The metaphorical hole-in-the-floor-of-existential-dread at least got a sheet of metaphorical plywood laid over it after I slowly became sufficiently comfortable with the replacement phone

to allow Dusty, away and out of range in the Buffaloes all week [as both Susie and I’d suspected] to check in and promise to check out the errant cattle situation over at Parker Ranch in distant

smoky Nevada. [photo thanks to Lee Saloutos, Fish Springs Road east of Doyle two weeks ago]

Our time after Labor Day proceeded sweetly,

in and out, upstairs and down

and up Fossil Hill.  Quite quiet until Tuesday’s lavish dinner at Nancy and Mike’s with

Robert and Joan, a lavishness which began with beautifully laid out hors d’oeuvres [sufficient to a normal dinner on our porch] with wine to match and continued on to cucumber garlic soup, great hunks of halibut, chilled asparagus, rice, copious homegrown salad and more, finishing up with homemade peach ice cream and impossible-to-refuse poire unto midnight, oh dear.  This actually resulted in way less diminishment than might have been expected – or deserved –

although a hazy lazy warming trend tended to keep things slowed down

through the remainder of a week culminating in

the twentieth anniversary of the Forever War, now to be pursued from “over the horizon”, as was soon seen when a Hellfire from a Reaper nicely eliminated an aid worker [and many members of his family] dedicated to feeding refugees in Kabul as the great Nation Destroyer was pulling out [but obviously maintaining their terrorism from afar**].  USA! USA!

Kind of a nice and typical ‘fuck you’ end to the whole sorry business.  Would that it were…

 

*Not only a poem but a book of poetry by the late and irreplaceable Kirk Robertson.

** During one of Bryan’s deployments to Afghanistan I learned from a high school classmate that his son was “in the service” as well; Air Force.  He spent his days in a room in San Ber’dino “piloting” drones over whatever country they told him to, targeting as necessary, safely home at night to the suburbs…the wave of the over-the-horizon future. In concert with economic strangulation warfare, neatly condensed by blowing up someone in the food-to-refugees distribution business “by mistake” or, in the Generals’ words, by “a righteous strike”.

Righteousness ‘R’ Us.