Byssus

The wrapping for a mummy. How I felt this morning. In the throes of dream, I'd wrapped myself so completely in my bedclothes that it took a few minutes to sort things out. Sound of rain on the metal roof, and I'd gone back to a fitful sleep. Finally get untangled and out of bed, raincoat over bathrobe with rubber boots to get an armload of wood, start a fire, set out a couple of buckets to harvest rainwater. A lay-about day. Barry Lopez essays, coffee, bouillon. Gotta get some low sodium bouillon, this stuff is killing me, I don't have much of a salt habit. Boil some rainwater, to replenish the drinking water supply. This is good clean enameled-steel-roof water, and the roof has been scoured by snow. Even clean snow is fairly dirty, because every flake seems to crystallize around a bit of something, and water, reclaimed that way, needs to be filtered through an old tee-shirt. This roof water is clean. This time of year, when I can get really clean water without filtering it, I fill the 35 gallon trash can that is a feature of my living room. It sits in front of a set of patio doors, rendering them useless, gathering whatever stray BTUs might be around. None of the three sets of patio doors on the 'front' of the house are useable right now, except in an emergency, when you'd just knock the clutter aside. One is blocked by pieces of the Wrack Show that I want to hang across a section of wall, high up; another set is blocked with firewood; and the third set has always been blocked by a chair and a spool table laden with printed matter. I don't go out on the deck in winter, the light is better out back, and I have to go to the woodshed anyway. There's a blues song in there, if we could just add a dog, or a lost love, the sound of a train, some counter-point. I have crude diversion devices, to funnel water off the roof, broken bits of gutter, actually, but they serve me, my modest need for water. Direct the flow, it's all you could possibly do, study the gradient and predict what might happen. Kick up a few berms as if they might hold. Seek higher ground. Melting snow plus frozen ground, then rain, means flooding, no place for the water to go. Realize I need to get out, stop at the museum and move the diorama boxes safely against a wall, because the rental folks, from the rehearsal dinner gig, will be collecting their stuff, and they don't know art from a hole in the wall. No big deal, and besides, I need to wash socks and underwear. Buy a steak, makings for a salad, maybe an artichoke. Tuesday we have to wrap 12 paintings, but that shouldn't be a problem, then Wednesday truck the show to Columbus, Thursday and Friday I can vegetate, split wood, take several walks, center myself for whatever is next. I think there is a break, time for gallery repair and repainting almost everything. Mindless activity, essentially. Patch and repair requires little thought. It's hard to express how thrilling it was to get the dioramas safely packed. One of those magic moments where all your training comes to bear. It was a treat, working with D and James on Saturday, what we accomplished is beyond the pale. I can honestly say I have never cut foam more furiously. Folk art is always horrendously constructed, designed to fail, the dioramas are no exception, small figures held in place with spots of glue. But they are beautifully packed, and baring a wreck, will survive another couple of venues. You send an opera to Seattle and a week later you get a note saying it was the best packed show they had ever received. Yes. Because we receive shows and I know what I expect. I'm usually disappointed, but that doesn't blunt my expectation. Packing shows is an art; working well with someone is a gift. Making music, for instance, and you realize you want to fall off the beat, and that other person, or you on another track, understands. I hate myself sometimes, when I just don't get it, but I love the way I can occasionally solve a problem. Me and my mummy. Those byssus, by the way, compose most of what we have of Sappho. A fragment here and there. I don't have a clue, really, why I keep on, something about the next dawn, fresh light, a new thing I might learn.