The Society of the Woman in the Wilderness
So. He and I run the department like duel emperors. He's my superior, certainly, and he's better at gathering information silently without letting on how much he doesn't know. I am, as usual, not the elegant presence I might hope to be, but young and fumbling, often angry and biting, but willing, perhaps too willing, to ask when I don't know. And we're both always up for work: furious, confused, savage work. We're quietly at one another's throats most of the time, but we handle things together, and we respect one another for that. There are so many things there that only we can do.
And the bastard has gone and broken his ankle on the ice.
For two weeks straight I worked like I couldn't die. There were so many things that no one else could do, so I was there, every day, my arms to the elbows covered in scales and in blood, some of it mine.
And yesterday and today, through some strange magic I don't understand, I was given some time to myself. Other people have been found to handle things for a short while, and my time is mine.
My last evening of work I celebrated, gathering with friends and fishmongers around a fireplace with magnificently crafted beer.
In the morning I woke to make myself a worthy breakfast. My breakfasts are always good. My oatmeal, I'd wager, is better than yours. But we start so early that a fishcutter's breakfast is usually a touch rushed. Given the opportunity, we endeavour to give it the proper attentions. I made a pot of Russian caravan tea, American style buttermilk pancakes made from scratch and topped with slices of banana and good maple syrup, black forest bacon, and smothered potatoes made with thin slices of golden potatoes and sweet potatoes, following as best as I could remember the family recipe of a dear friend who grew up in Kentucky.
After that I met Jamie at a park in the heart of the city. We'd both been craving some time in the woods, so he showed me the bike trail that seems to leave Philadelphia long before it really does, following the river out to more and more trees and rock faces. We passed good graffiti that read, "read more" and one that depicted a snake eating an egg. We biked until the snow and ice ate the trails, and then we walked and slipped and caught our balance with graceless and comical waving about of our arms. We found bits of surprising and magnificent green hiding under overhanging rocks and feeding on the snow above as it melted and dripped. So many trees had cracked and fallen under the weight of the snow and ice, their roots already loosened by the year's heavy rainfall. He told me that in Antarctica there is a volcano, and the scientists and workers who live near it, upon hearing an eruption, do not run. Instead they stand still and look up, waiting to see which bits of debris and flaming rock might be coming their way. Only when they've gauged the trajectory do they run. We discussed hearing the cracking of wood, waiting to decide which way to run. We considered the ways that we wouldn't mind dying in those woods. Trees can take us, although not without a fight. He fears a bear attack, impossible in our area but not on his upcoming walk of the Appalachian trail, while I long for it. My cousin drowned in that river, the Schuylkill, and I wouldn't be saddened to set us up as the dead guardians of the place, or even as a family cursed by those waters. We found strange buds on trees, things like little wooden flowers with saucily protruding pistils. We named the animal and human tracks that we found, identifying what could have been from a large dog, but was more likely evidence of a bear. There was something that was either a smaller dog or a cougar, and bicycle tracks or those of two snakes. Jamie found what may have been the evidence of cross country skiing, but I corrected him: clearly someone had caught the snakes and was dragging them along behind them. We marched up and down hills, digging our heels into the snow and often sliding and laughing anyway. He took me to a small manmade cave, possibly the meditation space of Johannes Kelpius, a Rosicrucian monk, the leader of a group of healers, stargazers, and mystics who lived in a community of doomsday cult celibates in those woods, or possibly someone's old root cellar. The confusion between those exact two things, by the way, describes my religious attitudes precisely. According to legend, Kelpius possessed the Philosopher's Stone and cast it into the Schuylkill before he died in 1708. Someone had artfully stacked thick branches in the back of the cave, and crafted a simple handmade besom from curling twigs. I'll be returning to that place, alone. Doubling back along the same trail we rode home, me with a branch that I found and liked strapped between my travelling sack and my back.
Once home, I worked on painting the antique writing desk I'm refinishing. I ate an unusually delicious apple. Fearing the soreness of my first twenty mile bicycle ride, I took a bath with a book and a blend of scented sea salts I'd made. I went to visit my massage therapist and my bone cracker, the twin priests who section out the sacrifice of my flesh to my will, who poke it and bruise it and break it to keep it doing what I require. I stopped in at the tattoo shop to visit Carla, gorgeous and finely attired as always, to discuss future plans, some art that I requested for the canvas of my thigh.
Next I ran off to an open house at a graduate school for fine arts. A dear friend of my sister was showing her work, and I attended mostly in order to visit my family. I held the baby and let her tug on my earrings. I gave my older niece rides on my back, let her feast on the snacks that must accompany any showing of art while her mother wasn't looking, and tried to prevent her from touching the artwork. I loved the artists' studios, their interesting collections of objects and the utensils of their trade. I loved the artists themselves, their paint stained shoes and trousers and hands, their nervous or bored smiles, their hope that we'd ask them about their approach. The work itself was not to my taste, but also not very good. I expect graduate school to produce art that is dull, honestly, but I also expect a certain level of technical proficiency. Even that was lacking. But the studios were really charming.
Today I spent too much time laying about in bed, which is a favourite activity of any sane person, and one in which I'd been unable to indulge in too long. While writing this I ate another good, but far more reasonable breakfast of more Russian caravan, another apple, the last of my bacon, and vanilla granola with goats' milk. I have so much love to give to goats' milk. Once this is through I'll mount my bike again and ride south and east, searching out fabric for a blanket I'd like to sew and perhaps more paint for my writing desk.
And the bastard has gone and broken his ankle on the ice.
For two weeks straight I worked like I couldn't die. There were so many things that no one else could do, so I was there, every day, my arms to the elbows covered in scales and in blood, some of it mine.
And yesterday and today, through some strange magic I don't understand, I was given some time to myself. Other people have been found to handle things for a short while, and my time is mine.
My last evening of work I celebrated, gathering with friends and fishmongers around a fireplace with magnificently crafted beer.
In the morning I woke to make myself a worthy breakfast. My breakfasts are always good. My oatmeal, I'd wager, is better than yours. But we start so early that a fishcutter's breakfast is usually a touch rushed. Given the opportunity, we endeavour to give it the proper attentions. I made a pot of Russian caravan tea, American style buttermilk pancakes made from scratch and topped with slices of banana and good maple syrup, black forest bacon, and smothered potatoes made with thin slices of golden potatoes and sweet potatoes, following as best as I could remember the family recipe of a dear friend who grew up in Kentucky.
After that I met Jamie at a park in the heart of the city. We'd both been craving some time in the woods, so he showed me the bike trail that seems to leave Philadelphia long before it really does, following the river out to more and more trees and rock faces. We passed good graffiti that read, "read more" and one that depicted a snake eating an egg. We biked until the snow and ice ate the trails, and then we walked and slipped and caught our balance with graceless and comical waving about of our arms. We found bits of surprising and magnificent green hiding under overhanging rocks and feeding on the snow above as it melted and dripped. So many trees had cracked and fallen under the weight of the snow and ice, their roots already loosened by the year's heavy rainfall. He told me that in Antarctica there is a volcano, and the scientists and workers who live near it, upon hearing an eruption, do not run. Instead they stand still and look up, waiting to see which bits of debris and flaming rock might be coming their way. Only when they've gauged the trajectory do they run. We discussed hearing the cracking of wood, waiting to decide which way to run. We considered the ways that we wouldn't mind dying in those woods. Trees can take us, although not without a fight. He fears a bear attack, impossible in our area but not on his upcoming walk of the Appalachian trail, while I long for it. My cousin drowned in that river, the Schuylkill, and I wouldn't be saddened to set us up as the dead guardians of the place, or even as a family cursed by those waters. We found strange buds on trees, things like little wooden flowers with saucily protruding pistils. We named the animal and human tracks that we found, identifying what could have been from a large dog, but was more likely evidence of a bear. There was something that was either a smaller dog or a cougar, and bicycle tracks or those of two snakes. Jamie found what may have been the evidence of cross country skiing, but I corrected him: clearly someone had caught the snakes and was dragging them along behind them. We marched up and down hills, digging our heels into the snow and often sliding and laughing anyway. He took me to a small manmade cave, possibly the meditation space of Johannes Kelpius, a Rosicrucian monk, the leader of a group of healers, stargazers, and mystics who lived in a community of doomsday cult celibates in those woods, or possibly someone's old root cellar. The confusion between those exact two things, by the way, describes my religious attitudes precisely. According to legend, Kelpius possessed the Philosopher's Stone and cast it into the Schuylkill before he died in 1708. Someone had artfully stacked thick branches in the back of the cave, and crafted a simple handmade besom from curling twigs. I'll be returning to that place, alone. Doubling back along the same trail we rode home, me with a branch that I found and liked strapped between my travelling sack and my back.
Once home, I worked on painting the antique writing desk I'm refinishing. I ate an unusually delicious apple. Fearing the soreness of my first twenty mile bicycle ride, I took a bath with a book and a blend of scented sea salts I'd made. I went to visit my massage therapist and my bone cracker, the twin priests who section out the sacrifice of my flesh to my will, who poke it and bruise it and break it to keep it doing what I require. I stopped in at the tattoo shop to visit Carla, gorgeous and finely attired as always, to discuss future plans, some art that I requested for the canvas of my thigh.
Next I ran off to an open house at a graduate school for fine arts. A dear friend of my sister was showing her work, and I attended mostly in order to visit my family. I held the baby and let her tug on my earrings. I gave my older niece rides on my back, let her feast on the snacks that must accompany any showing of art while her mother wasn't looking, and tried to prevent her from touching the artwork. I loved the artists' studios, their interesting collections of objects and the utensils of their trade. I loved the artists themselves, their paint stained shoes and trousers and hands, their nervous or bored smiles, their hope that we'd ask them about their approach. The work itself was not to my taste, but also not very good. I expect graduate school to produce art that is dull, honestly, but I also expect a certain level of technical proficiency. Even that was lacking. But the studios were really charming.
Today I spent too much time laying about in bed, which is a favourite activity of any sane person, and one in which I'd been unable to indulge in too long. While writing this I ate another good, but far more reasonable breakfast of more Russian caravan, another apple, the last of my bacon, and vanilla granola with goats' milk. I have so much love to give to goats' milk. Once this is through I'll mount my bike again and ride south and east, searching out fabric for a blanket I'd like to sew and perhaps more paint for my writing desk.