Nothing Changes

I get tired real quick of people enabling other people. As I get older I have a lot less patience with stupidity. James and I draped blankets over displays and hung sheets of plastic in the balcony opening that look down into the main gallery from our permanent Carter Collection. Then he pulled up a chair to remove vinyl signage from the entry wall, a fairly longer paragraph in signage about one inch tall, many individual letters. This is the same stuff they use to detail cars and it sticks really well. We paint the two walls we use for this with semi-gloss paint, which helps when removing, you just have to break the bond at a point, for which I use a paring knife, the tip of which I've bent slightly (don't want to damage the walls any more than necessary) but James uses that ancient tool, his thumbnail, to great effect. I sort hardware and try to make sense of the chaos. Start a list for tomorrow: paint walls, paint pedestals, clean floor. A bit ambitious, but it's just a list. At the Opera Company of Boston, there was once a list, that among other things, had on it: build Trojan Horse, fabricate 25' high statue of Pallas Athena. That was ambitious. With that particular 'A' Team, it actually was possible to build anything, we proved it time and again. It's more difficult to stage a major opera than it is to build a house, and the hours are worse. Got another of the white oak boles, a monster, I could barely get it onto the tailgate. Looking at it, and calculating, I think it might be a week's wood in milder weather, but below zero, I'd burn it in 24 hours. It's hard to predict what might be necessary when the variables are so large. Neil, who reads me closely, and is responsible not only for this very computer I write on, but also for the copy of Walter Benjamin that is never put away, has sent another gem, two volumes in one huge handful, of Elizabeth Eisenstein's "The Printing Press As An Agent Of Change" which is a subject dear to my heart. A winter's reading. I can blow off comfort, simply drape myself in an electric blanket and pay the bill. I'm just a printer but I'm ok, I work all night and I read all day. Wait, that's wrong, I work all day and I read all night. I hear it change, the way rain changes to sleet and the sleet changes to snow, I know these sounds, they frame my life. Dust off the crampons, buddy, because it's going to be an interesting walk in the morning. My ex calls and we have a good conversation about the girls. I need her input because I'm no longer there. I'm the distant parent. I hate every minute of this, but I'm good, ask all the correct questions and listen. Basho teaches patience. Crows aren't stupid, and cherry-blossoms in spring display a certain sense, look around you, I think it's everywhere, pretty sure. The poplar buds are pregnant with feeling. Certain tubers are ready to explode. The frogs are waiting for the first warm night. What can I say, I'm on the edge of my seat. You, it, whatever it was.