Cookstove

I thought I saw a solution but I hadn't addressed the problem. B came over, to examine the playing field, discovered the problem within minutes, that the air-flow was the problem, mechanical, in the stove. And he stuck his hand in and discovered the problem, ten years of built-up creosote in the throat where one of the dampers operates. I'm experimenting with leaving out commas. Putting more of the burden on you. Less key-strokes for me. You can see why I was attracted. It's easier to leave out commas than to include them. I'm a comma kind of guy, I love the way they make things more discreet, that pile of stuff you were looking at becomes objects. I have to think about that. Nothing if not everything, Sara asked did I enjoy the edge, and I said evidently but not really. Power out last night, Able to start a fire this morning and cook a monster breakfast, then loaded sticks for the show and headed off to town. We got the entire Turning Show packed and crated yesterday, put all the plexiglas away, got the vinyl signage off the wall; today we shuffled all the pedestals to the basement, make room for them. Unloaded the sticks. A little patching and sanding to do, touch-up paint. On the way home I stopped in the State Forest and looked closely at some young beech trees. It would be a Beech Climax forest, but never allowed to get that far after the first time, but there are places where there are a few. They hold their dead leaves all winter. I stopped to pluck a few. Well attached. They seem of only get shed when the new buds break in spring. The leaf stalk tapers down then flares at the very bottom, quite a strong joint and I think it protects the bud in winter, or where the bud will be, the bud spot. The season (the only season) for large fat house flies that fly very slowly, I catch them easily with both hands, an ambidextrous fly-catcher, and smash their little brains out on a board I keep on the back porch. It's an interesting piece, the board, I might let it dry and epoxy it. "420 Flies", or "Small Death", and want to try and recreate the piece I was working on when I was living in the trailer, building this place: a book of photographs, dead mice, specifically, where the trap bar had struck, the indentations, very close up, looking like channelized rivers in fields of wheat with the occasional patch of red. That B discovered the problem with the stove so quickly. I felt like an idiot, then realized I'm living in the other side of my brain, right now, on cruise control, everything is texture and form, I can't give a coherent answer to a simple question. Talk about cheating, I have, for instance, a bronze fire-hose nozzle that is a thing of beauty, exactly sized to the fire-hose we found, which will probably be woven as the roof on the porch, and it would be nice to hang the nozzle near by. It's almost a joke but told as a story, why I ended up with this nozzle, and how we happened to find this particular hose. I don't draw, there aren't any conclusions to be drawn, but you might think about connections. When in doubt, look to the specific. What was I thinking about? something germane. Oh. We brought the job-box up from the cellar, our Attachment Center, we could install a show anywhere from this box, this is a good test, everything is so irregular. The natural forms are so attractive, John Fowles, "The Tree", "We shall never fully understand nature (or ourselves), and certainly never respect it, until we dissociate the wild from the notion of usability." I applaud that notion. I could never have said it that well, and I've actually tried. Mostly what this show presents is a natural edge, crude, dirty. That edge we were talking about, when I mentioned I didn't really like edges, someplace in there, where you really didn't like to be discovered. I have private places, I'm on this like a Blue-Tick hound, there are things I don't want you to know, I protect myself through a series of filters. Protecting myself I seem to add a layer of interference, can't be helped, I have to cover my ass, various prison jokes. I love that the Deputy has gone to Oriental Whorehouse, that musky floral is overpowering, I forget what I was thinking about whenever I go in her office. Take a load of sticks in tomorrow, meet Kim, come back home and cook for a couple of nights. The writing will be scant. No apologizes, I just do what I have to. Now this.