Roof Pitch

The gutter guys rolled up while I was looking for an Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quote to illustrate how easy it is to float off into abstraction.

Who needs a quote now.

Bad luck for the young grass growing through the straw in the front lawn, but good news for future Josh.

And good luck for you all.

Now I can’t jump into the choppy seas of things I don’t understand to wrestle with the unseen giant squid metaphors and other such brow-wrinkling excursions of the word.

Not while there are guys in straw hats rustling the straw underfoot, as if the last crew shredded their own hats as a welcome mat.

Substack sends out newsletters to the writers, with gems like this:

“So often, the best ideas come to writers and creators when they are not being productive,” says Mason Currey, who researches and writes about creative routines and rituals in Subtle Maneuvers. For Iris Murdoch, it was looking out the window, for Ali Smith, wandering around the room, and for May Sarton, having “a strange empty day.” Mason says.

But the gutter guys are yelling from the roof. “Good right there? 34’ 11”.”

“It’s gonna be a scorcher today” one of ‘em said, the first time I’ve heard that used where it meant something.

“Yep” I replied, leaning on the shovel, digging out a corrugated pipe that had shifted in the backfill. “Lots of trial and error. Mostly error.”

It sounds like Santa’s landed on the roof.

Keep sweating, however you do.

–Josh