Ten Years Today

We were just in a place where every step had us on rocks and water billions of years old.  Our little boy asks us about who our first relative was and so we talk about generations back all the way to the Great Rift Valley.  We talk about books hundreds of years old, and listen to music made when our Grandparents were little children.
My connection to time and the world is you, my love.  Will you stay with me?

Field Interview Transcript (excerpt)

Field Interview Transcript (excerpt)

DPW

011712.a
Interview of Howard Dorsey, 17-year employee of Department of Public Works

[Portipont Correspondent]: What is something you enjoy about your job?

[Howard Dorsey]: Well, there’s lots of things I like about my work.  I mean, there’s a bunch of stuff that gives me headaches and bothers me—but really, I like my job.  I like being outside—even in the cold like we got now!

[PC]: What are you doing now?  Something you like about now…

[HD]: Well.  One thing we been doing the past couple weeks on and off is trimming the median bushes.  You know, the plants and trees that grow up the middle of the big streets?  A couple days ago we was on North Avenue, in the cold morning, cutting the junipers.  I love that smell of the junipers…it’s…sharp—sharp in my nose, like the cold, you know?  I got these loppers, the cutters, you know, I got a pair that’s real sharp, and they cut through those thick branches—junipers is tough plants, man!—these loppers go through those branches so smooth…it feels so soft in that hard cold…and then the smell starts comin’ up, into my nose…Ahhh…it’s hard to take a deep breath in the cold like that, but I do it anyway, ‘cause I love that smell.

July 4, Polk County, Wisconsin

Heat lightning northeast
of here.  Even aspens hold
still.  Storm'll break soon.

Preliminary Field Report 2012-001

The Baptism River has flowed its course for many thousands of years. The last glaciers retreated from Minnesota's North Shore of Lake Superior about 15,000 years ago.  The entire area--most of Minnesota, in fact--is considered an "immature" drainage system.
Laying down in this river, in a carved out bowl that my body fits exactly as the rapids wash over my shoulders on their way to the waterfall 20 feet from my toes,  holding onto rock a billion years old as water older than that rushes over my shoulders on its way down to Lake Superior, all I am thinking about is how good it feels and how loud the rapids are.

Apology #1

To the cleaning staff of Vallco Shopping Mall, ca. 1981:
When I flushed the urinal, I guess I had noticed that the pipe was a little askew.  I didn't think much of it until after I had finished washing my hands, and heard the sound of running water.  By that time it was pouring out of the urinal onto the floor.
I was a shy kid, you understand.  The kind of painful shyness that can abet cowardice.  I should have found one of you and told you that your bathroom was flooding, rather than just leave, embarassed.  I know, there was not anything, really, to be embarassed about--but I was embarassed by almost everything then.
So, sorry for flooding the entire first floor down there by the pretzel place and the LazerDisc store.