The obsessions of others are opaque to the unobsessed, and thus easy to mock. NASCAR, jazz, baseball, roses, poetry, quilts, fishing. If we're lucky, we all have at least one.

Fishing is just like playing baseball. You have to put a game plan together and you have to pre-fish. You try and get onto a pattern that the fish are doing. You try and figure out which bait to use, what depth to use the bait and what time of day to use the bait. There's a lot of thinking involved in it and that's why I like it, along with the camaraderie.

Cutting down a wall, the wall sawyer could feel the tension in a home ease and something windy rush in circles round her feet. It was addictive, each a sweet victory of art. The tumbling motion of a falling wall was like a volcanic eruption fading into a mountain of roses. The wall sawyer felt a loving animosity toward walls. “You must pay attention to your obsessions, where life and love intersect,” she told the little queen. 

Every year, regardless of whether the timber industry is struggling or the fishing industry is struggling, one stable factor has always been this game. Economy-wise, we've been through more than our share of tough stretches, but this has always been something for the towns to rally around when times haven't been good.

Women Are Not Roses

Women have no
beginning
only continual
flows.

Though rivers flow
women are not
rivers.

Women are not
roses
they are not oceans
or stars.

i would like to tell
her this but
i think she
already knows.

Thus we play the fool with the time and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.