Wednesday, July 27, 2011

A river runs through it

6:45 AM

Up early, rain on the skylights.

Dee, on her Wednesday sabbath, just returned from her ritual, getting a Steaming Cup coffee and a paper, reported running into attorney Kim Theobald also getting coffee ahead of an anticipated grueling day in court.

Yesterday was the opposite of today, with bright sun and cooler air, and led me on a constitutional walk around the mighty Fox, where I saw bears.

I traversed to Discount Liquor and bought a $1.39 single bottle of Pellegrino and toted that homeward, a liquor-shaped bottle wrapped in a narrow paper bag with the neck twisted, wino-style. I reposed gazing at the moving water on a bench along the river across from the bears, with the unopened sack at my side.

This morning, moments ago, I took the frosty glass I had placed overnight in the freezer, filled it with radium ice cubes, and had myself a cold glass of the treasured spring water, one of my residual pleasures here in Elba, my anonymous downtown-splendored 1882 limestone no-names-on-the -lobby-doorbell-rostered aerie. (Search SRN 'Putney'.)

Then I plumped down in my recliner with my elixir and Robert Ruark's SOMETHING OF VALUE, which I am rereading, a book from 1955 about the Mau-Mau uprising in Africa.

Ahead of opening the book to the bent-over page, I played the little wooden frog resting on the book in the rainy beginning of the day. Lighting flashed, torrents clattered on the overhead skylight.

An unfolding in the circumscribed and happy world of a not-for-profit diarist.

TBTG