My first summer in the field, we stayed at Williams Fish Camp
on the Aucilla
River, in a school bus up on cinder blocks with a lightbulb
in it and a microfridge
and an outlet for a coffee percolator. 8TA32
was behind us. We dug an Archaic
midden across the river and up
a tidal creek on the Jefferson County side. 8JE57.
We took the site down
with trowels in .2' levels and sifted everything. We water-sifted
grunge.
We found mostly projectile points. Some sherds. I excavated a mandible
in
a pit with a Jasper celt. It looked like a piece of jade, coming up under the trowel.
I
guess that's where I got the Curse of the Pharaohs hung on me. I never should have
disturbed
that dead heathen warrior. Even if he wasn't a Christian. When the tide
would
go out, we'd have to tow the john boat with all our equipment in it.
Water moccasins
and alligator snapping turtles. Up at the site were coral snakes
and mosquitoes
that could fuck a cow standing flat-footed. Sprains, sunburn,
and stinging insects.
Scorpions and black widow spiders. A brown recluse.
One's imagination plays
trick on one in the chiarascuro. I called the entrance to
the site the Slough
of Despond. A classical allusion. Later, I was to dig at Shadows-on-
the-Teche.
I called it La Place Ombreuse. In the book I wrote about the dig.
I REMEMBER
YEATS. I guess now I would say I used to remember.
I have a coffee mug from the
Tabasco gift shop on Avery Island.
I had a mug for Starbucks Coffee when you could
only buy them in Seattle.
I could have called this poem "The Collector."
Not everyone has done
what I did. Now, I'm not so sure I did it. And if I did,
what
difference does it make to anyone.
I'm like an unpublished, or underpublished
Samuel
Beckett. Who cares. Not the literati.
Not the hoi polloi. They're watching
television.
Not literary agents. They send no reply or a form letter
rejection
slip. Now email. It gets here faster. Saves a stamp.
Who cares about books,
the writing life, except a would-be writer.
I am writing for myself. I am feeling
sorry for myself. Nobody wants
to hear that shit. I don't want to write it.
What happened. Everything was going along,
fine, and then, out of a clear blue
sky, never sick a day in my life, senile psychosis.
If this can happen to me it
can happen to you. This did happen to me. I think.