Gutter Journal

A very humid atmosphere, heavy with mold. Stand still long enough and mushrooms will sprout on your arms. Yes, those are your arms, the ones you keep covered far too much of the time for fear of just such an outcome. Embarrassing, you say, to walk through the grocery store with mushrooms on your arms. And I say, balderdash, let them erupt, and see if they’re not admired by the produce manager. Are his arms covered? Of course not. Saturated with pesticides as he is, he leaves his skin exposed so everyone can benefit. But not you. No, not you, because you’re organic, a healthy high-fiber offering to the gods. This is real health, possibly even of a mental kind. And so, humidity, mold, and all, off you go on your morning run, your nose breaking the atmosphere like the prow of an old wooden vessel while your heart and lungs pull at the oars. Call me Ishmael.

Morning. Cleared the gutters and downspouts of matted-wet birch leaves, fir needles, and cones — a sloppy process that will need to be repeated often during the rainy months, which is roughly half of the year. I’ve wondered more than once how many times I do this each season. Maybe this year I’ll keep track. Gutter Journal, Numb. 1. October 12, 2023.

Here and there in the neighborhood are houses with no trees around them, the gutters of which remain clean and free-flowing. How I pity the people who live there, missing out on the squirrels and birds and their nests, and all the music and play. It would do them good to rake their hands through the cold slop between rains, and often during rains. This is the very definition of good fortune. A house to live in and plenty of water. And it’s a good workout, lugging a ladder around, climbing, reaching, stretching, and keeping one’s balance. Balance is important. Far too many of us at our age, and even younger, find it difficult to tie our shoes without falling over. We close our eyes; we stand on one foot; we touch the tips of our noses — and over we go, like a pelican in a runaway bath tub.

Read the fifty-fourth, fifty-fifth, and fifty-sixth chapters of Middlemarch.

If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new. We are told that the oldest inhabitants in Peru do not cease to be agitated by the earthquakes, but they probably see beyond each shock, and reflect that there are plenty more to come.

October 12, 2023.

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