Something complete! Damn, it has been a while. I attached the knotted bell-pull to the clapper on that chunk of heavy brass I have been dragging that bell around the world since 1968. Dad removed it from the fireplace mounting in a home we owned in suburban Detroit. It came to us in the purchase and we took it with us at the sale.

Based on the age of the home constructed on the ridge above the suburban course of the Rouge River, I assume it was a USN WWII-vintage bell.

Now, at last, it is proud and ready to signal the hour (or the alarm) as required, just as it was meant to.

That was the first chore done on arrival from the Imperial City.

I am on the farm this morning, the light coming up late due to the time change, and confronting more chores. I could see one unpleasant one coming. Went down around nine last night reading a science fiction epic about the end of an interstellar empire.

A pal recommended “Downbelow Station,” by a lady named C.J. Cherryh, and I bought it to cleanse my mental palate of the awful reality of Charlie LaDuff’s “American Autopsy,” his version of life- or the lack of it- in the Motor City.

Cherryh’s novel is a fine read- a Hugo winner in 1982- and about a highly vulnerable space station packed with realistic characters. And a war that will finish off an  interstellar empire collapsing of its own weight. Sort of like now.

It was nice to be lost in a literary Space Epic. That was my bread-and-butter reading growing up- beyond Tolkiens Hobbit unvierse and off on rockets of imagination to Burrough’s Barsoom, Azimov’s Trantor and all the worlds between. Of all the writers, Robert Heinlein was my favorite- the futurist whose irony skewering the present was always compelling. I think I read everything of his, and some of it still resonates.

Life has been too busy of late for fiction, and of course fiction could never have predicted the surreal present in which we live.

And that, of course is where we are stuck. Here in the present, I still have not got the clock-radio down here calibrated to the rhythms of the 60-year old body- I woke to music and padded out to the kitchen to start the coffee, which I did successfully while looking over at the clock on the stove and realizing it was only 0215.

Crap. I went back to bed and managed to get back down twice more- eventually rising at 0630, a triumph of sloth-dom. Moreover, I actually recall the Technicolor dream in which I had a handgun and a Kalashnikov on the Hill, props for some hearing or another, and the dream hinged on constantly misplacing them after becoming aware that the Hill was not the place to be in possession of firearms with high capacity magazines.

The dreamscape was a weird confluence of remembrance of working with the 105th Congress and the serio-comic events of today. Dreams are good, and I could feel some of the adrenaline of the last months leaking away.

But as the light came up I knew I had to get on with it. One of the reasons for going to bed when I did was the fact that that the cast iron stove was not drawing properly, and I knew I had put off cleaning it too long. Some minor smoke was all I could get it to produce, and gave up.

This morning was the removal of the singed logs, splitting out some kindling with an axe, remembering how intrinsically dangerous life in the country can be- one stick of kindling away from a lost finger or an axe in the foot.

Then sweeping the ashes through the grate and emptying the pan outside, hoping I would not trip and deposit the sooty debris at random in the farmhouse.

Then a run-around with the vacuum cleaner I couldn’t operate on the bad leg for the winter months. I can now, and I feel good about it. I can’t wait to throw the windows and door all open and let the fresh air sweep through.

There is much more to be done, many chores deferred. It has been too cold to work in the garage, but the workshop still needs to be set up, and to do that I need to consolidate the wreckage of the estate that fills the farm office and the bay next to the black truck.

The Bluesmobile needs to be ferried down to the farm at some point, while I could ride the bike into town and jump on the train to Union Station, I might be able to get a ride back north with the Russians.

There is a lot to do. I am absolutely delighted that I think I can do it all again. Just in time, my friends. Just in time.

It is amazing what a good vacuuming can do for the soul.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.comRenee Lasche Colorado springs