C.B. Potts's Blog, page 16

Wednesday Morning

We had no power then and there were lots of times Tim would be gone and I'd be left entirely alone with nothing to do and all day to do it. I hadn't learned then how to manufacture work, busting my ass to turn Adirondack woods into Stepford lawns; painting particleboard so things would be all fancy like in the 7th Avenue catalog. Even then, even though I'd said differently, I knew the situation wasn't tenable, that we weren't going to be staying. When the soil's yours...

Tuesday Morning

They used to call it Murder Hill, the place Tim and I once called home. His father lives there still, with the woman whose life he ruined and what is left of her children. Now it's paved, but it didn't used to be, and it's not in my memory. The road was dirt and gravel and humpy bits of bedrock, poking through in the most inconvenient places.

It went up. First there was a gently slope that bent under the path of some power lines - once a garbage truck got stuck in the  mud the...

Monday Morning

Sonja's rooms were sparse. Black and white and empty; she had nothing that wasn't essential.  One cup, one bowl, and so on. Only what she needed, and nothing more.

Well, except for me. I was not essential. I was an emotionally awkward lapse in judgement.

She was so tiny. Her arm was no more than two bones, the skin that covered them, and her pulse. She had freckles everywhere. When I kissed the side of her neck, I could feel the blood racing through, terrified rabbit fast. It made...

Sunday Morning

It's not enough to know you're hungry. You have to know what you're hungry for.

It's been a strange, strange week. A bunch of stuff happened that I'm not even sure how to begin to unpack and explain to you all. A lot of it comes down to motivations and why people act the way they do. I wrote a book for some guys once that asserted over 90% of all human behavior is unconscious; we do what we do because we do it, not because we sit down and logically, rationally work through...

Saturday Afternoon

Off for a week now; I'll see you next Sunday :-)

Friday Morning

In India, there is a big temple run by the Sikhs. Any one who wants to come there and eat is welcome. Every day, there are thousands of diners. But before there are thousands of diners, there are dozens of cooks who come together to do their part. Preparing this huge meal is an act of loving service. Big piles of dough are taken, a handful at a time, and rolled into little round breads, which are cooked on a great big griddle. Later they are served with spiced lentils. The meal is simple, but...

Thursday Morning

Last night, the cat and I staged an elaborate performance art piece examining the tenacious spirit of the Israeli settler. My bed, particularly the patch nearest my face, represented the Gaza strip. Tim was the lightly slumbering, always irritable Arab world, not to be woken lightly. Through the use of hushed language and a suite of deliberately non-violent (albeit provocative!) movements, I evoked the spirit of the increasingly frustrated peacemaker, trying in vain to persuade the settler th...

Wednesday Morning

Yesterday I read The Dark Mountain Project Manifesto and I have been thinking about it ever since. I still have a lot of thinking to do about it. All of the following is brain dump - I don't want to lose these ideas, but I'm not sure at all how they line up yet:

There are many different stages of development we go through as we get older. Physically, emotionally, socially, intellectually, and spiritually. And here, I want to talk about spiritual development with a focus on the experien...

Tuesday Morning

All winter long, the ground is frozen. It's hard and stiff and unyielding. But just about now, things start to thaw, and they start to thaw in a hurry. Generally, this is glorious, but specifically, I'm not a farmer, and I don't have to worry about fences. If you've fences, and your fence posts aren't set as deeply or strategically as they might have been, this time of year presents what is known locally as a 'fucking pain in the ass'.

Here's why: thawed ground...

Sunday Night

When we went out after Easter Eggs, oh so early in the morning, the ground was still frozen. Every blade of grass was silver with frost. I could see the girls' footprints following them: Nadia's boots galloping over the yard ferociously; Harmony's sneakers meandering from finds that were too easy and hence unclaimed to those she deemed hard enough to collect.

There were lots of birds on the ground, wee slate juncos and black grackles, conferring amongst themselves who indeed was re...