It was eighteen degrees tonight, balmy feeling by comparison. I sat outside in my robe, boots, fleece tunic, fleece jacket, gray hat with flaps and some new gloves. I've snowblown a little path up from the driveway and out across the back yard to my lawn chair. It's green and most people sit on theirs in summer, but mine is still out there. I shook the snow off it today. Felt wonderfully warm.
It felt so balmy by comparison because for the last four days, it's been twelve below zero each night. The back bathroom pipes froze, but didn't burst, thank goodness.
The furnace ran constantly, but couldn't get the house warm above sixty-five degrees, no matter what. I was burning logs in the wood stove at high heat, four or five times a day. I even swiped the Italian oil heater that looks like an old fashioned steam radiator from New York from my son's room, and stuck it in the kitchen. Wicked cold. Lot of work to stay warm. No fun to sit outside in my lawn chair. Until tonight.
But that's not what this blog is about. The reason I came in and decided to write it is that I heard, for the very first time since I came to this house eighteen years ago, coyotes howling up in the hills outside of town. Now I know that's no great shakes, but for where I live, it's a harbinger. Only in that the animals are behaving differently. Just means they're hungry. Coming down closer to town, where so many food-like smells drift around.
Snow lay in Salvador Dali-like melted blankets over all my roofs. The cold wind moved about eleven miles an hour down the hill, sifting through the dark trees before it blew past my face. I thought of how cold and snowy it must be, up there in the dark woods, where the coyotes are.
It's not news that dogs get to know one another by sniffing rears. To a canine, a dog's rear smells like a person's resume reads to another person. So I imagine that tonight, each coyote-- tail across snout and eyes-is curled up under its tail, sniffing its own personal information. Unlike people, coyotes feel quite at home sniffing their own rears. Most people-although I'm sure there are exceptions--remain content by polishing their resumes.
Having finished my thought, I came inside and played Svetlana. It's a way to add to my strange resume.
2004: Learned to Play Electric Blues
I guess I can add that to my curriculum vitae. Svetlana is my ivory and gold Gibson SG. It's the only guitar I've ever named, but then again, it's the only electric guitar I've ever owned. Naming it was inspired, of course, by B.B. King, who names all his guitars "Lucille". Makes sense to me.
Svetlana has provided me with more fun lately than a man has a right to have. Playing the blues. Johnny Winter has always been my favorite guitar player, I guess, out of all the greats there have been. So he's my inspiration as I realize that I know all this music, and all I've got to do is teach my hands to play it. What a hoot. Wrote a new rock'n'roll story to add to The Three Little Pigs. It's called Jack and the Electric Beanstalk. Something new. A little less ponderous than the hour-long stories I've been making lately.
Maybe I'm just a coyote, too, curled up on a cold night.
