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.