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.