Art Shuffle

October 1st, coldest morning of the new season, thirties, got up to pee, 5 AM, grabbed a blanket, started a fire and snuggled on the sofa, napping, feeding the fire until I could heat water to shave. Had to wear the specially altered sweatshirt to shave (the neck-band is cut away), then fiddle with the dampers to get the fire safe to leave. Change in routine, a seasonal variation. I've accrued so much vacation time I can leave work an hour early all winter. Next Thursday is pay-day and I need to address the larder, a trip to Big Lots for lamp oil so I can get the wicks in the new lamps soaked. Need a list. No frost on the ridge, as the cold air slides down into the hollows, but several roofs on Mackletree are covered with frost. Turkey lake is madly giving off heat, I stop and watch, thinking about ways to tap such a source. Phase change salts or even just a small body of water you could cover with insulation. I heated a greenhouse in Colorado (partially) with either 6 or 8 fifty-five gallon barrels full of water, painted black, against the south windows. On the Vineyard, without electricity, the water storage tank (200 gallons? I don't remember) was painted black and had a window, several nights a year, maybe two weeks total, I had to leave a kerosene lantern going at night, in a wash tub on a bed of sand. In Mississippi, once, we had to put things in the fridge to keep them from freezing. Tammy said she wanted to come out and see the way I lived and I thought about that, she's welcome, of course, but knows she could never live this way, hell, I'm not even sure I can. It requires accepting times that you will be uncomfortable, maybe very uncomfortable, but probably not life-threatening. My reading and writing, at this point in my life, seems to demand isolation, and I oblige that by putting up with some inconvenience. Not that I'm high in the art of suffering, but that I am willing to pay a certain tax. Where was I? Right. All the art is spread out and Sara is walking around and I don the white gloves, we spend a few hours moving things around, grouping them, but some things are trans-group and we move them again. It's a merry dance. This is not so much finding the show, because Sara has worked on this for two years, as it is finding the (one of many) installations. We work well together and I offer more suggestions than I ever have before. There's a Carter painting we've never actually seen, two horses in a dark tent, it's stunning; they're work horses, broad backs made for tumbling, if you're thinking circus, with their asses facing us. It's one of the finest things I've ever seen, the light is perfect, the diminishing perspective off-center on the underside of the tent. The brush strokes are haphazard, but not quite. This is a very good painting. I might have almost swooned. I willed it toward the center of the front wall, and that's where it is now, and I hope it stays there. Tomorrow we tweak the groupings, set-up some panels because we have too much work, we need more wall space. This is a huge show, pushing the limits of what we can do, but falls within that pervue, what we can do.

Emily's birthday and I so want to prepare a meal she'll enjoy. I know she can't be here but I cook anyway, she would love my squash soup, I know she would, it's so completely organic and green, for god's sake, even though it's actually tan. I set her place with a diagram Tammy had printed out, I assume the fork is in the correct place. We talk. And I go to bed, it's the damnest thing. Reading her, you have to look at the stops, what does a hyphen mean?