In Native California the winter was storytelling time 

Yesterday I was working most of the day with a breakdown in the system. 
Generator 1, Generator 2, old phased-out Generator 3,
the battery array, the big Trace inverter — solar panels —
they had all stopped — cold early morning in the dark — 
back to the old days, kerosene lamp — candles — wood stoves always work — 
the back up generator #3 Honda, cycles wrong? Tricking inverter relay that 
starts the bulk charge?
 
Big Green Onan — fueled by propane — wouldn’t start —
(one time turned out there was a clogged air cleaner; oil-drops blow back up 
from deep inside.) 

(I try to remember machinery can always be fixed — but be ready to give 
up the plans that were made for the day — go back to the manual — call up 
friends who know more — make some tea — relax with your tools and your 
problems, start enjoying the day.) 

First fifteen years we lived here, kerosene lamps. Heavy tile roof in the shade 
of a huge pre-contact black oak; 

Cheri, Siegfried’s long-time woman friend and partner, is due at any time 
with a 9-ton truck of 3/4 inch crushed rock. Wet dirt every winter eats up 
gravel, keeping a few hard roads for drenching winter rains and melting 
snows takes planning.        You have to ditch them too. 

In 1962 going all through Kyushu with Joanne, walked around Hiroshima. 
Busy streets and coffee shops, green leafy trees and gardens, a lively place. 
But at Mt. Aso, great caldera in the center of the island, crater 30 miles 
across, saw sightseers from Nagasaki with the twisted shiny scarred burn- 
faces of survivors from those days. And then read Barefoot Gen. 

What got to me about the Bomb was too much power. 
And then temptation there to be...the first. 

The first to be “The Emperor of the World.”
Yet to be done. So change our course around, or there we head. 

I could never be a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew because the Ten 
Commandments fall short of moral rigor. The Bible’s “Shalt not kill” 
leaves out the other realms of life. 

How could that be? What sort of world did they think this is?
With no account for all the wriggling feelers and the little fins, the spines, 
the slimy necks — eyes shiny in the night — paw prints in the snow.
 
And that other thing, can’t have “no other god before me” — like, 
profound anxiety of power and jealousy and envy,
what sort of god is that?
worrying all the time? 
Plenty of little gods are waiting to begin their practice and learn just who 
they are.
 
In North India, Fourth Century AD, some Buddhist Tantrick Teacher Lady 
said, “That God called Yahweh to the west, he’s really something. But too 
bad, he has this nutty thing that he’s
Creator of the World.” 
A delusion that could really set you back. 

But returning to energy. I’ll fix the Onan, give up on #3, it’s too far gone
and next time get a backup with a cast iron block and water cooling
and a warranty good for centuries — put in a bunch more panels for the sun — 

The old time people here in warm earth lodges thirty feet across 
burned pitchy pinewood slivers for their candles,
snow after snow for all those centuries before —
lodgefire light and pitchy slivers burning — 

don’t need much light        for stories in the night.