Dean at Home: The Pandemic Blog

Sweet Corn Season A heatwave has settled in  the air wringing a moist towel over a crinoline earth.  Glass drops glisten on the leaves of the rhododendron.  The air inside the house is still.  How can it still be hotter? You ask.  The oil popping on the stove is the soundtrack  to the rain through the screen door.  You can feel walking through the living room,  the air,  in your lungs,  on your face.  The rain is only but a gentle kiss on the yellowed lawns,  the naked rivers.  It is like a day at the fair.  Without the colored lights, rides, and fried dough.  Without, without, without. The air makes me thirsty.

Status Update It has been a busy week. These are things I imagine for the summer: recording an album in two days, drafting a poetry manuscript, finishing a short story, transcending my bodily aches and becoming one with the universe as seen through the James Webb Telescope.  It is hard to do these things when you are tired.  My head is filled with things I must remember to do. Tomorrow, I am going to make a potato salad. One recipe appears to have died with its cook, and all I have is my vague memories, less precise, yet more flavorful than the recipes I have found on the internet and collected from my parents.  Once again, I purchased a thing and imagined it to be greater than it could be. A guitar, a Yukon Gold potato, a lover, a side of French fries. How can one match up with memory, fantasy, the machinations of desire? Always, there will be disappointment. When I was a boy, I thought I would become an actor. Even today, I imagine how it might be to play a role. The ex...

A July Day in the Town of Washed Out Bridges Today there were clouds that made it seem like rain  in the town of washed out bridges.  There are children playing with bubbles,  and a duo strumming and drumming under the tent,  tunes that make me think of Lucinda Williams.  My wife thinks the singer looks like Oates.  It is strange to be out, and wonderful, but mostly strange, D. says.  There are Korean grilled chicken sandwiches, burgers and hotdogs.  And beer.  It is a July day in a scalloped existence. So different, so strange.  A humming bird sits on a wire and watches over the yard,  head in constant motion even at rest.  I can smell the garlic seared on the grate.  The neighbors are out sampling the wares.  So many people, M. marvels. So many people. Spring in the permaculture garden.

Maximum Intensity Sometime in 1999 or 2000, I took a Greyhound bus to Washington D.C., slept on the floor of someone’s study, and attended an academic conference where I interviewed on a job search. Simultaneously, I was coming down with pneumonia that had me shivering through the night. Unable to sleep, I was somehow able to access the internet and browsed the early days of ebay. My first internet amp purchase was a 1970s Fender Vibrolux. Despite my apprehension, it was shipped, vacuum tubes and all, to my home. That amplifier has followed me throughout my days. The wonderful amp tech, Jim Metz, saved it from a conductive fiberboard (precursor to circuit board). The old Oxford speakers were replaced with modern Naylors, and a few capacitors have been changed out over the years. But recently, the amp has been relegated to the sidelines because of some intermittent noise, a sometimes ringing, like a penny shaken in a glass Coke bottle, and a particularly noisy idle, like a snoring anima...