Much Colder

The Aftermath. Museum is a shambles, and yes, they broke the glass on one of the photos. D and I turn to, break apart their tables, bag up their linen, I focus on getting the garbage out. They've done it again, overfilled garbage bags, and I'm elbow deep into sorting things out. The basement class-room was a child-care center and it's been wiped down pretty seriously with applesauce and Mac-and-Cheese. At Janitor College, freshmen had to clean up after the senior's Janus Party, and it was good training, I appreciate that, because most of us clean up after a party or two in our lives. I do 8 to12 a year, and I am no longer confounded by how dumb we can be. I leave at 4, to get a fire started before dark, and 2 of the 3 catering parties (booze, food, equipage) still hadn't picked up their stuff. Fuck it, I've got a cold house to deal with, and I make off with half a dozen roast beef, cream cheese with chives, on bread rounds, sandwiches, and an opened bottle of Cab. Makes dinner easy in the gathering cold. Glenn mentioned that I was sounding more like Melville but I think of it as Proust, then I think he's probably correct. The earthiness, which Proust certainly wasn't. How very like a whale, which is Hamlet (Polonius, I'm pretty sure), but seems germane. Burning a lot of wood this week, having fires mornings and then again at night. I need to step up my output. By the end of Monday I want December in the bag, and at least one rick moved under cover. I only got one book at the library today and the librarian raised an eyebrow, I explained that I had some other things to do. Going into survival mode here, something you couldn't understand if you have a thermostat. I told Tammy I didn't trust people that had a thermostat, and she looked back at me, said she couldn't trust people that didn't have running water. Fair enough. I know speaking truth is a fiction, nothing is what we think it is, therefore not nothing. I'm not writing with gloves yet, so it can't be that cold. I read some Pound, some Dickinson.