So I am back from the outdoors...

Well, I went out into the great outdoors and I have returned. It was great. Really. Fucking. Cold. But GREAT!!! I realized that while I am not a billy in real life it is fun to play one on TV. The best part was the silence. I took along a very old friend. A friend that you can have conversations with without talking. So while we were splitting wood, stoking the fire, reading, hiking, etc I could look at him or him at me and exchange a thought and not disturb the silence of the those processes going on around us. We eventually got back to camp and started cooking. I had a windup short wave radio and we listened to A Prairie Home Companion and then whatever nonsense came on NPR after that until 11 when the jazz came on. Then of course I had to put on classic country. Tammy and George. Willy. Merle. Dolly. Sitting there drinking Chivas and a few Guinness Extra Stouts. It was great. The moon was huge. I admit that I was really cold that night but luckily I had enough whisky that the first few hours I actually slept and didnt wake up freezing my you know whats-its off until about 4. Then at the crack of dawn it was time for coffee with Baileys and Weekend Edition. Yes, you can be a billy-cracker-ass-mofo and still listen to NPR. Damn it was awesome. I admit I do not think that Simon Critchley's work has ever been consumed around a camp fire in Arkansas but I do like to think that I can get my name in the record books for that. Self-involved philosophical camping that sounds mildly Brokeback Mountain-esque... Gotta love it.
And then we shot guns.


On a more somber note: I went to go see the doctor last week and it turns out my cholesterol is bad. I admit that this is not too terribly surprising as I almost seem to take sport in destroying myself but this time it turns out I am actually doing some irrepairable harm. So I have actually taken upon myself to do something about it. I have been experimenting with cutting pork and beef out of diet (or at least cutting almost all of it out ) and in doing so I am discovering how much I love fish. I made a simple spread today of sardines, lemon juice, black pepper and garlic with a touch of olive oil. It turns out that sardines are rich in Omega-3s and nutrients and because they are small do not have that much mercury in them. It is pretty delicious. I would recommend it. It is also cheap: an added benefit. But I suppose that this all boils down to the that crisis of grappling with my own mortality. That I too will someday die. I do not think that I was ever unaware of it but that Heideggerian concept of the closeness of death (possibly his sole great addition to western thinking) has really snagged me. So green tea, fish, and a sense of finitude it is for me...