September 23, 2012

Most amazingly silent hour.

The computer turns itself off from time to time and does an update. The morning afterward you’re confronted by a blue screen and the necessity to log in, which infuriates me but evidently keeps the machine happy in some obscure way. Once the password is entered, the machine does restore much of what was there before, but always with some odd twist, by which the demon of the machinery manifests itself. Usually, as this morning, Netflix loads back up, but not necessarily with what you were in the middle of watching the night before. Light flickered up in the middle of an episode of Battle Star Galactica, which program I have never once watched or summoned from the ether in my life. The computer must have been watching it itself.

Last minute housewarming for Russell and Maria. They’re so excited about the changes they want to make in the place. They have two fig trees and a back yard like the Hanging Gardens. Disappointment in other things had prompted me to buy an elaborate cooking device from Cuisinart the last time I was in Biltmore. It sat in the box in the corner of the kitchen, my realizing once I got it home that I had no immediate use for it and might never even open the box. So that went to R & M at their housewarming, and stopped being a burden and a remonstrance to me.

Drove out to Swain County to look at some property. When I saw the ad online, I realized I’d found the perfect parcel, at a price I could afford, that I could in fact pay cash for on the moment if that were necessary. Phoned and made an appointment with the realtor. All the way out I thought about the property. I thought about wandering amid my own trees like an elf in Mirkwood. I pictured walking through. learning the life, clearing a little place here to favor a patch of bloodroot, taking out a crowding tree there, listening to my turkeys. I had determined to buy long before I found the office near Bryson City. But when I got there I realized I had misunderstood both the ad and the realtor. The parcel had been divided up and was being sold piecemeal, for home sites, in bits of one and two acres, and when I arrived for my noon appointment, three or four parcels were left. The lot was full of people being trucked out to see the land, and evidently had been all morning. I turned around and drove back. I lay down and slept the rest of the day.