Odd Thing

The burned world gets stranger. The past few days have been leaf-out, the trees exploding in green. Even on Mackletree, where the damage is severe, but the fire was a ground fire, the poplars and oaks are leafing. There will be little evidence of this conflagration by fall, some blackened tree trucks. Sumac and blackberry will be thick, and a burn always makes for great grass. My favorite burn, and I saw it repeated several times, was Big Roy's bean-field burn every spring. It was about an acre, I think I might have told this story to you before, I thought about it the other night, if so, I'll try and tell it better. True story. His property, to the north, ended at a pine-tree stand, and there was a fence there. Kudzu had climbed the fence and into the trees and there was a wall of kudzu walls as solid as a house. He grew bush beans, rather than climbers, Pink-Eye Purple Hulls, a wonderful bean, a cow-pea probably, African, maybe a hybrid, as I remember, from Texas. So many beans in Mississippi, little Lady Peas that would make you close your eyes and swoon, small yellow Butter Beans that grew just two to the pod, Black Crowder peas that produced a liquid that was ambrosial. Every spring, probably March, Roy would wait for the perfect day, a light breeze blowing from the south, call us all, maybe a dozen, I'd be the only white guy. He and I would start early, grilling ribs and various other things. Early afternoon, we'd all start a fire on the south end of the field, then run around to the north side. Fire would fucking fly across the field, burning old bean stalks, dead grass and weeds. It would hit the wall of kudzu with a palpable sound, and die. We were there to stamp out any embers that survived. Like the Kentucky Derby, or any horse race, a long build-up and a party after, but the event itself is over quickly. Then we'd eat, I'd bring over cases of home-brew, and the stories would start. They mostly talked about coon hunting, it was a passion with them, they raised the best hounds I've ever seen, Blue-Tics, Red-Bones, and these were dogs with voices. I let them hunt my bottomland, where there were many coons, so I could listen to their dogs while rocking on the porch. I went with them once and that was too much; they grew fond of me and I loved them all like favorite uncles, they taught me things. Other fires, on the positive side, every year in Colorado, we had to burn the irrigation ditch, but that was easy, nothing else grew anywhere close, so all you did was walk along the edge of the fire and sort of nudge it along. I didn't feel like writing tonight, checked the blog-site and realized I'd written more postings than any other month, and decided to make the number even. Memory is such a strange thing, how it reforms itself with time. I'm longer sure, anymore, the edges blurr, fractals of something else overlap. What Barnhart said about Bach. I have to work on this. The way the edges become important. I'm still alive, fuck the edges man, I live to find a place in the middle. I'm neither agile enough nor quick enough to stop anything happening, I might be able to get out of the way, even that's a close call, probably I'd watch the falling whatever. Nothing interests me more than a dead end. I like where we're going with this. I might have another agenda, for instance, someone could be paying by the word that I was writing you, it's possible, would that change anything? If you knew I was lying, maybe there had never been a fire. Maybe the fire was a construct, a conceit. There never was a fire, he only imagined a threat, we pat him on the hand, you know, treat him gently, he's a sensitive fellow, one of those guys that weeps at weddings. Read more...

Can't Sleep

Perfect sleeping weather but the slightest breeze stirs stinking soot and the smell wakes me. Escape mode, I reach for my keys; once, slightly drunk, I actually drive to the bottom of the hill before I realize there is no danger, or the danger is past, and I'm merely being paranoid. When you come this close to jumping in the cistern or seeking refuge in a mud puddle your view of reality shifts. I would never argue that my reality was any more real than any other, but this dip into hyper-space, where the world was on fire and your life was at risk, has altered the way I think. Like any trauma, it'll fade, with time, but I'm affected deeply and can't sleep. Barnhart was right, I need a nose-gay. This trauma was a smell thing. When I squeeze my eyes shut, I see flames, but mostly it's the smell. That damned Brit picks it up right away, says I stink, of course I do, I've been in a fire. Bridwell on a stick, smoked Bridwell, I answer to anything; I revel at being alive. That conversation with Josh, at the Dairy Bar, was important, because I wonder about the nature of reality, how we view things. This new lease on life makes me think I'm lucky. But I'm not lucky, I lose at most things. Consider relationships, everyone either asks me to leave or cuts me off. Not everyone, I have to watch those sweeping statements, I'm prone to over-statement. Exaggerated bullshit. But I find myself in this position, I look outside, and the world is burning; I live alone, I fanaticize relationships. My closest contact is with a fox. Would you trust this man with your daughters? I see a set of questions I need to ask myself, I don't know the answers, I could be rudely awakened. The story of my life.

Tom

Two blonds go into a bar, one of them has a marmot. Had I mentioned, recently, how glad I am you read me? Otherwise I'd be nuts. I think I can't sustain this then I do. Life is like that, first one thing, then another, the beaten path. Whenever I get dark I start laughing, I can't not. It's either pre or pro scribed. The daffodils or iris where a house had been. Clumps of meaning. You know what I mean. I have to peek out of the page. I wish I didn't have to, but I have to make my presence known. I think about this a lot, where I stand in relationship to what, but I'm harmless, I think, a gnat, nothing more. (Homage to Emily.) Nothing makes perfect sense. The fire, my helplessness. I am not strong, I want to make a point here, I'm not the person for the job, I tend to drift, you know what I mean, go off-track, not the person you'd want in that place, but there I am.

Read more...

Settling Down

Almost restored to order, 4,000 acres they're saying now, about one-sixteenth of the state forest. Still battling, looking to stop it completely when it hits Rt. 125, 75% contained, burning away from here. What this became was a big controlled burn. Not a single house lost, because there aren't that many in-holdings, and because when the fire approached a place they'd pull an entire crew (8 guys and a pumper truck), to protect it. Some rain, but not enough yet, just enough to make the smell terrible.The Marshals are out, sifting for clues, most of the snags have stopped smoking. Strange world. Light museum day, staff meeting, errands. On the way home I was struck with the desire for a hamburger and onion rings, so stopped at the Dairy Bar, added an order of jalapeno poppers. Talked with the other Richards' daughter's husband, he didn't understand anything either. Promised to get my tools back. The rest of the ride home, a bag of fried food sitting next to me, was wonderfully smelly and filled with anticipation: a beer, a burger, fries and poppers. I do this less than once a month and the place is closed for three months, probably not doing significant damage, and it's great fun to not cook, once in a while, just prop your book up and open the bag. Reading letters is so intimate, I've been reading lots of them recently, Emily, MFK Fisher, Marjorie Rawlings, Maxwell Perkins; they offer such insight into the inner workings. I put away some books, because I needed a place to recline on the sofa after dinner, read for an hour before I wrote you, returning to my near normal existence. Not as hot, this early, as it had been, I wander outside, surprise the fox at the puddles, we startle each other. I settle slowly on my haunches, not wanting to frighten her, she dances back and skittles to the side, then stops, looks at me; I'm not a threat, just in the way. She can slip through anything, but she gives me thirty seconds of her time, before she slides beneath the green-briar. There are events that take less than a minute, that might take hours in other circumstance, that carry the same weight, in meaning. I can stop worrying about the fire and worry about Swine Flu, thank god, a change of subject. Fucking Whip-Poor-Wills this morning, they were playing with me, I toyed with the idea of the shotgun, realized the shotgun had been stolen, thought about throwing rocks, these bastards are relentless. They always move when they fuck the cadence, they'll do thirty, forty, repetitions, then mess one up, and they're embarrassed, so they move on, I get that, and only hope they'll move further away. My heart rate has slowed, I'm better now, but the issues raised are germane. Wherein lies survival. I'll have to think about that. Pretty sure I know what my answer is, but I have to think this through. I might need to call someone. Call in the whatever. I was sure I'd stop making sense because I know myself fairly well, knew the limits of my being able to express what I was feeling. I'm locked up, emotionally, because I see just how far I can go. I could never be that for you, I could never lie, I have an odd set of limits. I would never fault anyone for knowing me. Just another Confidence Man, some one we could compare notes on later, who might lead us astray. Nothing means anything to me, what I thought you were hearing, the ultimate sense, to me, is what you thought you heard. Read more...

Making Sense

Drive in to the museum and Mackletree is smoldering. I'm useless at work, tired and spent, clean up from the Friday concert, piddle around, head home an hour early. Put some butter beans on to cook, with smoked jowl, trying to chase the stink from the house. The Music Guy calls, for the fire news, recommends a drop of perfume on my upper lip, which is good advice, especially as I'm holding a sample of Dzing, my favorite scent. Much better than the acrid smell of fire. All the Forest Service bulldozers, four or five of them anyway, are at work on burning snags. A little afternoon rain and the leafage is exploding. Hungry, no reserves, boil potatoes to go with the butter beans, fry several days worth of pork loin chops, rubbed with chilies, served with morels simply fried in butter. Manage to save a few mushrooms for a breakfast omelet (with fried mush, maple syrup), then get a scone, at Market Street, to eat mid-morning. Lost weight this weekend, couldn't eat at all on Sunday. The green, in just a couple of days, has started seriously obscuring the vistas. The enclosure of summer: for six months I can't see further than fifty feet. Birds all flocked over here, to escape the burn, doves, crows, the pileated, a brown thrush, a cardinal. A regular Birds Of North America pagent, actually a bit noisy, with the various loud bugs and the droning bulldozers in the distance. I kept no notes during the fire, just wrote when I could. The power comes in from the other direction, so, except for the one outage, just a few hours, I had electricity. The odd thing is that I never lost phone service, and the phone comes up Mackletree. I studied that today. First these fires don't crown, and move fast enough that they can't down a power pole, second, the road curves around quite a bit and the phone line crosses often, to cut the distance, it's usually flying over the roadway on a long tangent. Verizon, in their infinite wisdom, keeps the brush away from the bottoms of the poles and that allows the grass to grow, and the grass was green. Just amazed that in the frenetic activity the connection wasn't lost. D called several times, Monday everyone called, everyone who knew my number, because I don't write until later and there was concern. I've always considered that last couple of miles of Mackletree, after it dips into the State Forest, one of the most beautiful stretches of road anywhere (and I've seen a lot of road) but it is ugly now; secession being what it is, especially after a burn, will be interesting to watch. I know it will be green in days, all those plants, restricted by the canopy, will explode, grass, blackberry, sumac, whatever invasive species I might introduce, pot among the bull-rushes, I'm an old guy, but I still have seed. Acting my age, I wonder what that means. Should I not carry everything I eat and drink, up the driveway, in my backpack, for three months of the year? What's the alternative? Pretty sure no one is going to carry it for me, I do understand I'm in this alone, the one thing I understand is that I'm alone. We all are. I don't mean that in any special way, just that, when it comes down to it, you're alone. You make the best of a situation. It's the way we're conditioned. The survival thing is always a high priority, when you live alone. You don't want to burden anyone. Read more...

Emily Said

And I quote: It's divination:

"Your task must be a fervent one..."

the flames have died. Nothing is as it was, Read more...

Disoriented

Finally slept, fitfully. Scrambled some eggs, had a drink. A pall over everything, the thick smell of burned earth. This is the way the world ends. I've lived through hurricanes, tornados, ice-storms, but nothing like the smell of this. Mid-afternoon I took some beers down, gave them to the first guys I saw, they drank them in a single swallow, thanked me, told me I shouldn't be here, but I see the danger is passed. It was the green of the verges, simple grass, that stopped the flames. If they had jumped the road, I would probably be dead. Vic, the crew boss, said I was an idiot, I agreed with him, but pointed to where the fire had died at the edge of the road, told him I had a whole new reason for loving grass. Imagine this, on a front several hundred yards wide, at the far edge of the road, the fire had died, just at the bottom of my driveway, a few thousand feet away. I'm giddy. I would have fought, but as it happens, I just fretted. End-of-life harmonics. What you do, when serious danger pounds on your door, is worry about what your wearing, what you smell like. A guy at Janitor College, Fritz, was always worried about how he'd scored on the most recent test. He scored almost perfectly but worried nonetheless. I've known such great people in my life, possible annihilation brings things into focus. I'm merely lucky. I bring nothing to the table but the ability to survive. Maybe it's merely luck but maybe it's more than that, maybe I'm supposed to survive, as a kind of lesson to someone. You can be really stupid and live through things. I boxed several thousand pages of text, piled jeans and denim shirts on a laundry basket, collected all my bathroom items, prepared to pull my hard drive, I rehearsed, I had it down to minutes. I'd drive down through the flames, heading west, and once I'd broken free, I'd be a new man, something Whitman might write about. I'm so lucky I want to kiss something, someone, a rock, a piece of coal, the parched lips of tomorrow. In hindsight the firefighters might say it wasn't that close. I don't know, I just live here, it seemed close. My time-sense is fucked, eating and sleeping are afterthoughts, the smell, I need a room deodorizer, a new perfume. Something to alter the scene. Maybe the river, I don't know, I feel so lucky to be alive. I'm only smart in a stupid way, my feet are mired in molasses. Nothing prepares you for life. You just go from one beached landing to another. This world is so new, I can't comment, reality stinks. I wish I could make something up. An alternative. Fat chance. What you see is what you get. I don't mean that unkindly. Everything is ugly. This landscape, particularly. Spring is a myth. Read more...

Sheepishly

I merely write, I can't draw a single piece of music or even draw. My sense of color is seriously scrabbled. I have to take a nap. Read more...

So Close

Tired, haven't slept, haven't eaten enough. My beautiful Mackletree is a charred ruin. Last night after dark, the power out, was the closest approach, maybe a quarter-mile away from two directions. Oddly the most dangerous after the wind died, when the heavily fueled ground-fire could move in every direction. Almost bailed. Awful to see the glow of fire at night. This morning, though, power back on and the wind picked up from the usual NW, effectively blowing the fire directly away from me. Still out of control, and most of the crews are moved around to the other side, but mostly burned ground between the active flames and my ridge. The fire was set by a volunteer fireman. Rain forecast for tomorrow. Didn't drink last night, staying sharp for emergency situations, and I can't remember the last day I didn't have a single drink or beer or glass of wine. Heat some water for a bath, wash my hair, everything smells like smoke. A late lunch of morel duxelles on polenta, a new favorite dish. I wish shallots weren't so damned expensive. In all honesty, I don't use polenta but something available locally, Yoder's Cornmeal Mush, same product, half the cost. I used to make this myself, molded in soup cans with both ends cut off, but it always trashed the kitchen. The SW lobe of the fire, which I can still watch through a notch in distance ridges, is still producing roiling clouds of smoke. Disaster averted. Maybe I can leave the house tomorrow, I need things: tobacco, booze, some variety in my diet. I need to take a nap. I need to get into the museum to clean up after the jazz concert Friday night. It's interesting, the way my life, where it happens, is subject to events beyond my control, ice-storms and fires, floods and firings. I exert only the smallest effect on my environment. A fairly large foot and a small footprint, go figure. If I had been trapped, last night, I finally decided, I'd jump in the cistern; it's not part of the water system anymore (which has become a system based entirely on 5 gallon pickle buckets) but it is half full of scummy water, maybe 750 gallons, so it is part of the water system, a final retreat in case of fire. It's also the home of a race of beautiful pale green frogs. I could have holed up there, or face down in one of the puddles on the driveway, point is I could have survived: my house would have burned down, all of my books gone, my clothes, my toiletries, my computer (wherein is most of my life) and the various keepsakes that one collects. But the essential I could have survived. I could build a smaller house, now that I had fewer books. The books would be the hardest part, those that remain with me, the few thousand, I've mostly read more than once and I love them all, I use them in ways I don't understand, they create the mass of me. I think I'll be increasing the fire-break, and maybe buy a gasoline powered pump, so I could spray cistern water to dampen my approaches. Survival is often a close thing, being able to spray some water might turn the corner. And the closely following thoughts, about how long it was before they found my body. Just thinking, not an existential question, not wanting to bother anyone with an inconvenient body. D would probably find me within three days. For two days he'd hope I was holed up with Brandy or Misty, then he'd get concerned and find my body, charred beyond recognition but who else would have been there? It's either Tom or the robber. The story narrows. We get a close-up of his face, just when he starts crying. We live for first tears, and first anything else, as long as we live. Extreme situations alter your chemistry. We know this as a fact, all those chemicals you produce, to deal with situations. I'm sympathetic. What you thought you meant. Read more...

Danger Zone

Mackletree is on fire. The last fire break is Upper Twin Creek Road, coming at me from two sides. Scary. One lobe is half-a-mile away SE, the other is one ridge over, to the E. Roads are closed. Exhausted crews everywhere. Small game coming across my property, heading NW. Helicopters circling. Smoke is thick but blowing away from me. As evening comes on the winds have died down. I went down, one last time before dark, checked with the nearest crew and they think they can stop it at the road, because of the green verges on either side. So much fuel on the forest floor, a nightmare fire scenario. I've packed a bag, if I have to bail. I drove out Mackletree, mid-day, and they stopped me, asked for ID and questioned where I lived, wild fire on both sides of the road, a TV newsclip; they said I shouldn't go back home, but it's all I've got, so I loop around the back way and head back up the ridge. These fires don't crown into the trees, but rather creep along the ground. I think I could save my place, because of the work The Utah Kid did last spring, but fire, like water, is hard to control, and I'd almost rather die trying than start over again. A glow you don't want to see, is a fire in the under-story as dusk falls into night. Power was out for several hours because a fire-truck knocked a pole down, but the electric comes from the other direction, so I should be able to write you until I abandon all hope, then, the problem is, the driveway goes down in the direction from which the fires approach. I haven't worked this all out yet. I don't want to bail early, if the farm can be saved, but I don't want to be stupid. Really, the forest people would like to see a series of fires that burned the available fuel, so they focus on saving isolated homes, and tend to let things burn, when possible. I'm extrapolating here, but I'm under threat. Therefore they would send a dozer up here, to clear a break around the house. I love these guys, mostly skinheads, because smoke gets in your hair, but salt of the earth, good people. They're wearing funny suits, yellow, fire-resistant overalls, jackets, helmets, fucking gauntlets. I thought we were shed of gauntlets. But firemen must, and bomb people, someone who cooks for a great many people over an open grill. I'm not addicted to pain, I do anything I can to diminish it, I am not "High In The Art Suffering" not matter what anyone says. I paid my dues, I'm up to speed. I usually avoid things, my way of dealing with the world: ignore them and they stop calling. I can't not go down after dark and see what is the statis, most everyone has gone home, the crew chief is still there. He figures to back-burn from Upper Twin tomorrow. I'll be there for that, my life, as we know it, at stake. I assume competence, what he thought he meant. Read more...

Changing Weather

And a change in the deep blue sea. Too hot too soon, but we'll have some Indian Winter and maybe another fire in the cook-stove before we moth-ball our winter dress. I need cold-pack saddle bag for my black Dell, she labors in the heat. I divide the surrounding yard into quadrants, 200 degrees of arc into manageable areas and sling-blade 10%, then bow-saw stove wood for next year. I harvest, then make a morel in cream sauce thing that Barnhart had mentioned. I find myself using Q-tips to clean away dirt and, more often, pieces of leaf mold. Easier to just eat the stuff but I can't stand grit beneath my bridge. Reading Emily's letters, my god, she was so hot, she must have befuddled those to whom she was writing, to get a letter like that really.

Oh my too beloved, save me from idolatry which would crush
us both --

"And very Sea -- Mark of my utmost sail"--

Which is Revelation I think. I was reading A Letter From Jude, the danger of false belief, and fell out of my chair. She is too hot even by modern standards. She questions the questions we ask. It would take three women I know and a dead Greek to get where she goes. All I can do is place offerings. I love my mother, who is about to die; she raised me, when my father was at sea, ,just another Navy Brat, how did Emily see? Everything she says is pregnant. There's a Smother's Brother's routine I remember. Ashley was sick and we were breaking in a new girl at the coffee shop. She wasn't very bright and didn't get the humor in what was exchanged. I wanted to shake her, you know? beat some sense into her, then I thought, fuck, that's abusive, the idea that I'd shake anyone. Emily said to Otis P. Lord:

"Tuesday is a deeply depressing day -- "

letter #563, about 1878, any connection is tenuous. D and I were taking pate to Pete, B and Sarah were walking across the common ground, we didn't speak. A pattern is established, the edges of the fractal take form. The under story, the canopy, is greening out, the tulips are proud. Make whatever arguments you will, the past is just a bucket of ashes. Read more...

Lambent Will

Driving into town, two different places, I smell ramps; I could find them with my nose, such a strong onion smell. Quite the sidetrack today. Google-Mapped to Easter Island, D navigating. What started it, we were talking type faces, then side-barred into cuneiform languages and I mentioned that the script from Easter Island had not been decoded (this language was lost in recent historical times, maybe 1750), and that the forms were almost exactly like an Indus valley script that was proto-Phoenician. Almost exactly. "Extinct Languages" Johannes Fridrich, 1957, was my source for the script. Way out of date, as it happens, but a favorite little book that was sent me, when for several years I was the only member of the Bizarre Book Of The Month Club. J Cressy presiding (also got a Field Guide For Amputation) and D quickly had more recent information, seems that the Chilean Navy (Easter Island is a Chile annex, 3500 kilometers west) had the Rosetta Stone for the script in the form of a staff they'd stolen years ago. Rongo Rongo, the language is called, which somehow seems condescending, as a name. Another book, in my eclectic library, traces Jason and the Argonauts back to a Phoenician story, and charts their course to South America and ultimately to Lake Titicaca; and sure enough, some of their tin, the alloy so pure, perfect DNA match, came from the mines above the lake. They also used some British tin, as did everyone else, at the time. Also, another book. The stone Olmec Heads are almost all alike, rounded, as the Olmec faces were, but there are a few of these heads, carved from three or four foot boulders, large heads, a few that are oddly elongated, and that form is repeated on Easter Island, so his theory was that some Phoenicians, told about this large body of water not that much further west, fuck you Balboa, went to have a look. If you were a sea-faring kind of guy, and they were, first thing you'd do is build a boat, and set out now upon the sea. You couldn't not. Got as far as Easter Island, denuded it in a generation, and had no wood to build another boat. Google Map, I think that's what it's called, was a trip, once D located the heads, we could see them, from satellite, then a plethora of information, yes I had remembered that many of the heads had a different stone cap, a piece of several tons, that they moved from one side of the island to the other, and somehow lifted and fitted to sit on top. I could do this, I think, with a lot of dirt and infinite man-power, but they made it a science, funny heavy red hats on elongated gray heads. We've shot ourselves in the foot, in terms of the natural world, all we can do is stack sandbags and hope for the best. Let's stack some stones and be remembered, all I want, is to get home to you. I don't want to crow but I had Duxelles On Polenta tonight, and it was off the scale. I thought I was dreaming, that we should be allowed anything so good; I did throw salt over my shoulder and bow to the east. What I did was heat bacon fat until it sizzled, browned three-eights inch slabs of corn-meal mush, and topped it with this exquisite hash. It's not really brain surgery, I thought we were clear on that, I cook seasonal meals. Big winds, gotta go, send you tomorrow. Howling all night and very warm. Some things I need: a small air conditioner for my computer, a new microwave, an old TV so I can watch movies late at night. Really don't need anything but a very small fan and a bowl of ice to keep my computer cool enough to write you. I can bake potatoes on the grill, I've missed almost every movie for the last twenty years, but, but Liza and Glenn have gotten me interested in film and I feel a need to study the medium. Sara says there's an old TV in her basement I can have, and D says he has a small air conditioner; maybe, now that we're in the next century, I can enter the last. I'm not a Luddite, really, but I tend to rely on things I can assemble from materials at hand. Habit, and financial constraints. Not a complaint, just an explanation. Lambent. Radiant, but lightly so, slanted sunlight through cobwebs in the corner of the barn, like Venus, hovering before sunrise. I shouldn't be up, I need to sleep, but there I am, watching the light unfold. Not a position, but where I find myself. Now, thinking back, yesterday, coming home, there was a fire in the State Forest and I was concerned, until I stopped and wet a finger, realized it was blowing away from me and didn't present a threat. Radiant sunrise and I want to listen to music, the Cello Suites, Bach in the morning, and I listen, attentive, to the first movement, but I have to turn it off because I can't think, it sweeps me away, there is no way I can write and listen the greatest music in the universe. I can only be engaged by one thing at a time, in my heart of hearts; I can juggle when I need to, but when I'm paying attention, there is only one thing and it precludes everything else. In the zone, I'm not answerable to anyone else. I'd like to think I was, but there's a history here, and it indicates I tend to drift. It's fine with me that that happens, there are times I don't need an anchor, I'm comfortable with drifting, the drift itself is often what I'm about. I don't recommend anything, though I am a recent fan of carrot juice. Something Sara said, reading back over myself, I may be easier in smaller doses. When I write longer blocks I feel like I'm channeling Gertrude Stein. There are so many things to say. I filled the humming bird feeder and there is immediately a fight. Hummingbirds are beautiful but they suck socially. My fall-back position is that I don't feed anything, but I have a compost pile and I can't control that. (Yo, Tom.) So, really, everything is out of control. I see by my drinking that I have to go to town before Tuesday. I make plans. I'm always on time. Speaking of prisms, when was this, a couple of days ago, I was vacuuming dust bunnies, and a spider web sparkled in the light. E. B. White, how could you not. I needed to prove I could go on. I assume I'm part of your diet. Nothing is the same, everything is part of something else. It's fractals that make the point, look closely. Read more...

Mercy

I was collecting morels just as the sun was going down and the light was exquisite. On my knees, on a foam pad, looking closely at a piece of local terrain, I noticed a small pile of leaves poked oddly upward. The light made everything clear, it was a morel, trying to clear the litter. I marked the spot with a stick, I'll harvest that particular mushroom tomorrow, when it's had a chance to fill out. If the deer don't get it first. Pretty sure the deer are eating my morels. That old crow is perched nearby, the same one, I can tell, because a drop of sap has glued some feathers into an identifiable mohawk; he questions my intent. An answer clogs in my throat and I cough. A butterfly flaps it's wings in Argentina. I would like to think these events are not connected, but it seems they are. I can accept that, something I didn't believe being possible; but when I got up, a few minutes later, the light played off a transparent bud and there was a perfect prism. Who is allowed what? Because I stop and look I'm allowed these sights, if you don't, there's nothing there, beneath the radar, it didn't happen. I deny with the best of them, I could deny you exist, given the right venue, but I choose to believe there is a world we share. It's an elegant moment, when I mark a mushroom I'll harvest tomorrow. Not wings and arrows, but a concrete thing, locked in place. I may not be making sense but at least I'm writing. I come in off my scrum, my interface with nature, get a drink, roll a smoke, consider what I've seen, is it more or less real? It doesn't matter. I acknowledge the world. Fuck me, I sound like Thoreau, playing games. Wittgenstein suggesting what was meant. Merely blowing the flute and listening for harmonics. We were out back, having a smoke, and this toothless lady walked up, asking where the doctor's office was. I had no clue what she was talking about, but D knew enough to direct her in a certain direction, and I watched the whole exchange as if it was a movie. He repeated himself, over and over, until she got the point. I don't have the patience. I'd rather mop. A thousand pages in, I begin to get the point, what is being said. Thank god I live alone, that my ex told me to go away, I'm not fit company, she was right, correct, what I needed was a cave, where there were only shadows. What I notice, spring and fall, is this light. I can't describe it, it reveals things, a magical happening, and I don't buy this shit, the subtle shifts, still, I am transfixed, the way mushrooms emerge. I needed to confuse you as I am confused. Read more...

Eccentric Behavior

Not me, of course, I'm nearly normal, but the people around me. Subject to fits and starts, reminded of Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting Of The Snark, An Agony In Eight Fits." Low key day, everyone wasted. They all know Thursday is janitor day and no one bothers me. Today I was singing Zappa songs, under my breath; all that traffic, the floor was a mess. Dust-mop into piles, then sweep the corners, mop wet stripes in my overlapping chevron pattern. We learned, at janitor college, to fall into a zen state, when attention was necessary, paying attention by not paying attention. You might think that most janitors are on drugs, but actually, they're meditating. Those red eyes and dripping noses are from crying, they know who they are: The Great Unwashed, they can smell themselves, they don't need a kick in the ass, they need a bath, and deodorant. I know several people whose hair is not a natural color, we don't talk about it but I wonder what they mean. Tats, extra holes in your body, scarification, I'm not sure about the meaning. I try to blend in, fade into the background, I wear black jeans, denim shirts, and several different hats. I don't know my eye color. I'm reading Lewis Carroll because we're doing a show, someplace down the pike, and I want to be up to speed. Weird dude. Reading them, his work, as an adult is a whole different thing than reading them, being read to, as a child. Dodgson, I think, was a loonie, or whatever the politically correct term. He sure knew his Euclid. And that damned Brit told me today that he wasn't dillying the Liddell girls, as much as he was dallying the Liddell mom. Heaven forbid. Christ Church College in upheaval. History, as I said, so often incorrect. A construct to support a point. I can barely talk about today, much less yesterday or tomorrow. I was inspired recently, by unexpected comments from unexplained locations. The beat goes on. I used to get home, do something that advanced the cause, fix dinner, then get a drink and write you, now, what I do is get home, log on, and write you. A difference of degree. I try and have some available calories, something simple, so I won't waste away, but eating is so much work, all that chewing. I'd rather have one word, or a single mark of punctuation. I'm shameless, I bought a cheap chopped steak, because I knew I had these mushrooms, and I know what I could do with them. Chicken Fried Steak with morels; at my diner, you could order that, a certain time of the year, I won't speak for the rest of the menu. What I learn from Skip is that anything is fair game, what I learn from Steven is it's all in the beat. If I have to place myself in that pantheon, I would only say, pay attention to detail. The smallest things mean the most to me now. What that crow was saying, a certain alignment of sticks at the spillway, there's an equivalence. I'm not that kind of guy, but I have to admit, it appears to mean something. Maybe meaning is nothing more than appearance, what you think you see is merely what you need to see, a closed loop, maybe you fabricate meaning as a product of situation, maybe there is no meaning, things just happen and you're left gasping for air. I love my job. I mediate between worlds. The janitor's lot is always thus. My friends argued that I should be a lawyer or a doctor, but I knew my calling, I could mop with the best of them, there was nothing I could do quite so well. Read more...

Madhouse

Nearly four hundred people in the museum in 24 hours. High School art show awards last night, residency kids, then huge SmartTalk at lunch today, Aminah Robinson. Tomorrow will require full janitor mode, everything needs doing, then a jazz concert Friday evening. There was a problem with the cordless microphone caused by cell phones. I don't like phones, much less cell phones, everyone on the phone all the time, hearing the stupid things people say, feel it necessary to say: -I'm coming out of the building now-. The last three days, the poplar tops are greening in the bottom of my hollow, not on top quite yet. Two distinct climate zones, the bottom and the top. My puddles have become impossible, since the big trucks last weekend. I need to drop trees this weekend, for next year's firewood, yard work, roof the back porch. If I had the money I'd hire some things done, and I haven't done that in 32 years, everything I'm done myself, mostly, but the last couple of years, especially the last couple of months, all I want to do is read and write. The museum, Sara said this today, is good for me, less I hermitize completely. I like engaging the public from my position as janitor. D got his dander up today, and it was good to see, drawing lines on the museum floor. There's this curator person, Carol, I think her name was, is, that brought Aminah down from Columbus, who we paid to do that, and in her black pant suit, she indicated failings. The kind of person who gives art a bad name. She was awful, I ignored her; she did have a nice butt, I noticed that, but otherwise acted dumb. She was bringing serious art to the great unwashed. I have always been a member of, never ashamed, of that group. Heard that phrase my entire life, wondered what the origin was, called Linda, to applaud her gig at the Guthrie, and ask Glenn what the fuck it meant. He is such a resource to me that I've considered a second, dedicated line. A research associate. Linda understands better than almost anyone. I needed to talk to them both. I, who hate phones. I took more than I gave,I accrerted mass, I'm good at this. I picked up a small remaindered rib-eye steak, I knew I could collect enough morels for a sauce, knew, made it so. Morel hash is the wrong phrase, but I like duxelles, you know, as a word.. What you thought you said. I'm layers behind in this, what I thought I was seeing. Your guy will talk to my guy. Read more...

Anticipation

You guys decide on a show, I can hang it. Not arrogance but a matter of fact. That way I get to handle the art, see what it weighs, make a decision about anchors. Today, for instance, yesterday, actually, I did the unthinkable, and no one needs to know. When Beverly Sills did her last "Traviata" we pulled out all the stops, nothing was enough. She kissed me for a perfect show, we dined on ziti with way too much butter. She didn't need to know the best boy was tripping, the key grip was out on parole. I assemble a crew, resemble someone in control. It's not quite a joke, but close, missing only a punch line. I never remember jokes, try as I might. On my Outhouse Calendar I can pinpoint the date if I count backwards. History is a myth, who did what to whom when. Past tense. Jana agreed with Sara and that's close enough for me, I'm transparent but not exactly clear. As far as that goes, I wish I knew more about the relationship between type faces and meaning. I prefer Old Style types, Caslon, Baskerville, but I work in Arial, what does that mean? How long do crows live? That lumbering male was back for another frog. He walks like a lumberjack, no finesse, takes what he wants. He knows I'm watching and doesn't care, he has me pegged, an older white male watcher, no threat, another one of those. Attachment is the issue. This afternoon, as people were arriving, I left. My work was done. I needed to get home and write you, a compulsion, almost an obsession. This is my drill, I get things ready, then leave. Events bore me beyond words. I'd rather not be there. Still, I am the janitor. I make sure the strongest trash bags are in place, that there are no grapes or gummy bears, sample the punch, peck Sharee on the cheek and go home. Mallory, was that her name? I like her eyes, soft, but understanding.
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Being Offensive

That wringer discussion, the other day, I had my Gearpres out today, finally mopping the last of the Wrack Show away, and I noticed it was rusting and not long for the world. Need a school auction. I can't do plastic, I can't change my style; I see a whole new generation of janitors who don't wring their mops very well. Staccato rain on the roof, I lay out a spread, on the island, pate, crackers, two cheeses, a very good double cheddar (what's that?) and a stinky fontina. I graze, get up for no reason and get a bite of something, I add hot peppers and pickles to the menu. One of the great meals ever. Consider grazing. Consider Levi-Strauss, at some point we started eating proscribed meals, gave them names. Having a handle is good, so we can refer to things. I like to think we speak the same language, but even that's a myth. Your world is so different from mine. Yet all these dendritic culverts connect us. A pattern. Always looking for patterns. My minister friend explained degree of faith, it's all about mediation, I hadn't understood that, I don't believe anything, so I'm barely interested. That someone would need someone to tell them what they were seeing. As was pointed out clearly, at the DMV recently, I see pretty well. For a old white guy. Did I mention that these spreads were very good? There was a moment, at the island, I was licking my fingers, I thought I'd swoon: did you watch Tony Parker in that last play-off game, Jesus, the way he went to the basket. Sara was back and she immediately addressed my writing, my god she said, you're writing so well, what's that about, not wanting to call to deflect whatever it was I was doing, what she thought I thought I was doing. Sara asked me directly, but I blew it off, I just do what I do.

Tom

If she thought I had stepped it up a notch, that meant something, she is one of my careful readers. I read back, and it's different, a notch ahead, I don't know what I mean, but I understand, sort of, where it's going. You and me end up together and we never fuck. I suspected that all along. We have to talk about this. I'll meet you Tuesday. Read more...

Commotion

Middle of the night, sounds like a young war. I'm not fearless but I have to get up, go see what the matter is. Two coons fighting over rabbit bones. One of them is certainly rabid, foaming, hysterical, I kill him with the shovel; the other one shuffles off, looking back over him shoulder. Deal with the carcass later, but then I can't get back to sleep, the violent interlude, coon blood on my shovel, roll a smoke, get a drink. Consider the manic warrior, in his underwear, a flashlight in one hand, a garden tool in the other, he'd rather be reading Prost, or sleeping, but he is excited into action. It's easy to achieve a killing rush, fear, the dark, personal safety, but so much more difficult to calm down, once the blood is flowing. Temper. That state in which the unthinkable is easily done. I build a punky wrack fire and heat some water, wash my hair, muttering the whole time. It's good I live alone because I would never commit myself to the looney bin. My actions seem perfectly natural, a response to nature. There was a single crow this morning, yesterday, that stopped me in my tracks, I was checking my mail, drinking coffee, going about my routine; it flew in from the north, squawked and landed behind my truck. Their walk is lumbering, it lumbered toward the puddles, I eased out the door to see where it was going, yes, of course, it wants a frog for breakfast. I want bacon and potatoes and fried eggs, another cup of coffee. We've created a generation of young people who kill as a matter of course, we make excuses, but the fact is we've trained them to kill, it bleeds over into everyday life, one crossed wire and they're shooting up a mall. The price we pay for spreading democracy. Of course Thoreau is right, better just to raise beans and play the flute, build a shack and live simply, but there are these other forces. Emerson and Hawthorne are European, Thoreau is American, Like Whitman, and dear sweet Emily. The voice opens out, inbred in different ways, the way the moon hangs over mountains. It seems to mean something, appears. The trap slaps shut, I kill another mouse, am I good or not? I wonder. Read more...

Forcemeat

These names are confusing, let's just say I'm fond of making exotic spreads. The Vietnamese guy in Columbus, North Market, great food, wonderful sandwiches John Thorne turned me onto, says that I make a country pate, he likes them. I told Pegi I'd make one for the Dwight Lenox jazz concert next Friday. Must be today, because it needs to age and I won't have time later in the week, one last week from hell before a break. So I zip into town, rain, rain, rain, the driveway is a joke, barely controlled slide. I have a rabbit (French, domestic) in the freezer that I need to use. Get my act together. I smother-fry the rabbit in chicken broth, let it cool, bone it out, a pound and a half of meat, I get a pound and a half of chicken livers, and a pound and a half of mushrooms, three different kinds and throw in some morels. Caramelize an onion and a bunch of scallions, add six ounces of pecan pieces, black pepper, some really hot sauce, some allspice. I can tell, even warm, that this will be very good. Oh, a stick and a half of butter to bind the thing together, wine and chicken stock to loosen it enough to run through the blender and then into molds. A messy job and it takes forever, three hours to put it together and another hour to clean up. But I can't buy this anywhere, I'm the only one that makes it, I've painted myself into a corner. You'll notice I took a book with me, and did it deliberately, fenced myself thus. I make four pounds and three-quarters, half a pound for me, a quarter pound for Jim., the rest for the benefit. I'm the judge of this. The jury. By dint of all those nights I should have died. I offer nothing either way. At best a loss-leader, something you could bury in static, another loaf of bread. What you thought you meant. I'm just doing dishes, I don't claim anything, What is. In the back room, we nod to each other, bundle crows as if they were a commodity, wheat futures, pork bellies, something , I'm a total shithead, I don't get nothing. Worse than that, what I thought made sense didn't. Read more...

Yes, But

I either am or am channeling a demon. I don't know what to say, I don't believe in the supernatural, but there it is. I can bend spoons, unlock doors, I do this as a matter of course. I don't consider it unnatural to see what is in front of my eyes. What is. You can deny almost anything except what is. It's a door, it's a chair, whatever. When I walk into a room I look around, see what I can lean on. It's a little like lying, the crutch. Often, I get a drink, look at the room from the other side, sometimes it's almost the same, sometimes it's different. A good friend recommended aspirin. I thought about that. What it meant. Took a walk in the woods instead. The snap of the clippers makes a certain sense. These dead make no claim on the future. It's just a graveyard. Bodies buried thus. Saw a morel, never found any there before, assume the position, hands on knees, bent over, to lower the angle, look around carefully. Six more, nice ones, one is the largest this year, inch-and-a-half in diameter, five inches tall. Excellent. Duxelles, or something close, I'm thinking, something halfway between a mushroom hash and mushroom pate, chilled enough to set, on saltines. I chop them into quarter-inch dice, brown them in 3 tablespoons butter, caramelize an onion, mix them together, add a little chicken broth, a splash of white wine (should be brandy, but I can't seem to keep any), I smash some pistachios, add them a pinch of nutmeg. I get two ramekins worth, let them chill. I first had this in Moab, Utah, a very good steak house with outdoor tables. I was just separated, living out of my truck, finishing an addition on a house (where I would eventually live a while) for a lady that was one of the foremost authorities in the world on that crust that protects the desert surface. I had park passes and just slept in my truck, usually ate grilled meat and potatoes. My kitchen was a rack I pulled from a stove at the dump and a roll of aluminum foil. Primitive. But I was making enough money to stay in town, once a week, at the cheapest motel, take a shower, and eat at the steak house. I'd be meated out, so I'd always have an order of the pate and a large salad with blue cheese. The owner let take over a table for the evening, outside, the least used table, under a bug-light, and I'd retire there with my unabridged and a writing tablet, drinking a few whiskeys after dinner. After the first few times they stopped charging me. They used wild mushrooms too, but mostly meaty porcini from the LaSalle Mountains, right outside the door. The Lasalles must be the first range, in the Basin And Range that extends to the Sierra. I love them, I owned a house, briefly, half-way up them. Mushroom city. I eat a lot of mushrooms, probably, by normal standards, maybe 50 pounds a year, 40 pounds of those I harvest wild. I never have enough, dried, for winter, so in the winter, I buy. I made a mushroom ketchup once, and it was wonderful, but you have to be many pounds ahead before you think of that. I made a black walnut ketchup, too, and then wondered what the hell I meant by ketchup. Something that flows slowly? There's a scale, I know there's a scale, for, you know, things that flow slowly. A molasses index. The honey trail. Something. Probably Redford has done a film about it, I only get things second hand. I have a new DVD player, Glenn thought I was deprived, but my TV died so I can't play anything anyway. The microwave died too. Equipage fails me, I'm a classic case: the man who thought with his fingers and soon expired. Making love, for instance, what do you do if the other party, above or below, dies? 911? My partner is dead, we seem to be stuck. What you really want is a shower and a new lease on life. Excuse me, I tend to project, what I'd want, in a particular situation. Not unlike hanging this show. What D saw is I can hang his shows for him, I'm a tech person, after all, someone that can make it happen, we realized how we could move forward. Yes, of course, one careful step at a time. Fuck you, if that doesn't get you there fast enough. It's an arduous path, where you're going, the rewards are worth the price, whatever the dollar value. If you paint yourself into a corner,. you apologize, move on. The future is always open. Even though I always know you'll bring me down. Hey, I love you anyway, something about the way you move. Read more...

Whip-Poor-Will

Too early in the season for that bastard to wake me, but there you go. Night-hawk, goat-sucker. "It is life near the bone where it is sweetest." "Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth." " Do not depend on the putty." Henry setting the woods on fire, cooking dinner on a burning stump, skinny dipping at the pond. Building a fence for Ralph, taking care of the kids while the sage was away, hot letters to the old boy's wife. Concord was a happening place. I need the letters, I need to mortgage the farm and get a copy of the Journals. Nothing is beneath notice. He had a fox too, and studied the frogs. The other reason for using a mesh bag when collecting morels is that you spread the spores, extend the range. I found myself in a new drainage today, watching where I stepped (crushing a morel is sacrilege) and found a fine stand of fiddle-head ferns. I composed a dinner in my head and when I got back to the house, made it reality. A piece of toast has never been so adorned. Preconceptions are so often wrong, but this one was dead on; I would have shared, if anyone was around, thank god no one was, there wasn't enough for more than one. The perfect meal, not quite enough, the last sop almost sexual, leaves you hanging. MFK Fisher would have been the natural match for this feast, she would have understood. Someplace, she peels a tangerine, strips off the bitter white veins, and warms the segments on a radiator, they balloon, explode in the mouth; a simple explication and one of the most explicit sexual passages I've ever read. How do you do that? Attention to detail. Thoreau expands out by focusing in, by his standards Whitman is almost pornographic, Emily is graphic, what the hummingbird is saying: in nature, sexuality is a given. I'm deeply confused by what I think is going on. An older, attractive, patron of the museum, seems to be hitting on me, I don't want involvement, but I do want conversation; it's a ridge we walk, a narrow edge. At a basic level, we're all strange, inviolate, consider what we know to be concrete, but it isn't. Near the end of Walden Thoreau talks about the railroad cut, the way the sand and clay drifts and patterns. It's a drainage riff. It's beautiful, Joyce, or Stein, out there, couched perfectly in language, musical. Meaning is almost always secondary. The song of this bird, for instance, a whip-poor-will close by, it doesn't mean, it merely is. I do almost nothing but I'm inundated by sign, meaning is apparent, look around, where the leaves point, what's being said. I say nothing in my defense, I'm defenseless, but I'm interested in oak galls. Might make me an interesting person but not someone you could live with. I live alone because I don't want to apologize for who I am. I'm comfortable in myself. What Thoreau is saying in Walden, this place works for me, where's your place? What Olson asked, what Bly demanded. It's always the down beat, kettle-drums in the distance. At the top of my form, I'm in my cups, don't ask me to remember. However far back we go. What we learn, from the natural world, is that the real thing is right in front of you. The flowers blooming. Hold on to that, listen. Read more...

Sight Lines

In the woods north of the house, more than a mile into deep woods, virtually lost but with a fair sense of direction, I find something I've never actually seen before, but have read about. It can only be a red squirrel midden. Other squirrels, the eastern gray, the fox squirrel, all bury their nuts, or store them in a convenient tree; red squirrels just make a pile, and this one is 12 feet long, 6 feet wide and nearly a foot deep. Other critters must steal large amounts, but like that ice pile Ted Taylor built to cool a building at Princeton University (Ice Pond, in Table Of Contents, John McPhee): if the pile is large enough, it doesn't matter if you lose some. On the way home, following my nose, I stopped at a stump, cleared the leaf litter away, to make an ashtray, sat and rolled a smoke; there was a gray squirrel, apparently eating poplar buds not fifty feet away. This whole forest is damaged by two severe ice storms in the last 7 years, and I get to view that most embarrassing moment for a squirrel, a fall. Moving from tree to tree, as they do with great grace, he leapt to a Chestnut Oak and the branch snapped, he sprung off, backwards, and like a cat, landed safely on his feet. I'd never seen that before, either. Sight lines change with the season, a month from now I won't be able to see 50 feet. A minor epiphany at the graveyard. Clearly, a flock of wild turkeys had moved through. One of the great natural scenes and sounds, if you can be a fly on the ceiling; and I have been privy, several times, by dint of living in the woods, is watching and hearing a congregation of turkeys moving through. They are thorough, they are wonderfully noisy, the scratching; examine their feet, consider their agenda. I used to shoot one, occasionally, because they are so good to eat, but I probably never will again. That was the revelation, I'm done with killing, I know where my meat comes from. Though I aspired to physical labor, I ended up reading Thoreau. I'm not sure he'd approve. I'm complexly involved with this reading of him, I haven't worked out the details, his relationship with Emerson, dancing at parties, I don't know what to think. Dover did a reprint of the journals in two volumes on onion skin, the second volume is where you should focus your attention, this is a person finding their voice, Emily in her garret, Whitman walking the streets of Brooklyn. I signed for that thing, where you could pretend to know less than you do, and it didn't work, I was left, exposed. Listen, failure is a good thing because it hones the senses. The stick trees disappear as a matter of course, then it's spring, then it's summer. What you see. Read more...

Comes Around

I needed a gallon of cleaning concentrate, Damp Mop. I use two gallons a year and was out, sandwiched in a run to the cleaning supply store which is, in absolute clarity, called Cleaning Supplies Inc., instead of something clever like The Janitor's Closet. Becky runs the place, a tidy operation, everything a janitor could ever need; rents scrubbers and polishers, carries replacement pads, the best mop heads, solvents the general public wouldn't know how to handle. A chemist I consult when I can't figure out what something is or does, says that we could make a whole generation of clean bombs. Cleveland, in the spring, could use a couple of these, something that would wash away the grime of sooty snow and salt. I say the trip, for cleaner, was sandwiched in, we were full-tilt boogie all day. If I hadn't hung the show solo yesterday we wouldn't have made the deadline. But I knew that when I pushed hard yesterday, the internal clock that clicks off the hours until opening, a theater trick. You make a list of priorities, some things get glossed over. We actually have an hour on Tuesday, before we open; I have some touch up painting to finish, the pedestal tops, a few dozen places on the various walls; three different colors, so many washings of the brush. D and I were the perfect crew today, clicking on all cylinders, handing each other things that were needed before we could ask. OSHA doesn't like, but all tradesmen toss tools and save steps or trips up and down the ladder. Human nature. A toss many of us have perfected, causing no small amount of damage along the way, is an underhand cast that hangs a wrench or a closed utility knife just above the out-stretched hand of someone on a ladder. That was a fun sentence, a lot of memories, the things I've thrown to people on ladders, seriously, you wouldn't believe. I've been blessed to need to learn to do so many different things. If I'd ever had any money, I would have hired someone who already knew how to do whatever it was that I had to learn to do because I needed something and couldn't afford to buy it. Beautiful day, 70, down to 40 tonight, morel weather. Collect them in a mesh sack, they need air or develop a slime. I like them dry so I can brush them and not rinse them, their flavor is too delicate to wash away. And as my Mom always said -a little dirt ain't going to hurt you-. At the cleaning supply place, there was a guy ahead of me, buying a new mop bucket and wringer, heavy duty Rubbermaid (I like the image) and I was looking at it while the new girl was looking up the price. The wringer was all hard plastic, a couple of metal pins as pivot for the plastic hinge, Becky was on the phone, the guy asked me what I thought. By this time I was down on my knees inspecting the hinge, the forensic janitor, doing a Stress Failure Analysis. The new girl is looking over the counter and Becky is off the phone. I'm aware of none of this because I'm wearing my sword-fishing hat with the long brim (it acts as blinders for me, when we're in the middle of a push) and I'm looking at a piece of work that's going to fail. I use a generic pyrithione-zinc dandruff shampoo, to keep the dander down, but my hackles stood up, and when he asked I told him it was a piece of shit. The room was very quiet. But I know mops, and wringing. I'm a professional. I'm restoring a Donaldson right now, the jaws and hinge are works of art. When I'm wringing a mop, in the heat of the moment, I use my back, and my knee on the bucket, tend to exert a fair amount of pressure, so the replacement handle requires consideration, I know my mop-buckets too (in order categorical ) and I admonish him not to buy it, go to an auction, pick up something for nothing. Becky agrees. The plastic fails. Foot ergs or knee ergs or inner thigh ergs, very funny moment with that damned Brit on the back porch today; I cut him no slack, we understand each other, more or less. We act as if we understood what we thought that other person was saying. At his age, he said, a perfect ass was purely a visible thing, something you watched. No one could live with me, I'm impossible. I still think about giving classes. Maybe that's the product of going through the grind, you see something, want to pass it along. Hey, did you see that? Read more...

Stair Installation

Pegi put this bee in my bonnet, the second bee, there was already one there. I like stairs, I like figuring them out and building them, had thought about an installation of maybe four sets, maybe landings and doors. So I'm thinking about fours sets of stairs, each completely different, that her Cirque girls could slither around on and through. Barnhart will do the music. Maybe offstage operatic voices, some lyrics. Stage set disguised as installation. I take these ideas seriously, as witness I was up at 4:30 reading Thoreau. Budget cutbacks probably mean I'll miss the National Docent Symposium this year, damnit, Ontario in high summer. One of those days when the janitor is in charge because everyone else is gone, we're in a time hole right now, at the museum, many things on many fronts, but Pegi and D have to go the Arts Council gig, and Trish couldn't really control when someone would die, so I'm alone, Lauralee is in the basement classroom, Bev is at the desk. I want to set a good example so I hang the entire High School show, 38 pieces on the wall, centered at 57 inches, evenly spaced, the math alone I can only do if I don't think about it. I even take a break to talk to that damned Brit. He's doing "Wind In The Willows" this summer at our theater and I guess that I'm designing and building the set. Eventually someone would have told me. I'd like to take over framing the budget at the museum, I don't want to, but I could, I'd find a set of algorithms where I could plug numbers in and out would pop another number and that would be the number we needed. I hate seeing so much creative energy wasted on balancing the books, only idiots and geniuses fail to operate within defined bounds. Did I mention there is no money allocated for the set. Someone forgot to consult the janitor. We see this, you know, at the bottom of the food chain, no one tells us anything, and then we're supposed to produce miracles. We are not nothing, we have a union, and a fund, that can be pilfered at will, by someone in the know; it is truly awful, they're printing money China will buy because it's the coin of the realm. The whole system is suspect. I planted potatoes, but they'll probably get the blight. Read more...

Steady State

Everything changes, nothing changes. Note the Red-Bud, the few remaining Dogwood, they cycle again and color is the rule of day. The sun makes a statement, the moon. Gathering morels I disturb doves making love, they move a few feet, oblivious, and continue their courtship. Recent rains have scoured the creek beds to bare rock and water runs clear. The fecund spring scent of rotting leaves. What goes around. They say an asteroid, Apophis, will come close in 2029, inside the orbit of certain satellites, but we can worry about that later. For now, there is another dawn to deal with, another wakening. Between funerals and Arts Council meetings I'll be the only staff today and there's a show to hang, the yearly High School opus, angst ridden and slightly garish. There is some talent apparent, but nothing yet to say. One still-life caught my eye, and a painting in somewhat Fauve fashion; the pottery is too thick, the collages too obvious. A shroud of fog envelopes the ridge, I'd best leave early, drive slowly. Top of the morning. Read more...

Own Goal

I think that's the term that damned Brit used for when a soccer ball is deflected into your goal by one of your own players. Happens. Shooting yourself in the foot, or worse, as happened a few years ago, The Dumbest Accident Of The Year, when a guy shot his penis, we can only imagine the tent-like ghost he thought he was seeing. Dirty day at the museum, the Wrack Show left a mess. I'm breaking in a helper, a necessity as D rises through the ranks and I assume more responsibilities. A janitor apprentice. He hasn't even been to school, still wet behind the ears, has no tricks and no tool kit. Raw clay. Little does he realize, thirty years from now, someone will watch him mopping, and say -you studied with Bridwell, didn't you?- or he'll be cleaning a plexi bonnet and someone will say -learned that trick from Bridwell, right?- We're a close order, like bagpipe players, we can trace who studied under who back generations. My mopping pattern goes back to Mad Tom A' Bedlam, that particular chevron, to the 17th century. It's what I learned. The Bedlam Sweep, which is really elegant, when you look at the possibilities. Swabbies, in the Navy, tend to mop vertically, because the hallways are so narrow beneath decks. There was a great course at Janitor College, required, always taught by the retired chair, C. Cummings Trip, always dressed in those 19th century short golf pants with plaid socks and a funny jacket that didn't fit. He was a hoot. Course called "Holistic Stroke Management", far and away the best mopping course I ever took. Dude knew his shit. In the second half of the Journals Thoreau is finding a voice, it's a huge thing, and it's happening right in front of us, his speaking voice becomes his writing voice. Read Thoreau closely and you're struck with word choice, what he says and what he doesn't say. An actor, playing a role. We're all that, and even worse, simple whores, playing another role to simply earn a living. The only life I could defend is my own, and I struggle with that, I have no defense, it's nothing, a way I present myself. Still, I pause, to think, I can't not; all those things I said, I'm not sure what I meant. As a reader, your job, is to figure it out. Read more...

It's Raining

Downbeat. A patter. Lures me from almost sleep. I thought it was morning, but it keeps getting darker and I realize my mistake. Nothing is what it seems. Rather than gaining light it is getting darker, must be coming onto night. I gather clues, to decide, I really don't care. just want to know where I am. We could argue this point, but my heart wouldn't be in it, I don't care whether it's morning or night. My format allows me access to you, that's all that matters. There's a corner of the stove where I could cook an omelet, so I do, some things I might say. A guy goes into a bar with a woodchuck. She buried her head in the sand as a matter of course. Barges communicate with horns. I know they have radios, but there is a pro forma side of things. Nothing could ever be like the something you previously thought. I keep coming back to that. Whatever it might have been. Rain reveals how dirty I am, watch the layers wash away. A point, in my defense, I never smelled bad. Odd maybe, but never bad. I monitor this stuff, marvel that I don't smell worse than I do. Finally catch a bath Monday afternoon; listen, when in doubt. Suddenly, the verges are green. Fires in the cook stove are mostly to chase the damp. This new book by Skip Fox, "Delta Blues", is very good. He demands attention, I mean, rather, attention is demanded. Got a thousand page Selected Thoreau from the library, chided them for not having the Journals, pretty sure I saw a new edition in two volumes a couple of decades ago, when I was reading the 14 volume, 1906 edition, borrowed from Ed Darling, Editor-In-Chief at Beacon Press, who had opened his library to me. Strange times, as I think back. The Theater Years. Just made a very nice cream of morel soup, another small steak, dandelion green salad. I think I might have gained a couple of pounds, needed, because a pair of jeans was almost too tight. Woman in the museum today (I'm trying to get back to Henry David) who had googled me and read some of the online posts, immediately mentioned Thoreau and I was able to use the story of Diogenes to great advantage. A flirtatious exchange if I ever heard one. Be and end all is that I need to read all of Thoreau. What I'd like to do is reread the Journals and read the other books when they occur in the Journals, stretch it out over a year, so it wasn't all I was reading, I need a certain amount of lighter stuff, to leaven the brain. A twenty week course I'll design myself, then I'll know what to say when someone mentions me and Thoreau in the same sentence. I'm not really like Lopez, and less like McPhee, both of whom I love, because I do include all the personal bullshit. Much more like Emily, and Proust and all the moderns who I love also. The fox doesn't like horseradish sauce. Another shaggy dog story. When the dog was here, I never did catch her name, mumbled through chewing tobacco, I thought of her as Dog, hadn't even approached naming, she ate what I ate. I'd make some for her, of what I was eating, and she ate everything without question. The fox left the bottom piece of bread, which was smeared in horseradish sauce. Picky twit. The word twit cost me a roll in the hay once, when I commented on a lady's dog (it's raining cats and dogs, I get it now) and she misunderstood me. I won't say -the story of my life- and tell a soap opera tale of missed opportunity, just thinking. How we are so often misunderstood. I'm looking for a kind of worked transparency, a shadow dance in two-three measure, what I get is a universe of expression. Revelation is where you find it, I like that Pileated Woodpecker, flying in just at sunset, pecking away at a hickory, but whatever you choose. Read more...

Diogenes' Barrel

Mostly history is apocryphal bullshit, but some of the stories become dear friends. Diogenes The Cynic, for instance, living in a barrel on the streets of Athens. Sounds like a Monty Python routine. I was raised in a pot-hole and learned to keep my head down. Thoreau, another case in point, took his laundry home to Mom when he was living at Walden Pond, spent most evenings in town, held little lyceums at the cabin. I love Thoreau, don't get me wrong, the Journals are an important part of American writing; the other books, are, I think, misunderstood. But it's in the two million words of the Journals that we hear a voice clarify, and get that first, original, modern (if you ignore Sappho and several hundred others) mind-speak. Another big week coming up, installing another show, upstairs, and the space is a wreck, much to be done, so I make a run to town: library, laundry, liquor store, CVS for deodorant. My last underarm stick self-destroyed in a way none have ever before. It was almost gone and it just dried up and fell apart, crumbles of stick deodorant everywhere, but at least they didn't smell bad. Couldn't wait to get home because I wanted to go mushroom hunting. Found thirty morels quickly. Had purchased a small rib-eye steak, remaindered. Good meat is great, but sauces is where you go to shine. The morels were an hour old, I dotted them clean, I don't like to wash them, as a member of the Great Unwashed and conserver of water, so I wipe them with tissues; it's possible to be too clean. If I slept with you, I'd like to know what you smelled like. Consider the morel. It always pokes through this tannic winter layer, fucking leaves everywhere, everything looks the same. If you're right-handed, most things are left to right. I noticed this and made some notes. You're my Journal, what's the definition, I write you when I can, for how ever long is possible. I have other things to do, other fish to fry, as my Dad is fond of saying, but writing you is the most important thing of all. It's not so much that I'd leave you hanging as where I was myself. I choose nature over any construct. An unconscious decision, what do we make of that? Unconscious. Decision. I thought I was writing a field-guide. Read more...

Teasing Quadratics

"My damned brain has a kink in it that prevents me from thinking as other people think." C. S. Peirce Calculation began with moving small pebbles, calculi, around on a board. The pup was a brindle Mountain Cur, being trained as a squirrel dog. She was still here this morning, we ate fried bologna sandwiches and I finally got in touch with the owner. Good old boy and his son were here on the instant, knew where I lived, offered me $50 for keeping the dog and calling. Had been up near here hunting morels and told me about a couple of spots on my property. Usually difficult information to pry loose, but I had caught his dog and wouldn't take his money, he felt, as he said, beholding. They're no more than gone and another truck appears. Regular freeway. A 'timber cruiser' checking a section of the State Forest for possible harvest, nice guy, Patrick, we have a beer and talk trees. He verifies the Slippery Elm. I tell him about using the frozen sap from busted red maples as ice for my cocktails during the ice storm. He said my house wasn't on the Forest Service map and I told him to keep it that way. On his way back out, he stopped by to thank me for advice about how to approach a certain area, several hollows over (the directions were simple, go out to the graveyard, hang a left, follow the drainage) and came in the house. He was impressed by the staircase and the walls of books, the dictionary table, the natural stone counters; the cook stove blew him away. He asked good questions about writing and I sent him off with a couple of books. Docenting a lifestyle. Worked outside, beautiful day, cool, bright; bow-sawed wood to get a burn in my shoulder. Read Emily's letters for an hour, read around in Maxwell's "Matter and Motion". Morel hunting later in the afternoon, found 27 small ones, did them in butter then built a cream sauce, more butter and cream, served on a bed of egg noodles. This is why we eat local. Incredible meal. The sauce needed a splash of sherry but I made do with a touch of Irish Whiskey. Shallots would be better than onions but shallots are costly. I should grow them. I knew a shallot farmer in Colorado, he earned a living on one acre, everything by hand, organic; his neighbors couldn't earn a living on 100 acres of onions, using equipment and chemicals. Our Mississippi Compromise worked well, had a small old tractor, Ford 8N, used it to bush-hog and harrow, farmed three acres, two at a time, raising pigs on the third in rotation. Whole system worked really well but it was a lot of physical labor, Colorado even more so, building full-time and ranching full-time and raising kids. I was so much younger then, now, the museum suits me fine, inside work, climate controlled, meeting interesting people, installing shows; the physical work is easy compared to building a house in Telluride mid-winter. The geography of survival. What takes precedence. What is that tautology, Why Is What Is? I think, but I'm not sure. I hate being unsure but I still prefer the edge to anything else, as long as it's physically possible. I didn't finish that story, Frank John James (Mac said it should be don't trust anyone with three first names, he has a point, I was merely remembering) was so bad with the public that he would often mop their feet. Understand, he was world-class with a mop, his drying chevrons were a thing of beauty, his stroke we all watched with envy, to sling a mop thus, we thought, was an act of great beauty; but he made the mistake of mopping the President's shoes and the Secret Service shot him down. He lives in myth and legend. There's a fight song that uses his name, but I can't remember the lyric. "On Wisconsin" or something, cheerleaders and bright lights, pom-poms. Read more...

Saving Pieces

Loaded the Goat Head in Glenn's car for the trip to St. Paul. Linda liked the piece. Good that some pieces from the Wrack Show will find a home. I'm taking the Calder piece and several of the balls: bowling ball, Barbie Ball, a few others. A kind of sadness that things end. Most of the sticks are in my woodshed, through the summer I'll bow-saw them into stove wood, reminded, next fall, every time I start a fire. Nine months to collect, four days to install, four days to dress (a set, in theater, is dressed after it's installed), open for five months. Tuesday past, we deconstructed the damned thing in three hours, a pile of sticks, no longer an installation. Brought home most of the burnable material in two truck loads. Ephemeral. New show for the main gallery arrived Wednesday, Along Water Street, started installing on Thursday, will finish tomorrow, new show for the Richards gallery (where dwelt the River Sticks) to install next week. Still a fair amount of detritus among the debris, what I thought I meant. You clear up space as you move along, what you thought you meant. What happens is private, check the record. Favor a damaged digit and you usually injure it again, so I'm watching a new thumb nail grow. At the end of the next day now, and the main gallery is installed. No labels yet but we'll get them up before opening Tuesday morning. Needed poster board for mounting them and you can't buy poster board on Good Friday. Still, we won't need to work Monday as we had long projected we would. Small mercies. Linda sent a copy of Emily's letters, excellent reading. Dog showed up yesterday or the day before, with a bright orange shock collar, having escaped her confines. Glenn tried to lure her away yesterday morning but she's back last night and this morning. Has a phone number on her collar and I tried to call, no answer, so I feed her some table scraps in a greasy skillet. Tonight she gets a fried bologna sandwich. I had a couple for dinner, with sliced sweet onions, so good you remember things that never happened. Davenport said somewhere he lived on fried bologna sandwiches and they sounded good. I'll have them again, for Easter supper: a performance piece, played at the island, reading the Apocrypha out loud, a section from Judith, drinking Irish whiskey, eating bar food. Too bad the film crew has gone home. The movie opens with this older guy, thinning stringy hair, work clothes, he looks a lot like me, slicing off a slice of bologna from the mother loaf, making some radial cuts on the slice, so it won't curl out of hand, slapping it into a skillet, sizzle on the soundtrack. Next he prepares an onion, peeling and slicing it carefully. In a small bowl, he mixes mayonnaise with Arby's horseradish sauce, some mustard. He slathers sour dough slices with the mixture, slaps on a sizzling slab of meat, arranges onions so that they cover everything, sprinkles on lots of black pepper. (First morels, and I have them, fried in butter, on toast points.) He sits at the island and there is a rock he uses to hold the holy book open. He slices the sandwich in half, gets a drink, Jameson, neat. He eats the sandwich while he reads the opening of Judith, an engineering marvel, and then he rolls a smoke, turns to the camera, and asks -what next?- Glenn set me up with a file and a system to work on a manuscript and several other things that I didn't know how to do. Comes right down to it, I'm the doofus, I need help, and medication. Allopathic, homeoepathic, ridge-based or whatever, the crows were waiting for me at the lake. They know I slow and roll the window down, attentive to what might unfold, and they conspired together. I'm not being paranoid when I say they acted in unison. Crows are smart. Generally speaking, the natural world is a better construct, birds sing, there is relative silence, you can find yourself in a space -time thing, searching madly for a handle. What he thought about what he thought about what he thought we were saying. Him and the horse he rode in on. Why would he be immediately objective? The crows dictate that I park my truck exactly there. I suspect that's merely because they want to shit on my vehicle, and give them that option, and they cover my truck with shit. Did I mention I wasn't good at avoiding stumps along the way? So when I notice something it is worthy of note, the fox, whatever. listen, there was this guy at Janitor College, I never trust anyone with three names: Frank John James. He so didn't fit the profile. Imagine, instead, something else. Someone else, almost you, what do you do with that?
Read more...

Letting Go

I'm perfectly willing to let go, if there's a goal in sight, I would argue one should, but there's no reason to be nasty, life's too short, there's no reason to be ugly unless ugly is your only intent. Consider the lilies of the field. I agree there is no question what the result, but I do question the means. I can't not. I'm conditioned to question everything. We were talking, earlier, about meaning, how it might be achieved, like a rock pile that might be climbed, which it is, agreed on several points, that it required effort, and a state of mind. How anything was possible. Glenn used the very word that I would have used, ephemeral, this also passes; the Wrack Show dissolves, disappears, it never was, really, that solid. Merely an image on a chalk-board, a sketch, a floor plan, it wasn't anything real. What happens, when we talk, is that things do become real. It's a precious thing, this being able to actually picture things, most people don't, it took me years to realize that, I thought everyone saw everything. Nothing prepared me for the way things were. Read more...

Don't Ask

The wind woke me, howling like a banshee. A couple of weeks from now, leaves will ameliorate the sound, but for now it's woodwind, heavy breathing through stick-trees. The reed is rood. Four in the morning and I'm reading Whitman, Glenn had pointed out a passage, and I'm reading around it, looking for context:

Camerado, this is no book,
Who touches this touches a man,
(Is it night? Are we here together alone?)
It is I you hold and who holds you,
I spring from the pages into your arms --- decease calls me forth.

The last cold rush of winter past, the sassafras and poplar are budded, the fruit trees have blossomed, the frogs have fucked, but we are left with one last freeze. Nothing serious, but a reminder that we are not in control. Nature's way of exercising her dominance. I'll need to get my truck down to the bottom of the hill, because I have to get to work, another Nantucket sleigh ride, but that's always the way. Just when you think it's over, winter slaps you on the ass. I'm conditioned to this, start a fire, heat some water that smells vaguely of pickles, and wash my hair. Life, as I know it. The coming week looks odd so I plan some meals. I want to get Barnhart together with Glenn, the music is important, we'll have to eat and drink. Nothing is planned but there is a background against which events play. Being a hermit is easy because nothing matters, it's only when I dip my foot in the real world that problems emerge. When I'm alone I don't consider consequences, I only attend to my needs, watch where the foot falls, fix a meal, change my underwear. The wind is persistent. Just before dark a huge Pileated Woodpecker, large as a crow, flies into the scene, bangs away at a dying hickory. Bugs are where you find them. Listen. He cocks his head and hammers away. Staccato rain on a metal roof, I don't understand anything but it all makes sense, that nod of understanding. Hey, I've been there, wherever that is. Read more...

Housekeeping

Modest cleaning, vacuum dust-bunnies and those goddamn fake ladybugs. Had to clean the shop-vac I use at the house, this is the job from hell. There's a cloth cover and a foam cylinder involved, they catch the dust, they must be cleaned. I hit them on a tree, but I'm sure there are better methods. I clean some flat surfaces, shelve some books, scrub the sink and drain-board, fix a great feta omelette, with scallions and hot peppers with a green enchilada sauce; shredded potato patty with a pungent ketchup/wasabi that I think I invented; and toast with pepper jelly. Wonderful meal that left me crying. Breakfast is underrated as a seductive meal. This one, or Greek Eggs, or crab cakes, fried herring roe with wild asparagus on toast (probably unique to certain counties in New England, where the timing is correct). I fill all the wood stations one more time, because of the predicted spring snow event. Playing hell with Glenn's plans to get here for the deconstruction. Show must go off though. Thinking that through, wondering if we could wait a few hours on Tuesday, before we deconstructed, I think we can, before the film crew arrives. I was going to do an extended shaggy dog thing, but it occurred to me that the numbers were the same. How do I explain this, I just realized it, recognized a pattern. Liza had said to me that the talent needed $65,000 each, minimum; then Chuck and Barnhart and D saying $65,000 minimum for a terminal degree. I can't help thinking that a terminal degree is one where you get it and then you die. Why is it that figure? Is that the average cost of living? Maybe it means nothing, but it popped up, thought I'd mention it, none of it makes any sense to me, I merely record. Skip Fox has a new one out, DELTA BLUES, he's the louisana.edu guy, he'll send you a copy, you want to go crazy, get on his list. There was a pileated woodpecker today that was as large as a crow. Thunderstorms, I d better go. Read more...

Saturday Staff

Deserted town. No one everywhere, but Kroger. Run a few errands before work. Last four hours of the Wrack Show. I take a chair out and sit in the middle of it, read one of the Steven Havill, Posadas Novels. He's a good writter, his characters are very good, plotting is excellent. When people come in the gallery I tell them I'm baby-sitting. Below the floodwall, down on the first terrace, which is often flooded, there's a bloom of benthic growth, bright green and scary. Benthos is the bottom, the bed, right up through the littoral, great word I heard some geologist use when they were dredging Sesuit Harbor, mid-seventies maybe, the same day I found my first at-latl (there's another word that suffers many different spellings) weight, a whale fluke in basalt, with notched decoration. You remember days like that and that word was part of it. Museum actually very quiet today, treated myself to a tray of sushi, and medicated with wasabe. I spot mopped, cleaning muddied areas from the recent rains. Had this extended fantasy today, while mopping, took several forms, one was a One Man Show, where the Janitor is discovered on stage, mopping, talking about his experiences; then it morphed into the opera I might like to try with Barnhart, where the Janitor sings of his lost loves, and they appear, as visions or flashbacks or bad dreams, which would allow rounding out the cast and, of course, a chorus. I'm most interested, right now, in creating a cohesive manuscript, feel good about it, I see where it might go, some things it might do, but I don't want to stop writing you, and I only have so much time. I parse it out, I juggle. Time disappears. Someone I don't know questions my tense. They have no idea what I actually wrote. I won't let this become a problem but it is common. I am not me, and you are not you, get used to it. Fucking hit me, the bifurcation, the way we split at that watershed, the way the one thing was circling the wagons, holding the family close, and the other was learning from experience. A frick doesn't work, if frack is fucking with you. You have to bring out the big guns. First thing you know there are bodies, you have to deal with them. I know what everyone wanted to say, it was always my talent, I knew what you wanted to say, before you said it. Lose it in the backwash, it was nothing, anyway, what they thought they were doing. Read more...

Fake Snow

Oriental Non-fruiting Pear trees. I'm told, but I've been told a lot of things and only some of them are true. Hard rain and big winds last night and this morning the blossoms fell in thick sheets. The deposition of white petals. Final resting place is the nearest downwind curb. Filled the last of the ten thousand holes, sanded this afternoon. I'm Saturday staff tomorrow, probably read art books, maybe break out the painting equipage. I miss Sara, to smoke and talk with. D, or Superman, as we now call him, able to design and leap tall building, is becoming too much the Conrad story, where the gifted young man leaves his humble beginning behind and sails off into that other world. OU, MFA program, full ride. Some other museum will snatch him up, Cleveland or Chicago, but we have years before that, the program is three years ($65,000, if you're paying) and it'll take a year for him to winnow the job offers. This day and age, able to work from home, and Carma has a great job here, we might keep him a few years, maybe forever, never assume or predict. I could be Associate Artistic Director, don't particularly want to be, but could, though I'd bitch and moan about meetings and talking on the phone. I'm not a phone person, I hate meetings. I'm best with a mop, or a broom, or hanging a show, or writing you. I'm not that great in person, my habits of personal hygiene have slipped, I tend to speak honestly, my house is unfinished and dirty, I can longer climb an 'A- Frame' ladder. A significant shadow of my former self, a shadow none the less. I think about this, build a construct in my mind, where I should be, what I've done. Ultimately, I'm pleased, what I am, who I am, where I am, I only speak for myself, I have a list of people who read me. No small burden. Keeps me on my toes. Both in the world, and somehow outside. I have to look at my notes, I'm not sure what I meant. Not having a blueprint in front of you makes everything more difficult. Read more...

No Plan

My plan is to play it by ear. That old song. Hum a few bars. The river is high and it's raining again. My baby left me and I'm drinking Sterno. The outhouse is flooded and my boots have sprung a leak. My dog was run over by a train. New book by Skip Fox, Delta Blues, and it's playing with my head. Mississippi memories. I wanted Banty Chickens, the little guys that fend for themselves, roost in the trees, require no attention, and there was an ad in the weekly paper that baby chicks were available in Avalon, so we drove over, a 30 minute drive, to get a couple of dozen. Mississippi John Hurt was from Avalon. Dig out some tapes and play a few cuts. My blues collection is extensive, listen and weep. Raining hard, but I don't worry, collect water to bathe this weekend, mindless in the drone. The staccato beat is like a dulcimer, rain on the roof. Doctor John was surprised I don't play an instrument, can't read music, how I get by, crippled thus. I told him I write to explain that very thing. Melanie played the guitar, almost every night, until her fingers bled. I'm like that. Who was I reading, oddly, Raymond Carver, using simple language, digging for the heart of it. I'm thinking about this opera libretto, Missip white trash, going to the store for gum. On the way, they talk to a crow, kill a snake, everything matter-of-fact. The sub-text is they're talking about a crime they might commit, nothing comes of it, they get their gum, go home. Profoundly stupid. It interests me. An installation with sound. Pegi talked with me today about an installation we might do together, staircases and slithering dancers, and I realized that could be part of the opera I wanted to do with Barnhart. Take every advantage of the talent. There was this guy at Janitor College, Lamont, a simple doofus with no claim to fame, his one talent was blowing out candles with his nose: to his credit, he could direct a stream of air, I'm not unlike him, when you think about it, snuffing flickers. Freud is interesting, Levi-Strauss engages my attention, but what is the point? Here you are, what do you do with that? Musing. Read more...

Several Fronts

Busting ass, no other way to say it. D had rented a van for two days, to return paintings, we load him up and ship him off, he's back just before noon. In the mean time I pulled all the rest of the painting (42) and got all the walls patched and filled, the signage removed. The signage walls need painting, we need a color choice. I run out for the gaskets to repair the kitchen sink while D is away. Lunch at the Pub and the waitresses are giving us a hard time, we play along, a little loud, think they are using us as cheap entertainment. We can be very funny. Yesterday, in the office, Pegi was on a rant, at the dry-erase board, and she was using jargon; I was sitting in the dead chair, in the hallway, outside D's office, knew he could hear me, and Pegi used the same word again, in the present tense, which was maybe correct as jargon but wrong grammatically, I added the 'ed' as an aside. It was perfect, the timing, the enunciation, D belly- laughed but Pegi and Trish were so into whatever they were talking about they missed it completely. The nature of the ephemeral. Loaded D up again, after lunch, and he took off, I cleaned the plumbing parts I want to reuse, dealt with some other problems. He was back mid-afternoon and we returned a couple of watercolors to the University, I went along, because I wanted to see the student Art Show, touch base with some of the teachers, I never expected the breasts from Paradise. She was waiting for the elevator too, and as we were both carrying paintings, asked what floor to punch and we told her 3. She was wearing an outer spandex top that exposed these great puppies veiled in a daring black bra. I swear I'm not many things, and I could have gotten over the sight of youthful breasts, but she must have been a student of Lane's, because she was attentive to the fact that we were so casual with him. She walked by several times, I was standing at the door, she flashed her smile. It's blowing up a storm. I fault no one for anything, how could I, I'm the worst of the lot, what I posit is fifth or fourth down the line. However you count your crawdads. Listen, there was a moment for me, walking someone through the show, where I didn't realize what I was saying. Uber Mensch. You are the same as me, you is the same as me, you see what I mean about whatever it is. The next thing. I attempt to stay open, but I have to sleep. I love where you interject yourself. I would never gamble that: watch closely, what I refuse to say. Read more...

Waterwork Music

That music guy, Barnhart, at the museum today, talking about his life with music and playing samples from various periods. Some interesting electronic stuff. Finished by playing Waterwork Music, some of which might be in Glenn's movie. Might be able to get them together, Glenn coming back for the uninstalling, deinstallation, removal of the show, next week. I'd heard the music before, in Barnhart's office, but it sounded so much fuller in the main gallery. Excellent stuff. Manipulated water sounds and a nice violin serving as the current. Appreciative group, Doctor John, himself a blue-grass musician of local note, was on his feet applauding, said to me afterward that he was interested in how the Wrack Show evoked so many different reactions, all of them good. Can't figure out if I wrote twice yesterday or am writing twice today. In one 13 hour period I wrote for 6 hours. Three sessions with naps between. Felt great, wrote well, like I'm working up to the marathon, 27 hours straight, man, loony tunes. On the plumbing front we made real progress with just a few barked knuckles. We had to deconstruct (the perfect word, of course we have to deconstruct the Wrack Show) the entire sink assembly, including that puttied, gasketed thing the basket goes in. These are difficult because they are always corroded and there's a special tool we don't have. We improvise and finally break the suckers free (it's a double sink and if one fails the other will also, like tomorrow.) Now that we have everything apart, I can fix it. Plumbing is simple logic with a few tricks, like anything else, it can be elegant, but it doesn't have to be. The Wrack Show is elegant, what it does, with debris, is really quite amazing. I looked at it today, docenting for the second time, a woman through the show. She wanted a piece of it and I told her to show up next Tuesday with her work clothes on. I can get this fence painted. Finality is sinking in. What do we do with this thing. I can burn most of it, that's not a problem, tomorrow, I think, I'll make a list of pieces not to burn, so we can give them away, goodwill is everything, and I think D and I will do another show, when the dust clears, because we enjoy working together. Probably with Pegi and Barnhart, maybe an opera, I have a vague idea about something. Not much happens, it's kind of French, you know, and everyone is intense. I wondered how that might work with a very simple story line. Going to the store for some gum, getting some sliced white bread, whatever. Don't examine me too closely, I just flit over these things, just a janitor looking for absolution. Curious, now that I've brought it up, what we're looking for. I expect an essay by Friday, I don't care how long it is, I only expect you to be honest. Plaintive. What I thought I heard in what you were saying. Listen, I'm no expert, almost everything goes all right, but at the very end, there were questions. Read more...

Tracking

Good enough. When I consider the course. Obstacles are fine, they direct attention to where the foot falls and that keeps you awake. Hurdles, and the trailing leg. You learn. Most things are matters of training. There's a pair of ducks at the lake that someone released, domestic animals, reverted to the wild. They might survive, but they lack native instinct. They were raised in someone's yard and now fend for themselves. People tire of pets and dump them in the forest. Some people, some pets. We see this fairly often. Pitiful animals, not used to the wild. Sometimes they find homes, sometimes I kill them, open them up for scavengers. I don't like putting myself in the position of judge, but I tend toward a harsh view. These ducks will probably be ok. They look strange, a splash of red across the face, black tips on the wing feathers; they stay in the same area and people feed them. On the dole. Maybe it's even a good life, I'm not sure. We feed them, they roost somewhere. Dogs will kill them, probably, they'll get hit by a car. The way of the world. I don't like the way things stand. I'd rather be living in a cave in Utah, a silo in Iowa, someplace where I wasn't impacted by other people's wings and arrows. But I have needs, a light-bulb, power for my computer to write you, whiskey, the occasional piece of meat, tobacco. I'd like to think I'm independent but I'm not, I need you and certain other aspects of the world. It's a delicate balance: sanity and everything else. I need to wash my hair, I feel greasy, it's four-thirty in the morning. I start a fire in the cookstove, heat some rainwater. This is the way we wash our hair, so early in the morning. I'm hungry, so I make a mushroom omelet, potatoes and toast. I swear, this is normal. Nothing seems out of place. The timing is strange, but hey, who am I? The rain might present problems for getting down the hill, but I've never not made it. I need to get to work early because the kitchen sink is fucked, I need to rebuild the drain system, and there's a food thing, lunch, for the April Fool. We found him, smoking a clove cigarette, in the common. We had a spotter, a circling eye, that pin-pointed his location. He's on. Noodling the Baby Grand. He can do that. He also has some electronic requirements, which is why we hunted him down. The impossible is doable, we just need to know ahead of time. I get carried away with language. It's a drug for me. That we found this venue is a plus, I can indulge myself. I don't think you mind if I talk directly at you, we're beyond that, right? I'm ugly, up close, if you look at me closely in a mirror, craters and black hairs; my voice is better, I might talk you off the edge. Or myself. A nod to the knowable. I like it, when the planets are lined up, I feel more confident. April's fool.
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