Being Frank

I don't like wind-chimes, they're not natural and they skew my hearing, but I've achieved an arrangement of cast iron pans that rings just a short dense set of harmonics. They're hanging from nails and hooks off the inside of the main beam through the kitchen area, and when I come in and shut the door, they ring, and sometimes, when it's very still and quiet, my walking-by is enough to set them off. It's a lovely sound, distant and complex, like something Paul Winter might try and find in the Grand Canyon. The best wine I've ever had, and it's not a zin but a cab. Frank Family Vineyard '04. Full and dry and fruity and exploding through the mouth, from front to back, leaving no area untested. Extraordinary. The '05 is almost as good. To the work at hand, we must set the ODC show, with limitations of space and pedestals and plexi bonnets; I'm sure I walked 10 miles, every piece handled at least twice, but this is a hard show to install. There is no theme, no continuity, merely the best of the best in every different medium. Several ways to approach the task. Form and color win out. Jewelry must be spread everywhere, among the more 3D pieces that will be covered. Lot of money on display, whatever value means. If I had disposable income there are a couple of pieces I would buy. I've always bought art, even though I make less money than anybody I know; it continues to give me pleasure, which can't be said about everything. Almost nothing, in fact, continues to give pleasure. Which, of course, is the test. Would you want to live with something. Like anyone without a maid I stand in front of the kitchen sink a fair amount of time. It's not an outside wall, with a window onto kept gardens and a grape arbor, but a blank wooden surface between ingenious shelves for dishes that I built from dogwood poles and cheap, natural edged planks. A surface (my water-wall is always interior, exterior walls freeze) where I tack up a poem or photograph, something I want to see. Sometimes something will stay there for months, but I rotate things around, I don't really believe there's a perfect arrangement. I'll probably tweak my own funeral. Snip, snip. Memory is so arcane. Smell, alone, could drive you crazy. I was wearing the white gloves, most of the day, handling things, they'd call on me to move something, and I'd move it, from, one place, you know, to another. I absolutely do not want to go there, with what you or I might have said. My attention is completely on three crows. Or seven or five, I'm sure it was an odd number. The deuse of spades, something spades. I probably have that wrong, what was intended. I think it was a tarot reading, something that made no sense, someone said something. Read more...

Protandrous

Worked outside until I had achieved a full-body sweat, then did the two bucket shower on the deck. Read an interesting essay on oysters last night, then slashing brush today, remembered my five year love affair with them. Cape Cod, working with the crew called Local Talent, the funniest construction gang in I've ever been involved with. Les and Ralph could wake the dead, sent several people to the emergency room laughing so hard they couldn't breathe. Natural mimics, they once reproduced several episodes of "The Honeymooners" when they were doing a remodel for one of the writers of that show, and the performance is become apocryphal in memory. Les was a boat-builder and sincerely thought there was a boat for everyone, decided I needed a pirogue, because of my attraction to tidal zones. We built the boat, an amazing experience, and then I poled it everywhere up tidal basins. It drew two inches with two people and a cooler, I could take it across spartina, it was like an airboat. Result was I seeded select and private places, inaccessible without a pirogue and I had the only one, with blue mussels and oysters. There were already some, that I was harvesting, but these are easy critters to farm, and I introduced them into perfect habitat. Sometimes I had to make the habitat perfect, which was why they were not there, because there was nothing solid to attach to; so I'd haul in some rocks, at one place, MO7, I had a map, I needed a map to keep track, I lined a deep hole on Quivet Creek with radiators I'd hauled from the dump. When some shellfish are small, pin-head size, there can be thousands on a rock, one rock per hole and two years later you harvest, no pesticides, no plowing the middles. If people didn't shit in water, this could go on forever. Fouling your nest. Oysters out the bejesus, mussels like there was no tomorrow. Then The Vineyard, where I found an oyster bed that was considerably larger than a football field, yielded my income for several years plus all I could eat, no small feat, considering the guests you might expect on an island off the coast. Oysters are protandrous, a neat trick, like sea-horses and certain friends that spent time in jail. The ocean side of the island, fuck the "r" months, I could eat these year round though they were funky mid-summer, unmentionable cuisine. Kept bushels of shellfish under a bed of seaweed, doused with fresh seawater twice a week. Friends thought we were rich because we ate oysters at every meal, little did they know otherwise we'd have starved. We had to leave, couldn't afford to live that rich, but I still remember the bed, the road went on forever and the party never ends. Crustaceans. Crawdads qualify, but it was years before I saw the connection. Jeff Muldar in the background, a blues song about you best friend's brother, a niece twice removed, what you didn't do. I still don't know why. I should have, you know, taken advantage of the situation, but I was shell-shocked. Now I see it as a kind of joke, what I should have done. What's in a name? The rain's rolling in. I'd better go. I'm still confused, but I don't care anymore, home is where you find it. A banjo tune. Bela pulling everything together from a few threads. Then the power is out. Beginning to bore me, the daily failures. Still out in the morning, and the phone, have to go out to call the power company. The lady there is friendly and funny, -darling, you are the end of the line- which is true, and she allows the problem fixed by next week, upgrading something, adding something, I don't really even know what electricity is, lightning in a cable. Small load of firewood but the pile groweth, nearly made my nut I suspect. I'll burn the Wrack Show in the fall, recut all the new stuff and get in under the shed. A plan. Wood stacked and jumbled everywhere now, but it's too hot to work on firewood, other than just collecting it, which I mostly do before work, in the cool, and don't unload until even earlier the next morning. Used the sling blade this morning and drenched with sweat after 10 minutes. Finally caught a mouse that had been driving me crazy. Little fucker was getting outrageously blatant. Had learned to trip the trap and then eat the peanut butter. I put a stick-ramp going from a shelf in the pantry (the pantry looks exactly like a bookcase because that's what it is) to another stick that was cantilevered over a bucket with some water in it. Works every time for that occasional smart mouse. They're good divers, but they can't tread water forever. I don't enjoy killing things, but if they threaten my food supply I get pissed, figure out some Rube Golberg way to kill them, so I'm not directly involved. I was drinking whiskey on the patio. Happened to look at someone's watch, to note the time, I've never worn a watch, but I always know what time it is. Read more...

Whipping Post

Allman Brothers. The way I feel at the end of the week, wasted, all in. On my feet, I think, the entire week. Didn't get errands done on Friday, so had to go to town today, the three L's, library, liquor store, laundromat, then check in with D at the museum, talk about building scenery for "Wind In The Willows". Stop at the grocery, cans of tuna, olives cheese, too hot to cook; gas at the Quick Stop and a pack of Bugler Papers. Set for a couple of days. Try to get outside before the sun and cut some weeds. A flight of grackles out the back door of the museum, as I was leaving, in the intense light they were iridescent, colors rippling across the smooth glossy feathers. On the way home I consider the nature of black. I remember two long conversations about black, one with Harvey about fugue states, and the other in the first print shop, about how much scarlet we might have to add to pure black to get just a hint. Assuming a pure black. The closest I've seen, and it may have been pure, was on those Secret Service Suburbans when Edwards was here, I lose a few points, but it's usually tented. Finally, the farmer's market. Varietal selections, nothing connects you more than failure, with the things that can go wrong. Usually several things, at the same time, we duck, the shattered glass, as we dive beneath the desk. My memory fails me but I remember earthquake drills merging into atom bomb drills and getting under your desk was the point, somehow safer there. The safety a desk can offer. John Lee Hooker singing about a snake, listen closely: everything is either a metaphor or something more, iconic, almost mythic. Water over the damn becomes the story of your life, yes, yes, that is me, the way the flow intersects the curb. A standing wave. Nothing if not forceful. Meaning is a paradigm. Let's assume you stop, notice something, is it any more important than anything else? Probably not. You choose one thing rather than another, almost nothing, but something, a glint of color against the field. The middle distance is white noise, anabasis, a place you retreat. Harvey swore nothing mattered, but killed himself nonetheless, black is always a color if you look close enough. Variations. We should all, I think, kill ourselves, in the interest of sanity. Answering that question. But we choose to live, imperfect as the world is, beat against the tide, because living is better than dying. Read more...

Acorns

You have these grinding holes wallowed in rock but there was no grain, nothing to grind, you have to wonder. Maybe they were eating nuts, maybe for several thousand years they were eating acorns. Look at the distribution of oak trees since the last glaciation, the spread of humanity. There seems to be a connection. The acorn view of history. The missing link, that whole transition period, we were eating nuts, dandelion greens, seriously, look at the record. Euell Gibbons mentions in passing that some acorns are sweet, the occasional white oak makes a decent gruel. He was correct, I've found a few trees that were less bitter, easy to leach and make a meal. Get home totally wasted, the ODC show arrived at noon, we had taken an early lunch, calculating the timing and wanting the afternoon to start unpacking. John is there with the truck when we get back, a 15' Budget, and we unload it in twenty minutes, all highly motivated, him to get back to Columbus before rush hour, and us, to start seeing what we've got. This show is different, in the first place, because it is packed individually by the artist. A show put together by a museum to tour is packed by that museum, a certain uniformity, maybe a little pride; but artists generally know shit about packing and it's actually quite funny unpacking this show every two years. I love it. It's wonderful and awful at the same time. Shredded paper, foam peanuts, egg cartons beyond number (the single most common cushioning agent, go figure), blankets, towels, pillows. We see a lot of that foam substrate they use when laying carpet. Old phone books, junk mail, crumpled newspaper. That last is an interesting one for me, because I don't get a paper and tend to read anything, so I usually flatten a sheet, once in a while, and read a filler. Megan spiked 17 kills in the game Valley won over Northwest. Other stuff you might or might not notice. Artists must keep bags of this shit, hoping to send work to some juried show. A few of them pack their things really well. Two pieces today, very delicate, encased in plexiglas and she didn't want any scratches, so the final layer, the innermost wrapping, was a pillowcase made out of tee-shirt jersey. Excellent. As usual this show is off the wall, the judge, we just call him a jury, was fond of ceramics, and several of the pieces, so far (we haven't finished unpacking) are beautiful, exquisite even. There's a pottery lady, bending over slightly, she's maybe 10 inches tall, wearing a ball gown and picking up the hem, peaking out are maybe a dozen fox heads, the piece is called Hen-House, and I'd buy it if I had $1,250 that wasn't spoken for. Seems a fair price to me, too, which is another aspect of this show that appeals to me, that the artists have to place a price on their work. In my personal experience it's the writer's significant other who actually fixes a price, but somehow we arrive at a value. We set up two 8 foot tables, 30 inches wide, covered with shipping blankets, started unpacking. I doubt that there is a better team at this, at least as good, D and I work so well together; unpacking, when one needs the other's help, only a grunt is necessary. In this case means hold the box while I slide this sucker clear, or could you please get that tape off my mouth. Staggering quantities of tape. My personal corner of the electric grid is nothing if not undependable, leaving me unsent and irritable. Read more about oaks and acorns, trenails, which I can't believe I never looked up, were usually oak pegs, used for a great many things, one of which was to hold the keel upright while the ship was built around them, used, also, of course, in the joinery. Red oaks are younger than white oaks, came into existence for a nice Darwinian reason. Sometimes weather wouldn't allow ripening of that year's nuts, red oak acorns take two years to mature, a margin of safety. Unpack the rest of the show, some lovely things, some peculiar things, remains to be installed and all the rest of it, but I've seen and handled all the pieces and there is a good show here. Picked up the scenic unit we had farmed out. I felt like a magician and I really had nothing to do with it. Talked with The Damned Brit and figured out what he needed, scrounged the materials from the basement. I'd contacted Todd at the college painting lab and asked him to paint Toad Hall, D took the horrid panel home, he has a decent shop, trued the edges, sanded the surface, attached a frame, we downloaded some images of British Estates. Five hours work for Todd, who likes to paint, using oil washes and stencils, pencil and spray paint, and here is this really fine piece of scenery. Toad Hall may never have looked so good. A benefit auction coming up and Sara thinks we might get an piece in the local paper with a photo, and then auction the piece. I clear the ways for that. Talent is always vain. Lest my organizational skills become over-inflated, I learned a lesson as a janitor today. Your usual clogged toilet, half a roll of toilet paper and a bunch of shit, I was going to bail it out, flush several times, then feed the bucket a bit at a time. D, thinking outside the bucket, used the plunger in a way I'd never seen before; he'd flush, then release some of the debris he was holding back, then block the flow of solids with the plunger, masterful. I felt stupid. There was a great course in plunging, at Janitor College, "Don't Get Your Feet Wet", taught by this doddering Swede, I should have paid more attention. After we wash our hands we go outside for a smoke, talk about shit for awhile. I'm going to send this now, fraught with mistakes, because I have a window between thunderstorms. Read more...

My Sign

Crossed mops. And on the pocket, the name Frank. We just entered my house so maybe this will be a good month, good being loosely defined as a month in which nothing terrible happens. I think the danger with rabies is past, and the last month, defined as 30.41666 days, what with the engorged tick, the bat, breaking my toe, was not that great. Fortunately I'm a calm guy now, no longer easily riled, I have a high pain threshold, and my immune system seems to be intact. Got a truck load of white ash from that place where everybody dumps unwanted wood. All pre-cut, branches, 3-4 inches in diameter. Perfect firewood. Specific Gravity .67, 42 pounds per cubic foot. Another load tomorrow. When you live in the hardwood capital of the world, firewood is not a problem, especially if you scrounge in the off-season. I'm so green it hurts, I not only recycle my own shit, but I burn the waste of others. That was a joke then it didn't sound like one, a clunker, a clinker, a kink in the telling. I just meant that the wood was free and I was taking every advantage. Scrounging with intent. The power company is cutting easements, and I get a lovely 8 foot section of black locust, for just helping the guy get some brush off the road. Dead Of Winter, this would be a day's wood. I love this show we're unloading tomorrow, the ODC, Ohio Designer Craftsmen, we do it every other year, top-shelf stuff, considered. I love looking at this stuff, being a critic, I love unpacking it, I love putting on white cotton gloves and handling; once, I can only remember parts of it, a dream, we agreed that certain things meant certain things. I remember this, we were playing chess, and everything depended on the move. Read more...

Zone Out

Up early, some slashing in the yard, too hot too soon, inside, I start cleaning and working toward shifting chairs. New (used) writing chair and I couldn't let the big natural chair from the Wrack Show go to firewood, so I need to get rid of a few things. Lightning strike a few months ago took out the TV and the microwave, D and Carma got a new mattress and as mine is old and uncomfortable, I took their old one, which was almost new. So I need to dispose of: a mattress, a broken office chair, a really funky reclining chair, an old TV, a dead microwave. If I was willing to live with a really unsightly pile, I could just stack them outside somewhere and haul it to the county clean-up in the Fall. Probably what I'll do. It's not a philosophical issue, just a janitorial problem. During the course of the day, thinking about disposal and installation, I think I might set up a little tableau in the woods: the mattress and a couple of chairs facing the TV, the microwave on a stand (for snacks); manikins would be good, a few of those foam wig stands. I once found myself with a several dozen foam heads, a collection I started because I found some in a dumpster; when it got out of hand I looked around for a way to unload the collection. I lived on the coast and the tide seemed a perfect solution. I'd never do this now, knowing what I know of garbage, but I lugged the heads, in garbage bags, down the head of Quivet Creek, sat there with several quarts of Genny Ale on ice, and launched them, one after another, every time the previous one was 50 feet downstream. I was going for whatever effect it would have on the people that might be there, at the mouth of the creek, where it dumped into the bay. I wouldn't see them and I didn't care, but at about 4 o'clock, these heads would start emerging. I'd drifted the creek on an inner tube, and on a boat I'd built, I'd timed the outflow, gathered information, and there were just a couple of good dates, when tourists would be thick at one of the most beautiful places in the world, and I could play with reality. So I sent them downstream. To fuck with their mind, installations always fuck with your mind, that's the point. If you accept A, then you have to accept B if it's exactly the same, then C, then D, and now we've several steps removed, and we actually have no idea where we are. I'm really bright and I can't figure a fucking thing. Background noise. Power out again, lost some words. Slept on the sofa, to escape the heat, woke just before dawn, a bare suggestion of light, 5:30, knew I needed to clean up before going to work tomorrow, decided that I might as well get really dirty. Organize and clean house until after 2, pretty much straight ahead janitor work but which also involved setting the new sculpture garden under my staircase (the Wrack Pieces) which meant moving the tools that were stored there, and cleaning, which also involved clearing enough space in the studio, my storeroom, for the tools, and cleaning the spaces I cleared. On breaks, for coffee or a smoke, I cleaned off the carpenter's chest / coffee-table, putting away dozens of books, high-grading off-prints, throwing away some things. Reduced the pile of books on the sofa to just four, Emily's Letters, Song Of The Dodo, Kant And The Platypus, and Oak. Filled the three gallon shop vac, will need dumping and cleaning before the next use, truly the job from hell. From my minimal standards of housekeeping (I keep the museum much cleaner than I keep my house) the place looks pretty good. I especially like the coffee table, you can actually see some of the surface, and none of the 7 piles of books remaining are more than 5 high. Very neat and tidy, there's a pile of bookmarks, a pencil and a pen, an ashtray, a couple of candles and a small fossil on a small sandstone pedestal, oh, and the bag of jacks, that I still play, occasionally, to check my hand-to-eye coordination. Reread the essay about the ceiling/roof at Westminster Hall, someone sent me this, I don't remember who, and there's no record of the publication, but goddamn, what a feat, built between 1393 and 1397 and still standing, no one knows why. Many schools of thought, engineers differ wildly in their guesses, but it's all about the oak. "...and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name." William. Building structures requires an odd ability to visually imagine the way forces work. Which requires understanding what certain building materials are capable of doing. "There are no amateur barrel-makers." Consider the barrel, consider that it was made with hand-tools and didn't leak, let's define a barrel as "a solid of revolution composed of a parallel circular top and bottom with a common axis and a side formed by a smooth curve symmetrical about the mid-plane." He could do this with a hatchet. He wouldn't need an axe. I have to take a break. Read more...

Overheating

The air is hot, the wind is hot, first really hot day of the year, humidity right at 100%. I might buy a small window air-conditioner for the computer. Black Dell is not happy in this weather. I have a couple of freezer packs in a bowl next to her flank, she labors. Big storms forecast for tonight, it's rained every day since the fire. Mackletree, ragged as it is, is still 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the county, the canopy intact because the fire didn't reach that tall. Ominous rumbles, still a ways away. Thunder is noise created by a shock wave of air set in motion by an abrupt electrical discharge. Read that somewhere, made a note. I might have changed some of the words, but what a sweet distillation. I love thunder and lightning, the power they wield. I fear for my life, yet it's comforting, to hear Loki and Odin bowling in the apartment upstairs. At least you know where you are. These evening thunder showers of late, I'm almost always sitting in my chair, writing you. I Save, usually the power goes out, I read my oil-lamp light, eat something that doesn't have to be cooked (a cold can of beans) and feel fairly well centered. I have plenty of everything because I brought in supplies tonight, all the major food groups plus booze and tobacco, don't need to budge from the ridge until Tuesday. I have a list of things to do, I really need to at least start some of them. In this mode, now, of reading, reflecting, and writing. It's all I want to do. The last couple of years, I barely maintain a path from where I park my truck and the house. The chair situation is soon to be completely reconfigured. I found a chair in the museum basement that is an exact match to my 'writing chair' and I've worn this chair out. I wanted a new chair or an upholstery job, and here it was. Which meant that things would bump along, as long as I agreed what game we were playing. I mean 'game' in a special way, not like a chess match of anything, more like something you experienced in real time. My shoulders hurt because I've been mopping forever. Lost power again, the local grid maxed out, everyone running AC for the first hot night of the year. No ceiling fans for me, so I get out the oil lamp, set it at the end of the sofa on a stand near my head, strip to skivies, dampen a towel with cold water, stretch out and read with the (thread-bare) towel across my body. Not bad. It's a little awkward because I have to get a block of wood to keep the book off the wet towel, and every time I get up, to roll a smoke, get a drink, find the definition for a word, it involves moving several things and having a place for them. I move a kitchen chair over, and I can put the block on the seat and drape the towel over the back. Works fine, a small flashlight at hand. Thinking about getting one of those new generation of head lights: now, when I need both hands in the dark, I have to hold the flashlight in my mouth or under my arm and it's damned difficult. When the power came back on, I was sleeping on the sofa, under a towel, with a wood block wedged uncomfortably against my elbow. I had put the book safely aside, blown out the light (dear Laura), gone outside and looked at the night, peed in the dark. It's all brain surgery, what you think you see. A myth on which you place belief. I think it's more complex than that. Worse than you thought. Everything comes to bear. How do you, then, respond? I think you should read more books, learn how to do more things. I think, extending the next size garbage bag. I'm completely open to anything you might say. I consider myself another dufus, a sloppy map job, sweet home Chicago. But, that's my thing. Being slightly off beat. Read more...

Sore Shoulders

We loaded out the crates, Aminah's show, no one remembered exactly how they should be packed. I'd wondered about this, thinking we should have shot some photos, so we'd remember, but we do a yeoman's job, ship the show off to Columbus, and these crates are heavy, make no mistake, that's why the shoulders are sore. They had a Highliner truck, 6 feet tall inside, and the crates were stacked three high, the top one was a bear. Turned my attention to mopping up the second flooded basement in three weeks. No one bothers you when you're mopping up sewer water. Second fill and sanding in the main gallery, ready for paint, signage wall and entry wall ready to paint. Next week we shuffle the permanent collection Clarence Cater paintings, and THOSE walls will need painting also. I see painting in my future. Unless you're a professional interior house painter, I do more painting in a year than most people in a lifetime, which is cool, in a way, seldom get any on me. Heard a funny story yesterday, concerning drug testing, as the Board at the museum will probably be enacting something, to cover their ass, after getting burned, and who can blame them. Oddly, it was D, who does nothing illegal, drinks a little beer, maybe has an ibuprofen problem, but he gets headaches, and we forgive him that, that argued strongly about invasion of privacy, getting their foot in the door to fire someone if a nephew needed a job. Really coherent, strongly worded tirade. I agreed, of course, but understand the Board's position. Everyone knows I'd fail the test. So the wording will be that it is at the Artist Director's discretion and for 'new hires', a grandfather clause that allows aging hippies to work; Sara likes me, understands my unique position at the museum, especially in these changing times, so they won't test me until they're ready to put me out to pasture. But the story, D was still venting and we went out for a smoke. I'm actually just kind of amused by the whole thing, but D is young enough, bright enough, paranoid enough, to want to draw a line in the sand. It's a lovely thing, and I absolutely understand, from my vantage, Old And In The Way (a great album, Sam Bush and Gerry Garcia) and not really caring much what anyone else did. I stay under the radar because it allows me to live my life, I care about the world, and especially one small corner of it. This ridge, now, where I am. The only sound is bugs and birds, the hum of the fridge is probably a bass note but I can't hear it for the noise. The sound-track of my life is mostly bull-frogs and crows. The story was that the CCC camp had closed up shop because of a federally mandated policy that required drug-testing, and EVERYONE, including the Supervisor, tested positive. Every one. I'd test positive to drugs they don't know, standardly toast morning glory seeds with garlic and salt, take a walk in the woods, amuse myself. I don't know what the active agent is there, I only know it exists. Whatever. It's all about control. Look at any issue closely, it's all about control. The most important thing is that they manipulate memory. What you thought you remembered, infield practice, hitting the ball around. This is the game, I'm dying here; I'm tired of moving, dodging the bullet, I'll stand my ground. I need to clean house, vacuum corners, I'm not tidy, I need to put 20 or 30 books away. For most people the situation would be critical, but I don't really care what happens, just that something occurs, and it always happens that it does. Something. I subscribe to that low-key fraternity where you watch your buddy's back. Frankly, why I was so misguided: I thought I knew some things. Nothing unusual, never mind. Read more...

Fibonacci Sequence

The numbers 1235 on a license plate today and I wondered if it was a vanity tag. I went on with the sequence in my head, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89. I've played simple number games with license plates since I was a kid. Service brat, moving all the time, a dozen trips back and forth to Colorado, dozens of trips to Florida, it's a lot of license plates. Nice email from Linda, now at the Guthrie, talking about nests. I videoed the eaglets but it's lost forever. Interesting nest, as it was shared by both Golden and Bald eagles, whoever got it first, and it had grown to enormous dimension, filled a 12 foot ledge maybe 15 feet long. They'd build a new nest in the middle and as the young got older they'd kick the sides out to become another layer on the frame nest, which became a playpen. Excellent dynamic use of space. I dove with Navy divers, before there were Seals, when we lived in Key West. Spent 25% of my waking hours under water. A fish bed is very like a nest; for a moray eel, the hole in a rock. The divers would goad them out with a stick and shoot with a spear gun. A beach fire, skin one out and cut it into chunks, dip in soy sauce and cook on a stick. Sharp briny taste, not at all the muddy eel debacle on Cape Cod years later; remembering those Key West moray eels, fresh, from clean salt water, is what got me involved with gigging eels on the Cape. Awful tasting. Some of my worst meals. The Conger eel is quite good though. Almost anything from clean tidal zones is good to eat. At the first print shop, East Dennis, Mass. we were finishing the press runs on a four-color cover that we were letter-pressing, and the poet was there, and several other poets, and we decided to pool resources, fix dinner and celebrate. We had enough money for either booze or food and went with the booze. Then all walked down to where Quivet Creek flows into Cape Cod Bay. In an hour we'd collected mesh bags full of muscles, clams of every sort, and at Enslin's command, a large bag of periwinkles, quite small sea snails; in size, from the last joint of my little finger, to the last joint of my pointing finger. A gallon of Gallo white, some chopped scallions, some garlic, a five gallon kettle, the periwinkles on the bottom (raises the level of cooking liquid, your smallest fines on the bottom. We had bread I had baked, the week's supply, ate in the back yard, creating a midden as we worked our way through the pot. Smoking a local hybrid, drinking red dago, dipping bread in the heavenly broth, we got down to the snails and looked at Enslin. He produced, from the pocket of his filthy jeans, some large safety pins, 2 inchers, he liked them, he explained, because when they were open, you had a handle. You grip them on whatever that thing is called where you safety the pin, your thumb and forefinger grip well there and you secure that shaft with the meat of your thumb and the last joint of your first finger. Elementary, Watson, and that allows you to stick the pointed end into the shell, then give a twist. You have a morsel about the size of a pistachio nut, out of the shell, but so good, and you can eat them forever because you exert more energy than calories you take in. We ate half-a-gallon apiece, dipping them mostly in the broth, but over the course of a long evening, you might try some in bbq sauce, or an aioli. Lemon juice and black pepper is a favorite. Even snails that are too impossible to eat you can drink, make a broth. What was I saying earlier, you simply find yourself there. No excuse, you don't need one, merely what is... Read more...

A Nest

Bachelard says someplace, must be " The Poetics Of Space", that a nest is always special. He says that "to read poetry is essentially to daydream." Je suis l'espace ou je suis, I am the space where I am. What is it about a bird's nest that produces such a response? Meaning personified. It's not so much that I think it means something, as it does. Consider your usual workman coming home, loppers over his shoulder, and he finds this construction, perfect in every way, in the middle of his path. He picks it up, who could not, and examines the structure. He's built things before, but nothing like this. Twigs woven with consideration. He'd like to think he could do that, but knows he couldn't. Knowing your limitations is one step. Choosing the proper course another. Proper might not be the correct word, correct might be better. Or necessary. I spent a season with an eagle nest, this was before I gained my fear of heights, and I'd rapel down a shear face to see what the babies were eating. Eagle nests are cess-pools. Shit and small bones. Good to see that someone is messier than me. Fucking eagles, man, they foul their nest. Mom can't wait to be shed of them. Learn to fly, goddamnit, learn to fly. She boots them out, finally. Richard Thomson at his most pissed, he says love is a fantasy. I tend to agree. No one I love knows I love them, it's better that way, better that you'd think I wasn't emotional, somehow removed from that. Of course I'm not. I bleed like anyone else. Blood a fact of life. The Aminah Robinson came down today, which meant getting four of the five large and very heavy crates up from the basement. Too large for the elevator, we had to carry them up through the aisle of the theater. Had a third person, young John from the Cirque but had to wait for a fourth person to lug the last two up; too wide for the aisle they had to be carried at an awkward height over the seats on either side. While we had John we accordion-folded the 60 foot piece of fabric art both ways toward the middle, as instructed. A heavy and delicate piece of work, enlisted Pegi to help us get it centered on a blanket and lifted into its crate. A flurry of activity and we packed the rest of the show, the framed pieces going quickly; then stripped the hanging hardware, mollys and hooks, leaving large holes everywhere and hundreds of smaller holes where nearly 50 feet of velcro, cut into small pieces, had been attached to keep the top of the fabric piece in place. Tomorrow I'll start patch and repair. Extensive. Relocated four turtles on the way home. Exhausted, I stopped at the lake as no one was there, rolled a smoke and drank a beer, watching the spillway, feeling the earth shake beneath my feet. Two geese families expected hand-outs but I had none, retreated to the table top. The goslings are already chicken-sized and cute as buttons, whatever that means. Cute as a button. In that fabric piece of Aminah's there must be 10,000 buttons, dozens of neck-ties, 17 music boxes, a snake skin, several sticks, stuffed toys, folding it was a nightmare. The guy who delivered it, another Brian, who is picking the show up tomorrow, in his off-hand funny manner, said, when we were unloading it, -some shit falls off, just sew it back on-, so we did, Folk Art sucks in its construction. Wasted, all I can do is open a can of soup and make a toasted cheese sandwich, read some light fiction, after, get a drink and roll a smoke, address you. The high point of my day. Attempting sense. Depending on factors I don't understand I make more or less sense. What Wittgenstein calls a game. I've been playing a big one with myself, concerning child support payments, which I've made for 12 or more years, and the end is in February, last payment actually January, and maybe I can buy some socks, finish the back porch. This whole period of time has been close to the bone, in every way I could have imagined. I had only suicides as role models, but I knew I didn't want to die, my problems were more of discomfort, not terminal; a toothache, not a fugue state. The most important thing for me, is to have a nest. I'd rather it be between two perfumed breasts than alone in the wilderness, but here's where I find myself. A slightly fungal smell. Spring. Forget the ticks. Read more...

Rising Damp

Water squirting from wet-weather springs in the road cuts. The driveway grader ditch is scoured clean. Too wet to consider yard work, so I take a slow quiet drive to town, linger in the library, go the pup for a beer and salad. As it's Monday, they don't let me pay for the beer. The annual box turtle migration is in full swing, a bit late this year, according to my records. I take three off Mackletree and put them on the side they seem to be headed toward. I see no pattern in the direction, but I'm not a box turtle. Stopped at the rock cairn, to check nearby additions, and there were a pair of turtles either mating or building a tower. These are Eastern Box Turtles, lovely orange patterns on the upper shell (carapace, I like that word), and slow, as you might expect. Gets its name from the fact that the plastron (lower shell) is hinged in the middle. This allows for very tight closer, "boxes" the critter in for protection. From a flyer the Park Service gives out: "The greatest threat to Ohio's box turtles is the thoughtless driver who makes no attempt to avoid running over them as they lumber across the highway." Read that as actively trying to run over them for that satisfying crunch. After a lot of rain, you see them crossing to higher ground, their holes are full of water. Ricked sycamore outside to dry, then took a walk, down the driveway, clipping away the canopy. Hanging Gardens Of Low Gap Hollow. Walking back to the house there's a rattlesnake stretched across the drive, big as my arm, twice as long, an old female I think, maybe the matriarch, I know there's a nest, a den, whatever they call it for snakes, somewhere nearby, probably the graveyard. Not profiling here, I read something somewhere. I knew I could stamp my feet and the snake would go the other way, pretty sure I believed that, and I wanted to see her more closely. Put myself at some risk and moved forward a few feet. I'm afraid of snakes, they give me the vapors, I'm certainly not going to measure it and weight it and send it on its way, but it seems to be enjoying the sun and not an immediate threat, so I moved closer. A beautiful creature, the scales, the color, that yellow goes so well with the black. I finally stamped my feet because I wanted to get home, and it worked perfectly, the snake disappeared and I walked home.You want to know the truth, I think you're full of shit, the world is not that hard to understand. A noun-verb thing. Hey. I thought you'd be free. What? Did I say something wrong? Have you identified me yet, the aging hippy that appears in the last frame. I thought you knew that. Here's a quarter, how might you flip it. It's always Patsy Cline on the radio. Hey. For instance. Read more...

More Rain

Power back on, the very leaves are saturated, so very green. Outdoor work to do, but by the time I clean up and get another huge breakfast, power is off and it's raining lightly, mid-afternoon a major thunder cell slams the ridge. Nice set of funny phone calls, Glenn, catching up, then a silly conversation with Mom, who's feeling well enough to laugh. Full rainwater bath, a little soap going a long way, the water so soft; finally wash my hair and discover an engorged tick, great, living in West Nile Township and all. Doing some editing, but have to shut down when the lightening starts and then the power goes, so I read for several hours, sitting on the floor with a cushion, and my back against a patio door to catch enough light not to strain my eyes. Thought about the Post Office for a long time today, how they've put their gloss on geography. Their grid, that they overlay, has little to do with anything other than roads. I'm a Blue Creek mailing address, but that isn't really a town and it's in the next county over. The shore is a river community, both sides, they got their mail by packet, everyone over the ridge-lines on both sides, got news from the interior, then, a much slower method of transport, a wagon and a couple of old horses. A canting Amish horse pulling a carriage might make 4 miles an hour, the Ohio often flows at 4 knots, a pair of old mules pulling a wagon might make 2 mph. I remember a trip to Missip when I was maybe 10 or 12, cousin Wanda was hot, and her brother Kenny was Daniel Boone, and we took the wagon, pulled by two plowing mules, down to get the mail and pick up some groceries. At some point I said I could walk faster than the mules were pulling us, and he said, yeah, but we weren't walking. I understood then, the way things would play out, the carrot and the stick. How I would always choose crazy women, because I prefer them, to anything normal. I have a history, some things you don't want to know. Read more...

Nothing Everywhere

Thinking about Beckett, Brandy mentioned a pair of boots. Exactly. Maybe a cajun beat, a squeeze-box, a sound I wasn't familiar with, but immediately recognized. Life is like that. Always what you don't expect. When you get to Utah turn left and stop at the natural bridges. A bridge is where an arch spans water, otherwise it's merely an arch, where wind might hollow an opening. Nothing makes any sense, really, on close examination. Sara jokes that I keep magnifying glasses everywhere, but they do little good, other than magnifying. Making letters legible is helpful but everything else is fractal. Consider the pollen swirling on Roosevelt Lake. It almost means something. A spiral that centers on the spillway. I watch the way a duck carves a V across the surface, it's interesting, the way meaning is carved, the way definition becomes water over the bridge. Homage to memories lost. Atmospheric, something you smelled but couldn't quite place. Lil Kim says it all. Servitude is the issue, perceived or otherwise. Nothing means anything, a zero you use with abandon, I understand. Read more...

Black Holes

I need a fall-back position, where I just thrash on the floor and complain, indulge my weaker side: if you think about it, you know what I mean. We all do this all the time, toss and turn, seeking a way to sleep through the night. Nothing means anything, really, you're on your own. I'd like to wash my hair, but these bat scabs preclude. Fact of life, what you can and can not do. Not sleep, for starters, get up and cook a huge breakfast that includes foods from every group, involving bacon and several things fried in the remaining bacon fat. No remorse, a second double espresso. No eminent threat of rain and I realize I must go to the museum and get the sculptural pieces from the Wrack Show out of the kitchen because they're blocking the loading door and the Aminah Show comes down Tuesday and needs to out-load through that door. Sara is staff today and we cross paths. I'm struck with how we both not only love the museum but consider it a second home. This is the best job I've ever had, dealing with art, handling things, installing shows. Actually, I've really enjoyed most of the things I've done, the Opera Company Of Boston, building houses, fabricating stairs, constructing world-class showers, binding books, making paper, the list goes on forever. But I'm loading the truck with these pieces and their pedestals and realize it's a lot of stuff. When I get home it takes up the whole house. Sculpture everywhere and nary a drop to drink, I'll be living with broken toes. It's not that I kick them on purpose, I just run into them in the night. This why moving furniture is a bad idea, you get up in the night, you think you know where things are. There was a course at Janitor College, Dustpan 204, I remember the professor clearly, T. Weldon Quiggly, the best person I've ever known with a grinder; he sharpened his chisels with a belt-sander and they were really sharp, I was young and easily impressed. Like sailing a Catboat, I guess, you get used to doing things a certain way. Expect guests to know more than they do. With the Hubble we're getting closer to the beginning, be good to know where we started. Might make things a little more clear, clearer, you might say, more transparent. But, but. A Molly Bloom moment, I bang away, an excruciating moment when the splinted toe meets an immovable stump. Believe what you will. Real pain is an altered state, nothing prepares you. That jammed finger you got playing baseball will be with you the rest of your life. Like the smell of your grandfather's hat. I'm not advising anything, just commenting. That rock I see in the road. House bats are rarely rabid. Hold onto that. The future. Usually not. What you thought you were you were hearing. Might be Bach, the cello suites, making sense. Read more...

Mohs Scale

Indication of hardness, talc is 1 and diamond is 10. Perfect cleavage is the property of a mineral to break only in a certain direction. A faulkner was a falconer, I never knew that, a duffer was a peddler, and a hacker was a maker of hoes. If it rains tomorrow I'll be reading glossaries all day. The bat scabs are beginning to erode and I talked with several people about rabies. None in the county for years except in possums and occasionally raccoons. Not a single case at the local medical center for over a decade. Good enough odds. I splinted the toe with a pop-sickle stick and tape, much less pain. If you walk flat-footed, rather than heel-and-toe, it doesn't hurt as much. Notice the way you use your big toe when walking normally. Watched a bank employee, a lovely lady, walk by in high-heels. She did it well, but it is not a normal walk, attractive, but not normal. Talking about job-description several times today, mine, for most of my life, has been --- As Needed ---. If I flush the toilet once a day at work I increase my personal water use by almost 60%. The urinal uses just 2 quarts so one flush would be only 10% increase, but I don't like these numbers and consider taking a five gallon bucket and a pail of sawdust to the museum, hiding them in a corner of the basement, doing my necessary there, bringing it home and composting it. Doesn't seem like a radical idea to me. In the "Stories Told In Stone" book, one of the glossaries, a Colporteur was a peddler of books. One of my best puns, a Cole Porter riff, based on that word several years ago and then I see the word again, updated from medieval monks to the 18th century, and I think, wow, I'm on sort of a slow-breaking wave here, the way language changes, meaning morphs, and punctuation tries to keep pace with the times. I'm all the way up to 1758, a duffer: "A Colporteur with a motley assortment of classics, we sent him packing..." from the diaries of Hermione Datson. I buy old diaries at junk shops, I've got some great ones: "Hired on to set rails, 15 cents an hour..."sold a week's butter for four dollars, bought meal and sugar..." I love this stuff, it pulls me even closer to the natural world. The driveway, with all this rain, has become a tunnel. I keep the loppers in the truck, and a rock to put under the rear tire, because sometimes I have to stop and clear a passage, so I can drive through. The forest has become a jungle. The crows parrots. That's a closely parsed sentence. I have to look at it twice myself. What I think I mean. Shit happens, things change. The way I'm looking is not the way they'll come out being, is that a problem for you, that I freely admitted I was wrong? I know I'm often wrong, I have decades of evidence. I'm wrong most of the time, but I'm occasionally correct, and that's enough, you know, to keep on keeping on. You might question my motive, but I'd kick you in the nuts and run away. I don't want to fight, I just want peace and quiet. I'm only up to 1758, cut me some slack. Read more...

Scrivener's Palsy

A day of odd reading material. Could tell from the moment we went in the pub for lunch that Jim had something planned, our places were set at the bar, and as we assumed them he slapped down a copy of a glossy mag for each of us. First issue of The Garage Slab. A magazine about garages. Funny, but not a joke, an actual magazine. Articles about interesting garages, a pin-up, recipes, lots of photos. Then, later, giving Bev a break at the reception desk, she hands me a couple of things for Pegi, one of which is a large format paperback "Stories Told In Stone" which is a study in cemetery iconology and includes several interesting glossaries: Historic Diseases (old names for things and what they actually were); the heraldry of tombstones; gravestone elements and cemetery vocabulary. More later. Damaged myself last night. Asleep on the sofa, in bat fear and loathing, plus it was much cooler downstairs. Woke up to pee, still dark, forgot where I was, I had been drinking, yes, but that was hours before, and slammed my left foot into the carpenter's chest I use as a book support in front of the sofa. HARD. Broke great toe, splint it with tape, go back to bed. Hurts this morning, then worse throughout the day. I don't leave work though, I would have, but D and Sara were being very funny and I got caught up in it, finally being funny myself, despite the fact that the toe was burning in a kind of fevered pain in my shoe. I walk a lot in my job, 10 miles a day probably, need to get one of those things that keeps track, or maybe not, could be too much information. I know I won't stand and cook, so I stop at the Dairy Bar get a footer and jalapeno poppers. Reread an Elmore Leonard at the island. He does dialog very well. Thunder in the distance, so I Send Later this, then get right back. I don't think this cell is going to strike here. Sounds off to the north. No lightning, just a gentle rumble of thunder. Very nice sound, and it stops all the bug noise for a few seconds, so a sequence developes: bug noise, slow thunder, silence, bug noise. The timing is completely irregular and the thunder varies in its sound. I have these sanguineous crusts (scabs to you, but I have the glossary in front of me) on my head where the bat feasted and I wonder what are the early symptoms of rabies. I've got these bat wounds and a broken toe, I feel old and in the way. Shuffle over and get a drink. The wind picks up, and a whippoorwill. Rain, but only the edge of this, I think. Power out for most of the day, every day this week, my digital clock informs me. Must be the edge, because this rain is light, the whippoorwill and bugs maintain their chorus; I imagine them, getting wet, figuring what the fuck, might as well keep on doing what they normally do. Maybe they get under leaves or something, have little feathered parasols they pull out when they know we're not looking. Finally take some aspirin and go shoeless, flex it enough to know it's not broken, just badly contused, and I am not much worried by gangrene but the rabies still bothers me. Develops beyond my control. These anxiety attacks. Suddenly I can't stand on a high ladder or fly. I can't. I'm thirsty, I could be coming down with rabies. But maybe I'm just thirsty, get a drink, smile.

Tom

I heard the crows,
they were offbeat
and raucous.
Read more...

All Lies

Reading Harrison on strippers I'm reminded of a time Mom was sewing costumes for the girls. I'd come for a visit and it was clear she was losing her sight, could no longer drive, I was taking her from club to club, where she was dropping off Holiday outfits in red leather. We'd laughed until we cried about how profitable making costumes for strippers was. Mom and I share a sense of humor, she jokes to get me out of a funk, and I joke to make her forget her failing body. Beyond a certain point, we all know we're dying, make the best of an awkward situation. We were making the rounds on the west side of Jacksonville, where the Navel Air Station is the dominate force. There was a stripper she wanted me to meet, Wanda, married, with a kid, drop dead beautiful, leaning toward a drug problem, thought I might intervene. I'd just done some major opera, with some major star, and I find myself backstage at a strip club. Yes, yes, I can do this. The bartender knows I am my mother's son and gets me a beer, Wanda brushes herself against me and we all examine the current situation. I've been asked to see if this outfit works correctly. She strips for me. Mom is watching, to see that the costume breaks away correctly and I'm transfixed on a more than perfect set of breasts. I'm nothing if not honest. I forgot where I was. Nothing prepares you for the fact that your mother makes costumes for strippers. Not just that she's making good money but you're backstage looking at these perfect bodies, frankly more than I can bear. Yes, no, maybe so. I'm just a product of what came before. The downbeat always falls in the same place. Does that mean something? I don't know. Maybe. What we thought we meant. If I view you as a field and myself as a pointer, I could get there, someplace in the middle of nowhere. I mean that, where I think we need to go. The natural world.
Read more...

Canned Laughter

"Beauty is beauty even when it is irritating and stimulating not only when it is accepted and classic." Gertrude Stein. How often we are misjudged on the basis of what we never were. I don't care where I haven't been, it's mostly the same. Cut off your nose to spite your face, go around your finger to get to your thumb kind of thing. Pot calling the kettle black. Work on the budget with Pegi and D, then discuss approaches to some stimulus grant money with Sara. More hard rains. Finally get to some cleaning, simple by comparison with balancing budgets in an imagined future. Stop at the lake to experience the spillway. Turkey Creel in spate, 10 inches of napp over the spillway, a standing wave at the bottom, the ground shaking, noise so loud I couldn't hear myself think. The water's too warm for trout here, but they stock them anyway, stupid farm-raised Rainbows dumber than rocks; most of them get caught right away, they're used to being fed, but I watched several get washed over the top, flashing in late afternoon broken sun. More rain coming, but the fractured light is a lovely thing, the way just small sections of real estate are lit, intermittent illumination, the best we can hope for, really, under any circumstances. A clear sky hardly guarantees nirvana. The fugal state a writer, or any artist, might achieve isn't predictable in terms of weather conditions, though they might factor as part. I've thought about this, because I go fugal, at times, forget where I am, or why. Exist in the middle distance. Thinking about water use, I'm, frankly pissed: when I work full-time (I love my job, best job I ever had, and I've had some really interesting jobs) I use more water. I have to stay cleaner, so as not to offend, and I use the goddamn toilet and urinal. There are no bushes to pee in. It's town, you have to act civilized. I shit when I have to, and when I work full time, it would fall (I've kept a record, I'm very conscious of my water use) twice a week, and we've got those old monster toilets that use five gallons, so that adds over 500 gallons to my yearly water use. Year before last was my best year, less than a thousand gallons, for the year, try that. Water is the next oil. We've so fucked our nest. This water-shit problem bothers me. Shitting in water is probably the dumbest thing ever considered. If we collected our shit, compost it, spread it on the fields of alfalfa, we wouldn't be considering hauling ice-bergs from the North Atlantic, that grand mid-west aquifer would still be available. We're greedy bastards, we see it, we know we should act different, but you wave money in front of us, we follow. Two things: money is always a false value, and you need to leave the room as soon as possible. I'm good at the balancing act and it's difficult for me. I don't know how anyone else survives. I keep notes, I put them in boxes, we'll make sense of this later, but the actual spread of this, in front of me, as the nature of reality, I'm not so sure. I accept some of it, other parts I reject completely. I'm guilty of very little, my position, I might hold Little Round Top against a spirited charge, but that doesn't mean anything other than I hold high ground. If you only held a Gattling Gun you could sweep this field into a different posture, everyone prone and dead, but all you have are words, and I wonder where you'll go with that. Listen, a brunette goes into a bar. Read more...

The Vagaries

D is back and had to admit we'd done well without him. Catch up on odd jobs. Vacation jabber. He's sunburned and we're all very sympathetic. I'm mostly interested in what they ate. Somehow I'm drafted into the budget talks, look at the numbers for the first time and there isn't much fat. I see some things that I wonder about, conference tomorrow, I'll add my two cents worth. Interesting that the arts are immediately threatened by any downturn. We know the arts are important, but we're willing to sacrifice them, as a culture, not me, you, but the great voting mass. Is that half-moon on the outhouse just a rounded ass viewed from the side? Would make certain kind of sense, and that's often more than enough. I'm perplexed by control freaks, I live to not know exactly what's happening. I know most people want a sharper line, but I don't. I like being surprised. The natural world is the perfect place to be, because she so often changes her mind and we're forced to go along. An experience last night I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, a bat tangled in my hair, fucking screamed like a teen-age girl, but the damage was done, I'm either rabid or not. Several people I'd like to bite. If I am, you know, diseased. Pass it along. I can be ugly when called on, give me room to sling my mop. I need a cabin in the UP, I'd rather be cold. Read more...

What?

What are they doing? What are they doing anyway? Wish I could play the guitar. Anything to make a noise. Never happened, I'm out the door. Hot Tuna, fish in the sea. Hesitation Blues. Let's talk it over one more time. Please don't go. One more time. It's Cassidy on the base. Oscillation Blues. As long as I'm in this world. I doubt everything, my nature. Pretty sure this area is burned, it's mostly black. The ash lays like a blanket. I lost a beautiful page I was building like a brick wall. Out of nowhere, the sky was a uniform white, everything else was green. Power is out for hours, all I can do is read. Finally quickly open the fridge door and get a few cubes, for an early drink, roll a smoke, toke and watch the world outside my windows. Read myself, make a few changes, realize the word logorrhea contains my younger daughter's name, conceive a sign:

NO
LOGORRHEA
HERE

I have resources, with a phone I could build a bridge, it's straight engineering, right? I could carry that load. I know the dance. You don't want to take responsibility, I can see it in your eyes. Not my kid, no way. We joke, then I break your nose. I can't not, it was so prominent. I forget your Boston ways. Hey, I'm actually your friend. The power is out for hours. I eat a cold can of beans. Thunder shakes the house, lightning strikes the opposite ridge, a blast that blinds me and starts a fire that is put out immediately by torrential rains. Nothing like severe weather to take you out of yourself. At the laundromat yesterday, all the people were ugly and fat, some of the women, in particular, had body parts that I couldn't identify; with the men it was mostly extended bellies but some of the women had vast reaches I'd never seen before, areas to the side that had blossomed into confirmed existence. Thighs that weighed more than me. I felt puny, string bean, wished I could gain weight, but I worry too much and skip meals to write.The moon breaks through some clouds, a lovely thing, like one of those black paper cut-outs, sharply defined leaves from what I know is a poplar tree and an opening in the overcast. All day the sky was white, illuminated from above, evenly bright and strange. The green was so intense that several times I cried. We were never meant to experience this color. There's the usual shit, red, blue, green; then this violent explosion. Purple. I was shocked. I didn't know that color existed. Realign my color chart. I don't need to write when the power goes out, I just need to remember. What I thought I saw. Read more...

Beady Eyes

Cynical beady eyes. If I had any sense I'd be hung over but I decide to get another load of firewood, do the laundry. Firewood first, physical work, get the juices flowing, 16 ounces of carrot juice. The produce guy at Kroger puts remaindered Bolthouse juices aside for me, he knows I'll drink anything. Big Lots, while the clothes are in the wash, stewed tomatoes, tamales, enchilada sauce, I rarely pay full price for anything, and these canned tamales, as John Thorne promised, are not bad. The wood pile groweth, the lord knoweth. Also, more socks, a couple of tee-shirts (seconds) and a couple of candles toward next winter's power loss. I love Big Lots, I get a big jar of pickled sliced jalapenos for 80 cents, pinto beans are 49 cents. I cook beans all the time, but it's nice to have a few cans on hand. La Rochefoucauld said "We commit the sins of our youth to have to meditate on in our old age." I'm still going, actually, as it was still dark, I had a final drink when the birds and bats got me up this morning. An old tradition, in the Hebrides a morning dram is called a skalk. I had nowhere to be, it wasn't like I was letting someone down. It seemed right at the time, I wrote a scant paragraph and remember feeling foolishly happy. I love that image of awaiting serve, naked. It was the crows at the cairn with their beady eyes, I had stopped again because there were more homages, minor rock piles, it's becoming an event, as it should, this is a work of transcendent beauty. It needs to be documented, I want Sara to see it. Ephemeral art is so difficult, certain things only exist for a few minutes. The veils of ice that might fall from a power line explode in seconds, if you're not paying attention everything passes you by. Road side bombs. They killed our best. Read more...

I'm Cool

First it was a Whip-poor-will. I'd flung the bedroom windows wide open for the cool early June air and this fucker flew into the red maple I'm tending as a specimen tree just outside. A young bird, testing his song, sounding awful; I shouted him away in the dark. Then that off-beat flutter that can only mean a bat and I grab my tennis racket, flip on the light, standing next to the bed, in my all-together. I look like someone awaiting a serve, but I'm naked and slightly drunk. The bat, sensing murderous intent, slips through a gap where I haven't trimmed. This is the way we start a day, so early in the morning. Briefly entertain the notion of a bunker, anything to get some sleep, but the natural world always wins. I need open windows, the smell and sound of what actually happens. Nothing makes any sense but certain scents calm me. I like the smell of old books, cardboard, sawdust, they anchor me. The rock cairn establishes order in a field of total disorder. What Goldsworthy does. Like a dream come true. How could broken rocks mean anything? What is meaning? My favorite smells activate memory in ways I can't control. I can be simply adding a anchovy fillet to a stir-fry and I'm suddenly in the boat, fly-fishing with my father, forty years ago. As real as can be. Crouched with my racket, I remember the first time I beat my coach. I'm on this, like ugly on a stick, but I still don't know what it means. Being able to do something is one thing, understanding what it means is another. You and your reality is one thing, mine is another. Read more...

Lacunae

Aristophanes: "Whirl is king." Stopped at the cairn, up close it is an amazing piece of work. Others have added adjacent things, nothing to the piece itself which would be a sacrilege, but upright stones in a kind of homage. Living on the East coast 35 years, one would occasionally encounter a truly incredible sand-castle. Just north of St. Augustine Florida, where the sand is a natural building material of great permanence, cochina, tiny shells, from just visible to maybe a quarter inch, the oldest town in America is built of it AND still stands, there would appear magnificent structures, above the usual tides, that must have involved entire design classes on vacation and resulted in a dozen of the worst sunburns on record. The nude beach at West Tisbury, on the Vineyard, was famous for impossible rock piles that could only be conceived by ingesting certain esoteric drugs from the rain forest. On Cape Cod, there was a place down Crow Pasture, a peninsula poking into the bay, where some of us built an ephemeral model of the Coliseum. But this rock pile is special, employing as it does two very strong elements, a sense of beauty and form, with a deep knowledge of how the load is carried. Artist and engineer. Tatlin. I knew there was an antique car show somewhere in Portsmouth today, and that there would be street closings, but I had to do my laundry, sockless in Gaza. Stopped at the library, but then all access to my Laundromat was blocked. Fuck a bunch of antique cars, it's a pain in the ass is what it is. Get a footer and some jalapeno poppers at the Dairy Bar and scoot right back home, unload another batch of firewood, 5, 6, I forget; figure I need 12 or 13 loads to survive next winter. Wood to burn is a defining characteristic of my life. I'm all over this, I don't want to worry, if I have the flu next winter, that I can't stay warm. Means I need a back-porch roof and ricks of drying hardwood out of the weather. I can still do that. Arrange some things. I remember you mentioned what we had talked about that had been forgotten. The nuance, thought about that and dismissed a great many things that might be remembered. We go back years, in this process, what I thought you meant.

Lacunae, what I thought I meant. Read more...

Rock Cairn

A lovely thing someone built, a budding Goldsworthy, in Mackletree Creek. Beautiful cairn of those peculiar flat stones found in profusion there, hundreds and hundreds of them. Most of the stones are hand-sized, about an inch thick, and the tapering pile is at least four feet high, three feet square at the base. I'll stop tomorrow on my laundry run and admire it more closely. Serious stackage. Brutal day at the museum, had to clean the basement hallway, which serves as backstage for the theater. Cementitious-dirt removal. I don't know exactly what it was or where it came from, but when the recently flooded basement dried there was a deposit of what seemed like, and I examined it closely, mostly sand with some organic matter. On my knees with a magnifying glass and flashlight, too often where I find myself (the other night I found myself in that position, examining the Raven "Landforms And Drainage" map of the United States, looking at the fractal edges of coastline) and this stuff was weird. It had consolidated and was impervious to the broom. Known facts: it was rainwater, had come in from outside, through brick walls, probably in contact with plaster at some point. It could have picked up some lime, maybe, maybe some clay, coming through the bricks, idle speculation as I consider the mess. I end up scraping it up, on my knees, with a plastic three-inch putty knife, so as not to remove the paint D and I finally got to stick, then mopping three times, the last time with a strong bleach mix to try and kill the sewer smell. Another dead mop-head. I was all in at four o'clock in the afternoon and Pegi grabbed me to get the cordless microphone operational for the talent tonight. For one thing, nothing needs to be amplified in our theater ever, I hate amplification, generally, except for rock and roll, because of the distortion; and the other thing is I know squat about electronics, have no idea how to hook up a cordless lavilier. But we get it done. Pegi is effusive, for my efforts calming her anxiety. Two of her hottest young girls do a cheer for me and I'm embarrassed. I want to stay under the radar. I don't want the attention. You fuck someone, eventually you have to talk, that's where my problem kicks in. I think about things, sometimes I get distracted. Occupational hazard. Later the clouds move off, and the sky is clear, a blue we all accept, dark, with streaks of purple. Once in a while you actually catch a fish, not just an iconic image. Good to know. Read more...

Twisted Logic

If I understand correctly, none of you have been getting me, because D's mailbox is full, and the AOL rule is everyone or no one. I have copies, because I print before I send. I've deleted D, still on vacation; his mail, I imagine, piled to the rafters. Finished the ceramics show, labels, signage, and finally the bonnets, with nary a hitch. John from Pegi's Cirque, was a good hand, young, strong, and not well enough versed in what we were doing to be anxious. Pegi and Heather spotted us on the last bonnet, a close fit and no room to move. Heather noticed I was sweating, and I told her I had been sweating that last bonnet for three days. Forgot to take the Shrimp Fried Rice in for the staff. Tomorrow. Meant to haul another load of firewood, but rain threatening so I beat a path home. My arms are scarred like either a heroin addict or someone who foolishly totes firewood in a tee-shirt. I throw an old sweatshirt in the truck to use when loading, I heal more slowly now, must protect my forearms. Impressive piles of firewood, maybe a third of what I need, but just four day's work, and I see what's possible; Sara's birthday and I put together a few things, to give her tomorrow, her daughter Liza calls, and it's all I can do to not rip the phone out of her hand and talk to Liza myself, I love this lady, I think we think in similar ways. I'm so glad to be shed of the museum, doing a show without D, paranoid and anxious, to just get home without breaking something. I refuse to handle pottery after four-o-clock, I don't trust myself. Life, the universe, all that. At a certain point you start dropping things. Vowels, for example, or maybe consonants, a lyric line. Power out, lose a few lines, read by candle-light. Can't Send. Troll day at the museum, cleaning the basement and tool-room, more rain. Power comes on just as I open the door. Two remaindered books await in my rural box, a Jim Harrison memoir, and a John Thorne food book. Two of my favorite writers. Reheat some fried rice and start them both simultaneously, switch between bites. Interesting, in the last week I've talked seriously with two board members and dozens of times with Sara, talking policy, budgets, shows, morale. Had the thought today, thinking about rigging, ropes and pulleys AND the more sophisticated stuff required by the Cirque, hoops and rings and trapeze; Pegi and her Number Two, the other Trish, were unrolling bolts of colorful cloth, a thin but strong synthetic, that when bunched, could carry a flying person, cutting lengths in the main gallery because the space was large enough, a fucking sail-loft, really, looked at that way. It was a lovely sight. Spinnakers. I was in Ted Hood's sail-loft, north of Boston, one time, talking with someone about Olson and it was electric, the precision and strength of 12 meter sails is very like a poem. You don't want to fail under load. Several things struck my fancy, is that I feel more and more like a Danforth anchor for the museum, the next couple of years, Sara backing off and D going away to college half-time. I need to do more things, work harder and I wonder if I can, immediately know I not only can but will, I love my job, I love the museum, despite the fact that they've pulled me from my comfortable niche as merely janitor. My plan was to work half-time and collect Social Security, I didn't mean to get involved. But I am. It's a great place to be. I've never been a good employee because I tend to wander off, look at something through a magnifying glass and take it apart with sharpened tools. Sara understands me closer than most, cuts me some slack (you think you know slack? I'll show you slack, you never knew slack. Monty Python) and we get on with running a museum. The second encounter with a board member I was eating a half-salad with a scoop of tuna with my fingers, dipping everything in blue-cheese dressing. It was awkward but I tried to act adult. We discuss how the museum is doing, how it will do with D only half-time. Another heavy storm, lose a few more lines, can't Send. Read John Thorne by oil-lamp and candle, such a fine writer. Rains all day. Meet with the Damned Brit to figure scenery for "Wind In The Willows", janitor stuff in the afternoon, drive home in the wet and dripping world. Every green in the book. A can of pretty good Mexican soup, the ethnic aisle at Kroger, Throne has some recipes, note to get some tripe and posole. Odd traffic situation where 125 turns off Route 52, couldn't go any further on 52, fire truck, flares, no accident, but I can turn on 125 and then when I get to Mackletree, there is traffic coming out. Many times, I'll drive the length of Mackletree and never pass another vehicle, at the most one or two, probably pick-ups, but I pass twenty-five vehicles, most of them cars, none of them familiar this afternoon. Something is being done or an accident on Route 52 between Stout, which is no longer a town or even exists except as an intersection between a small road and one even smaller, and Friendship, which does exist, because there's a Post Office. I find detours interesting because you're not going the way you knew or thought you might. A monkey-wrench. But if you don't let delay interfere with observation it's probably a good thing, you see a new creek, a new rock formation, maybe veer and clip a young turkey with your right front fender and settle the matter of what you'll be eating for the next several days. A pheasant or a young turkey I just skin and don't bother plucking, I can buy some cheap chicken thighs for the skin, and plucking is a pain in the ass; then bard it with bacon and cook in my Little Chief electric smoker. I'd feel guilty about this, using electricity to cook, but I don't have running water and compost almost everything, my footprint is smaller than my shoe size. That should be the goal. Walk lightly on the world. I'm a romantic, actually, a kind of bent romantic that might be viewed as a cynic, but in the long run, it's essentially romantic to hold any hope at all. There's a pattern I see, where I don't want to talk about something, but I end up talking about it anyway. I can't not mention what engages me, if I'm to be honest with you. What Thoreau was writing in his journals, the last third, he had found his voice, was speaking directly. No mediation. Where Oppen writes from. Harrison is a very good poet because he accepts nothing, excludes almost everything. All you can do is read the line, try and figure what was meant. Read more...

Crows Again

Three crows above the outhouse, squawking, then another skein of geese, perfect formation, come very low over the ridge. Don't know how anyone could ever have thought they were born of barnacles. A brindle pup walking on the logging road spooks a lovely brown thrush into the tree right in front of me. Too much excitement before breakfast. Irregular queing at the library check-out, I think I'm next, but a person off to the side says he is. The check-out person looks at him and says -how could you be next, you're not even in line- -hear, hear- I say -there are rules of engagement- The reference librarian chuckles. I let him go first. How can you not understand the principle of a line? Lunch at the pub and everyone there shocked to see me on a Monday. Jim disappears then reappears with a sign saying "Tom And Topless Women Drink Free" but I postpone the free beer until after three hours at the museum, handling all the pots again and setting labels. Lights and bonnets tomorrow. The pub is hopping, I get ice for a harried bar-maid, and talk recipes with one of the new partners. Thinking about another country pate, frozen domestic rabbit at Kroger; love the combination of rabbit, fowl (wish I had a brace of woodcock or a guinea hen), and mushrooms; herb it up a bit more than last time, chardonnay instead of chicken stock. Organic Celery hearts on sale, a buck for a package, and I bought one for the shrimp fried rice I planned to make for the staff. Eating them filled with peanut butter while I putter about, making the dish, and forget to include them, end up cooking some separately and folding it in after the fact. Sliced four heart stalks and cooked them in butter, didn't know, hadn't thought, that one could caramelize celery, or would want to, but it's very good with pan juice, salt and pepper. Never thought of celery as a vegetable, always thought of it as a vehicle for peanut butter or something you chopped to add crunch to a soup. I have to do a second batch. Cut a head of hearts into thirds (three inches) then take off the threads with the wonderful peeler Linda gave me, from the Minnesota State Fair. Three tablespoons of butter, a little salt and a lot of fresh-ground black pepper, cooked over medium low until they slightly brown, 40 minutes, don't cheat, this process takes time. I read a book, stir occasionally. If you fried these, then stuffed them with goat cheese, ran them under the broiler, they'd be killer; I just eat them with pan drippings and they're fantastic. Celery, who knew. Fuck, I thought we were talking about onions, or crows; I'm repeatably struck with the notion that what happens in the natural world is somehow real. Consider that trillium, I never would have seen it, if the crows hadn't called my attention. Silence is the great equalizer. If you can just be quiet, long enough. Read more...

More Wood

Three loads in three days, excellent, and today's is red oak, deep winter wood. Need to spend a couple of hours at the museum tomorrow, so another load. Town birds are different than country birds. The Kroger parking lot birds are completely fearless and are grown stupid. On the way back home a bitch dog in heat and there's a snarling jumble of males blocking Mackletree. They won't move, even as I nudge them with the truck, and I have to wait until they move their orgy into the grader ditch. Spring. Almost always cut down dead trees, not used to lifting and carrying green wood, especially not when the sap is up, probably lose 50% of their weight in drying, sometimes more than a gallon of liquid in a cubic foot of hard wood, cut this time of year. Use a muscle group I haven't used in a few months, sore shoulders. Some red maple base cuts at the dump sight, one of them, I calculate, weighs nearly a thousand pounds, and it's only four feet long. I covet it. Maybe I can split it there, maple splits nicely but base cuts are notoriously difficult in any species. Make a good sculpture blank. There's a boat winch at the museum, so if I built in a stayed and welded winching post just behind the cab of the truck, and had a ramp and some rollers, I could harvest these large pieces that generally go begging, because they are too big to move, for the usual two guys in a pickup truck. There's a nice breeze, the leaves are still limber, the green is close around my house and everything dances. I keep a young maple outside my writing window, as wind-sock and barometer. One thing is as good as another. You can barely light your way, with, dissipating to nothing, the lights we have, a hallway that goes on forever. Like a dream. Sunday talk with Mom, we laugh about my failures and share a few recipes. She's in pain and Dad can hardly move, but we can still joke about almost everything. Dad remembers a fishing trip when the big one got away. I know the trip he means, I miss-played a large bass and ended up with nothing but a back-lash. When I get off the phone, I think I've mostly failed. A few things I've gotten right, but generally not. Life is mostly a history of failures. Stress failure analysis. You learn from your mistakes, and if you don't die outright, you fix breakfast and get on with the day. I'm almost completely pole-axed but still welcome tomorrow as a new day. I feel I should be depressed, but I'm not, I welcome the challenge. Fuck a bunch of failures, I still might get something right. A fleeting thing. Whatever. Sure, more wood is a positive thing, next winter, the row you hoe. Listen, I've given up on almost everything but I still engage the natural world, those crows seem to say something.
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