Detritus

Bubble wrap is the easy answer. You can see where rumors are started. I once had a relationship fail because I didn't eat fried eggs correctly. You can imagine how those chips fell. I have no interest, but I watch. I consider myself almost normal. I know I'm not, I have ample evidence. Listen, nothing is what it seems, consider the road-side chicory, an impossible blue, what we really know is almost nothing, but yet, there it is. At what I think of as the wood depot, actually a place they allow brush and trees to be dumped for grinding into mulch, I get a load of red maple, then another today, pre-cuts, five inch rounds thirty inches in diameter, maybe eighty pounds green, but sliced so thin, so much exposed surface area, they'll be dry in no time. Excellent firewood, hot and little ash. Another load tomorrow. I might be working on next year's wood. This system is panning out, letting Asplunt do the heavy lifting. Factoid, further research into Pacific settlement, in the 15th century Chinese ships were the largest in the world, 300 feet LOA with up to 9 masts. I try and picture the rigging but it is beyond my powers. These ships were in the Pacific NW before Columbus, maybe way before. At the museum the basement has flooded again, the toilet clogged with shit and paper which has overflowed into a fetid tangle and I employ the Darren Technique to get things working, spend several hours mopping, bleach everything. There was a class at Janitor College, "The American Female And Public Rest-Rooms" which, at the time, seemed sexist, but now I know to be true, god, what a mess. I have a plan for the slumber party, a menu, a schedule, I can't feed six or eight people without a plan. Even the path to the outhouse is overgrown and I don't have enough beds, and I've been away, the house is trashed, everything in the fridge is history, and my brain is not working correctly. Love's labor lost. Read more...

Back Home

Strange trip. Oddly peaceful. Alone in a new rental car, plenty of time to think, AC, NPR, back roads, many stops to pull dead animals off the tarmac; stopping at roadside stands for fresh fruit, chatting up the locals, slipping into my southern dialect. Hand-painted signs are a feature of blue highways. "Need Sod?" "Live Bait" "Divorce Parties: 14 Naked Ladies" "Lost Skunk, Reward" and I wonder about that last, if you saw a skunk what were the chances it would be the correct skunk? Loess of the melt-water, hard-scrabble farms, lives of sacrifice. Nothing is inevitable but some things seem pretty certain, you get out if you can, otherwise you stay, bitter, probably, and leaning toward violence. On the way down I stop for lunch at a Mom and Dad place, homemade pie it says on the sign and it certainly is, peach, blackberry, and a lemon chiffon that could start a war, and there's a mild altercation going on when I arrive, two good old boys arguing the ownership of a pig. I buy a round of pie and coffees so I can listen to the dispute. I understand the language, which is helpful, but the argument is bullshit. One of the guys, Orvis, had a sow that birthed one more piglet than she had teats, so he gave the runt to a 4H kid and she raised it into a monster ribbon winner, the ribbon winner went for hundreds of dollars at the fair and the breeder thought he should be in for a share. Nonsense. Mary had raised the pig, she was entitled to the profit. I waded into the conversation, which I almost never do, bought another round, set them straight. I should not be set loose on the world, we view things so differently. I use a lot of water, in motel rooms, hot, from the tap, keeping track, always, I'm compulsive about that, the free flow of information. I merely cooked. I didn't know what anyone was up to. I fixed dinner, sometimes in the middle of the day. I cooked and read, almost a vacation, except for the serious conversations. I don't sleep well, the guest bed in my parent's house is awful, so I move to the sofa. On the way down I stopped at a Motel 6 in Columbia, SC, dined at a BBQ joint that is a converted gas station, great slaw, decent pulled pork, excellent sauce. A stretch of Interstate over to the coast, then Route 17, Sunday, a week ago, down to Jax, stopping often at estuaries, to sample the fried fish, Coosawatchie, Ojeegee, Jerico. Settlements time has forgotten, a few dirty flat-bottom skiffs and the smell of rotting crabs, nice people, simple needs and roughened hands. Arrive, inventory the larder, go to Publix to resupply. Put on a pot of butter beans, fry okra, grill a London Broil. And so it goes, for a week, cooking and talking; Mom is up for several hours a day and we watch reruns of NCIS, plan the next meal, talk end-of-life issues. I cook several meat-loaves for the freezer. They nap a lot and I read on the back screened porch overlooking the lake, where the algae blooms and the occasional perch strikes at a bug on the lily pads, dappling the smooth surface. We're on the flight path for NAS Jax and a carrier arrives from the Persian Gulf. When a Aircraft Carrier makes port they fly all the fighters off the deck and it's quite the show; and every hour, on the hour, a C130 takes off, a load of supplies to Germany for transfer to the wars. I can't wait to get home, where I can't hear what's going on in the world. On the way back I rent a room in Norton, Virginia, shower twice, flip through the channels and watch an old James Bond movie, Sean Connery beating ass, three o'clock in the morning, the middle of nowhere. The American dream. Dense fog in the mountains and I am careful, defensive, avoid anything and everything confrontational, return the rental, undented, retrieve my truck, achieve the ridge. Both the power and my phone are dead, requires a trip back to town for ice, for a drink, and a phone call to the rural electric. Seems I took a lightening strike while I was gone and nothing works. What's new? Can't Send, need another modem (number five for this computer) and my printer (almost new) is dead. Freezer full of food must be tossed, random breakers are tripped, but at least I wasn't robbed again. Picked up some Mace in Florida, and another shotgun. Installed the new modem and my power is back on, but I can't remember a damn thing, a story without semantic content. A second-rate mind. What is it Whitehead said, "There is no idea in all science that can't be grasped by the persistent application of a second-rate mind" something like that. One of those drug ads on TV "I'm still not where I want to be with my symptoms" and I wonder what that means. Life becomes a Beckett play, nothing is inevitable, a mantra I intone, the increments you have to deal with. Back at the museum there is an almost panic about the film premier, the arrangement of tables and chairs, whether or not the correct projector is available, I stay calm and mop the mess from a pottery demo, keep the floor clean and wash your hands before you eat. Panic is from Pan, a dervish mode I avoid whenever possible. There is no arrangement of tables and chairs that I can't set up in an hour, talk to me when you know exactly how many people are going to be there, don't worry until there's something to worry about. The fucking talent is always a problem: Judy Collins required her dressing room floor be covered with freshly laundered towels. Talent is always weird. Wearing the same socks through a hitting streak, crossing yourself before you go on stage, sniffing rotting apples, whatever, I'm not one to laugh, I have my habits, my routines. I understand eccentricities, as they seem to be the basis of my life. Not through design, I never would have imagined that I would live as I do, Sara said something germane, recently, that I seemed to have a system and it seemed to work. I do, it does, but it's an amalgam, not a pure thing, merely the surface; what you see is not necessarily what is. Nutrias have infiltrated the lake behind my parent's house, they've eaten everything, but on the surface the lake looks the same. A book I should write, "Lakes I Have Known", I make a note, but I won't follow up, spend 30 minutes in the ether and come back to firewood. Got a great load of red maple slaps at the wood dump, pre-cuts, I actually chuckle out loud, in some ways, I think, this is too good to be true.

This one is for Linda,
I considered who
I might be writing for. Read more...

Some Trips

Having completed both lists there is no further obstacle to the Florida Death Trip. Unlikely I'll see them both alive again, and I need a break. Cooking for my folks is always fun, Mom watches and we laugh a lot. End of life issues to talk about made easier by the odd fact that for mysterious reasons they've become almost zen at the end. I look forward to it, as a footprint I might follow. Wonderful people, and as I've often said, such a functional family that I was long away from home before I knew there was so much dysfunction in the world. The last couple of days is a haze, do something, consult the list, do the next thing. Final touches on "Wind In The Willows" which opens as I write, clean and stock the bathrooms, get one-night liquor permits for the film opening and whatever the next event, I didn't read the fine print, install an on/off switch on the water cooler (noisy bastard), arrange the rental of a car, go to the library for a couple of books on tape, get a traveler fifth of whiskey so I can have a drink wherever I stop tomorrow night, get some cash at the bank, pay my land taxes. Home, I clean out the fridge and wash containers, pack my laundry basket and ditty bag; I'm ready, I've crossed the t's and dotted the i's. I tell Mom to do nothing, but I know she'll have pot roast waiting, and Texas Toast, and cold slaw. She can't not, even blind and unable to move. When I get back the weeds will be six feet tall and rising. This is, I think, the real world, where things actually happen, shows opening, people dying, wars and such. And I'm amazed we don't just shoot ourselves, as a matter of course. What did Beckett say, "This is the world, but these are my trousers." Read more...

Loose Ends

Ten thousand things to do, but D and I off to Morehead, Ky for the first components of the big circus show Sara is putting together. Dioramas, cute things like TV's, with little figures and spectators. The maker, or his dad, I'm confused, sold their circus (in Australia) when TV became real, thinking live shows were dead. That circus is still the highest grossing traveling group on the continent. First of many pick-ups for this show, and then we'll have to crate it, as it tours two other venues. Then sometime, a year from now, we'll have to return everything. Back at the museum, we unload, and these things are delicate, store them in the vault. D has to leave because of a sick baby at home and I have to clear the back hallway of crap brought in for the next benefit auction. Finally lunch at 3, then normal Thursday janitor stuff, then prep the theater for dress rehearsal of "Wind In The Willows", then ready to go home, dragging ass, when I realize the main gallery has to stay open because the kids use it as a cross-over to get back to the top of the theater, and the back door of the museum is chocked open to allow latecomers and parents to go in and out, which means I have to stay late, because I'm also Security. Focused on getting away Saturday, renting a car, getting to Florida, I think I need a break, so I have two lists, one for my house and one for the museum, and tomorrow to accomplish both. I barely have time to think it might be doable when Pegi informs me that I'm hosting a party for the film crew, her and her assistant, a slumber party, which means dinner and breakfast for five or six plus myself and I don't have that many beds. Sleeping bags, she informs me, and I start thinking about a menu, wondering when I'd have time to cook. If we ate fashionably late I could do ribs, with slaw and bread, call it a meal. I could make a cold cherry soup ahead of time, olives and cheese, Key Lime pie, if I could borrow an oven, nothing is impossible. But no one actually believes the janitor, leaning on his mop, though it might be a key to understanding, because he might be stupid, or at least understand less than we imagine we do. I'm not the brightest bulb in the array, I don't compete; driving back from Morehead, I was just looking around, swells of pasture and outcroppings of limestone. Northern Kentucky is so beautiful, southern Ohio, the hardwood capital of the world, look at these trees and look at my trousers. What did I think I meant? Nothing if not other. Read more...

Priorities

Unsettling call from Dad and I'd better get my ass to Florida. Rent a car with AC. D got a good deal, museum employee, all that, but on my personal credit card, maybe leave Saturday, get back in time to deal with the next round of receptions and openings. In a certain way I'm the brilliantly black sheep in my family, I've always been at a remove, distance wise; they respect my inclinations, but wonder why I'm not physically closer. I get out the atlas and chart a slightly different route. Impending death is another set of logistics. I'll cut through the Marshes Of Glenn, go back in time, perhaps rend the veil, mea culpa. The final expression of love is a wail in the night. I can't go back to sleep, the dreams were haunting me, I read poems, Sidney Lanier, Keats, Skip Fox, dear sweet Emily, they make more sense than anything else. It strikes me that the real sin is omission. I've tried to merely get on with my life, nothing more, I make no claims, and now I feel terrible that I couldn't have been more of something else: the good son, a better father. My excuse was that I couldn't be anything for anyone else if I wasn't honest with myself. Now I wonder. God preserve me from driving into a bridge stanchion. The existential me is vulnerable to every little thing, the slightest missed step, a spot of ice, something misunderstood. I can do this, go to Florida, sort through the shit, take loads to Good Will, address my case to family, but I am essentially a monad, a unit alone, we all are. However connected, we are always alone. Everything is fabrication. The world as we know it, the universe, reality. I hate to leave my house because I'll probably get robbed again, but we do what we have to, as a matter of course. I need a check list, things that need doing by the end of the day Friday, if I were to leave on Saturday. Arrange the rental car, get some decent books on tape for the trip, take 1500 manuscript pages and some valuable books to the vault at the museum, doesn't sound impossible, I can take dirty laundry and wash it there, bring back booze and food for when I arrive home, I think I can. God is in the details, everything is logistics. Glenn said I was writing well, but I don't know, I just write. Reportage. Most things I don't mention, the mom I find attractive, the young girl's ass that is distractive, I think I'm writing poorly, actually, not clear enough, but several of you argue otherwise. Maybe I'm more transparent than I imagine. What I think I mean. The past is subject to reconstruction, a down beat, then a riff on some reed instrument. Read more...

Good Harvest

Dirty laundry, so off to town. Needed to check the degree of mess left at the museum from the wedding reception, stop for a quiet beer at the pub. Delayed because the lake is deserted and I spend some time there, watching ducks, then stop at a newly worked fallow field. Probably planting a cover crop, a legume, to fix nitrogen. The field has been harrowed, not plowed, and I search for arrowheads. Find three, two perfect and one chipped. Three young Mexican guys, early twenties, at there laundromat, and they are all packing clean and folded laundry into suitcases. My suitcase is a laundry basket, really, has been for years, and I finally have to ask: they don't have green cards and stay prepared to run. The wedding mess is extensive but not deep, I grab a handful of mints and leave it until tomorrow. The pub, after one o'clock, is dark, cool, and empty, I get a free Stella and order a small salad, eat at the bar, watching ESPN for the highlights. I'm not a sports person but I appreciate grace wherever I find it. The impossible Willie Mays catch in the outfield is one of those places, the dive, the full extension, the ball snapped into a glove, it defies reason; when the shortstop fields a ball behind second base, does a forward tumble and fires the ball to first base, gets the runner out by half a step, we've seen something magic. Crows at the lake, a pair, and they're having an argument, Crovid are the smartest, far as I'm concerned, those beady eyes. These two are sparing, squawking, pecking at each other, and I wonder what's happened, to make them so angry. Most likely one of them got a morsel the other had seen. I want to call my younger daughter but the phone is out, a product of the fire, there must be sixty trees poised to take out the line, so I write off-line, make a note to Send later. Add to my list a back-up ream of paper and an extra black cartridge, some new socks, a couple of those cheap ball-point pens they give away at hardware stores. I need utility candles, boxes of five at Big Lots. Three-quarter inch diameter, six inches tall, they burn for two nights at least, and oil for the lamp, two quarts minimum. Stop, assess. My needs are what? There is a yard filled with firewood, there is a larder, I can walk with a stick to balance, good to go. There was something further here, that sounded like a boy scout motto but the power went out. Basement at the museum flooded badly Saturday night (my driveway almost washed away) and some things to be done for that Damned Brit. Casters on the set pieces. The moms have finished painting and this is the best scenery ever at the museum. The boat is splendid. Not trusting the talent to propel backwards, I need to add a screw-eye on the stern and let it trail a rope coming onstage, so that the stage-manager, or someone, can haul it offstage. The Brit did lighting today and was crowing like a cock, the added system D and I added (for free) greatly enhances what can be done. Sound cues, light cues, head-sets for the various crew members. We've definitely upgraded these kid's shows, don't want to lift the bar too high. Out-load the wedding reception: the bride's parents are gems, clean the place like they were after the janitor's job. Then Liza calls and wants to premier the Docu-Drama in three weeks at the museum, the Cirque kids being the cast, and this is way cool, but requires logistics, and there is a sudden shift in attitude, like what I imagine happened when a submarine encountered a convoy in WW2. I'm the only one who leaves at 5. All the rest of them are on the phone, all of them. I imagined the geese would enjoy these small soft sweet mints that there were bowls of at the reception, so I bagged a bowl, and stopped at the lake. There were a lot of fat young couples fishing for stocked trout, and I don't know what that means, but the geese are congregated down at the spillway and no one is fishing there, so I walk over and feed them mints. They like them, a lot, I'm a long way from my truck, and they're acting funny. Aggressive. How do I get myself in these positions? "He Was Pecked To Death By A Gaggle Of Geese." Even if it was true, no one would believe me, that wolf thing, you cry to often and no one believes anything. I was running, you would have laughed. So fucking awkward, ducks chasing a penguin, and now the phone is out, I couldn't Send if I wanted to. It makes a certain kind of sense, that nothing works, you reach a point in your life where you allow substitutions.This is as good as that, I heard a whole conversation, that was, I swear: "that was this, this was before that' and I'm confused. What did they mean, exactly? The bat woke me, get up to pee, a glass of juice, 4 in the morning, I have both electricity and a phone. Read more...

Grilled Oxtails

Altering a recipe by Steven Raichlen. I love ox tail. I needed to rescue the sauce, which I had been neglecting and I'd found a package of tail bones in the reduced meats bin. The sauce (now over 7 years old) needed some bright additions and boiling. Put the tails in a pot with a lid, a can of chicken broth, an onion, some garlic, simmered for 90 minutes. While that's happening I get out the sauce, three-quarters of a quart, covered with a layer of olive oil, dump it in another pot, add tamarind paste, enchilada sauce, dregs of red wine, some anchovy paste, an herb bundle and a small onion that was reduced to liquid, with some soy sauce, in the blender. Because of the tamarind paste I stir constantly, bring to a low boil and pasteurize for 30 minutes. Start the grill, just a few chunks of mesquite charcoal, and when it's ready I sear the tails on both ends such that the marrow surfaces are caramelized. The sauce in a puddle around. Sour-dough for sopping. A cucumber drizzled with balsamic. Let the bones rest for 10 minutes, molten marrow is a health risk. I meant to go to town, to deal with the garbage, but I read another Gruber novel, "Valley Of Bones", then read about ox tails most of the afternoon. But the dinner, my god, was so good, heart-stoppingly, that my brio was restored, and I did a single pull-up on the beam that runs through the dining area. I'm sports challenged (not that I'm out of shape, but that I really don't like to compete) and other than walks I don't do much. Firewood, which is a major thing for me and requires physicality; walking the driveway mid-winter with a pack, certainly another. I'm in good shape actually, most wouldn't really chose to live this way, so close to the bone, but I like it. It's very close to real. The sound is actual, and the colors are correct. Almost real. What does that say? What is real? Some dying bats? Read more...

Amor Fati

"Such is the perfect man. His boat is empty." Merton. The Tao is all around you. Jacob comes out for dinner and conversation, doing his Senior Seminar on altered states and creativity and thought he's do some field study. Intense talk and I fix a shrimp dish that's pretty good and he leaves before dark. I have trouble with his theory that gaming is a metaphor for life, but maybe it is. I consider it mere play, but maybe play is a metaphor. Anything is possible. I argue that the natural world is a model, then think, after he goes, that my life is hardly an argument. Fate is a deep pool or just a backwater where the current flows the wrong way. I lean toward the non-representational, a personal inclination; the vast swirls of pollen on the lake are meaning enough. Sure, there are times I'd prefer another warm body next to mine, but who can stand the heartache? We're all disappointments. What you could have been or done. I have a Swedish Bow-saw and when I'm feeling low I go out and cut a few branches. The physical exertion releases some chemical and I feel better about my life, if I do it long enough I'll feel sore the next day and remember. Any job you do, eventually you get out all your tools. The nature of the game. A drive toward unachievable perfection. Playing the humble card, I was doing dishes, wearing a scarf like it was a habit draped over my head, I might have mumbled a prayer, it might have been in Latin. There was no one around, the tape, as they say, was not running, just imperfect memory and a couple of fossils. A mop tossed in the corner and broken glass. No denying that there is glitter everywhere, look around you, the shattered is everywhere. A sudden rainstorm and there are drops of water on everything, each one a prism, it blows my mind. I can't even deal with rain, much less a relationship, the real world, the shit that backs up in toilets. I'm missing that switch that tells you to go to sleep. Invariably I think too much, I can channel Darwin or Thoreau, a click of the dial, I can hear Emily, the pauses; sometimes, listening to The Cello Suites, I stop my heart, to clear the confusion, and in this grand mal, somehow, there is salvation. I was writing for Glenn there, I'm pretty sure he got it. It's a sin I can do this. We need to talk. They empowered the wrong body. Whoever they are, You and me Babe. Read more...

Wedding Blues

No one got the memo about glitter. Glitter is my enemy. I hate glitter. I despise the very glint of glitter. In my version of hell naked people are dipped in corn syrup and covered with glitter. Wedding reception for 160, which requires tables and chairs in every gallery and I'm as paranoid as a box turtle crossing the road. Because everything is so close and most of the work is breakable 3D art. We're insured, but we probably don't charge enough for these functions. It takes a day and a half of my time, setting up, and I have to clean the mess after. Fucking lasagne for 160. 68 people eating on carpeted floor. What are the odds. Not wether but how many. I proposed a show to Sara and she liked the idea, I'd like to do some shows, while D is away, fill that winter gap when he'll be in school and Sara down south. It's easy for me to imagine shows because I've imagined so many houses. I was thirty before I realized I visualized things with a much more critical eye than most people. I remember the incident, it was that day Fritz set his coat on fire with a smoldering pipe. I establish a good relationship with the bride and especially her parents, they, and a fleet of friends, decorate, lord love a duck, it's all pink and neon green. No liquor, there's a candy bar, and the theme is candy, because they are gathering in holy matrimony because they share a passion for candy. I'm making none of this up, I'm on my good behavior, the world is too good to be true. To true to be good. I'm speechless and assume the role of gofer, provide power where necessary. I know the circuits and plug the outlets historical. Remove the foam-core from against the warming closet lest it melt or flame. I need to do laundry but if I wash some socks by hand I don't need to go back to town before Tuesday. Marriage is a simple legal agreement, requires a Justice Of The Peace and a witness; my second marriage cost almost 50 bucks because we bought a decent champagne. They put out vats of candy and dishes of nuts. I spend most of the afternoon making sure every table is equally nutted. I have a stick I use, to determine the depth, but I constantly re-mark and eat nuts. The Tom Variable. As I use nature as my model, I'm listening to a Rufus-sided Towhee, and he's awful, I could sing that better than him, fucking juvenile. But I'm stuck with what I get. Read more...

Regarding Nonsense

Children's theater can be very funny. Watched a few minutes of rehearsal today and a couple of the lads and lasses are quite good. Young toad, over six feet tall, is a presence. The moms painted the boat and the car, the caravan tomorrow, one of them even buying the yellow paint. The kids were adamant that the various colors be the same as the illustrations in the book. Which book? Damned thing's been illustrated by everyone, but in the text, if we hold to that, the boat is blue outside and white inside; the car is not red (the one he wants is red, the next one) and the caravan is yellow, when the moon comes out to listen. Power out, damn it, I wanted to write, now it's already the next night with another day between. Picked up two more Michael Gruber novels at the library, a very fine writer though a little convoluted. Some work on the stage, set some lights, replace some bulbs, move the main drape downstage. The moms and kids arrive, D and I lunch at the pub and are quite funny doing our old-guy ---young-guy routine. Get our daily sports as ten minute highlights on ESPN above the bar. I'm off, in my mind for a couple of hours, doing Thursday janitor stuff with the temporal body, but for some reason I started thinking about building Pegi a studio for the Cirque. I imagine a building that's 3456 square feet and just how I'd build it. But the Cirque needs to be physically closer to the museum, that's the most important criteria, other than the existence of the Cirque, which is threatened, if they lose their rented home. On an hour's notice I'm told we'll be taking delivery of: the decorations, 68 chairs, 13 tables, some cases of bottled water, and boxes of attendant things. I don't mind this, I like to stay busy, but I like to be warned. Then Trish chooses this very afternoon to go to Sam's Club, lord knows, someone had to go, so that she is specifically not there when the shit she knows about is delivered. I don't say anything to anyone, I just unload the stuff and stand out of the way, lock up the museum, and leave Pegi, Sara, and D talking in the back hall. It's my birthday and I stop for a footer on the way home, some fried onion rings. Take them back to the island, eat them with a beer, reading an essay by Virginia Wolfe, imaging it could possibly matter. Several of the moms, now that I've built some scenery, look at me differently. Drawing concentric circles I told Janet to consider string, to make a circle, and she looked at me as if I was something alien. Yes, she said: that what happened is a matter of habit. I have some habits, I wonder how subject I am. We go along in that vein, what has happened. I notice things, sometimes they mean something, it's a spread-sheet, yes or no. Crows are smart, that whole Corvid family, beady eyes and all, they make us look like numbskulls. Consider a piece of string, too short to be saved, might describe an arc. Hold my hand, follow the line. Probably close enough. It's scenery, nonetheless. Read more...

Free Wood

Another source, logging crew up off Mackletree and I stopped by after work today with a cold six-pack, asked if I could buy a few loads of off-cuts. They said hell yes, a six-pack per load, same time any day. The old beer ploy. People who work outdoors in this weather really like a cold beer at quitting time, hell, I work indoors and like a cold beer at quitting time. Turned the props over to The Damned Brit today and he was very pleased. Need to finish moving drapes and setting light for him on Thursday. Smart Talk tomorrow, pottery demo, probably occupy me most of tomorrow; morning, I have to clean flood damage in the basement, so the play moms can paint the boat, car, and caravan. D off tomorrow, judging another art show. A large flock of turkeys, on the drive home, and I parked and watched them for twenty minutes. Funny but wary birds, this year's crop were the size of large chickens, more than I could easily count, they move around a lot, maybe 40, four or five moms, one a monster, 25-30 pounds. They were feeding on the back edge of a field of last year's corn, this tear in soybeans, a perfect view of them with the glasses. Two of the moms, one each side, always keeping watch. The first time I saw a large flock of them, in Mississippi, I couldn't believe how loud they were, walking along scratching and pecking the ground, big feet, large claws. They're wonderful eating, on occasion I've shot one, probably no more (I live alone, why would I fix a turkey?), then I'd skin it, I've always hated plucking, bard it with bacon and cook for 8 hours in the smoker. Can't believe my good luck in firewood, I'll get more than a cord of pre-cuts for a case of Bud Light. Satisfied that issue is addressed, I briefly think about next winter, inventory the larder, vow to restock an item every payday, start a list. 10 pounds of dried pintos, 10 pounds of grits (I can make polenta), five packages of smoked jowl for the freezer, 10 cans of sardines, 10 cans of stewed tomatoes, five packages of butter beans for the freezer, 10 cans of sliced white potatoes, 2 boxes of dried salt cod, 10 cans of chick peas, 10 cans of black beans, a case of decent zinfandel or shiraz, 10 pounds of basmati rice, 2 pounds of bacon and 2 pounds of butter for the freezer, back-up peanut butter, back-up soy sauce, 10 cans of chicken stock, a case of grape juice, a case of tinned pink grapefruit, that gets me into November. I carry perishables, a few pounds at most, even when I hike in mid-winter. Now that I have a list, I can catch these items on sale, 10 for 10 bucks. Big Lots has always got stewed tomatoes, and I love them, alone, or wherever tomatoes are required, I'll get the sardines there too (I make a sandwich with a can of sardines and a thick onion slice that you don't want to know about) and several other things. 10 cans of enchilada sauce, how could I forget that? But I'm good to go on pickled hot peppers and hot sauce, my main holding right now, in hot sauce, is a local product and too hot to use, so I'm going to cut it, I'm going to step on my hot sauce with carrot juice, take it down a notch. My test for these, and it's just me, is if I can't eat 10 saltines with a single drop on each it's too hot to consider. Considering the accumulative effects of that kind of heat. 10 saltines in five minutes is a really long time. But I'm a scientist so I keep plugging away; I'm a fool, so I keep confusing myself. 10 cans of tuna, 5 golden rings. 3 calling birds and a partridge. Maybe a turkey, I always get the beat wrong, at the end, my sense of time is always incorrect. I thought this was yesterday. Read more...

Vernacular Subjects

We had agreed to build scenery for "Wind..." and I knew that neither D or I really wanted to do it on a day off but also knew that if I showed up at his shop we'd probably get started. Three pieces, the boat for Ratty and Mole, the gypsy wagon, and Toad's motor car. It's children's theater and the standards aren't high here, but we actually want to raise the bar a little, get one step removed from painted cardboard. We design a funny little boat based of a couple of struts that we build and it's not a bad Idea, you could build one of these that would actually float if you spent more than a couple of hours. This one doesn't have a bottom, so they can propel themselves with their feet, the frame on casters. Cute. One thing we see, is that you could build a boat in a day, if you really had to. I'll get back to the scenery, but a strange thing happened, I'd picked up that book on extinct languages, noticed the Easter Island script, filed it away, had misplaced another book, on early mining (tin, copper), and was just putting some books away, mindless, and there was a book I didn't recognize, stamped Wincester Public Library and it was Thor Heyderdahl, not Aku-Aku, which would have been good enough, but was "The Archaeology Of Easter Island" and it is true that the written language is almost exactly like an Indus Valley script. No one can read it anymore. I'm shocked we draw the same conclusions, there was world-wide trade in the Bronze Age, then a dark age, that was iron, because it was everywhere and hard, anyone with a hot fire could make a superior sword. Iron isn't that much better than good bronze, but it was the abundance that brought down entire cultures. I see this stretched-out over a long period of time, animal brain, eons. I knew McNamara, didn't know him really, only knew his oyster beds. Reality is so interesting, when it catches you. I mean I never met the man, just completely altered my life to avoid his war. We decided to build Toad's car next and it was very like the boat, but with a hood and wheels and maybe we'd add a windshield later; he'd carry it, like a sandwich-board, on straps, over his shoulders, so he could run around and make noises. Because D has a nice shop, though horribly messy, we accomplish this very quickly. A car and a boat, a quick lunch of small meat-loaves, so there is no question that everyone gets an end, and we build a 'caravan' as if we knew what we were doing. It's scenery, you know, illusion. On stage, everything is fake, not unlike life. Consider the backdrop, the scrim that mimics sky, gauze and lights. I'm missing a lug-nut, afraid my wheel will fly off, drive home carefully, and the crows await me at the spillway. I'd stopped for gas and bought Twinkies for something to feed the geese, ended up drinking a beer, talking with crows. Sup on a can of tuna and a sauce so hot it brings tears to my eyes, a double-cheddar, and olives, crackers. The bugs and frogs are so loud when I get home I put on the Allman Brothers, "Sweet Melissa", make a cup of sumac tea, pretty sure I've gone crazy. Too much time alone. The Cello Suites, and a whip-poor-will, far away. Make what you will. A noodling double-bass. It almost makes sense. A fiddle. Read more...

Distant Thunder

Strange percussive events, takes me a while to remember fireworks. Bullshit dreams of freedom, say the wrong thing at the post office and end up in prison. I take the fourth with a grain of salt, still, took part of the day off and read a book about fresco painting. Realized that a problem at the museum, a peculiar bubbling on some plaster surfaces, was out-gassing from un-slaked lime, a really slow process that can take decades to be noticeable. Failure can be a spectacular event, like a bridge falling, or slow, like a fresco failing. I think about that, having a second breakfast for a midnight snack. Duchamp said that only one thing in art is valid --- that which cannot be explained, Which is almost true. Artists are often hoist by their own petard. I'm reasonably gregarious, a decent docent, but stupidity is not my field and I often walk away from conversations. I left a table in Boston where three certified geniuses were tooting their horns, I was just there because we were doing a show and they needed technical support. I tend to be "technical support" because my ego is somewhere else, off to the side, out of the frame; I don't care, really, can look at things as they occur and not feel that I'm responsible. Nothing is what it seems allows me freedom. Rain all morning, pee, drink juice, go back to bed, listen to NPR, finally get up, fix breakfast again, what passes for cleaning house, put a few books away, reading passages as I go. A day like this, I listen to the radio, read, talk to myself, consider life. Samara calls to complain I haven't called Rhea who was involved in a car accident, she's fine, but Marilyn flew down to Arizona to get her. Here's the thing, of course Rhea's number is a cell-phone, but I still think in terms of land-lines, and thought I had to wait until she was back home. Duh. In my defense, I don't have one, so I don't think that way. New fat figures today, Mississippi still number one, Ohio is ten, I'll look up the list tomorrow, see where Mass and Colorado fall. This Mountain Top Coal Removal debate is bullshit, I have to turn off the radio, the coal barons are ruthless bastards and should be shot. They have this Republican Conservative Advertising going for them, they're good at that, but they are wrong and actually bad. When I turned the radio back on there was a slice of Bach, he always sneaks up, you realize he's controlling the pace. First this then that. Read more...

Done In

Physically shot. Probably wouldn't be so bad but I took a fall last night, off the deck, and contused myself in several areas. Wet deck was slippery and I'd gone outside to run off a pack of semi-wild dogs, took a header. Note to self to be even more careful in the future as I'm a long way from help. Not much blood but some pretty good scrapes which I flood with peroxide and then apply some Neosporin. No broken bones, but close enough to put the fear of god in me. Not as young as I used to be, but I would have taken this fall anyway, the difference being that I heal more slowly now. I worry about chain-sawing, as most of the billets I have now need cutting a time or two, so in my mind I design a saw-buck, that I need to build, which would greatly improve my safety. I'm on this, I want to live, I haven't found anything to die for. I do really like installing shows, because I'm southern and shy, I've learned to like looking at feet. Goddamn I'm sore, hadn't noticed I'd taken a blow to the shoulder, my right arm is almost useless. I'll be extremely sore tomorrow. I've a thousand cancers on my body and one of them will kill me. Not many alternatives, I choose to stay active, and watch whatever passes beneath my microscope. I will not move to someplace safer, I'm happy here, settled in. Throw your red-necks at me, whatever they say, I can wave my hand, everything disappears. The silk scarves, the rabbits, the quarters, slight of hand, what we thought we saw. Next week we build the props for "Wind In the Willows" set the stage, then, maybe, I'll go to Florida. I can't not see something through, not in my nature. Couldn't Send last night, mu modem wouldn't connect, then couldn't sleep because of soreness. Rereread parts of "Song Of The Dodo", town early, another small load of firewood, beautiful oak. Hang the last pieces of the show, finally the furniture guys from next door (the movers) come over, we help each other out, to be the extra hands to put on the last plexi bonnet. This one is four feet tall, 24 inches square. To get it over the pottery statue we have to get it 5 feet in the air, then straight down. I'm paranoid and sore, but with two strong guys to spot us, the job is done in 30 seconds. D and Sara light the show while I start putting things away. Five trips to the basement. By the end of an installation we'll have pretty much used every tool, plus an assortment of things bought for specific purposes. I just haul everything downstairs, will spend a day down there later, sorting. Five gallon buckets of paint, gallon cans of paint, roller trays, rollers, brushes, sanding blocks, tack-cloths, shipping blankets, odd bits of lumber, tables, boxes, trash cans, light cans (3D is lit with spot bulbs, flat wall-work is lit with floods), bulbs, ladders, and the job-box, in which are hundreds of other things, more closely sorted, in boxes and bins. Officially open the show two hours late, but the time was a little arbitrary; the three of us are a bit giddy, actually, realizing we've done it again, and it's really nice, as always, when the lights are focused. After lunch I clean the floor, paying special attention to hammer-drill dust, which is nasty shit, do some last minute touch-up painting, throw in the towel. D, at the white board, drawing in blue, we're designing scenery, the boat, the caravan (wagon), and Toad's car. That Damned Brit assures me that the role of Toad, in England (at least) is considered a plum. The A A Milne script. D and I agree to work on a day off, get the stuff done so we can move on; we've got to re-hang the permanent collection of Carter's, to free up the circus stuff and we need to start picking up work, from far and wide, for that show, since we, it's really Sara's baby, are the originators. We'll have to build shipping crates, arrange the logistical nightmare into fractal units. I've never originated a show before, that's not true, I helped D get the last Carter Show on the road, but every show is different. And what I can do is different from what I could do then. Give you a line of talk. Trust me, I can be misleading. But when that bonnet top was nine feet in the air, we had no control, I knew it was beyond my reach. Goddamn electricity out again and I lost most of a paragraph, something about the nature of reality, a mention of Janitor College, a pun I don't remember; writing at the end of the grid is a fractured reality. Unloaded billets of firewood and went back for a small load of pre-cuts, then, after the drizzle started, read "The Forgery Of Venus", Gruber, which I quite liked. For my Fourth of July dinner I've planned an elaborate breakfast, featuring scrambled eggs with avocado (which I read about in Thorne, "Mouth Wide Open"), and a very good chorizo, sliced boiled potatoes fried in butter, the first local tomato, a decent brie, and a modest Cab. I would have grilled ribs, but I knew it was going to rain, saw the Dopler yesterday at the pub, no way that line of storms could miss. Maybe it's just the presence of That Damned Brit, but life seems to become a Dickensian drama. In lost versions of my writing, some of the thoughts are completed. This past week, on my feet forever, then hauling a modest load of wood, I'm completely wasted. I actually nap with a book on my chest: what Hume said, about the limits of empirical observation. There's a sense in which we want logic to intervene, such that events fall into place, but it is only in mystery that new information appears. Wittgenstein is correct, when he says "the world is whatever is the case". Some infection in the scrapes, so I rub off the scabs with peroxide and medicate. What are you going to do if you don't have medical insurance and a retirement plan? I tend toward blotting up the blood and sticking on a band-aid. Most things are out of my control. I can decide what I'm going to fix for dinner, but even that doesn't often happen, I end up with a can of beans. Maybe it is a matter of breeding, if someone else fixed dinner, I'd eat it. But I live alone, there are no options. Unloading these heavy green billets I'm struck with what a rough life this is, but how connected with the natural world. I make no claims, don't give a shit, really, carry wood from one place to another. The world is what I imagine. Read more...

What Next

There was a mandatory course, in shit management, where you dealt with shit that had become a paste. I remember the course, we all gagged. The professor was this weird dude who'd had his nose surgically removed, the Fifth Earl of Bidford, you couldn't forget him, with his bizarre apparatus. He seemed to be both climbing and falling at the same time Read more...

Poke Shoots

A great dinner of poke shoots and scrambled eggs with salsa, fried salt-pork, toast. You can take the boy of the country. I'm usually on my feet most of the day, but the last four or five work days have been excessive. Had to get all the packing boxes out of the back hall, six elevator loads, then carry them, 42 feet, around obstacles, stack them in the pedestal storage room. Hanging the part of the show that needed to be hung, we worked our way around the gallery. Always a huge amount of math involved with hanging elements, and I forget, between installations, that I can do it so well. It's simple math, only rarely complex, and I consciously tap a short-term number trick I learned at an early job (16 years old) when I was a "counter" on a crew that inventoried stores. I compute with a pad and a pencil and call out the numbers very quickly, and call them out to D, then immediately forget them, if you asked for the number again I'd have to recompute, but if you want to be fast with simple numbers, you really have to forget quickly. We did our magic, hanging, and goddamn we are good at this. We discuss questionable attachments in a language few could understand. There are several trips to the hardware store. A show like this, where the pieces are prepared for installation by the artists, is a comedy show of jury-rigging. Two pieces, by the same guy, we're going to secure with a dowel up their ass, which means drilling a pedestal top, which means repair and filling, but not really a big deal, considering the wedding reception and the value of the pieces. Potters are very bad, some of them, when it comes to figuring where the load is carried. These two large pieces stand on very small bases and in one case the base isn't in exactly the right place. Sara tells me there will be no drinking at this reception, and that's good news, but top-heavy Fragile items scare me. A possible tombstone, HE USED A LOT OF MUSEUM WAX. That'll keep them guessing. Finally did something I'd been meaning to do, the pampas grass, across the parking lot, had retained all of last year's stalks, and I wondered what the growth pattern was. So I walked over there and poked around, shoots, of course, uniform in rank, and I thought this was probably an umbel of pampas grass, where multiple shoots shoot off a common root-like thing. I remember looking it up, much the same as you might remember a movie. (I take out as many words as I leave in.) This small forest of pampas grass, that will rivet next fall, the way those Kroger birds will, if nothing, carry a certain weight, The Golden Rotor. Hey, I was just joking. Read more...