The Demon Electorate of Neversink
Smashup on the road outside the casa this morning: A deer jumped in front of some oncoming cars.
By rights, the car that slams into the deer has claim to the meat, but the driver didn’t wait to exercise that claim. He cleared out as soon as the cop car departed.
And as soon as he did, Iggy grabbed his paring knife & raced out to the road. Carved out the tenderloins & that piece at the juncture of the hip that’s kinda the filet mignon:
I was amazed he knew how to butcher it. Venison is pretty tough meat on the whole, but Iggy knew right where the tender pieces were.
Say what you will about Iggy, he is an expert forager. In the country he forages stuff like venison and chicken of the woods mushrooms; in the city, it’s vacuum cleaners, microwaves, and toaster ovens. The casa is equipped with foraged appliances. “They just throw that stuff out,” he told me. “You’ll just be walking down the street in Chelsea, look down, & see a microwave-in perfect working condition. People are so wasteful!”
The casa has five foraged vacuum cleaners, all with excellent suction.
A word about the deer this fall: They are more numerous than I have ever seen them. Most likely that’s because this area is far more rural than Hyde Park, but since I’m a magical thinker, in my mind, the deer are all somehow connected with the election.
In 2016, I did a lot of canvassing for a congressional candidate called Jeff Beals. BB (who hates parties) very kindly agreed to accompany me to Jeff Beals’s victory defeat party, and on the way home, there were deer everywhere along the side of the road as though they’d lined up specially to watch us pass.
We drove back from Woodstock over the Ashokan Reservoir. Multiple reflections of the bright full moon were trapped in the dark, bottomless water.
I immediately became possessed by a backstory: The Catskill reservoirs that provide potable water for NYC were created in the early 1900s by drowning a whole bunch of small towns FACT. One of the small towns was called “Neversink” FACT. Every four years, the demon population of Neversink rises from the dark waters so that they can vote in the election NOT FACT.
The demon electorate of Neversink disguises itself as deer.
I actually wrote about 10 pages of that story before I gave up on it. The problem was that it’s a great backstory-but what exactly could be the actual plot?
The half-written story draft is somewhere on my hard drive still, & I’m thinking I may hunt it down for another go.
Maybe all the animals are voting, & the issue they’re voting on is: Humans! Yea or Nay???
###
In fact, a palpable sense of STRANGE is enveloping the Hudson Valley.
It hasn’t rained in months. From the Catskill foothills to the scrub woods along the New York/New Jersey border, brush fires are burning, more than a dozen of them. The winds are strong so visibility is high, but it’s an eerily occluded visibility like looking through that Biblical glass through which one can only peer darkly.
This morning, an enormous flock of small black birds took over the greensward & blasted tree outside my window; at one point, they all flew at the house and for five seconds straight, the view out my window was black with beating wings. I’ve never seen anything remotely like that before.
By rights, the car that slams into the deer has claim to the meat, but the driver didn’t wait to exercise that claim. He cleared out as soon as the cop car departed.
And as soon as he did, Iggy grabbed his paring knife & raced out to the road. Carved out the tenderloins & that piece at the juncture of the hip that’s kinda the filet mignon:
I was amazed he knew how to butcher it. Venison is pretty tough meat on the whole, but Iggy knew right where the tender pieces were.
Say what you will about Iggy, he is an expert forager. In the country he forages stuff like venison and chicken of the woods mushrooms; in the city, it’s vacuum cleaners, microwaves, and toaster ovens. The casa is equipped with foraged appliances. “They just throw that stuff out,” he told me. “You’ll just be walking down the street in Chelsea, look down, & see a microwave-in perfect working condition. People are so wasteful!”
The casa has five foraged vacuum cleaners, all with excellent suction.
A word about the deer this fall: They are more numerous than I have ever seen them. Most likely that’s because this area is far more rural than Hyde Park, but since I’m a magical thinker, in my mind, the deer are all somehow connected with the election.
In 2016, I did a lot of canvassing for a congressional candidate called Jeff Beals. BB (who hates parties) very kindly agreed to accompany me to Jeff Beals’s victory defeat party, and on the way home, there were deer everywhere along the side of the road as though they’d lined up specially to watch us pass.
We drove back from Woodstock over the Ashokan Reservoir. Multiple reflections of the bright full moon were trapped in the dark, bottomless water.
I immediately became possessed by a backstory: The Catskill reservoirs that provide potable water for NYC were created in the early 1900s by drowning a whole bunch of small towns FACT. One of the small towns was called “Neversink” FACT. Every four years, the demon population of Neversink rises from the dark waters so that they can vote in the election NOT FACT.
The demon electorate of Neversink disguises itself as deer.
I actually wrote about 10 pages of that story before I gave up on it. The problem was that it’s a great backstory-but what exactly could be the actual plot?
The half-written story draft is somewhere on my hard drive still, & I’m thinking I may hunt it down for another go.
Maybe all the animals are voting, & the issue they’re voting on is: Humans! Yea or Nay???
###
In fact, a palpable sense of STRANGE is enveloping the Hudson Valley.
It hasn’t rained in months. From the Catskill foothills to the scrub woods along the New York/New Jersey border, brush fires are burning, more than a dozen of them. The winds are strong so visibility is high, but it’s an eerily occluded visibility like looking through that Biblical glass through which one can only peer darkly.
This morning, an enormous flock of small black birds took over the greensward & blasted tree outside my window; at one point, they all flew at the house and for five seconds straight, the view out my window was black with beating wings. I’ve never seen anything remotely like that before.