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.