on building a wall

One thing we're rich in out here in the Poconos is rocks.

If the economy really shifts and we revert to a rock-based system, McGee and I are going to be freaking Rockefellers out here.

I will be Thurston Howell the IV.

What with all the rocks lying around and me with some time on my monkey hands, I've started a stone wall that will, in time, ring around the property and protect us from bears, Jehovah Witnesses and Mountain Witches and Ju-Ju Men.

I'm rolling boulders, digging stones out of the ground, staggering around with rocks the size of small suitcases, stacking, stacking, building a wall.

It's tremendously satisfying in a quiet, slightly mad way.

I've felt the obsession grow over the last week. I stare at the wall from every window of the house, walk out to it whenever I get a minute and dedicate at least an hour a day to full-on Wall Work. I'm noticing stone walls everywhere, envying other people's piles of rocks, sneaking over to the neighbor's property when he leaves and rolling some rocks closer to our place.

It's the pure flame of private property burning me, I suppose. The simplicity of a line drawn, marking Mine and Not-Mine.

It's frankly all I think about these days.

The theater, Nancy, politics, my family, writing, all of these I see now were just preparation for the Great Work, my true purpose on this earth.

I shall build the Wall and Dwell inside it's Shadow for all my Days.

Or at least until we run out of groceries.

Back to the city tonight, praise Jebus. Going mad, pleasantly, out here in the mountains. Need some hustle and some bustle if I'm going to stay sharp.

But now, to the wall.