Ascomycetes

Another day of storms. Out, in the morning, but doing brush-work when everything is saturated produces a green slime that stains whatever it touches. I walk down and clip some young sassafras trees that have become top heavy with water and bowed down from both sides into the driveway, an effective roadblock. Sassafras are very limber when they are young, often wrapping around and around a stiffer neighbor. Wonderful shapes. I'm going to use some slightly older trees for my deck railing. Thinking again about the set of stairs I want to build out there. Single massive stringer, notched, half-log treads, cantilevered out both ends, curved dogwood railing; the stringer needs to curve through 90 degrees of arc, big quarter turn up and to the left, I can see it in my mind's eye. Worried today about the single bearing point, would like to use a large rock, piece of sandstone probably; can make a serious connection at the top, notch and large pegs, and at the bottom would need to epoxy a couple of large re-bar pegs into the rock and drill holes in the bottom of the stringer. Seems like it would work, dead weight holding it all together. The last chapter in the house book I worked on for several years, stolen in the robbery, "Toward Building A House," was a long essay about building the stairs inside my house, 30 or 40 pages about designing (actually allowing the pieces to decide what they could do) and then building the stairs. Reminded of that. How, for me, imaging, imagining, is such an important part of the process. Get a drink, roll a smoke, and stare at the place something is going to be constructed, a staircase, a bookcase, a site where a house is going to be. Now, because I only take on certain projects, there is often a pile of collected materials that I want to use, I need to see the materials in the place where they'll go. Arcane, almost, but I am grown enamored of using natural materials and not distorting them much. The rock I need (available free) weighs 840 pounds, I think about how I'll move it, get it into position, not that difficult, really, just slow. In Telluride we hired a guy with a back-hoe and used a chain off the bucket; my project will be more Egyptian, with rollers and ropes, maybe some bacon fat. I've moved a lot of heavy things (the Realist School in headstones, "He Moved A Lot Of Heavy Things") and I think it through step by step, paying attention to detail, a slow motion documentary film about something apparently very boring, moving a rock from one place to another, and I'm the one riveted member of the audience. Get almost to the end and realize I don't know how to get the rock, physically, from the rollers (I think if I use four inch schedule 40 plastic pipe for the rollers I won't even need runners) into the prepared hole. Then I see it, of course, the old tripod and come-a-long contraption, haven't used it in years, but perfect in this case. A good day, when you remember how to do something that might have been a problem. Patchouli leaves were used to wrap silk from the east for those long trips westward, bugs don't like camphor, and we were introduced to a scent, bug repellent to perfume. I still like pure Patchouli, anoint myself after the weekly bath, remember things. Particular smells make you remember things with no mediation. Strong connections, attachments. "Going to a white-run barbeque is, I think, like going to a gentile internist: It might turn out all right, but you haven't made any attempt to take advantage of the percentages." Calvin Trillin. "How can you be expected to govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese?" Charles De Gaulle. "The only real stumbling block is the fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude." Julia Child. "Don't think---cook!" Wittgenstein. And, of course I never get to the subject, that's a given. Ascomycetes, touch them and they release spores, molds are a lot like mushrooms, the way they spread.

Tom

A pileated woodpecker
just at dark and all the
other birds were silent.
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Spoil Bank

Mine tailings, but more often the piles of mud dredged from a canal or harbors. They tend toward the barren as usually contaminated. Once, on Cape Cod, I was watching them dredge Sesuit Harbor, followed the huge hose to where it was dumping, behind the first line of dunes, found many arrowheads and half a lovely whale-fluke spear-thrower weight. Another very quiet day, which I needed, sling-blading between thunder storms, reading the new old "Dictionary Of Americanisms", finger food all day, cheeses and olives and bread, then breakfast for dinner. Always a little post-partum after finishing a big show, too much adrenaline for too long a period of time, one reason I mostly gave up opera and theater, the mood swings, manically working toward something, then getting there and having all the pressure lifted suddenly, the ghostly images of yourself strung back along your timeline, like a film event, slamming back together to make you whole. I have to listen to Bach for a while and not move, to avoid a headache. Later, I listen to large raindrops and wind hit the strong leaves of early summer. Cleaned out the fridge, some interesting things after working two weeks, every day, and letting things slide; I remember most things and can identify them easily, but two containers I think are plants, I don't remember them at all and they are unidentifiable under layers of mold, one of them I keep, because it is so beautiful, intense reds and blues. Fridge Art. We could get an old food-store refrigerated dairy case and display moldy food. Some of these molds are incredible, I get out the magnifying glass and put an extra lamp at the island. Everything has a name so I'm sure that the individual hairs of a mold have a name, whatever they are called are thin and delicate, and when you touch them you can't feel them at all and they crush easily. Eventually everything smells like mushrooms. I'm hesitant to smell the molds, not because the smell might be offensive, but because I don't want to suck many of those fibers into my filtration system, but I do sniff around the edges and it's earthy, brown, a clay note, that dries down to finished compost. The perfume of the working class, we'll call it SWEAT, sell it in little bottles shaped like milking pails or running shoes. -Why do you believe me- I asked her directly, she mentioned specificity, and how I was good at that but lousy at almost everything else. I had to agree. I can cook, everything else is a mystery.
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Atypical Psychosis

Loosening of associations. Affectless. Opening party last night, and then up late talking with a lady friend. Twelve days at the museum, then the final big push, then the party, today was a sofa day, reading. Finished "People Of The Book", good read, then a book on tides, looked up a great many words. Squalls move through all day, some hitting, some not, I collect water and take a bath. Late afternoon managed to cook a half-slab of ribs on the grill between showers, steam an artichoke, make a nice slaw with tangy horseradish dressing, drink the last of the Ridge Zin that I opened last night: eating artichoke leaves and eating ribs go well together, both finger food so no constant cleaning, the traces of sauce on the leaves is a nice touch. Rampant growth all around the house, the foliage explosion. This area is amazing in that regard, any clear spot becomes a text-book on succession. Sumac is so invasive, but tender when young (anything that grows that fast would have to be), falls easily to the sling-blade. I need a tee-shirt that says SAVE HYPHENS because I read another piece about losing them, that a thing could be one word or two, but hyphens were dying. I resist losing punctuation, and fucking Vonnegut killed the semi-colon. It's nice to have a long conversation with an intelligent other person, the large number of bases that can be touched, the layered story-lines. She let me put D'Zing on her wrist and smell at intervals. I wanted her for my Antigone several years ago, the beginning of the end of my tenure at University. I like the museum better anyway, smaller numbers. We sold a lot of art on Friday, the Purchase Awards for the show, where local folk can support the local show, and all of them over-bought, the numbers were good; everyone left to go home and change clothes so I stayed to watch the shop, habit, remember we had forgotten to put on the punch-list to clean the frames and polish the glass on all the wall pieces, you have to handle them, to put them up, to hang them. I get a couple of the lint-free cloths and the spray bottle of alcohol to clean and these strange sexy young women start arriving, in costume, the 70's, the party has a motif. When asked was I going home to change, I just replied that I was wearing essentially the same clothes, jeans, denim shirt, work-boots, and I saw no reason to change. So, while watching these hot high-school senior girls (I think it's a Beauty Pagent, Miss River City or something) out of the corner of my eye, I go around and clean all the frames and the glass, thank god, everything in the back half of the museum was seriously dirty from the emergency repair of a wall section that seems to have a kind of plaster ringworm (I could have used a hyphen there). We had deeply gouged and re-plastered a couple of places, I had to sand and repaint, and, of course, there was dust. Most modern frames, wood, plastic or metal, are black; Sanding new plaster is white dust everywhere. Black frames seem to be magnetic for dust. That electrical charge thing. Static. Tesla's solution, I imagine, would strangely be oddly correct, you just charge other areas positively and keep a low profile, charge yourself negatively, stay clean. It was nice to indulge my interest in feet, I had forgotten that space between toes. I liked the dry-down, almost vanilla. Dirty, slightly off center, where I find myself. Hello, I thought we were on the same page: shit, washed up by the river, the very things.
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Panic Disorder

We think we have it under control: we have a show, it's lit, the labels applied. Should have plenty of time to do the vinyl signage and hang the last pieces of art on the signage walls, clean up, do janitor stuff. Already people coming in to see the show, a good sign. 18 items on the punch-list to truly finish. Doable. Storm storm cell hits at exactly five-o-clock. I pull over and read for ten minutes, a piece about water use in the west, pretty cute, but it was the next piece in the pile I keep in the truck for emergency reading, reading about the arid west while waiting for a frog-choker of a storm to move through. Serendipity, what? Start home in medium rain (17 miles to my house, three legs, 7, 5, and 5 miles) and before the first leg is done the roads are almost dry, stop at B's new digs, his and Sarah's house, for a beer and chat, but the moment I turn into the last leg, down Mackletree, the roads are covered with debris, tree parts, and it's necessary to stop and drag branches off, and I meet the entire Blue Creek Fire Department, coming out, a pole down, but they've done whatever it is they do (I see no evidence of a fire anywhere, and I'm driving slow, stopping often), the power company, the phone guys, the cable guys, they are all over this overtime shit, their bread and butter, momma needs a new pair of shoes, especially if the beautiful Sofia has worn the last pair through a flood. The uppers release and it's ugly. Suddenly you're walking in nothing. I have one digital clock and it resets to 12 so I know how long the power has been restored. This is a marginally useful piece of information. Big news on the time front is that when I boot up to reset the clock, the minutes are the same. This has never happened before, I never expected it, imagined it might happen, and it does, not the information I need, but information, it's 6:42, so what? I choose to ignore a great many things, I can do this because I live alone, I don't compromise, call it what you will, but there seems to be a factor, maybe it's a fox or a tadpole, any control I would exercise is marginal, my older daughter calls and needs money, how can I not, I actually have the money, if I eat beans, I'll send her a check. I eat beans, mostly, anyway, what is projected, what you can expect.

Three crows
squack, you
don't move
a muscle.
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Atypical Dissociative Disorder

Trancelike state. Yesterday I left my glasses at the museum (only wear them to drive, not necessary even then) and didn't realize I'd left them until I got home and tried to take them off. In the weird people of Portsmouth category: shopping at Kroger this morning and still some time to kill before work so decided to go below the floodwall, driving down 7th, west and there was this strange large man with a very small head walking down the sidewalk carrying a sickle. I reached over and locked the door. Was in a funny state this morning, kind of off the wall or over the edge , D was showing me something on his computer, and out of the blue I yelled -FISHSTICKS!- D spit coffee and asked what the hell I meant and I didn't know. I asked him when was the last time he had fishsticks and he said -dude, I've got kids, fishsticks are a staple-. I haven't had them in decades but may have to buy some, ate a lot of them in college, with stolen ketchup. Running on fumes, at this point, and when we're hanging the upstairs galleries I just zone out in the middle of a calculation and lose the entire numeric sequence, have to start over. I can do this perfectly if I don't think about it: one doesn't think about pounding nails, one just pounds. We get everything hung except the couple of pieces that can't hang until the vinyl signage is on hand, tomorrow, and then do the lighting, we finish, it's like four-thirty, and we're all in, done for the day, wasted, and this great thing happens, as has happened before, the four of us, Sara, the Deputy, D, and the janitor (myself), confer around the staff table (which same D and I conspire to replace, with something nice, 8/4 cherry top with a trestle base) and shoot the shit about what's going on. We're all laughing and carrying on, at five I go close up, and get a couple of beers out of the fridge, real tops, not screw caps, I use the opener on my key-chain and D uses the appropriate blade on his Swiss Army Knife, we deserve a beer, and this one is free. A great fifteen minutes after hours. We should do this more often. Here is the heart of the museum, the four of us, this is what we do. EVEN THEN I'm making a punch-list, what we need to do, I pass it to D, he makes a few additions. On the same page. We're good to go. This is very much like doing theater or opera or ballet, it will open when projected, that very day, that very time, the finger-food is, you know, ready, and everyone all dressed up, you can't miss the party. Never have so few done so much for so few. If it floats my boat, I'm all in. I always eventually decide. I won't tell you my tell, I'm so transparent you already know, but I like pretending to hold it secret. Allow me a place, and I'll, you know, expand. What I/he thought he meant. It's rough, being at the bottom of the pecking order, you spend most of your time avoiding blows, but no one expects much. Sara, I think, loves that we can produce the show that she imagines, something in that fifteen minutes tonight, she didn't say something, and D and I knew exactly what she meant, all of us laughed, because she knew that we knew what she was going to say.

Fuck me,
Tom
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Der Show

Before I forget. I have to write before I forget. The days are sliding together, into one another, museum tectonics. We hung 44 paintings today, a personal best, 28 to hang tomorrow and the 3D stuff to set, pedestals to repaint, plexi bonnets to clean, wall patches to finish, a ceiling repair, 94 labels to dry-mount and cut, vinyl signage to apply, THEN janitor stuff and set up for the party, lighting, remove our tools and hanging hardware (since the advent of the Job-Box, on a dolly, this is a much easier task, though requires half-a-day in the basement, sorting things out). The show is going to pop when we get it lit, it's good, a solid show, having a smoke with Sara, just before closing time, we agreed, it is a strong show. I was a little confused when I got to work today, because the message seemed to be that we needed to clean up after the carpet layers. God, I haven't even mentioned the carpet-layers, during the last three days all of the carpet in the museum is being replaced, fucking zoo, really too much going on, but it is the end of the fiscal year and the carpet, in traffic zones (desire paths) was awful. I kept after it, as well as I could, but I entered the scene too late in the carpet cycle to effect any change. I'm not 100% satisfied with the carpet job, but wonder if I'm being too picky. I tend to be really picky about work I'm doing for someone else, bust my chops (my personal surrounding, my house, where I live, I tend to let things slide, I know I could finish most of those projects, I easily do it for other people, for pay). Where was I, right, then Sara arrived and asked what I was doing, and I said, you know, cleaning, and she said -but you've got a show to hang- and I realized I had interpreted a sequence of events in the real world incorrectly. What D and I have to do (I was sure of this from the git-go) is hang the show, somebody else can vacuum, though they won't do a very good job, and I'll have to vacuum after them. There are standards, after all. Ran out of paper, I had made a note, but I never got around to reading the note. Was actually in Kroger and forgot. I need to print out hard copy, need to read it before I start writing the next day, it's a habit, and I find some sheets in the First filing cabinet, that are only printed on one side and we could reuse them, sure; I like making a record where I can, it helps, talking to you, still, it's difficult.

Tom

Three crows and the fox,
frog eggs to tads,
fucking tracks.

Carma is killing me here, like Nadal on clay. The only place he can beat that other guy. It's a small ball, they volley, when I get confused I ask someone. I've never been that proud, that I would stay lost. I always ask directions. What the game is, how big is the ball, these are central issues, my wrack self responses a certain way, where does the floating shit fit in? Love, listen, better you should invent the fox, than I should keep time.

Tom, finis.
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By Increments

A huge show, it will extend to three galleries, a hell of a lot of work to get done (installing) by end of day Thursday, so there is time to light and label on Friday, set up for the opening party. We move everything a great many times, looking for a fit. Actually the two largest pieces only move once; up and down stairs, working on all three galleries in a kind of rotation. Most of the 3D stuff is upstairs; giant fist shooting a finger, completely covered in cigaret butts, and Brad Gray's lovely music stand and his library steps stay downstairs, walls are full. The flat work is all leaning against where it will hang. Going out the door we agree to not start hanging until Sara looks at each bay again tomorrow, after sleeping on the arrangements. Showtime. We really must pull out the stops, if there are any left in. Massive thunder cell moved through after four o'clock, we were moving rejected art from the front hall down into the classroom, and had to stop, sit on the inside steps at the front door and watch it hail, dime-sized, pelting, melting quickly on the summer pavement. Stops just as quickly and we have time for a last smoke out the back door, coming up with a plan for tomorrow. We know what to do and how to do it. D will measure things and call of numbers, I'll do the math, get the appropriate hangers ready while D marks the spot, two spots. Everything will center-line at 57 inches. All the galleries used to center differently, but we made them all the same in the interest of sanity. Centered at 57 inches, so half the length of the piece minus the distance from the usually wire hanger, pinched up to the top of the piece with two hands at about the distance apart the hangers will be and leveled across, to the top. We both do our part in this very well as long as we don't think about it too much, so we usually talk about boat-building or Basho. We consume copious amounts of coffee and take numerous small breaks for cigs out back. We have too. We're intensely focused when we do this, and that's difficult, for us, to sustain, without R&R; as I think about it, I understand something I hadn't thought about directly: we hold all this information in short term memory and there is a rhythm, a cadence to the work, and if it's broken, we have to go back to the beginning, because the information isn't in long-term memory, not learning but doing. Fucking Carma, man, that ceramic wall plaque that is the inside of my brain is just too much. It works well as a composition, she's an AutoCad person, of course it works, even for someone who doesn't know the inside of my brain, which is almost everyone else. The piece is iconic for me, and probably for the people that read me; the Committee should find a grant to buy it for the Tom Bridwell Library, where my ashes will be spread on the Lilly that refused to bloom. It's all fitting. My brain as a tile, a cast iron foot stone, a library that contains an illustrated guide to field amputation and a great many books about shit: this September 15th I will have been composting my shit for 30 years. Point me to another (actually, I know several) with all them stars on water-use, my whole equation is that I'm probably to the good, overall. I have areas of weakness but all of the water I've used for the past three years is rain, I just slow it down a step, don't even interrupt the flow, water the tomatoes under the deck. Got up to get a drink and roll a smoke and my body was stiff, I do some stretches, then a couple of pull-ups on the beam in the kitchen. Life is strange, when I try to parse it out, but in the moment, everything seems natural. Worry about that later, we have a show to hang. My job-description includes this. The janitor from Mars. Yes there is ice below the surface. What I'd do is just sweep the surface away, a delicate brush, soft-brilled, an un-bred female groundhog, maybe a squirreled accretion somewhere, a midden, I'd sweep, I know myself well enough.
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Judging Day

Comes down to this: one man's opinion. Everyone has a different view, but, as with Venn Diagrams, there is overlap. Dennis H, from Cincy, didn't like things that weren't framed, -not finished- he said several times. Also he likes folk art which neither D nor I brook, so a couple of things that I wouldn't have picked. He pointed out that non-glare glass actually distorted colors. These juried shows are learning experiences. Lunch at Sara's which is always fun because she and Clay have so much nice stuff, two new Ron Issacs pieces, trompe l'oeil, a child's dress in the downstairs bathroom and an incredibly delicate flower/arbor piece over her bed. There may be someone who does this kind of work better, but I don't know that for a fact. I love his work, and Sara collects him. Good art strengthens the soul. And there is good art in the show, now officially "Cream Of The Crop" because it has been winnowed, maybe 270 pieces down to 94, one-third survive the cut. D and I at the museum early, to spread everything out in one layer against every flat surface, hallways, board room, library, main gallery, so Dennis can see everything. The opposite of the judge (or is he a jury?) two years ago, who eliminated, Dennis picks the best pieces out first. I think I like his way better, though I would also eliminate the worst in the second pass (the first pass is just to see, to get a handle) because it bothers me visually. Of course, I'm just the janitor and my opinion is a lot like a wet mop. All three of Carma's pieces survive the cut, and one of them is a ceramic dream of my life, the fox, the crows, the frogs (in stages, starting as eggs), the tire prints, it's all there. The fox is perfect. I wish I could afford to buy more art. I bought two paintings this year and I could ill-afford them, but had to have them. I can eat beans. I like beans. Thank god. A long day, much walking, and at the end, Dennis and his daughter are gone, we do the paperwork on what's in and what's out and we can't get the numbers to balance. D and I become empiric, we count the pieces that are tagged four times, the numbers are the same, therefore the problem is in the paperwork, we get it straight, finally, D does, really, because he wants to go, get home. Sara has to stay, get the accept/reject notices out, I'm wasted, take one beer from the museum fridge, a Pub beer that didn't sell Jim had given us, and stopped at the lake on the way home, to decompress. Got in a conversation with a guy fishing for stocked trout with whole kernel corn, fucking dumb fish, man, would go for that. I tell him about fishing for cut-throat trout above the beaver ponds, 10,000 feet, in the San Juans, and his eyes glaze over, native fish. Jesus, my father calls, because it's Sunday and I didn't call them this morning, and they're fine, the two of them almost making one person, as long as my brother is there, to do the lifting. Mom is better, getting downstairs more often, the back-brace is a good thing, as are the lift chairs. Dying is tough. Attitude is everything. What is the last thing you'll say? Parting words. -Is that eggplant gone?-
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Last Minute

Meant an extra trip to town, the one day in twelve that I didn't need to go, but really didn't feel like taking my laundry to work and going to the laundromat after. Besides, I wanted to check on Lily at the museum, last day of submissions for the show, and sure enough, almost as many pieces in four hours as the previous four days. Sara came in, just before closing, and we agreed that we now easily had a show. At the laundromat I helped a young mother fold sheets, she allowed that her husband had never helped her fold sheets, she may have been flirting. I taught her young son (8) to do a cat's cradle. He was amazed. Going into town, stopped at the 2nd Street Dairy Barn and got a footer with sauce, mustard and cheese, ate it below the floodwall, walking the edge of the second terrace above the river. Everything we need to finish the Wrack Show is trapped among the somehow living trees that grow there, Ohio River log jams, down on the first terrace. There's a language to wrack and I'm learning it. You can look at a specific accumulation and figure out why it ended up where and how it is. Wrack Detective. The best pedestal stumps are lined upright at the river's edge, seats for night cat-fishermen, using deep-sea rigs with chicken parts on large hooks, fishing for lunker catfish, 50, 60 pounds, that they either release (bottom feeders in a sewer) or put in a pool in a clear creek or run, to clean out for a week or two, feeding them cornmeal. I love these people, I love their stories, it was a near thing for me, to leave the rivers of my youth, pursuing a different education, I might well have become a kind of Harlan Hubbard of the St. Johns River in north Florida, I loved being on the water. My dad and I would start drinking beer early in the morning, just after breakfast (scrambled eggs in a jar on white bread) he'd say something like -is it time yet?- and I'd crack us a couple. We'd fish all day, whatever the fish of the season, never get quite drunk, and talk about everything. As I got older, after they had bought me a set of encyclopedias, I'd have dad scull me into a pod of lily-pads, so I could look closely at the blossoms. I still remember the smell, heavy and floral, danforth green, frog shit. Being a medic, he was cool on creek-side injuries, removing lures from flesh, cutting out hooks, I can't do it, last time dad and I fished together, in Colorado, he got a hook embedded and I couldn't do it, a guy from up the creek volunteered and I turned my back. Talk about easily distracted. This show is huge and D and I will walk many miles in the coming days. I'm sure you'll hear about it, what I realized today is how much I care. I'm fucking there on the one day I don't have to be there, because I want to see the stuff, SHOW ME THE STUFF, why Sara comes in, to see. Yes, we have a show. Now, the jury is a single judge, we can only slightly influence by position and lighting, what he or she thinks. We agree to meet an hour early, manipulate things. Hey, we don't want to be embarassed. What he thought he saw. Tomorrow, rejects become an issue, I have to tell them something. I'll fall back on Basho, tell them something cryptic. Response, anything, something, what is actually meant. It's difficult for me, trying to talk. Not like it comes natural. To tell then they are rejected: a lizard comes into a bar.
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Fetishes And Kochinas

The Year Of The Cigaret Butts. Two major pieces, or large at any rate, completely covered in cigaret butts, revolting, as they are meant to be. Interesting. Several objects that could only be called fetishes and a few nice strange doll-like things. Todd, one of the best local painters, brought in a very large triptych, each panel 3 feet by 8 feet, three figures, two nude males and a clothed female. Stunning. And two smaller single paintings, one of which is great and the other less so. Nick Gampp, "The Gamppster", brought in two very fine collages, one a quadtych (?), and a wonderful box assemblage. Lots of young artist angst, some spectacularly bad things, an equal mix of bad or absent technique, and total lack of vision. We were having a smoke, out back, in the alley, and D said that good art always implied the existence of bad art. Looking up triptych (I knew the word, but couldn't get the spelling correct) I came across triph-thong, which I assumed meant falling over your underwear, but actually means a sound sequence of three different vowel qualities for a monosyllabic word. The example is 'our'. I make a note to look it up in some other dictionaries tomorrow. A breakfast project, as I'm way too whipped to get distracted now. What a week. And this was the easier of the two weeks, starting Sunday we wander into chaos. Lily is staff tomorrow but I tell her I'll stop by, she if she needs help. The problem is artists, the talent, so many of them are late, always late, always last minute, still warm from the kiln, or the last coat of varnish still damp. We see a lot of this. Deadline is five-o-clock tomorrow, I imagine there will be a rush. I did something I'd never done, I bought a big frozen lasanga (the best, I was told, and it was on sale) to get me through a few days eating, too tired to cook and write and I knew I was going to write, drink and write, therefore needed to eat. I'll do sushi one day, probably a pot-pie, breakfast often. I never tire of breakfast, potatoes and eggs and bacon and toast, my god, my corner of heaven.

I never tire of breakfast,
potatoes and eggs and
bacon and toast, my god,
my corner of heaven.

Janus would probably be the breakfast god too. Traffic was moving slowly on the way home, a slow car on 52, if I'd had a bazooka, I swear. I just have to get to the turn-off at Mackletree because then I can stop at the lake or continue without a vehicle either ahead or behind, I can take time into my own hands, where I might stop and watch almost anything for a very long time. Matter of course. Fly the god-damned spinnaker mates, because the wind is blowing in our direction. I like that Irish guy, O'Bama, if he doesn't break a leg.
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Critics

Takes all kinds. Some very nice art in today, a flood just before noon delayed lunch, but when we got to the pub Jim had set little table setting for us, with a mysterious packet of Sweet-And-Low in the center. He poured us a couple of ounces of a new beer that might be a contender in the fund-raiser beer tasting the Deputy and D are planning for the museum. D and I are the official pre-tasters, excellent job. We don't drink on the job, so spit the beer out, right. I don't like drinking during the day, unless I'm fishing, otherwise I need to take a nap. Schedule from hell, like doing opera in Boston under Miss Caldwell. A schedule like this you only glance ahead, stay rooted in the present, take it one day at a time. I make some lists, they look like poems, I'll try and remember to copy some and include them, I can't recall any of them, the things, that's why I make a list, so I don't have to remember. The flood was a van from OSU, Chillocothe, with work from 7 artists, and before we had finished with them, Alan and his beautiful daughter arrived with the best work so far. Kathryn's paintings need frames, but they would have to be quite special indeed, she paints around the edges. She's quiet. She either doesn't know how sexy she is or is the best actress I've ever seen. Alan's paintings are killer, drop-dead small realistic renderings. I wish I had the money. $850 dollars and these are worth five times that, a thousand times that, they render a world. Maybe I can trade him a sand-blasted stump. What this show does is make everyone a critic, the work comes in, we stack it along the walls, we look at it, and we make a judgment, we say things, some of them are really sarcastic, when the work is bad, but there are those moments when you look at something and sigh. Bach "Cello Suites", I fucking melt, that kind of thing, where you become open, where you open. Lily had a scent she wanted me to smell, she thrust her wrist in front of my nose, I couldn't not smell, that would be like not-hearing. Fuck, I am so completely fucked, whatever I meant to say.
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Glorious Fog

Very cool. Talk about being on the same page. Early to town so went below the floodwall to inspect wrack, we still need things for the show, stump pedestals, some more rails. Find a nice rail, an actual rail from a fence. D needs it for the wrack bed he's making (he's making several pieces of wrack furniture) and see the stick he had mentioned yesterday. I know it is the stick he saw, which is strange, as there are a lot of sticks, but his description and our working together have conspired to create like-mind. B over the other evening for a quick drink and to bring by a found object for the show, a bolt, 10 inch, half-inch diameter and at it's center is a wooden knot as though welded, it looks like a bird on a bolt. I said so. We have the drink and discuss the show, what might be done how. Yesterday I took the piece into work. When D showed up, we always go in his truck to get coffee before we open the museum, I was holding it up in the air, he rolled down the window and asked how I had gotten an owl on a stick, and why. This glorious fog occurs on hillsides when the humidity is 99 or 100%, almost like smoke, the altitude and the dew-point and the barometric pressure conspire fog, wispy and ephemeral. A nice combination. This morning the lake was giving up vapor, a Basho Moment, I wanted some cherry blossoms:

No blossoms,
but the lake
is breathing.

Vernon making cornbread, somehow reminded, he would save all the crumbs around the cutting board in a freezer container, we were poor at Janitor College, tomato soup from stolen ketchup packets, and then make a kind of cornbread from the scraps, cornmeal and soured milk, sometimes an egg. It was good. Someone would spring for a stick of butter. Weird birds outside, seem to be making a point. It's hard to hold a vacuum, you'd need special equipage. Wrack and ruin. Need to think about that.
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Other Criteria

Art work coming in for the local show and we wrap paintings all day, asses dragging by the end. Handling paintings worth a quarter million marvelously focuses the mind, but maintaining that level of attention is a drain on mind and body. We get almost as much done today, with the museum open and being interrupted, as we did yesterday. Finish packing tomorrow and then serious gallery repair, paint the signage and entry walls, get started on cleaning our mess, which is considerable, we've trashed the place in just two days. No one at the lake so I stop for a smoke and watch the spillway, they stocked dumb hatchery trout a few weeks ago and I watch a couple get sucked into the flow and wash over. A lesson there. Got home and the fucking table with radio and CD player, speakers, CD's, cassettes, books on tape, has toppled into a large and unsightly pile, takes an hour to clean up and then right the table. I enact a repair that is a marvel of jury-rig, I only need the table for a few more weeks as D has promised to build a smaller sturdier model (this one is a damned ugly Victorian end table) so I cob it back together, then anchor it to the wall with flexible metal plumber's strap, a nail, and a small clamp. An excellent repair, reminiscent of a mountain cabin or the Alaskan out-back. I couldn't find my baling wire. Interesting session with the dictionary. Baling wire as in what is sometimes (synthetic twine mostly now) used to bale hay, which after use, on a working ranch, is ricked on a post for emergency repair of almost anything, but the 6th definition of bail, is " to assist in escaping a predicament" which would mean if you'd never been a rancher, it might be bailing wire. Make a note to check what it's sold as. I don't know what bling is, heard the word in several different contexts recently, and I'm usually good at parsing things out, is it "something you don't need that you treat yourself to" or "illicit sex", oh, wait a minute, those might be similar. I've used that word a few times, probably (twice), over the years, as "a thought occurring" or "the sound a wine glass might make when thumped with a fingernail" but clearly it means something different now. Like how BOINK went from being a cartoon term to meaning fucking at a MLA convention, language at it's fluid best. It's all inflexion. Stand back and listen, it doesn't even matter if you understand the language, you understand enough, if you pay attention, to not put your foot in it. Everyone leaves us alone, as they always do during the turn-around, they know no one else could do this, and D comments, we'd taken an elevator load up to the vault, that what we did was holy, I'm absorbing this, from my position as janitor.
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Yellow Jackets

Up early, though the museum is closed D and I need to get started taking the Impressionism Show down, the wrapping so problematic we don't have a feel for how long it will take. Early enough that I've got a few minutes to sling-blade some brush before leaving the house. Nice way to start the day and I'm enjoying the relative coolth, then stumble over a hole and yellow jackets come roiling out. Stung six times around the head and neck, one just below my left eye. Come in and make very strong coffee, a substitute for meds I don't have, and it works, a little woozy then jangled by too much coffee too quickly. Not going to work is not an option, buck it up, dab on some ointment, head to town. Saturday we had dug out all the packing materials and sorted most of it, actually threw most of it away, as everything had been done wrong, doubly wrong, maybe triply. We couldn't wrap paintings that badly if we tried. We establish our system. D prepares the nest, cardboard on the bottom, bubble wrap next, then glassine on top (to protect the painted surface, the assholes at South Bend had actually wrapped them in plastic sheeting and are lucky they didn't grow mold on 3.3 million dollars worth of paintings), we use blue painter's tape with a folded edge (for easy removal) on the glassine, then clear packing tape, folded edge, for the bubble-wrap, same for the cardboard-to-wrapped-painting joint. We quickly get very good at this. I don the white gloves, get the paintings off the wall, shed the gloves, then our four hands fairly fly through the folding and taping. We impress ourselves. Our goal is 21 of the 63 paintings. As we clear a bay, we stop, remove the hanging hardware, and patch, we leave the vault open, upstairs, and when we finish wrapping a painting I put it in the elevator, which, as the museum is not open, we can leave locked open, when the elevator is full we offload it upstairs. We talk about Rumi and how he can't hold a candle to Basho. We talk John Boats. We talk about the Wrack Show. We see the increasingly pregnant Zoe at lunch, she bumper-cars us with the twins. The staff at the pub are (is) surprised to see us for lunch on a Monday, it was like a scene from a movie, where, in a slightly sarcastic manner, the staff over-accommodates the patrons, pretty funny, really, and then Jim went to the cellar/storage and when he came up he plopped a five-gallon pickle tub on the seat next to D, D hadn't asked for a pickle tub but would take it anyway, and there was something about Jim's grin. The bucket is heavier than it should be and rattles, 14 bottles of beer on the wall, 14 bottles of beer. Jim always gives us the odd beers that don't sell, and some of them are awful, but some are interesting and they're free. The swelling has gone down, I can no longer see the flesh beneath my left eye, what is that called, vertical seeing. I'm sure there's a name for it, it escapes me just now, whatever I meant to say.
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Sharp Edges

Good sense goes to the leeward. Should be slashing brush but work 11 of the next 12 days so I couch-out and read, new travel book by a dear friend in the mail "Twenty West" Mac Nelson, and it's a fine trip. Another in my personal pantheon of very bright friends, WELL read, Shakespeare scholar, wilderness junkie, he uses the forum to talk about everything, especially getting to, and camping in Yellowstone. A lovely book, from SUNY Press. All of the books I've seen from SUNY are handsome, well designed, well crafted. Having designed and printed some 60 or 70 books myself I don't take this lightly. The new print shop here is done, but B is off, adding rooms for his daughter's forthcoming twins and a master bedroom in the new bride's off-ridge house, so no printing until the fall. I thinking about doing a book with thin copper covers, embossed, allow it to oxidize then cover with acetate. Pretty easy, really, meaning nothing I don't know how to do as long as I'm careful. I'm familiar with those parameters. Have to deal with the sharp edges issue but I thought about that and think I can make the books safe, imagine a symbol/sign that could be put on the cover, to indicate the problem, a warning: two color, black outline of a finger with a cut and drops of blood, inside a black circle, with a heavy red X over the top. Just something to slow the reader down. Actually I can just wrap the acetate down around the edges and everything is copacetic, still, I like the image that symbol forms and may have some rubber stamps made. I could become a graffiti artist, defacing other people's work. A kind of criticism. Need to keep options open. Fucking whippoorwill sets up right outside my window, not 15 feet away, actually louder than the cicadas, and I can't stand it, intrusive sound. I'd brought home some firecrackers D had bought to scare away the shitting birds at the museum, doves and pigeons, befouling the various architectural detail; I had brought them home to scare away snakes if I needed to get under the house, but, reasoned one might scare a bird. And it worked, I make a note to keep firecrackers at hand, and those foam ear-plugs. Even the bugs are silent for a while, then start back in, tentative: a measure of control. I'm your captain, with these foam plugs in my ears, throwing firecrackers at birds, why would you believe me? I'm worried about you, I think about you all the time, what you listen to, what you eat, but I have no control, I merely report. I'm actually a midget with a mop-bucket.
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Fetishism

Non-living objects (fetishes) used for sexual purposes. I probably read too much. Saw a pair of shoes today, the feet were also nice but don't qualify, exactly, they would be an Atypical Paraphilia; checking in some art, and I tend to notice things, look down. This woman, attractive in a severe way, straight nose, high, distinct, zygomatic arches, minimal make-up, nice scent, an iris white smell that lingered when she moved away. Her toe-nails were painted black. I felt a certain frisson, a tightening in my chest. She wasn't beautiful but she was really sexy. Pheromones, I know, but in the moment it was a kind of bliss. My ex-wife had wonderful feet and knew way too much about shoes, she could play me like a violin. I'm an easy mark, if you can get close to me. But I protect the perimeter, hold my boundaries, try not to let what I need become what I expect. Great shoes though, they would have won the "Fuck Me" award, hands down, but an alarm went off, in my head, and I just made a note. I didn't close the deal because there is no reason. I don't want to live with anybody, I like my arrangements, I'm comfortable alone. I know it's a lot like a solitary bunch of oats, growing in a sandbar on the Colorado, but there it is, the best I can do.
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Stage Setting

Last full day before we start the change-over. I've a list. Art started coming in today, local stuff (within 85 miles) for the "Cream Of The Crop" show, every other year. I love this show, being surprised, what did Sara say, eye candy, more than that, of course, but still, it is so nice to see, at all different levels of proficiency. The show is always a nightmare to hang, jack-leg, cobbed together, inadequate structure, pieces that don't support themselves, but even that's cool, because it allows for problem solving, always time well spent. This is when it's really fun, working at a museum, seeing the new stuff, hanging a show, listening to the scuttlebutt, the comments. The show opens two weeks from tonight, tomorrow we start taking the old show down. Barely enough time. At the end, we'll be running around like chickens. An interesting articulated ceramic chicken came in today, Bev yelled for me from the reception desk to come and deal with it. A nice piece, high-fired, with embellishment. The woman wanted to show me how to carry the piece, and I don't blame her, an awkward thing (life-size chicken) and I watched her pick it up and move it, she looked at me, to see if I understood, and I said -yes Mam, I put my hand under her butt and keep the spurs apart- it was as if I were from Mars, -well yes, exactly- she said, and I was pretty sure I had gained her confidence, in terms of handling her piece. Nice chat with Sara tonight, about the museum, waiting for D to get back from Cincy, because we'd agreed to a beer at the pub, and I like setting on a bar-stool next to him when he needs to decompress. I understand decompression, I practice it daily. I wonder how anyone could live with anyone, the sex would have to be good AND you'd have to be able to talk. I can't imagine. A platypus goes into a bar.
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Painter's Block

Wonderful local artist (forty miles up the road in Chillicothe) was in to see the Impressionism Show, and as an art student, 55 years ago, had met several of the painters. Closed a circle, compresses history. My Dad was five years old when Wyatt Earp died. Alan, the painter, tells great stories, just had a second show in two years at a very good gallery in fancy German Village, Columbus. The gallery owners advise local new money (or inherited, Columbus is a wealthy town) on what to buy. Last year Alan sold 24 out of 32 paintings shown, then gets another show and sells 18 of 24, on a roll. The story concerned even getting a second show so quickly (every other year is the norm) because the gallery had booked a recently retired from teaching painter for a show and he was suffering Painter's Block and Alan stepped into the breech, made a lot of money. We talked about blockage. He doesn't suffer it, nor do I, we both imagined this other guy was a painter who became a teacher. No longer knew what to do with his time. Lost the ability to function. There was a guy at Janitor College that was a basket case, Vernon, so sweet, he'd won the Marine Corp Award For Musical Excellence, playing the cymbals, for god's sake, and then had done a tour of duty in Vietnam, any loud noise and he was on the floor. He hated hallways. I liked him because we shared a bluegrass background, he was from Kentucky or extreme southern Ohio, where a mark was legally accepted because no one learned to write. I was back in touch with him recently, his grand-daughter got in touch with me, actually, wondering what we could do: I might be termed a fatalist, I told her nothing. Still, I wonder.

Tom

A crow is working
the roadkill squirrel
on the bridge where
the race escapes
the spillway.
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Hummingbird

I stopped feeding the hummingbirds because I can't stand listening to them fight, sets my teeth on edge, a kind of fingernail on the blackboard thing. But I didn't take the feeder down, silly me. Get home today and log on to read mail, maybe start writing early, fucking hummingbird, man, the Alpha Male, hovers at all four feeding stations, then right outside my window, looking at me, complaining in hummingbird-speak, that the feeder is empty. A tiny bird giving me shit, and I have to wave him away several times. Finally he taps the glass with his beak, arrogant bastard, and I scare him off with the corkscrew on my Swiss Army Knife. It's dangerous out here. We built a storage rack in the vault (this was a bank, after all) for quilts, archival storage, we want to roll them, with buffered acid-free tissue on tubes that are acid-free (an eight foot tube is $15, the tissue, 30x40 sheets is a buck a sheet) and we built the rack for $18, which impressed even us, who often scrounge every component for a specific given project. The Reimer Brothers, in the Florida panhandle, are the best in the world at this, but we do alright, in a much more difficult area, in poverty zones not a lot is thrown away, the dust bins are empty. I built a large 'set' for a play at the college, a few years ago, and when the show was done, I had to strike the set right then, the night of the final performance, tradition and neccessity, so I had hired a dumpster, so I could rip the thing apart and throw it away. The entire Maintenance Staff for the University was there, scrounging, I could have fit the waste in a trash can. The rack, the frame we built, was conceived and constructed for $18. It impresses me, remembering. D and I work so well together that the conversation is rarely about the thing at hand, often we're talking about boats, or the way women walk in different shoes, or the way spring sprang into summer. I'm only alive for the ride. Why do some men throw used bubblegum into the urinal? In so far as I might be existential I can't understand. If you throw bubblegum into the urinal someone will have to take it out. Be better to throw the gum in a grader ditch, or under a desk. I suspect sabotage. Bombs. Cell phones that blow your head apart, but it has always been simple stupidity that is the motivating force, consider my iris, which did not bloom this year, and I don't know why, I pay attention, but I can't monitor everything. I get an Email from a friend. Seems, seams, what was meant is misunderstood, what I thought I saw. Hey you. What is the wavelength? Sara saw clearly that a maple was growing in a clef of the elm. I just nod, you know, what can I do?
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Merely Difficult

Instead of impossible, I keep reminding us. This next turn-around is the fucking try-works of turn-arounds. First time ever we actually printed out a schedule for D and me, 14th to the 27th we work every day but one. Really, it does look impossible but that's not an option, as the date for the Opening Party is set in stone, committees and volunteers, food, entertainment. It's just like opera, once the flyers go out and the tickets are sold, nothing short of natural disaster can forestall The Opening. We'll be putting up labels as the first guests arrive, the ladder we use for focusing lights will be put away moments before the doors open. In the Combined Arts (where more than one person is involved) this is always the way. I've done close to two hundred shows, maybe more, my memory is faulty, and always, at the end, there is near panic. As if it is the adrenaline produced by panic that is the final motivating force. I need to eat more but the seasons conspires against me, my only cookstove is wood fired and the weather is very hot. I have a hot plate, and over the course of two nights I make a Shrimp Fried Rice that is memorable. I had found a mango/chili sauce at Big Lots, fairly expensive by their standards, six ounces for two bucks, but I like the way it looked, clingy, and bought a bottle. I had caramelized onions and peppers, I had cooked saffron rice, and then I scampied peeled shrimp in butter and the sauce. Very good, I didn't bother with a plate. My first thought, after a few bites, is that I need to take a sample of this to Sara and the Deputy, because it is so good, I think we would agree. I want to see their reaction, after two or three bites, the dry-down, what is left to smell, or taste, or hear. The best meals accumulate notes on the various palettes, they build. Maybe my senses are shot, they could be, I don't know, but I appreciate a deep and dense build-up of tastes that can only be cut with a very strong zinfandel. What we are, where we find ourselves, is craps against a backboard. Roll the dice. Snake eyes.
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Tension Zone

Defined as an area where two ecological zones overlap and where species from both zones struggle to adapt to borderline conditions. Altitude is often a determinant. In Utah once, I'd gone for a hike north of Monticello, a set of buttes east of the road to Moab always caught my attention, they looked like islands with the water gone, and I had a couple of days. They looked close but were actually 10 miles away. Left a note to the BLM that the truck was mine and I was hiking over there (arrow) overnight. Light pack with a pad, space blanket, jerky, dried fruit and nuts, espresso powder (sugar packets and fake cream) and 50 feet of light climbing rope. I am not a climber, I was more of one then, but the last job in Telluride I fell twice, into my safety harness, and lost my taste for heights. But I was interested in getting on top of one of the buttes, a kind of first ascent, but really just to see what was there. I took as much water as I cared to carry, a fanny arrangement that carried four liters. My rattlesnake stick (even then a mop handle). Mid-morning I was already into a very solitary zone. Three hours and I was in amongst these strange formations, the tops of them were about the size of football fields and the sides were shear, between two and four hundred feet tall, some of them with little hog-backs that came down off their sides, a pale yellow sandstone. I could walk around one, looking closely, in an hour, and on the fourth or fifth one I found a crack. At grade, where it opened out, it was six feet wide, narrowing as it got higher, and it was partially filled with talus which would provide, maybe, a way up. A mixed talus, because of the confines, usually fines settle by weight, but climbable. Late afternoon, a slot like this doesn't get much light, but I pick a way to the top of the talus. Still thirty feet to the top but there are cracks and handholds. I remember thinking -what the hell, a good place to die- but it was a surprisingly easy climb as long as you didn't look down. The top of the butte, at first glance, seemed devoid of anything, polished stone. Established camp, heated water, made espresso, then explored until the light failed. Amazing, the way a small cleft might harbor enough sand for something to grow. In one basin there was a pinon pine that was maybe twenty inches high, maybe 250 years old. It's a brutal place. I camped lightly, no one would ever know I had been there. Where the Scioto flows into the Ohio is not a flood but a viscous flux, so much material being carried downstream, the very color is different, what the feeder streams drain. The marks of where water once was are marked on the wall, it's a fact, there they are, like Aunts at a wedding, Did I mention your brother? I've always coveted your sister. I know it is a sin. Still.
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Serial Phrases

Cicada-shrill wakes me, dressed and outside quickly, to beat the heat, another day over 95 and already warm before 7. Brush work for a couple of hours, drenched with sweat, belt wet (the real parakeet for working outdoors in hot weather), I pack it in, strip, pour water over and drip dry, spread a towel on the sofa, and, naked, read for an hour. Finishing the new Fradkin biography of Stegner: "Wallace Stegner and the American West". Good book, and as I've explained to B, I was not a Lit or even English major, and I never much read biographies or criticism. I still hold the work itself to be primary, but the people are interesting and now I enjoy reading about the controversies. Stegner is a good example, "Angle Of Repose" is a great novel (I prefer him in non-fiction, "Beyond The Hundredth Meridian" is sublime) and there is the issue of how much he used the Foote papers (a lot) in the composition. I myself have trouble with the fiction/non-fiction line. I don't know where it falls. In the maps of criticism, which vary with schools, the line is nowhere defined. It's talked about a lot but never etched. This is always an indicator of confusion. The next time someone asks, and there's always a next time, my answer to the question -what do you write?- is -serial phrases-. Stegner used it to mean how he honed down on something, the disparate threads coming together. With the bugs and the fans I can't be expected to think, but he was correct, in terms of how we now know what we think, how we do it. He preceded the knowledge, adumbrated a course of study: look at things closely, consider where you are. Pure Olson from the other side of the continent. Stegner is the western Olson. He started it there, the best writers of this generation pay him homage, every time they take up a pen. That what we say must be honest, that what we say must be true, but memory is a strange function, not subject to the laws of nature, carving its' own path. I didn't mean I was capable of that, just that I had thought you might have thought I might have been capable of closing the deal. I can't. I'm really just the janitor.
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Megladon Tooth

97 degrees today. When I get home I strip down, go out on the deck and pour a gallon of tepid water over my head. The Black Dell, my square-headed girlfriend, doesn't do well in these temps. I have to use a loud fan, which I hate and is distracting, to be able to write at all. Life is vexing. There are a couple of shark's teeth in the artifact collection, Megalodon, old and large, I know the teeth, found one once, just north of St. Augustine, Florida, and they are impressive. Can't decide if it's a traded good (probably) or really high water in some warm period of history. I don't know enough to know. The gaps in my knowledge are legion. It's amazing I can butter toast. Only because I've allowed myself a tutorial in Toast And Buttering, a perfect course, in which we explored a great many possibilities and realized we all had different tastes. A toasted piece of sourdough, for me, smeared with softened butter filling every pore, is exactly right. B swears by olive oil. I crave animal fats, they fuel my machine. Bacon grease needs a place on the periodic table. I know it weighs less than water because it floats, maybe a .67, or a .42. They're closed access to a lot of roads, late for the water to be so high. Good growing season. Water's good, as long as you live on a ridge. All the springs are below me. Power out gotta go. Never did come back on. Went to bed. Overcast and hot this morning, the cicadas are loud and bumping into the house, strange. Make coffee and go out on the back porch to see what's what. Big leafy sassafras tree is swarming with them, flying in from all around, disoriented, maybe they go to ground soon. Brush work for a couple of hours and I have to stop, drenched and hungry. A sharp sling-blade is a joy to use in young canes and tree sprouts. What was bare dirt 6 weeks ago is a jungle of saplings, reaching for light, some of the blackberry is five feet, impressive growth, the sumac is two feet, the red maple over a foot, hundreds of them, competing for space. By contrast, in front of the outhouse is a stand of young poplar 6 years old (post Ice Storm), way too thick, I'll thin them this year, that are densely canopied, no direct light gets through, and the ground is bare under them. I do a stand up bath on the deck, or maybe a heavy shower: strip and pour half-a-gallon of water over your head, then lather (I'm using a really nice Welsh soap one of the board members gave me, we had talked about scent one time when she was visiting the museum with friends), and rinse by pouring a gallon of nice, tepid water over your head. It occurs to me that I've bathed a lot of different ways in a lot of strange places. Rerereading the McCord novella recently and his stone killer stops, after a naked run, and bathes in a stock tank. They were a specialty of mine, when I was living out of my truck in the backcountry of western Colorado and Utah; and the map of springs and seeps was an important part of my gear, when I was in the Four Corners area, where every bath was an adventure. There's probably a book there, "Back Country Hygiene", several, "Back Country Cooking", Back Country Self-Medication", "Back Country Avoiding The Law", airport books, just pamplets, really, not books at all. I was so pissed when the power went out last night. I had been working on a paragraph, in my head, all day, knew some points I wanted to touch, some things I might talk about: for me, as a writer, this is heaven. Couldn't wait to write and then chopped off by power failure. I'm too dependent on the grid, what we all take for granted. I need a back-up system that gives me half-an-hour. A finish the sentence period. Time to collect my thoughts.

Wild plum is
lovely, and the
lingering smell.
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Grandmother Story

Shawnee prophetic tradition predicted the circles of hell for Indians wearing white man's clothes. Up and out early as I don't know the condition of the driveway, sure enough, a tree down, back to the house for bow-saw and loppers. Not a pleasant way to start a work day, sweaty and dirty. BUT the rest of the driveway handled the flood very well indeed, the grader ditch and culverts, the catchments, all self-scoured, what they were designed to do. The ditch is mostly down to hard-pan, even the leaves flushed. I'm amazed when anything works. The spillway was magnificant. It might be forty feet across and water was flowing over 8 inches deep, hitting the curb at the bottom and holding a standing wave over a foot high, down where the lake becomes Turkey Creek again. The noise level where I was standing, top of spillway (where the wave is standing is much louder) was just about chainsaw level, 100 dbs. When there is noise to that degree, thinking becomes a problem. First I forgot why I was there (to measure) then I forgot where I was. Sometimes it's hard to draw yourself away. Thursday is Janitor Day at the museum, I think of it that way, mostly because it's the day garbage goes out. D and the Deputy are discussing budget things, I horn in, I have a vested interest, I want a new dust-mop next year, the technology has leap-frogged, there's a nano dust-mop head now, that is charged, and, if I read the literature correctly, it pretty much sucks up everything. We didn't have this kind of attraction when I was in school, we still glued things. P-38's mostly, I did a couple of German planes because I liked the line, sexy those Messerschimt engineers. And the tail became important, extra feathers, a different color, whatever, maybe it was the way she moved. Fuck, I have to think about this. What becomes important. I define it, privy to the code, as just fitting in, how I get by, what I do. It can be defined many ways, what you do, might be best to hone a skill. A job that pays. It is so wonderful to not give a shit. Whatever you imagined, him, moving this stock, slowly, across the divide. Did I mention that my uncle was German. No one could understand him, what we saw. Does that make him "a" OR SOMETHING OTHER, or a mere article or something other. What you thought you were saying. I have trouble with our ancestory, questions, like my sister, asking me why I didn't earn a living, so damned smart, and I had to explain, I need to read for 6 or 4 hours, write for 3 or 2 hours, this was a given, what I did with my time. Basho, fucking looking at information. What would he say?, sometimes, I wonder. You, me. he shit it, what is extended..Yo, you. What I thought I meant. Sometimes it's just x number of feet, slipping away, I wish I had taken math more seriously,
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Dark Storm

Biblical. Glad I chose to stay home. Last night and then again today, wave after wave of rain, at times an inch an hour. Power out most of the day, finally on after five in the afternoon and the sun breaks out, the cicadas set up. Basho:

a temple bell too
seems to be ringing:
cicada's cry


Hardest rain in years, rolling thunder, sheet lightening, the ridgetop shaking. At 10 AM and again at 2:30 PM I have to light a lamp to read. D calls from the museum, says we've taken on 6 inches of water in the basement, wonders if I have a driveway. I don't know, and don't feel like walking through the tree-rain to find out right now. Tomorrow is soon enough. Read Louise Erdrich's new novel today, "A Plague Of Doves", excellent, her language and her characters, wonderful writing. I'd like to visit her bookstore in Minneapolis, Birchbark Books. Eating tinned or jarred food all day, strange diet. A can of pork and beans, a can of tuna, lots of crackers and cheese, a small jar of artichoke hearts, spoons of peanut butter, bread with a very good marmalade (lime and grapefruit), and several apples, in slices, sprinkled with salt. There were a few moments, mid-afternoon, when it seemed dangerous to be here. Once I walked over to the back door, half-glass, and just as I got there a huge lightening strike on the next ridge to the west blinded me for a moment, and the sound right on top, flash, beat, sound. Just enough time to realize you're not dead or dreaming, and the percussion, from such a close event, is enough to shake the walls. Printed this, because another cell passing, but I judge it south enough to not blow the power again. I need to write. It's when all of me comes together. I mean I can be a nearly normal person in most situations, talk about almost anything, but I feel most complete when I'm writing. This might not be healthy and I don't care. I enjoy it. I take my enjoyment, now, where I can. Fucking Basho, man:

no moon, no blossoms,
just drinking sake
all alone
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Considering Options

Shoot myself, for one thing, the fucking cicadas are driving me crazy. A major ground-swell this morning, as though they sensed the coming rain (I'm sure they do), and they all decided to go off at once. What they're saying, gotta be something, interests me, but god, at that sound level it's hard to think. The sound is so large, it's like a wall of noise, then you start to hear modulation underneath. Barnhart should score this for 20 violins. asho:

stillness--
sinking into rocks,
cicada's cry.

Town early, before the rains. Note that the spillway is barely flowing, just in the center, where the concrete is worn most. Stopped to feed old bread to the ducks, they also sense the storm, rumbles to the west. Pollen and catkins are thick on the water, trout and small-mouth rising to the bugs. I take my car-cup of coffee to the picnic table at the dam, roll a smoke, think about building dams. Might build a small one down in the hollow, catch some of Low Gap Creek in a pool large enough to raise frogs. Assured the frozen food person at Krogers this morning that I would buy the entire case, just get some more of the French Frog Legs, great thighs, my goodness, four of them are a meal, and they were cheap. Lots of little things to do at the museum, and D and I talk about many things, the next turn-around (too much, too quickly) and how we might build some moveable panels for the Richards Gallery, to add wall surface for flat shows (shows that hang on walls (as opposed to shows that don't)), but mostly I'm busy with janitorial duties. Sara catches me wiping the tops of the frames in the permanent collection. I had cleaned all the plexi in the artifact room and the glass on all the watercolors in the permanent collection and was using those cloths to clean the frames. It's a sub-routine, that I do, and she said -I didn't know we did that- caught herself, and said -but, of course, you would know.- Another line of storms. I'd better save this. On the way home there was a young couple necking at the picnic shelter, I was going slowly because I had meant to stop, knew the spillway would be in spate, diffused light, everything shades of gray. The silhouette they presented was Hallmark perfect, it was the perfect ad for something, voice over, a little music, I drove on by, didn't want to scare them, weird, tall, skinny guy getting out of a truck with a gym bag. Mallory's course, at Janitor College was extraordinary, "The Hidden Spaces", where we learned to use white cotton gloves as an absolute indicator of when something was dirty. I remember him shouting -clean looks after itself, what you're looking for is dirty!- That kind of stuck with me, you know, given the shit that goes on. You're lucky if you have even one good teacher. What does that say? The National Average is less than book a year. Might be a good time to look for a cave.
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Comstockery

Anthony Comstock, [excessive] censorship. Exflunctify (!), to overcome, to use up. This new dictionary/novel is killing me one word at a time. Are 'Slow Children' signs politically correct? B over mid-morning, haven't seen him in 10 days, touch base, quick cup of coffee, some starts for me to plant. When he knocks I'll looking at a picture of that impossible staircase in Santa Fe. Double helix, rises over 16 feet to a choir loft in Loretto Chapel. Story goes that an itinerant carpenter, 1878, stopped by, built it in four months and disappeared without payment. An act of God. I know maybe three people who could build it today, with space-age components, and I'm not one of them. I could be, I think, but I'd have to read a lot about some things I don't care about and the math would be difficult for me. Find a picture, it's unbelievable. Thinking about stairs because I want to do an exterior set to access the front deck, a single stringer down the middle, half-log treads, massive. The stringer would need to be curved through 45 degrees, maybe eight feet long, and at least 16 inches diameter. Why is it a 'set' of stairs? Riser and tread? Railing and riser? Up and down? Herbert, my stair mentor, said that 17 and a half inches was perfect for the combined rise and tread, he was a small man, I like 20, 8 inch rise and 12 inch tread. After I left Colorado, Dennis called from outside Telluride, he had a staircase to build and wanted to run it by me. I was flattered, he's a genius with wood. For the outside stringer, exposed (there was no inside stringer, the treads would be buried in a rock wall) he was going to take a stick he had cut, 16 feet long, an 8x14, rip it into strips a quarter inch wide, build a form, and bend them into the shape required. Dennis is so good, that I can visualize the glue lines will look like growth rings, he's that good, and I say sure, that all works, we talk it through. My own tendency is to take a walk in the woodlot and find a tree that might work, a particular curve. Important distinction between hammering something into your position or using something found. I spend several serious hours visualizing what I might build, steam an artichoke, the largest vegetable I can find. Fucking Cicadas, they are really loud; B , even blanched, is better than most, scratching for anything I could k(ghat) though, i unsuruct YOU, know, whatever., where we think we might go . What is reveled, what is was, I was looking at a construct, playing with the noun. I don't know what I mean.
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Natural Sounds

I love the outdoors. Generally, a day alone on the ridge, I'll hear from 0 to 6 sounds that are not natural sounds of nature, maybe a train over in Kentucky, maybe a loud car or truck on the road below, maybe a helicopter looking for illicit crops. Awakened this morning by a wall of sound, rolled over on my back, coming to my senses, the windows open wide, it is cicadas, maybe 75 decibels. When I go out to sling-blade I wear ear-plugs. It's an assault to hearing, like that big cage of monkeys at the Cincy Zoo. Back inside I listen to Bach on low volume and try to read. Can't listen to music and read, but I can read and listen to weekend NPR, so do. Mid-afternoon I start cooking. Caramelize a couple of onions, red pepper, celery, add a can of very good roasted and skinned tomatoes (organic, expensive, but terrific flavor) let it cook down. Lots of flat-leaf parsley at the end. Slice, salt, sweat, wipe and fry eggplant slices dipped in corn flour, the marinara on top. This is a meal that makes you remember past lovers and weep silently, tears dripping onto your plate. I just had bread and a small salad with it, usually there would be a meat, pork tenderloin or a small steak, drizzled with old, thick, balsamic. A big rich dense meal, haven't had one in a while, and I drank the last Ridge Zin, the only wine up to the task, that Glenn had brought, when he was shooting footage of us finding and collecting wrack for the show. Perfect combination, a meal like that needs a wine that can scour the inside of your mouth. A meal can be an easy conceit. A friend from Cape Cod, friend is too strong, a guy I worked with, Juan. The infamous Juan Of The Two Beauties, we were at Janitor College, overlapping, he was a great cook, seduced many women with his cooking, but had the advantage of being rich. His father owned a South American country and had sent him away for safe keeping, he could fly girlfriends up. The rest of us were reduced to northern milk-maids, they had good hands, god bless them. So easy to get sidetracked. BUT Juan was the first person to ever explain to me the connection between a really good dinner and sex, that it was a doable thing, I took up cooking right away. I'm sure I was going somewhere with that. Sure, it came out in court that I knew nothing, when Juan was shot 42 times outside the Hilton my reputation suffered. Hard not to be offended, when they don't shoot you, but thrilled, you know, to be alive. Call attention to that. Note to self : who knows what. Basho, 1688, spring:

so lazy
finally roused from bed:
spring rain.

"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawhh'TV thought, I mesa, want you might hazard said whatever.A butte, a landform, something. Did you see that?."What is said.
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