Washing Rope

Found two more hanks of hawser yesterday, filthy, embedded in river mud. Stopped at B and Sarah's place to rinse them in Turkey Creek. Decide they need to soak, so leave them weighted down with rocks. No one is there, so this morning stop by the college to tell them that there are important ropes in the creek behind their house. Two inch braided nylon, mostly blue. Forty feet of fire hose. I finally do an actual sketch with measurements, mostly to count posts and rails, need more of both, back to the debris field next Monday. There's another area, further east, that I need to scout. Spent time in the gallery today, visualizing. B stopped by the museum, visiting the Deputy, and we chatted. He has a sculptural piece for the Sex Toy room. I call it that, no one will know, a slightly suggestive piece of wood, a boat bumper, a strange bag-tube device, need a couple more things. There's another small stump that sort of looks like a lady bending over. Must sandblast the walnut stump. Found a piece of dock with a piece of rebar sticking through it, figure to use the rebar as mounting posts for the sculptural pieces on their peds. Wish I had a lot more balls, I'd fill the pergola, like those fence cylinders they use to contain beach balls at The Store. I still think the pergola is good for the balls, just wish I had more. The balls I didn't collect. I need a better retrieval devise. Maybe a small bow and some of those suction-tipped arrows. A net with a really long handle, aluminum, extendable, like a bull-float handle (what concrete guys use to smooth the surface of a pour before they can walk on it). A parachuting net that I can wad-up and shoot with a slingshot. A very well trained blue-heeler hound. A wet-suit. More balls. Maybe a boat. Maybe a fleet of boats manned by Ball Volunteers, we could scour the river from Cincy to Portsmouth, a little over a hundred miles, then put all the balls on display in a huge wire cylinder in the middle of a football field somewhere. But then what do you do with the balls? I was thinking that I could fence part of my land turn it into a Ball Corral, a ball graveyard, and they could just rot or melt or whatever. Eventually there'd be just a slick spot where nothing grew, a kind of latex carpet. A weird installation, because it wouldn't do its thing until long after I'm dead. A Post-Mortem Installation, like a trust fund. Main gallery show comes down day after tomorrow and I need to wrap it alone as D needs to sit on his ass and design graphics, to clear his time later, when we install the Wrack Show. No problem on wrapping the show alone, it's an easy show in that regard, but I will miss the banter; I knew it would come back to bite us on the ass, D and I have way too much fun working together. I've been lectured on this, I know I'm good to work with, funny, smart, always one step ahead. Janitors are students of human nature. They see it all. From Puny Falafulus, Keeper of the library at Alexandria, to Punky Dorff, Head Janitor at Sing Sing, these guys have seen it all. There was a course, at Janitor College, on plungers, the history of, a very good course, I can't remember the profs name, Hardy, Hardaway, Hanson, he smoked a pipe and wore Channel # 5. It was a good course, where you saw clearly that there needed to be a plunger, and the development therefrom. Plungers have gotten better, so has glue, maybe there's hope. Don't question what you think you should do, just do it. An open space, I assumed you hovered and cleared a space with your black plane, no markings of any sort, and I would go solo, admit you were never there. -I'm sorry, he was never here- what was. We need to talk, your people and my people. I'm confused, you and me, what do we have in common. What I Thought I Saw, hey, nothing is what it seems, nothing.