Cutting Edges

I've done so much painting of walls that I take short cuts. One thing is that I cut edges without taping, Helen always said charge the brush fully and pay attention to the flow; and when you're pressed for time, taping is laborious, and the tape is expensive. I cut from right to left, from up to down. I'd been saying for several months that I wanted to paint these walls, they'd been re-hung without much attention, and I finally get my chance. I use Tammy, the new-hire, to take the art off the walls, feeling that if you work in an art museum you should handle art. I'll tell her tomorrow we moved paintings worth 100K. Suffer through a necessary staff meeting (so much on our collective plate) finish painting walls in the permanent collection's gallery at 4:30, after patching, filling, sanding, and feel good about that, on schedule if there was one. Because ham is on sale I decide to make a ham and bean soup for the staff tomorrow. I know Sara likes it, and I want to help curb her rising anxiety about the upcoming Circus Show, and I want to cook a meal for the staff to create a little complicity. The family that eats together. I enjoy putting a pot of this together, comfort food, nothing special, but I do caramelize a large onion and red bell pepper, pre-soak a pound of Great Northern beans, add garlic and a pound of ham chunks, several goodly grinds of fresh black pepper, can't really fail with this, if you've got an hour to put it together. I start a hot quick fire in the cookstove, heat the soup to almost boiling, damp everything down and just leave it on the stove until tomorrow morning. I do short ribs this way, or pork back bones, when I've cut out the loins, with cabbage. We're entering the cooking season and I can hardly wait. I'm ahead on wood, noticed a large dying chestnut oak today, loosing leaves early, a sure sign, marked it with crime-scene tape. Don't know where I got a roll of that. Now that B is not part of the equation I need to buy a small gas chainsaw, I need to drop a few trees, in the woods, alone. I'll be very careful. I'm good at careful. Got way more done than I thought I could be done. One foot in front of the other, slogging away, and I have the thought, sometime during the day, that if this is the worst they can throw at me, we're fine. My tool-kit allows for almost anything. Big storm and I had to shut down, lightning, thunder, no rain, still. I've already done the labels for the 'new' paintings and use them to pull all the replacements from the vault, set the order with Sara, get the road-box wheels, which contains 99% of anything needed to hang anything anywhere. Lovely drive to work this morning, huge flock of Canada Geese befouling the beach at the lake, three crows at the spillway, eating worms left by a fisherman, pristine, emerald green trees, cleaned of their dust by last night's storm. Get the soup to town with only minor spillage, not as good as I'd hoped for, old beans, several years is my guess, because I've often kept beans for years and they require a much longer cooking time. I cooked this soup for over twelve hours and it wasn't very good, a bean should keep its integrity, then explode in a buttery way. I'm particular about my beans, ten years in western Colorado, pinto capital of the world, made me thus. For a rare treat, raise a patch of pintos, and pick them when fully formed and still green, cook them for a scant hour, a wonderful meal. Thinking about it, while I eat of a bowl of not very good soup and some delicious cornbread Sara got, to go with lunch. I sliced the little squares and toasted them, a daub of butter on every bite. Thinking about the varieties of beans and peas that I've raised, I quickly get above twenty, christ, thirty before I stop that line of thought. The stand-outs, all heirloom, are an unnamed black crowder pea (I still have seed for this one, makes the most amazing juice), an African cow pea, a delicate tiny lady pea (hell to shell, but god they were good, almost a jasmine aftertaste), and a pink-eye purple-hull from Texas that made grown men weep. Pintos usually win my bean of the year award, I love them so many ways. My bean rhapsody. Part of me says get a life, and the other part comments on what a good life it is. I knew I'd hang paintings today and I'd prepped the walls and was ready, anxious, even. Hanging part of the permanent collection alone. Valuable stuff, but that's not the point. This is a fully engaging interesting piece of work, and I want to do it well, want it, really, to be almost perfect. I strive for almost perfection, I know it's the best I can do. I run the math for each wall, then do it again, arrive at some numbers that locate a piece horizontally and vertically and establish an icon that identifies who's where. Simple system, a number inside a circle. Hang ten pieces and only have to re-hang two, not bad, actually, going for almost perfection. In both cases a pesky conversion of quarters to eighths. I can predict my failures, it's good to know yourself. For me, the only odd thing happening at the museum right now, I accept the chaos of a auction fund-raiser, Sara's panic mode concerning the Circus Show, it's her show for god's sake, her name is writ large across the face of it, the clogged toilets, all of it, I love it. Mostly I really like installing shows, it's fucking magic. I fully intend to work here the rest of my working life, unless they fire me, for apparently trying to take control. I don't want control, I'm happy with my slice of cheesecake. I like what I do here, I hang stuff on walls.