mamook tzum : making the marks

Now and then it seems like a good idea to leave the hermit’s cell and greet the next passerby. I step outside into a drizzle of rain sliding off the lower branches of fir trees, but no one’s in sight on the road uphill or down. It’s too dark for dog walkers and too gusty for cyclists, and my family is in town running errands.

Time to go inside and light a fire. I’ll settle in with a glass of smoky black Russian tea and my old computer with the letters pounded right off its keys, and tell stories to the wind and the rain.

Stories run bright seams across my days. They leave me with a taste for sweet root-cellar apples, a planisphere, smoke-scented deerskin, rail spikes caked in coal dust, a hank of seiner twine, scribbled ideas, thumbed research files, marks on paper.

Marks on paper have served me well. Over the coming weeks and months I will post information and links. If you like them, hand them on.