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.