Hell Week

The ship hits the sand. Delivery tomorrow of the big photography show for the main gallery, probably late afternoon. Before it arrives really need to finish painting walls and get the theater cleaned up, some tables moved, and about a dozen other things done, on a list I left at the museum. Unpack the show on Wednesday, install it Thursday, lights and labels on Friday, it opens, play performance on Friday night, two shows on Saturday. Must ask The Brit about a program, I think everyone has forgotten that. D will need to get the newsletter out, probably design a program, but it will surely take both of us three days to unpack, install, light and label a major show. Also, dress rehearsal for the play on Thursday night but I probably don't have to be there for that. Should have fixed a big pot of something today, but I didn't feel like cooking. I do have the pork loin curing in the fridge, so I could just take slices cut off that, soak them in sweet milk (takes the salt out, from the cure) and fry in olive oil, steamed vegs and cous-cous, would get me through the week. Next weekend I really want to cook some baby-back ribs, fry up some fresh sweet corn with onions and chiles and a sweet red pepper, skillet fry some cornmeal johnny-cakes as I can't fire up the wood cookstove when it's as hot as this. Had to break out the three pound block of ice in the coffee can (plastic) to keep the computer cool, and put a fan on it, blowing into the back of the computer, works really well. Must buy the metal roofing for the Wrack Shed and for my back porch this week, can't afford it, but that's why God invented Visa. Got to step it up. Got to get below the floodwall and collect the missing pieces. 6-8 posts six feet to eight feet, with a crotch at the top, would be really good, also, I looked at the pile today, we need more rails, for suggesting walls, also we need a can of rusty nails, which we surely should be able to find in a section of dock, there are always two or three sections of dock down on the first terrace, below the access road, ripped from their mooring and trapped in the trees, note to take a crowbar, wait, I have one in the truck, D saw it last week and wondered if it was his. It's not, I've had that crowbar, forever, nearly, I know it's scars, could tell you when what happened, to gouge the hard metal so deeply on the prying end. It's my fucking crowbar, and I have several others, almost a full set, some of them horribly distressed. I tear a lot of things apart. Also, I realize, we could use very primitive pegs in many places, a hole and a stick whittled to fit. Maybe some monofilament to hold it in place, the trees are full of monofilament, fishermen generally drink, and you'd hardly see it. This is an installation, not a house, people aren't supposed to lean on it. I think they should be able to touch it, that should be part of the experience, but in the way that you touched your mother's good china, with care. Not lean on it. I can build a set of stairs but this isn't that. This is a construct. Thought about this a lot today. What this was. We cleave a space, by our actions and the materials, we divide into spaces, we fill those spaces, or maybe not fill but put something into them. It's hard to be coherent, everything works against it, for three solid years, working hard, every night, I've tried to be coherent, and it isn't easy. I'm not sure the Wrack Show says anything, it merely is, a collection of debris. That it would look like something is actually your problem, the reader, I don't envy your task, I just drink and smoke and write this shit, I really don't have a clue, you have to figure out what the hell I mean. I never think about that, I just Send and forget.

Tom

Of course I don't forget everything, some things carry over, like the need for salt. Certain grievances. Things I could never forgive. I was raised in such a functional family I had no idea everyone was so fucked up, I've been over this, it marked me, being almost normal. Find myself on the outside looking in.