The little Hindu guy, the professor directing the analysis of the William Rivers Pitt being done by the student working on her master's degree in soil science, came by today, on what has to be the hottest day of the year (temperatures circa 100-105 degrees F, humidity awesomely overbearing).
Using a portable sort of drill emanating from the trunk of his motor vehicle, he extracted samples from 20' within the William Rivers Pitt. I have no idea if that would be swine excrement vintage 1948 or 1940 or 1935--or if it was even deep enough to get to the last deposits, made the spring of 1950,
Remember, 1950 was a very long time ago, giving plenty of time for natural sediments to build up on top of all that.
He tells me that the William Rivers Pitt is "layered," and that the layers are uneven, with significant bulges and thin spots. What he had gotten today were samples from one of those ostensible thin spots that had been overlooked when the William Rivers Pitt was penetrated on July 15 and for a couple of days thereafter.
I got the impression this portable well-drilling thing was somewhat too inadequate for the task, even though the William Rivers Pitt is notoriously porous, easy to probe (i.e., no rocks, no hard shells, just plain dirt). But he appeared satisfied with what he got.
It still seems he does not recognize me as having been one of the eyewitnesses to his primitive ceremonial ritual dance of establishing territoriality (or dominance) the morning of July 15, making an ass of himself in front of a whole lot of people he assumed were country bumpkins, but nearly all of whom were actually educated at some of the finest academic institutions in America.
It is unfortunate there were no youtube cameras (I don't know how youtube works) that morning, as it would have made a great movie (but of course that would have terminated the project immediately, for obvious reasons). Others of course were listening to his rants, but it was as if a silent movie to me, his jerks and twists and convulsions and pas de deuxes and faux pases and tip-toes and twirling and stamping and pirouettes and whatever else is in ballet.
One misses a great deal when paying attention to what someone is saying, rather than watching what someone is doing.
We had a few conversations whenever he quit for a while (because of the sun and the heat), and came to sit on the front porch, or into the house, to cool off. I let him do most of the talking, and so by the time he left, he was convinced franksolich is one of the most interesting people to listen to.
I have no idea what he made of me, but I got the feeling I was as if an unusual specimen being closely examined. I have to say that I have a patch over the left eye, there are still some scars (but inevitably to fade, as in the past) left over from the Monday after the 4th of July, and there are new stitches, new red spots, where more had been taken off three weeks after that. Add to that, that my shorn hair reveals the unmistakeable absence of ears.
This too shall pass; it always has.
Like most people, he betrayed an intense curiosity about the missing ears, but was too polite to stare overmuch. It confuses people because the sides of the head show "beginnings" of ears, but then abruptly stop; half-formed ear-lobes much too small for the head.
He had heard that I am deaf, and like many of the patronizingly over-solicitous, had carried with him a pen-and-pad, prepared to write things down. Really, privately, I DO appreciate such a gesture, especially if a name or an address has to be gotten, by me, correctly, but for informal conversation and chitchattery, it's never necessary.
He told me much about growing up in New Delhi in an upper-class family, thus confirming my suspicions about the maharani primitive on Skins's island (Lioness Pryanka) being a spoiled rich kid whose family had prospered much under the British, and then later under the corrupt independent government of India; living in wealth and decadence over the broken backs of hundreds of millions of the Anonymous, the Forgotten, the Never-Seen.
I already knew this stuff, but it was nice to get it confirmed.....again.
Despite the excruciatingly high temperatures and the scorching sun, the Hindu professor seemed pretty mellow by the time he left.
