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.