Notes from a cold place, kept by hand
The physical life in a cold place — tools that have learned a hand, buildings that answer the weather, and food cooked with the heat you actually have.
The letter
The whole sequence on two pages — water, propane, food, pests, and the order to do them in. Free, and the only thing the letter ever asks for.
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The lanes
A tool learns a hand. Wear is a record, and most of what a house owns has been keeping one.
56 pieces
Buildings answer the weather. Read the winter off a roof pitch and the wind off the open side of a woodshed.
24 pieces
Cooking with the heat and the light you actually have. Hand measurement, long waits, and the unphotogenic middle.
27 pieces
Human-powered movement and old gear with a personality problem. The way back is always longer.
27 pieces
Feed stores, free boxes, garage sales at the last hour. Commerce at the scale where the cashier mentions the weather.
44 pieces
Souvenirs with no gift shop. What gets filed, and why worthless things are the safe ones to keep.
27 pieces
Two walls in one house: printed spam pinned up as insulation, and a grid of monitors running Dallas.
16 pieces
Recurring
Lately
Choosing a cantaloupe that isn't ready yet — smelling the stem end, pressing without bruising, guessing which day it turns from hard to gone.
Not Garbage Yet
A cracked bowl came off the table and went out to the bench, where it holds screws now. The crack means nothing to the work it does today.
Roadside Architecture
A bus shelter on a rural road. A roofed box with a bench, one pane gone, a schedule faded past reading. It waits even when no one does.
The boat left tied overnight, the hitch trusted to the wind and the dark, and the morning walk down to see if the knot kept its word.
Inventory by Local Emergency
The scratch tickets under the counter glass — the one thing in a practical store that sells hope instead of use.
Essay
Salt in the palm, flour until the dough stops arguing, oil until the pan shines but doesn't pool. Measuring by a hand that has made the mistakes already.
Pat lives where the winter is long enough to be an argument. These are short pieces about objects, buildings, weather, food, and the small competences that a cold place asks for — written from the thing itself rather than from a plan to be inspiring about it.
Nothing here is a tutorial. If a piece is useful it is because the object was, first.