Exciting Night

Must have been something I ate. I remember bits of dreams, sometimes, but about once a month I get one intact, a couple of pattern-dreams, perched on really bad scaffolding is one, and another always concerns being lost and walking endlessly. But last night this massive apocalyptic dream, everything, literally, falling apart, and me standing there, watching, flat affect, looking autistic. Woke up in a sweat. Never happened to me before. Get up early and fix a huge breakfast. I'm staff at the museum today, 1 to 5, but when it starts raining I head out, errands to run and then can read in a climate-controlled closed museum, a very good place to read. I sit in the Library for several hours, reading, go out back once an hour, watch the traffic and have a smoke. Beautiful Holly of the new tattoo drives by and flips a Queen Wave out her window, Howard is walking over from Covert's Furniture right then, says -who's that- -a waitress from the pub- I tell him -and the smartest of the lot-. I know that period should be inside the hyphen, but that's really not the way I read it. I do well with convention up to a certain point and then I completely lose it, a Deep South Democrat, Libertarian, Non-Religious but for the rituals I employ to actually write, person. One thing the dream was saying is that I'm don't do enough, I've got to keep after those weeds. I don't do much, but you have to remember, I don't make much money. Filthy lucre: don't make me quote Pound, XLV in The Cantos. One of my favorite poems, on the list of poems that I bookmark, so I don't have to search. It's a particularly good bookmark, I remember where it came from. There are hundreds of these Claymores, set about the house, set to explode memory; whenever I notice anything I mark it, habit, I might need to reference it again, and when I do remember, the floodgates open. What I thought I remembered. A spillway of useless knowledge or a vein of ore, I mine them equally. I'm what you might call an opportunistic miner, I tend toward the obvious, however counter-intuitive it might seem. However incorrect. Lord knows I was that yesterday, when I called D's attention to my side of the railing to watch the bobbing breasts of this bank employee. It's spring, I make no apology. Read more...

Record Growth

The conversation turned to kudzu. In Missip, on abandoned farms, it was rampant. The goats loved it. Introduced as cattle fodder because of very high protein, but it quickly grew up out of their reach. I'd drop trees that were covered with it and the goats would eat themselves silly. On the long driveway in to our place it was trying to cross the road (why did the kudzu cross the road?) and I could monitor growth, well over a foot a day. You could watch it grow, and those damned sweet gum trees, one of which, in front of the printshop, grew 16 feet in a year, poplar here, and sassafras give them a run. Young pines in Missip too, they were thick in some of the gullies. I was fond of bending them, saplings, to a specific angle (young trees, 4 inches) with a rope tied to a stake. Lasso the top (great fun) and pull them down, stand back with my pattern template and get a given batch the same, then use them for a bowed roof on a shed or barn, two years and I had 6 inch rafters. Built the pirogue on Cape Cod so I could scoot in on the tides, in a couple of inches of water, to some hidden and completely inaccessible places, transplanted blue mussels and oysters, did very well, harvesting mussels the next year and oysters the third. The spat are so small, a rock a foot square, couple of inches thick, would carry ten thousand. Which reminds me of that shallow fiord, wrong word, tidal inlet, on the Vineyard, McNamara's summer house, where I found an oyster bed that had not been harvested in 20 years. A bushel of singles in 15 minutes. Most people have never had all the oysters they thought they could eat, we made several people sick, too much of a good thing is possible. Thinking about my daughters and western Colorado, I've now been away longer than I was there. I was so sure I would die there, finish out my time. How things are constellated. Joking over cupcakes, saying good-bye to James, the volunteer, the best ever, the conversation drifts to relationships, and I realize the fact that I live alone sets me apart. Everyone wants to be in a relationship, even as they bitch about the mate, can't imagine not being in one. So I'm carrying that thought around, for the rest of the day, turning it this way and that. The way home, a few groceries, one frozen bag-o-shrimp but no one at the lake so I stop, walk over to the spillway. The beauty of this particular spot, and there's a picnic table there, is that you can't hear anything else unless it's very loud. It's a sound stage. Falling Water. It's a completely artificial construct, a man-made lake and a spillway, but it sounds just right. Like the Army Corp created a really good instrument. God bless them every one. I occasionally blow on a blade of grass and it makes a nice sound, mostly I fail at that too. I don't do reeds. You lick them or something worse, hold them on your tongue, I need another dictionary, I can make room, put the phone over there. When I achieve the ridge my work is done, I'm home, my work is done, I no longer compromise the most wayward thought, I specialize in wayward thoughts. Recursive. Listen to the mocking bird. Fucking Whippoorwill, jesus, man, they're killing me. Who could sleep with that din? I tried to run over three crows eating a squirrel but they flew, they're very good at what they do. Crow breast on toast, with gravy, ain't bad. What they thought they meant.

Tom

Listen, what you think I said
is probably right, concerned
salamanders or some other
reptile but what I really meant
was don't trust me.

I have to warn you, I'll lie. I'll say anything, I make things up. What you thought I meant. I make up mopping patterns. I'm not a threat, merely another crazy, bare that in mind.. I wouldn't trust me.

T. Read more...

Call Letters

Glenn has put me online, 'ridgeposts.blogspot.com' mostly because I can't add anyone to my list because I'm already virtual spam. We'll probably be expanding things. Of course we will, live free or die. You're assigned a thwart when you're born, from which to row, it's a combination of genetic shit and nurturing, maybe you play the piano, maybe it's soccer. There's a kinesthetic thing that happens, that might not be the word, or maybe I've misspelled the correct word, I know I don't mean kinetics. Whole day has been like that, trying to figure out what meant what. Several of you asked, and I feel delinquent in omitting detail: I use a Geer-Press Floor-Prince wringer and an 8 gallon Rubbermaid bucket on wheels for mopping. The main gallery is three bays, with columns, twenty foot bays, are, what, maybe 50 feet wide, I mop a 8 foot swath, and overlap, it goes without saying, overlap vertically too. You can't overlap too much. Smoking a cig on the sidewalk out the back door, waiting for D this morning, and I'm actually visualizing my mopping pattern. I went and got a jelly donut, from the lady that wears way too much makeup, thought I needed sugar. Wrong guess and it was a mess below the floodwall, we have to collect some pedestal stumps, we have things to display. All of you must see this show, Sara is keeping it open for two slots, stay at my house, I'll feed you dinner. I took a bag of really rancid pastries down for the ducks. I swear, there are times I could shoot a 59. I almost don't understand, then there's that ball lightning or whatever, a celestial event, something takes place, and I get it. What I thought I meant.

Tom

I took 'Mopping' under Grayson and he was the best, understood the chemistry of stains, used Club Soda a lot, and white vinegar, remember him sweeping his mop in that hook he used to sweep edges, a fucking grace note, elegant; I bow to his elegance, but he was a horny bastard. Would fuck the knot in a fence post if it was offered. Where's the point in that? Is everyone fucked up?. I think so. Had pause to think about this today, what was meant. But forgot what I was thinking about. Something. Read more...

Interiority

The Law Of Flat Surfaces had me buried. Up at dawn and I started right in. The new dictionaries needed a home on the Dictionary Table. I go through an 18 inch high pile of paper. Restack the other pile (I can live with one pile) as an all manuscript entity. A bag of stuff that needs shredding (one at the museum) and a large pile to recycle. On a roll I clean the table, set out the books that I use often, set the OED in a place where I only have to move one book to get to them. Webster's Second sets closed, the Lopez "Home Ground" on top of it, the two volumes of "Americanisms" on top of each other, the Random House, opened to the last word, spine again rested by opening onto "The Yale Shakespeare". So neat, so tidy. I put away twenty or thirty books. My system has gotten too chaotic. I need another bookcase, has to be in the second bedroom unless I clean out the studio, my store room, B's books are stored in there, but they only take up one wall, 25 boxes, and when he builds a library over at his place, they'll be room for even more expansion. Which will mean cleaning out the shed, which has been home, still is, to many different critters. If you need to clean out a shed, throw in a couple of firecrackers before you go in, critters all gone. Just scouted it out today, a fucking mess, need to do it, I've allowed the studio to become a tool room. Almost needs to be, for the hard-assed life-style where you never know what you're going to need, truthfully, the room is an insult to anyone not living alone in the woods, living on very little money, chainsaws, wrenches, boxes of bolts, cans of nails and screws, tools. Telling just how this room came to contain what it now contains is not my point, though it would be an interesting subject. FOUND, at the bottom of the pile, a piece of manuscript of mine I thought I had lost, when the computer fried and I was robbed. I read myself for hours today. It's pretty good, this rough draft I was working on, 5 or 6 years ago, I think I see what I was trying to do, now I just do it, work hard a different way and it's easier. Speaking of handles. Which Gary made sacred, as it should be.

"Tell Laura,
it was just a
scarlet tanager." Read more...

Bucket-Wringer

The Deputy looking through a catalog of cleaning and packing supplies was attracted to a bright yellow plastic Bucket-Wringer, I pointed out that our old metal one was fine by me and that I did the mopping. These little turf matters are always interesting. Waiting in D's office for him to him up a design project and pick up an old copy of Wooden Boat and there's a very good chart called, I love this, Percent Strength Reduction In A Beam Due To Knots. It was a good chart in terms of information but very elegant, took a while to learn to read it, but came away with the shocking information that a five and a half inch beam with a one to two inch knot near the center and in the center (not an edge knot) can reduce strength as much as 55%, 35% for an edge knot. Another thunder storm, no lightning, but I may have to go. Damn, wanted to write and this is the only way I can work anymore, on the screen, accreting mass. Leaves are inside out, dark early, stuff is growing at a frightening pace. Wrote that one book, "54 Views Of Lone Cone" using a tape recorder and nearly got arrested for rolling a cigaret when I pulled over to look up a word at a wide spot, in the unabridged I carried in the truck. But the transcription part was hell. I'm not even a decent typist and I'm easily distracted, which is fine, working this way. Distraction is my middle name. I get up twenty or thirty times, writing one of these paragraphs, and mumble incessantly. It's not pretty. I do things with my hands between words, flutter the fingers, playing notes on the air. I squirm. The seat of my writing chair is flaking, vinyl, need the orphan chair from the basement at the museum, it's Shit Brown, but not worn, and just like the one I have, vinyl over metal, pads on the arm-rests, uncomfortable seat. Explained to the Deputy today that I needed to be a little bit uncomfortable and maybe a little bit hungry, almost never dirty though, strangely. I often shave before I write, if I haven't that day, take a sponge bath. Go figure. I got up, just then, for another drink, rolled a smoke, then walking back over to my desk, sat down on my heels, asquat, and looked at the damned chair for several minutes, fifties modern, absolutely functional. Raining harder, might get me another day off though I need the hours to pay the bills. Still, I'd take the day off, given a choice. Which I may give, as is my nature. What's the word, benevolent, that might describe my position. I'm me after all, did any of you earn less than $13,300, as a Single Head Of Household, last year? Paying child support? I play this game close to the edge, I learned from a Tunisian, Janitor College, who could mop. He would sling his mop into corners, pulling back at just the right point, so that he kissed the baseboard. He was good, could have made the Big Leagues but he blew out his knee and ended up in Ironton, a back-up shortstop. I can't not invent, give me a clue. Significant information seems exchanged, what we thought we meant. Raining hard, I'd better go. Read more...

Holiday Storms

Weather alert. Storms arriving from the upper Mid-West tonight so I had to write early, hail and big winds, they're saying. Mahler on the radio and they interrupted with a warning. Ruined the symphony. I put the Bach Cello Suites on to erase the auditorial insult. African dominoes (or golf) is a slang term for shooting craps. I'd forgotten about calling 'shooters' (in marbles) agates. This new dictionary is wonderful, I really am just reading straight through which could take a while as it's a couple thousand pages, large pages, small type. Rereading Samuel Beckett's lovely little book on Proust "The artist is active, but negatively, shrinking from the nullity of extracircumferential phenomena, drawn in the the core of the eddy." Struck me strongely from several different directions. I had to take a walk. Watching the river so much this year, the swirl and eddy, the Wrack Show is all about eddies, what gets left behind when flood-waters recede, how the quote seemed to be exactly how I work, where these pieces come from, how my life is ordered. Something else I was reading, a quarterly review, don't remember which one, part of a line I remember, "...unexpected pausings and defeated climaxes...", an essay about Susan Glaspell I think. First thing this morning I rubbed and fried some pork loin chops, boneless and thin, five of them. Eat the first one with fried potatoes and shirred eggs with salsa, sour-dough toast. The second and third ones were really funny scenes. I only had this flattened loaf of sour-dough but I wanted a sandwich, so I cut a center slice in half, standard, but the chops are pretty large because I've flattened them, because I like to, to break the fibers, and I can cook them very fast that way, 4 minutes, so the meat over-hung the bread by an inch all around. They had been rubbed with a red chili mix and browned in butter and were wonderful but very messy. I ate them hunched over the island, reading out of the corner of my eye, trying to keep one hand clean to turn the pages. Life is difficult. The fourth and fifth ones I had with baked beans, the last of the last of the Colorado pintos that I 'doctored' as my dad would say, and a johnny cake, as I would call cornbread in a skillet on top of the stove. A fat tortilla. You got to have bread, or noodles, some green stuff you can learn about, kill a few animals, it happened everywhere. Suddenly you live in a town, buy bread, there's a blacksmith that makes hinges and a place you can buy lumber. The pressure is off, as long as you can make money, buy what's necessary, hire the sub-contractors to do what's necessary. I'd rather do everything myself, suffer the slings and arrows, and not go to town. I can project my needs, they're minimal, a place to sleep, I have a knife, I keep a sheet of plastic close. Read more...

Bath Ritual

Plenty of water from the recent rains so I fill the solar shower (five gallons) and put it on the bottom of the sheep-watering trough overturned in the morning. Mid-afternoon, after brush work, take the shower off, turn over the trough, dump the water and it's too hot. Add bath salts and agitate with a gallon of cool water. First outdoor bath of the season. Pull a kitchen chair close, shampoo, ashtray and a rolled smoke, an early drink, towel, a paperback Dashiell Hammett "Red Harvest" that I've only read a couple of times. Very still, with birds. The Piliated Woodpecker arrives and works the hickory tree. The Green Wall of summer is almost complete, I can't see my truck 150 feet down the driveway. Now, because of the work The Utah Kid did and shamed me into, the Wall starts 30 feet or more away; stage two of the firebreak is to keep all the brush cut so that grass will appear. This is a very cool thing, so fecund here that grass just appears, if you keep the brush cleared, like that in Missip too, but I had spent most of my life on sand or in western Colorado where grass was more problematic, if you wanted it, a lawn, for whatever reason. One of those moments with the sling-blade this morning. Caught a root (probably, not a rock) on a back-swing and knew I was going to hit my foot, managed to turn my foot out, so that I took the blow on the sole. When the neurons are firing time must be extended or something. How could I possibly have time to turn my foot? I did play baseball. As I think about it, I don't swing the blade very hard or fast, I know where it is, I had plenty of time. When I don't, and hurt myself, probably means I've slowed a notch, and shouldn't do that job that way anymore. Indicates. Strange phone conversation, I should never answer the phone, don't usually, but with my parents dying, certain days, I do, so I answered one today and knew I had a newbie in a different country, sounded Asian is all I could admit to, and I questioned him, about the weather, his family, what he ate, how it was cooked. I think he thought I was a spy. I was proud of my ability to bullshit, like an archer might be, or anybody that did anything, this makes no sense at all, but I was there, he saw the fucking woodpecker. Read more...

Different Fox

Came and got the apples. Maybe the male feeding her in the den. Female stays home until weaning. Remember starting to write a book, Cape Cod, winter, called "The Fox, The Girl, And The Honey" (a nice little Levi-Strauss triplet) and gave up the project because I was getting too abstract. Think I have the piece in a retired bookbag, maybe look for it tomorrow. Remember writing about the little white-phase fox on the ice. Wonder what I meant by 'too abstract'. The morning cutting brush, easy work sessions, inside, for equal amounts of time, drinking coffee and reading the wonderful Alphabetical Novel, great historical quotes, great cross references. I use a piece of card stock as a bookmark and note page numbers, a pencil dot on the page in question marks the spot, I'll print pages with key words and page numbers and put in the front of each volume, setting up a treasure hunt for myself. Need to rearrange the dictionary table and I have some problems. It's a six foot long thirty inch deep slab of sandstone on filing cabinets and it is large enough but I keep other things there too, the phones and books, and two piles of manuscripts and important stuff to be saved. Must eliminate the two piles and put in a shelf for the OED, maybe move The Yale Shakespeare, but I need it 10 or 12 times a year, and besides, use it to support the broken spine of The Random House Unabridged, which is the dictionary that is always open to the last word I looked up. The last time I was at B's, looking for the ashtray he keeps for guests, I noticed he had more dictionaries than I did, wow, I thought, what a ridge. Even with the power off, and Google too, we can look up almost anything. I got A Serbo-Croataion dictionary last week, at the Good-Will for 59 cents, I don't understand a word, but I like that I have it, you never know. Planning for the unperdictable is a challenge. But not one I shy from. Brash enough to imagine I might notch a 'save', count coup, put a feather in my cap (the subtext is triplets), or simply thinking ahead, talking about options, viewing the situation.

Country roads,
garbage mama,
take me home.

I have nothing against the memory of John Denver. Don't take that the wrong way. What I mean to say is that talent is never directly linked to success. I'm priviledged to read the best minds of my generation, blessed with a mind that can tell, usually, what is what, I think about things and look closely, it's a gift, ok, I try not to think about it, but it is, fucking gift, the universe, all that dark matter, what you meant. Read more...

Condition Report

Biggest headache on getting this Impressionism Show out, three weeks away, had been filling out the Condition Reports on all the paintings, but now a bigger headache, that we have to store the show for a month before the next place, State Gallery, in Columbus, can take it. They have no storage space and we have precious little. Clean and organize the big vault upstairs tomorrow, needs doing anyway. 63 paintings, might get half of them in the vault, probably close off one of the small galleries in the permanent collection. Logistics. 3.3 million in paintings, we can't just rent a storage shed. Remove hanging hardware, patch the walls, where the school show was. Can't remember the name of the blue paint on the wall we painted for the wine-tasting, need more, semi-gloss for the signage walls downstairs, the color of the day, D comes through, indicating cigaret break out back, I ask him, he doesn't remember either and we make up blue names for a few minutes, Utah Dawn, Whirlpool, Lover's Quarrel, Bad Sunglasses, Bruise, She Left, Dead Dog And Train, Suede Shoes, then D remembers, either Rain or Raindrop, probably Rain, have to ask the Deputy. Truck's in the shop, yes it's the lower ball joints, yes we can fix them, next week, $300, yes it's safe enough to drive, don't hit any big pot-holes and don't drive too fast. Thanks, I guess. Thank god it's trash day and I can clean the bathrooms, get the garbage out (12 stations), and mop. The Mop Master at Janitor College was a compact Hong Kong native, his politics were strange, as were the mantras he muttered as he executed a perfect six-foot herringbone with a 22 ounce cotton mop. His technique was as close to perfect as will ever exist, you wanted it to stay wet, so you could see the individual quills in every feathered stroke. I mop well, as good as I know, actually, but Dr, Tazi, was as far beyond me, as I am your average houseperson, the difference between amateur and professional. I do this for a living. So after the news about the truck, knowing I had dinner prepared, quitting time, I went below the floodwall, we need more stumps to use as pedestals. Interesting. There are people that fish for large catfish late at night, I see them rarely, but they leave a kind of camp, a set-up that I recognize: they find a stump, as seat, and a broken-off crotch to support the rod, they seem to drink and smoke a lot, and their seats are my pedestals. Who'd fucking eat a bottom feeder from this sewer? But I need their stumps. This sand-blasting thing could become important, what happens to the wood. I wish I had some control, but I don't. Read more...

Strange Day

Upset stomach. I'm sick so rarely that I don't recognize the symptoms until I barf in the kitchen sink. Maybe ate something bad, can't imagine what, the fact that I'll eat anything doesn't mean I'm not careful. Quiet time under the reading lamp, still, considering the nearly healed scratch on the right cornea, was probably not a good idea to read for eight hours, not only have a splitting headache but a panic attack about going blind. Headache partly because I forgot to eat because of the upset stomach, a hot moist cloth and a couple of Advil restore my sight, wonderful mid-afternoon meal of several rashers of bacon, fried polenta, three shirred eggs with enchilada sauce and salsa, half-a-loaf of toast. Get right back on that horse. I hold it down, and feel I've strangely lost a day. Didn't do anything that I intended to do, just played host to my body. Drank broth and read in Hakluyt's "English Voyages". Accomplished nothing outside a few cryptic notes that I can't read or don't make sense. I was thinking about what I wrote last night, I print a copy, usually, stack them to my right, as I face the screen, stage right, and often, as part of the routine, I read the last paragraph, posting, and wonder what I was thinking. Lila and I could never been paired. I found her morels suspect. Morals. Not that I was religious, but she crossed over several lines. Some Tantric Stuff you wouldn't believe, what was required. I'll never be that kind of slave again, unless something so bewitching came along, then I would be, sure, creature comforts are never to be diminished, a clean place to shave is a nice, a good, thing. Take every advantage. Soon, they'll be offering me a shower, and use of a washing machine. I'll retreat to a solar shower, wash off the dirt-of-the-day, something I'm secure about, from which I say what I do, whatever it is you think you hear, flip dirt from the cleats of my hiking boots. Read more...

Abutments

They've lost a lot of bridges hereabout, and as a consequence there are any number of old abutments visible from newer bridges. I love them, in their apparent solidity. B and D both share the passion, we point them out and squeal like kids, B is practically a docent, a tour guide of the massively concrete. D was over yesterday and we framed the Wrack Shed, a concise minimalist, or maybe post-minimalist structure, post, beamed and raftered with the absolute smallest number of pieces, just need purlings and the metal lid, maybe some bracing. We bolted the frame together and I need to add hurricane clips to hold the rafters down in high wind, always a consideration on the ridge top. Flying a roof on six posts is actually building a kite you don't want to fly. At Janitor College we used to raft the Upper Sabine to get under the bridge where the Interstate went over, talk about a set of abutments, which, of course, became shorthand for breasts, especially after Lila enrolled. Rich, attractive, petite, undergraduate degree from Sarah Lawrence, rebelling against super right-wing upper Westchester parents. What a trip she was. The first female sexual predator most of us had ever known. She regaled us with stories of large Polish sausages, cold Finns she had managed to thaw, a certain hot-spring in Colorado, where you could fuck in the outflow channel, rolling over and over, then throw yourself in the snow. She would occasionally walk into the common room at Clarence Hall and just point at one of the guys, turn around and walk out, he would follow. There was never laughter, at those times, just jealous glances. She was a good janitor too, wanted a job at MOMA, rise up through the ranks, become Artistic Director, thumb her nose at the parents, who flew out several times to try and lure her away, bless her heart, to no avail. She was also a reader, and my senior year, we got quite close (still in touch, she's at the Hermitage now), talked about books and life, and just often enough, we would make love, in exchange for my fixing her dinner, and collapse in a post-coital pile discussing probable questions on some final. Or the upcoming election, or whatever. We could talk. She was comfortable with me, and I don't know what this is, but most people are, comfortable with me. I think I don't threaten them, is what it is, because I'm generally non-threatening, mostly interested in getting food on the table and recording a few impressions. What I choose to remember, unless it's immediate, that Pileated Woodpecker that just flew into my sight, is subject to misremembering, what I think I remember. Still there is a core, a cord, of truth, in whatever I saw. I try to be specific, you know, genuine, authentic. Driving home today, a single crow buried itself in the tall grass, I guess they don't always appear in triplets, but I prefer them in threes. It's an abstract vector, but one I hold close to my heart. Where we simply go beyond. A golf-ball in the rough. A friend that builds funny hats. Listen, the Whippoorwills have already started, what are you going to pay attention to, the frogs and bats and flying squirrels, or the sound the wind makes in the trees? I get a mounded spoon-full of peanut butter and walk around, nothing makes any sense. Read more...

Jargon

Sections (of land) are numbered in a pattern that is boustrophedonic (turning like oxen pulling a plow, back and forth) but then surveying, generally, is arcane, rods and chains. I mean what kind of measurement is sixteen and a half feet, a rod, or 66 feet, a chain? Reading an essay on Installation Art, ran across the phrase "Post-Minimalist Procedural Candor" which dictates we see attachments and power cords. About which, as it happens, just recently, D and I had an argument. Your usual discussion between the Curator and the Janitor about what means what. Pretty sure I was correct about intent. Big windy day after morning rains, trees swinging through 40 degrees of arc. I hear a tree fall, NE of the house, down-slope, go out to investigate, a standing dead Chestnut Oak that broke off below the first branch and flattened the shinnery, took out the thicket, I'll need another path to harvest the firewood. Notice that I seasonally change the manner of my walk: if I need to be in the woods, late spring, summer, early fall, I walk with a heavy step, snakes are sensitive to vibration, whereas the rest of the year, and in my house, I tread lightly. Interesting, isn't it, that we know our own walk so well, that we can adjust for a new pair of shoes, thickness of sole. I have a habit of watching people walk, and when the light is right, you can clearly see there isn't much clearance between heel and ground. High-Heels are the Western equivalent to bound feet. At Janitor College we were a fairly Libertarian bunch, but one point of agreement was that High-Heels were the work of Satan, the pounds per square inch they brought to bear could destroy marble floors, hardwood was no barrier, they ate ceramic tiles for breakfast. The attraction, for whatever reason, is what happens to the lower leg muscles, it becomes sexy, and all is forgiven, that you can't walk, but the muscle definition is perfect. What constitutes perfect? In this case there are vague guidelines, what you like to see impressed over a general image, a kind of map, overlapping diagrams. It's information, you beat it in, one yolk at a time.

Tom

Listen, I'm not a simple guy, but I can pass,
talk the talk and walk the walk, the final
image for me, as we fade to black, is always
the next thing, where do we go from here? Read more...

Sling Blade

Yard work, equal sessions reading. Way too much coffee. Swales and swells. Sling blade slices through young green growth. Essays about the circus. Guy at Janitor College, from west Texas, called a thicket a shinnery. Whatever you call it I was in one today, getting a few last morels, don't know how I got in, but when I stood up I was surrounded by canes and vines. Down a north slope, beyond the graveyard, a kind of terrace there that might qualify as a hanging bog. I'd call it one, "a water-saturated terrace located partway up a wooded hillside." Not that I feel bad physically, but all day bothered by the notion of something and therefore set off on the day in an abstract vector. When cutting blackberry canes with a sling blade you must provide a good follow-through and hold the pose at the end of same until the canes fall to earth, if you swing back, as is the tendency, you stand the chance of raking the canes across yourself. I only made the mistake once but managed to scar a cornea, thus the morel hunt. I always carry clippers in the woods, so I managed to get out without tearing clothes. First rattlesnake of the season, coiled in the depression above some Blevins child in the graveyard. I stamp my feet going past him, he was slow and didn't move much, cold last night, reptiles up late, drinking around a bonfire, he seems hungover. Like me, but I'm not, so I cut him some slack, don't kill him and eat him and tan his hide. I hate snakes, I have to admit, not because I'm afraid they'll kill me, but because they have often shocked me, scared-me-in-the-moment, that sudden sinuous movement. I have a history with snakes, anyone who has lived in the woods for decades has a history with snakes, they're part of the landscape, like the fox and the chipmunk. Enough morels for an omelet and creamed on toast. Probably the last. I lick the plate. I like this, the way it plays out, the end game:

Three crows,
nothing unusual,
never mind. Read more...

Late

Waxing moon
late spring, cold,
the frogs are quiet.

Late spring,
waxing moon,
the frogs.

The frogs,
late spring,
waxing moon.

Plop. The wind and the water. What you hear. What you think you hear. The moon is just outside my writing window. I can almost see clearly but the trees are in the way, definition is lost in new leaves. What I think I see, an imagined crow on an imagined branch, nothing is what it seems. I wish I could talk about this with Harvey but he offed himself and deprived me of the chance. Life, it seems, is about the living, the dead are a footnote, steps along the way. Basho, at the end, 1694:

deepening autumn:
the man next door,
what does he do?

And a particular favorite, at the very end:

Written during illness

Ill on a journey:
my dreams roam (a)round
over withered fields.
Read more...

Deranged Drainages

After days of rain
the spillway
is thunderous.

Revetments are designed to protect banks, but they are, sadly, under water now. A quiet day reading essays on Geography, a dozen trips to the dictionaries, twice to the encyclopedia, an inordinate amount of time looking for books I know I own but can't find. First shoots of poke, I fry with breakfast #1, they're mostly white, just a pale green on top, emerging from the ground so quickly, like what the French do with asparagus, pre-blanching. It is tender and not at all bitter. Yesterday morning, in town, I had forgotten, the smell of ramps was strong, probably wafting over the Ohio from Kentucky but maybe just Damon's cooking onions, that deep-fried flowered thing they are infamous for. An over-turned oak I stopped to examine, on a foray out to the graveyard in a lull, was a text-book Tree Tip Pit, I remembered Gretel Ehrlich's definition from "Home Ground", 'the wonderful hole a shallow-rooted tree makes when it tips over', the substrate revealed, where the sow bear might dig grubs while the cubs frolic on the bank of dirt pushed up on the downslope side. Almost everything has a name. If I had ever had a son I might have named him Tree Tip Pit, naming is important. A day like this, so many things whirl through my brain, I don't have enough bookmarks, I start using strips of paper-towel to mark particular passages. Knowing I can't keep track. Later, when I fold back the pages, they mean nothing, I remember nothing, nothing is the rule of the day. What can be folded, my relationship with you. I wander about, keeping time. The beat. I dive into a limestone cavern to discover why a limestone cave collapsed. Nothing if not local. We call things different names, depending where we live: a pone, whatever, name things; almost an internal monolog, but we spill into the common referent, whatever it's called. The natural world. Nature. What I thought I saw.

What I heard a minor bunting,
be still my heart,
that rarest of birds. Read more...

Steady Rain

Saturated again, lowlands flooded, rain for the next five days. Well stocked at the house, but as Thursday is Janitor Day at the museum I get a few more things, an extra bottle of whiskey, bag of shredded frozen potatoes so I can eat breakfast several times a day, loaf of sliced wheat, for grilled cheese and tomato soup breaks; back up easily in 4-wheel drive but it will be a Nantucket Sleigh Ride down. Easy enough day at the museum, no one bothers the guy cleaning toilets. We break out the ten foot ladder and enact a repair, paint releasing where wall meets ceiling in the stair-well, but as we haven't found the leak, we know what we do is temporary. We think we know where the problem is but need several dry days to clean out and recaulk the joint, failed, where the EPDM roof membrane goes up a few feet on a brick wall and is capped with a shaped metal trim piece, which is caulked into a grout joint on the wall. Awful mess. I was mopping the main gallery when Bev called me over to take a hillbilly couple up to the High School Art Show, their son's girlfriend had won an Honorable Mention, so I walked them through the Impressionism Show, I swear, wheeling my mop bucket. Felt good. Man of the people. There was a guy at Janitor College, Ambrose Decalion, we all called him Dimwit, he had to take Mopping twice, never could get the mop-head where he wanted it to go. We used to joke that probably spoke volumes about his love life. College can be cruel. But so can life.

Spring rain
on the metal roof
sounds like Bach.

He had to take a night janitor job, he was just too stupid to put out in public, and there is a line here, we studied in Hermeneutics, what might best be called "putting the best foot forward", first impressions are important (maybe, we could sidebar here, but I'm on the clock) and you don't want a Dimwit interfacing as your first contact. I'm good at first contact, I control the ground floor; I've noticed that no one is ever upset with me, there are implications my opinions are worth consideration. I knew Slippery Elm was used for spit balls, the first thing I thought of, I clipped a branch, gummed my fingers, and threw a wicked slow pitch that god couldn't hit, on his best day. It's that bad. Or good. The thought-trains rumble through my brain. I have the thought, wonder, do I know anything? Probably not, the crows certainly exhibit more knowledge than what I possess. I defer to your greater sense of understanding, what is meant. I lost some lines here, technical error, they would have tied this to that, you'd see. You don't miss a trick. What is meant. Hard rain, more like Miles Davis. Read more...

Expansive Prospect

Perfect rainy day off and two new books of Basho. Mid-afternoon the impossibly cute female Ranger comes by, drops off some indentification booklets on local flora and fauna, plus cd's of local bird song. She identifies the tree B and I were perplexed about, a Slippery Elm, says the cambium makes a nutritious stew, like oatmeal, also the lozenges, which I knew about from my opera days, as all the singers swore by them for sore throats, says not to use the leaves as toilet paper, give you a rash. Noted. I rarely use leaves anymore. Wonderful, rich, fecund smell of spring, a musk of rotting forest litter. Find maybe the last few morels, sliced, browned in butter, a bit of cream added off the heat, on toast. I don't have an adjective for how good they are. I would only share these with someone I loved. Spring, of course. Wondered why I kept thinking about cooking a meal for and talking with a woman. Talking with The Impossibly Cute Female Ranger I was a little flustered and I talk well usually, with anyone: Opera Stars, Nobel Laureates, other janitors, hog farmers, oystermen, rock stars, orthopedic surgeons, college professors (a particular specialty, as many of my friends are), babies, and the elderly. I seem gregarious, witty, can talk on any subject, even if I know nothing about it. At Janitor College there was actually a course, mandated by The State Division of Industrial Compliance, which implied a National Association (which might not be a bad job, working for, like I know there is a Fenestration Council out there somewhere, because there is a sticker on new windows, graded by them, and I'd like to have that job, too), I can't remember the title exactly and don't feel like rummaging through boxes, but it was a class devoted to the art of asking questions that sounded stupid, but, really, cut to the heart of the matter. Appear dumb. A mop is a good prop here. Rosco was a master at looking stupid, and would say the damnest things. Politically incorrect, immodest, ugly, and they were somehow germane, more than that, they were precise, to whatever was at hand. Two Basho poems I have to share with you, no commentary.

a wayfaring crow:
its old nest has become
a plum tree

and

slowly spring
is taking shape:
moon and plum

Thrills me just copying them. I've known a lot of poets, spend most of my time with them, when I'm not alone, exerting a kind of control, only in my own house, where I smoke and curse freely, over the direction of conversation, amazed, really, that anyone would put up with me, a laborious dead-end. He ended up a janitor? Go figure.

Om, no, Tom.
Read more...

Cincy Trip

Down early, to load art and transport, and there are books in the mailbox. Stop at the lake and tear them open, two volumes of Basho, nearly complete poetry, and prose. I must do yard work, I must do yard work. Town. Get a rental van, take out the back seats, load Tony L.'s electronic installation pieces, both starved so we get breakfast sandwiches and large coffees, hit the road, 20 miles or so and I ask D to pull over at the Sandy Springs picnic table and out-house rest stop. Place has gone to hell, cut-back on maintenance, had to pee in the bushes as the out house was disgusting, needed a coke bottle, to use as ashtray and there are about 300 to choose from, the dumpster is overflowing big time and surrounded by dead tires. Whoever cleans is seriously janitorially challenged. We talk about the Wrack Show, we talk about the shed, we talk about Basho. One minor mistake getting the Tony's, no big deal, unload, have a smoke and chat for five minutes, then off, seaching for a Harbor Freight store, which isn't where Map Quest said it was, in fact Beechmont becomes Rt.125 and we are on our way home, cut back over the Rt. 52 at Ripley, driving, for just a few miles, on roads neither of us have ever traveled. Wanted to pick up a sand-blaster but we can order and ship because we got the information we needed from Tony. Very soon I'll be sand-blasting river stumps, a dream of mine for 10 years. Sand-blasting wood is fantastic, they way you can blow off sapwood and get to the heart, reveal the character of the grain, I need to get more stumps. We blow off lunch, get back to the museum, reseat the van, leave a little early. I'd bought groceries this morning, including a bag of beet and sweet potato chips, nothing added, picked up a footer at the Dari-Bar and stopped at the lake to eat and watch the ducks. That way, I thought, I could transition from the world to the ridge without too much of a jump, and get right to writing. Last couple of bites, of course, a small pick-up truck with six large guys pulls up, four in the back, two in the cab, already slinging beer cans, I leave, the mood destroyed. Still, when I enter the forest, just beyond Booby's sawmill, there is a certain peace. I stop for a confused Turkey Vulture, the canopy is nearing complete, escape is not obvious, this is the fourth vulture today, the opossums have been stupid again. Coming up the driveway, 1st gear, four-wheel high, radio off, listening to the suspension squeak, the accumulated dust. This is the way the world ends, dirty corners, I would have gotten to it, you know, if that earthquake hadn't struck, but I live on a fault, part of the equation, where you choose to live, what you choose to gamble, it's a serious and convoluted gambit, the Janitor allows insight:

The iris,
lovely, takes my
breath away.
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After Thought

Black gelding with white front pasterns. Nice gait. Had to truck out to the Marina Mart, nearest place to buy cigaret papers, odd place, very religious, sacred junk for sale, Mary on a key chain, little picture of the white Jesus with those eyes that follow you wherever you go. Have to buy a pouch of Bugler to get papers, as it's a sin to sell papers alone, drug paraphernalia. God, I hate proselytizing, it's such a bore. Got out my pocketknife, slit the package open and removed the papers, left the tobacco on the counter. Stop on the way home and watch the lovely horse for a few minutes. My tenses slide under the weight of memory. Cold wet morning, windy, but some yard work in the afternoon. If you see The Utah Kid tell him his lesson took. Some reading. Rosco's funeral was with full honors, cremated with the day's garbage, ashes dumped off the bridge that spans Thrash Creek right where the outflow flows from the College Treatment Plant. It's a really nice spot, actually. The Chemistry Department had several large pyrex stills and our moonshine was legendary, we had our own cooperage, we had our stands of oak trees, we charred barrels, used them once for sherry, then aged the shine in them. After his service we all got shit-faced, the entire school, and there was not a problem until the impromptu fireworks show. For the local cops, we were off-limits, a land-grant, we had our own cops, retired janitors who understood our behavior better than some young buck with a brush cut. But that night the local cops moved in, our retired janitors couldn't stop them. Several other people died, that little Albanian guy, nobody ever spoke to him, he smelled really bad, and one of our women, at that time a small percentage, Bertha, who's breasts were so large and solid that she was actually probably responsible for Rosco's death, because she had shattered both his eardrums, demanded he bury his head there. Listen, I like to think I would allow anything, but my life belies that, I seem to have certain standards, what's not allowed, I'll bore you with a list: trash, in any form, long poses, remembering anything, any pet, tattoes, a specific mushroom. Read more...

Rain Day

Severe storms, tornado warning in Kentucky, ground is saturated, again, and the leaves are inside out. Want to just write all day but too much lightning, so I read and make some notes. More "Seven Pillars...", then the Best Short Stories 1993, then some essays in the New York Review of Books. Maybe the last morel omelet for late breakfast, way too much coffee, early dinner of Pulled Chicken Thigh Green Chili. Storm warnings lift at 5:12, though still raining. It was on a September day much like this, the Fall I was a Junior at Janitor College, at 5:12 PM, we got word that a classmate had died, Olaf Kellervo, killed by a sugar beet. Another huge fucker, but the sweetest guy you'd ever know, he had gone over to the UP to get a load of mushrooms, some magic mushrooms, but mostly a large haul of Agaricus Augustus, 'The Prince', the most prized of the whole agaricus family, and around the old white pine stumps in the UP, because of late summer rains, there were hundreds of pounds of mushrooms. The Upper Peninsula is stingy in most things, since she was raped, but she does produce some fine mushrooms (deep-fried battered dill pickles, smoked white fish, bad coffee) and Olaf, we called him Rosco, because there was a beautiful toilet, in the museum, a wooden, lined, water tank that mounted to the wall, with a pull chain, and a lovely seat with surround, and Olaf could just reach up and take the tank off the wall for cleaning, so he became Rosco because the toilet was a Rosco. You never know how these things are going to happen. I was mostly known as Birdbrain. So Rosco was on a mushroom run, we could piece together the trip from certain stops he always made, he adored roadside food, a trip with him was the seventh circle of hell, he stopped at any place that sold food of any sort, so mostly he did these trips alone; he liked to drive fast, he drove a '56 Ford convertible and the sun had come out, after many days of rain, and he had lowered the top. He was following a farm truck loaded with sugar beets heading to the factory, a serious business there, then, running 24/7 during harvest, probably still, I don't know, can't keep up with everything, and a really large beet bounced off the truck, a pot-hole on Rt. 2, I can still see it today, what I imagine must have happened, he wanted to pass and had gotten too close. The witnesses, two families in motor homes, traveling next behind, east and west, were close, and in agreement that a big sugar beet bounced off the truck and struck the driver in the head. He was dead before he hit the abutment. Cleaning Operating Rooms is a good test. What do you do with that? Pieces of skull, hank of hair, what I thought you meant. I'm not looking for compromise, I'm more than willing to be sacrificed, but Rosco was down. I collected his body bag, dug his hole, sand-blasted his tombstone in granite, hauled from Vermont, and that was the end of that, until tonight, until I remembered. Read more...

Food Thoughts

Actually D is ready to curate and he'll be good at it, Sara needs to take time off and she has groomed him well, the next couple of years at the museum should be fun. Took the day off, sipped sun-tea and read Basho, then rereading sections of T. E. Lawrence, "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom". Watching a cooking show at lunch (morel omelet with salsa, potato wedges, sour-dough toast with pepper jam) and veering off from a dish they cooked, "America's Test Kitchen" (cable or dish would kill me, I'd watch cooking shows and the History Channel a lot) spent the afternoon making a very nice chili with chicken thighs, green enchilada sauce, and several very good reconstituted dried chilis Jana had sent from NYC. Onions, garlic, cumin, thickened with a cup of cooked and food-processed pintos. Rubbed and browned the thighs, then started adding things, leftover white wine to thin it a bit at the beginning, took the thighs out after a while and pulled the meat apart, so this would be a Pulled Chicken Thigh Green Chili. It is excellent, never had anything quite like it; later in the season I'll add some Tomatillos. Had some sour cream, so a scoop of that, and a little lime juice. Next winter I'll bake cornbread sticks to go with it. People will die. I was going to make some horseradish dressed coleslaw to go with, but I just forgot, drinking a cheap but robust Shiraz. In the late fall this would be a very seductive meal, speaking of which, I don't know enough about artichokes, must research artichokes: there is a monster globular variety at the market now and it scares me. I mention it because I find eating artichokes sexy. I'm not a control freak, you can ask anyone who's ever worked with me, I'm, like, the easiest person in the world to work with; I don't like waves, which makes me a partical guy, right, words rather than music. That's not what I mean, it's close, but not exactly, I don't split hairs near as well as B, though I am a damned good janitor, mandate me to a section of dirty floor, and it's as good as cleaned, I deal with shit as a matter of course. Basho

Boozy on blossom -
dark rice
white sake.
Read more...

Reception

Cleaning up after the High School Art Show Reception and four of us are around the kitchen trolley, squabbling for petit fours and some really good little chocolate things. Like none of us had breakfast and we were starved. Sharee, the organizer, catches us with our mouths full, we all deny eating anything, with crumbs falling to the floor. I actually said today, in some context, -there is no reason to not deny what can't possibly be true- which really confused the issue, whatever it was. I tend to keep track of lines and forget the context. Thunder. I'll just print and save, couldn't wait to get home and write, I've got a pencil and paper as back-up here somewhere. I'm so old, I use to write long letters by hand, now I cramp if I write much more than my name. Handwriting, generally has lapsed into an arcane art, what passes is what we used to joke about on Doctor's prescription pads, scrawl. Still, there is no denying how fucking convenient it is working on my Black Dell, even with my limited skills, that I can work the way I do, is a constant amazement to me. The number of changes I make, writing one of these paragraphs, is staggering, hundreds, in order to make it sound natural, and I can do that, and drink and smoke, and end up with fair copy. A lot of the difficulties, achieving Fair Copy, are eliminated. You can edit without retyping. And the timing, for me was perfect, Marilyn had bought me a computer, my first, Christmas, then in February, asked me to leave. So I first started writing on a computer 12 years ago, and my time is structured completely differently now, I can stop, anytime, for however long, and watch or do whatever I want. Almost too much freedom, and it got to me at first, but the secret is to just stay focused: I think this rain will produce a last flush of morels, Shane thinks they're over. It's not a competition but I'd like to eat some more. Rain is falling so hard it sets up a harmonic, the metal roof is loud, I'm driven to distraction. I'd like to point a finger, but it's not my place, I do, after all, only control that place that is at the bottom of anyone's pecking order. The Division Of Industrial Compliance, that the boilers worked and the floors were clean, not a complaint, I'm so cool with this I could do it in my sleep. What was so cool was the meeting of the minds, I'm sorry Pegi wasn't there, but these things are not predictable, they happen, this afternoon, just before closing, one of those moments; we were way deep into planning, several layers, Sara was annointing D, I think he's full of shit and way too wide in the beam. Lardass. I know my opinion means nothing, still, I have to say something, what I thought I was seeing.
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Three Crows

Way home stopped at the lake, light rain, no one there. Visit the spillway and watch the weight of water. Walking back to the truck I notice a disturbance in the eating shelter (I'm sure they have a name) and there are three crows cleaning up after the last picnic. I feel a certain affinity, go over to watch their technique. They squawk at me but are soon back to business, a diet of bread and potato chips as far as I can tell. Finally the head bird jumps up on one of the tables, does that jerky head thing and caws what must be the signal to go across the narrow band of water and check out the eating shelter over there, which they do, and find something, I go back to the truck for binocs and yes, it is a package with a couple of hot dogs still extant. The scene gets interesting. Two hot dogs, three crows. A crow cannot take flight with a whole hot dog, so the battle is afoot. Excellent viewing with the glasses, I like the way they frame the shots. Finally get home and decide to park at the bottom of the driveway, walk up in the rain. Excellent choice. Morels and another small steak, nice salad with feta. That mere mortals should eat thus. I could have drank the last Ridge Zin, but I'm saving it against an imagined guest. Besides, it would have been too much, my favorite wine and a meal for which to die. Trying to remember a Grateful Dead lyric, right on the tip of my brain, life is all curves, my girls sent me the Complete Annotated Lyrics but if I went to find it, I would be lost. I'll stick with you. Once I establish the connection, I'm afraid to put it on hold, minimize and look something up, what I do is call someone, usually Glenn, and ask for a particular piece of information. Being apparently good is all about contacts. The number of things I know how to do, and the number is probably large, by whatever standards, is still finite, BUT I have an infinite resource pool to draw on. My business card says only 'The Impossible Takes Longer' and a phone number. It's not even my phone number, I made it up, but I still get calls, where's that at? GPS? And listening to the crows, as if they were Bach, and they are, the boundaries shift, how we inhabit our bodies, what we pay attention to. The crows, this winter, were amazing, they touched all the bases, I'm not sure I see things in the same light, you know, previously. What I thought I said. Did I mention the crows?
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Gleaning

My friend Kim, in Tallahassee, collects bricks and copper and anything else of use from construction site dumpsters. He works a main-frame job but hates waste, uses the significant profits from his dumpster diving to finance his cast iron habit. At the University Foundry they recycle old sinks and tubs, but you need to add in some clean pure stuff, so he has to buy some ingots on occasion, pays for them with copper. Metal for metal. Cool exchange. D loaned me a quarter today (exact change for coffee is important at the pub if Hollie is on duty, because we're in a hurry) which will blossom into a dollar by Thursday: the bastard, he cheats me out of petty change, gleaning me blind. "To gather what is left by reapers" is the final definition of GLEAN in the 1st Random House Unabridged, god do I need a new dictionary, maybe the income tax refund. On the drive into work I stopped in the middle of Mackletree to try and figure out what the fuck a particular squirrel was doing. I'm sure it's the road salt, I tasted some. How did they learn that? At Janitor School there was a guy from Latvia, Janis Rainis, named for a writer I never got around to, so many of them, and I read fast; he never bought a drink and was drinking all the time. How good is that? (He could tell a story, lied like a sailor.) Glean is also what you take from a particular place, the gleaning, what you do with it. I do very little, examine words, my usefulness, what I might be worth. Power out, got to go. Up early this morning, out with a mug of coffee, find enough morels for a breakfast omelet and to saute with a steak for dinner. Good way to start the day, nail down the menu. Town with a list, laundromat, library, Kroger, lunch with D at the pub, oil-change, stop at the tire place and line up two new tires for tomorrow morning, then below the floodwall and down on the first terrace scouting posts for the installation. Nearly take a fall in the slick overbank deposit of silt, lubricated mud, slimy with hydrocarbons. Need a golf club, as summer walking stick, finding so many golf balls, a chipping wedge would be nice. Never played golf except for one round in Utah, at the height of my post-divorce what most people would call depression that I remember as being just dumb, sad, remorseful times. But I did inherit those genes that make you want to hit small balls with sticks. Janis, before I forget, was a big guy, and his left eye was glass, a penalty he swore was from looking through a knot-hole at his older brother having his way with a milk-maid; Janis ejaculated, let out a squeak and the milk-maid stabbed him in the eye with a hat pin. He told the story well. I remember nuanced variations in his tellings. We all do this, but with him, it was an art, granted him free booze in a competitive environment. That glass eye, every major function, ended up in someone's soup; still, they couldn't get rid of him, at 23 or 24 he had published the definitive text on Cobweb Removal in all the major mags, a giant by any standards, could weave string theory into cleaning corners. Brilliant in the field but had no sense of propriety, sacked from several jobs for touching. Just because you're Latvian doesn't mean you can, it only means they like your accent. Could be true of me, I suppose, but I offer in my defense a humble tale Janis often told: there was this farmer, he had several different daughters from several different mothers, all left with him, which is a testament to something, and he was looking for suitors, beating the bushes, hoping for something to happen. A pale-skinned guy from the East arrives, looking clean and well-shaved, might as well trust him, whatever he stamps in the snow, goodwill. Turns out he was the devil and there was hell to pay. You probably had to be there, it was a very funny story. Thunder storms, I'd better go. With morels, it's mostly a texture thing, like squid, an earthy background taste (or salty) and then it's gone. Ethereal. Ephemeral. Mushroom breath in the morning. Brush and floss. Took two days to get there, but it sounds right, correct, really, it's all I have to go by, what I do. Love your Iris.
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Footers

We did the foundation points for the wrack shed today, six footers, a bag of concrete each, with a piece of rebar in the middle, which, by drilling a hole in the center of each post is our primary attachment, doesn't seem like enough, but when you think about it, when the wind is blowing strong the posts are bending, slightly, and friction becomes an issue. When you float a roof on six posts you are building a kite, I'm not an engineer, but feel that if I 'hurricane clip' everything together it has a certain mass, and friction figures in my ersatz conception as imagined. I've run some numbers, though I wouldn't trust my math, I'd love to know, really, how many gallons of water flow over the spillway, any specific spillway, per inch per linear foot. I just want to know. I know what a great many things weigh. You might consider it useless knowledge. You might be right, or at least correct. I lose track, living alone, as I do, can't account for large tracks of time. I must have been doing something, probably reading, even cutting back, in the interest of yard work and wrack shed, I read for four hours a day, and it seems perfectly natural., as does most everything else I do. I strive toward the natural though it means a significant decrease in earnings. Really, I have to make more money, I need to finish my house, I have books to write, and yet, now, I allow myself to be sucked into an installation. Go figure. I thought I understood this drainage, but Jenny set me straight, I knew nothing, less than that, less than nothing, how is that even possible? D had never had something come out on the same foot, no left-over concrete, but he did a decent samba. I'd vote him in. I'm blessed with you, someone i can talk to, what more could anyone ask?
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No Moonshine

But there was some brandy and good company. Ronnie played the trumpet, softly, some old jazz, and it sounded good. B had soaked the loin in red wine, and, sliced across the grain, it was wonderful. Boiled new potatoes with cauliflower and broccoli, a great fresh-made apple sauce; that as a nod to clean-up, I ate off everyone's plate; an apple a day, man, knowing B, probably Yellow Delicious, he would never bend to Gala or Granny Smith, -apples- he would argue, -should be local.- We've had this 'authenic' argument so many times, what is meant. I can't even bring myself up to speed. I flop, flip, whatever, tend to view things from too many angles. Reading some Dead lyrics today, I was struck with how often they morph into something else, a metaphor for something hot and steamy, what you think you meant. I stood proud, just reading clues, and was at a loss, this degree of family, I meant to say, must mean something, the way they interact so smoothly, like a well-rehearsed bit, done before the curtain, in plain sight. I'm in awe. I never would have imagined we could, do whatever. I work for coffee and cakes, the position I find myself in, what
we do, janitors of the world unite.
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No Subject

The green wall advances. Rain all morning and I harvest water, take a bath, wash hair, shave; then a huge breakfast, bacon, potatoes, morel and shallot omelet, toast. Read Turin's descriptions of scents, chase down some definitions. -Nothing raises false hopes in a human being like one good cantaloupe.- Anonymous. Read several essays on Dendritic Drainage. Rain put out the wildfire in Kentucky, thank the gods, the smell of a fire in the woods was driving me crazy. Yard work tomorrow, couple of hours anyway, then early dinner over at B's, his turn to host the family Sunday Dinner. He's cooking a whole cured pork loin. We discussed it a couple of times, I'd smear with an herbed butter, cook in foil, off the heat, for a couple of hours, he doesn't use butter (I might use bacon fat, herbed bacon fat, what a concept) but did agree some lubricant might be a good idea, as his wonderful home-cure removes all moisture from the loin. Usually we fry slices of this cured meat. Both with long experience and a deep love for this particular product, it's always fried in slices, cooking a whole one is a different kettle of fish. Be good to see that whole family together, a very cool dynamic thing, everybody giving everybody a line of talk. Southern. The focus on food and counting coup in a friendly and off-hand manner. My intention is to get home before dark and write, but if somebody has a jug of moonshine, plans could change. I try to stay flexible. Also, I don't drink and walk outside my house, I know everything in the dark, and can navigate unknown shoals by the way the surface looks. And did I mention facile, had the thought that I'd gotten quite facile, Glenn's algorithm that if you worked at anything for three hours a day for ten years you'd get better, and I have. This is the instrument I never learned to play, what I mean, you are my family, my readers, all that matters to me, stronger than blood. Not to diminish blood, hey, I've read "Hamlet" a great many times but I keep getting sidetracked, sub-plot, sub-text, I flounder, no, founder, like a fish out of water. Whatever that state is. Where you flop around and die.

Tom

Avoiding the limp
celery is a chore
but better than nothing.
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Ramps

On the drive to work, down near the river, there is a place that always smells of onions. No room to pull over so I've never stopped and looked. Speaking of nowhere to park, there's a ring of wrack, like a huge bathtub, several hundred feet long and maybe twenty feet wide, against the berm for the bridge approach going over to Kentucky. There is no place even a goodly hike away, to park. I'd rather get down there than go to New Zealand, go anywhere, I'm tired of going, I'm in more of a being phase. There's a traffic light, where I approach the 2nd St. Bridge, that has me looking at right down at the wrack, I can identify some things. It's at the edge of a Boone Coleman field, a flood plain where he gets paid for crop failure. A neat trick. Probably some sort of farm access. Must get the Deputy to get me permission to get in there from below. Need several trucks. This could be the motherlode. Pollen on the lake is thick enough to form large swirling masses. The ducks leave trails. I fed them the last of the turkey sandwiches. Found just enough morels, in thirty minutes before dinner, to saute in butter and have with a lovely little remaindered Rib-Eye steak, a salad, heaven. Drank part of a bottle of Ramey Chardonnay, 2002, that they wine guy said was over the hill and to just pour it out. I think not, brought it home. Must have been aged in oak because the high fruit notes are turning to sherry, but I like it a lot, much better than young fruity insipid, excuse me, whites. I don't really like white wine. It's ok for deglazing a pan. Kitchen Duty was part of the rotation at Janitor School and wild foods were popular, roadkill reigned supreme, a lot of us hunted. Several times a year a bunch of us would go over into the UP, not that far, and collect mushrooms, one spring we came back with over 400 morels. There were a couple of great cooks at the College, Marie Freshet and George Kill, married, who taught the cooking course-work. We catered events for the descendents of the logger barons who had raped this region and there was a great seminar, held sporadically, "Large Amounts of Left-Over Food", for which distinguished alumnae would fly in; I met the Head Janitor for MOMA at one of these, talk about a cushy job, he had 14 assistants and a four thousand foot shop. It's time well wasted when you just stop and look at something. Second sighting of the yellow-spotted salamander and I knew to just hunker down, how often you likely to see one of these? Fucker is huge. He thinks he is invisible, but I caught him, in the corner of my eye, and never shifted my attention. These last ten years, I've learned, let go when necessary, stop what you're doing and watch. Trust the corner of your eye. What you thought you smelled. Phantom smells. If imagined they are real, I assume Kim is being honest, D, the world I drive down into, of a morning; we stop at STOP signs, amazing to me, really, that we do, but we do, and traffic flows freely, more or less. They're burning the wrack, I should have known, plastic and wood, I could have predicted they would. It's not rocket science.
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Operose

There's a couple of minutes of me on Utube, under the title Operose, reading a poem, nice little film. Did something wrong and just sent last night's posting a few minutes ago. I'm not in complete command here. Dear Sara did two great things for me this week, and the Deputy cleaning up after the wine tasting, like this was be kind to the Janitor week. Sara got me a copy of Luca Turin's top notch book on perfumes "Perfumes, The Guide", and said that I should be promoted to Associate Director at the museum. I deferred on the change of title, it's taken too long to become Janitor. Turin must have the greatest nose on the planet, his descriptions are so precise and often outrageous. I love reading him. Barely time to get the 3D pieces set up, pedestals acluster, in the middle of the Richards Gallery, before the Germans arrived, and a large group of kids in the basement schoolroom. Early lunch then get the vinyl signage for the exhibit, then do labels, attach them, light the show, clean up, then remove most of the tables and chairs from the luncheon for a kid's story thing tomorrow. All in. I rescued two box lunches, destined for the trash, so don't have to fix dinner. Got the computer sorted out, my error, of course. I don't know what to tell me. Sorted through most of the trash as I was putting it out today, taking out cans and dumping liquids so the bags wouldn't burst. I put the cans in a clear bag in the alley for the Shopping Cart Guy. Couldn't wait to get home and there's a wreck on Rt. 52, long line of traffic, wished I had a cold beer. Have to stop at the lake and chill out, walk down to the spillway, let the sound of water displace thought. I'd bagged several pounds of sandwich crusts, from the German Luncheon, and had the full attention of a great many ducks; to avoid my ire at those hoggy ducks, the Alpha Ducks, I just spread the crusts quickly along 100 feet of shoreline. Worked perfectly, everyone got some, the Alpha Ducks were fighting over the first ten feet so even the duckly challenged got some crumbs. There are times I'm so far to the left I'm almost right. I don't want to be in the position of even contributing to the duck pecking-order. I only bring this food to the ducks because it was being thrown away, not because I want to become a duck maven, or duck land-lord, or heaven forbid, a Duck God, the benevolent, broadcaster of crusts. My intent is to stay low profile, there's less of a drag, gas prices finally being what they should be. The major problem with my footprint is that it's cleated and I track in dirt. When I remember, I sit on the back stoop and dig out soil with a pocket knife, when I don't remember, I sweep up the next morning. It's all the same, whether there are two or three crows, finding a mess of morels, listening to the water at the spillway, what I want, what I long for, is simply peace. What is said and what is meant. I'm processing as fast as I can, I want to make sense, I really want to be understood, specifically, in the closest detail, I think it's important that we draw a line in the sand, where whatever it is says whatever it says. Check me out, I never would have imagined.
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Redbud Gap

Knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door. What I seem to be doing. Listen, I am totally in the dark, what you thought I meant about something I said about something that happened. Formerly confused, now at a loss. Just got the new issue of "Dreck Und Schmutz", the always interesting and weighty German Journal Of Janitorial Sciences, and like reading Scientific American, could hardly understand a word of the lead article "The Dynamics of Dust". I mean I knew dust was light, but now the whole wave and particle conversation has landed on our doorstep. The German Sister City group, with translators at the museum tomorrow and I wish I had my new Janitor Overalls with Frank on the pocket, to greet them. -No, my name is Tom, Frank is what I am.- The dip and curve down the little section of Upper Twin Creek Road before I turn off on Mackletree, can't be five hundred yards, is aflame in Redbud. Beautiful. I stopped this morning, in the middle of it, nearly got rear-ended by a logging truck. He was pissed and pulled out around me, stopped abreast and asked what the hell I'd stopped in the middle of the road for, I gestured and said -the Redbud- he looked at both sides of the road, turned back to me -damn, them fuckers are pretty, ain't they?- Yes, I think, yes, I advance the cause, the beauty of the natural world. Start restoring order to the kitchen post wine-tasting, run 160 wine glasses through the washer and box them, realize I need to spend half a day organizing kitchen storage, not my strong suit but I'm better than nothing. Sam Beckett would deny that. Fry morels in butter with shallots, a few drops of this twenty-year-old balsamic (a gift), grill a small rib-eye steak; on the side I have the last of Dawn's green beans (home-canned green beans are the best, better than fresh, and quick) and a salad, a sinful dressing of walnut oil and raspberry vinegar, the end hunk off a loaf of sourdough to sop everything. Good eats, off the scale, one of the best meals of my life. The fox likes turkey sandwiches, we don't eat them the same way, she's one of those take-the-sandwich-apart-people, but she likes them; I'm looking at her closely, with glasses, face-on, and the whiskers on the left side are bent, the downy fur in toward her eyes is lighter in color, reverse kohl, a tricky shot, but she pulls it off. Carma asked me if I could photograph the fox, she'd loan me a camera, and I didn't know for sure if I could, because I feel so blessed to just see her that I lose track of time, forget everything else, much less remember the camera, get a decent shot, fuck, I've designed and built houses in four states and I don't have a single picture, wait, one, a picture The Utah Kid sent, after they had moved to Utah, of a house I'd help build for them in Colorado, it's thumb-tacked to the wall somewhere. The past is a kind of spit bucket. To paraphrase Sandburg. I like that poem, actually, it moved me early on, "Four Preludes to Playthings of the Wind", I still quote it, when the spirit moves me. It's all rhythm, B does this poem, "Buster Paddling", and it makes you reconsider what you thought you were doing, much like Bach, and the Cello Suites: how do you, in any medium, translate feeling. For openers, this way works, I can talk to you, B makes sense in that piece, Stephen hammers meaning like a spike, Skip is doing Bumper-Stickers that bury the unwary. My point is lost. Just at closing time tonight a great conversation crested, in the common room, but I had to get home and write, couldn't stay and discuss, had to get home, Redbud Gap, what I meant to say.

Tom

I can't believe the puddles of blossoms I have to walk through, between here and there, it's a maze, there is no correct way, there are only paths, you choose one. Good luck to your future and the one you left behind.
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