the bean counters

july 4th-8th:

i instantly feel at home in w's little farmhouse here in new
hampshire, though the waving stopped on the way in.
(we kept waving but we only received funny faces.)
oh well. w once humbly helped j feel at home here too.
when she ventured here a couple years back for her masters.
our spirits are high from the mountains after the short drive
in - j is anticipating a nice shower, me, a good bed.

w has a garden, a dog, a cat, a compost pit & a lovely little
swimming hole not even a mile away. the top floor is one
large room, with only a chimney running through it.
she knocked all the walls out to open it up.
its a beautiful space. it feels like possibility sometimes.
it's all we imagine to have once school is done. when our
two begins growing into three, four. an older farmhouse with
a quiet porch & a swing comes up from time to time. always with
smiles & sometimes investigations & pictures.

w is all she is talked up to be and more. its hard for her to sit still
at times, other times she feels perfectly content just knitting.
she is relaxed & gentle when she speaks. her frankness
& honesty is refreshing, nothing is shocking or out of line. she's
still quite a hippie but she's lost the bell bottoms & the need
for those secret LA parties. (at least i think so)
w always has a project.
half of one room is filled with yarn. she does gardening,
catering. and she steals honey from bees. we get along
as though we have always known each other.

though it rains much of the time we are here, we take
a small break to go to a humble river to wade.
its not deep enough to swim. nor warm enough.
the water is low here, as its been in the midwest.
farmers are struggling. waterfalls sound like leaky pipes.
creeks are drying up. i step slowly across
the scattered stones towards the middle of the banks. a
place of refuge, a place that erases thoughts.
two small laughing boys try to catch fish in their pitiful net,
sure of their abilities to act faster than them. i always
caught toads & frogs. they don't like to move much. and
when they do, it's quite drowsy.

j takes me to campus for lunch at a "legendary" restaurant.
i complain about the price of coffee, she gives me the eye.
i don't know when i began doing this, bitching about prices,
but i've been trying to quit. but it's amazing to me how much
profit some want from a cup of joe. i know folks are hurting.
i don't mind helping the little guys out. wait. these are the
little guys, right?

we take a hop, skip and a jump to w's work where she seems
flustered & annoyed, ready to pound however is in charge of
distributing this assignment to her down into powder.
we help her out a bit, putting paper into folders, punching
some mad numbers and trying to rearrange the disorder this
small room has become. strangely & in the middle of a manic
array of sentences w manages to say she's off to see the bean
counters. those silly overbearing bean counters. i laugh.
she looks up seriously. "that's what they are." i nod.
don't i know it. well hell, don't we all.