Dreary Day

The first one of the those gray and drizzling days with leaves off the trees. Where, if you're depressive, you start thinking about getting depressed. I sweep and mop the floor in the main gallery, as projected. I don't mop so much as to be mopping, as to just get the goddamn floor clean. I need a special rock to keep my keyboard from moving away, I know right where to find it and make a note. This winter, sometime, I'm going to put up a message board next to the back door, to better remind myself what I thought I should do. I seemed to have burned my thumb, I don't remember that. It hurts, sharp pain. I got a little pissed today, at the caviler way Penny brings in her dufus boyfriend with her beautiful child. I'm conflicted, because I love beautiful children, but it's a museum, after all. AND Sara and I were having a last cigaret of the day together, and had to listen to a hunting story (badly told) when we really just wanted to talk about the museum, the staff meeting today, what needed to be done and in what order. My book rock from the island would be a perfect keyboard rock, but then I'd have to get another book rock. Remember I have some rocks, under the coat-tree, there's a nice piece of sandstone, with a bunch of vegetative fossils. It's perfect, much better than the pile of paid bills I'd rubber-banded together (thinking the rubber would provide some friction, but underestimating the foot-pounds I hammer with two fingers). This is great, I feel like an idiot, but I'm not chasing my keyboard all over the desk. A fucking rock, I mean come on, how simple is that. Even tool-challenged people learn to use a rock to keep the door open. Nine days from Sunday, I hadn't realized this was a big deal, but it is. Suddenly my keyboard is stable, and I make fewer mistakes, and I sit better, make a formal appeal. I might write a novel, invent something. Wow. On the other hand, I do enjoy walking in the woods and telling you what I see. Learning words, researching items. What I actually saw. Local singer/song-writer of some note was doing a gig at the museum, we were talking about the spring Mackletree fire, and it turns out he's my neighbor. Around here, if you live in the same drainage you're connected, almost family, operating from the same referent, so we chat about local politics. He asks about his audience for this session, how old they might be, and I hold a hand up, in that universal symbol for height, say I don't know age very well but they're about 48 inches high. Another volute on the twisted path we weave. How we make sense. Coming back in, today, going home, that sense of serious weather on the horizon. The lake could freeze tomorrow, some of the drizzle was not quite drops, wanted to be flakes, but the ground temperature was too high, snow that couldn't happen. Volute within volute. Adumbration. Prepare your bed, soon you will sleep in it. I don't trust anyone with a thermostat because they ignore the natural world. I notice that clothing changes to match the season, I rummage through several piles to find a long-sleeve tee-shirt. The last train to Boston. I'll be waiting at the station. My idea of preparation is to have several cans of tomato soup on hand. Some chicken broth. You might have guessed, another fucking tree down over the phone line. Our connection is tenuous. You assume some things about me, I assume some things about you, the nature of things. I'm not really a hermit, but I read as one, an isolate, a monad, but I'm actually just a normal guy, responding to stimulus, boots, short skirts, particular scents, the way you paint your mouth, or the various implants. I ain't a man of constant sorrow, I've looked at this from every direction, and I'm just not. Sometimes I want to be. But it's not a train, you don't just buy a ticket and ride. Often I wonder how other people navigate. It's difficult for me, and I'm good at it. Wittgenstein. Merely a game. Here's to the Pope I didn't meet. It's a really large world and I miss the point, if money is the object. I watched some wild turkeys, grazing, today, and it was all the mystery I needed.