Sunday, February 28, 2010

Previously...

Something in the night went "boom!" in my head and when I woke up I discovered we had no running water. This was not until I had flushed one of the toilets and realized that in order to make the flushing work the next time, I'd have to fill a bucket of water...from the river...and down where the road ends and one drives through the river to get to the other side. It's decidedly better, I'm thinking, to collect the water from the river before it reaches that point - less gas and other pollutants to screw up the septic system. My experiences with lack of water go pretty far back: renting a house without water in Morocco, living as part of the caretaking crew of two at El Rancho Navarro in Mendocino County, where the pump had to be primed sometimes once a week, being without water at parties at my ex-sister-in-law's, with Casey having to fill the container, and living at my niece's house in Tamil Nadu, with no running water.

On this day, or at least I think on this day, we decide to drive up the mountain, past the river at Tom's place, and journey to the top. This means that we'll be going over rocks and holes and pockets of water in a road that Tom's not driven in a couple of years, and "going" means the distance of driving perhaps three miles. It's truly beautiful -- there are more than a few places that are turn-offs in the road to places built, or being built, or in the imagination of being built -- and the views of the vegetation, the valley and the sea are more prodigious the more we ascend... When we reach the top of this "road," there's a waterfall, though of small proportions, but with many rocks which spend through the downfall... The dogs, Muttonhead (or is it Muttinhead?) and Rocky, find an easier way to get down and back, which I follow, because I'm only wearing thongs on my feet... Muttinhead likes to sit half-submerged in the flow... Rocky's right by his Master's side...

 

 


Traveling back down the road, I think this is, indeed, lovely country. Toward town, we pass the only vehicle we've seen and they yell out to us, "Is this the way to the waterfall?" I wonder if they'll be brave enough to traverse the road...

Tom makes lunch -- chili and grilled cheese sandwiches with avocados. It's enough for me for the rest of the day, but clutters up the kitchen with dirty dishes. Since he's waiting for whichever of Sadie's daughters will come to wash dishes, and we have no water, I'm wondering when I'll be able step in and do them!

The T.V. is almost always on here, as it is at home, but Tom's got more stations. And, when the screening is in English, the subtitles are prominent, which makes translation instantaneous. However, we did watch Apocalypse Now in an MP4 file which Tom requested from me about 36 hours before I came here. Most stores were closed after I went the first night to Best Buy where they were out of it, so hence the MP4 file from my son, Seamus. Tom asked me if I had ever read "Heart of Darkness," which I hadn't but knew that Apocalypse Now was based on it. So, in a hammock, I re-open my long ago attention to British fiction apres 1850 and re-discover Joseph Conrad and his inimitable writing style. War. "The horror! The horror!"