Once In Vermont films © bob arnold
poem by lorine niedecker
Dear Gerry & Lorry,
Tonight is Christmas Eve.
Susan is taking a nap after supper on the sofa as she does every evening in the winter, Kokomo wedged in there with the blankets and Susan.
The two tea kettles are knocking softly with a low boil on the woodstove. One pot has its cap off for good and is used to simply make water vapor into the dry woodstove rooms we live in all winter.
The Thing, original, by Howard Hawks is playing. I taped it from last Sunday morning at 5AM when I wasn't up yet and wanted a copy for Susan. . .it was her most scaredy-cat film of her childhood. One of mine, too. Along with The Abominable Snowman, which I saw at age 5 in the Adams Theater with my older sister.
There is a new film for Christmas eve on the Longhouse Birdhouse which will give you a feel of the outdoors right now, and which poem is on the chalkboard. A good one. We love the lights in the pitch black woodlands. The spaces in the film that act as drifting dark blankness as the bright holiday lights appear and disappear are hemlock trees as I move toward the lights with the camera. Snow crunching under boot. River roaring with day earlier rain.
And I'm reading Mermaids, Manatees and Bimini Blind Snakes* in one-sitting. I'm so far on page 123, and you know exactly where I am in the book. Tomorrow when I call my mother to wish her a Merry Christmas I'm going to remind her of her skinks which she complains get into her house. And she has a cat "Baby" she really loves.
Now I know the two things that Lorry wanted when this move to Florida was made. And she got them.
The story "Crabby Tale on the Gulf" may be the one sticking most to my ribs. But all the stories stick with one another and I like them all as they are coming to me. It's the kind of book that self-drives. Stories that want to be told and be heard.
I'll be done with the book by midnight. Easily.
The Thing will be dead; and we'll all be alive.
Thanks to you
all's well, Bob
Tonight is Christmas Eve.
Susan is taking a nap after supper on the sofa as she does every evening in the winter, Kokomo wedged in there with the blankets and Susan.
The two tea kettles are knocking softly with a low boil on the woodstove. One pot has its cap off for good and is used to simply make water vapor into the dry woodstove rooms we live in all winter.
The Thing, original, by Howard Hawks is playing. I taped it from last Sunday morning at 5AM when I wasn't up yet and wanted a copy for Susan. . .it was her most scaredy-cat film of her childhood. One of mine, too. Along with The Abominable Snowman, which I saw at age 5 in the Adams Theater with my older sister.
There is a new film for Christmas eve on the Longhouse Birdhouse which will give you a feel of the outdoors right now, and which poem is on the chalkboard. A good one. We love the lights in the pitch black woodlands. The spaces in the film that act as drifting dark blankness as the bright holiday lights appear and disappear are hemlock trees as I move toward the lights with the camera. Snow crunching under boot. River roaring with day earlier rain.
And I'm reading Mermaids, Manatees and Bimini Blind Snakes* in one-sitting. I'm so far on page 123, and you know exactly where I am in the book. Tomorrow when I call my mother to wish her a Merry Christmas I'm going to remind her of her skinks which she complains get into her house. And she has a cat "Baby" she really loves.
Now I know the two things that Lorry wanted when this move to Florida was made. And she got them.
The story "Crabby Tale on the Gulf" may be the one sticking most to my ribs. But all the stories stick with one another and I like them all as they are coming to me. It's the kind of book that self-drives. Stories that want to be told and be heard.
I'll be done with the book by midnight. Easily.
The Thing will be dead; and we'll all be alive.
Thanks to you
all's well, Bob
* Mermaids, Manatees and Bimini Blind Snakes
by Gerald Hausman
Irie Books
12699 Cristi Way
Bokeelia , Florida 33922
