Gray Friday with Gutters ... and Books

For a long time I resisted the temptation to go out and remove the leaves from the gutters. But "temptation" isn't the right word here. That word connotes something pleasurable that we ought to avoid. What would be the right word, then, to describe such a thought? Resist the self-imposed injunction? No. (Help me out here!)

It was true, the gutters were full of leaves. It was true, it had started to drizzle, with the prospect of more seriously wet and dreary weather ahead. It was true, when the gutters get clogged, the rainwater dribbles down the front of the windows in both the bedroom and the den, ending up who knows where?

On the other hand, there were still quite a few leaves on the trees. A week or two from now I'll have to do the same thing all over again. But my life has been based, almost from the beginning, on efficiency and flow. Don't get so worked up. Don't push so hard. Things are never going to be perfect.

What finally got me up out of my chair was the realization that it would be impossible for me to enjoy any part of the luscious gray afternoon that was developing if that stupid thought kept nagging me: I ought to go out and clean the gutters.

So I did the sensible thing. I got the aluminum ladder out of the garage, found the flimsy cotton gloves which I use for no other purpose than cleaning out the gutters—I call them my Red Ryder gloves, with reference to a TV show from the early 1950s—and stepped out onto the back deck. 

My plan was a simple one. I would clean out the leaves from those crucial areas that might lead to backups and overflows above the downspouts on the deck, the bedroom, and the driveway, leaving the bulk of the work for another, drier, time when I could climb up onto the roof and slide along the abrasive shale-gray shingles on my rear end, clearing out all the gutters from above.

There wasn't much of a problem with the gutters above the deck, but when I lifted the first clump of wet leaves from the downspout outside the bedroom window, I heard the pleasant sound of water streaming down the pipe, and it went on for quite a while. Ahhh.

On my way back into the house after stowing the ladder, I noticed our little rosemary plant, standing alone in the plot that had nourished Hilary's tomato plants all summer—still green, still offering its oily, pungent leaves, and perhaps doing better now that the tomato stalks have been cleared away, though I doubt it. Tonight might be a good night for spaghetti sauce?

But now, have completed my self-imposed yard work, I was free to make a fire and luxuriate, which was a good thing, because quite a few new books have made their way into the house recently. I'm not referring to the ones I got at the Fall Forum book convention a few weeks ago, but to those I received from a friend of mine in Madison who has recently moved to a newer and smaller house, leaving quite a few volumes stranded on the shelves in the old house, which has not yet been put on the market.

Timothy allowed me to take two books from his newer, trimmer—but still awfully large—library: The Scottish Enlightenment by Alexander Brodie and a selection of essays carrying the title Kierkegaard After MacIntyre.  Back at the old house, now in considerable disarray, I picked up The Haiku Seasons by Higginson, In Defense of Reason by Yvor Winters, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratics, a paperback edition of Pascal's Pensées that has "northwoods cabin reading" written all over it, and The Discovery of the Individual 1050-1200, a Harper Torchbook by Colin Morris, the very appearance of which reminds me of my undergraduate years at the U.

I'm sure Morris's theory has been discredited many times over by several generations of gender- and race-based scholars, but I'm also sure there are threads of truth in it, and it will make for a relaxing and pleasurable read.

And as for the "ancilla," (a word that I just now looked up: "an aid to achieving or mastering something difficult") I open the book at random and hit upon Melissus of Samos, a disciple of Parmenides, where I almost immediately spot an error. He writes: "If [being] were infinite, it would be One; for if it were two, these could not be spatially infinite, but each would have boundaries in relation to the other."

Not true. For it's easy to imagine two spaces meeting up at an interface—imagine an infinite brick wall—while extending endlessly off in every other direction.

To add to the biblio-influx, I wandered over to the Golden Valley Library book sale this morning. But let me be clear: before doing so I did more than an hour of paid work making proof corrections and emailed another friend (and sometime client) regarding the issue of book cover colors. (But not for this particular book.)

At the book sale I limited myself to five hardcover volumes at a dollar apiece: A Literary Education and other Essays by Joseph Epstein; The Retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce; The Complete Operas of Verdi by Charles Osborne; You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie; and Red Earth, White Earth by our own Will Weaver.

The day is frittering away. (Otherwise put, I am frittering the day away.)There's a big pot of borscht in the fridge. Also sour cream and fresh dill. The rain is holding off for now.

It's time to make a fire.