Pleasantly Surprised

Cold again, but not bitter. I was staff at the museum this afternoon, so went to town early, supplies, some wrack. Washed my hair at the museum kitchen sink, warm running water and a heated space, what luxury. Winter, I forget what even simple creature comforts are like. Did a little work but mostly read through the afternoon, the perk of being Saturday staff. Sara and Clay relieved me at 4:30, told me to go home and start a fire, it was cold outside. Sweet gesture, I did so. Three family groups in today and I docented The Wrack. One of them from two-and-a-half hours away, come just to see the show, saw it on the website. Enthusiastic. Yesterday a wonderful couple, retired teachers (D's 2nd and 6th grade teachers), became members because they liked the show so much. Backwoods Gratin: you keep a stock of the canned, sliced white potatoes, 10 for 5 dollars (there is no waste, potatoes were rotting on me, not to mention the smell), thick sliced, but what the hell, looking for something quick here, I aim to eat half-a-pound of potatoes a day, when the weather is cold, so has to be quick. In a pyrex bowl dump the drained potatoes, sprinkle on a goodly amount of mixed shredded cheeses, maybe some chili powder, some crystals of sea-salt, nuke it until the cheeses melts and then brown the top with a propane torch. A couple of twists of fresh black pepper and this is really good. Any that you don't eat, blenderize the next day, with enough cream to lubricate. Can't go wrong. Weird out tonight, saturated and heavy with the weight of events. I concentrate on starting a good fire, so I can cook. Most of the time, that's all I'm trying to do, be in the moment. Start a fire, mop up the mess, plunge the clogged basement toilet. This is nothing new, toilet paper is my enemy; all clogs are toilet paper clogs, disturb the natural drainage and you have a lawsuit. We run out of water before we run out of anything else. What about water. That we consider it a given. It's not. I farm water, collect it where I can, merely slow it down; Glenn was correct, it is all drainage, what actually happened. Specifics aside, what you thought you meant. How wrong we could be. I'm wrong about almost everything, I don't let that stop me, if you don't push you never know.
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Screaming Kids

120 ten and eleven year olds, in groups of thirty, Pegi downstairs, me upstairs, answering questions. They loved the Wrack Show. Kept asking me what things were, I told them things weren't anything but what they appeared to be. Everyone sat in the chair. One of the prolate spheroids, hanging from a small rope off to the side, has heart-checked severely, all the sticks are checking, but in the case of the wooden football, it now slips from its rope at the slightest touch. I'm good with that, things fall apart. The first time it happened today there was a deathly silence, everyone circled the guilty party. I walked over and picked it up, slid the rope back into the heart-check (knot at the bottom) and slipped in a shim that I just happened to have in my pocket. I had foreseen the entire sequence, I knew the spheroid was loose. A theater career prepares you perfectly for life in a museum. A theater education and even a few years working the trade, prepares you very well indeed for any other pursuit. Theater is a vertically integrated discipline, you do a little of everything, you build, you wire, use a lot of pipes, fly things, revolve things, sit quietly, learn who and what you can depend on. Not bad training. We took down the show in the tiny Mehser Gallery, nice pencil drawings, well matted and backed, a high school show, and we have a problem that we often have. Have been trying to solve for years: how do you hang a show of unframed ephemeral paper? We've tried every sticky thing in the book, and we get catalogs. Diana found my janitor supply catalog, embedded in academic literary print-outs stacked by the guest bed. A tell, or a plant. A plant, as it happens, I put it there for Glenn to find. Very cool that Diana found it. That's the problem with specific plants, you can never be sure the intended person will come along, an innocent stranger might pick up a poem meant for someone else. It's a mind field. There was a double-stick product, with foam between the sticky surfaces, D was large on, worked somewhere else but not here. D cut between the work and the wall with a sharp blade, and left, to format the newsletter. What I have are 45 stickers, and I need to get them off. They don't come off. I spend hours, develop a system, it's a six step program. Half the guilt. And it's straight-forward. Who chooses? I'm lost completely in a world where I want to differentiate between this and that. Read more...

Nothing Changes

I've worn out my writing chair, and the pillow and pillow case that I use for lumbar support. I prefer a certain amount of discomfort, it keeps me aware of my surroundings. First night above freezing in forever. A token fire in the stove, burning garbage, junk mail and cardboard. It's quiet. I expect the First Frog Fuck-Fest during the Non-Family Reunion, looking back, the timing is right. I get over things, we all do, trashing the driveway was childish. But maybe it was important for reasons I don't understand. I live here and nothing else matters. Maybe if I lived somewhere else and wanted to make a point I'd do something that I knew would upset someone, but access is an important issue. I'm invested in this place. I haven't slept in a week, the edges are blurring, I think about other places I might live, how I would conduct myself. Certainly I'll never be beholding to another human being. Ever. I'll shoot myself first. I can barely deal with my own vagrancies. An algorithm for solitude, a formula for disaster, but what's left? The lesson is that I know what's required and never wanted to go there. Doesn't mean I can't. I see that the problem is me, that I need to be another step removed, another level of deniability. I could live in a hut and only eat berries, live in a tent and only eat road-kill, I'm fine with that, seems natural. I was walking up the driveway tonight, thinking, poking the damage with a stick. I never wanted to be responsible for anyone else and I refuse it now, the burden. I'm shed of that shit. Take it to the mountain. What I will not be. Another sex of perfect fot prints. Perfectly confused. Nothing makes any sense. Read more...

White, Black

Theater was black, naturally, but that Damned Brit wanted it white for a play, his stage manager had started the painting, priming. Walls not too bad, but the floor was half white and half black, needed painting, black, again, for a function tomorrow. Thus I amuse myself. Janitor duties included proofing Pegi's major press release, docenting a group through the galleries. I'm perhaps not oddly good at this. Sharing enthusiasm about whatever takes my interest. Driving out this morning, down by the lake, two birds swooping across the road, Brown Thrushes I think, couldn't have been much else, that color, that size. Patterns. Still a good flow over the spillway and Turkey Creek is looking good; a shale and sandstone bed erodes quickly, creating many small waterfalls. They're beautiful, sparkling things; after spate has receded, the fines have all dropped out, the water is perfectly clear and fairly shines dropping down to the next level. I note spots where I need to find a place to park, later, enjoy the new configuration. Drainage is always worthy of attention, there's usually something interesting about the mechanics involved and the strata. The wet-weather creeks that drain the ridge, that parallels the river, are infinitely interesting. Just want to get downhill, carving a path, what water wants to do. I know most of the rills locally, have watched them in action, and they're good at what they do. I only ever subtlety try to alter what water can do. The play was canceled so now the whole primed theater needs to be black, again, because theaters are always black. Trying to hide everything, smoke and mirrors. Black is best, when you're trying to lose track of things, I wear black jeans, maybe there's a connection. But wait, the jeans were given to me, maybe it's a conspiracy. This could be layers deep or simple, pick a number. The driveway is my measure, B found it necessary to carve deep ruts. I think it meant something but I'm not sure, he might have been merely pissed. Question: if I block the driveway with my truck, because I consider it (the driveway) in delicate condition, what right does he to shove my truck out of the way. I probably need to leave. I don't want confrontation. I can build another house. All I need is a phone-line and you, I could be in the Gobi Desert, without a clue. There are only two important things, me and you, everything else pales, right, right, if it was me I'd probably make me into a character, a suicide friend that offed himself to say something. Bottom line, I don't understand. Thought I did but I don't. Read more...

Reading, Later

Wallace Stevens at the island. I'd kept it out because Glenn kept quoting him, from "Credences Of Summer" -A hermit's truth nor symbol in hermitage./It is the visible rock, the audible,/The brilliant mercy of sure repose,/On this present ground, the vividest repose,/Things certain sustaining us in certainty.- Exactly. I've been reading poems for hours, all over the board, some Shelley, some Stevens, dear sweet Emily (hot deep Emily), "The Kingfishers", some Sidney Lanier, looking at the way charged language carries its freight of meaning. Prose, you know, I just let the program wrap the lines, there are no hard stops. Everything becomes different. Enjambment, for instance, is not the same, internal rhyme achieves a different result. Parsing. I had a box of Jiffy Mix Cornbread, there's a corn dish I use it in, and late last night, the stove was hot, I decided to make corn sticks. The cast iron pan makes seven sticks, I wiped it out, heated it to smoking with a drop of bacon fat in each form. I didn't have any milk, but I had some half-and-half which I diluted and soured with lemon juice, an egg. These were so good, I have to say, that I ate them all, the last two with molasses. God, if there is one, would meet you at the gates with these. Cold, tonight, but then warming, the cookstove is spiked, I could anneal steel, tandoori frog legs, but I choose a simple cream soup and bread. I always wander through the produce section at Kroger and I had bought the smallest Butternut Squash there was. I don't think I did anything different, it's all about the sugar transformation, the way things are stored, but this was a good soup. Grown people cried. Me. There's a tell here, if you dig deep enough, you want other, another, but the precise one is yet to be defined. Spooned with no demands. Listen, the crows are settling. Brush and trees from the ice storm are stock-piled and then ground to mulch at a designated spot west of town. Huge grinder set up yesterday, a couple of piles maybe 15 feet high, 20 feet across; this morning, in the cold, they were smoking. I stopped and plunged my hand in up to the elbow. Warm, 150 degrees. Would be perfect for slow cooking a large brisket, rub, wrap in several layers of foil, center of pile for 24 hours. This would work. My new recipe book: Cooking In Compost. The lady at the donut shop wears too much makeup. You want your donut shop lady to be fairly plain; and her hair, god, so 60's southern; also, too much perfume, I can taste it on the donuts. I only eat plain cake donuts. My donut career lasted a year, Freshman in college, night shift, while rehearsing a play and taking a full course load. Demented. I made the largest cake donut that would fit in the fryer for the opening night party of "Henry the Fourth, Part 2", a twelve pound monster with crude icing pennants for the various houses. Cops really did come in for free coffee and donuts. I was always high and they knew it, but we had a certain rapport and they chose to ignore it. The three nights a week I was off, I built the set; this was the era of Black Beauties as a diet aid, and we sped against the future, everyone's mom had a bottle in the cupboard, they were almost free on the street. My mom was taking them, prescribed, after the birth of my brother, 10 years after me and she couldn't lose the fat; she was fine with me taking some, after all, the Doctor said. Nice foray below the floodwall, I get some hardwood. I can heat with this. Building that set, I remember, late at night, we'd run out of materials, but they were building more dorms across the swale, and we'd just go take what we needed. Midnight shopping. Theater is its own world, above the law. The show must go on. Most people ignore the question and look the other way, the fact remains. It was the birds, that drove it home to me, the way they flitted through the under-story. The way things are construed. I could sell this house and build another, I'm not without skills, though with the recent robberies my tool kit is wanting, I don't have a hammer for instance, and I really need one, they took my drill. Fuickers. Read more...

Venture Out

The smell of dirty socks again, separate them out, underwear and tee-shirts. I have enough denim shirts and jeans to last until thaw, and just the unders I can carry (clean) in my pack, along with a bottle of whiskey and an eggplant. And a library book or two. New skiff of snow on frozen ground, more birds out and around. I make some ducks very happy with a batch of very hard cookies from some function at the museum, I'd forgotten they were in the truck tool box. Another perfect set of fox prints on the path out to the graveyard. Snow still clinging, down low, and it's essentially a vertical and diagonal world, but there are three branches, out my writing window, that are absolutely horizontal, one of Emily's poems left out in the woods. Anyone who runs into a Collected, used, send it along, I've lost mine or loaned it. Guy Birchard's new bibliography of Howard McCord is excellent. Guy's work is excellent, all those years in Moose Jaw, his poetry reminds me to stay alert, he observes closely. As considered and spare as B, and that's saying something. Stephen Ellis is the best in the language right now, Skip Fox is second, far as I can tell they alternate years. There's a pile of manuscripts and print-outs on the edge of the dictionary table, I occasionally have to rearrange them so they don't topple. This writing is dangerous stuff. Now, with no safety net, I feel vulnerable, must remember to be more careful. Wear crampons and walk with a stick. That run into town today made me realize how profound my solitude had become. I had nothing to say to anyone, straight transactions, my mind was somewhere else entire. Thinking about that young woman I had been talking to in the museum library, we were interrupted, I never got her name, forced to think of her as Boot Lady, maybe she'll come back in, join the pre-closing gala, when Glenn is trying to get some things he missed, and there will be several of the people I care most about in the world gathered together. We should have just rented one of those cabins in the State Forest, I think they sleep twelve, bathrooms and kitchens, but maybe everyone needs a retreat, anabasis, a den wherein to hole up. Just a thought, I don't know how we're going to do this, but I'm on board. Diana stays with me, maybe the Boot Lady, Mac can sleep on the sofa, breakfast for four is all I can manage. I can do dinner for eight but everyone has to carry something up the hill. I'm not responsible for the salad or any desserts. Carry that in your hat. I meant something specific there, the way you might carry lettuce in. Under your hat. Carmen Miranda. Bananas, not a cat, I miss-spoke. You know what I meant. Read more...

Another Blanket

Got up because of the extreme quiet, four inches of powder, beautiful in the porch light. Stay up, start a fire, start melting snow toward a bath. Mid-morning a break in the cloud cover and the world is dazzling. Brought a load of river sticks and a stump home, last time I could drive up. Log billets from the river, for the most part, are a uniform gray, rounded edges, unidentifiable except maybe by weight, wet, all bets are off. This one is heavy, slightly wet, splits easily, a maple of one type or another. I rick it inside to dry. Stupid robin outside, should have stayed in South Carolina for a few more weeks. He's puffed up like a body-builder. Looks funny. He's watching me through the window, cocking his head. I don't have any bird-seed but I take out some tabouli. This bird is used to being fed. A couple of nuthatches appear from the under-story. Tabouli, who knew. Continental Drift, birds have a long and collective memory. I spend so long, looking up a word, chasing definitions, that I forget what I was longing for, get a drink, go to my desk, try to reconstruct events. I've learned to make a note, I keep a folded piece of paper and a pen next to me at the computer for this very reason, but I sometimes forget to make a note of where I am, jumping up to check a word or fact. When I'm home, I occasionally jot something on the same paper. I keep a pile of these sheets, the extra sheets of paper that go through printers and usually get tossed, fold them in half and have four pages to make notes on. I started saving them, for years I used them to start fires, but now there's a pile of them under one of the dictionaries. I bury myself in paper. Blue-grass on the radio, very low, it becomes a drone; it's astounding to me, the way I focus my entire existence toward the three or four hours I write you. Now, of course, it's again critical. Write myself out of a box. Is that cat dead or not? Clouded over and started snowing again. Excuse me, I'm distracted, the whiteness of the whale. When you know someone well, meaning accrues, it's like mold, it accumulates. You might see it as a patina, just a gloss, but it might be more than that. A scream in the dark. Something almost tangible. Read more...

Fine Line

"Deterministic systems have lost their consistency and revealed an inherent defect." Paz. Blue morning gives way to gray afternoon. The trees across the hollow are fine lines against the sky. My crows are back, singing their sweet squawk on my trip to the outhouse. Sweet squawk should be one of those phrases you repeat to clean up your pronunciation. Good blood, bad blood, was one of mine (they're assigned, like koans) and I still say it occasionally. Mindless pleasures. Split kindling, split starter sticks, split firewood. Something about the wind or atmospheric pressure, this happens a time or two a year, has the stove smoking just a little bit; so when I come in I put on a piece of sassafras. Smells nice. I needed conversation, changed into mufti and mocs, ready to make a couple of calls and before I could, they called me. Good form. I had just rolled a couple of cigarets and was reaching for the phone, Glenn called, from the Twin Cities, picked it up on the first ring and he said, with preamble -sitting at your desk, what?- and we launched right back into the last conversation we'd had: multi-level, prismatic, personal. The film comes along, he fucked up one interview and wants to redo it, also wants to get Diana on tape, her response to the Wrack Show, Linda's coming. Non-family reunion. Hope I can cook for everyone, despite the trek. Everyone bring a flashlight. Broken protocol. If I fix the eggplant we'd have to eat in shifts, might be worth it, but I'd rather all eat together. Shit, I have to clean off the table. It's not large enough. I can eat at the island, at the kid's table. If it's cold I'd do a two soup meal, with cornbread sticks, a cream of squash and a lamb stew. Fucking robbers, man, they took a bowl. They took one of my finest pieces of pottery. I just then got up to check my bowls, an inventory, and the black one was missing, it had great swirls of color in the basin or whatever you call the bottom of a bowl. Fuck me, I hate this shit. What I really don't need is a robber who sells books on the inter-net. I'm being paranoid. Nothing is the same. Everything changed. The wind is howling, blowing near a gale; the swaying trees are hypnotic, I forget what I'm thinking. The Music Guy calls, and he is breath of fresh air, tells me, I think, that it wasn't until 1975 and Fractals that we understood what a genius Bach was. Whatever. I have more recordings of the Cello Suites than any other piece of music. Increasingly, all I want to hear is the natural world: when I listen to music, it's usually Bach. The Music Guy advised an early drink, he was having one, and that sounded like a good idea, so I'm writing you early. Early, late, what's the difference? I've learned to hold things back, a reserve, maybe my true self. Somewhere between a janitor and a hermit. Wearing a tee-shirt that screams ANABASIS across the front, and "retreat" in very small letters across the back. It's a big hit, we've sold ten thousand since Tuesday, when the shit hit the fan. It's macabre, the way people take interest, when the fine lines merge into a hornet's nest. I claim ignorance as a first position, I had no idea things could go this far. 5:55, the trees are swaying, I'm a janitor for god's sake, I need my job. Read more...

Not Working

Enough snow to postpone going in to work. Head in a jumble, I take the day off, thinking things through. Doesn't work. Escapist reading. Dorothy Sayers to the rescue. Split a little wood. Walk out to the graveyard. Listened to explanations of the Stimulus Package, seems pretty straight-forward, print money and make your grandkids pay for it. Of the local unpleasantness, there are so many elements, so many points of view, so many fractures, that we'll be weeks cleaning up. Fucking mess. Wild emotional moments, leavened with serious conversations. Why I needed today off. My brain hurt. Not a headache, just a confused state that I find psychologically painful. I'm not a control freak but I do go to great lengths to protect myself, AND I can't even do that. Put that on his resume and see if he can get a job. It's a good marriage, right now, me with the museum, I need a few more years of work in the outside world, I like the people I work with; by my standards, I'm living comfortable. Have to admit, I thought about leaving, again, how could you not? And it had seemed completely impossible. Could never sell this place, then remembered a couple of visitors who had mentioned needing a place, realized I could, actually leave, if I wanted to. Opened the equation. If I can't talk with B, there is no reason to be here. None, but the ridge and the seasonal shit, and I can get that almost anywhere. And I'm pissed, that I had put myself in a position to be judged. Maybe it's the final nudge. I've having trouble finding listings for caves. What happens is always told from a point-of-view. What we see is rarely actual. Nothing, recently, made any sense. I want to hibernate. Maybe it'll be better later, when we've figured some of this out. And you were right, what you thought I said. I lose track. Forgive me for forgetting, nothing is what it seems, why I need to be alone. An unpleasant reminder, remainder of what exactly had happened. Didn't Send last night, didn't want to say anything offensive and didn't trust myself. D off today, finishing floors in his house; quiet at the museum, janitor stuff early, then some errands, then this very attractive young woman came in the museum and spent several hours seriously looking. She went in the library and some time later I went in to check a broken shelf and she was still there. We chatted, she'd worked at a museum in NYC and was blown away by our modest establishment. We talked about the Wrack Show. She wondered why I was so well spoken, living here, working as a janitor. I told her the explanation was tedious, she was clearly flirting, D and Lily had given me a set of guide-lines; she said she'd like to here the story anyway and I told her I made a mean pork fried-rice. She's coming back to the museum next week to set a date. She had these really cool Innuit boots that I wanted to feel. But the important thing, most important, to me, was that we could talk, natural and straight. When I want to be, I'm a good conversationalist; I'm from the south, for god's sake, every story is preceded by a story, and she followed the thread. And I'm a good listener, especially when the speaker's voice is in that mid-alto range, stirs me in my bandages. Not dead yet. The house is cold and I can't get a fire started. I rarely fail, building a fire, so when I do fail, it's a mystery to me. Inattention is a failing of mine, even though I pay absolute attention to some things, I often forget what I'm doing. Picked up enough things to make several meals. I want a cream soup. I want to make a chicken-noodle soup from scratch. Pick up a chicken. A guy goes into a bar, the only available stool is between two chickens, he senses fate but wants a drink, takes the seat and orders Irish Whiskey neat. The chicken on his right, a Rhode Island Red, leans in front of him, talking to the chicken on his left, a Banty Rooster, and they're talking about the stock market. He puts his hand up, to intercede, and they peck him to death. I'm working on a collection of post-modern jokes. It's all about attention to detail, the blood spatters tell us blah blah blah. This artery was severed that way. I think long and hard about private language. Almost language, I'm at a loss, I don't understand. What do you imagine I should have done? Confronted thus. I could argue several points of view. Love your new dog, I always admired pointers.
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Nothing Personal

Up all night and way too much to drink. Decided the mass of what I don't know is much greater than the mass of what I do know. I want in the Witness Protection Program. I make a point of not getting personal. You probably know I'm a Democrat and agnostic, I believe mold but rarely people. Goddamnit. I hadn't wanted to move again. I make some calls, what are friends for? I'd like to disappear, this cloak of skin is a hair shirt and uncomfortable. I don't know what I could do different. I knew there was a danger, aligning with a family, that I would expose myself. But I could do that, make myself vulnerable, as long as the connection was there, now I feel like a leech, with no warm body available. This is why weird dudes live in caves. This is it. I want to remove myself a step further. I wonder how to do that. I know it means complete detachment and that scares me. If I build another house, there will be a staircase that doesn't go anywhere. Maybe a door at the top, on a landing, that leads to a wall. Nothing there. Dark matter. For hours I consider response to stimuli. I can't even read, stare into the middle distance and cry. What might have been. Of course the world will go on, there's a huge momentum there, any suicide must recognize that there is another world out there, ice-storms and snow-burdened branches, but despite the body-blows, I'm fine. I don't know why, exactly. I look at some options and I'm amazed there are some. Thought I'd used everything up. I could still be a mason. I might take up quilting. And other things. I prefer the natural world, give me a mud-puddle and some frogs, I'm happy as a clam. Whatever that means. Can a clam be happy? Yes. Tuck it up. Consider the flowers. Safe to say I believe in nothing, but I had thought certain things inviolate. I was wrong, nothing unusual, actually, a pattern emerges, a failure to see what is happening. I could do a history of my failures here, consider it done, I'm a bad guy, and insensitive. Listen, I have to think about this, maybe I should move to Iowa or north Florida, I'm confused. I don't want to be here, in the face of it, I'd rather be anyplace else, I'm ill-prepared. And that's always the way, you're never prepared to deal with the actual issues, I'm not, none of us are. Shit happens. Wind storm, front moving in. Save this. Couldn't sleep after I Sent last night, started this very late. I won't go anywhere, of course, I love my job, I love the ridge. I am going to get a pistol, soon as I can afford it. The sense of violation is still strong. Seven robberies on the creek last year, knife point; I feel too exposed walking the driveway, that's where the creek mechanic, Dave, nearly got his throat cut, his driveway. And I'm not suicidal, don't have the sense to get depressed. One day/night in Utah I was depressed, I've written about it, like watching someone else, weird. An out of body experience, really, though or even if it was just a drug flashback; except for mystics (there are many roads here, they all lead) most folk don't seek out of body. What can I say, I was taking acid when it was legal. Don't do it much anymore, I ate some magic mushrooms I harvested from cow paddies in Florida, five years ago, they allowed me outside myself, but the thrill was gone. I can get there on my own. Writing you is a kind of fugue state at this point, a simple ritual, rub my fingers together and focus on the screen; the program, Mail Waiting To Be Sent, wraps the lines and when the screen is full, I scroll down, looking for open space. The best part of my day, that I pamper, that I hold dear, is writing you. I thought about that, last night: whatever happens, I'll keep doing this. Nine days from Sunday, I finally learned how to do something. Drainage update. The Scioto is still out of its banks, what we call local flooding, everyone knows where not to go. I walk some debris fields, just looking, take a great pink cute bear head, the only thing I allow myself to pick up, right back to the museum, and set it with the gar, on the desk, next to the corroded IBM Selectric. It looked good there, but I'll probably move it around. I had some time and no one was around, I took the plastic bear head around and talked in a squeaky voice, a meaningless monolog. Not Pinter, not even Shepard, a pale voice, but still germane. Maybe I'm just Miss-Remembering something, but I thought I meant something. Whatever, you and yours, we welcome you to our casino. There's a good chance you'll lose everything. If you're like me. A matter of course. Glenn mentioned periods, so I thought I'd throw in a few. The hard stop is different. Look at the way it makes you read, what I thought Glenn meant. This storm is sounding powerful. I'd better Send. Sorry we can't work through that thought, love to you. The roof of the woodshed is at risk. It's blowing a fucking gale.
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October 14, 2008 Transcript: Tom and Darren

Tom's cabin, interior. Night. Low light. Tom and Darren at the kitchen table.

[00:00:09.04] Tom: Get an artist's statement here. Well, it's already embedded in the work.
[00:00:10.17] Darren: I told Carma...Carma actually mentioned, there's so many people she sends your posts on to, that go to your blog, that were saying, "What has Tom been writing, we didn't get anything. Oh god, you know, and they were just like jonesing for the Tom posts.
[00:00:29.02] Tom: She sent me a little email today that said something about that. She said, can you write posthumously?
[00:00:33.21] Darren: Yeah, that's what she was saying.
[00:00:35.26] Tom: You know you're going to be offline, can you just go ahead a pre-write one.
[00:00:41.20] Darren: (Laughs)
[00:00:41.20] Tom: Well, not exactly.
[00:00:44.03] Darren: What I said, what we can do is, I can set up the software that we can pull certain segments of your writing and just over the course of the thing, just lines here and lines there...
[00:00:54.03] Tom: Oh random...
[00:00:56.07] Darren: And randomly generate a page
[00:00:59.10] Tom: Get people off my back...
[00:01:00.04] Darren: Keep this going forever, man. All you have to do is click, just hit a random one, I don't feel like writing...
[00:01:08.13] Tom: A random text generator.
[00:01:11.04] Darren: You've just be out-sourced to China.
[00:01:15.02] Tom: Actually, my new dream is to be translated into Chinese and then translated back into English. What do you think?
[00:01:24.12] Darren: Tim Schlish's wife...
[00:01:24.12] Tom: Oh yeah, right.
[00:01:29.08] Tom: It's so interesting in a way what she said, 'cause I do get that.
[00:01:33.15] Darren: Here comes the packet...He is rock. What a minute, I wrote like 4 pages.
[00:01:47.09] Tom: When I was in the Richards gallery with Glenn today, I was looking at the stuff, what we had discussed yesterday, a hell of an important conversation, because whoever came up with the idea, based on what Nick had said, the fact that we can suspend other things in those walls and that'll give the walls some substance.
[00:02:11.25] Tom: It won't be a problem with like seeing through them, but it'll give them a little more substance that what they have. That piece you found yesterday will be beautiful hanging in there.
[00:02:21.24] Darren: I like the idea. I mean, if we have a wall in the museum, we put something on it, that's what we do. So, that we're creating a new wall, it seems like a natural place to go.
[00:02:34.20] Tom: It does. It was not apparent to me before Nick first mentioned it and then you guys were talking about it yesterday. It was not apparent to me because I...my first conception of the walls was that they merely cleaved the space. Right, so they just established what the boundaries were or something like that.
[00:02:53.26] Tom: And now they're taking on more substance which I think is great.
[00:03:05.16] Tom: And they go with interesting...Hmmm, I wanted to mention this to you: if the main wall, which bisects the gallery, goes across at X angle, does the wall that forms the dividing line between the sleeping room and the sitting room go at 90 degrees to that wall?
[00:03:24.18] Darren: Ohhh, that's a good question, hadn't thought of that.
[00:03:28.28] Tom: See, I think it should, irregardless of the fact that it's not 90 degress to the gallery wall.
[00:03:34.28] Darren: It think it should too, especially since we're doing those angled houses, the opposite houses. I think it certainly should. That lends a total new dimension to the show, absolutely.
[00:03:44.28] Tom: Yeah, I think it does too. I was pleased I had the thought.
[00:03:52.01] Darren: I hadn't thought about that.
[00:03:56.06] Tom: Space. That's what we're doing, is defining space, within a given space.
[00:04:00.17] Darren: Sure.
[00:04:02.16] Tom: And the way in which we do that is by using those bisecting lines, right? The rails are lines. The only thing like this that I've ever been involved in before was the time that my former partner Ted Harper and I had ingested some powerful psychedelic and we were down in the print shop, which was down in the basement of his Mom's house, and they had a really beautiful backyard that looked out on...it was the Quivett marshes, which was all spartina grass, really beautiful, creek winding through it. And I was just spaced out, looking at the marsh and Ted disappeared for a few minutes and came back and he had this great big old ball of white twine.
[00:04:50.29] Tom: And he started, he tied a piece of it off to the corner of the print shop, and he walked over to a tree and he wrapped it around the tree and he looked around. And he walked over to the edge of the house next door and he like thumb-tacked it in there. Looked around and he...and when he finished he had divided the yard into all of these fairly small quadrants, just with one piece of string.
[00:05:21.24] Tom: It was amazing. Well, maybe it was the drugs.
[00:05:31.17] Darren: (Laughter)
[00:05:34.06] Darren: I know whenever I was laying out the purlins on my shop, I had the chalk line out....

....Offstage, camera operator is trying to turn off the overhead fan, which is making too much hum. Tom and Darren kibbitz.

[00:07:15.14] Tom: You're good at a lot of things but singing isn't one of them.
[00:07:18.00] Darren: I'm telling ya, you should invest in stocks now.
[00:07:25.12] Tom: And I love the fact that you can't remember the lyrics of an entire song.
[00:07:29.03] Darren: Yes, I can. I tend to skew the lyrics occasionally. "I am the eggplant..." It works much better. What was John Lennon thinking? I am the eggplant much better that I am the eggman.
[00:07:52.07] Tom: I heard the revamp of a Beatles song on the way to work. It was about the credit crisis. It was hysterical.

..........

[00:08:30.12] Tom: So how is this guy Mike Reeves or whatever his name is going to be at the opening?
[00:08:33.16] Darren: I don't know. This is Lily's big idea.
[00:08:35.11] Tom: Okay.
[00:08:35.11] Darren: He's supposed to be...You know, he did some of the auctioning a few years ago at the Bizarre Bazaar. Really, he ran the prices up a lot, a lot better that what John Rayhall was, sort of this droning guy you just didn't want to listen to. And Mike raises a lot more, he is inherently entertaining.
[00:08:59.27] Tom: Sure, sure. More personable.
[00:09:02.16] Darren: But, his band's going to be there and I guess he's going to play for...just sort of doodling with a few other musicians. And after a set period of time, then he and his band are going to play. So I don't if that's going to be background music or what the deal is. I don't know what kind of music...
[00:09:23.14] Tom: Back to cleaving space....
[00:09:25.06] Darren: Back to cleaving space...
[00:09:36.05] Interviewer: You know what I'm getting? Crickets.
[00:09:36.05] Tom: We can't turn them off.
[00:09:38.22] Darren: Got a shotgun? You go outside and shoot a shotgun, you'll have a good 10 seconds of...
[00:09:41.07] Tom: Yeah.
[00:09:42.23] Darren: Or 15 seconds
[00:09:49.00] Tom: That's the classic whippoorwill story around here.
[00:09:53.23] Darren: Maddenly 2:30 in the morning go out and fire a 12 gauge.
[00:09:59.06] Tom: Which only completely wakes you up. But it doesn't work.
[00:10:04.01] Darren: It works for about 10 seconds.
[00:10:05.06] Tom: Marilyn stark naked...yeah, just lost it in Mississippi, she just completely lost it. And just went outside and like fired both barrels, man.
[00:10:15.20] Darren: Oh man, I've done that several times.
[00:10:17.07] Tom: She was so cute, right. And when she came back inside and the whippoorwills hadn't shut up, you know, and she was stark naked with a 12 gauge shotgun in her hands, I thought, yeah, that's why I married that woman.

[00:10:49.12] Interviewer: The other thing that to me is of interest is just talking about the show in terms of what you expect people off the street to think of it, if anything.
[00:11:00.00] Tom: We've thought about that, we haven't talked about it all that much because there's a certain level at which, as an artist if we can call me that as part of this, I don't really give a shit what they think about it. I mean, but of course there are levels on which I do really care. And I don't know what the answer to that is, after seeing Darren's show come into the museum in the last couple of days and then having 3 separate people come up and say about the color-field painting, "Is that the packing?"
[00:11:40.02] Darren: (Laughter)
[00:11:45.07] Tom: What do you think? How are people going to respond? Considering the level of interest in the show which is amazing for anything I've ever been associated with, with this museum, that we can be below the floodwall and some old lady walking a dog says, "You guys building a house at the museum?"
[00:12:05.08] Darren: Yeah, I think we will get a lot of people who are just curious, just curious about this.
[00:12:12.19] Tom: And have never been to the museum before, which is fantastic.
[00:12:16.23] Darren: I think so too, I absolutely agree. So we're going to have a lot of that sort of train-wreck type looking.
[00:12:25.14] Tom: You know what I was thinking, I have thought about this a little bit, I think one of the things that we'll hear...Trish will come into the installation--mark my words--Trish will come into to the installation and say "well, I could have done this..." Any my response is, You couldn't have the idea.
[00:12:44.24] Darren: That'll be sort of the main response from the work in the abstract show. You know, that'll be the main response: I could have done that.
[00:12:55.20] Tom: Already has been, both Ruth and Bev said this morning, "I got to get my brushes back out."
[00:13:03.17] Darren: That's cool, you know. I mean, if you want to go ahead and give it a shot, that's great, I think. But I'm not sure you can do that.
[00:13:13.25] Tom: There's a real difference in having an idea to do something that's interesting, and there is saying, as so many people do if you're a writer, say "I've always wanted to write." Well, all you have to do is, like, practice for 3 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, for you know depending on what you bring to the table, between 2 and 10 years and you'll probably be able to write something.
[00:13:46.18] Darren: That's the way I feel about the furniture that I make. You know I been building furniture seriously for 7, 8 years now. I just now feel like I can build a decent piece of furniture. I mean, I think I can...I have 4 or 5 pieces that I know I can build pretty well. And it's still not on par with Thomas Moser or George Nakashima but I feel that I'm a little more competent now that what I was 10 years ago.
[00:14:15.24] Tom: You're still a young guy. I'm always amazed the really young artists that come into something, say like David Foster Wallace, that at a very young age is writing...and Pynchon, I guess...writing whole new things, big psychologically complex things when they're still remarkably young. I'm not sure I even woke up until I was 30.
[00:14:46.19] Darren: You saying I'm going to be the next Pynchon? Is that what you're saying?
[00:14:50.01] Tom: Your writing career is very much like your singing career.
[00:14:59.09] Darren: I'll take that as a compliment, a budding star.
[00:15:07.09] Tom: That's why I like working with you. So full of shit.
[00:15:11.16] Darren: No, but it is, with the abstract show, one of the things that is most overlooked with abstract work is that tendency to say "well, I could do that." The fact is, some of those paintings of Nick's are very sophisticated. They're very sophisticated. When I was curating that show I looked at 200, 300 artists all around Ohio, I really wanted to stay in Ohio, but there are a lot of people doing abstract work. It's really interesting, amazing because most people consider representational work as a higher medium.
[00:15:56.04] Tom: And it's much more difficult to do figurative art, you have to be able to draw.
[00:16:01.25] Darren: But, I think in a lot of cases, you have to know what the rules are and be able to obey by the rules before you can break 'em. I think you can see that very clearly in Nick's work and also in Mark Roth's work. I think it's very deliberate what they're doing.
[00:16:29.17] Tom: Back to the wrack show. I like the way the lines, none of which are perpendicular to any of the walls of the room re-define the space. I mean, they completely re-define the space where if, when you guys were talking yesterday about hanging other stuff on the walls that we installed, I was suddenly thinking, although I don't want to do this, I was suddenly thinking, it would be really cool to just completely ignore the walls of the gallery, so they would be as invisible as possible.
[00:17:06.09] Darren: In a way, if we do that, that wall being on the angle with the 90 degree directly off it, that does ignore all the planes in the gallery, it's as if they don't exist.
[00:17:21.22] Tom: As do the other two walls.
[00:17:21.22] Darren: So it may make sense to ignore those. What if I built just half a bed and it came out of the wall.
[00:17:29.12] Tom: That would have been just fine.
[00:17:29.12] Darren: You know.
[00:17:32.26] Tom: That would reinforce that idea that the walls of the gallery are invisible.
[00:17:37.12] Darren: They just don't exist.
[00:17:42.08] Tom: But no, I think we need to pay a little attention to 'em.
[00:17:45.14] Darren: They're there. That's a big part of what the exhibit is, you know it's there. Why did we do it?
[00:17:52.10] Tom: But what will people think?
[00:17:58.10] Darren: It's a difficult question.
[00:17:58.10] Tom: Say fairly sophisticated people like, let's say when Jim from the pub comes over.
[00:18:02.22] Darren: You think Jim's sophisticated? Sorry, trick question.
[00:18:11.04] Tom: I was thinking about it. I'm a little slow, but I was thinking what a really good response was. Something terribly politically incorrect, like yeah, you're right, he married a girl from Kentucky.
[00:18:23.13] Darren: She has her green card.
[00:18:27.25] Tom: That was so funny. We couldn't get married until she had her green card.
[00:18:34.16] Darren: We're avoiding the question very presidential-like.
[00:18:39.18] Tom: I think the response is going to be all over the board. I think there are going to be a lot of people as you were correlating with the response to the abstract show, there are going to be a lot of people that either say, my 7 year old kid builds things like that in the back yard...to people who I think will go "cool." And maybe some people even beyond that go "this is a really interesting conception and it's really well realized." Because it will be.
[00:19:18.07] Darren: How do we play in with that message, I mean really, whenever we're saying, how will people react, we’re sort of stating that there's a message or a way that we would react to this. What is our reaction to this? I mean, how do we consider this? How do you consider the show?
[00:19:40.03] Tom: I like it a lot. Not on paper. Because I don't do paper. I don't draw. I've liked the concept from the very beginning when we built the pergola at James and John's place and we used that stick, the other part of which has got to be in the show...in some capacity.
[00:20:06.23] Darren: I love the idea of being able to peel that, if that was possible.
[00:20:10.05] Tom: No, no. It's not possible.
[00:20:14.04] Darren: But it would be really cool.
[00:20:16.06] Tom: It would make a great ped[astal] for something.
[00:20:18.23] Darren: Sure. Well, ultimately what I wanted to do with it was make a trestle table. I mean, that's what I wanted to do.
[00:20:23.13] Tom: But I mean for our use now we could use it as a ped and not cut it, not do anything with it.
[00:20:29.00] Interviewer: What's a pergola?
[00:20:30.11] Tom: A pergola is...what is a pergola? A pergola is an outdoor arbor, specifically not connected to the house.
[00:20:42.05] Darren: A free-standing arbor.
[00:20:44.04] Tom: A free-standing arbor. That's a pretty good definition. And they can be any configuration or elaboration from gazebo to something that's minimal. Ours is going to be quite minimal. They're probably more traditional in a square shape with the rafter ends being cut decoratively, a la southwestern architecture. For our purposes, of course, they're going to be irregular sticks. They're usually, as I said, square. We have come on the V-shape which we like quite a bit, because it allows....
[00:21:29.06] Darren: It's a vanishing focal point.
[00:21:31.01] Tom: A single point perspective but it has a flair to it that a square doesn't have. That's because it's a triangle.
[00:21:40.22] Darren: Flair, and bling and all of those...is that what you're....
[00:21:44.16] Tom: I am not ostentatious. I am not ostentatious in the purchase of useless jewelry that dangles. They're a lot of things I am...
[00:21:56.25] Darren: That definition so came out of the dictionary.
[00:22:02.03] Tom: Actually, it was sent to me by Neil Baldwin. The email is posted on the wall behind Glenn. I had no idea what bling was. I heard the governor of Kentucky's wife use the word bling in a commercial for the lottery, when these like women workers in Kentucky, like 8 of them or something had all pooled 5 bucks a piece and bought 40 lottery tickets and one of them hit. And they won like 163 million dollars divided 8 ways, 20 million a piece. And the governor's wife was saying, being cute and funny and everything, what do you intend to do with this, and some of them gave some serious answers, and then she kind of winked and nodded and said there'll probably be some bling involved. And I didn't have a clue. The closest I could come to bling, I did a reading about 8 or 10 years ago, I was reading at the University of Pennsylvania Behrend, and they paid me handsomely to read, and then they were going to take be out to dinner afterwards. And they had actually, they got this Spanish tapa bar to stay open late and we were going to be the only customers, we had it all to ourselves. So of course, the entire English faculty goes, right, and the administrative people and myself and my daughter. And there's an MLA convention that's going to be like the next week, and all they can talk about is who is going to be boinging who. So I had boinging in the back of my head, meaning fucking. And then she says there's going to be some bling involved, and I'm thinking the word has morphed, and they going to have these guys who dress up with ties and strip
[00:24:26.09] Darren: Didn't you do that in the 60s?
[00:24:26.09] Tom: Only a couple times. Just the once, and it got hung up in the bull vine. Who are those guys though, the Edwardians, the Templetons...
[00:24:48.08] Darren: The Chippendales. You always do this, you sort of meander around.
[00:24:54.09] Tom: It's my fondness for lists. See, that way we get more than one option.
[00:25:05.04] Darren: Chippendale, for which Chippendale, the actual furniture maker, would be appalled, that his name turned into that.
[00:25:09.15] Tom: I'm surprised they could do that.
[00:25:13.02] Darren: I'm surprised too because the Chippendale factory is still open.
[00:25:21.02] Tom: I don't know, but I think people are going to see...I think people of...boy, talk about politically incorrect, I was going to do it again, but I'm not going to do it on camera. I was going to say something about I.Q. but I'm not going to now. People with synergistic, vertically integrated mentality.
[00:25:43.23] Darren: What a minute. Say that again.
[00:25:52.11] Tom: Oh come on, I was clear as a bell. You don't follow that? This is almost completely theatrical, what I learned in theater because in theater as a general education, and I think theater is one of the great general educations you can have, because you end up having to do a little bit of everything, so it's vertically integrated in ways that a lot of professions are not. And synergistic because you have to bring in ideas from everyplace to make it happen. So I'm almost embarrassed that the two of you laughed so hard at that. Was it just that I knew those words? Or that I could string the together so comfortably. But you know what I mean.
[00:26:54.21] Darren: ...your explanation of bling.
[00:26:58.18] Tom: And then there was that side-line into I.Q. So what I think actually, is that people that are capable of creative thinking are going to look at the show and just go "wow, this is really cool," that they had the idea to do this, that they took the time to collect the obviously, a lot of collecting of stuff to make it happen. We have at least 8 truck-loads of stuff involved in this. And I think it's going to be hard to deny that, when it's all put up. I think there'll be a fair number of people that go "I wonder if I should like this?" or "should I like this?" Is it a tangible big enough that I have to acknowledge that it's there? And then it does have the fact that it is tangible, all the parts, unlike your abstract show, which demands that people construct a framework that allows them to understand, to try to understand what abstract art is, why did that guy just, why is this just like a huge red canvas, with just a couple of subtle variations? Does it mean something? Is it emotional? Does it tap into your emotions?
[00:28:26.11] Darren: You have to build an inner framework whenever you're discussing abstract, there has to be an inner framework, I mean inside you, inside the viewer to come to these pieces to any sort of idea of what's going on. I mean, you have to be able to acknowledge within yourself that, at least for me, that yes this means that for me I'm upset here, or this just makes me happy, I don't know why it makes me happy but I have that inside of me, I understand that this, whatever it is, makes me feel happy. Or any sorts of that. And with the wrack show, I think all of that will be very apparent, it will be right up in your face, all that structure is right there.
[00:29:11.27] Tom: That's a good phrase, because it will be right in your face. And that's what I mean by the fact that its tangible quality, that you can't deny that it's there because it going to be like seriously right there in front of your face.
[00:29:29.23] Darren: It will be. And I think that...
[00:29:32.07] Tom: Will they get the sex toys?
[00:29:34.25] Darren: I'm not sure I get the sex toys.
[00:29:37.29] Tom: If the piece of Brian's, we saw again today....exactly, you wouldn't know about Praxiteles or whoever it was statue of, who the fuck was he saying it was like...and then he does this funny dance...Iris. He always duplicates this dance step with it. But we're only looking at this part of Iris, right. But I think it would be wonderful for him to talk at the museum and just have to reproduce that little dance step. And talk about Iris, seriously. Talk about Iris. And what we're actually looking at is a crotch. Not to put to fine a point on it, that's what we're looking at. And I think when you combine that with, there's another piece that's a candidate, that kind of looks to me like a lady bending over, and if you put the two of those things in a place, in a space, and then you put that douche-bag thing on the wall behind it, and then you put that...
[00:31:00.00] Darren: Which I found out what it is, actually. It is an air bladder out of a well tank, is actually what that is.
[00:31:09.11] Tom: Damn, I was so sure it was an enema bag for a truck.
[00:31:16.26] Darren: I'm sorry to shatter you views. I found out what that was.
[00:31:21.25] Tom: You shatter my illusions. Whatever is actually is, the fact that it could be mounted on the wall behind these sculptures and then next to it would be this white boat bumper. The boat bumper starts confusing you. You're pretty sure it's a sex toy. But you don't know how to use it. So, I like that. I like that, the mystery.
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Commentary Privilege

You earn the right to comment by watching closely, or reading closely, or looking closely (watching is not the same as looking). Former wives and husbands have commentary privileges. Of course, it's usually best to not comment. I've been writing so much, the last few years, have gained a working facility with language, and a certain speed of response. I talk a lot, out loud, when I'm writing, monologs and dialogs, ask questions and answer them, so someone gives me a line of talk, I'm on it like ugly on a stick. One of those Celtic bards leading the charge, singing the lines of war. Wherever this stuff comes from. I did tweak my back yesterday but caught it just it time. Needed to split some wood, wore the back brace and used my legs, kept the back straight, and it was fine, maybe slightly better. The considered stroke. I needed to be outside, just above freezing, a breeze, partly cloudy, racing shadows. I always have a stump, in the woodshed, that I can sit on and roll a smoke. A second wave of woodpeckers. B comes over for a drink and we talk about the birds. Our best guess is this a unique thing, or a seldom thing, not normal, because we had neither ever seen it before, and we'd watched. So it wasn't a lek as much as it was a field of opportunity. There was something there to eat, and, with a full belly, you might as well fuck, you know, lay some fertile eggs. There was a lot of strutting and pecking on the back of the neck, looked almost abusive, but the female rarely flew away. Hard to not make that a metaphor. Pink elephants, red herring: the world in which you live is a construct. There is no guiding principle. Let's not even use my friends as examples, they'd be an odd sampling, let's choose some people at large. The person that checks you out at Kroger, the clerk at the liquor store, the librarian that scanned your books, they're people too, have lives, get up and do what needs to be done. I have a thought, divergent, dismiss it, maybe make a note, try to stay on line. It isn't easy, everything diverts. The apparent me, that most of you see, might be a construct, I can't speak to that, I actually am a janitor, my largest concerns are the grout joints, I fear for the worst. Fucking chocolate icing, it's everywhere. That kind of thing, where you'd know what I was saying, and I'd ask how did you know that? The natural world is brutally honest, we accept that, as a matter of course, that you might need an update is more problematic, I can't offer one, I was just trying to finish a thought. What you might think I was trying to say. You build up a certain level of trust, you can say anything, so you just have to stay on track, but that's difficult, when there isn't one. The writing me is a mystery; I know him hardly at all, the writing me. He knows people I hardly remember, I'm shocked by what he says. I can't believe I was ever that person, and I apologize, that I could do that for you. Lie about whether or not I'd seen you. Listen, everything is protoplasmic. Look around. The world as you know it, what you think is actually happening. It changes in a moment. Damned machine wouldn't let me send last night. I'm becoming sporadic. Entropy, losing my heat. After a really bummed day I consider where else I might live. I can't think of anyplace. There are places I can crash for a while, but doing it all over again seems a little far-fetched. Truth is, I love my job, love where I live, content in the relative balances. Something went very wrong today, like that day Herbert started throwing hammers toward the loading doors at the Cape Playhouse, it was too far away for him to actually hit them, and he threw like a girl. What was it B said, from his days coaching girl's softball, you have to teach them to lead with the elbow. It's all mechanics. Me commenting on things, I can't not. For instance I just took a phone call, usually I'd hang up, from my credit card company, and because of the financial melt-down, they've lowered my interest rate, to keep me as a customer. I talked with Karen, she had a good speaking voice and she had been over her material, and in the couple of paragraphs she read me (it was a found poem, I wish I could've taped it) there was the word 'applicable' and I laughed, she stopped reading and asked what was funny and I told her I liked that word, that it had been a word-of-the-week, in my, you know, vocabulary game. I told her (this was being taped, for performance review, so I performed) that the current word was synecdoche and used the Brett Farve example rather than Pamela Anderson. She was calling from Maryland. The weather was fine. I'm more and more led to believe that I don't understand anything. I'm a good watcher, a good reader, I can weave disparate threads, but I never see the train-wreck before it happens. I consider going to ground, renting a room and eating TV dinners, maybe under a different identity. I'm a good janitor, I could probably get a job, but there are always problems. Sure, I could be someone else, hacking away in an apartment somewhere, Kansas City, but my neighbor (I've never had one of those) would probably have a cat that chooses to shit in front of my door. Of course I step in it. Of course the apartment is carpeted. I'd rather not. I'm fine with a painted plywood sub-floor and the occasional mopping, the occasional robbery. Eventually, there's nothing left to steal. If you need my blanket that badly, steal it, I can always cover up with leaves. This train-wreck bothers me particularly, because I know the players. I sense a fundamental change. I don't know what to make of it. I have esoteric training that points in certain directions, there's no reason to stay here, considering what's happened. I might as well be in Arkansas. Mississippi. One of those states, where nothing matters. I thought I meant more than that, but who could ever tell? Necessity is a mother.
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Expiation Rites

Another Pileated day. Wasn't aware they ever flocked, a cresting of woodpeckers. Working the ridge hard they sounded like a percussion ensemble, red flags flying. Needed some quiet time, so I read all morning, Octavio Paz; then B and I cleaned the grader ditch and catchments. A new light, white strobe, out the right-hand side of my writing window. Tomorrow I'll work wood and scramble under the house to repair some minor wind damage to floor insulation, the ongoing price to pay for living in an unfinished house, still, there is no mortgage. I've been here for ten years and the county taxes me as a woodlot, not knowing my house exists. Not that I make any secret of it, just that in rural areas with no building inspector, there's no mechanism to keep track of houses. B came over for a drink and we discussed Romanticism. Defined some terms. We both listen well and talk well, which allows a continual refinement of definition. When the woodpeckers moved in this morning, I thought I was in a movie, a dream. The flashes of color, maybe tracers, do I hide under my desk? Then process that, oh my god, a fucking squadron of Pileated Woodpeckers. More than I've ever seen all at once. Takes my breathe away. Too many combs to count. More than I could exaggerate, lots of large birds. Swooping and displaying. I think I must be in their breeding ground. Just what I need. Another field of interest. I could hole up in a bark hut with a single candle if there was some reason I should bed there. Be here. Wherever that was. I'm deeply paranoid right now. Everything is a threat. I thought about retreating to the vault, holing up for real, living an alterative life, then realized I did. Forgot that, the harm I had actually done. I'd need pages, and most of them would be false, I can do this, I can invent pages. Power out again, they must be correcting what they jury-rigged during the ice storm. Saved, writing on top. To bed early, need to stop thinking about a schedule, up early and the power back on. A LEK is a mating/courtship zone, woodcocks and such. Can't get that fly-over by the Pileated Air Force out of my head. So unexpected. Started a fire, had to go out and split some kindling, then cleaned house for a couple of hours, mopped, get ahead of the mud for a day or two. Reread Paz off and on during the day, great thinker, difficult only because he, like Pound and Davenport, expects you to have read everything. Allowed myself to fester, for a couple of hours (you can't allow this shit to run your life, the occasional tirade is acceptable) over a barb tossed at me by a former friend. He didn't have closure. I'd forgotten about it. Psychological wounds are like physical wounds, they heal, if you let them. I'm walking uphill too often to be carrying that many axes. In so far as I can, I banish the brash, ugly, modern world from the ridge. I try not to have arguments, except, maybe, about style. I still have opinions but I don't voice them as often, not as willing to even take the time to waste the effort to butt heads. I have frogs to watch, a fox to flirt with, and woodpeckers doing a Hitchcock with the sound-track from hell. What need I of that other world? It's a trap, first thing you know you have a thermostat, adjust the heat as needed, amuse yourself with cable. Just in the natural world, there is so much distraction, I run out of kindling. Serious business. I can't afford to be that distracted, but love that I am. I'm already hauling wood for next year, the woodshed makes all things possible, might haul the first load of wrack next week. I got a load of pine pre-cuts from where the power company was off-loading them, to dry and split for kindling next year. Thinking ahead, making life easier, doing what I can. I can prolong this effort by several years if I'd just get my act together. Maybe I can, but this is rough, I tweaked my back lifting something heavy; knew it right away and strapped on that kidney/weight-lifter belt ASAP. I had to finish the chore. Hurting pretty good when I went in. Pain is a fact of life. Pan is a fret. I hadn't lost track of that, the music that was made. How it reflected on what was viewed as the current scene. Listen, I pay attention: a poor excuse, but better than none, I merely observe, nothing I say carries any weight. A few birds, nothing more, still.
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Some Drainage

Parallel ridges drain like a trellis, there are places you don't want to build; people build there anyway, and their existence must be hell. Cold air funnels down valleys. Fortunes and lives have been lost. Amazed that with all the snow-melt and the rain, that I could drive right up the driveway. B had cut back the fallen arched sassafras so that we could drive under. Poor damned thing. It arched over the driveway, 7/8's of the way up, in the 03 ice-storm, stayed bent, still solid. A slightly imperfect arch, if you had built it, but, as it is in the natural world, it was perfect; as is the nature of most trees in this situation, it sprouted vertical branches, like a little phalanx of trunks. I always meant to hang something from the center. Talk about ephemeral, it would already be gone and it never existed. Of course it took a load of ice this time, hundreds of pounds, maybe thousands (I can't imagine where there would be a chart for this sort of thing, but probably the power companies have some data), and the bowed and bended trunk just couldn't take it. A compound stress fracture resulting in death. We see this, in the woods. Nature is a Mother. Does, though, focus the attention. I know a person who consults in stress failure analysis: that job, or being on the board for the Fenestration Council, are two of the only positions to which I aspire. Actually, forget I mentioned it. There is no pink elephant. It was just a construct, construction paper, something cut out of a book. Knew when I walked down this morning that I could drive in, so I walked back to the house and got empty water jugs. Filtered drinking water for 39 cents a gallon if you use your own jug. Backed up all the juices, backed up coffee, ultra-pasteurized cream, a couple of avocados (I'm a local, seasonal kind of guy, mostly. But I do allow myself the occasional treat. Mid-winter, walking from room to room, looking out the windows at endless snow, eating an avocado from the shell, the hollow filled with lime juice, is one of my great passions) and various other things. Some splintered trim from the dumpster that is perfect kindling. This perfect weather, speaking of her, it, the; D said that the back of winter had been broken. This is true, but things are relative, we still could dive below zero, but, yes, there is more sun, and wounds heal. We might consider this just stage one. Maybe you survive, what do you do with your life? I have friends that are alive and friends that are not, they talk to me all the time. Robert J conditioned me so well, a Bach Cantata week after week. Here, what we have, is a perfect set of fox prints. I don't want to know how she cleans her paws. On the other hand our relationship is such that it wouldn't matter. All I can really see, at this moment in time, is a set of prints, she walked here. Yes, I have problems understanding, processing, mostly nothing makes any sense;l but I have dictionaries and various reference books. I could probably figure out what I meant to say. What I meant. You'd have a leg up. You know what I mean before I say it. Trying to stay simple, keep it clean, no reflection, what you thought was said. We keep coming up against this, an almost barrier. I prickle, I have to admit; the way you turn my crank. Thinking we might be understanding each other. Lost power again, but I'd saved part of this. Water running everywhere, even my little rill, the wet-weather springs flowing into the grader ditch; driveway drainage working exactly as it is supposed to, which it nearly never does. Mackletree Creek flowing slowly across whatever changes the dozers worked in her bed. Big napp over the spillway, Turkey Creek in spate but within its banks. The Scioto is well out of its banks, Boone Coleman's fields are flooded, large debris zones arranging already. The Army Corp must have taken the Ohio down, because at the mouth of the Scioto the smaller river was over-riding. The wind storm dried the frost coming out of the ground. Drained land is dry but pity those with business to transact in low-lying areas. The first terrace below the floodwall is completely recharged with wrack but the mud is a foot thick, awful Ohio River mud, thick in toxins. Still, as the new wrack field dries, I'll be bringing sticks home, anything I can't use I can burn. River as resource. A load a week would probably be firewood for a year. Live in the middle of the forest but only burn river wrack. Got the booklets done, my outdoor hands weren't very nimble, I had trouble with knots, got the wine glasses delivered, got the little rings from the printer, to label the glasses, got the wine, from George's cellar, another trip to Debbie's, help with the final set-up, bulls in a china closet. I just want to get back to the ridge, where everything is easy, merely survive, conflicted in a world where they're actually contained, where what you wear matters. I grant them some grace and pass over. It's my goal, really, feed you a line, and achieve the ridge.
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Wind Storm

Tornado warnings. High wind advisory. Full-tilt at the museum. Temps in the 60's, but the current high is supposed to collide with a low precisely here. Somehow we get everything done, that theater training kicks in, between janitorial responsibilities and a hard place. I don't know what day it is, lost track of time last week, and struggle for the line. Lose threads and most of them red herrings. Mid-afternoon, scudding dark gray clouds from the south suddenly fill a formerly blue sky. Ominous. We deliver the wine glasses (170, two sizes) for the tasting. I proof the wine-tasting booklet, a pompous piece of writing with several incomprehensible sentences that I alter toward legibility. Finally the first rain hits and it's looking bad. I cash in a comp hour, leave the museum a little after four. Rain hard at the lake, napp flowing over the spillway, Turkey Creek in spate. I pull over to arrange my backpack, a light load, 20 lbs, get out the Gore-tex. The bottom of the driveway is a quagmire, B's truck in his slot and I have to shift into 4-wheel drive to back into mine. There a subtle politic to the slots, a mandate that would be difficult to explain. Seems clear enough. Pelting rain and I hunch against it, slogging up the hill; meet B, coming down the hill, he's closed his windows and secured lose items, heading for a warm bed. I fear for the worst, drenched. I'd set a straight-backed chair near the back door, knowing (now) yesterday morning, I'd need to strip when I got home. Probably the wettest I've ever been getting back to the ridge. Change out my clothes and hang dripping items where they'll do the least harm. Power is out, temps dropping quickly, the weather runs my life, this time of year. Get out the candles and the oil lamp, start a fire in the cookstove, eat a can of cold beans. The wind is howling, a full gale, I can hear branches snapping, but it is darker than the shades of hell and my world is again reduced to a flickering cone of candle light. I'm tired of taking notes so I mostly read, a history of salt, some essays Diana left on the table, and finally, default mode, go to bed. The wind is so loud the house creaks. A large gust, must be over 70 mph, shakes the pottery. There's nothing I can do, the house will either hold together or not, I snuggle under my comforter and drift into bad dreams. Disaster, destruction, at some point I'm strapped to bamboo scaffolding, trying to finish the plastering on a mosque in some wind-swept landscape, and the plaster is blowing off the hawk. I've lost my hearing because of the drone the wind makes in the trees. I'm naked, whipped with sleet and bleeding. I don't feel heroic, I feel stupid. I need to pee, and this is strange, the sequence, not that I need to pee: I know my way around in the dark, know where my foot needs to fall, and I go downstairs, outside, to piss in the face of it, or, rather, downwind. I haven't taken a flashlight because I know where the ground is, and I can tell wherefrom the wind. Finish my business and going back inside, maybe four o'clock in the morning, stamp my feet, step inside, slam the door shut, and the power comes on. My intension was to go to bed, but I had to write you. It was overwhelming, I never got back upstairs. Take whatever advantage. I had thrown away some cookies and crackers in my janitor mode and then remembered the geese, so I went through the garbage and retrieved some, and when I stopped at the lake I made some large birds happy. Least I can do, considering. Several things occur to me, but they're not germane. I don't even like geese. I'd be a tree-hugger but I cut them down and burn them. What I mean is there's no removal, that wind, it's part of it. Read more...

Nothing

Later, I was thinking we could talk about what we hadn't said, the things we really couldn't say, private things, that we shared in only a general way. The things we couldn't discuss with anyone. How close we might be to that. I have fields of privacy to which no one is privy, whole areas that are clear-cut and not up for discussion. Things I'd never say. Opinions. What I thought about myself or you, I wouldn't mention those, everything else might be free-range, mentioned in passing, I could make everything up, it wouldn't matter, what is real is real. Nothing I say can be trusted, but is trustworthy nonetheless. I specialize in the immaterial, the ephemeral is a friend of mine, we meet for drinks on Thursday, I've learned to listen, something always says something, if you listen hard enough. Bach to Change Ringing to those last string quartets. There's a thread. I might be deaf but I hear what you're saying, what might have been is always an issue, at least for me. Easy to be ignored, extraneous, still, I nag; this world, where trees explode and saplings are the honor guard, is a place I'd rather be: it interests me, everything else is chaff. If I'm not engaged nothing matters. Duck-walk is a relative term, what you were actually doing, a kind of dance on the beam. I must have started this page when I got up to pee, I don't remember. Then back to bed and overslept because of the cloud cover. Rain. warmer, maybe 60 tomorrow, messy walk down to the truck. Speaking of ducks, we had to line them up at the museum today, so many things to do. The last wine tasting Friday and I'll need to sew 36 little books, D setting the type today. Today, I am the janitor, cleaning up from the opening last Friday that Lady Diana and I simply skipped. Too much to catch up on. She really liked the elk-meat chili. The museum was trashed because we had salted the entrances and the cookies (or whatever it was they ate) were crumbly, and also, at these receptions, I've noticed, people spill whatever they're drinking. My personal theory is that it's because they're standing up and gesturing. Lots of spilled liquid. From my point of view, having a specific task is fine, I enjoy mopping, the results are tangible. It's much harder to write coherently than it is to mop. Carrying wood, a chore I love, is very simple, it involves certain physical senses; I go easy on myself, rarely carry more than I should, actually think of myself as a whimp. I can barely survive winter. This one, in particular, is grinding me. I've already burned more than four cords of wood, the last two weeks I've burned a cord, trying to stay alive, burned forty candles to write you, and I'm still cold. A fart in a whirlwind. Too many windows and not enough insulation. Eventually you have to ask if the view is worth the discomfort. Merrily we slog along. I have to be careful, here, to not talk about things I don't talk about. Oh, that was nothing. Read more...

Mud

Frost coming out the ground. Nice set of fox prints at the head of the driveway. I'd walked over to test the ground for a possible run to town and fell on my ass in the mud. Slick clay. Thought to make a resupply run and drive back up to the house, but no chance yet. Probably could make it up in 4-wheel high and back down in 4-wheel low, but would seriously rut the top of the driveway. Not really out of everything, and I can carry in 25 lb packs this week as needed. Rain and warmer temps coming, replenish the water supply. Good to go. Still smiling about the visit with Lady Di. Such a perfect house-guest. Brilliant, carried her own kit bag (pulling your weight, as my Granddad, a mule-trader, always said), and a fine conversationalist. After we got home Friday, chili heating on the cookstove, B came over for some sparkling talk, and we arranged to get together again, before Diana returns to Erie. B and I'll cook, an eggplant marinara to die for, a cream soup, some other things, maybe crab cakes. Sarah and Di can talk Feminist Studies, I've saved a Ridge zin. I imagine a great evening. When B and I cook together, it always is, though there is often hell to pay in the morning. Sweaty outdoor work all day, steady taking off layers as the temps rose, and tracking mud all day. The floor in the house is a disaster, but I can clean that tomorrow or the next day, it's more important that I shave and clean up so I can show up at the museum without offending anyone's sensibilities. Besides, I like to get clean, I think I write better. The drip-edge off the back of the woodshed is a quagmire and I usually remember to step over it, but occasionally I'm spaced out and step in it. I knew the lugs of my boots were caked with crap, so before my last foray outside I'd put a pair of slippers just inside the door, where I could reach them, stopped on the stoop, sat, and scraped the grooves with my pocket knife. With damp paper towels I pickup most of the larger pieces of clay I had deposited on earlier trips inside. Maybe if I made a thermos of tea I wouldn't have to go back inside so frequently. Fucking mess. There's probably a lesson in this. I'm rereading some Octavio Paz, he's fearless in his essays, like Davenport, he understands, slants by the way he reports; Montaigne merely reports, but no, that isn't actually the case, you can't 'merely report', there's always that question of identity. Paz: "The transmutation of the primordial sun ---the gold that was everybody's, when everything was gold --- into the omniscient eye of the bureaucratic Police State is as impressive as the transformation of excrement into banknotes. But no one, so far as I know, has ever embarked upon an investigation of the subject." Diana had commented on the fact that I was rarely political, or even personal. I don't have an axe to grind, they took it away, along with my belt and shoe-laces, thinking I might harm myself. The positive thing about being robbed is that you develop a sense of the necessary. If you were raised in a card-board box, the important thing is the card-board box, not the knick-knacks. You can replace a ceramic mouse, your ethics are established before you speak, which way the wind blows. First there is an immediacy, then there is familiarity, then a kind of iconic thing happens, then it's mythic. Such is language. Maybe it's just the way the brain works. I'm nearly normal but I have questions. I'm willing to trade, but I'm not willing to give up my beliefs. Gold is merely gold: when ice explodes and trees smoke, you need to pay attention. Something is happening. What did B say -it doesn't have to be real to be authentic- something like that. This is very real. I need more fat on my ass if I'm going to fall on it. My fingers are cracking. The natural world in spades. Omit the political, the personal, get down to the thing itself; that red flash, another woodpecker, is enough. The coin of my world. I need to walk the driveway because I must, to stop, look up and see, breathing hard but not dead yet.
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Yet More Recently

You have no idea, how much it bores me to transcribe, I only want to be in the moment, I took steps to avoid any difficulty: I ate certain foods, I drank less, I smoked less dope. Still, the very scale overshadowed me, I'm a peon looking for penance. I know I'm the guilty party, just want to know how many cycles of the beads I need to rub. Give me a number. You and yours. But I've lost my gullibility. The second robbery changed things. Now, I'm very private indeed. Protect myself with a shovel. 1st. Up half the night, then up early, my sleep patterns are truly screwed, get a fire going and eat before driveway and culvert work. Warming overnight and the bowed saplings are upright. The landscape has changed again, rain coming. We clear the driveway of obstructions, trimming away what we must. Focus our attention on the top culvert and catchment, as that is where failure has always occured. B breaks out the ice and I shovel leaves and fines so that the culvert can flush itself clean. We work quickly and well together, not much talk, B points, I shovel. There is no boss, only a task, we have our different tools. Running low on my regular Drum tobacco but knew B had a moldering pouch of Gauloises and I had a backup pouch of Zig-Zag I'd gotten at the liquor store; sealed the Gauloises up in a couple of baggies with a mini-peeled carrot a couple of days ago, took it out last night and mixed the tobaccos, not too bad. But after the culvert work I clean up and shave, zip into town for necessities, carry a heavy pack back up, unload, whipped. Take a nap, eat, coffee, light the candles and write. Soon need more lamp oil and candles. After a couple of days I wanted a clock, and in a feat of assemblage I put back together a Baby Ben I'd thrown against the wall the last time it woke me. I hate clocks, generally, but I wanted a time-frame, which is strange for me, because usually I don't. No guarantee that is frame I've been using has any reference to any other time-keeping system, but I can wind it up and it keeps some time. I had to rebend the hands back down, so that they would all cross each other without interference, and they're no longer straight on the flat plane, but they pass each other fine. I just made up the time that I started the clock, Ridge Mean, the prime meridian. The rain finally arrives, big drops that play a Bach Cantata on the roof. Fifth in the third spot charging home, change ringing. Triple Round Bobs. It might have driven me crazy, but I was thinking about something else, the way I might frame something. 2nd. Pileated Field Day. You have to understand that there is almost no color, everything is black and white, there is color, of course, if you just look closely, blow off a little snow. The sassafras twig-ends are an almost violent red, under a sheath of ice; the berries on female green-briar are a blue I've never seen before. Mid-day, I'd been bow-sawing red maple starter sticks off and on all morning, then a great lunch of pasta and an elk-burger patty on toast, with a slice of onion that would choke a horse; sitting on the sofa, smoking and reading after, suddenly these two red flashes. I know what they are, I'd wondered about them, and there they are. Here, now. One close, not thirty feet away, and one other is within that line-sight, there's another I lose, that happens and it doesn't bother me, out of sight, you know. The two I can see are the brightest color ever. A red that is so red it makes you reconsider red. That color occurs in nature? I had no idea. I thought I was making all this up.

Tom

They were in a feeding frenzy. I'm sure I saw
that and maybe made up some stuff afterward,
and it all seems so unnecessary now. I
should have just told you what I thought.
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More Recently

Are we up to the present yet? I lose track. I thought we might have been, but no. Pages of notes. I smell, really must bathe and get out of this long underwear. Lady Diana asleep upstairs, wonderful conversation, great pot of chili and wine. Sidebar: walking up the driveway, which she handled with grace, a bottle of wine slipped out of her pack and skidded into the grader ditch. B over briefly. We discuss marriages and children. What day was that? The 29th, I think, there was so much bounce light through every window that I could write without candles until after 6 in the evening. The sky was soft white, almost no shadows, so quiet all day, the only exterior noise, other than exploding trees, was one train over in Kentucky, a lonesome sound, a country western song or maybe the blues. Some birds out feeding, as they must, after a couple of days on the nest. B was over, to borrow back his bow-saw, and we discussed the wind, frostbite, various dishes that could eaten directly from the skillet. I'll need to get to town, at some point, running low on necessary items. It's wicked outside. Five candles, the oil lamp, make some notes, go to bed. Bare existence. Lessons taught by an indifferent ridge. The 30th, finally sunlight, 10,000 sparkling crystals, the sassafras, especially, lose a load of ice and spring right back to the vertical, the driveway opens up, paths reappear. A quick trip to town, heavy pack: whiskey, juice, onions, tomato soup, chicken broth, rice, beans, bread on top; I feel like a Sherpa. Odd snow pack, snow, the layer of ice, more snow, almost strong enough to support you; walking is difficult, every step an adventure. Dry red maple starts a very hot fire, B had warned me to lay in sticks, his advice about burning what is always on the money, his knowledge of the local woods vast. Necessity. I had been using long-dead, bone-dry, dogwood and there isn't a better fuel for starting a hot fire, but it's all gone, harvested over the last several years. Red maple and sassafras burn hot even green. Wind and more snow. Breaking down to the ice layer on the back porch, for my drinks yields a couple of cut knuckles. I'm running out of bandaids. My hands are in terrible shape and my nails are worse. The next time I go out for ice I use a tool, a fork, to break off pieces. This landscape is sublime, under its weight of snow and ice, a concrete beauty, I'm humbled by the staggering immensity of it. God, I've gotten blood everywhere, candle light is lovely but there are deep shadows and I'm only alerted to the blood by a stickiness on my hands, dripping everywhere. Clean up by flashlight. It's hard to see. 31st, clear, intense blue cold but the sun has the trees shedding ice and smoking where the woodpeckers have bored holes. Small hike, over the head of the driveway, don't really want to go deep into the woods and disturb deer bedded down against the weather, this is the raw natural world, I'm immersed in the real. Very cold night, I have to get up and fetch Linda's hat. The sky is full of stars. Clear and cold, the house is frigid. Too many windows but the views are spectacular. In particular there is a large damaged sassafras that looks like an elephant in the dark. B found me at the head of the driveway, that open vista, standing there transfixed at the sound and sight of ice breaking off trees. A shattering scene. The snows melts off the ice on branches, and the ice shatters (expanding as it melts?), raining down, knocking off other ice in saplings and bushes, the cascade effect, I label it. B comes over for coffee and we talk about beauty. He offers warmer gloves. We agree on the depth of snow. The icicles are gone but the ice layer is good drinking ice, especially as I found an ice-pick; and it's very hard, a glassful will wear out several drinks. The blue sky was so intense it was shocking, I needed those Innuit slit-goggles, but I just wore sunglasses all day. A dark blue I don't know the name of, with a few thin low clouds that were being emitted by the hill-sides. Extremely local weather, because the air was dry and the clouds would disappear within a thousand feet. Sublimation. Evaporation-transpiration. "Everything is here, everything is open and visible." George Oppen. Culvert duty tomorrow. B's call, and a good one, we need to clean them for the melt. The melt and the mud, oh my god, the mud. I had forgotten. It's hell to pay. Jumping time-frames, Diana was here, and a trouper. She only required strong coffee with cream (just the way I like it), good conversation, and a warm place to sleep. Those things I can offer. House Rules. I don't offer much in terms of creature comforts, but I make a mean chili, and I've learned how to stay warm. Follow my lead. Even when I fall, I don't fall hard. I have a few years yet. As long as they let me write you, I'll probably be ok, but the noun would be a verb and it was no longer clear what you were saying. Listen, we've been over this material a great many times, what we thought was being said. Deep into the ice-storm, I don't believe anything. A blank slate and a chisel. I make some marks, that's all, writing longhand. This is to be under my own control but I have no idea what I mean. I tried to explain to Diana, that I just wrote, it's all I can do. A merely thing, what I can muster.
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Recently

Lady Diana maybe tomorrow. Can't catch up on mail until Sunday. New show opens tomorrow night. Doings. From hermit to gadabout. Amazing week, not quite the event of 2003 (I was without power and phone for 7 weeks) but a significant adventure. Power out Tuesday a week ago, right after I posted, Wednesday morning surreal, the bowed and bended saplings and bushes, the trees exploding, but muffled by a foot of snow. 8 inches, then a half-inch of ice, right at freezing for 4 hours, water froze on contact, perfect conditions, then four more inches of snow. A crystal world, laid heavy in white. Every single branch and twig covered with a sheath of ice and a layer of snow. Stunningly beautiful. Fucking Russian novel. The 03 storm was just inches and inches of ice, destroyed the forest, every tree on my 25 acres was damaged, this was more like Rousseau in Siberia. Serene. Because the iced branches were slightly damp the second snow stuck to everything. A magnificent Runic document. The sky was white all day, the same above and below. Out each window the view was slightly different, a framed image of absolute winter. Black and white photos, no color at all, a complex jumble of bushes and saplings and trees weighted over with snow and ice. B came over mid-afternoon, duck-walking under the shrubbery, we drank a toast and discussed my survival. That day, and the next couple, the ice would break loose from the trees when the weight became too much, crashing down through the various layers of underbrush, a shattering event. Cannonades in the distance. I take a chair on the back porch, roll a smoke and watch. Prismatic. You can't see fifty feet into the woods. It's a Goldsworthy installation "Frozen Taiga". You can't tell the background from the foreground, nothing makes any sense, it beggers the imagination. I move my reading and writing self to the island, five utility candles and an oil lamp, write in an old Composition Book, black taped spine, machine sewn, that I picked up at Big Lots for just this occasion. It's very quiet, between explosions, just the ticking of the stove. When you live with candles you're sensitive to airflow. The next day I walked over to B's, and it was a duck walk, for his bow-saw, mine is a useless piece of shit, so I could generate some body heat and be productive. Mid-afternoon I clip a trail through bowed saplings, then last thing, at dusk, walk over to the head of the driveway, where the view opens out. Birds breaking into the sumac seed-heads. Scarlet, like blood on virgin snow. Work in the woodshed for hours, stopping often and staring into the middle distance. Good timing, Skip had sent a load of my work that I had otherwise lost, so I read myself, some of myself, 500 pages, and some of it was acceptable, Text Toward Building A House, which outlines the decision trees involved in building a house, balancing money and time, satisfying whatever conditions, the mind and the eye. That middle layer of ice is perfect for drinks, that and icicles, which I collect and keep in a cooler on the back porch. I bow-saw a couple of red maples so I can collect their frozen sap, it makes a very good drink. Whiskey and snow isn't bad, but it's kind of like an adult slushy. I fall into a routine, stay outside as much as possible, then light some candles and make notes. Park at the closest corner of the island to the stove. I eat everything right from the pan, no mediation, I cook in cast iron, there is no heat lost. One of these nights, when it's very cold, I heat a skillet and wrap it in a towel, take it to bed with me. I'm shameless. This is extreme, if I fall I die, so I watch where I place my foot. The minor injuries are mostly caused by ice. It's very sharp. I'm ashamed of my knuckles. This is the very edge, where you maybe let slip certain elements of personal cleanliness. I haven't been out of long-underwear for days, I smell. So much bounce light, through every window, I can write without candles until after 6.
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Later

It's beautiful, last light of dusk slowly fading, I've built a structure here, that maintains. Time for the mummy bag and Linda's hat, suits my fancy. If the wind picks up, we could avoid disaster, knocking down the ice before it reached terminal mass. Listen, I was on the committee, I voted for this, my reasoning certainly suspect, but nonetheless. I choose to live here, given the sundry options. I've never been so engaged. That's worth something, in the great scheme of things. That I would be forced to pay attention. Power out. I can hardly remember what's normal. The ice storm arrived and it was spectacular. Stunning. Everything was covered. More than a week ago, I made some notes, when I got up, crawled out of my winter bag, started a fire, looked out the various windows, everything was crystal, every single thing. The saplings are bowed, the entire natural world is arched with the weight of ice. There is no sound, everything muffled. Suited up, walking to the head of the driveway, duck-walk, takes thirty minutes. Time and distance take on new meaning. I'm ill prepared but still ok, I knew this was in my future. Grilled cheese and tomato soup. You don't so much prepare for events as you live your life. It's cold, you dress appropriately. I pay attention to my diet. I eat a lot of fat. Jana called and suggested a warmer clime. I smiled and agreed to chicken broth. It's so beautiful, you wouldn't believe. It was above freezing for a few hours and then not and the snow stuck to every surface, everything was white. The whole world, the universe. There were things that were white that I knew to be black. The natural world can be confusing. Out each window the view is slightly different, a framed image of absolute winter. Black and white photos, no color at all, it's such a complex jumble of bushes and saplings weighted over with snow and ice. B duck-walks over, we discuss my survival. I admit I'm close to the edge. Cannonades in the distance, I go out to listen, trees exploding, nothing unusual. At some point I'm outside, and the trees are shedding ice. It's very loud. I often retreat to a cup of tea. And then I take the time to listen. Like now, for instance, back on my key-board. Hey. Fucking trees exploding. Hummocks. What you thought you said. Read more...