today was a decent day. i got up, and pretty early on, i started working on cutting down ficus tree #1. it's been a quiet obsession of mine. i would climb the ladder up, and using a long pole saw, would start to saw away at the next incongruous branch. i would have to rest every few strokes, simply because i am out of shape. but i would persist. i would imagine that, say, each 20 strokes, would get me incrementally closer to getting the branch or whatever to splinter and fall... actually, what usually happens is i cut 3/4 of the way through a branch, give up out of fatigue (or simply because it becomes an awkward angle... remember, i'm using a pole saw many feet above my head)... and then sometime in the night, during a wind storm or something, i would hear this ominous cracking sound, and then this thundering crash in the darkness... and i'd know that the branch had fallen. actually, there would be times when i would wake up in the night and imagine hearing that strange splintering sound... it's kind of like a thundercrack in miniature... a complaint of sorts that you can feel in your own bones... and then what comes afterward would be unpredictable... like a lot of the time, it would just turn into silence, a kind of suspended animation... and then at other moments, it would lead to a kind of staccato series of cracks, as though one end of the tree were sending signals back and forth through the cut, as though lignin threads were being snapped one by one, and the speed of those sounds conveyed a kind of collective panic, as though the support cables were snapping rapidly, and the golden gate bridge and all modern engineering had thrown up its hands in despair and just given up... anyways, so that's what i've been preoccupied with. today, i sawed through a major branch, in preparation for tackling the central trunk, that still has one towering crown reaching towards the house. that last one will be a challenge, but at least i've removed all the peripheral obstacles...
that brings me to the next challenge... i've had this idea of creating biochar with the waste wood. biochar is essentially charcoal, produced through a slow burn of wood in an environment of low oxygen. while not a fertilizer in itself, it is believed to produce ready carbon structures for other important soil microorganisms to take up residence. there are several ways to produce biochar, but i opted for the cheapest and simplest method, which involves digging a conical pit in the ground, and after starting an initial burn, covering that pit over with a metal plate (or something that cannot burn). the plate would essentially limit the oxygen going into the burn, so that the gases would circulate and reburn... (i think there are ways of capturing that gas as syngas or something, but of course, i wasn't interested in the burnoff). anyway, right at the start, i kind of panicked, because i was generating too much smoke, and i feared that my neighbors were going to call the fire department on me. so i think i doused it with water too early. the wood burned for many hours, puffing smoke through the dirt and the corners of the metal plate... but when i opened it up at the end of the day, i found several chunks of unburnt wood... a lot of moisture... so i messed it up.
i'm not sure that it's wise to make biochar in a residential neighborhood. too bad. i wish i could just process this wood and recycle it to better my soil.
*****
i listened to salman rushdie again, and i feel a sort of quiet hope. i also have been reading neil gaiman, both his "american gods" and his "anansi boys." i actually like the latter story better. "american gods" lacks the humor and lightheartedness of "anansi boys," and i actually think it needs a touch more of it. as it was "american gods" just seemed too dark, and the lack of a clear protagonist (or at least one with more of a character; shadow just seemed, well, like a shadow) just made the tale unsatisfying... but in any case, reading gaiman gives me hope that i too can create some sort of narrative. also the rushdie statement (and i'm paraphrasing) that the job of narrative is to tell truth. that's always been my stated objective, even if i get totally lost in the embellishment of my stories...
*****
i suppose i had an insight as i was sawing away at tree limbs... it wasn't anything profound. but it was this feeling that the important thing was that you kept going. you keep fiddling away at what needs to be done. you make mistakes. but the general direction remains the same. things get changed, incrementally, and incrementally, your art starts to match your vision. at least that's the hope. that's always the hope.
*****
secretly, in my head, i am considering writing my book so i have something to sell, and thence, help pay for my daughter's impossible college tuition. i may have mentioned that she got into berkeley. of course, she failed to list berkeley under the fafsa form, so they didn't give us a financial aid package. she's attempting to rectify that issue, but frankly, i'm not holding my breath. of course, she's trying to put up a brave face, and is claiming that she will go wherever we can afford, but i know in her heart that she wants to go to berkeley. so i need to find a way to pay for it. we're actually very poor, particularly after the pandemic... and yet. maybe there's a way.
No comments:
Post a Comment