In Conversation

Everything comes up. Blame. What you might have done differently. The odds. Periods and commas. You forget how well you know someone, the years of background, until the shit hits the fan, then you remember. The concrete construction is a foundation, what lies below, rebar suspended in a matrix. The strength of any system is where the first failure occurs. You're no better than your weakest link. We forge ahead, using language like a hammer on the anvil, assuming. Meaning is a kind of wrought iron, pounded into shape. Family or friend. Whatever can carry the load, whatever attachment. Stress failure analysis. What happened in what order. A bridge, for instance, fails. The sequence. A certain harmonic and the truss vibrates, rivets pop, the structure falls. We understand in theory but the reality dumps us in the river. Women and children first. Lane's life-jacket knows limitations, can't guarantee you'd be face up, you might well be face down and drown, deader than a door nail, but suspended. We recover a body but it isn't the same thing. An empty vessel tells us almost nothing. It's a bowl, your point is? Nothing makes much sense. Green-briar clogs the path, I stop the filming, go back to the house for clippers, there's a way through this. Listen. The dead speak. Harvey would have said. We're dealing with periods here. Hard stop as an anodyne to the convoluted. The Board Room needs painting; patching, then painting. I patch and sand. Leaks of unknown origin. I suspect chalk failure. Can't find the right color chalk. Brain dead today, and not the only one. Ready to start painting tomorrow. Enough food cooked for the week and cooked ribs in the freezer. Three single-malts and one of them not opened, a bottle of Beam Black. Stopped at the lake to watch the ducks cut large V's on the surface, where they overlap there is a brief W which would make a handsome logo for some company, the name of which started with a W. Or maybe a company dealing in duck supplies. I think about a book I could do from the text: The Janitor And The Fox. Some Confessions: The Diary Of A Janitor. What They Thought I was Too Stupid To Hear. Shit And Dust. More seriously, I can see a book about Janitor College, framed within the museum day-to-day, coming home during that run when the fox was common. The book is already written, I just have to find it. Correctly recognizing the intervention, no mean feat, because it was so well played. Dear friends were concerned. I'm touched by that, you know? because I work in a vacuum. I can only work if I separate completely from social constructs and live in the natural world. It's a habit, and after what Linda said about wearing the costume, straight-pins in the dark. I probably seem more troubled than I am. The injuries are not serious. I have to think about that, they actually are serious, everything becomes relative. What I was saying earlier. Don't make me remember. You, and your restraints. It took me years to order for myself. I actually like tripe, when it's cooked right. I'm often aware of my surroundings. True Story: I heard this hum, a drone, probably the fridge, maybe something that I hadn't considered, dying bugs or strangled birds, don't get me started. I wanted to check the basement, but I don't have one. Under the house? What are we looking for? We'll talk later, make a note.