Dear Miss Sis Jadene end-of-July 2008
I hope that this letter finds you on the upswing from the springtime doldrums that I believe you had been battling earlier this year; and that you are getting enough spiritfood.
I thought to drop you a note, because I had decided to not do any work today and the book I've been reading began to drag on my patience to stick with it. I had decided to do no physical work—which translates to taking the chainsaw out to in front of the barn and sawing tree trunk sections that I have been dragging down out from where I sawed them down in the woods, to the yard in front of the barn, where I prefer to saw and split them: usually later due to having shot my physical wad plus run out of patience to continue whamming away on this year's firewood detail, by then; which usually is just approaching the darkening of dusk.
Due to the loss of many weeks getting another truck usable, I was pretty far behind on the detail. This has had me pushing the detail along for this month at a, for me, inhumane pace. Throughout this month of crawling up or down hillsides through brush and more trees, I kept reminding myself to behave extra-vigilantly and exert an even extremer form of caution than is my usual already sensibly-conservative attitude anyway. This because, in its essence, it is the last mile, figuratively speaking, in the decades-long miles and miles of firewood-rendering that I have applied myself upon for a quarter of a century now. I am fairly-easily accepting the desire in me to continue to handle all the firewood that I will have rendered by my 'retirement' date, this Friday, until its is: 1) stacked into the barn as September gets going (I let it cure in the sunlight and season in the wind for the warm months), and 2) Get it transported to and stacked in Marie's woodshed as the cooler and rainy seasons get themselves underway; no matter the status of my having been officially retired by them as of this July thirty-first. I feel this as a point of honor and plain old decency, with regard to my sense of loyalty toward these folks who have been so generous and gracious about my continuing blight (?) upon their grounds. Sure: I allow no plastic garbage to show its ugly head other than the few seconds it takes me to put in trashbag or throw in wood stove—I know, tsk, tsk on the air pollution it causes to burn plastic; I only burn the litle stuff, bits, and pieces, and have a whole ten-years' accumulation truckload for the Beaver Hill dump over toward Bandon; and I attempt to discourage hunters from hunting here during hunting season, repair fence and waterline when needed. The other guy, Frank Walker and family—you remember Tim Walker? Frank's his dad—who have their digs at where you and I and Jerit first lived on the ranch, does most all of Marie and Jere's hired man type stuff, and keeps cows here, so he is the fence fixer guy now. This is another increment-of-relief for me from my duties, as performed here over the years.
Not having to deal with the nearly three-hundred yearly bales of hay, that all come in a two-day rush to the barn for stacking, is the biggest relief! I did beg off from the hay-loading details, but stacked ev-ry one of those suckers in the barn this year—30,000 lbs.' worth! I probably handle that much tonnage in firewood, also, but most of those pieces only weigh 5, 10, or twenty pounds, max.; and I can space out the times and quantities I handle to suit my own far slower pace than younger people would tend to attack such tonnages' handlings—especially when under the pressures of working for an hourly wage. Me? I think in terms of a yearly wage of $3,300 from the ranch; now reduced to $1,800, and that to end in one year. Even though I understand arguments that other folsk could make that would accuse me of allowing a near-total enslavement to all the ranch work I've done for this past decade-&-a-year at the ten-dollar-a-day rate which thirty-three-hundred divided by 365 days in the year approximates, I see it another way entirely. First and foremost of all is the clean air and water!!! Then I tally up the ambiance of the greenery of grass, shrub, and tree. And then: The wild foods not far off nor in need of other than the hour or two to go and harvest and otherwise glean. Then: No rent or utility bills, the garden space, no overseers or landlord—although I know that Marie would be a tough landlord, indeed, were I other than who I am--and all the space, space, space, and the sense of freedom that such roominess inspires. Of course, I also appreciate the lack, here, of the standard pollutions of electrically-generated traumma-to-our-molecules that assault all urban dwellers to their detriment; plus the absence of: asphalt, paint, chemical fertilizer residues, and most all toxics, really. And then, I amaze to myself that they—these cousins-of-mine—in addition to all the priceless and healthy ambiances I thoroughly enjoy here for free (!)--PAY me good money every month. I mean: Whatta dream this has been, eh?
I am very much looking forward to getting myself and guitar chops into position wherein I can become supportive to Jerit's musical-entertainer's efforts. The hangups are numerous and often seeming nearly insurmountable to become really able to accomplish this, but I am resolved to give it what go I can muster from within these old bones.
You made a suggestion in your last letter about what I refer to as storebought guitar picks. Well, for me and how I have always approached my efforts to be able to play a professional-quality guitar music, storebought readymade picks do not work. Their flimsiness leaves much to desire with respect to being able to reliably and consistently produce quality rendition. Secondly: None of the standard storebought fingerpicks allow my fingers a downward strum, which, as you may understand, is one very vital aspect to being able to express intensity-of-expression in guitar-music-making. Their curl, from the inside of one's fingertip toward the end and outward, just lets the strings into that sliver of a gap there at the operational-end of one's fingertips and if the urge presents itself in the musical piece being played, to strum a big bunch of fingertips' downstrum, such as one hears in Spanish guitar music, and which can have such a profound effect upon the ear of the involved listener, which includes the guitar player him or her self, and those damn storeboughts just go flipping off the ends of my fingers ev-ry single time!
I'm gonna make, or have made, what I wan. Take that back: What I feel that I do dearly have a logical sense of a need for, in the way of fingerpicks that will enable me to play any darn string in any particular direction at anytime I so feel the urge, or 'see' the need for in a place-in-time of a piece of music that I am playing—or trying to play, at least. In order to save further typing here, I will dig out and include copies of my unclear curiosities about possible design-process and how it will (hopefully) render the thimble-like silver fingertip plectrums that will not wobble nor flip off my fingertip ends, and my conceptual drawings of them from a letter I have just recently sent to Jerit, with a request that he share with Franny to see if maybe she knows some silversmith artist who might be able to assist me in getting the pattern-molds made and the silver melted and poured into them.
Otherwise: I am worn and weary from lots and lots of extra physical and mental effort spent on ungodly amounts of tree-fallings, sawing-up-of, throwing into and out of truck, throwing of the splitting maul (on the easy-to-split stuff) and operating the gas-powered wood splitting machine that I bought in May, and dragging logs with truck down a half-mile of dirt road up behind me; not to mention of the weeks of work and worry of getting this new thirty year old truck operational . . . yahdiddy yah-diddy, and etecetera.
All my best good wishes for a continuing continuum of upward trajectories as the clock ticks the tocks of your life; and love to you, for you, by you, from you, with you, and because of you . . .
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