The Edge Of Somewhere

View Original

Wondering Lakeside with Beans and Beagle

What is the balance between the ideas spoken of and the ideas brought to action?
“If I can find a good creative writing program in New England, perhaps I’ll work and go back to school for a bit. My writing skills are not what they should be.”

There. Another idea spoken. Add to list of all others.

“While in the creative writing program, I plan to live in a hand-made lakeside cabin containing only a cot, table, washbasin, and laptop computer.”

“For meals, I shall only consume the best beans and turnips which I raise in a plot beside the cabin.”

“Horace, my companion beagle dog, will be versed in a considerable portion of 20th century poetry and criticism.”

“The cabin will be so remote that supplies of seed and washcloths will be parachuted in by military transport. Horace arrived safely in that manner; the first two cabins did not.”

“I shall write esoteric poetry. The first major work will concern the relationship between one of my lesser early season turnips and the northeasternmost leg of the table. Somehow the turnip found its way to the foot of the table and has (seemingly) made no attempt to move since. Every day I am fearful that it will gain an interest in the cot, thus crumbling the basis of my epic.”

“Horace will, on occasion, bring down a deer and place it (dressed) outside the door. Feasting on the raw meat does not disagree with my digestion and somehow seems purer that potentially tainting the beast with fire.”

“Horace, my brother.”

“If Horace eats beans, he emits substantial pockets of pungent odors.”

“I may also attempt to change the focus of 4-H clubs all over the nation to a cluster of five H’s—the additional “H” symbolic of HOEwoop, my unique agricultural method that must be related only in a series of complex solo polyphonic chants.”

“Horace falls into a trance.”

“I have three chairs also—one for solitude, two for company, three for—the third chair is a sit-and-spin.”

“Horace levitates out the eastern window.”

“Sometimes living so is lonely and alone.”

“I’ve beans to hoe.”