cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So Grow a Pair A&E wants to talk about me doing a show for them. Huh. Whatever. We'll see where that goes. I'm just terribly lonely most of the time. That French magazine reporter came to observe my class this past weekend and brought a photographer along. We went out for a drink on Saturday night and while she was interviewing me, some dude walked up to our table and said what a big fan is is of my work and write down the URL of his cousin's blog (why?) and handed it to me on a scrap of paper. That was a first. He did everything except ask for my autograph. I wonder if it will make it into the magazine article. It was good to do the interview and to teach the class. I felt very competent afterward. They all asked me many questions and I knew the answers to all of them and found that somehow I was a qualified expert on most of it. I was all that they needed to be. Expert, mentor, hero, provider. At the shooting range I only shot any rifles to make sure that they were set up properly and every time I did I shot bullseyes. The trick to looking good with a rifle is to smile and hand the rifle to someone else after making a perfect shot. Keep shooting and you'll eventually screw up and look human. When the deer arrived yesterday afternoon, I butchered it as cleanly and smoothly as ever. I realized at the time that I was making it look easier than I ever have before, doing more work with fewer and smoother strokes. I have the entire anatomy of every joint and every organ in my mind's eye in three dimensions now. I no longer teach so much by giving precise instructions, I found. I now give a few broad principles to follow, which when followed will naturally tend towards a successful job of it even if everything else is forgotten. Work close to the bone. Work from beneath the animal upwards, rather the other way around. Make a few long, smooth cuts rather than many halting cuts. Follow the muscle groups and the sinews and avoiding cutting through bone. Do these things and you will butcher your kill well. I only wish that I had such a complete understanding of this art when I was writing my first book. I don't have anyone to talk to, nobody to confide in. I just need a woman around very much. I keep getting this weird fan mail from total strangers. I don't know if I'm famous or not but I have all of these fans who write to me. Fans and journalists and all sorts of people but somehow very little of it seems to be translating into either money or company. How can I be this alone when I have all of these people clamoring for my attention? I'm sick of teaching the classes. Its exhausting and disruptive and incredibly stressful dealing with the logistics. The teaching part is all right but all of the rest of it is just too grueling. My students this past weekend were all men and I was disappointed with all but two of them. They were poor specimens and tended towards cowardice. Most of them agreed that in spite of having been taught to shoot a 3 inch circle at 150 yards, in spite of having been taught and tested on anatomy and natural history, in spite of having witnessed and participated in the skinning, gutting, quartering, butchering and cooking of a deer, they did not feel that they could actually accomplish the task on their own if they had to tomorrow. What. The. Fuck. They said that they felt like they needed to have someone help them with it a few times. You know who helped me with my first deer? Fucking nobody. I hunted, killed and butchered it on my own with nothing more at my disposal than a rifle and a knife. Were my cuts of meat especially pretty? No, but it was food and it was good and all was well. We ate it for the next month. You don't have to do it perfectly. Just do it. This is what I find so often lacking among my fellow men. The willingness to step off the fucking cliff and take a risk and be willing to maybe fuck up a little bit in the interest of getting somewhere. Butcher a deer. Build a house. Make a raft. Fix your truck. Quit the job that you hate. Grow a pair of balls already. Incidentally, I have never had a female student who was a disappointment. 11:10 p.m. - 2011-03-07 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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