Hard Rain

Rain on a metal roof, even with insulation, if it's hard enough, is going to wake you. A pleasant sound but loud. I get up at three in the morning and wash my hair, eat some butter beans and left-over corn bread, reading a really bad novel at the island. I could wonder that my life has brought me here, but I don't care: what is. To bear isn't that far from to bare, what we're left with, when everything is striped away, we're all the same, lonely, isolated, self-contained. When it's dark and raining, you have to get up and pee in the middle of the night, feel you don't have control even of your own body, your mind spinning out of control, this is the test. What do you do then? Camus all over again. You don't want to embarrass your family, so you get dressed and go to work. Stiff upper lip. No matter that inside you cry like a baby. I still have two weeks of vacation I have to use before the end of June, two new tires for the truck and I need to visit my parents, responsibilities, life is a constant demand, the next thing you need to do. I'm not sleeping well, bad dreams and a general sense of failure. Probably something I ate, bad seafood or a bug I picked up somewhere. Fucking kids, they are a vector for disease. I docented a group of them through the wrack. High School art class, lots of facial studs, pretty girls and ugly boys with drupaceous pants. A dozen pedestals we had loaned out came back, three elevator loads down to the basement, organize the ped room, stack; collect garbage from the 13 stations. I needed to sit for a few minutes, I'm the only one without a specific chair at the museum, so I usually sit in the library and flip through an art book. Read, last weekend, an essay by Guy Davenport on Vladimir Tatlin, wanted to find out more but not very likely, as Davenport found any information difficult to find. I looked up the crazy Russians. Got a hit for a MOMA catalog, a 1968 exhibit, The Machine: As Seen At The End Of The Mechanical Age, and goddamnit if we didn't have a copy in the library. Excellent. Interesting book, hinged metal covers, an idea I'd thought about for many years, very nicely done. Brought it home. This weekend I'll be reading about Tatlin and the gang, Russian art between the World Wars. They were out there, pushing. Davenport also wrote a fiction, called TATLIN! and I'm sure I have a copy but I can't find it. Which is strange, because I keep the Davenport together. Hope to god I didn't loan it out, I'll never see it again. I lost my great copy of the Icelandic Eddas, I either loaned to a visiting prof at Oxford (Missip) or Ted Enslin stole it. I've narrowed that one down. Usually I don't really care. If I liked a book and I find it remainered, I buy as many copies as I can afford, and press them on people until my stash is gone. I've given away 18 copies of McCarthy's SUTTRE, and 14 copies of Pynchon's VINELAND. I got four paperback copies of SUTTRE at a library sale, for 25 cents each, I can afford to be lavish. Pegi was cute today, she batted her lashes and demanded butter beans. I make a note to take her some tomorrow. The future is thus imagined. What I will do, what he, she, and it. I command the high ground, I chose it with that intent, everything is downhill. This was a watershed, drainage day. I left the truck at the bottom of the hill, so I walked down, with staff and pack, poking at things; don't give me a pointer, I'll use it as a drill, to see what I might uncover: are those really dinosaur footprints? where do you keep the mummies? What is the plural of mummy? Listen, I'm happy to be alive, odds are you die, eventually, composted matter. I don't subscribe to any belief. Maxwell saw it clearly. I call your attention back to the previous document, something must have been said, if there is no record does that mean nothing was said? I thought I meant something. Does that count for anything?