We discovered that we'd left two baked potatoes in the cold oven for over two weeks while we were away. Our houseguest, apparently not the culinary type, had failed to discover them, although he managed to "discover" an entire bottle of good tequila that my brother-in-law brought back from Mexico and gave to me as a Christmas present. Or he found the spuds and considered the possibility that they were some sort of perverse experiment before placing them carefully back in the oven. Either way, last night we pulled out a stained metal tray with two wrinkled and deflated leathery bags, like old scrota, still stuck through with metal spikes to speed up cooking. They hadn't molded or rotted in the dry warmth of the oven, but dried to the point of vegetable mummification.

Sure enough, when I smelled them, they bore the faint aroma of death. I knew this scent. While on my vacation, I happened to be in a graveyard where a section was being exhumed. The workers were off having a smoke, so I approached the translucent plastic screen around the site and peered through. The lids of the exhumed coffins were plainly visible, lined up close together. About five feet of earth had been removed; the coffins were exposed down to several inches below where the lids joined to the sides. The lids were scraped by the digging equipment but otherwise intact. That smell hung over the pit, unmistakable but not overpowering. Desiccated, like old dried rags, almost sweet, a smell I don't need memory to recognize. Old clothes in a dry summer attic, spilling out the confetti of rat turds when shaken. A smell like the opposite of scabs. Not nearly as bad as the imagination would have it.

Strange to hold that odor in my hands, on a metal tray, having unwittingly incubated it in my absence. It was like I'd somehow cooked up a delicate soufflé -- something so complex and subtle that I'd thought I could never prepare it at home. I had somehow managed, through ignorance and rushed inattentiveness, to recreate the breath of dry death using common household ingredients.

Furious

Life offers so many opportunities for anger, and society so few for its healthy expression. Sometimes I'm so pissed off, without knowing quite why, that I relish a guilt-free opportunity to lash out at the unfortunate someone who gives me a reason. Yesterday a telemarketer from Susan's old bank called at 9 a.m. and became bizarrely abusive when I told him she was unavailable and asked for his name and number. I guess he didn't like the idea that someone whose name, address, and financial records he could see pulsing on the screen in front of him might want to know his name. By the time I hung up, I was in a fury and vowing scorched-earth revenge. I proceeded to call various managerial types of the bank, ripping through one after another in an effort to discern my tormentor's name. That, above all, was what I wanted: to be afforded the sane prospect of knowing the name of the person who was violently unprofessional when he called, unprompted, on a Saturday morning. His name, had I repeated it to myself three times, might have closed the breech through which this pointless fury flowed out of me.

But I could not get the name. Seizing the opportunity to act like a dick before grace and intelligence prevailed, I vented some of my pent-up piss by sending emails to individuals and organizations which have irritated me recently:

• The sporting gun association that recently ran a double-page magazine ad that featured a rifle and the ludicrous headline "The very fact that it can be so dangerous is what makes it so safe."
• The administrative contact for a website that apparently copied some material off The Seven Deadly Sins for a page that referred visitors automatically to a porn site.

It can feel so delicious when someone gives you the excuse to unfurl your pirate flags and aim all canons at their flanks. Something tightly curled in you comes loose and stretches out its long limbs. Like love, it's capable of so many different things, so many expressions based on the object of its advances. It's like having a forest of animals living within you, each specialized through epochs of evolution to hunt in a precise way.

By noon, anger was growing frail and failing, seeking a quiet place in me to lie down and rest until again summoned. I went down the street to the Quaker meetinghouse, which was having a book fair. As near as I am to belonging to any religion is how close I am to being Quaker, having been dragged along to Sunday meetings every week during childhood. (Insiders know that the Quakers are more properly known as the Religious Society of Friends, or just "Friends." I find this appellation rather cultish, and thus tend to use the formal name, which is also recognized by most folks.) Of course, a fundamental tenet of the faith is pacifism, so I was feeling rather strayed and frayed from grace.

The book sale was held in the meeting room, where I've attended Sunday meetings now and again. I felt this place would be good for me to visit in my postcholeric condition. It's an unadorned and pleasantly still place, with simple wooden pews that converge on the center of the room. I believe the meeting room to be one of the more peaceful places closeby, and despite the fact that it wasn't being used for religious purposes at that particular moment, I felt its influence could only be positive.

On this day, books were laid out on all the pews, and a couple dozen folks ambled and browsed. In one doorway, a woman sang folk tunes accompanied by an autoharp. The sound filled the frail silence generated by people's contemplation of the books. I found the noise horrifying in the space that I associated with silent meeting. The autoharp is one of the most unfortunate musical inventions ever to spring from the human mind. To its grating, vaguely discordant saws, the woman sang "This Land is Your Land" before my mind shut down, the prospects for peace folding up like a board game being put away. I was neither angry nor at rest. In my internal forest, the pirana-pools had dried up, but the trees were shimmering with fluttery, agitated birds. Insects swirled among them and were devoured by clicking beaks. I seemed empty of herbivores, unable to savor the absolute stillness of spirit found in consuming the death-scent potato.