s charred we brush it and the color steadies and the black ash covers our hands and the day progresses and the ash covers our pants and shirts and hair and smudges our faces and we look like coal miners and I wonder if the Japanese craftsman the meticulous and measured man is also covered in ash and it’s tempting very tempting to bring the Japanese craftsmanship into the kitchen too like the many chefs who do making glazes with soy sauce and importing fish from Hokkaido and curing them in kombu. No I don’t think so. I must go deeper into this place and into the Time that has gotten away. The wood charring feels right the importing of fish feels wrong. For me. There’s an American way that I’m looking for and haven’t found. And why is it important to find it? I will spin in the chaos of Time without the order of Place.

Journal 10.23.24

The autumn leaves are suddenly unmistakable. Last week I thought the peak couldn’t be just there at the end of October. Everything was green. Now I’m wondering what I need to do this year to enjoy it instead of being sad that it will soon be over… and I’ve stopped writing. What more can be said? I look for guidance and there within arm’s reach wedged between the Transcendentalists and Joy Harjo I find the uneaten fruits crumbling damply in the shadows* yes yes Mary Oliver who among us wouldn’t reach for you in the dark? When winter is on her nipping way? Remember what I’ve just scribbled: I’m wondering what I need to do this year to enjoy the peak instead of being sad that it will soon be over. And Mary answers without hesitation: I try to remember when time’s measure painfully chafes, for instance when Autumn flares out at last, boisterous and like us longing to stay—how everything lives, shifting from one bright vision to another forever in these momentary pastures.*

     And what will be my next bright vision? It lurks beneath the polished steel of winter bay. It’s nearly time for collecting things I’ve found. Like driftwood and thoughts. And receipts: catfish “rinds” made from its eyes. Yes that is the type of trash I prefer when attempting to alchemize treasure… what draws me to eat when bowed head saunters over hardened pasture. But enough already with this ink in dainty hue. There’s much work to do…

*Fall Song, Mary Oliver