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.