Oh man. Maybe I should get out of town for a while. See, I never leave. You can’t do that here, though. You have to get away. It’s too intense, there’s too much loose electric quantum goo. You can’t pretend and just fumble along.
My wife gave me a newspaper article about a place to go in Florida. Florida? No, no. That isn’t happening, baby. But a winter like this is when one thinks about a beach, all right. I can’t even imagine heat and humidity any more, eight years out from Maryland, but I could stand to smell the salty stink of ocean water hissing over hot sand. I’ve never been to Maui or Australia and probably need to, don’t you think?
I need a lot of things. I need a break. We both do. There was a point not so long ago, for instance, when “objective” reality seemed ready to come apart like wet tissue paper. Not that this would be so terrible, but we do love our inventions.
Yesterday morning I tried again to call my wood guy, but he wasn’t there. What did I expect, just after Christmas? But we needed fuel: the temperature was falling under zero most nights, and more snow was in the forecast. Last week the garbage truck got stuck in the driveway and dug a huge hole with its giant, spinning tires. The driver eventually got his rig unstuck, then walked back to kick snow into the pit (by way of fixing things). This time he parked the beast, walked over to the dumpster, and emptied it by hand, flinging the garbage bags high in the air, so they dropped down into the main container atop the truck! Point is, if the garbage man was scared of the drive, conditions were edging into extreme. I needed a wood connection fast and found one, an interesting fellow about my age.
How is less important than the fact that he appeared. And the wood… the wood is of a character unlike any I’ve ever burned. It all appears to be cut from beetle-killed piñon, and much of it is heavy with resin. These pieces have the density of cannon balls, and you can light one with a match. “Be careful with this one,” he said, handing me a round, 18-inch long hunk that weighed like it was cast of solid iron. I knew what he meant and promised, having encountered this organic reactor fuel before. Even the pieces that aren’t so resinous are still extraordinarily hard, but these are hard to ignite. Almost impossible, in fact, unless you really know your kindling and have a bed of coals already. Once sustainable combustion is reached, of course, look out — and it burns orange-hot for an awfully long time.
The firewood is almost extra-dimensional. He told me it comes from a place where herds of elk run alongside his truck. We hit it off pretty well and visited with the neighbors. This may sound weird to anyone who’s not from Taos, but before he left, I got a manly hug. Just at that moment, I must have closed my eyes for just a split second, and there was a spark of electric blue light. Don’t ask me, I don’t know.
You probably think I’m making all this up, anyway.
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