A Variety of Thoughts, Most Of Which Bear Little Relationship to the River

Jacobson, MN (August 13)--In the Jacobson convenience store (/liquor store/USPS Contract Unit--there is literally just one commercial building in this town) there is a “Wall of Fame” dedicated to the Polaroided exploits of the town's hunting and fishing contingent--mostly deer, a few pike and walleyes, and, because these towns all seem to be participating in a large-scale, clandestine, never-ending Outdoorsman's Championship, three black bears, catalogued by weight (mean 200 lbs., which is, btw, about the average for the N. American male homo sapiens). One of the ostensible bear-slayers (somehow no one ever seems to self-identify as a “deerslayer”) looked barely old enough to drive a car, a fact which simultaneously impressed and frightened me. I've heard that bears aren't a problem problem up here unless you're an idiot or the unluckiest person in the world.

Speaking of bad luck, I ended up in a fit of giggles thinking about the thoroughly unnecessary, at least in terms of narrative, e-mail exchange in Infinite Jest between an injured laborer and his insurance company, revealing one of the funniest hard-luck stories I've ever heard (not sure if DFW invented it straight-up but at the very least I've never heard it anywhere else, although that might have more to do with the circles in which I run than with the story's providence): a roofer finishes a job with 600 lbs of supplies left over and rigs a pulley system to get them down 3 stories. He ties a rope to the ground, goes up and loads the crate, and goes back down to lower the crate down slowly; he unties the rope but, himself weighing only 200 lbs, is pulled rapidly skyward, meeting the crate halfway and breaking a couple bones, and continuing up to the roof. He lodges his fingers in the pulley but the crate has hit bottom and spilled its contents so that its weight drops precipitously, so back down he goes. He hits the crate again on the way down and then the ground. Lying there on his back, he finally lets go of the rope only to see the crate shooting down towards him. It's funnier in the book so go look it up yourself, jerk.

There were two mosquitoes and a fly in the tent last night. I turned on my headlamp and the fly went completely out of its fucking skull (exo-skull (-eton?)? Ha.), following the light, which made it an easy kill. The first mosquito, attracted by the commotion or possibly the smell of flesh, made its way up to where I was, which also made it very easy to dispose of (despite the fact that while you can just kind of slap a fly out of the air and render it immobile, a mosquito takes a one-sided slap the way a womanizer takes a slap to the face--just the cost of doing business), but the second stayed close enough to be audible but out of sight. I lay on my back for probably 15 minutes, hand on my headlamp, ready to turn it on should I hear the scoundrel approach. It never did. Its whereabouts are currently unknown by all but God. And I suppose the mosquito but that opens up the animal-consciousness bag of worms (can of worms? I like my worms in a bag, thank you.).

Later That Day

The ballpoint pen is a brilliant invention. It's those innovations that simplify processes and mechanisms and the order of things in the world that I admire most, and I think most people, were they to consider it if they didn't already, would agree. One of my favorite examples is that of the silo. Here we are, with a limited amount of land from which we need to extract the greatest amount of crops possible if we are to earn a living, but here too is the necessity of storing large quantities of harvest, and feed for the animals, and it would seem that these requirements put us at a kind of impasse, for both together require more space than the plot allows. What shall we do. We will build... up. It transcends the two-dimensionality that is the single most noticeable facet of farmland and introduces a new possibility. The silo! Think of it! There are fewer silos in these areas of Minnesota than most lands of comparable history and geography, but I'm inclined to give MN the benefit of the doubt and just imagine that fact to be due not to the stubborn personality, and adherence to Old World habits, of German and Scandinavian settlers, who are more inclined to bear problems (ha, bear problems) stoically than to look for solutions, but rather to the prevalence of trees. Minnesota has lots of trees (more now than a century ago, actually, this being the result of several decades of perverse incentives which were ostensibly to replenish lumbering-stripped forests and create wind barriers to keep soil intact, but which in fact created more than a few “tree farmers”, who were in practice if not belief, and if only for economic reasons, the first environmentalists; but that, as I seem so fond of saying, is another story (Ed.: maybe you should keep those “other stories” to yourself from now on and leave the heavy lifting to someone smart, OK?)), often in places where one doesn't expect trees, and they impart the land with the verticality lacking in other farmlands. Then again, maybe the silo is just a primitive agrarian phallus in a landscape otherwise devoid of phallic symbols (which might explain why MN, home of trees and Paul Bunyan and timber “cruisers”, doesn't need any silos).

There are others, too. I'd count the printing press despite the objections of plenty of reasonable people, and despite its obviously mechanical nature (besides, even the most complicated press could never reach the heights of that mastery of mechanical efficiency, the human body, or even the hand alone), for just re-thining the way of applying ink to paper.

Honestly now. I don't mean to be nerdy or obsessive, but I could go on and on about silos. Because that moment of clarity is what drives us to pursue questions without answers, to be that person that looks at the problem and says, “Why not just build up?”

Although, reconsidering now, in all likelihood the silo thing wasn't arrived at suddenly or serendipitously or in a flash of inspiration, but was rather developed slowly as first the farmers piled extra stuff as high as it would go, then built four walls around it so they could pile it higher, and of course from there it's just a short step to the silo as we know it. But hey, I'm not going to let mere facts get in the way of a good story or even, especially, an Irreducible Truth; sometimes you just need to build up.