Janitor Stuff

Too many things. Need to adjust my will, so I have D look up burial regulations for Ohio. You don't have to be embalmed, you don't need a casket, if you're going to be cremated, you can use a cardboard box (a crematorial vessel), and they don't care what you do with the ashes. Bottom fee, if you shop around, for cremation, is about $500. It takes high heat for a long time, you're mostly liquid. With the furniture store next door to the museum, a cardboard box is no problem, I could be cremated in a Lazyboy box. There was a dude at Janitor College, Maxwell Compton; English parents who had moved to Sweden for the sex and drugs, he was the result, fat and dim. He farted constantly, these great reeking waves that smelled like something had crawled up inside him and died. No one could stand to be around him, he had no friends and a large collection of inflatable dolls. The brunt, as you might imagine, of a great many jokes. He died in an explosion of cleaning products, that combination of bleach and ammonia on a hot day that sears the lungs completely. It was no huge loss, but we janitors, like cops and firefighters, always show up, in our starched dinem shirts with name tags, to honor the dead. This was a guy whose idea of a good time was watching traffic. None of us liked him, but we all show up to sing the Janitor Requiem, which is a haunting piece of music. As many things had fallen on my plate, janitor shit, I needed to crank it up a notch. An observation from the field: most people sit on their ass most of the time. Which says something. The crows were back, at the lake, and it was good to see them, members of my family, and I was saddened by the death of a fox in Florida. Janitor 101, you learn to disassociate the pangs, the pain, your job is merely to clean the mess. I don't understand my position at the museum, not completely, but it allows me to write you. Who was I talking to, someone knew exactly what I was saying, it was scary, the way you understand me. Hey. Listen. I'm just trying to be clear. It makes a certain sense, when reports are admitted from afar. What I'm looking at, what appears on the screen. Calls into doubt what I thought I was saying. A particular period took me over an hour, sleep on that; I did, absolutely. Sorry my list got used for a personal tirade, I consider the list something almost sacred, held in trust, but I don't control the action of others. Liza thinks I can blind copy, which would be better. I've got some people on it. Before the ugly email, before I left the house, I had lost a sock. I hate losing socks, so I mounted a search. It wasn't completely light yet, so I was using a flashlight and I looked everywhere, retraced my steps, as I remembered them, looked in all the odd places: could I have put it in the freezer? could I possibly have burnt it? under the bed, under the chest, under everything. I'm maybe a bit compulsive about my socks, but I try and stay on top of the little things, hoping the best for big things. I stopped looking and sat on the sofa with a quad espresso, wishing Linda were here to roll me cigs. Then I realized where the sock was. I had worn them to bed because I'd listened to a Greg Brown song about sleeping in just your socks. Warm under quilt and comforter, I'd peeled off the damn things and one of them had slipped into that zone beyond the end of the mattress, down to the tuck of the sheet. Yes, goddamnit, it was there. I'm at least as smart as a sock. Still before the email, I'd wondered, seriously sitting there pondering, before work, just as the sun cleared the opposite ridge, how many more people I'd manage to disappoint before I died. A circus day at the museum, setting up for a luncheon music thing, Dr. John and Robin who everyone calls Tommi, did river songs and told tales, nice, rooted local stuff. She had written a song, for the occasion, that was beautiful, nice voice too, an alto-soprano with vibrato. John did a nice musical interlude for me and D, a banjo piece, The Two Rascals, I blushed. Nothing is what it seems. Glenn noticed the slight delay, what wasn't said. I defer to anyone, someone that could have said something. Nothing matters.