Betraying Emotion

Heat of the moment. Needed to do some house-cleaning and to do that I needed to dump and clean the shop-vac. This is a dirty job and a hell of a way to start any day. There's a point in the process where you beat the canvas cover (covers the foam filter) against a tree. The wind always shifts, you always get a face full of serious dust. I wear a little mask when I do this, but next time I'll wear a old tee-shirt over my head. Cut a little firewood, vacuumed a few corners, clean up myself, read some essays (Montaigne), walk the logging road out to the last ridge, overlooking Low Gap Pass, sat there a while, watching the non-traffic. I have to clear my throat before I can talk to myself, haven't spoken a word in 24 hours, then, before I can speak, two crows come squawking into my soundscape. Crows are actually smart enough to be rude. So the first sound out of my mouth in 24 hours is a Bronx Cheer. Makes me laugh out loud and that seems to piss-off the crows, who chime in and worry me back to the house. Before I put books away, I take a final glance at marked passages, make a few notes, stack the bookmarks in their places. A stab at order, a cartoon if you think about it, but an actual operating system in any event. Look at all the things I don't say, don't talk about, what about them? We know he does this and probably does that, but he never mentions them, what's that all about? Linda sent me an Emily letter, that left no doubt, she knew the pleasures of the flesh, they may have been rare, and orchestrated, but they were there. I think it needs to be a major sub-text. Shit. One text bleeds into another. If I had a really big screen, like Pegi, I could do them both at once. What I was thinking, and what I was doing. For instance I just went and got a drink, turned on the radio, rolling a smoke, it's Dylan And The Dead playing "All Along The Watchtower" and I spill tobacco everywhere. Hypnotized, mesmerized. I'm simply an aging hippy, there's no mystery. Natalie, I think I love you. Nothing is what it seems. Which I consider for a long period of time. I'm too soft when it comes to thinking, I can think about anything. When Bela plays the banjo, reality disappears. Some really haunting stuff. Phone's out again. Will happen many times this winter, as the dead trees on Mackletree fall. So I won't really stop this piece until tomorrow night. Back at the museum today and it is still a shambles, despite the four hours D and I put in on Saturday. Hard at it, bright and early, then pull the extra hardware we used to hang auction stuff on the front wall. Re-hung the front wall. Added a beautiful watercolor. Probably explained how we got it, but here's another version. Sara had lined up the painting for the show, from Berea. Berea doesn't have a gallery space, and their work just hung in stair wells and offices. Bad economy, they sell their paintings, but I friend of Sara's bought it, and had another of these Keller watercolors of the circus, he sent both. The other one now hangs behind the receptionist's desk, I say other one, because we could only squeeze one into the show, and that barely, re-hung eight pieces to fit it in. The one behind the desk required a hammer-drill and mollys, number nine. The main gallery floor is toast. There's a Janitor College story here that I'll get back to. Maybe I can get to the floor tomorrow. I'm uncertain about tomorrow, as one should be. Had to re-label everything, and by then the day was gone. Actually, I left a few minutes early because of the rain clouds to the west. Big grocery shop (for me) and really needed to drive to the top. The timing was perfect, I get unloaded as the first drops crackle on the leaves. Except I don't want to drive down and walk back up in the rain, blow that off, which means I might have to wait for the damned thing to dry out a bit tomorrow. I need to do a very large buy at Kroger, payday this week, so probably come in Saturday to check on The Golden Boy and buy a bunch of stuff. Forecast is good for then, good enough to drive in. Need to get a new set of crampons, and maybe a guest set. Another janitor story, but I have to tell it now, before I lose track. There was a Professor Sneed, who taught Hydraulics, a great guy, lived way out in the boonies, had to hike in and out in winter, and that was most of the time. He'd done some important work on the flow patterns of liquids and solids at various pitches, he's the one that gave us the 'Quarter-Inch Per Foot' rule. Other Hydraulics guys would stop by, on their way to conferences. Sneed had to print up a sheet of directions and instructions, and one of the items said "If you visit in winter, bring your crampons" and that worked fine, until the new airport restrictions. He had to drive to Milwaukee, mid-winter, in a snowstorm, to bail out a Finnish colleague, who spoke just enough English to get into serious trouble when he tried to board with crampons in his carry-on. We gathered at his place, every couple of weeks, year round, talked drainage. In the winter we played an odd game, sitting outside, around a bonfire, on lawn-chairs; all dressed in insulated bibs, with parkas and gloves and face-masks and scarves and hats, and you'd roll a small solid snowball, call someone's name, and throw it at them. We were all armed with ping-pong paddles. And we'd sit there for hours, drinking hot toddies, and batting away snowballs. Talking about Claude Levi-Strauss. Sneed knew him, they've eaten together at the Harvard Club several times, always the mutton stew. I've let this run away from me, I don't know what I was talking about. Oh, right, fucking crampons. I never owned any crampons before I moved to Ohio. Mostly, in Colorado, because of sublimation, the snow became vapor, and so, away. The mesquite snatches a drink, I know it does, I've watched it, the bark gets damp and the tree sucks moisture from that. The tree's need creates a certain pressure, in this case an osmotic thing; and I know I don't know enough to alter anything. The piss pile we've landed in. It all depends on what you mean. I come back to that. The other janitor story, cleaning the floor, at Janitor College there were no janitors, we cleaned up our own mess; there were professors and aspiring janitors, and the aspiring janitors did the actual work. Occasionally Sneed, or someone, would appear, pointing out those spots where wine had gotten into the grout. I'm a professional, show me what you want to fry, and I'll fry it. And they were always right, correct, they marked the spot. I question this red-maple they call as a point? It was a bad call. We all do this.