Pattern Recognition

I've installed a lot of ink cartridges, I print quite a bit. My computer is telling me that my printer is telling me that there is tape on the unit. There isn't. Must get D to print the last three days, need to read myself, to see what I said. The room of my text. Had that thought standing in the installation, explaining to a group of 7th graders what it was. The Room Of My Text; I went and sat in the chair, while I was talking. They thought I was cool, I told them I was, and to build tree-houses. Also the thought, I may have mentioned, about locus, how we are curving around an imagined center point. More about that when I figure out what I mean. A conflicted day at the museum, and here's an odd thing, I smelled it on everyone. No one smelled correct, even me, I smelled like dirty socks, Lily smelled like a smart kid taking an important test, D smelled like a swamp (not a bad smell, but distinct), and Sara smelled worried. I won't go into the "notes", but I could. I think we are resolved, everyone will smell better tomorrow. I'll have to powder-up, because I can't take a bath until Saturday. I have rules and I don't have the time for that whole heating water, sheep-watering trough thing right now, I need to assume the role of Hypo Clearing Agent and mediate a mess. Finally got all of the garbage from the fund-raiser out of the kitchen. I love Thursdays, when I can just get rid of shit. It's hard to deal with too much emotion, it clouds, as they say, and takes over local control. Had to clean the largest trash cans, they smelled like beer and vomit (I don't mind this job, it's rather straight-forward) and one thing I've noticed is that if you're cleaning a toilet or a trash can, no one bothers you. A tombstone might read "He Sought Solace In Dumpsters" or even "Diving For Bricks". Touched base with Barnhart at the college, listened to the composition he'd recorded, a lovely thing. Like Stravinsky in that little piece "Sphrinx for Flute Solo", which I whistle badly but know quite well. You don't want to know. It involved a dancer from Merce Cunningham's company, some very fine pot and a dance on the beach. Memory is a mine/mind-field. I try and focus on the present, I weary myself laboring. But what is is elusive, what we see. Listen, did you smell that? What you thought you heard. It seems to me a rather calm run of water, no real rapids, an easy trip, less than you expected, what you thought. I'm suspect, what you thought you meant. I'd never watched Rugby before, how violent it was. They hit. I just run some numbers. Whatever. We're cool on this, you and me, right? as it scrolls before us, say what you will, we're linked in a mysterious way, I'd rather disavow anything, than deny the link to you, what we share. What we are.

Phone out, so I couldn't send last night. Still can't get the damned printer working, slipping further toward chaos. Stack of paper was growing at an unseemly rate anyway. Cold on this side of the house. Teens last night and never above freezing on the ridge today, skiff of snow lingering, but only on the ridgetop, maybe 36 degrees in town, teens again tonight. Be writing in long underwear soon. Cleaned the fridge out at the museum, whatever left-over food the staff didn't eat, then carted the bags over to the Pub's dumpster, which is dumped daily, as opposed to our weekly pick-up, scored a dozen rolls for the ducks. Left work an hour early, stopped at the lake, fed the ducks, parked at the bottom of the hill and walked up, good fire by dark. Small tuna steak and 10 minute potatoes gratin, done in the microwave, browned with the propane torch. Start reading a lousy fiction and finally tossed it against the wall, another doofer. Why is so much bad fiction published? My demands are only moderately high for recreational reading. I'm recreating, for god's sake. Bunch of kids in the museum yesterday and today. One group of them went downstairs to the classroom and worked on a stick project, D and I had gone below the floodwall and picked up a couple of boxes of little sticks for them to work with, authentic sticks, to inspire them to do something, whatever, the Show made them think about. That's a fucked sentence, but I drifted off, thinking about the older couple in yesterday, when we were changing the signage to include B, a sin of omission for which we all bowed to the east, and they were really into the Show, owned some riverfront property, collected wrack there, had constructed a bench and table from river sticks. A sub-culture I hadn't expected. We talked wrack for a while, they asked if they could call me, if they found something interesting, mentioned a duck-blind that had beached itself recently, that they moored, until finally someone took it; I said certainly, call me any hour of the day or night, if something interesting washes ashore. This could be the beginning of the River Spotters, a dedicated group of volunteers who watch closely for particularly strange objects that might be drifting or already abeach. Sara mentioned another show today and I'd already been thinking I'd like to do a larger wrack show, something that would require buying a four-wheel drive Wrecker, so we could move large things. There are any number of things we passed up because they were simply too heavy, water-logged and awkward. I need a tow-truck. "On The Banks Of The Ohio." We could travel this show, because, really, I could install anything anywhere; I don't mean that in any arrogant sense, it just happens that I know someone who can lash, I know someone to call. What I meant, back at the beginning, a fixer. The kids were really loud. Puts me off my feed. Like I was being distracted or something. I don't envy your position, under the gun, what you would say.