Barrow Ditch

Borrow pit, borrow pond, barrow ditch, burrow mound. Den, warren, bedding spot. Warm up exercises. Remarkably out of tune. Deputy out with a headache, D picking up abstract paintings in Columbus, most of today spent getting ready for tomorrow. End of the day I set up a table with a blanket on top, get out the job-box, the shipping boxes and 57 bundles of labeled bubble-wrap for the photographs. Two big rolls of clear packing tape, dispenser. Check. Basement is a shambles, as always when we switch over shows, because inevitably the packing and shipping crates you need are behind the packing and shipping crates from another show. Try to remember unpacking the show, so I'll know how to pack it. Need to get D to rip some 3/4 plywood gusset strips, two feet long, for the improvised ramp we'll need to get Wrack Material up over the balcony rail. Just thought of another attachment. We find a great many small boards, some quite cute, in a small board way, rounded ends, soft wood etched smoothly away, but we don't collect many of them, but we have an interesting few. One could be screwed onto the backside of a post and the post could be mollied to the wall through the board, very strong joint, I like strong joints. Distractions, don't get me started. There's a small sassafras diagonally out one of the two windows in the wall where I write (I always used to write without any windows, inside walls, or whatever cave I could arrange) and the leaves are all different colors, yellow, red, orange, in failing light the damned thing looks exactly like a water buffalo out the corner of my eye. If that don't get your attention, I mean, really, it's almost as good as the pink elephant in your living room. Just enough wind to flutter his ears, like he's swatting at flies. Asked again, this time by the Visiting Artist in the Schools, Hal, a sweet, nice person, what was the theory? I said there wasn't one, the Wrack Show is all about the materials. We just collect them, we collect interesting pieces, using a criteria we don't understand, a kind of cave-man duh-and-point, and oddly, there is generally agreement that whatever it is, it is interesting. Case in point, the piece we call Bird On A Bolt, everyone, so far, 8 out of 8, sees the damned thing as a bird on a bolt. Is that strange? I don't know. Bisecting space, drawing a line between two points, building walls, even if just a skeleton of a wall, thinking about that, walking in the gallery, realized I didn't want to pay any attention to the plane of the walls of the space, ignore them completely, our walls are the important walls, I aim to make the others disappear. Even a string, stretched from one tree to another, cleaves space. Walking a bull-dog, this old lady says, -you the guys building the house at the museum?- Yup. Power out last night so I couldn't Send but I saved. which is almost as good. So beautiful today, that fall light, and the recent rains give color for the second half of leaf-fall. Mackletree is lovely except that the goddamn mowing crew cut all the roadside wild-flowers. Hit the ground running at the museum, packed the entire photography show, 57 pieces, and got them all boxed. D finished the calendar, a 75 gig pdf file (large, if I understand correctly). Tomorrow I need to remove hanging hardware, patch and sand, then unpack the Abstract Show. Glenn arrives late Saturday to film some more, the Wrack Show grows, and time compresses. The level of interest is interesting. Stopped by B's on the way home, to find the rope we had stashed in his creek, he had figured out where we had put it, but Turkey Creek was considerably higher and it was not easy to find; he wondered why we hadn't put it where he would have. I had no answer for that. We had good conversation about the Show, he is adamant that the only signage needs to be my writing about it, the way the show achieves a tangibility through what I say about it, how it is created by the things we find. I agree. Any statement I have to make is embedded in my postings. Last week, for instance, I thought I was fairly clear, "Whatever Floats" is pretty much what I think. Maybe Sara or B could edit me, and that would be the signage, I don't have time, I have sticks to clean and attachments to consider. The stump peds need work and the lashing material is sopping wet. I've reduced my own expectations to a single stump I want to sand-blast, a walnut beauty. Picture if you can, two old guys dragging a piece of hawser through the grass, both of them excited by the possibilities; wow, man, cool rope, lashing looking good. They drag it where it will catch maximum sun, leave it to dry, retreat to the stairs for a beer; talk about their friend, Steven Ellis, the best poet in the language, as a matter of course, that Darrow Bitch is a friend of mine, I've seen him lord it over the best minds of my generation. I'm nothing if not flammable, disappearing in the wind. Parts per million, run the equations.

Tom

Three crows, and they didn't want to fly, they
hopped off to the roadside, in that awkward
way they have; I rolled down the window
and yelled at them -survival skills, motherfuckers,
get with the program- and they ignored me completely.