What's Said

I don't know what to make of me, I used to pride myself on being just beyond understanding, and now I want to be understood, I ask my readers to take a leap, they do, without a moment's hesitation and I'm the one that's perplexed. Listen, I was driving home today, and I was thrilled that I hadn't seen three crows, then, just before I reached the end of Mackletree, there they were, feeding on the scraps from KFC. I slammed the truck in gear, got out, yelled at them, picked up the trash. Exactly who is being used here? It's like an insider joke and I'm the goat. You wake up from surgery and they've taken out the wrong thing. -Excuse me, gall bladder maybe?- Not easy to laugh with a hernia, but I manage, nonetheless:

An Ace Bandage
and you, in the wilderness,
is enough.
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Triac Failure

Don't know what it is, but according to the manual "Triac failure is minimized with toroidal devices." Good, always hate it when my triac fails. D, of course, does not read the manual and somehow gets the dimmers and controls working, but even he will tell you he doesn't know exactly what he did. The second dimmer pack had three blown fuses, easy enough. While he replaces those (hard to get to) I reread a section on Activating Chase Effects but it doesn't seem germane. Computer works great with a two pound block of ice behind the rear. After lunch we are finally told that we've been given an 'as new' baby grand piano, everyone else has known about this for months; it'll have to live in the back hall and be moved about for various events, which means we need a piano dolly, more specifically called an Adjustable Grand Piano Mobileer (with locking wheels) and a bomb proof cover. Big rain last night and I was able to replenish my water supply but the driveway was a slippery mess this morning, a barely under control free-fall, and more trash on Mackletree. I need a bath but just go out on the deck and pour a gallon of water over my head, towel off, call it good enough, eat a can of tuna and some cheese, a hunk of bread, call it good enough, get a drink and settle at the keyboard. The Impossibly Cute Park Ranger showed up at the museum just before closing, a function on the Esplanade, 50 Zebco rods and reels for kids, a fishing adventure on the old Ohio; she brushes against me and I ask her over for dinner. If I understand this correctly, we have a date. D was standing there, he says that is the case. A perfect chance to cook a slab of ribs for pregnant Zoe and not eat dinner alone, this is good, but everyone is related, cousins and nieces, and I don't want a family, I think, but maybe I need a family, maybe we all do. That's not quite right, I already have a family here, the extended clan, and I wonder if that relationship would be endangered by a more intimate connection. I think about this shit, you know? When I first met Jenny, the very first time, ten years ago, she was skipping down the path, from Brian and Dawn's, down to Ronnie's house, and she looked back over her shoulder, I was filled with lust, that dancer's body, the grace, come on, what male wouldn't? Filed it as fantasy. Now I might be alone with her. I wonder what I'll say. Probably something inappropriate. I have a history. Three crows, never mind.
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Not Off

D out on emergency childcare, the Deputy on vacation, Pegi at the Cirque, skeleton crew. I reread the manuals on the electronics and hook things up, everything step by step and correct, but when I plug a stagelight into the system it is not off, as it should be, with the dimmer pre-set down, but on, and I can't get it off except by unplugging the damned thing. I do the entire programming sequence three times. Manage to waste half a day, keeping a light on even when I hit Black Out. Tomorrow I intend to mop and clean bathrooms, something I understand. Fuck a bunch of high-tech. Dogs back again, a feral pack, mix-breeds, but still I don't want to just keep shooting them so probably get a pellet gun, start pissing around my perimeter, try to establish a territory. Shot an ugly little black one last night, snarling at me, mouth foaming; shot it in the ear, dragged it down the logging road, downwind, and into the brush, -Food for worms, dear Percy-. Nice rattlesnake this morning, on the other side of the driveway puddles, 34 inches, 5 rattles, very dark, thick bodied, a female. Trapped her with a stick and got my foot behind her head, stretched her out, lovely thing but they do scare me, re-trapped her and stepped away, stamped my feet, amazing how they move so quickly away from vibration, no crows (quid pro crow, Sara still laughs at that) but some red-neck asshole has thrown his garbage out on Mackletree. You have to realize this particular section of Mackletree, through the State Forest, almost completely canopied, is as drop-dead beautiful as any section of the Natchez Trace, and for someone to stop (they had to of, we're not talking a Wendy's bag here, Taco Bell) and dump several bags of garbage. I keep trash bags in the truck, and latex gloves, pick most of it up on the way home, I'll finish tomorrow, but I have to get home because some other, or maybe the same, red-neck bastards have smashed my mail-box with a baseball bat. I feel violated, but have to measure my response: I don't want a war, there's no way I could win. I think about casting a mail-box in concrete, or, this is a fairly common problem, smashed mail-boxes, buying one of those steel ones, with a life-time guarantee, and setting it in concrete. If it's a drive-by bash, as I think it is, that would really sting, a broken-bat dribbler down the third base line. I don't think I'm hated, locally, I'm not sure they know I'm here; wait, yes, of course they do know. Not a problem, I often have to rethink, not a problem, one thing I know is that I'm not slow, usually.

Tom

-Catching up is hard to do- doo-opp, a down beat, let's get those guys back. Cage in Portsmouth? I'm dreaming. One of them is a Classics scholar and we talk about translations. He couldn't believe I'd done "Antigone" here, -Goddamn- he said, we don't get "Antigone" in Cincy. -Yep- I said, -we're full of surprises-.
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Easier

Makes it so much easier, to just say what you mean. I'm fully sympathetic, when it comes to saying what you mean. I don't lie well. I'd rather not make something up. But, if reality doesn't provide what I need, I'm not above making it up. You can't trust me. I'll grope in the dark. I won't remember, but I will grope. Once, in Florida, I must have been 15, Dad and I went fishing, Salt Creek up the St. John's, the flats where the river opened into big water, a place we couldn't often fish because it was exposed to any weather, wide open, but a calm day, we were fishing shiners for large-mouth bass at the edge of the lily-pads. An attentive kind of fishing, where you watched a moving bobber for sudden jerks, mine suddenly dipped and moved away, Dad yelled, but I was on the case, waited until the float went down the second time, set the hook, largest bass I ever caught, 8 pounds 6 ounces, I played him well. I almost never lied at home, I could tell my parents anything, ask them anything, we moved around so often (Navy Brat) that I was never part of a group, so didn't have a peer group to lie to, mostly, I read. Still do. Good day at the museum, finally sought out Leo, Tech Director at the college, seems the lighting equipment Pegi had at the Cirque is just fine, hook this to this, that to that, run a certain size wire, various mounting pointers; then D was able to find and download the manuals for both the electronic components. On a roll. The AC guys were back, to repair one of the two big roof-top AC units, thank god, things were heating up in Dodge City. I read both manuals, because I'll read anything, and because I left theater before the electronic revolution. I was still writing on a monster manual Underwood, horrible machine to learn on because it was so heavy and could take should a beating, I developed a two-finger hammering technique that destroys mere keyboards. Never could unlearn the technique, either, as if I'd learned to think through hammered digits. No nappe at the spillway, families quietly fishing: aha, I think, just two crows at the sheltered tables, but there's the third, chasing a donut hole down the slope, into the edge of the lake. Too hot to cook, and I know I'll skip dinner, so I stop at the Dairy Bar and get a footer, stuffed jalapenos; bought a bunch (10) of the little cans of baked beans on sale recently, another habit of families that fish, is that they eat many things out of those small cans, perfect boat food, and always at room temperature, so, with the footer and peppers, a cold can of beans. A picnic, I fish in my mind. Eating Vienna Sausages, Beanie Weanies, smoked oysters, sardines, liver sausage, yellow cheese and saltine crackers, drinking Busch beer in returnable bottles. That last couple of years, fishing with Dad in north Florida, I was close to becoming a river rat, but fell into theater, such is how, now I'm a river rat again, go figure. The driveway is eroded to loose rock and the verges are infringing. The finish on my truck is beat to shit by blackberry canes, the driveway has become a secret: if you didn't know it was there you wouldn't know it was there, a close dense canopy. If I ever drank anyplace else, and tried to drive home (I don't) I'd never find my house, I carry two flashlights and a large plastic bag in my soft army back-pack, a few other things, an extra pen, a dry notebook, a Phillip's bit for the drill, several of those strange nuts that secure down the plastic bolts for a toilet seat. God help me, I save those. I have a peach-basket filled. AND my current and forever passion is to compost ALL OF MY SHIT, which I do, AND collect the nuts that anchor toilet seats. Suspect. I wouldn't trust me, if I were you, I'd vote me off the island. I have to go out and shoot another dog, they're running the wildlife off, I hate killing anything, but I have to, I'm writing a book about a fox.
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Pounding Nails

Actually, I'm designated sawyer and don't pound that many nails, but B and Bear do, because the nail-gun is on the fritz. Because the lumber is so bad we use many small pieces between studs (blocking) in order to keep the door openings true. We get all the interior framing done, great room, bedroom, bath, closet, and as the ceiling is vaulted (scissor trusses) we add some ceiling joists in the closet creating a storage loft. I pace Bear on the beer consumption, drinking one to his two, Natural Light, I just sweat them off, a bottled water between, still don't pee until I get home, sweating enough to saturate my clothes. The two-bucket-on-the-deck shower, tepid water, feels great, a couple of Advil for those muscle groups I haven't used in a while; can of tuna, cheese and olives, hunk of bread dinner. Read Chuck Palahniuk's new book "Snuff", early this morning, finishing at dinner, a slight thing, a conceit really, but raunchy and funny. OK, Kim sent the second line:

There once was a doctor from Nantucket
who brought home brains in a bucket,

Brandy, Skip, Steven, Jana, surely we can wrap this up in a tidy fashion; suck it, fuck it, come to mind, also truck it, we need the set-up lines (bb) and then a closer. Cool enough to turn off the fan, the noise sometimes drives me crazy, I have to listen to music or wear ear-plugs, and for some time now, I'd rather just listen to the natural world. That's it, something I meant to mention, going to the concert, Saturday night, I was listening to a soundscape created by someone else, that I had to pay attention to. I don't do that so much any more, listen to music, though, times in my life, there was always something playing, blues, loose jazz, or the Grateful Dead, but now I listen to the wind in the trees, the frogs, those fucking crows, a pileated woodpecker hunting for grubs, that peculiar sound a fish makes, slurping a bug. Bear would say -Bridwell, you mother-fucker, you're losing your senses- but actually I'm gaining. I see progress here, moving toward the less artificial. God, I just had this fugal moment that went on and on, where I drifted off, thinking about music, visual arts, the written word, installation, how art ties us together. You're not me, I'm not even sure I'm me, yet, we can connect, we can take things out of context, in fact, need to, because, otherwise, nothing makes sense, and construct an order. Where we want to be. Make believe.
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Nothing, The Same

I can't believe how much I expose myself, everyone knows what I'm doing, I don't have any secrets anymore because I put it all out on the line. You might imagine that there is something reserved, held back, but there isn't. Sure I forget things, often never get to the point, and there seem to be some subjects that I never talk about (though when I think of one, I usually talk about it, at least skirt the edge) mostly in areas I feel strongly about but in a negative way. I don't like to complain unless I can be sarcastic or funny. There is, generally, too much complaining, now I'll complain about that. I can't stand people complaining about their job: quit it, for god's sake, get another job, and if you can't get another job, quit complaining about this job. Drives me crazy, I have to put on a prolate spheriod helmet and beat my head against a wall. Did I mention, I don't like idiots? B called and wants me to help with the inside framing at Zoe & Josh's place. Don't know if Bear will be there, I'm going in as a consulting framer, no intent to argue a single point, merely offer opinion and pound nails, that hammer and nail thing, Hamm and Clov; and, of course, there will be conversation with B and Josh, I might see the hugely pregnant Zoe, someone will feed me lunch, we'll probably drink a beer at quitting time, talk about Emily's grave, or Grave's terrific memoir of the First World War "Goodbye To All That", or Gulley Jimson, or nailing baseboard. We'll probably talk about food, maybe compare a recipe (both of us don't use recipes) in a very oblique way, B might say, for instance, when I might have asked him a question about how much chili powder to use when dredging fish fillets for tacos, -well, Tom, I guess I'd have to say, I fully expect to be digging chili powder out of ears with a Q-tip the next day- which I convert to ounces and a cloud of a certain density. And here's the kicker, working at Z&J's place with B, I'm understood and respected for what I am, whatever that is, accepted. I don't have to apologize for who I am. That wasn't the point here, what was the point? not apologizing but not putting yourself in that position, not going out: then you don't have to apologize. But I'll go out for this Richard's clan, because I like them, they engage me, I'm like an itinerant preacher with limited job skills and a guilty past, any chance to mix with the party. I have no social life and no skills. I'm not complaining, but ... . I feel I've been dealt a bad set of cards. What is the experiment, exactly? Should I be docile and roll over? Tune in tomorrow.

Tom

Talk about skirting edges.
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Evening Away

Excellent trio, Percussion Group Cincinnati, at the museum, needed help unloading and setting up, then loading and putting away afterward. Stage hand. Also I had altered the air-conditioning system for the theater (one of the main gallery units is out, so things are heating up) and wanted to be there in case something blew up. AC guy was around, last week, ordering parts for the big unit and we picked his brain. Theater unit is really an outdoor compressor, but we don't have an outdoors and the roof is too far away, so the original installers had run torturous ductwork for the exhaust. Too restrictive, burns out the coil, but the thing is in the big, awful, basement storage room, and the guy says, as I had thought, just cut a big hole in the plenum and baffle the air up, away from the intake. Easy enough, but a really loud and ugly job, gloves, metal snips, sawzall, hearing protection, drill, to start a hole. Cut it on both sides and the top, then bend it out so that it makes its own baffle. Elegant solution. Works. The group played some interesting pieces, one by our local Barnhart, a couple of John Cage pieces (they're famous for their knowledge of Cage) and finished with Four Chilean Songs that they've adapted from those mountain pan pipes transposed to the Karimba. Barnhart and Amy came over, he'd been best man at a student wedding over at the college, for most of the second half. Nice conversation for the load-out. Briefly thought about going for a drink at the pub, blew it off, wanted to get home, get cozy on the ridge. Spent an hour in the gallery the Wrack Show will occupy, walking around slowly, looking at walls and ceilings, some hoops to jump through. I'm anxious to get started sand-blasting stumps. Our lives move us, you notice that? you get interested in one thing over another and suddenly you're fixated, down on your knees with a magnifying glass, and let the wild woods grow. No nappe at the spillway, but squalls coming in from the west, fireworks, and a low rumble of thunder. I get a drink and make some notes. I've never been more comfortable. Not answerable to anyone other than a few close friends that make no demands. It's an amazing freedom, to not compromise, approach it slowly, it means you'll be alone most of the time, consider how you'll deal with that, yourself alone. B left early, to get home to his squeeze, I saw that look in his eye. I nod, you know, your greater graces, what we think we know.
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Fugal State

That second posting, early this morning, what happened was I got up to pee and saw I'd left the computer on, went over to shut it down, but I'm so conditioned, when I sit in this chair (which needs retiring, I've worn it out), to write, that I went on automatic pilot, wrote, sent, went back to bed. Forgot I'd even done it until I noticed the sheet on top of the pile when I got up the second time. My hard copies don't print the title, so I write the title in a scrawl at the bottom of the page, knew I had written "Extrados", which should have been on top, but instead, there was "Funny Guy". Mackletree is so beautiful right now, peaking, and the verge mown; had to stop and pick up trash. Turkeys everywhere, must have seen 60 or 80 this week, nearly managed to clip a Jake with the truck. Thinking about feeding B's clan, maybe do a brisket in the smoker with a pork roast on the rack above, talked with my Dad, he thought twelve hours at 200 degrees, maybe do a trial-run and parcel it out to the museum staff. Hound Dog makes the best potato salad I've ever eaten (almost an egg salad with potatoes because he raises chickens) and maybe a cold cherry soup. Like to have Sara and Clay, certainly D and Carma, Bear, Daleena and the kids, the Deputy and Jamie, Jenny, looking at twenty people, probably, Josh could bring Zoe on a stretcher or we could wait until after the twins are born, better idea. Need to cook a slab of ribs for Zoe. She is so very pregnant. I could use some myself, with slaw and baked beans. Have to go in tomorrow, for a concert at the museum, maybe buy some things, cook some ribs on Sunday, boil and rejuvenate the sauce with fresh herb, 7 years old almost to the day, an incredibly complex taste sensation at this point. It's like a wall of taste, every niche filled, explodes in flavors and combinations you'd never imagine, mango and chili and tamarind, red wines and balsamic vinegars, Guinness, onion juice, garlic, lime, rose water, geranium, capers, various drippings, juices you don't want to know about, a sauce for the ages, I hope when I die someone will keep it alive. I'd like to think. Phrasal verbs: fuck off, fuck up, fuck over (my apologies, Herman and Portia, I just fall into triplets, it's like they're issued to me or something, give Bridwell the threes, it's a given). I never know where to put periods, that's why I run on, I'm looking, you know, but I never see. I'm probably a foil, or a red herring, or something, a shadow you could have ignored, the moon, moving around. It works. I feed my computer ice and I can write, yes, I was hoping for a compromise. If there was a tug-o-war, we'd be on the same side of the rope. I rest my case. Your honor.

Tom

There once was a doctor on Nantucket.
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Funny Guy

I'm a funny guy, if you cut through the bullshit, what's left is a kind of humor, a sardonic grimace, one last slip on the banana skin. Like Groucho said. Tennis is just a game. I don't trust words, I love them, but I don't trust them. I always think you imagine something I don't mean. I want you close but I'm a private person, maybe the slightest bit strange, smell strongly from recent physical exertion (hacking my way through blackberry and bull-vine to get to my door) but it is the odor of honest labor, not a purchased scent, honest in that regard, like smoke after a fire, and I don't really know what you think of me. Maybe trust is an issue, what I would allow. I is an issue, what we could do with him. I'd like to stuff him in a box and put him out with the trash, but where would I be then. On a different dung-heap. Consider where the Scioto flows into the Ohio. I've considered this particular confluence on many occasions, we might say I know it well, still, I know almost nothing about it. Disheartening. On the other hand. Go away, go away, Dixie Land. It's good to get to the bottom of things. B said something, I don't remember, I could see he was annoyed, I had driven back roads for what seemed like hours, Bear wanted to hire me to talk with him, this is probably a dream, one of us will wake up and fly away, that butterfly. Saw another black squirrel today. Think about that. I need to eat more, but I'm tired of chewing. Nothing is shocking. I don't want to see them, but I swear to god, driving in tonight, the county road crew has mowed the verge of Mackletree and it is beautiful, canopied, filtered light, post-card:

I'm ashamed to admit
how much they mean
to me, three crows
on the road.

Tom

An inverse reverse Idaho. My gift to you. A matter of course. Tacking the wind. -Is it blowing, Bob?-
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Extrados

Yes, of course, what was I thinking, duh, outside curve of an arch would be extrados. A lot of jumps to hoop through. Nappe pronounced 'nap', is the sheet of water going over a spillway or dam. Knew there was a word, Latin, mappe, meaning napkin, also Old French word for tablecloth. A great word to finally have, stumbled across it looking up something else, a little gift from the dictionary gods. If it wasn't for George Bernard Shaw Nietzsche's Ubermensh could have been "Beyondman", dealing a death blow to the first super-hero. No scones at the bakery this morning and D and I pitched a fit. Twice this week. We started by repeating the phrase in every possible way, -no scones? no scones! NO SCONES- escalating in volume; then into a routine, totally off the wall, about being addicted to the damned things because of the opium they mix in the batter, first they get us addicted, then withhold the fuckers so they can laugh at our withdrawal symptoms, how cruel they were, how they should be eaten by bull sharks, how the dust from a thousand camels crossing the Gobi should clog all their pores. We were on a roll, and the owner was loving it, as she sliced and slathered cream cheese on bagels for us. A couple of the help thought we were crazy and a bit threatening. -Four lefts to go straight and stay on Gay, you can't miss it- my directions to a confused motorist,- or, I say -two rights and it'll be straight ahead, but the lefts are safer, no wait, do the two rights because you can't make one of the lefts- hope I helped the guy. Supernatant means floating on the surface, seems like too much word, but it might prove useful. Thinking about some printed matter for the Wrack show, not labels, but hand-outs, offprints: "Do Bowling Balls Float" article, a list of specific gravities, a flow-chart for the Scioto / Ohio confluence, the piece about Prolate Spheroids: a little booklet you get at the end kind of thing. I like this idea, museum logo, maybe a list and description of upcoming shows, maybe a few of these pages, where I talk about the show, where the idea came from, how everyone climbed on board. Sara wants to run the show extra long so maybe we close with Glenn's film of us making the show. Maybe we should dip the booklets in the Ohio and then dry them out, they'd be crinkled and the ink would run, maybe just the cover, like that lovely moldy cover B did for the Skip Fox book. When does Meg Oliver get up? I only see her at 3 or 4 in the morning when I get up to check the weather on TV, not that often, because I mostly don't care, you know, bring on whatever, nothing I can do other than take my truck to the bottom of the hill, but there are times that is critical information, if getting to work is REALLY important, like changing over shows, where there isn't the option. The Janitor Escape Clause overrides any other rule or regulation: If getting to work is dangerous, or is perceived as dangerous, the janitor may stay home and read. It's in the contract, read the small print. All my friends are assuming false names, I wonder if they're distancing themselves. Was that scene in the coffee-shop too much? The Cole Porter song with the bible salesman? I can't remember what I had decided.
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Intrados

Sitting in the theater at the museum, going over, in my mind, the components (the scenery) of the set for the kids' play the Brit is directing. Needs a fence gate, covered in ivy, and I'm imagining how to build it, an arch would be nice, like part of a trellis, I think about several different methods of construction. Need a smoke to think, D is off judging County Fair art and Sara is at the beach, so I'm standing outside alone, thinking about arches. Which leads to thinking about Arches, the grand National Park outside Moab, Utah, where there are some 154 natural sandstone arches, requiring millions of years of wind and the old freeze-thaw cycle; then thinking about Natural Bridges Park, how if a stone arch spans water it is called a bridge; then a mattress truck pulls up next door at the furniture store, and painted on the side is a beautiful woman in a slinky nightgown lying on a bed, her lower back is bare, and it's a kind of inverted arch. The word 'intrados' pops out of my mouth... the inner curve of an arch... (implies that the outer curve has a different name, but I don't remember that) and I remember hearing that word first from my Scenery Mentor, Herbert Senn, on Cape Cod, when I was 18, then years later, in Moab, drinking with a Park Ranger at a brew pup, watching Jordan and the Bulls crush the Jazz (Jordan had the flu, fired the game-winning shot, with his tongue hanging out, falling away). I'd always use the word when building an arch and I've probably built more than my share of them, with various people, in various states, certainly two dozen, over the years, and whomever it was I was building with at the time would look at me strangely. I'd usually just shrug and apologize but sometimes I'd stop working and do five minutes on The Arch In History, those Romans, man, concrete and keystones. Waiting for the AC guy, D gets back from judging 4-H art, a late lunch at the pub, lovely Holly is our waitress, and during our meal, at the bar, she elbows in next to me, to reach across and refill a coke without having to walk around. She's like 8 inches away, bare shouldered, and I turn my head to smell her neck, I can't not, it's there, like Hillary said about Everest; despite the fact that I am careful to be discreet, with that knowledge beforehand and not giving a shit, that three people see clearly what I'm doing, Holly, D, and Jim, the owner (or at least the money), there is no way that I wouldn't take advantage of that particular situation. A slightly musky sweat over salt marsh over a floral soap. Some people just smell good, their cross to bear. She said she wasn't wearing anything, just BO, and I'm thinking we should bottle this. She smelled great. Fucking turkeys, on the way home, wild turkeys and I've seen so many of them this week, 60 or 50, everywhere; I could have taken one with the truck and wondered, afterward, why I hadn't. Stupid three pound chicks, perfect fryers, haven't leaned to avoid vehicles, but I stop and let them cross the road, just to watch their awkward walk. Penguin time in the city. Darwin said something about finches. What about those lizards that eat seaweed? I've captured one of the salamanders that prey on the frogs, I'll watch him for a few days and set him free, I don't know what's going on, really, I merely watch, probably a crime in most states.
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Missing Piece

Holding to the triplets, again, no one at the lake, stop for a smoke and watch a large group (two 3's) of crows cleaning the shelter. Excellent technique. And a third triplet: I find a single puzzle piece, my third in a year, the famous "missing piece" that you hear about so often, on a picnic table. Someone is going to be pissed. I need to get a bunch of uniform frames, cheap is fine, though D and I could probably make 20 in a day, from walnut or cherry, that would be stunning; start buying used puzzles at Good Will and yard sales, take a nice single piece out of each and frame it. I'm not usually a minimalist but I like this. Normal janitor duties following a Saturday event and there is stuff for the auction that needs taken to the basement and a dozen or so rolled off-cuts of carpet that need taken to the third floor, I docent a group of students through the main gallery, then, late afternoon, walk a couple through, that decide the museum is the perfect place for their wedding reception, which it is, probably, the best venue in town. Bet I walked 20 miles today, leg muscles are almost cramped (that pre-cramp tingle that actually allows you enough time to stretch your leg or flex your toes and avoid seizing) and my feet hurt. Fortunately I foresaw how I would feel when I got home so I stopped at the Dairy Bar and got a footer (sauce, mustard and cheese) and some jalapeno poppers, god, I love those fuckers, an almost dangerous food: for one, dealing with the whole pepper family, you never know how hot one is going to be, two, the cheese with which they are stuffed is molten, and three, they are batter dipped and deep-fried. If my purse were deep enough, I'd stop every day and get an order of these, just for the thrill, not knowing what you'd get, how rare is that, in a time of absolute codification? Not to draw to fine a line, but as a codicil to my rule about getting footers from really large people (because they prepare each one as if for themselves) as opposed to an anorexic teenager who didn't add enough of anything (and you had to get two), but you should eat these at least once a week. They'll make you think. The best I ever had were at a state line where a writer friend was meeting me because she was wanted across the line. I drink free beer anywhere, I'm not particular, but I was aware of the surroundings, there were stuffed animals and old-fashioned juke-boxes, I fed quarters and played the Allman Brothers, "Whipping Post", really, I'm a creature of habit.

Tom

You said what? I have to pay attention, what did you mean by that? I wish I understood this better, far as I can see there is more weather, a storm that blows me off of my foundation, breaks my nose against a wall, I'm bleeding, I ask you, ever polite, what did you mean?
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Triune

I don't know why things fall in threes. Maybe it's just me, an imagined pattern, something I read when I was young and impressionable. Maybe it's just a rhythm, a beat, that I pick out of background noise. Seems real. Could be a Whip-poor-will or a Rufus-sided towhee, those fucking crows. If I were superstitious I could play the alien abduction card, the previous life gambit, the lost tribe bullshit, but I'm rooted in a world where a bad-hair-day fox takes an apple from the compost pile, glances my way, and trots off into the bush, a mocking bird sings badly, clouds occlude the moon. Not a promising scenario but something I could live with: late at night, I just need to know what are the parameters. I can adjust to almost anything if I can see the playing-field, understand the basic rules. Lean into the curves.
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Perceived Slight

What I go through. You wouldn't believe. Just as I set down to write it gets several stages darker, big winds, the leaves turn inside out, thunder, I start writing anyway, fuck it, I've lost more than a paragraph before, I can deal with it. I make some notes, actually write longhand, by candle, because I had thought far enough ahead to get supplies available. I'd written some replies earlier, I assume they're in storage, beyond this lightening bolt, saved somewhere. Coming a blow. Wait for the first drops to spatter before you close any windows, consider ventilation, changing stale house air for a batch of ozone. Hadn't worked with B's nephew, Bear, in a few years and it was good to be around his profane self. He drinks beer like it was water, is as strong as an ox, curses like a sailor. Bam, lightening close, catches me looking NW and blinds me for a minute. Fast moving cell, 30 mph, with winds to 60 mph, roaring over the ridges. I feel exposed, shit, I am exposed, the house shudders. A choice I made. Hate writing longhand, so laborious and you still have to transcribe. So, eight years ago Bear was helping me on my house, lending brute force when necessary, and I had bought a whole leg of lamb, for a dinner party. B likes lamb as much as I do, and his brother, too, so they were coming with significant others and we were grilling the rubbed leg slow, off the heat, then crisping the outside over high heat. I was relatively new to The Creek, not intending a family affair, but Bear's sister (the impossibly cute park ranger) was at her father's house and sure, she should come too, with current lover. Bear takes such offense that I don't ask him and his family that his anger is palpable, he calls during dinner, to ream me out. The perceived slight. The dynamic moment that charged and changed a relationship. I didn't ask them because I didn't have enough plates, food, and chairs. After eight years, he's mellowed somewhat, though still calls me by just my last name, as in -Bridwell, you mother-fucker, what's going on?- Back then I felt he was always on the edge of violence, he intimidated by his very presence, but since, he's survived a head-on car crash that would have killed anyone else, and then last year, you may have read about it, a Creek Guy shot a kid, at distance, through a pick-up truck, with a high-powered rifle, twice, for stealing a bale of hay (to use as a target base, honing his bow-hunting skills) and the kid bled out in Bear's arms, waiting for a misdirected 911 response, and he had known the shooter most of his life. Maybe we're most changed by events over which we have no control. Into town today to do the laundry and get a few things, stopped at B and Sarah's place on the way home (it is right on the way) to see if they had finished the roof, have a beer, and he had picked up the same vibes I had, me working with Bear again, the perceived slight. Deep background. This is like a one-page novel (a nod to Mr. McCord) because to really tell the story it would be, what, like a 100 pages, these people, this place, so interesting. Think of me as Jack Webb or Nick Adams, just the facts. Oh, wait, they're both fiction. Reality is like molasses, you get bogged down in it, and sometimes that's a good thing, you can't pay enough attention to detail. I've solved the computer problem, the over-heating-mid-summer thing, after that talk with B, because heat rises and cold sinks, and if I place a saucer on top of the black Dell and put a frozen 2 pound yogurt container of ice on the saucer it seems I can cool my mainframe. Excellent, I'm already paying for the fridge and there's no added incurred cost, hidden expenses. Coming home, there is no one at the lake, odd for this time of year, and I can see a book on the picnic table down near the water, I'm curious enough to stop, walk down and check the title, it's one of those self-help things for lost Christians, I throw it in the trash and feed the ducks bread I salvaged from the dumpster behind Kroger. God, I feel good, I'm still alive, bless the little children, I'm sure they contribute something, nothing holds a candle to the way I feel about you. An owl, there is hooting in the distance, any country road, you stop to neck, there they are:

Three crows...
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The Caesura

A thoughtful fabrication. Thinking about the Wrack Show: slightly careless in broad ways but highly refined in some particulars. B called this morning and wanted me on board for flying the roof on his addition, yes, of course, and I'll be the ground guy, the sawyer, the passer-up-of-plywood person. Hot bright day, tee-shirts soaked and sweat rolling into eyes, sawdust stuck to every exposed body part. I remember this, I used to do it, when I was younger, and nothing weighted so much. That's an odd phrase that sounds like it means something else, "and everything was lighter" might be closer to the money. Sleeveless tee, so my shoulders are sun-burned, when I get home I rub them with raspberry vinegar, if I have a choice of what to smell, you know, I go with the best option, I was afraid if I rubbed them with balsamic I'd eat myself. I have no idea why vinegar works, in this situation, or, even, really, if it does, I do it because it's a thing I learned and it seems to help. Placebo? I don't know. I do remember sex with Olinda, on the beach at Ponte Vedra, she was a red-head and we were using sun-screen, but I had brought a bottle of apple-cider vinegar because I knew she would burn, had doused her liberally, and when we fucked later, in the dunes, it was all about apples, despite the sand. I have to pass this along, Glenn said:

First: Three...

Then: ...

Then: .

Then:

he got it in one, how rare is that? There was a bird on Madagascar that weighed over a thousand pounds, it couldn't fly, short stubby wings and the bones weren't hollow, simply filling a slot, a "predator" but by name only, probably a Roc.
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What Sara Said

Nacelles are cubby-holes in planes or boats (Fr. small boats) and I ran into the word twice this week, don't remember ever seeing it before. Talk about getting side-tracked, goddamned Janitor Catalog comes in and I'm way out in left field somewhere, then to exacerbate the problem, an Archival Storage Catalog AND a Shipping Supplies Catalog. Fine day for them, though, because the carpet layers are in to finish the offices and the atmosphere is toxic with glue fumes AND they play AM radio, rock, fairly loud all day. I work downstairs and in the basement but the poor Deputy is driven to distraction. What Sara said, we were talking about a job Gina, Interior Designer for the engineering firm that did the structural consulting for the major museum conversion-from-bank, was next door at Covert's Furniture, matching some swatches, D and I were out back having a smoke, so we chatted with her (she has a terrible laugh, there should be courses in laughing, at any professional college, it was a required course at Janitor College, I developed a nice upper mid-western chuckle, innocent and self-deprecating) when she came out, seems she's designing a new interior for the local funeral parlor. We joked about that, but thought about it too, asked her if she was doing it Hawaiian Surfer or more like the Victorian Library (what I think of as Classic Funeral Parlor) that was more traditional. Later that day, we were having a smoke with Sara and recounted the conversation, Sara said -dead people are the perfect clients- she's an interior designer too, and a good one, I've designed and built a lot of houses, a lot of books, D's built custom furniture, we know what it's like working with a client, a dead client is perfect. We laugh so hard we sputter. This is the paradigm shift that is happening at the museum, where the Director and Janitor can share a laugh. I wish I'd gotten a beer and had a cigaret with her in her office, yesterday, after hours she closes her door and smokes in her office, but I wanted to get home and write, because I had this fucking Janitor Supply catalog in my back pocket, burning a hole. And I'm an egocentric bastard, generally, want to get home and write, I'll probably eat, get a few drinks, roll a few smokes, but my overriding motivation is to get to the keyboard, to tell you what I thought I saw. I love that, last night, ending with:

Three crows...

so perfectly what I meant, there they were again, at the bottom of the driveway, when I was switching into four-wheel-drive. I always stop, look carefully around, before I start up the hill, and the three crows were there, squawking, bouncing around in that crow dance, which is very like a chipmunk, somehow, erratic and off the beat.
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Janitor Supply

Got the new Ojserkis 'Janitor Supply' catalog today. Clear prose with pictures, "Improve sanitation and avoid plumbing problems. Provide disposal cans." "Larger capacity means less refilling." "Encourage handwashing and indulge the senses." Baby changing stations, hand sanitizers, soap dispensers, flat towel dispensers, roll towel systems, recessed paper towel dispensers; an entire section FOR THE URINAL, tall block screens, solo screens, lexus screen blocks, urinal blocks, budget screen with block, the grabber tool "for the nasty jobs". Commercial toilet seats (antimicrobial, fire-retardant (so that if there is a fire, and you sit on one, your ass is saved)), seat liners, napkin disposal products, deodorant systems, lavatory guards, undersink piping surrounds, toilet grab bars, stainless steel mirrors, braille signs, green cleaners, receptacles, outdoor entrance mats, comfort mats, stair treads. A transport of joy, the pictures are stupid enough to make you laugh. Still I follow the development of certain products, and specific trade catalogs must keep up to speed. Boat mags are the best place to keep up with finishes, model airplane mags for doping fabric, you don't have to know everything, you just need to know where to look. For a while I got a mag "Concrete Construction", a trade mag, informative, and the lead article, I ripped off the cover (Febuary1987) and push-pinned it right in front of where I write, it's been moved a few times but always the same relative location, "Concrete Cures An Ailing Church". Sara said the damnest thing, yesterday I think it was, we were outside, smoking. The wrong time of day, direct sunlight precluded the alley, so we were clustered in the shade on the north side of the building, the back door, and Howard had come over from Covert's. Did you notice how different reality became, when it was remembered. Not the same thing. I make some notes. I'm out of my league. You shouldn't have thought I'd mean anything. Let's consider whether it's an image or not. Do you see it, is it there? I think your sister is my half-brother.

Tom

Three crows...
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Visibility Nil

Last two mornings, going in, river fog thick as pea soup, both mornings I'm early enough to go below the floodwall and scout pieces for The River Wrack show. It's coming together. The pieces dictate what they will do. Still need some rope, with which to hang. What I think of as the river pedestals, trunk-cuts of firewood that are debarked, tumbled and bleached, are lined up along the river as chairs by the night-fishermen. I invent a device, you'll need two, for rolling these rounds the 100-150 feet to the cut-bank of the first terrace. One end is a stout spike, then a shaft, maybe two or three inches, then a stop plate to keep the rope from sliding off. The only extra equipment you need to carry is a Sharpie marker. Find the center point of both ends and mark it (using any straight piece of wrack). Drive the spike home with a rock or something heavy, two loops of rope about 8 feet long, you're in business. Positively Egyptian. None of them that couldn't actually be carried, with maybe a break half-way, but how cool it would be to roll them. We'd have to get this on film. I need to fabricate the invention, the second generation of which has a pulley. Kim, can you help me here? Your expertise in off-the-wall inventions exceeds mine. I'm not too proud to ask directions, though I don't mind being lost: like that mountain man said, I wasn't really lost, I just didn't know where I was for a few weeks. Noon Smart Talk at the museum and I introduce Donald Pollack, excellent reading considering the lousy acoustics in the large open gallery, and then questions that went on forever. D and I, the Deputy, take Donald and his wife Patsy to lunch and spend an hour talking. I feel a bit guilty, because in my capacity as janitor, it's my responsibility to clean up after the event and instead I'm taking the talent to lunch. While he was signing books, though, B shows up, D sees the opportunity to set the desk top, another three man job and there are only two of us, B pushes the point, that we could do it now (then) and I'm oddly conservative then agree, sure, we could do it right then. And we do, we stand the fucker up on it's dolly, B footing, D rolls it into position, which we had discussed, this is like a heavy weight ballet, back into position and then tilt the rock forward off the dolly, swing up to our waists and set it in place. Perfect. The perfect crew. We three, I think, could do almost anything, the 'comfort level' is off the scale, the trust is complete, we know exactly where we are and what we are doing, we set the desk top in maybe five minutes. There were a lot of assumptions made, thinking back, later. That B would foot the piece somehow, that D could dolly it around, that we three could lift it into place, but a waist high lift is nothing, and we accomplish the task as if it were nothing, between book-signings, god, we're good at this.

Tom

Three crows squawking at the house,
I grant them space, they demonstrate
'open mind' and I applaud what they do.
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Mercy, Quality

Art Shipper coming for the Impressionism show today, down from Columbus and back up, show going there, so first thing I open the vault and lock the elevator. D had forgotten to sign them out (sixty-three signatures) so I get three elevators down before he joins me to get the larger pieces and the ones in crates. We both count, starting at opposite ends, yes, 63, and we stack by size against the walls. We've loaded a lot of trucks, so prep things the way we would want them. Just before lunch the shipper calls, late leaving, missing help, won't be down until after lunch, so we slip out to eat at the pub and Jim gives us a couple ounces each of a new fusion beer that is truly disgusting, D takes a tiny sip and makes a face, Jim laughs, telling us we have to expand our horizons, we tell him he's full of shit. He says the stuff sells, girly beers he calls them, but they are insipid and awful if you're of the school that thinks of beer as a malt and hops thing. Shipper arrives and we must load quickly as he has to be back at the museum in Columbus before 4. Nice high-sided shipper's van and a mini-van driven by his kids for the small pieces. We load him in 33 minutes and there isn't room for another painting. Excellent packing, nothing can move, thank god the show came insured for travel, 3.3 million in a couple of vans, but, as I say to D when he expresses concern, it's out of our hands, we have signed off. Then we are off to the White's for auction stuff, almost all glass and nothing packed, we don't have the necessary supplies and I just can't believe they would think we could move everything loose. We do an odd thing, that works if you have a good careful driver, and that is, the same as the vans of art, pack everything tightly and avoid bumps in the road. We get back to the museum with hundreds of pieces of glass (plates, wine glasses, vases, useless doodads) without a single broken piece. Amazing. Get afternoon coffee and have to get D's new desk out of his truck, two base peds that are very nice wooden file-drawers, and the top, which is 2 inch thick sandstone, 2 feet deep and six feet long, 280 pounds (my chart says Specific Gravity 2.32, 145 lbs a cubic foot, but my empirical experience, maybe mudstone (which the locals call this) is slightly different, and I have a perfect block for reference, collected for just this purpose, three-quarters of a cubic foot exactly, 105 pounds), the top weighs 280 pounds, take that number to the bank. I don't know how D loaded it by himself (I can imagine, probably almost exactly, but don't have to) our concern is just to get it inside. We decide to load it upright onto a two wheeled dolly, on a piece of foam at the bottom, to absorb vibration, and strapped in place, that way we can get it inside and lay it down and still get our hands under to lift it again tomorrow. The Deputy gives us rafts of shit about D's new office furniture, how she thinks everyone should get new office furniture, that D builds, at least until her number comes up. Transparent. Again it happens, certainly a pattern, that the last couple of hours at the museum are very cool, give-and-take, the four of us in sharp funny banter. We get the rock top slid out of the truck to the tipping point and I have to foot the dolly because it's creeping and D can't get behind the piece, we need a third person, we're stuck. I'm footing the piece and have to stay there, I tell D to go get somebody from either the bar or the furniture store because we need help, not a lot, but we need help, and Howard answers the call, foots the dolly so that D and I can tilt the top into position, which he then rolls inside and we are home free. Tomorrow is another day.
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Epistemological Rules

Avoid inbreeding depression, don't fall down the stairs, eat when you're hungry, oh, and don't sleep with bats. Scared the bejesus out me, this morning, just at dawn, awoken by wing-beats and quiet bleeps, open my eyes to see the world's largest moth, which is actually a bat, that settles on my forehead. All I can think is RABID, knock it off with the back of my hand and roll out of bed, go downstairs to check for blood, none thank god; pretty sure I killed it, back upstairs, yes, dead, I'll study it later, back down and make some coffee. You can never go right back to sleep after a bat attack, too much adrenaline, so I pull out Vol 3 of the 11th Britannica, AUS to BIS, and read about bats. I'm not a chriopteraphobic or anything, but what a way to start the day. In a sense everything is downhill from there. Remember that great bat killing scheme Suttree's friend (?) has in the McCarthy novel, which leads to thoughts about introducing Pollard ("Knockemstiff", a very funny, dark, book) at the museum this week for a talk. Which led to thoughts about the inequity of opportunity and areas of the country where fucking your sister was considered a divine right. I see where the day is going and try to sidetrack it or at least ameliorate the impact by dissecting the bat. He's eaten a lot of bugs. I wear rubber gloves because I know he is a vector, but I must say, the sight of his little heart and liver make me consider a very strange omelet. I don't, but I think about it, maybe some mushrooms, a touch of parmesan. Chriopterphobic makes me want to say Yoknapatawpha. Pollard draws from Faulkner, a Spiritual Father. An easy grasp of a place you know well, a sense of the patois. All politics is local. In Cod We Trust (the best tee-shirt I ever saw, Cape Cod, night-fishing off the beach, cod-fish cakes forever) or a warm body spooning in next to you, whatever establishes a framework. Then I thought about Prolate Sheroids, footballs and related objects, rugby, wrack. Sandblasting is the perfect medium, you blow everything away, left with just the core. The armature is instructive, it indicates what follows. Give me the knots and burls and I will make a country, root beer in all the soda fountains and a chicken in every pot. After all I am a fucking Romantic.
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Discreet, Discrete

Several hours with the dictionaries, good clean fun. Reading through a four-inch pile of offprints from B, essays on literature and language, make some notes, start a smaller pile for discussion later. Falling behind in everything but reading and writing, work on B's addition tomorrow probably, be nice to pound a few nails, though I usually become the sawyer in these situations, like hanging shows at the museum, I'm good with small numbers and fractions, have some talent with setting pace. Inanity (silliness) and inanition (lack of vigor), discreet (showing caution) and discrete (detached from others): this is the way I spend my time, parsing. Ur Text, the real, questionable enough, and then we get into faulty memory, a quicksand of recollection, but something happened, actual events, we have footprints in the sand, that became stone, that we can see. Certainly they tell us something. I remember digging in the road-cuts with my daughters, searching for anthropods. Connecting us that way. Something older than me, and I'm older than dirt.
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Wall Raising

B calls to remind me to come over and help raise the tall wall (12 feet, big headers up high, very top heavy) on the addition at their house. Four of us and a boy, get the wall up, braced and nailed in short order. Coffee and discussion after. On the way home I stop at the lake, two crows under the picnic table at the spillway. A loud place to eat. Ratty fucking crows, matted feathers, they've been into something, ketchup or grease or machine oil. I'm not sure they can fly because they just hop away in that awkward crow walk, like drunks on stilts. Tattered luncheon remains under the table, greasy fried chicken bones explain the crows condition; I pick up trash, leave the organics, head home. Already sweaty, in work clothes, I sling blade for an hour, then bathe on the deck with buckets of tepid water and shave at the kitchen sink, late lunch of homemade sausage, eggs shirred in wine, shredded potato patty, sourdough toast, and as a special treat, a little nip bottle of Glendronach single malt that I remember Glenn bringing when he was filming here, that I found yesterday, looking for whatever it was that smelled bad in the island storage (an bad onion, like a bad apple only worse) and moved things around that hadn't been moved in a while. You find the damnest things. Hours later, I'm thinking about the ratty crows, remembering a fishing trip with my Dad, after I had left home, on a trip back, so I was older than 18, but I don't remember when it was, after Bass Boats and really large outboards came on the market. He tolerated me smoking dope when we were fishing, had eaten hash in chocolate bars when he was on Sea Duty in the Med. We were powering in to a place that was normally unfishable because of shallow bars that guarded entrance to anything drafting more than a couple of inches. Some daredevil had discovered that if you blew through on full plane you could get to these fishing grounds up Salt Creek. Scariest boat ride I was ever on, but it was the Anhingas I was getting to. Once we made it over the bar, Dad slowed to a crawl, the water so clear we were watching specific fish, I took a three pound Large Mouth Bass on a very light fly-rod, four-pound test, probably the best fish of my life, we were drinking a lot of beer, suddenly, smeared against the bushes that lined the creek were these birds, Anhingas, and they don't have any oil or lanolin or whatever in their feathers AND they are fisher birds, so they get wet, and dry themselves by splaying their bodies on a bush. Doesn't seem like a good survival technique but there they are. The crows reminded me of them. I think about what they might have to say to each other. A Crow and an Anhinga go into a bar. They say to the bartender, -Tom sent us,- and the patrons move their chairs to the back of the room, get out their opera glasses. The Anhinga says -the audience was terrible tonight- and the Crow says, -no, we were terrible-, they proceed to throw back shots and argue performance. A Post Modern Moment. Ratty birds remind me of ratty birds, it's not really a large step, but I take it, any movement is probably good. You probably heard that blond joke. I had a fan on, blowing on my black Dell, then it was cool enough to turn the fan off and the silence was deafening, suddenly nothing, I sat back in my chair and thought about that. I love what passes for silence, which was Cage's point. I could be a real control freak about the River Wrack show, but I don't want that, I want a free flow of information.
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Sumac

In a day the seed heads of sumac went from yellow to orange on their way to red, colorful change in the verdant green. Increasingly becoming spam, if you miss me, of a given night, check ridgeposts.blogspot.com where Glenn is posting them. Anybody know how to send them individually from a list? Kim? I hate being dumped. Watercress at Kroger, so I buy some, and an English cucumber and a package of those light rye rounds, make a plate of sandwiches, with butter, I love these High Tea sandwiches. Carma sent via D a piece of cherry pie, seriously good Mom-and-Pop Diner cherry pie, rolled and pressed edge-crust, fresh filling, maybe my all-time favorite breakfast, but I can't save it, eat it after the sandwiches. Planning tomorrow, insofar as that's possible, in the morning, with copious coffee, what I want to do is write about Missip, then some brush work, clean up, a pork-fried-rice from leftovers, get a drink and write you. That's my plan, figure I'll read for four hours, between events. A marathon day. Fucking dog, man, I could hear him running up the driveway, a beagle for sure, barking and polluting the sound-scape, a screw works loose and I go and get the .22, when he zips past my back door, chasing a fawn, I lead him and pull off a shot, send him ass over tea-kettle, suddenly quiet again, that's what I mean. I put on gloves and drag his mangy carcass down the logging road, downwind, out of sight, let the crows, resplendent in their glory, out of sight; it was, after all, someone's dog, but there isn't a guilty bone in my body. Falls under that umbrella of protecting your space. I like that last line, I read it several ways, it's the way I pass my time.

Three crows might mean
nothing, not a blip on the
radar, less than nothing.
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Disambiguate

To make unambiguous. The Deputy called me back, last night, a point of information, seemed a second meaning of Tourettes was disambiguation, which we had to think about, then rehash over scones this morning. D and I were Plumbers-For-A-Day as faucets in four places were dripping, replaced the seats in three and changed out a fourth completely, excellent problem-solving, so engrossed we were late for lunch and the very pregnant Zoe was waiting for us at the pub, tapping her foot, in that splayed-leg way expectant mothers have. The Deputy's hubby was there too, Jamie, so we took a table instead of eating at the bar, which is our habit, and the staff fawned over us. Waitresses who have had kids tend toward attentive with hugely pregnant women: the service was great, meaning gruff and sarcastic and being part of the family. Jim brought us a couple of ounces of beer to taste, to see what we thought, we did that rolling in the glass and sniffing thing, slugged it back, talked about hops. Trash day, so after we get the last faucets finished, I collect garbage from the 12 stations, bag it all in strong drum-liners and get it into the alley. We generate a lot of trash. It's like the museum needs a compost pile, but there isn't a place for one, I sometimes take garbage home, so I can recycle it, compost it, or feed it to some animal along the way. Fifteen inches of rain since May 1st, a lot of water. I have this problem with Kim's spoons: I don't want to give them away, I want them all, because they are all different, but I line up those I haven't given away and I see a pattern. Right now, on the island, I have all of the spoons (of his, that I haven't given away) lined up, eight personal spoons and one fish serving spoon (Best In Show) and it is a lovely display. My personal favorite is a full-twist cherry spoon. He fucks with quick early twists and waves and things, but there is something about the long slow twist that turns my crank. I'm glad I got out all these spoons, they make it easy for me to give away the last two, to B and Sofia, apparently simple spoons, charged with meaning. Stephanie, I had to buy these paintings, had to send them to you, Iowa, corn, this kid is great, hang the one with blue and inch or two above the stalks. Your Dad will love this. Beware the highly specific, what you think you meant, B said it best, what anyone thought they were saying, we have filters in place, very little gets by us, I found another mylar star today and I went crazy. Maybe I'm not the man for the job.
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Cellar Daze

All day in the basement at the museum. My birthday, what the hell. Clear out what I think of as our (smokers) winter break room which had become a narrow hallway lined with shipping crates, organize the pedestal storage room, put things away in the tool room, then, after lunch, tackle the hell-hole where we store auction donations. I'm trained for days like this and sometimes prefer them to any alternative. I do better with dirt than with bullshit, though I can handle shit pretty well; snitch a birthday beer from the museum fridge and stop at the lake on the way home; a hard shower, late-afternoon, has driven any recreationers home and I have the place to myself. Brought a half loaf of moldy bread, to get the ducks high, and drink the beer at the spillway, feeding my congregation. Reminds me, there was a dude at Janitor College, a lapsed Muslim we called Charlie Mo, a very cool guy, dealt Egyptian hash (actually from Lebanon, a gold seal stamped on thin disks), ate pork, drank, smoked, we're talking severely lapsed, who had a way with birds. He had a couple of parrots he had taught a litany of dirty words in several languages, rented an isolated place in the drumlins that was called "the suicide cabin" for obvious reasons: you were either a terrorist or were going to commit suicide. Middle of nowhere, snow-bound for half the year or snowshoe in and out, bad karma, a ghost, a pack of wolves in the looming forest. Very cool place otherwise, and cheap. 11 suicides in 22 years, batting .500. Visiting him there was like visiting the Tourette Ward in a looney bin, the birds just kept up this barrage of dirty words unless Charlie put them in the cage and threw a blanket over the top. He had trained some ducks he had wintered over, in a small heated pond with a duckhouse, and they followed him around, did little duck tricks, grabbing food out of the air and biting each other on the ass. It was quite the show. When he graduated, he's janitor at a major mid-western museum now, he left his prayer rug to be displayed among the trophies in the lobby, swore he'd had his way with 47 women on that rug, and it should be retired. Ducks. Don't think I forgot. I think about Charlie. And it is these very sidebars that are important to me, now, what reminds me of what, a smell thing, but a pattern, the dry-down, whatever. Something to hang my perception on, a frame, a stretcher, an armature, the very idea. A mold, a net, a form, just at dark, I kid you not, the three crows settle above the outhouse, I get a drink and go outside. I'm just enough sheets to the wind that I seem to understand. They're discussing what I gave the ducks and didn't give them, how I'm a duck guy and not a crow guy, though we all know I'm a crow kind of guy, squawk in my ear and I'm gone, the birds confuse me. I don't want pets.
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Move, Remove

We all do this, for instance make piles of things that will have to be moved again. 100 kids in batches of 25 in the classroom tomorrow, so the reject art from "Cream Of The Crop" has to be moved, only other space not spoken for in the immediate is the Board Room, so I move everything there. Yearly auction event upcoming and stuff starts arriving at every door, this is the patrons chance to clean out some places, get rid of some things, one sweet woman whose name I didn't catch made me promise to not let her buy back anything she was donating. For a year now we just dumped things in the cellar, without a chance to organize, so the one possible storage area (a hideous space that floods and stinks) for the auction stuff, is already filled with crap, so the rest of the day I spend down there, cleaning the hold, coming up a few times for air and a smoke, take three elevator-loads of trash upstairs, three elevator loads of auction items down. Many things I have to wrap, delicate glass, because I don't have that much space and I need crowd things together. A bunch of those thin-slatted fruit cases I pack things in for safe-keeping. One woman actually brings something in that is already broken and I can't wrap my head around that, a bunch of broken glass in a bag, I put on gloves, box and tape it shut, put it in the neighboring bar's dumpster. Sometimes the janitor has to make a call, there was a class in this, at college, concerning where the guilt fell, if there was a lawsuit; when it might be necessary to mention something to your superiors, and when it was best to remain silent. Hiding the truth. Deniability. Getting shed of dead florescent bulbs is always difficult, but I've developed a technique that is both exciting and effective: explode them in a just emptied dumpster behind the bank across the way. Nothing easier. Doesn't matter if it takes a few weeks for the perfect circumstances to occur, D and I out back having a smoke and the garbage truck comes over there, D goes back upstairs, again, deniability, I put on an orange vest I keep folded in the basement, against the moment, take the bulbs over and smash them in the bottom of the dumpster, sometimes I wear a wig, sometimes I glue on a mustache, I change hats. I enjoy smashing the bulbs, I wear safety glasses and long-sleeves, fuck the argon, I can breathe almost anything, go to lunch on inert gases, my goal is, at death, to become neon: "Live Bait", my all-time favorite sign, in neon, at a fish-camp in north Florida, Paccetti's, the 'Live' is red and the 'Bait' is blue, I see this sign in dreams, sometimes the one thing I remember, probably be distracting to me, day-to-day, but I might turn it on for parties, like someone else's scented candles. If I ever had a party. I seem to consult on cooking for that clan about once a year, just enough to stay viable. That other guy. The one that justified a certain introspection. I haven't forgotten where I was just a couple of nights ago. It may be that the best you can hope for is not dying. I tend toward the negative because I am so often wrong. Not this. Fuck introspection. I need to clear some brush. The answer is almost always physical work: I'm a Sling-Blade Man, doo doo doo, I'm a Sling-Blade Man.
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Reading

B and I read for two classes at the University. Made a day of it, the cost of gas, $10 trip to town, and do the laundry, go to the library, lunch at the pub (where they are shocked to see me on a Monday, Jim, at first, refuses service, then gets me a free beer); then to the school, read for the first class, they seem to get some of it, a couple of them particularly, which is all you can hope for, back to the pub for another beer, read for the second class, and B is done for the day too, so we retire to their place at Pond Lick for a beer and conversation, walk down to Turkey Creek, squat and watch the water flow, realize I've allowed myself to get very close to him, this other person. We talk about writing but mostly we talk about invasive species and whether or not to mow the grass when the bees are in the clover. Honey bees, lots of them, hundreds, under foot, doing what they do, that magic alchemy of plant juice to honey, I agree: Don't Mow. His other daughter, Katie, may move back here, asking to live in his cabin for a month while they find a place. Her significant other, Philip, is the finest natural stage talent I've ever found. Makes me think about doing a Pinter, "The Caretaker", which might be worth the effort with B and Philip if I could find a third crow, maybe an albino, to throw in there. I could use it for my own purposes, something to write about. Small changes, I notice I sometimes, now, start writing as soon as I get home (earlier, if it's a day I stay home) stop at some point and eat, then continue writing. Point being that writing is the most important thing I do, around which everything else is constellated; sure, there is 'extra' time, when I could be doing something else, but I can't predict it and make plans. It sounds stupid, but I can only go with the flow. Which would make a relationship difficult (-sorry, gotta go-) but is what makes me whatever regional thing I am, the second best potter, the third best wood-worker, the fourth best painter, though I am none of those. Six spoons in the mail from Kim today and I am hard-pressed what to say, he says for me to take two and pass the others along, one to B, one to D, the two others as I see fit. Fuck me. I want them all, though I choose the walnut twist (such character) and the cherry full-spiral, beautiful spoons, realize I don't have a spoon for Zoe and how pissed she'll be, decide to give her one of my spoons, she's carrying twins for god's sake, reasonably sure Kim will make me a close replica of whatever I had to give away. Close enough. The water is never the same, Heraclitus was correct, carrying a burden downstream. I collect samples, let them settle, I'm always surprised, never publish my results, they wouldn't be believed, what actually happens. Leaning on my mop, explaining art.
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Invidious Language

Insularity, isolation, maybe it does warp the mind. I was walking down the driveway, to curtail budding symptoms of what I now know to be a headache. Smoking too much and reading way too much in sometimes bad light, so a walk down the driveway, clear the mind. Half-way, there is a large hickory tree, and, gathering nuts, is a melanistic aberration, a 'sport', a completely black squirrel. Beautiful against the green. I nearly fell over. I've seen a few before, but never one here, like an electric shock, I know what it is, but I have to short through things, to get to the knowledge. These are more common the other way, albinos, I've seen a white raven and a stately white-tail buck In Missip, a massive 12 pointer that was as white as arctic snow. I shot one black squirrel in Missip because I wanted the pelt, and there were a lot of them, so I wasn't putting the species in any greater danger, and lost it to maggots in a really hot and humid Missip summer, so I have nothing to show; I do remember a very good meal of squirrel-and-dumplings, several, actually, but one in particular, that one. I pluck it from memory. Replay it, rushes with no text. Images. I need to look into this, I make a note and post it where I might see it. Who can do anything moire? more, right. Staying on course is the hard part. Me, I use that pronoun loosely, I just wait to see the drift. I fully expected a white crow, I was waiting, but it was those three black mother-fuckers, again, on that snag above the outshouse. I don't know what they expect of me, I'd like to make peace, sacrifice a lamb, whatever, but I am drawn into these triplets:

Black squirrel, you
shatter my illusion, (s,)
you are actually real.

I don't know, I take this with a grain of salt, what happens if I stay awake. The tendency is to stay awake forever, I require sleep, and dreams, but I want to stay awake, still, I must sleep. Grab odd hours, sleep when you can, I often sleep on the sofa, make sure I'm uncomfortable enough to not stay asleep. We're strange, when you look at us closely.
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Stochastic Factors

Any random or seemingly random factors that contribute to the decline of a species. Reminds me of idiopathic, of unknown cause, and I spend and hour with the dictionaries. Quammen's summation of the Alfred Wallace / Charles Darwin simultaneous discovery of natural selection is very good. Lucid even. Threat of rain, some showers, thunder in the afternoon. Bad tick year, too much rain, seed ticks, the little fuckers, everywhere. Just a little walk down to the printshop to look at the wrack pile, and when I get home I pick several large ticks off, and wash both ankles with alcohol and witch-hazel. When we picked blackberries in Missip we had to wear long sleeves and tie rags dipped in kerosene around wrist and ankle, pretty effective if you don't break out in hives. One of the most erotic rural scenes I was ever involved in. One of the good old boys had a beautiful wife, Rudy and Sonia, his family owned some acres for hunting in the fall, near our farm, and they'd stop by a few times, late summer, she'd stay at our place talking to Marilyn, mostly, while Rudy scouted his hunting sites. I was down at the hog-pen, Martina (the sows were all tennis players that year) had just birthed 13 piglets and only had 12 teats, so I was deciding which one I'd take inside and raise on goat's milk. The women had been for a walk. Sonia had about a zillion seed ticks on her ankles and Marilyn needed to go milk, the goats were talking loudly, so she foisted Sonia off on me. I go and get the alcohol and the witch-hazel (after an alcohol rub I always like to cool whatever it is off with witch-hazel, I love the smell), deciding on a course of action. She's a little freaked, not really a country girl, she's wearing open-toed, expensive shoes, and I take them off, she has great feet, well attended toe-nails, and lots of ticks. I've done this many times, and the way I've found that works best is that you seat the victim, hold a foot by the Achilles Heel and clean the foot area, then lean forward and anchor that foot above your belt, working on the zone between the knee and ankle. I kept getting sidetracked by her toes, and she was wearing a light summer skirt that drifted up her thighs, when I wiped her down with witch-hazel she was making sounds. I thought I was in a Faulkner novel. We never fucked, but she was later involved in an incident at the Super 8, a table thrown through the window. I wonder where we could have gone. Nowhere probably. I meant to go out tonight, listen to B's brother's band "Houndog Harrison" at the museum, but I started writing and there was thunder, I couldn't leave. I'll use any excuse to not leave the ridge, thunder is good, the price of gas, what someone had thought I meant about something I'd said about something; come on, get up to speed, what you think you say is a myth, a misunderstood fossil. It's those damned swimmers in those funny suits, you going to say something or not?
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Not Depressed

Not to worry, I rarely write twice in one night, I'd slept for a little while, somehow gotten sober, and the computer was just sitting there. The occasional rant does wonders for the spirit. Rain continues all day today, sometimes hard. I collect water for a bath, take one, the whole ritual, then dab on a little Dzing. It smells like old books, mesmerizing. It is, as Luca Turin says, a female scent men can wear. The dry-down is wonderful, a bit vanilla or close. I love it. Sara has a bottle of Tommy Girl at Hilton Head and has promised it to me. Also nice, and very cheap (Dzing, by comparison, is $135 an ounce) which is strange in the perfume industry. Read the new Sanford novel, a good read, then started rereading "The Song Of The Dodo" by David Quammen. A big important book. These rains have me living in a tropical jungle. Country Fried Steak and the lovely scalloped potatoes I do in the microwave and brown with a propane torch. 4th of July. Woo hoo. There's a large bent tree on the terrace below the road below the floodwall, but certain logistic problems. If Kim and Kurt were here, with B and D and myself, we'd stand a chance: the eight feet or so I need must weigh 1000 pounds. Eyes bigger than my gravitas. Some things are impossible, I constantly remind myself. The crotched poplar, as index, is less than a hundred pounds. The big rock I need, for the deck stairs, will be loaded with a fork-lift, all of the moving will be slightly down hill after that, easy; but the bent stick, 18-20 inches in diameter, is down on a bench, and would need to be lifted 12-15 feet at a sheer terrace face. Might could haul it up with the truck, I'll have to go back and look, some places that would be possible, could get it into position with some six-inch rollers, it might not be impossible (of course it's not, I mean relatively easily) and I think about it for a while. I'm attracted to the difficult, or maybe not that so much as attracted to certain materials and using them entails moving them and often they're large and heavy and awkward. This stick would make a great stringer for the stairs, but it's very existence proves that such sticks exist and maybe I'll look around on higher ground. I built a staircase in Utah, using a big Ponderosa Pine, horribly bent, as the stringer, come-a-longed the damn thing out of the woods and then went to a bar and enlisted large drunk cowboys to help me get into my truck. Using the ploy that always works with good old boys: -bet a round that you can't lift this- they lift it and I buy a round, sometimes two. You just have to know what's the carrot. The Deputy called me on the new carpet, said that I didn't respond when her cousin was flirting, I countered I didn't know, so far removed from the game, then D asked me what I thought about that dancer I dated a few times several years ago, stopping, to chat, when we were all out having a smoke, I said I thought she was flirting with him, he's attractive, I'm a weathered drunk, what am I supposed to think? I love holidays, everyone leaves you alone, they all have plans, and if you don't have plans you're a loser. I admit to not having plans, I don't use them anymore, just build things out of my head. I'd rather think about building a boat than talk to most people. The Wallace Line (you are, of course, familiar with that) which is generally deep water that separates islands, tends to divide species too, what Wallace was thinking about when Darwin wouldn't speak, then Hooker entered the picture, the classic case of independent discovery, and the mediated settlement is we remember Darwin and Wallace is a footnote. Life ain't fair. I really expected to be the Goat Cheese Tsar at this point, dictating terms, instead I'm a janitor. Such are things constellated.
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Early, Late

I've been up all night, what I think of as D's Sleep Disease, which I seem to have caught, as though it were contagious. Nothing makes any sense. I consider my various roles, none of them matter, in any larger frame: what I might do, what I've done. This time of day, the only thing that makes a difference is a perfect omelet, steak and cheese, a slice of sour-dough toast with seedless blackberry preserves. My older daughter calls and I wish I could send her the money she needs for whatever it is she needs it for, but I'm broke, been broke for ten years, paying Child Support as a matter of course, bleeding the turnip dry. In most ways, I've failed. The absent father, the broken piggy bank. I look at the spread sheet and I don't see how things could be any different, this is where I am. I can't even make an apology, give it light and shit grows. The sumac is incredible, the way it fills space. I had a list of things I needed to get done at the museum, I was the only person on the floor, the only one sweating, I stank by the end of the day, when I got home I had to pour a bucket of water over my head, soap my pits (a great soap from Iowa) and rinse in the rain. It's worth it, to me, because I can write you, parlay experience into a paragraph, but I have a hang-nail and I broke my left little toe on the bottom stair and I wish I could sleep. It's raining hard, a drone on the metal roof, and I like the sound, better than those fucking whip-poor-wills, setting up in the distance, coming closer. I hate birds, their cheerful sound, only the crow sounds natural, a rasping, gutteral cry. Off my feed. I think about that, wonder why I expected anything else, Frost was right, the past is a bucket of ashes. I'm thinking about moving to Iowa, my connection here is tenuous at best, and there's decent work there, a staircase, a shower, something I could do, maybe rural north Florida, where people carve spoons in their spare time. I can't get far enough off the grid. I try, I bathe with rain-water, I heat with wood, it's not enough. I want to live in a cave with just an elk-skin shawl, tallow lamps, raw meat, ramps. Everything else is pretense.
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Hummingbirds

These fuckers are driving me crazy, two fighting, or whatever it is, outside my window right now and I yell at them, they pay no attention. I was below the floodwall this morning and found a stick that we must have, told D to bring his chainsaw on Tuesday. A perfect post with a splayed crotch that will make an easy attachment for the pergola in the Wrack Show; when we get morning coffee, we drive down again, D and I, he agrees we really must have it. Need several similar sticks, make the show easier. I think about another show I'd like to do, "From The Bone-Yard", a rock show, everything from the McDermott quarry, stacked rocks, ersatz furniture, everything made from stacked rocks. The bone-yard at that quarry (the bone-yard is where they throw shit that fails) fills an entire hollow, thousands of cubic yards, and they add and bulldoze over the edge every day. We're talking a lot of rock, cheap. $20 a pick-up load, Jesus, at $20 I'd buy anything, horse shit, offcut slabs, rocks, wouldn't quibble. I've done major league bathrooms and kitchens with this stuff, it's cool and so goddamn organic it breaks my heart. Jana asked, I'll answer her here, because it seems appropriate: I like being the janitor at the museum, I enjoy being mis-pegged, I love docenting with a mop. I took a tour today with a crippled lady, wheelchair, through the show, we talked about useless patterns, what you might imagine you would do. She was comfortable in her broken body and I went to school on that. We do fail as we get older, the frame, the joints. She smiled when we talked about the show, she was so happy to be included; I shared the insider dope, the judge's personal preferences, how that played a part. I never know how much to help the handicapped, some of them take such offense that I'm shocked. What I do is nothing, just mentioning some things. Anyone could be more specific. At the back door there is a threshold and I lift the front of the wheelchair, exactly as I would do for anything we were bringing through the door, art, bodies, whatever, a certain way to play your hand. We connect, I talk with her several times over the next hour. I need to be on the floor, subject to question, everyone else is hanging on the subject, removed, I'm mopping. Excuse me, you thought what?
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Not Magic

Three crows everywhere, far as I can tell. This morning, taking the compost out, they were on a dead snag in a Chestnut Oak; stopped at the lake, to roll a smoke, and there they were cleaning a picnic table; pulled over, to get a dead raccoon off the road, where the Barbecue Place used to be, and they were competing for a perch on a bush that wouldn't support them all; at Raven Rock they flew over in a vee; none at the museum, but Carma's, in tile. Another day cleaning and tomorrow I have to put things away in the basement, for weeks we've not put things away, because there wasn't time, now, you can barely move down there and the tools are akimbo. D hates that now I'm the guy that gets to go to the basement, far from prying eyes, and work at whatever pace I decide. I said to Sara's husband, Clay, that if he was getting cards printed, I wanted some too:

Southern Ohio Museum
Janitor

I don't want promotion. It took me years to get here. I don't care what my title is, or handle (I'm sensitive about nicknames, there are two people who call be Tommy, and one who calls me Tomas, D tends to call me Old Fart, and that's cool, I call him Lard-Ass, still, I would never trust him with an ice-pick. He lunges.) Then on the way home the fucking crows are on the job, they've called ahead, they have a beacon on my truck. There are so many balls in the back of my truck, I was looking at them tonight, while I was looking for the bug, you know, someone watching, and started laughing. I could have choked to death, I was laughing so hard, not a bad way to go. Forty balls in the back of the truck, recent balls, I have become selective, and, still, forty balls. Three crows in the road on a squirrel that is completely flattened; and then I get home and those same three original crows are in position. What would you make of that? why do crows travel in threes? is that ugly sound actually a language? Run full-circle.

Tom

The spring rains
and plum blossoms:
blackberry canes, the
way things explode,
I never thought to ask.
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Downe a Downe

In a post a few days ago, By Increments on June 23 if you're interested, Tom talked about a tile triptych that Carma created for the current show at the museum. She was kind enough to send me an image of it, so here it is. (Click on the image for a larger view.) Primal iconography. There are primes 1, 3, 5, 7 in the clay, I believe. And music.

There were three ravens sat under a tree,
downe a downe, hay downe hay downe.
And they were black as they might be,
with a downe.

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Eating Crow

Interesting message from Carma concerning crows, she was suffering word overload and needed to mention several things, make sure I had some information I might need. I knew all of the words she highlighted, had forgotten Huginn and Muninn, "Thought and Memory", the two crows that sat on Odin's shoulders and filled him in on events. Had to get out a book on Norse mythology. "Kenning" I knew as 'a brief metaphorical synonym' (the whale's road, for instance, being the ocean) a strong feature in Anglo-Saxon stress verse poetry. Crawa is Anglo-Saxon for crow. Museum was trashed by the party, D had warned me, mostly the floor and bathrooms: I was in Janitor Mode all day. They should outlaw glitter and small decorative foil stars. There are maybe 8400 feet of grout joints in the tile floor of the main gallery and the stars were a perfect size to be lodged within the joints, mylar, probably, which doesn't need glue to stick. I sweep up thousands and then pop several hundred out with the blade of my pocketknife. The person that invented these should be shot. There was a mandatory course, at Janitor College, "Non-Food Foreign Bodies" that preached patience with the stupidity of party designers, but I am too long out of school to remember the calming mantras, mostly I get pissed. I really don't like stupid people. And what is it with women and public bathrooms? why are they so much messier than men? in my personal life I've always found the opposite to be true. For instance, when you tear off a piece of toilet paper and it doesn't rip perfectly on the perforations, in public rest rooms, men seem to just fold the jagged piece under, or wad it in the middle, but women tear it off on the perforation and drop the extra piece on the floor, because it disturbs the perfect fold. This is wrong, one should never drop anything on the ground or on the floor anywhere, bad form. I stopped on the way in this morning, on Mackletree, and picked up the remains of a late-night Taco Bell run, I carry a spatula, for flipping food onto the berm, where the scavengers might eat in peace, and pick up wrappers and bags and cups, and am rewarded with a perfect drive back in this evening, no trash, a pristine ride through a perfectly canopied tunnel, stopping to look at a lovely weed I'd never noticed before, a sturdy stem three feet high and then these narrow cone-shaped white blossoms, a foot long, tapering to a point, impressive. I don't know my weeds well enough. Someplace I have a book, "Common Weeds Of The United States" and I make a note to look for it, a Dover Book, pale brown, an inch-and-a-quarter thick, I can almost remember where it is. It's nice, you know, when you're doing really dirty jobs that no one else wants to do, because everyone leaves you alone: you don't criticize the way someone cleans a toilet if they clean it and you don't have to. Rule Of Thumb. I'm picky about floor upkeep and everyone knows it, they defer to my level of engagement. Today, I am serious and vocal about the fucking stars; they humor me, the rest of the staff, and then, because I'm working on the floor most of the day, I end up docenting various people and groups through the show, leaning on my broom or mop and offering opinion. I'm just the janitor but I'm ok. Oddly trusted by a broad range of people. I don't know what to make of it. I live a really simple life. A small steak tonight, a baked potato with sour cream, I saved just enough, next to the bone, for an omelet, with a serious British cheddar, the future. Holly, don't wear a scent tomorrow, I have a perfume sample I want you to wear, I'll bring it over at lunch, I'll slip away to smell the dry-down. That potter I was with when we came over for lunch the other day thought you were the most beautiful woman in the world, I cautioned him against extremes but he was adamant. He mentioned your feet. I talked about the weather. We settled on fishing, native trout, high in the Rockies.
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