Two Objectives

Paint the blue wall in the small galley (I taped the baseboard and door trim yesterday) and pack up the Cake Show. Mary Poppins' walk down to the truck, twirling my umbrella. Hard rain in the early morning and I have to stop at the lake, experience the spillway, set out a couple of roadkill squirrels for the crows. They watch suspiciously but I'm not back in my truck more than a minute before they investigate what I've brought them. It must be terribly annoying to have to hop away from your meal every few minutes so a vehicle can drive through your dining room. I bring roadkill home and if I can't make a meal off it, put it on top of the outhouse for the three buffoons. They crack me up, a comedy routine, I'm learning to speak a little crow from watching their show. Language by osmosis. Successful repair and paint job in the small gallery. Tape residue is a pain in the ass. I used a damp foam sanding block yesterday, and it is paintable today but the texture is slightly different. No one will notice. Packing the cake show takes no time at all. D and I watch the Cirque performance, because the cast threatened us, and I still get home early, start a fire from the Wrack Show, heat cider for a toddy. It's a different world from a week ago, the leaves mostly gone, and it's somber, dampened. A prelude to winter. I can feel it in my bones when I go out to pee. "This is it, pretty baby..." and are you ready to play? Preparation for winter is such a large part of my life, strange really, but it doesn't seem strange to me, consider your latitude and do what you must. More a mandate than a prerequisite. I'm better prepared than I've been for several years. I scoff at your winter winds, your ice-storms, throw your best natural disaster at me and I will merely seek higher ground and hibernate. There are moments, in the early hours, where I defer to myself, I know I'm wrong, that isn't the issue, but I wonder what I'm doing. Why am I here, what am I doing. I don't have a clue. It's a short loop, I feed myself and write. I should be able to predict a pattern. But of course I can't. Because it hasn't happened yet. We'll talk about that later.
Tom

I'm pretty good, your looking
for a closer, I could do that,
throw straight strikes.
Read more...

This Fall

Most of the leaves are off there trees, the drifts are accumulating, the views are opening, I can see several other ridges now, the antics of the crows. Breezy evening and dead leaves rattle against the house. Rain forecast and I need to be at the museum tomorrow, so I park at the bottom and hike in. Puddles are disguised as hard surfaces covered with leaves, and I make several mistakes. Summer temps, today, 78 degrees, but with the trees stripped and the wind, you know it's fall. There's a turn-out, above the lake, on Mackletree, where the creek flows into ponded water. I often stop there, it's a lovely spot, and in the up-slope opposite it's easy to follow the succession of trees. Most oak forest are beech climax, things usually burn before then, but given a few hundred years without interference, any given oak forest would be a magnificent beech park. Beech trees are odd in that they hold there leaves, often through the winter, and I can't imagine what the advantage is in that. So that, in a typical winter, when everything else is bare, dead brown leaves still wave from the beech. The nuts are large enough that the succession must be at the whim of squirrels, or chipmunks, or something large enough to carry them. Times I feel like an idiot, every year, some particular things come up and I realize I don't know anything about them. Does the new leaf, in the spring, push the old leaf off? I won't speculate on that, but I will say that what happens in the Beech Climax sequence, is that the oaks canopy, the under-story dies out from lack of light, some critter buries some nuts; eventually an old oak falls, lightning or root-rot, and there are a couple of small beech saplings on deck, ready to go. I cut a very small sapling beech recently, 12 inches tall. If I read the rings correctly, it was 10 years old. Talk about waiting for a chance. Three or four of them will shoot up in a clearing, and they canopy quickly, shade out any competition; they're beautiful trees, I love them. So one of the reasons that I stop at that turn-out, is to look at the trees, and try and figure out what's going on. I don't research this, I just watch. An interesting bifurcation there, because I often do want to know, find the fact and file it, but sometimes I enjoy idle speculation. I've walked in the woods most of my life, and there are vague patterns there that I want to understand. But I want the understanding to come from experience, not from something I've read. I want too much, which is my want. An alpha beech emerges, shades out the others, establishes a realm; we've seen this before, if you follow history. I wouldn't want to profile here. We all know who we're talking about. He who needs no name. Or was that 'she', whatever. Read more...

Like Chickens

Two power-point presentations, two different rooms, one projector. A pain in the ass, but there are sufficient reasons, therefore I'll make it happen, as long as it doesn't interfere with my lunch. A new rule I just made up today. I'm not big on rules, generally, but I like to flirt with Lindsay at the pub. The leaf situation is reaching critical mass, I always forget this part, it doesn't last long, where the leaves are more than ankle deep, and you track them everywhere. Leaves in your socks, leaves in your pocket. The front deck is an installation, "Leaf Litter", that changes day by day. My truck was so buried this morning I came back in for the broom. The pot holes are a total amalgam. I could make a screen with a deckle and pull sheets of leaf paper. Tonight is the designated Trick-Or-Treat night in Scioto County and marks 30 years that I've never seen a kid in a costume at my door. I don't wear costumes, so I miss all those parties. I get a small bar of bitter-sweet chocolate at Kroger and eat one square. I'll make something for the staff with the rest of it. I don't do sweets. Key Lime Pie is my only dessert, I make maybe three or four a year, eat a slice and give the rest away. I bought four pounds of sugar last year, most of it I took in tea. I bought a scant five pounds of flour, I don't do any baking anymore, there were years when I bought fifty pounds of wheat berries and ground my own flour, almost daily, baking everything under the sun. Now I buy a loaf of whole grain bread every other week. We change, over time, for years I raised everything I ate, now I raise nothing but a few herbs. I wanted to slap someone, yes, this is what I do now. Emily, you know, up there on the second floor. We could probably live together, you up there, and me down here. I'm almost flexible, consider what you might say. Hey, all I was doing was driving home. Take Plato's main point, that the artist is dangerous, I'm not sure we still really see it that way. Emily goes a lot of different places, she's always one step ahead. I thought of several things that might happen, and none of them did. Blow it off and get on with your day.

Tom

Like crows, chickens
peck an order, look
where the blood runs. Read more...

Leaf Fall

The shear organic propensity. Usually there are some big winds that blow things into drifts, off to the side, but right now the leaves are six inches thick and cover everything to the point of invisibility. What driveway? In four-wheel low, a gear I used once in Colorado (in ten years), I slide slowly, but completely out of control, contained only by ruts that remind me where I should be. Exhilarating but a hell of the way to start the day. Scott has promised to grade my access this week, which probably means next week, in the mean time it's merely the first hurdle. I have a routine: drive out to the beginning of the downhill run, stop the truck, get out and walk the first 25 feet and gauge the relative footing. If I can't walk it then I don't drive it and call in some accumulated overtime. Mackletree is amazing. I know everything is mostly water, but the leaves are so thick that the road is disappeared. You know where it is, because of the leaves, but you can't see it, because of the leaves, the verge is indistinct. I want to be clear on this, the kitchen is my office, you leave dirty dishes in my sink and I will certainly wash them, a matter of course, but you can' expect me to be civil if you soil my carpet. My problem has always been too much attachment. That word again. I love the museum, and my place here, but I hate it when things are dirty. Odd, really, because I can live in a hell-hole, my home, my space, but the show must be clean. I actually prefer my space to be cluttered, I have a sense of where things are, and precision has always struck me as anal and too much bother. I call your attention to that last attempt at order, where the lights went out and you struggled for a candle. Fact remains, if you slip in your shoes, you probably can't drive it. Reconsider. If things are so constellated, then you merely read, which is a rule, I think. A theorem. I try to place things in order, devise a system, but what I'm actually confronted with is a wall, that I need to climb, that is unclimbable. I could have made a mistake, in what I that I was doing, but that seems unlikely, because I've considered every step. Newton said, and I trust my interpretation of this, five years of Latin, "tanaquam ex ungue leonem": as the lion is recognized by his print. You're revealed by what you do. Nothing is more important than who you are. I don't mean that in any profound way, more merely mundane. Yes, yes, Emily, or was that Molly, what is your name? Read more...

Storm Drain

Daft morning, the Roto Rooter guys were on time, early, to clean the clean-out on the interior roof drain, which comes down inside the building and elbows out into the alley about three feet below grade. There is a clean-out, cast iron, frozen in place, they eventually have to break the cap. Fine. They pull out a bunch of scale and small animal parts, come and get me, send me up the ladder with a flashlight, there's what they call and off-set and I'd call a break about three feet in, not good. They give an estimate of $1500, to dig up the pavement and make the repair. I'm off to the City Offices to talk to the town Engineer, Larry, who passes me along to the Sewer guy, Rusty, and we pop every manhole cover within the block, both ends of the alley. I'd not seen the underworld of Portsmouth before, bricked and nasty. There is no storm drain in the alley, but we have a roof drain that clearly goes out and connects with a storm drain, but it's not there. If Roto-Rooter had effected the repair, it wouldn't have made any difference, there's no place for the water to go. No wonder the basement floods. Records were lost in the '37 flood, whatever. You can almost reconstruct events if you look at the paving. Lovely brick pavers under two inches of asphalt, and down the middle is a strip of concrete maybe three feet wide, depth unknown. Having popped the manhole covers, we know that two of them, one at either end of the alley, and the concrete strip, are electrical, massive three-phase trunk lines. They destroyed the storm drain when they put in the underground electric. Progress. My proposed solution is to drill a hole in the side of the building, through double walled brick (there's a company that does this, there's a company that does anything), refit the drain with a 'tee' higher up, and daylight the water out onto the surface of the alley. This is what later buildings did, and it makes the most sense to me. Now the water hits a plug and pushes back against the basement wall outside the museum and percolates through. Not good at all. All I want to do, Drainage 101, is get the water downhill, I don't care if it blocks traffic, I don't care if a Barbie Doll drowns. Drainage, in these flood plains, is serious business. Glenn and I had talked about another movie, The Emily Project, and he sent some dialogue today that cracked me up. Talk about outside the box. A working title might be "Called Back", because we've always enjoyed that concept, of being called, again. The image of Tim Hardin smashing his guitar is priceless. I've known a lot of people, in a lot of different places, and that rift you do there, give me the camera, I can shoot as well as the next guy. We could well conspire together. Emily would need her room, and the view, out that dormer window. We'd have to build this, I see it in my mind's eye, and she needs to be perfectly comfortable there, understanding every nuance. There's a picture of Faulkner, it's iconic, he's stroking a horse's muzzle, there are holes in his pants. Does make you wonder about the relative value? He'd already won the Noble Prize.

Tom

I have to wander off soon, to the spaces between,
the unknown connection, that ties us together,
what they call static electricity,
and I call I shot in the arm.
Read more...

Modality Audible

A vagrant sound, an animal, sounded like a cat, but could have been anything. Enough to get me outside with a flashlight, it's a raccoon, horribly damaged, either a pack of dogs or an inept hunter. I go get a gun, put it away, best thing you can do, a situation like this; I don't like doing it but I don't have a problem pulling the trigger. Just before sunset, a shaft of sunlight broke free, a pie in the sky, everything it exposed became more than real, an emphasized reality, and I merely nodded. Nothing, really, you could say. Wow, but what does that express? I wonder. A Bach fugue chases its tail, everything that can be said about a certain subject. I don't know why it's suddenly clear to me, maybe just that seven worlds collide. String theory. Everything ends. We could walk in the dimming light. It's still beautiful, but the edges of the leaves have turned and there's a lot of brown. The angle of light and the colors now adumbrate winter, you can feel an edge to the wind, and the days are shorter. I'm ok, I think, but I don't have the confidence I've usually had facing this change in weather. Drag in the sheep-watering trough, heat water, scrub off a layer a skin and consider my recent mistakes. I'm not that good at living in the world, but I have a tough body; not strong particularly, but my bones are good and I heal quickly. After the bath I treat some surface injuries and chide myself for not being more careful. I want something good to eat, an omelet, with onions and mushrooms. I play to this part of myself, the part that wants something specific, and I have some dried morels that I reconstitute in chicken broth. I cook an entire onion until it almost disappears, add the mushrooms and the broth, cook off the broth, stir in three eggs. Not just any eggs, totally free-range, you might call them wild, chicken eggs, I had to put on a climbing harness and repel down a slope to get them. There was a opossum, edging closely, and I beat it off with my umbrella. Everyday life is a challenge. It's awkward, earning a living. Please tell me you care. Emily is above all that, beyond care, into the netherworld. The North Country Fair. Almost a circus. The hallowing winds. The borderline. The river won't hold you forever. Trust me. She's a girl with a face long gone. If I were just a carpenter. Carry it close to your chest, whatever it is, if I were a carpenter. Read more...

Emily

She draws at my heart-strings, she's everywhere in this world I experience, the air I breathe. Out the southeast window of the kitchen a couple of young red maples are lit by afternoon light. Nothing special, but they glow in a way that catches my attention. I'm so easily diverted, the classic mountain stream. The path of least resistance. You see something and you wonder what caused that. Rereading Emily's later letters, looking at her tombstone. Hour on, hour off, sawing wood, reading. Just enough light breeze and enough small birds in the understory, that there is no extraneous sound. At one point I wander off, thinking I saw a mushroom down the logging road. It was the underside of a poplar leaf, bleached almost white, an honest mistake. And extend the walk, looking closely at leaf form and color, marveling at this slice of the natural world. I spend an hour walking a hundred yards and back. I shouldn't be surprised when someone asks me If I'm alright. Crab cakes, picked up several cans of premium crab meat at Big Lots and I make a batch (these experimental batches are three cakes) with a little acorn flour and some instant mashed potatoes as binder. Fried in butter, these are a little heavy, but I like them, the last one I fried in bacon fat and served myself with a mild hot sauce. It was heavenly. I didn't lose the crab, and the crust was magical. I want a slight 'bite', I want some resistance. A flattened note, something. Read more...

Surreal

Deep blue cloudless day with a breeze and the leaves continue free falling. Impossibly bright gold surrounds what I laughingly refer to as my yard. Carhartt bibs, start a small fire, and I'm out the door. Eschewing intrusive noise on a day like this, I hand-saw wood, with breaks reading the history of Scioto County. An interesting hour working out the history of the word pone, which may or not be Indian. Postpone (bread later?) the usual Sunday bath until tomorrow, so I can just stay in overalls and work boots, tracking leaves in the house, a bit of mud in my tread. At the Goodwill I picked up a bag of sweatshirts for two dollars. These are disposable shirts, to be worn on walks through briars. I lost a favorite denim shirt last week, to the evil bull-vine (green briar), all of my denim shirts have a provenance, and this one had been bought at a thrift-store in Florida, eight years ago for three dollars; I had the collar turned (a group of older ladies have a sewing co-op, and they still know how to turn collars) for ten dollars, last year, so it was good-to-go for another five years before it became a painting shirt, and then disposable. All to be lost in a single incident, in a five minute period, on a day in October, when I got pissed and over-reacted to a bed of thorns. Downside of the disposable sweatshirt wardrobe is that sweatshirts are moisture magnets. Year-around I have wet clothes draped various places, absolutely can't put damp items into the laundry basket, so mid-winter, when the house is sealed up and I'm drying dirty items, there's a certain funk. I usually fry bacon, which gains me a couple of days before a trip to the laundromat. We all have our systems. The greatest good, for me, that approach to the sublime, almost always occurs when I'm on my knees, splitting kindling. Grain is critical here, and the force of the blow, that slap in the face if you figure incorrectly, or another band-aid on your thumb. I'm always fully in the moment, when I'm wielding a sharp implement, I know my skin is thin, hardly even a barrier, a mere acknowledgment, pretty sure I could do that in my sleep. Whatever is required, I don't do required. I'm a loose candle. There are always those. Read more...

Write Mail

Sometimes, now, I just keep a file open. A reporter's notebook or the sheet of paper I carry, folded into eights, bearing notes headed in every possible direction. There are two places to ford Upper Twin and we locals use them to clean our undercarriages. The first is beside a bridge and follows the old roadbed, a natural ford, on solid flat sandstone. The second, added recently, several miles further upstream, is not as elegant. They dozed a tow-path and hauled in some rock. It cuts a corner where the road turns sharply, nothing fancy, but serves the purpose. I drive back and forth through the first one, melting a week's mud. In the country we call this alignment. A thought occurs to me, something about crows, because there are crows everywhere on this little drive, and I stop to make a note. It's cool and I'm not dressed appropriately, but the hood's warm, so I sit there, amazed at how far a warm ass can take you, writing words on a folded sheet of paper. For the record, the words were: "How many times can three crows surprise you?" Rolling a smoke and of course a Park Ranger drives by, the first moving vehicle I've seen. It's bow season for deer, and there are trucks parked off the road, where hunters have staked claim, but the Ranger is moving, driving slowly, checking for violation. And of course he stops, recognizes me, and we chat (exactly the correct word, I love English, the nuance provided: we didn't really talk or have a conversation, we chatted) about the price of tobacco. I told him about the loophole in the new tax, how I now rolled cigarette tobacco that was packaged as pipe tobacco. There are always ways to cut corners. Between acorns and roadkill. At the second ford, I went through at speed, I knew I'd lose control for a split second, but trusted my ability to gain it again. Right there, where the State Road turns sharply, a Forest Service road goes straight into the heart of Appalachia, trailers, with everything they've ever owned piled outside, and there's a pick-up truck with three guys drinking Bud Light, waiting for me to make a commitment. I hit the ford at a high rate of speed, maybe 25 MPH, and the water exploded. The Good Old Boys applauded. We went our separate ways. The wild mustard is rampant. The one blue, other than the sky, is phlox. I recognize chickory by the stalk, it used to be blue. There is a way in which the change of seasons is just a change of color. Eventually everything becomes black and white. The dead of winter. I need a base line, and I find it in a stark black and white scene, deep winter, everything frozen, with Sam Bush playing a heart-breaking mandolin. My world, take it or leave it. Where nothing is what it seems. Read more...

Speaking Freely

When you're completely alone, it doesn't matter what you say or do. There is, of course, that problem, that you are a part of the world, so we develop different persona for where we might find ourselves. I watch myself closely on this front, and watch the way other people deal with it, it's a mixed bag. Some people surprise me, but not that many, and that's not just a product of years at the wheel, that element of surprise, it's something that actually occurs. I believe that, but I'm short on definitions. I really need to hook up the new printer, because I'm losing track of myself. I know I exist, at certain points of time, but as I gain definition I lose definition, and I wonder what that's all about. The more transparent I try to be, the more opaque I become. This is a language problem, I don't begrudge anyone anything. Whatever you have coming. I expect nothing, and that works for me. Your expectations would be different from mine. I assume we don't understand each other, maybe that gives me a foot up, an extra step. I'll take any advantage. I can't read certain things, parts of the old testament, the stupid parts, where I just roll my eyes, come on, we're adults here, some things are metaphor. Blustery day and the leaves are flying. Into the museum to touch base with D, order light bulbs, and to meet James and his fiancee. Cook's Tour. Stop back by Dave's place, best creek-bank mechanic in the county, but even he is defeated by my latched hood. The cable to the release has come loose and the primary latch (there are two) seems to be completely housed. It's impossible to get to. Dave says come back next Saturday and he'll stop at the auto parts store and read the manual. Haven't driven all the way up the creek in months but Dave lives at the outlet, near Rt.52, and I live 7.570 miles up the creek (my mailing address is the miles from the river, that's how they do it around here. Roads parallel to the Colorado/Utah border, in western Colorado, are often expressed as miles to the border. 41.35 Road. Here, everything changed, when the river ceased to be the main artery. Upper Twin Creek was running nicely, with the recent rains, at that lovely stage where all the fines are washed out, the water is wonderfully clear. Little waterfalls, over the steps of slate and sandstone. And the trees were lovely, madly shedding colored leaves. The verges are deep in leaf-drifts. The edges of the road are disappeared. Magic. There is a very real sense in which it is all theater: the posing, the role playing, the elaborate scenery, even the trained ducks at the lake. This whole Plato thing, reading for D's course, I'm struck with how dumb I was when I first read it. In the natural world, as I have lived for 40 years, the questions of reality fade into a chorus of frogs. There is no question in my mind, when I hold a tadpole, it is there. I can't speak to your table and chairs, but I know what I touch. And then it disappears. The past starts at the limit of my vision, when something has faded beyond my view, it's gone. It's the best I can do. I don't hide behind technique any more. I merely write. The past starts at the edge of the present, pat it on the ass and move on. Read more...

Fully Fall

At the top of the driveway, the young sassafras are a thing of great beauty, gold and yellow. 40 to 50% of the leaves gone on the ridge-top and I can now, for the first time since early April, see the other side of the hollow. Drive in with supplies for the weekend, but, as heavy rain is forecast, I took the truck back down to the bottom of the hill. Lovely, walking back up without a pack, flushed two grouse, that, as usual, startled me. A huge V of geese overhead, maybe 50, honking a running commentary on something. The women, staff, at the museum, were a riot today, I kept my head down, checked the calendar to see what phase the moon is in. Another event, something called Business After Hours, where business people gather for a few beers, a bite to eat, and chat amongst themselves. I duck out, as soon as everything is prepped, as this is not a crowd I would hang with. Too many suits. I know my comfort zone and I've stayed late twice in a week for functions, a record for me. The ladies liked the squash soup, it was good, I liked it both hot and cold, as I do when I make the same kind of soup with cherries. Made a mean chili, way too hot for almost anyone, a traditional chili, beans (pintos), ground elk, onions, garlic, tomatoes, a great deal of green and red chili powder, and I never had designed on eating it in a bowl. Scooped on tortilla chips with salsa and a thin slice of avocado was what I had in mind. Really, really good. I made some tortilla chips with corn and acorn flour, very little salt. I need just a small fire in the stove now, to chase the chill and damp. The house smalls good. An interesting aspect of work, in the current configuration, the smoke breaks. Sara usually comes down and finds me, we go out to the loading dock concrete sofa. Many things are decided there, and now Tammy, who is one of those 3 cigs a week people, comes out occasionally with us, and then today, Pegi came out too, waving a pencil between her fingers, as it were a cigarette; and the four of us were perched there, lifting our legs when cars would use the alley, talking museum business. Sara and I have declared the loading dock a No-Fly zone, where anything can be said, Tammy and Pegi catch on quickly, and we talk there, openly and honestly. It's a very cool aspect of working with other people, the chance to be open and honest. We always hold enough back to protect ourselves, I think that's the universal condition, we are monads but we operate in this enormous Venn mosaic, where everything overlaps. Thinking about dust today, the way it infiltrates. I now collect used Bounce sheets at the laundromat. I don't use them on/with clothes, I bought a box soon after I found out how useful they were for other things and used them once in the dryer with some jeans. I itched for two weeks. Fucking chemicals, man. Still, I use them for cleaning glass shelves at the museum, and I use them the clean my computer screen, and wipe my windows after I clean them, every few years. I think what they do is break the electro-static charge. I might be making that up. I ran a little experiment, to see if I wasn't the victim of yet another urban myth. Watched with the magnifying glass as dust I had stirred from the ash-box of the cookstove settled on several pieces of glass. I had prepared the surfaces and I had closed the house up tightly, so that any currents were fostered from subtle changes in temperature. The dust motes, which when viewed closely look like very successful, very light hair balls, a billion filaments, want to connect, want to amass, it's the nature of useless shit, it collects in the corner. But they bounced off the sheet that had been treated with Bounce. They positively clung to the glass that had been treated with any detergent, and they even liked the sheets of glass that had been wiped with an actual glass-cleaning product. Dust is insidious. When I watched closely, though, I noticed, there was an actual charge, when contact was made, the ball simply bounced away.

Couldn't Send last night. Thunder storms. Walked out this morning, and a fine thing it was, downhill, first light, everything cleaned by rain and prisms on every leaf-tip. A glorious sight. Spent most of the day working on the Historical Show with staff. Wondering if I'm becoming too assertive. We need to get this show together, so I can install it, consequently, I push things a bit. I thought they needed pushing. My role is mercurial. Sara would, I think, tell me if I was out-stepping my job description. 1926 catalog from Standard Supply (a large plumbing and heating supply company, wholesale) and I almost brought it home, to look at the pictures. One was labeled 'Battery Of Porcelain Urinal Stalls' and there were eight of them in a circle, around a shared cistern that flushed them. I want one. But the item that really caught my eye, was a thing I never knew existed, a sub-section, in the boiler division, "Isolator Garbage Consumers" (which phrase I had actually thought before, as it might relate to Kim, Kurt, and me) and there was a top of the line unit that was drop-dead perfect design/function. Once I got the concept. It was a large cast-iron closet, and you threw everything in there, household waste, and when it was full, it flamed-on and reduced your waste to ashes. How cool is that? The product description said: "Provides for the sanitary odorless accumulation and complete destruction, at the source of origin, of all garbage and waste material." That about covers it. Not to cut too fine a point, but what we do is create waste. There was a rain, hard enough, this afternoon, to knock leaves off trees. So it was raining leaves, really wet leaves; they lose the ability to shed water as they rot. I love the fall, you either hibernate or die. The decomposition has already begun. Mackletree was covered in leaves, to the point that you didn't know where the edges were, and my driveway, I'm pleased to report, was an absolute carpet of leaves. This is one of those days that defines (that last s might not be necessary) the year. When you might dance naked and do other things you wouldn't ordinarily do. I look up and see Emily's tombstone. I'm not sure it gets better than this. Read more...

Circus Lecture

Foremost authority in North America, we flew in on a Humanities grant, gave a nice power-point presentation and talk. Woman knows her circus. Wine and mixed nuts. With mixed nuts people tend to pick. I raised peanuts for years in Missip (the tops make great hay) and still love them dearly, so I am not usually a picker, just grab a handful, and shake them into my mouth. I do, however, love filberts and no one was taking them. Working at the Jefferson House, in Winchester, Virginia, there were lots of nut trees and bushes. Filberts are bushes (that can get large) that like their feet near water, and along the outflow of a small spring, someone had planted them on both sides. The one fall I was there I must have picked and roasted 30 pounds. In Missip they were wild along streams. I love them, I make a nut butter with them that is transcendent. Winter coming on, I've started thinking about oils and fats. That, of course, is one of the things that makes acorns such a good food for storage. A pemmican of acorn meal and jerky would be handy to have around, when you didn't want to cook. I might make some, I've read about pemmican forever, but I've never made any. You need two rocks, some acorn meal, some jerky, and maybe a drop or two of walnut oil to start the amalgamation. Sounds like something I'd do on a date. "Hey, you ever made pemmican before?" My younger daughter (I do love the comparative) calls and we laugh about a great many things. She may move here, to establish residency, so she could go to Ohio schools cheaply, and she is the only person I could live with, so it works for me; she understands my habits, she wants to write, I can't imagine a better place to be. I imagine, calling across, "I'm tensing a verb", and she replies, the very fact that she replies, is beyond the pale. "Did you come up with anything", I am not a role model, I don't want my girls using me as any kind of template. I'm a sorry model. I wear the same thing ever day. A creature of habit. I assume you'd have to change that look by the way you felt. But that wouldn't necessarily explain anything. What is is a mere diffraction of light. Look again. What did you think you saw. Read more...

Centrifugal, Centripetal

Centrifugal (I love the fugal in there) is force directed from the center toward the outside, centripetal force, also called afferent, brings it back toward the center. The modern circus, the American Traveling Circus, started as a horse show, when a horse trainer in England discovered that a ring of 42 feet worked best for tricks on horseback. Stopped at the lake on the way home because a guy was launching a small boat and needed a hand. Two fly-rods in the boat, so we talked fly-fishing for a bit, match the hatch, all that; he ties his own flies, and I gave him a couple of squirrel tails I had in the truck. Warm enough to not need a fire, but I start one anyway, to make the butter-nut squash soup for staff. I love this dish, and It's always interesting, the differences, how or whether the starches have fully converted. I'll be using leached acorn flour for thickening. A medium squash, peeled and chunked, simmered in chicken broth, with salt, pepper, allspice, and a little ground ginger, thicken, run it through the blender, add cream. I make similar soups with almost any vegetable, and a great many other things, varying the herbs and spices: shrimp, mushrooms, spinach, cherries, mustard greens are assertive, and I made a turnip version, last year, that was top notch but needs a name other than Turnip Soup, which doesn't fall so trippingly off the tongue. I love the entire turnip family, I do a caramelized rutabaga dish that once resulted in a marriage proposal. I turned her down, because I knew she just liked my cooking. That might have been the basis of a relationship in the past, but I require conversation and she was an air-head. She had a nice body and I did think twice. But, fuck, a relationship built on a side dish doesn't seem doable. I think about how my cooking, now, reflects the equipage. The wood cookstove allows all these options, cooking something for hours, leaching acorns, getting an oven very hot. My house is thirty-six feet wide, from the cookstove to my desk, but I never walk directly, or rarely, so I borrowed one of the measuring devices that you roll along and it tells you how many feet you've gone, from a city-worker guy that had one. I used the: "Hey, I work at the museum!" ploy, and it went perfectly. I like playing with new tools. A normal move, when I get up and roll a smoke and get a drink and feed the stove, is within a tenth of 42. I look like a serious dufus, rolling this thing around, but I appreciate the information. It seems to gibe with something. Yes, right, 42. Here's another cool thing, after I had cooked the squash in chicken broth, I needed to take the lid off, so I could let it cool, and I released several thousand BTUs that were pregnant with earthy smells. Almost as good as part of that. What actually happens. Cooking, I make some assumptions, rosemary goes well with lamb., maybe I make some substitutions, one thing for another, the deal is I always tell the truth. Factor that. Read more...

Left Field

From far out in left field, but not beyond the pale. Anything I think seems to fall within the realm. Even if I try to not make sense, sense emerges. Not that it's a game, but it seems to be. Something Wittgenstein said: "But if I hear a tune with understanding, doesn't something special go on in me --- which does not go on if I hear it without understanding? And what? --- No answer comes; or anything that occurs to me is insipid. I may indeed say "Now I understand it" and perhaps talk about it, play it, compare it with others etc. Signs of understanding may accompany hearing." This approaches the heart of things. When I listen to the Cello Suites I don't so much understand as I'm transported. Beam me up Scotty. Oak galls are bitter, but at their heart, there is a sweetness. A lushness, call it Romantic, or whatever. Harmonics play a large part in it. Listen to the Allman Brothers. "Sweet Melissa", I swoon. Two shots in Glenn's movie about the Wrack Show, that shot of Sara, and the boat carving a white line, what makes sense, really? A couple of chords, a progression of sorts. Work on firewood for a while, but feeling tired, coming down from the final rush of getting the show opened. Need my energy for the next show as we change out the upstairs gallery soon, photographs (all must be framed) and related materials, objects from earlier businesses in Portsmouth. History show. Reread parts of "Zettel", Wittgenstein stripped bare. "In a certain sense one cannot take too much in handling philosophical mistakes, they contain too much truth." Two nice boles of pine I'd picked up and dried all summer, I don't burn pine but I do use it for kindling, and I busted them in half to check the dryness. Both pieces have perfectly straight grain, what a treat splitting them will be. Need a froe, left mine in a tool box in Virginia. Burning Osage Orange is like burning hickory, hot enough to burn out your stove. I'll save the rest for deep winter. Solved the mystery of the floating wood. 50% of river wrack is poplar, then sycamore (a water tree), then oak; but there is also a lot of Osage and it didn't make any sense to me, because it is a very dense wood, about as dense as Live Oak, .95 specific gravity, 59 pounds per cubic foot, and it shouldn't be floating at all BUT it doesn't absorb water. Must have silica in there somewhere, because it actually repels water. Which, of course explains why it makes such good fence posts (in the words of Big Roy in Missip, "damned things will wear out two or three post holes"), absolutely refusing to rot. Quiet relaxing day until the woodpeckers arrive, I don't mind them, really; quite like watching them, so businesslike, so busy, and it wasn't all that quiet, with the breeze through drying leaves. It was relaxing, though, a nice walk down the logging road, a slow saunter, stopping to look at things. The Sassafras is lovely right now, yellow leaves and green branches, and the Red Maple is beautiful. A few fall mushrooms, and I collect a batch of chantarelles, a rare treat, right back to the house, I cook them slowly in butter (they get tough, is their only fault), just salt and pepper, serve them to myself on toast. With a second, smaller batch, I make an omelet. This is eating high on the hog. I had planned to make chili, but I can do that any time. I imagine an acorn/mushroom stew which I think would be very good: leach-slow-cook acorns, shelled and chopped roughly, two hours, changing the water less frequently, then toast slightly. Do not boil, the fats will go out with the baby. Simmer the chunks in chicken broth, slow cook the chantarelles, chopped roughly, in butter, add them, add some garlic, add an onion that you've caramelized in yet another pan. Served on toast, in a bowl, sprinkled with good cheese and minced scallion. I have to fix this as soon as possible, it sounds like something, and the idea of something perks my interest. Me and Molly, me and Emily, what was I thinking: now I've got this tombstone, staring me in the face, "called back" indeed. Read more...

After Midnight

Grazing on left-over finger food, after a horrid dream pulled me from well-deserved sleep, the last few days flash before me. That old actor's nightmare, where you not only don't know your lines, but can't even remember what play you're supposed to be in; you're in your underwear, the lights are very bright, the audience poised to throw vegetables. Almost freezing when I step out to pee and I know the bracing chill has chased sleep, at least for a while. Nothing satisfies. The deep dark and absolute quiet would seem to demand a return to blanket-wrapped warmth, but I know I'd just toss and turn, so I get up and start another fire. The hand you're dealt. Post partum blues. If you're good enough technical support, you disappear, that's the nature of the beast. Language almost makes sense. Belief is a crutch. There are two things, really, what you just finished and the next thing. I take my cue from the natural world, this change in color means I must look to the wood-pile, until spring nothing matters but heat. There's a disconnect here. What if the Circus Show included sawdust and actual dung? It would engage the senses more. It would certainly be a fucking mess, but somehow more correct. I think about that for a while, about what would be authentic, consider the real, dismiss it as a flight of fancy. I need to keep my core temperature within a certain range. Everything else is decoration. Set dressing. What is merely is, an accident of time. Consider your reality, what means anything? Sorry, I lapse peculiar. Read more...

Opening

The event is open bar and finger food carried about by Pegi's Cirque girls walking about with trays, and they are dressed in formal tails. Very cool look for young attractive women, could completely eliminate that whole French Maid thing. There are, like, ten thousand things to do. It must be wonderful to watch but is exhausting to be a part of. James takes care of some pesky wiring problems, D and I, a well-oiled machine, solve final problems at a rate that is truly impressive. It's fun, when you're good at something, to just do it. I'm good at this and the energy flows, good is a fine place to be, it falls almost exactly in the middle between bad and great. Bad, good, great. You could sub-divide. I managed to screw-up several labels several times, and there was a funny scene with the paper-cutter, you would have to have been there. I don't so much decide to stay for the opening as there comes a time when everyone else is gone and I'm the only person there. I think about that, because I've been told I have a 'commitment problem' and I think about that. D wants to talk about Plato, and I've prepared my argument, the stage was set, and he had already gone there, so, great, I don't have to read anymore. I love the opening because I talk with really cool people. Full stop. Me, suddenly, out there. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Everyone is shocked I stay, I think they think I might cut and run. It feels nice to be appreciated, several other curators are there, including the one for the show's next venue, and we talk at length about the actual installation. She wants to hire me for a day to talk her guys through the trickier aspects. Everyone loves the rigging for the Aviator Monkeys, the ropes cleated down. The show looks great. I'm all in, but still no rain so I go to Sara and Clay's for the after party and a bit of dinner, more chat, more praise for the show. Light rain, finally, and I head home, one drink and I'm asleep on the sofa, awake at 9:20, the longest I've slept in months, and back to the museum for a talk about the show by the first Director, visiting from Indiana to see what we've done. The ride home today, after laundromat, library, and liquor store, rested and care-free, was like getting off an escalator. Naming the colors of fall, stopping several times to pull roadkill off the road, stopping at the deserted lake and feeding left-overs from the opening to a small flotilla of ducks, then stopping once more for a couple of billets of firewood on Mackletree, where someone had cut up a dead oak that had fallen across the road. Gathered another bag of acorns, to thicken the butter-nut squash soup I plan to cook tomorrow. There is life after the circus. It's mid-afternoon when I get home and I want to be outside and work physically, so I bow-saw some firewood, with long breaks to watch the wind in the trees, smell the sawdust, listen to the last of the song-birds (winter is just raucous crows and the hammering Pileated Woodpecker); and several stops for a mug of something hot, chicken broth or cider with a shot of whiskey. Slipping back into the natural world. From Plato to Thoreau. It's closing time, but I call D at the museum, to talk about changing tastes. We had been talking, earlier, about the zone, that place artists go when they go somewhere, that middle distance, and I remembered a thing that happened. In my defense, I understand why I respond the way I do; but I always question my motivation. I'm so deeply flawed and question everything, Melville's "Confidence Man" comes to mind. Waking up is hard to do. Barnhart does a riff here. I imagine a cello, but Barnhart probably uses a kazoo. Nothing is really what it seems. Read more...

Penultimate

All the rain has made the driveway a ski-run, so I park at the bottom, hike in and out with an umbrella, feeling like Mary Poppins. because I've never used an umbrella before. I twirl it and do little dance steps. Awake early this morning, to rain on the roof, go over the check-list it my head, prioritize. Spend three hours trimming 150 labels, while James sorts out the electric line to feed the diaramas, I start adherring them to the walls. We use a story stick that's more like a sick joke, one of those tool/jig things cobbed together for a show years ago and still in service. Two yard-sticks taped together, with a cleverly attached horizontal that foots at 57 inches, with a torpedo level taped on the bottom of the horizontal. It works pretty well, actually, but you notice, if you do this (attach labels) that both the loops of painter's tape and the small pieces of velcro (the panels are carpeted, the ridged firm half of the velcro, with adhesive backing, sticks to the back of the label, and the carpet pretends to be the other half of the velcro) but both methods of attachment tend to slide just a bit on initial contact, so there are a lot of minor adjustments. Level is a relative concept. The world is round, for god's sake. Also the floors are not perfect and the panels might not be perfectly plumb. Final adjustment is by eye. Every item has a label, then are is label/signage for the artists, a little bio, then there are these other, larger, black type on yellow paper, with cool circus font title, mini-panels, that explain different aspects of the traveling circus. The finish, installing a show, is a triad. First it is hung/installed, then it is lit, then it is labeled, then you clean up. I'm sure it's been done this way forever. This is the way you do a show. Counting theater, opera, and museum installations, I've got to be over 200, I can't even think that far back, and this one is special for me. A lot of reasons, which is why it becomes special. To wit. Lily is gone, and the B thing; this is a major show, two years in the making, a huge effort on Sara's part; I'm installing this show without Darren, except for the Monkey Aviators, where I really did need help; and the fox is back. I hoped I had been a good neighbor, it's hard to tell, cross-species. I roll apples and hope for the best. Glenn mentioned that I was more careful with my punctuation, and that's certainly true, it's a tool I can use. I need to sharpen my chains and get a gallon of bar-and-chain oil. I'm not transparent, but I try to be. I'm flat-out on this, nothing in reserve. I should hold something back, but I can't, even when I know I should, to protect myself or whatever, but the show is everything. Sara completely understood that I might not stay for even the opening, much less drinks and dinner, that I would have to get home, because my house would be cold, and I'd be wasted. I am now, and I look forward to tomorrow, tweaking things; then coming home early, deciding to build a soup, deciding what soup, then building it.
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Status Report

We're good, is my best guess. The days are become a blur. So exhausted last night I have no idea what I wrote and don't remember sending, maybe I didn't do either. Woke up cold, in the dark, started a fire, heated water. The weather is ugly, nasty even, and the forecast is the same well into the future. But the final list, the punch list, gets shorter, despite adding a few things today, tomorrow is critical, then Friday to mop up what remains. I'll plan on attending the opening and dinner after, but I'm wedded to nothing but having the show open in good form. Not sure I want to walk up the hill, late, in the rain, to a cold house, a trade-off between discomfort and celebration. I can always celebrate alone, I know what I've done, I don't need a pat on the back; what I'll probably need are a couple of stiff drinks and three scrambled eggs, a piece of toast, some fried potatoes. Thank god my TV was hit by lightning when I was gone at xmas, I'd be watching baseball, some, at any rate, because I love the game, and I don't have the time. I watch highlights at the pub, at lunch, and that's fine, it's enough. I read, write, stop at the lake, find time for a walk in the woods, it's a balancing act, we all do it, carve spoons, whatever. If you're not going to just stop the chain and shoot yourself, you find a way to balance that deep you, who you are, with what must be done. Listen, I'm lazy, the only person I know who might read for 6 or 8 hours at a stretch, but I still get things done, it's just a matter of keeping your priorities straight and making a list. Living alone helps, because you're not beholden to anyone else. I don't recommend it, though, because it's very lonely. I like being alone. This is a difficult thing to even talk about. I like being alone, but I sometimes wish I could be talking to another, or maybe occasionally having sex. I'm still alive, after all. Having said that, I prefer being alone, because I can merely get on with my life. Install a circus show, cool, I can do that, and it advances me, I learn from this, installing shows, at a certain point, makes you a curator, and I am one now, and didn't see it until today. One thing Glenn is saying. One step removed: his movie is saying. I think about this a lot, the convolutions. Everything is two steps removed. My construct is built on an idea, are these simply Venn Diagrams or something different? I thought you might be different. Staring squarely at her tombstone, I have no choice, there's a link here, I have to examine, you'll forgive me because you must. Don't think I don't see what's going on. You and your hard stops. Read more...

Rhumb Lines

The evanescence of lake vapor is a lovely thing, I had to stop and watch. The fall color is coming on apace, big red maples along the Ohio are particularly spectacular. Lower and internal leaves are still dark green, but the outer leaves have turned a striking mercurochrome. An impressive display. Red maples line the Ohio in this area, they seem to be able to digest petrochemicals and do well in the flood-plain. Side bar: Mordant Rouge, a solution of aluminum acetate in acetic acid, used in calico printing, is also called red liquor. Memory is weird. I have a set of things labeled 'things I don't want to remember' but, sure as shit, something goes in that file and I remember it. I have to pay special attention, reread, fucked from the get go. It's hard to not remember what you specifically wanted to forget. Bullock in the china shop. Thank god I worked Saturday, today disappeared, almost totally, I saved the day by gluing and sealing 30 pages of labels, another 20 to go, but I'm well begun. The problem was that one of the internal set of lights in one of the diaramas wasn't working and I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I don't understand electricity, but I've done enough wiring to know that something is broken, and I don't know what. I took apart and re-soldered joints, replaced the cord, did everything I know how to do. Traced power back to the piece, therefore the line coming out of the piece is flawed. I'm sure I can fix the problem, but it's consumed hours already. And now I have to splice another feed. Electronics are cool, but they almost always screw up. My power fails at the drop of a hat. I'd call me tenuous, at best. Read more...

Kafka

Physical fasting can be taken as a parable of spiritual denial. I wonder now if I'm the one that's gone away. Wittgenstein said "It is not something behind the proof, but the proof itself that proves." Aristotle: "Truth is the correspondence of our thought with what is actually the case." Sow it in on the mountain, reap it in the valley. There's a state of rapture, walking in the woods, that has no parallel on any sidewalk. Maybe it's just non-direction, one thing leads to another. Late at night, for me, it's Robert Cray. I can't live without the blues. You come home late for dinner, and the chicken is cold. The truth is your ordinary mind, and an electric guitar. Dig it. I don't want to get to work too early, but I can't stay away. There are things I need to do more important than sleeping. What keeps me rocking.What keeps me keeping on. I'm a blues nut, it drives my internal combustion, there are times it's the only thing. John Lee Hooker is the voice of God. Religion is a crutch. You live and then you die, get used to it. The grave is a fit and final place. Read more...

No Problem

What does Lennon say, only solutions. A merry-go-round. Sleep on your left side, keep your sword hand free. Not that anyone's after you, but it never hurts to watch your back. That there is anything at all, rather than nothing. Kafka's 'baffled transcendence' or whatever you want to call it. Quis custodiet custodes. I say sweep the corners and mop everything twice, but that's just my training. I like what I'm feeling and I like what I do. Not just anyone could have hung this show, but there is a set of us who could, enough to know I'm in that set. I don't need to be the best, I just need to be good enough. I no longer need to be unique, good enough is fine. Check my EKG, I flat line when it comes to the future, expect nothing and you're seldom disappointed. Nothing is good enough. A last cigaret. Nothing is what it seems. If you want someone to love you, I'm probably your guy. Cowboy Junkies, god they are good, that lead vocalist tears my heart apart. She's way too good. That gruff thing is too much. When a voice destroys you so completely you have to look at the harmonics. Tom Rush. Who else? Bach, the last string quartets, even Miles, there at the end. Leave this broke down palace. Leave this river to rock my soul. Nothing is what it seems. Read more...

Reading Wittgenstein

First, though, I suited-up and hand-sawed some wood, built a little fire, spilt some kindling. Just enough wind to drown out any ambient noise. Kneeling on a foam pad, using a hatchet, taking care, I stop often to listen, hear before I see the fox coming out the path to the graveyard. I've got an apple in my bibs and I roll it across the logging road, she watches so intently I have to laugh. It's not lost on me that we're talking apples here, might as well call her Eve and be done with it. I don't want to totally stop work and the first few times I split off a stick, she starts, but she catches on to the rhythm, flattens down on her belly, grips the fruit between her paws and eats the whole thing. At one point she gets some apple-skin (I think) between her teeth and does a lovely head-shake --- tongue thing to dislodge it. She leaves, we never say good-bye, any contact is on her terms. I used to laugh about Tesla and his pigeon. Not laughing anymore. So I'm still on my knees, kneeling on the pad, looking into the middle distance, listening closely to this contained universe I call home, my conceptual unity, my concentrated unity, I slip into a fugue state. Something has fallen into place, but I'm never easy on myself, and I need to pry it loose. I tend to set the jumps a little higher than is really comfortable, that way, if I hit the first one, I can excuse myself from the race. This time, though, I see where I was going: the essence of modernism is in its break with nature. It strikes me like a blow. I think I could defend this argument in any discipline. Look at painting: dot dot dot, then realism, then impressionism, then post-impressionism, then abstract expressionism and so on. Steady moving away from the natural. Moving into the topology of closed spaces. The windowless monads. The Venn Diagrams that could be drawn from this. I come back inside and heat some chicken broth, pull "Tractatus" from the shelf, then all the other Wittgenstein, and I make some notes which I use to start another small fire after a strange dinner of cheese and crackers, pickled jalapeno slices, and an egg I poach inside a circle cut in a piece of toast. Life as usual. I no longer make claims for being normal, nor give a shit for what anyone thinks. I merely do what I do. Read more...

Peace and Quiet

I needed a day off. Some of Glenn's work visible at ridgeposts.blogspot.com check it out. A bit of cleaning but mostly spent the day reading and eating, mentally dead. Hanging a show this large, dealing with all the things that come up, attachment, is totally exhausting. End of yesterday, I was fried. The illusion of an illusion. It occurs to me that I can make acorn-butter. I have a small fire in the cookstove, so I put on a pot of shelled nuts, maybe a quart and a half, I keep another pot of water on the stove, change the water every half-hour for four hours. Now I know why I thought to do this, James researched the food value of acorns and said there was a lot of fat, just remembered that conversation. I spread the nuts out on a cookie sheet and dry/bake them in the oven, only at 250 degrees because I don't need a hot fire, I'll experiment with higher temps later this winter, you know, toast them. As they dry them I cut them into smaller pieces, as they get drier, I grind them in a mortar with a pestle, I've got a great large one picked up at a yard-sale, not to a meal or anything, just smallish pieces, so the little food-processor (I don't remember where this came from) doesn't die on me. I need some liquid, some oil, to get started, and I've got some walnut oil I use for a killer salad dressing, and as there is no sweetness and almost no taste I decide to use a little maple syrup, and some salt. You could use any type of honey, to alter the taste of this, but it's surprisingly good and sticks to anything. I like celery, for that burst of liquid, and for it's ability to carry dips. I'll take you there, the cemetery, wherever, it might take me a while, to understand, but I usually get the point. Step into the light, walk on through. This neighborhood. Is there something I should say? Read more...

Paper Cut

It's a dream, but enough to shake me. Maybe we all feel inadequate. Maybe it's a fact of life. I do a lot of things well but I make a lot of mistakes along the way. I was (in the dream) hanging a painting, lost my grip, and put my fist through a valuable piece of canvas. Harmonics, ringing changes. I don't have anyplace to be, so I get up and roll a smoke, pour a short drink, the night is young, better than tossing and turning. Tune the radio to some great guitar playing, not wanting to really listen, I play it low, just barely into the realm of hearing. A presence, but not something loud enough to distract me. I go about my business, it seems to me, trying to not make waves. There are a few people I try to please, nothing else matters much. My sense of self is critical, and because I live alone I'm allowed some quiet time, which is increasingly important. I can drift off, thinking about fall colors, Valerie's ankles, an imagined installation, a certain fox, ways I could cut my water use. I can think about anything, not think, simply be in the natural world, without someone calling me back. A field guide to living in the world. These are your tools, this is the world. The more things change the more they're the same. The more you lose the more you gain. Explain that. I don't want to fight, I have no argument with anyone, and I'm don't fight well. I never learned to play an instrument, wish I could, but wishing is seldom enough. I resist testing, scores, rating in any form. I don't want to be compared to anything, what I really want, in the morning light, is just a Circus Show, no frills, but a statement. The acrobat that I am, I docent several families through, one group, from the big city, are surprised we even exist. We play the games we choose to play. I've done nothing wrong. Reality changes. It's up to you to find meaning. Interesting, because we have this show, and this is where it all comes together, I guess it's ok, I'd rather the floor was covered with sawdust, but I guess it's fine. Set the show, I set the bar fairly high. It's a habit. Read more...

What's Real

Considering the scope of things, working all day Saturday isn't a big deal. I knew I needed to, though Sara said not, I did anyway, knowing D and I could knock holes in the punch-list. Up early enough for a major breakfast, then stops in Kentucky, for tobacco, and at Kroger, for supplies. Ducks in a row. D met me in the grocery parking lot, having forgotten his keys, coffee and a scone at Market Street. We fairly jump on it, paint (pickle) the Carter frame and reframe the painting. It's cool to reframe a $50,000 painting. Then the signage on the front wall, then I hang two works on the signage wall, we hang the Carter, I rehang a watercolor that was hung an inch too high (James made a mistake in the math, the mistakes in hanging are almost always one inch, one way or the other), then prepare the panel for the 12 photos that were forgotten. It's a simple 3 foot by 4 foot piece of plywood, rounded edges, filled and painted semi-gloss Gallery White. I had to mark it all up to plot the lay-out, then place the 24 screws just so. It'll need touch up paint, as will all the pedestals (14) and some wall areas. All those labels to mount (spray glue then vacuum seal, trim to size (individually, as they are all different) then stick them to the walls with loops of painter's tape), and still have to fabricate supports for the distressed animals. We'll make it easy, because I worked today. I'd rather make it easy and work an extra day. Dreary weather and I would have just read. Great start to the day, walking down the hill, I flushed a grouse and nearly had a heart attack, thumping birds should be outlawed. Foggy, the hills are smoking, as the vapors rise, it's beautiful, I have to stop several times. Then slow down for the free-ranging chickens, have to stop, actually, because a previous driver had killed a Rhode Island Red, chickens are cannibalistic so the rest of the flock were clustered in the middle of the road, eating Frank or Mary or whomever. Booby Weghorst and his chickens. Since I'm stopped he comes out of the shed/coop and we shoot the shit about lumber prices. Finally he herds the chickens across the road and I can be on my way, knowing that, this time, the chickens crossed the road because Booby herded them. Sometimes it's embarrassing to be an adult. Must be because of Glenn's movie, the 50 or so people that were at the preview must have mentioned it to other people, but I've been directing a lot of people to the blogsite. Another person, yesterday, said there should be more of me (that person) in the movie, and I wondered how, or what, and where. I'm not an actor. If anything, I want to appear natural. That's my position as an anti-romantic lead. What you see is what you get. If you're filmed looking at something, how many times removed is that from what the thing is? Many, then there's String Theory. Forgive me, this dumb spectator can't keep track. I do the requisite reading, but I'm so easily distracted. I watched formation of geese going south, coming home, and nearly caused a pile-up. Dufuss Bridwell watching the birds. I withhold judgment, I think that, maybe, the fact that the geese settled into a perfect 'V' counts for something. I don't pretend to know how they navigate, you go to that big tree in the middle of a swamp and turn right. If there's a genetic story-stick, doesn't that change things? I have to ask myself, so hey, man, what do you think? and I'm always at a loss. The real world is always one step ahead, the natural world. Lane is correct, Plato is wrong. This is a matter of definition. We could talk about it, but the result would be the same. What you decided. Read more...

Old School

Back when I was in school a degree meant something, you could translate Latin, you could talk coherently, you could defend an argument, write a paper about almost anything. Now you can graduate with the sure knowledge that you know how to sign your name. Fashions change. The length of skirts is somehow tied to the economy. I awoke in a fret. Something I was forgetting. The house was cold so I pulled on a sweatshirt, heated some chicken stock and spiked it with a shot of whiskey. What was it? Something to do with Plato banishing the artists. It's a disconnect between art and business that bothers me. What I was saying earlier, about the mandate of a museum. I'm in this because of the art, installing Sara's show, busting my ass to create something. It has everything to do with beauty and the sublime, how, when I'm listening to the Bach Cello Suites I'm not thinking, just responding. D called, we were so comfortable back in the groove today, solving problems, after we had flown the Monkey Aviators, with a simple solution to a nagging problem. The final link, as far as I was concerned, yes, yes, yes, as Molly says. It all comes together. It's either late or early, depending on how you sleep, the bottom line is the level of your engagement. Sappho said "I don't expect to touch the sky with my two hands." Emily said, " Perhaps affection has always one question more which it forgot to ask." Basho, the final word:

Like nothing
it's been compared to:
the crescent moon.
Read more...

Light, Tunnel

Hard rain on the metal roof all night. I'd been expected it, parked at the bottom of the hill and hiked in. Fall colors are happening, clean and vibrant in the drizzle. Enough of a fire in the cookstove to chase the damp and heat the oven enough to cook a halved acorn squash stuffed with homemade sausage (easy if you keep a jar of the spice mix, then catch the ground pork on sale) and that takes care of dinner for two nights. Slept well, with the droning roof, out early, to watch the creeks in spate and check the napp at the spillway. Thunderous, a sheet of water 42 feet wide, 10 inches thick, aerated in the fall, turning white, crashing against the curb at the bottom. Turkey Creek is roiling. Altogether an excellent thing. The sound is thrilling, and I always forget the way you can feel it in your feet, standing there. The word awesome comes to mind, and sublime, all of which was discussed today, at length, because of a paper D needs to write on Plato. Perfect museum day, though exhausting. D there, and Sara, an we finish what might be called the initial installation. Still some tweaking to do, some small brass supports to be fabricated, so all the toy animals can stand. The poor things, their joints are wallowed out. Actually light the show, and I didn't think we'd get there until tomorrow. We three have agreed to work again tomorrow. Having D for just two days a week, when we're installing a show, the A team needs to be together. In an Art Museum, the art is what it's all about. So, we have labels and mounts, and a huge clean-up yet ahead of us, but the show is there. Fucking magic. We flew the Monkey Aviators today, and it was no big deal, ropes through ring bolts. The ropes go all the way from the Richards gallery, upstairs, and tie off on cleats downstairs, on two pillars. Very cool, and it breaks the plane. It's striking, really, what it does; that particular attachment is elegant. I want to get some of the belly out of the top of the banner, and I see a way, using just a small screw-eye and a length of monofilament. I leave some details to the other two perparators who will install this show at other venues. Out of my control there, if I made notes it would probably only confuse them. I know my notes confuse me, they're a jumble of things I want to remember and things I need to do. I only keep one set of notes. I thought about only wearing shirts that had two pockets, so I could have two sets of notes, but that seemed ridiculous, who needs two sets of notes? Barnhart exempted, obvious reasons, no one. I rest my case against Plato on a faulty logic, but it's enough for me. We don't even understand, exactly, what he means by 'good', we don't understand what he meant by 'artist', I'm not a meta-thing person, but we have very little idea about what's being said. Plato would have liked Thoreau, I can see the two of them at the pub, imagine them telling stories. That's my level of engagement. I told Sara today, I'd done hundreds of shows, thousands of performances, but this show is special, it does something else, it brings memory into play. It's not just art, it's more than that, it's a record of a thing, a phenomenon. I'd feel ill-spent, if this show were viewed as only minor regionally important. My exhaustion is balanced by a certain hubris. I know I've installed this show really well, and I don't want to appear arrogant, or the usual asshole that appears to accept the award. You know you're better than that. We know that too. There's a thread through here somewhere. Right, right, what you thought they were thinking. that's a dead-end street, don't go there. Read more...

Emily's Tombstone

If you're read by enough people, eventually someone sends you an actually rubbing of Emily's tombstone. I need to get it framed and under glass right away. The inscription is from the last letter to her cousins, 'Called Back' and I want to hang it to the left over my desk, where Faulkner currently reigns, a poster from the 1996 Yoknapatawpha Conference, 'Faulkner and the Natural World'. Suffice it to say that my day is made. Which is good, because it's another brutal day. Brutal isn't the correct word, what I mean is fully engaged and challenging. I didn't sleep well last night, worrying things like a dog with a bone. I'm fine flying solo, especially with James's help, the newbie, and he's good, a brilliant organizational mind, and, as Sara said, a systems guy. With an MFA in Library Science he tends toward the complusive, and this is a good thing hanging a show. The real problem wall ended up being a panel, which is wood under carpet, and I used a story-stick to level across. Eight inch framed side-show postcards, three rows of six, and they hang on two screws, four inches apart, two inches from each end. James marks a stick, the straightest stick I could find, and we level it against a piece of wide masking tape stuck to the panel, transfer the marks. I put a dry-wall screw at every point. Screwing if fraught with variables. The angle, the grain of the wood, the point of entry. The variations are less than a sixteenth of an inch but over eight inches they're ugly and skew the view. I hand James a small finish hammer and a level. You can tap them up and down, soft metal. He asks how good do I want them to be and I tell him whatever he would accept. Hell, his standards are higher than mine, I've got too much on my mind, so it's perfect to give James that task, because he does better than I would have. The show is spectacular, it's mostly all hung, we'll fly the Monkey Aviators tomorrow, maybe do the signage, maybe do the lighting. The labels are extensive and necessary and will require almost as much time as setting the show. A week from tomorrow this show opens as a major event. Arts people from all over the state. I want the installation, and the site, to look good, I want mouths to drop open. Originally centered around the Carter's, and the horses hold center stage, that Vermeer horses's asses is a great painting. It's all about light, really, that subtle thing that happens.This time of year there might one tree lit, from an errant shaft of light. It might be glorious. This morning there was one of those displays, and I didn't know what to say to myself. Hey, Tom, you're hanging a show, it could be ironic or not, what do you think about that? Read more...

More Notes

Up to two folded sheets now, that's thirty-two panels and a lot of notes. I have notes to remind me what other notes mean, as I tend toward the cryptic, and some that just don't make any sense at all. I cross those off, exactly as if I'd done whatever it was, and I actually have crossed them off, which counts as something. So tightly focused on what I was doing yesterday that I was bone-weary exhausted when I got home. Didn't really know to what extreme until after I'd eaten and written, but remember know that I was so tired I didn't want to go through the whole SEND procedure and then forgot this morning. Rather I slept late and didn't have the time because I needed to get right back on that horse. Enough leaves down on Mackletree that a rooster tail follows you. Fucking black walnuts are a minor traffic hazard, I stop and collect a Kroger bag full on the way home, some I'll put in a bucket of sand under the shed, to plant, they have to go through a freeze cycle before they'll sprout, and I'll crack enough of the oily bastards for a wilted spinach salad. A dressing of hot bacon fat with balsamic, mix in the bacon and some fresh mozzarella. A salad, you know, to die eating. I consume a lot of fat in the winter, and eat a big salad with a scoop of tuna-fish every other day, for lunch, at the pub. Considering diet, I remember the lessons I've learned from the goatherds I've managed, primary of which is: eat a balanced menu, but yield to the odd craving. Suck on a piece of charcoal maybe once a year, eat a little clay. There could be something important in library paste. Pay no attention to me, I eat acorns, for god's sake, and I'm planning an acorn squash, thickened with acorn gruel, soup, for the staff. Cooking a proto-type miniature version now, with a small acorn squash I took from a seasonal display at the local Tim Horton's. I can't help myself, in these situations, I always take the vegetables that are going to rot anyway. The displays at Tim Horton's can feed me for a month. Feed me well. I make some hominy from the corn, rick the squash in as if I had raised it. Sometimes, when I read myself, I think I talk funny, and my writing is very close to my speaking, right now, so I look at that and listen to myself. It's a tight loop. I'm very interested in immediacy, memory, and I want to cut out the chaff. I'm older, I don't have time. Edit on the fly and SEND. I'm pleased anyone can understand anything I say. Language is so goddamn difficult. Andrew, a sharp critic, said he wished there had been more of me reading in Glenn's Wrack movie. It's hard being me, expecting a limo, and having to change a flat instead. What. When. Where. I felt like a critic, briefly, sometime today. An extreme day. If you've never worked back-stage in theater, you wouldn't know what I meant. I worked at the very limit of what I could do, today, as hard and as fast as I could mange, teetering right at the edge. Someone remind to do a page about D Rings. The Butler Museum sucks. Everything is relative At some point I back away and look at what we're creating, Jesus, with this show, there is almost too much. I match Sara smoke for smoke as we consider what she has created. I'm comfortable with this. I like being here. To be engaged is actually the best possible state. Fuck you and your index. Go girl. I'm pretty sure I agree with her. I'm sorry, what did you say?

Tom

Three crows,
they don't mean
anything.
Read more...

Set Sail

God, what a fine dinner. Everything worked today. Starving at the end of it, I made a great hash from left over roast beef and minced potatoes, with shallots and garlic, plopped a fried egg on top, toast with Carma's grape jelly, and a stout whiskey on the rocks. Good enough for anyone. Started hanging the show today and it's a lovely thing. Ran the numbers on a couple of walls (length of wall, add total width of pieces in that bay, subtract, divide by the number of pieces plus one) to make sure there was room for the labels. One bay didn't work so Sara came down and we finessed a solution. When James started doing the numbers for me (he had to organize a file of pics for the other venues first) the pace picked up. Takes two to hang a show, generally, if anything is wider that three feet, and I don't like hanging a painting worth $50,000 without an extra set of hands. This is it, though, the fucking cat's meow, installing a show like this, being very careful, all cylinders clicking, and it is exhausting. The front wall is beautiful, stunning even. Pegi hadn't seen the Carter horses, and they blew her away. Just the reaction we're after. Sara has done her work well, and my intention is to install it nearly perfectly. Could hardly stop, but I knew I needed to, at 4:30, because my brain was fried: but I can see it done, projecting ahead, the time frame works, light it this weekend with D, then set the labels next week and clean the floor. Then set up for a huge opening party, then clean up from the party, then get to work on framing for the next show upstairs. Finessing the one wall was fun, I ran another set of numbers and told Sara that if we could use a one foot shelf for the two circus toys (a camel and an elephant, with axles and wheels, very cool, but the elephant is missing an ear) and the two pics, a camel and an elephant Carter had shot at the traveling local circus, then we'd have 8 and five-eights between and that would work. She went and got a couple of little pedestals, one plexi, one painted, squatted down and tried several arrangements. Found one that worked, we save 13 and a half inches of wall, divided by 8, perfect. And this was the tightest wall, the rest of the gallery is clear sailing; end of tomorrow I should be 75% roughly installed. Still, have to run electricity to all the diaramas, rig the fucking Aviator Monkeys, but I'm feeling good about it all. I love doing this, I could make more money a thousand ways, but I'd have to be away from home, building a staircase in Iowa, a hard-plastered shower with a built in bench in Texas, delivering a table to Colorado, and I don't want to travel, I want to stay home, read and write, that's really all I want to do. This whole B thing bothers me, I can't deny it. Like the way it came in there, it's a plague unto my house. If we're not going to speak, I'd rather live on another ridge, or buy him out, so we didn't have to occupy the same space. This situation is not acceptable to me. It's not critical, I don't have to act on it tomorrow, but it is on my mind. I don't care, one way or the other. I could move to Arkansas, or even back to Mississippi, in many ways I don't care where I live, or I could stay here, a fine enough place, with acorns aplenty. Why even consider bronze, stone is good enough. Then you don't even need to consider a source for tin. Stick with stone as long as you can. I hate melting shit, it scares me, really, like clowns.

Tom

Fell asleep
Before I Sent
Read more...

Can't Sleep

An idiot, me; this world, I swear to god. I was pretty sure I understood. Everything I thought I knew, a puff of dust. Biggest problem with this show, believe me, I've thought about this, is that in the hanging, there must be extra space for the labels, so everything will not be hung exactly centered. There's no algorithm for the eccentricity. It's easy to do the numbers if everything is centered, A, plus half of B, equals C, when A equals the space between. I wake in a sweat that the balance is unbalanced. A preparator's nightmare. But, of course, the labels have weight, and for a show like this, where information is critical, the signage is important, therefore carries even more weight. A false alarm. I know I can do this. Still, I think, we face a difficult week. Much of the work has never been part of a show, it might be hanging for the first time, as part of an installation. I need to wrap my head around this, come to grips. I think I agree with myself, that it's the circus, imperfect by nature. Side-show freaks: the bearded lady, a three-legged man, that midget breathing fire. It's over the top, and everything is here, but I have to install it, and I'm insecure, because my office, the kitchen, is a mess. Both Tammy and Pegi forgot they'd spread out food for a Friday feast and I don't have time to deal with this. My job, I thought this was clear, is to install a show, and keep the heat and humidity at a certain level. I can't be everywhere at once. I'd love to build a set for Sharee and April for the upcoming residency, but I really don't have the time. I want to do a stair installation, but I can't think about that now, the task at hand takes precedence. I'm good at this usually, so the next week is a kind of test. I'm ok with that, I've always done well with tests; just, please, get this other shit off my back. I bleed therefore I am. I make no greater claim. Fact is, I can do this, with a little help and a great deal of slack. Odd, isn't it, that it comes down to an aging hippy and a room full of art? If someone's watching they must wonder how it could come to this. But here we are. It's sloppy and imperfect, but what we're dealt. I intend to do my best and hope it's good enough. I'm driven in this, by something I'd be hard-pressed to explain, to get it right. It's theater, come on, make believe. To get it right is relative. I understand that. My job is to make Sara's vision real. Tune in, turn on, drop out. Give up, you can't do it. Expectations are the ultimate curse. There's a Dylan song that explains everything, "North Country Fair", listen closely. Read more...

Drainage Pattern

The shape of the pattern is determined by the land. Simple enough, if you throw in dozens of variables. Branch Rickey said: "Luck is the residue of design." Architecture is frozen music. I forget who said that, so it's not really a quote, because I probably got it slightly wrong. Walking in the woods again, I find a couple of nice Boletus mushrooms, and gather a rucksack of kindling for the large trash can I keep for such small stuff. Some color in the leaves today, and it's still, the light is tangible, in shafts that define space. I have a little flask I picked up at Goodwill so I was carrying maybe a half-ounce of the peaty single-malt Glenn had left, a Talisker, found a stump off the logging road, stopping for a nip and a smoke. Scraped an ashtray with my foot, rolled a cig, took a small sip. I love the smell of rotting leaves, the fecund isness. It was very quiet, the occasional car or truck far away, but otherwise just the sound of birds, and leaves stirring where something scampered. I sat there I long time, maybe an hour, doing nothing, not moving, quieting even that internal voice. I do this as often as possible, because what happens, if you stop your flailing about, is that nature returns to fill the vacuum created by your intrusion. I learned, from watching the tadpoles, that if you didn't sit very still, you'd never see the salamanders. One of those observations where what you see might be a metaphor for something down the road. Finally walk back home, velcro the elastic back brace and hit a few licks with the sling-blade. I'm careful, I start slowly; I need to reestablish contact with my body, I've been dwelling in my mind through the hot months. Look at the cycle, take the long view. I'm less concerned with my personal comfort than installing this Circus Show which is a monster, fraught with complications. I'm sure I can do it, with James and Sara, it would be cake with D, but he is off the table; I'll use him just once, to install that pesky banner, fucking Monkey Aviators, because of my fear of heights. I have a thought that the posters shouldn't be hung perfectly, D agrees, but it's murky terrain. The argument is that the posters would have been applied in a rather haphazard manner, so we sh ould, you know, not hang them straight; BUT they're artifacts now, art maybe, we could talk about this, and therefore deserve to be handled and hung as such. It's an interesting question, I think, so I spend some time thinking about it. Get bogged down in Andy Warhol, and come out of it like that dream the other night, shaking and mildly upset, not knowing exactly where I am. Life throws these great sweeping curves and we're looking for a fastball. It's nice hard stop but I'm not done. Nothing prepares you for the real world, that's the problem, that extra year in graduate school, the dirt beneath the nails, nothing prepares you. Suddenly you're on your own. a monad, but wait a minute, what about anyone else not quite up to speed? I will not profile here. It's a trap, but there are those who can be engaged. I'm more interested in what actually happened. My drift is obvious. Read more...

Another Thing

Cold enough to need a fire and I decide a midnight bath is in order. I wrote and ate supper twice reading Emily's letters. Interesting that as you read them over and over, as I do, that even the most opaque passages take on firm meaning. That anyone ever thought they could edit what is already stripped to the bone. "This is the very weather that I lived with you those amazing years that I had a father." Heat water on the cookstove, bring in the sheep watering trough, set out my sundries, the large rough towel I like for these occasions, stolen, as I remember, from those Catholics in Baltimore. I scrub off a layer of skin then buff myself pink. My feet need attention, and my nails, my hands drink lotion like they are starved. Ablutions. I feel better reading Emily when I'm clean. The provenance is perfect, hearing her speak from the page. The park ranger thought I was a retired professor but I told him I was just a run-of-the-mill ridge top autodidact. I tried to explain what a preparator did but I saw there were questions and I didn't want to talk any longer. I'd bought a small bag of apples in my campaign to get the fox back out in the open. Mackletree, in the State Forest, mid-afternoon, the slanting light and the trees created a strope-light that slowed me to a crawl, but I finally got home and took an apple to the graveyard, where I assume she dens. I suspect a certain warren of caves under sandstone ledges but I really don't want to know for sure. Tree tip pits vary with terrain. If a tree fails in an ice-storm, and it falls down hill, a significant amount of dirt sometimes covers the base of the trunk. Woodchucks like to burrow there. Squirrels deposit nuts in middens. I've clipped paths down to a couple of viewing thickets, where I might watch from, without interfering. Something as simple as a woodchuck sticking out his nose can be an event. I could allow myself to seem simple. Must have fallen asleep, a warm bath after midnight will do that, then woke up confused. Must haven written early yesterday, then eaten, then read for several hours, then ate again, then bathed, then started writing again, then just passed out of the sofa, woke once, fire out, got a blanket, back to sleep, that awful dream where I'm trapped on a very high landing and the stairs are falling apart, the railings are gone, I'm on the edge of panic. Woke in the usual cold sweat. Decide to take the day off, fuck the weeds. Tomorrow is soon enough. Memorable lunch of potatoes, venison steak pan-fried with mushrooms, eggs, and a scone I picked up yesterday for this meal (a minute in the microwave); a fruit smoothie (kiwi, banana, plain yogurt, protein powder, orange juice) and a perfect double espresso. May be my only meal of the day. Walk out to the graveyard and end up spending several hours wandering around in the woods. No specific purpose, just looking at things and reflecting. Part of the time there's an internal monologue, part of the time there's nothing but a child-like engagement. I taste things, I smell things. There's a very small violet, a teeny plant, that I like very much, and when I find them, I hunker down and look closely. This late part of my life, I set the pace, that's the rule, I can only do what I can do, a small fraction of things, really, but the best I can accomplish. I consider, again, that prospect of moving to a place that had running water and a thermostat, and I dismiss it out of hand. No. I need to be engaged by the world, the natural world, nothing else makes much sense. Dean of Liberal Studies at Janitor College was one "Mac" Knelson. A fucking tyrant. He tormented what would be called TA's today but were then merely assistants, to memorize certain passages from "Macbeth". So they could better control what was presented. Right, pretty sure I get that, but what do you, exactly, mean? I'm on top of this, I have a notebook, with me , I'm everywhere, I make notes. They almost look like words, but they're not: it's that other language, just under the surface, where we actually communicate. I have to consider that. Left out to dry. Hanged out to dry, what does that mean? When you listen to the radio, a baseball game, I saw the interest spark. My advice would be don't question my competency, I explain myself a lot, a simple sand-wedge; not a difficult shot, but you choose to make it difficult and we come to loggerheads. I say nothing, learning my place, a mere instructor. Read more...

All Bluster

Windy autumn day that starts the leaf-fall. Leisurely drive to town, laundry day, stop at Big Lots for pantry supplies then lunch with D to liaise. Back at the museum we talked attachment, he made some points. A young couple came in and I walked them around the Circus Show, getting my docent rap in shape. Excellent show, "Sawdust And Spectacle", anxious to get hanging. I'll get D to put the Carter horses on the web site. Several have asked about the Wrack movie, and copies will be available soon as we get this show wrapped. Large workload for the next two weeks, hanging a major show with D. I think I can. Wonderful part of the job, working closely with Sara the last two days, setting the show, watching her mind tease order out of chaos. Should have gone on down the road and bought a new printer, but the lake and the ridge were calling strongly and I needed peace and quiet. Stopped at the lake and sat at the picnic table nearest the spillway, a gentle napp of just over an inch managing a sound much like a low note played on the cello. Just enough noise that I didn't hear the park ranger walking up behind me, he cleared his throat, so as not to startle which me, which, of course he did. I was rolling a smoke and he wondered what with. This happens often. He rolled one from my pouch and I went and got the opened bottle of merlot from the board meeting, which was probably better now, having breathed for a couple of days. I had some plastic cups. We drank and talked acorns. He was interested in my recent fascination with Balanocultures. I had some acorns with me, from a small tree in town, just behind the museum; getting to work early one day last week, I'd picked one up off the sidewalk and shelled it out, scraped it with my thumbnail, my tasting technique for acorns, and it wasn't too bitter, so today I collected a small bag, thinking about the soup Ishi described. I went and got one from the truck and we tasted it, I explained various leeching methods. He knew where I lived, all the locals do, I'm that crazy guy that has to park at the bottom of his driveway all winter and hike in. He knew I was a writer, he knew I worked at the museum. Whatever happened to autonomy? I think of myself as almost invisible, but of course my truck is often parked at the bottom of the hill, so people who use this road, Upper Twin, know where I am. And I'm not trying to hide, it's not that, I could hide if I wanted to, but probably not here, I'd hide in Utah, if I wanted to hide. Also, I know several of the park rangers, and word gets around. The eccentric at Low Gap Hollow. Talked with Linda about failed expectations, about how it was better to know which way the current flowed, so you could steer accordingly, then talked with Glenn about the final cut, how we wanted to work together again soon. I'd love to do a film about Janitor College, about Emily and Sappho. I'm open, as they say, to anything. It's hard to let go of one thing and start on another. Divorce comes to mind. Who was at fault and what does it matter? Now is now and then certainly was then. Mostly I muddle along, I have a dog-eared text I reference now and again, but it's hopelessly out of date, anything I say is bullshit. Understand that. Anything. Read more...

Loud Noise

I'm sleeping on the sofa because I just didn't want to climb the stairs. Didn't even turn off the radio and I wake to Chris Smithers singing "Desolation Row", grab a flashlight and go see what it is. Two coons, red eyes gleaming, fighting over a bone, atop the compost heap; I chide them for waking me but they seem unconcerned. There's a pile of rocks on the deck for this situation and I let fly, hit one on the ass, fat bastard screeches and they both run off. I don't mind them recycling my garbage, but they have no business disturbing a dream where I was on the brink of discovering the secret of running water. Get a little taste of single-malt and roll a smoke, think about the day past, with some remove. We had set the front wall with three paintings and two little drawing isolating the center piece, a Clarence Carter painting of two work horses under a circus tent, the horses are white Percherons, lit by a shaft of light from a raised flap behind us, the tent, above, fades to a single vanishing point. The composition is perfect, catching a throw-away moment, two horses facing away from us at an angle, the dark folds of tent barely visible but with some dark colors thrown in with careless brush strokes. It's breath-taking, absolutely beautiful. The other two paintings are very good, also horses, also circus, and the two small drawings serve to separate, but there are almost too many pieces in this show and at some point we add a circus poster to the wall: Buffalo Bill on his white stallion. It doesn't really fit, but it needs to go somewhere. It's a great poster. Sara asks me what I think and I find another place for the poster, in the next bay, where there are also horses, and the front wall regains a more Spartan grace, the Carter, front and center. A circus show, by definition, will be over the top, and this one is, wonderfully, but that front wall needs to maintain a certain elegance. Everything depends on the red wheel-barrow. Those plums I ate that you were saving. Sappho:

As an apple branch reddens
on a high branch

at the tip of a topmost branch.
The apple pickers missed it.

No, they didn't miss it:
they couldn't reach it.

There's a line, a connection, between Sappho and Emily that becomes more apparent to me as time goes on. I'd be hard-pressed to say much about it, but it's there. An acknowledgement of the natural world, a nod to real feeling, not a pose or stance, but that far-away look when you catch someone looking deep into their soul. Plato is probably correct to mistrust the artist, I listen to John Lee Hooker and reason plays only a small part in my response. I'm engaged at a completely different level. My gut responds. It's like Bach with a Roman Candle. The place I long to be. Even merely cutting wood I strive toward the sublime. I want beauty in my life, I reject everything else, fuck it, I don't have the time. Everything else is dross, almost everything is dross. The nature of the world. Consider the crows. Some future space-traveler will find a planet where black birds rule. Or roaches, or ants, or even spiders. Just because you have an opposable thumb doesn't mean you win, a hard shell might be a better advantage. I'm a bad example, but it might give you pause.
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Establishing Placement

Walked over twenty miles the last two days, up and down stairs, around and around the gallery. Everything moves at least twice, like it's a rule, or something, which it is, because this show hasn't existed before and the combinations extend toward the infinite. We're looking for a pleasing arrangement and there are many possibilities. We work at this all day, over a hundred pieces, put up four of the removable panels, defining bays. The panels are double sided, requiring work installed on them, and that requires a further shuffle. Finish just before closing, collapse on shipping crates, pronounce it done, which means 95%, because certainly five things will move before we start hanging/installing on Tuesday. D in today, but busy on graphic design for various flyers and the newsletter, we went for coffee and a scone before work and I gave him the short list, mentioned a couple of difficulties I forsaw, told him I'd need some help hanging the Monkey Aviators. An authentic circus banner ten by twelve feet, painted canvas, with leather reinforcement at the corners and rings, to haul up on ropes. I, of course, want to use pulleys and ropes to hang it from the upstairs down into the main gallery. It's heavy. Need to avoid ripping anchors out of the wall. I have some ideas, need to borrow two pulleys and a couple of tie-off cleats from the University theater. Decrease any danger by carrying the banner upstairs and tie it off directly, without actually pulling it up, which seems to me where the greatest strain would be. Trail the free end of the line down into the downstairs gallery and tie it off there, with a coil of extra rope. Rope was important to traveling circuses, to raise and stay the tents. Rope, jesus, there must have been rope everywhere, and there were a couple of rigging specialists in the mix, because it was/is like rigging a ship, which is not a simple chore. The Clipper Ships built at Sesuit Harbor, were towed to Boston for rigging and it took weeks. Traveling circuses set up in a less than a day, and then did a matinee and an evening show. I've done enough theater to know what a chore this is. Awesome, really. Behind the tents, while you watch the show, there's a gang of roustabouts all but stupored by hard physical labor, a big meal, several beers, and the sure knowledge that they're going to do it all again tomorrow. Most of the petty lifting done with local labor in exchange for a ticket and a peek at the dressing trailers. I've never even actually seen a small town circus, the clowns frighten me, but I have taken opera on the road, so I have some idea. And the elephants helped, pulling up the major poles. Imagine erecting a tent 150 feet long and 100 feet wide, with room for flying acts. This is no small piece of canvas and it is enormously complex, what is done in what order, the knots you need to know, and then, naturally, there is the weather. I had a plastic grocery bag of bread crust trimmings, someone was making fancy sandwiches, and it was in the trash, so I put it in the truck, hoping for a late skein of geese at the lake. No geese, but three crows, and a flotilla of ducks. It was like a run on the banks. No pun intended. I dumped the bag and ran for my life. I understand my deposits mean nothing. If I read modern criticism correctly, that doesn't mean anything. My daughters are demanding to see Glenn's movie and I'm slightly embarrassed because it's their father who taps his fingers in a kind of time, a jazz rift, where the words carry weight. I thought immediately of Emily, how she imagined punctuation. I think I can follow her line, but it may be just my imagining, she is so precise nothing else matters. What the dufus would say. D wanders too far astray, what he needs to talk about is what he knows. There's a lesson here somewhere. I just mop the floors, after dark, pay no attention to anything, I just want to get home. A modern day wanderer. Did I mention the woodpeckers? Read more...