Stupid People

But, of course, stupidity makes work for the janitor that no one else wants to do, will not do, in fact, and that's a good thing. Job security. I expect the kitchen to be a disaster after a food event, and I'm not disappointed. We have two 55 gallons trash cans, heavy Rubbermaid, and they're maybe 42 inches tall, slightly rectangular opening, wheels, good handles. For food events I line them with 55 gallon, 3-mil contractor bags. You could dispose of bodies in these. Two other cans, both 30 gallons, I line with 42 gallon contractor bags. One of the smaller cans is not over-loaded, so I take that bag to the truck (I have to haul everything to our dumpster over at the Cirque), then put a new bag in that can and start sorting garbage by hand. This is an awful job but I don't mind too much, because I can sort out stuff to be recycled and several meals for the dog. A kind of shell game with garbage. In one of the larger cans, after it was more than half-full, they put in a dozen empty wine bottles, ignoring the empty case, then filled the empty case with waste food, and put it on top of the bottles. Naturally, when I go to lift the empty case filled with wet food scraps, so I can put the empty bottles in another case I'd stashed, the bottom falls out of the formerly empty case, and the bottles are covered with a semi-liquid food sludge. By the time I get done it's almost noon. Down side of this later, when I finally get home, is that Little Sister smells it on me, and as both of my hands are full, I have to kick her in the head to keep her from jumping on me. An incident at the coffee shop. I was manipulated into a position where I was scant inches away from Erica's chest. It was flawless and I had nothing to say. I forgot to breathe, coughed and backed away. I'm one of the stupid people too, I have papers, I walk among you. Everything I ever owned is stacked against my trailer, or in the yard somewhere, it's all there. What you not trailer-trash don't understand is what I want you to realize, this shit is actually important. Even now that I longer live in a trailer I tend to collect things other people discard. Phone line went dead last night, after yet another couple of calls about the trip in May. So I couldn't SEND. Mind-numbing number of things I need to get done. I start two lists on two pieces of the folded paper I use as notebook: one is the museum list and the other is the house list. I'll need to cut back on the reading for the next six weeks. I need to drop some trees before I go. Organizing stuff at the museum, patching and repainting the upstairs gallery, helping Pegi edit text to send the Ohio Arts Council for the final report. I got into town early, did a big shop, juices, milk, cream, butter, ingredients for several meals I can fix quickly. I need to work outdoors here, for just an hour, most days, to get ahead of the brushwork and firewood. Leaving work, I was in a kind of thought-out mode, driving slowly, looking around. The last of the ice is gone from the wet-weather springs facing north. Some of these stalactites were huge, as big as a storage shed. I imagine a house, built a certain way, with a ramp down to the well-drained cellar, a really well insulated cellar, with a removable wall panel to get in and out. You bring one of these ice chunks in, early spring, cover it with sawdust, and it cools the house all summer. Actually doable, I decide. Thank god for Forsythia. It begins to hide the endless piles of trailer junk. Past Boobie's abandoned sawmill, into the State Forest, and there's a dead woodchuck on the road. I stop, as I always do, to pull bodies off the road, so they need not be further violated, but this one is still body-warm and flexible, not dead half-an-hour, and I realize I could cook it for Dog. A couple of day's dog-food. Meat. I have a great drop-point knife (my preferred, for skinning) clipped inside my pocket. What the hell? I stop, backup, and pull-off into a staging site, where they'd clear-cut after the last ice storm, go get the dead critter and drag him back to the truck. I can't believe I'm doing this, skinning another animal, but I do know how, and I'm making short work of it, when a good-old-boy stops by, I recognize the rust patterns in his truck, wonders what I'm doing, and I explain I'm skinning this woodchuck to make dog-food. He asked if there was anything he could do and I told him if he held the head I might be able to pull the pelt off. He grabbed on to both ears and planted his feet. Came off like a glove. Where's the camera when you need it? He went off, to meet his best friend's wife, and I had a neatly butchered woodchuck, wrapped in the contractor bag I keep behind the seat of the truck. A three-mil, 55 gallon contractor bag. You could live in one of those. I imagine a scenario. Dog is fucking crazy, she knows she will be eating woodchuck, whoever that fucking asshole is, that controls when she eats. Which would be me. I'm confused. I want to mean nothing, but I mean something, in spite of myself. You and me, babe. Read more...

Last Soup

Maybe the last soup of the season, navy bean and ham because I'd found a couple of ham steaks in the remaindered bin at Kroger; cube them and chop a large onion, can of chicken stock, in the crock pot, with some diced sun-dried tomatoes, a pound of rinsed and par-boiled beans. Turned it on high last night, then down to low when I went to bed. This morning I made some cornmeal Johnny-Cakes and had a bowl of soup for breakfast. March rain and wind, a dreary day, but I don't really care, I hole up on the sofa with a blanket and a pile of books, every few hours I get up and nuke a small bowl of soup, toast a cornmeal cake and slather it with butter. On the phone several times, arranging logistics, check maps, I don't write any more and go to bed confused. Then another gray, cool rainy day dawns and I build a little fire, to chase the damp, make my first double espresso, and tackle the second half of "The Printing Press As An Agent Of Change". Leads to a massive pull-out of other books: books about book-binding, books about printing, books about paper, books about books. Pretty much uses up the day, thank god I made that soup yesterday. My library on the applied arts of printing and books is extensive. Found several things I had forgotten. I own some beautiful books, too, lovely objects in their own right, and I look at some of those. A day like this, and I enjoy them, I start a list of references and use a lot of bookmarks; I have a master sheet that looks like, and is in fact, a code. A single capital letter, underlined, with a vertical column of numbers underneath it; which reference pages marked by bookmarks in particular books. I have no idea what's germane to what. Sometimes I keep some notes, usually not, maybe a single word, which, later, means nothing at all. But I remember the flow, usually, the way one idea leads to another; and the next thing you know, you're reading about the history of glue, because you need to know about bonding. Forever is a fiction, even stars die. The information is cryptic, lots of empty space. There's something in the background that you can't explain. You peek again, over the trench, exposing no more than an eye, for just a second. Maybe there's some radiation, but you don't want to talk about it, part of the price of doing business. I'm learning from Dog to worry a bone. There's always the corner of the bottle, where a dram is trapped, a taste you might attribute to a higher power. I'm left in the dust here, I don't believe in god or any afterlife: fuck a bunch of handbags, baseball caps, bobble-heads. The bible is a fiction, get over it. Jesus is a minor prophet, you want the juice read Judith. Peter was an asshole, saw a con. The white whale. What he could make from that. I don't just hate, I actively try and mount a campaign against misdirected mortars, the misplaced commas. I feel it's my duty, you know, to call attention. Read more...

Anxiety Attack

I always dread trips when I'm planning them, but then enjoy being on the road. This particular one, back and forth to western Colorado, I've made at least a dozen times. Staying with my daughters is a new concept. I assume I'll have to cook certain meals and will be displayed as the eccentric, slightly hermetic father. Put on your dancing shoes. Though I'm not known for my moves, I do strive for grace in whatever I find myself doing. Close as I can come. I stir a risotto with my whole body. As the Zen Butcher used to say, 'the master need never sharpen his knife, because he never really cuts anything." He was hell on the basketball court, pick-up games, nobody would play us; he had mastered a half-court shot that looked like Nolan Ryan throwing a large musk-melon. It was a bank shot, he always said that you should bring the backboard into play. What's said and what's meant, we know about that. Almost nothing. I only qualify it because the day is so beautiful, and I touched Erica on the arm. I'll tie these things together. A tidy package. Delivered at your convenience. I just got so off track, I was gone for several hours, right here. I don't know where I was going, I like that image of Nolan throwing a melon. Little Sister loves the lunch meat wraps the art teachers didn't eat. Meals for both of us for several days. The world is my oyster. Little song and dance. What an ambiguous sentence that was, do you add an 'A' at the beginning or not? How ambiguous do you want to be? Sara and I were having a smoke, out on the loading dock, the wind was sweeping the leaves away, I said something about the Venturi Effect, a device that measures fluid flow, but also the way the wind whips through a hollow. Funneled. She laughed at my description. I enjoy making Sara laugh. An intellectual engagement. Few things I enjoy more in the world. Nothing is replete with stringers, mylar jetsom, you astride a stallion, the usual headlines. Hey, I don't play that game anymore, I have a small bowl, I eat mostly rice. And left-over food from the museum. Dog and I talked about this. She feels she's entitled to everything and nothing I could say would alter anyone's opinion. Why speak at all? I find I don't get into trouble if I don't say anything. Grunt and nod. Read more...

Cold Snap

Wicked wind today, and the mid-twenties tonight, but back in the fifties tomorrow. Notorious March. Fuck a bunch of weather. Snow covered the ground this morning, but it was nothing, really, a dusting. By the time I got to town it was all but gone. A friend of the museum has bought a building that used to be a Tea House, and he's giving us all the tables and chairs. I can't move them with D, because he's tied deep into museum business, and Pegi gets me a couple of young guys from the Cirque, and we make several trips, then move the chairs I got yesterday over to the other building. Get back to the museum and the people that loaned us items for the "Ghosts Of Business Past" show are there, to collect their stuff, because they had been misinformed. A logistic nightmare. Everything we had planned to do tomorrow, we do too quickly, but pull it off, in just a couple of hours today. We may have gained some hours. Bent time. There's paperwork involved and we're slack, really, because Kenny signed this show in and none of the rest of us have much of a clue, and Kenny is out on disability. One of those random, incandescent moments. I touched the beautiful Erica on the shoulder this morning. It was nothing, but I had built up a static charge and she was right there. Even if you're not driven by your libido, there are occasional moments, when the self rises through the morass. I might be speaking for just myself here, but the right ankle, in the perfect shoe, might convince me. I'm a cheap date. Late afternoon, I'm removing hanging hardware from the "Ghosts" show. When you do this there's usually a slight pucker, where you pull the nail or unscrew the screw, and I tap it down, with the edge of a hammer, to make a depression I can fill and sand and paint. I do this at close quarters, my eye not a foot from the wall, feeling my way with a fingertip, and I probably look like a madman, staring into the middle distance, tapping the wall, listening for some response, when D and Sara come up behind me. Sara says that usually tapping with a hammer involves a nail and I explain that I'm beyond that, I no longer need a nail, the hammer is enough, we can imagine the nail. The issue is no longer attachment. I could have driven in, but if I walk up the driveway I notice things, the first flush of green, the poplar buds, the way new growth tends toward the sun. Little Sister, the dog, is only interested in food; frisky but not barking, because I've explained to her that I hate noise, she runs circles around me. D and I had lunch at the pub and were having a smoke in a store-front alcove where we often escape the wind, and the Music Guy, Barnhart, found us. We exchanged a huge amount of information in very few words. He said the piano didn't need tuning because it was only jazz. Off-beat. April fool. I think I know what he means. Communication is questionable at best. Sound, like smell, is not a logical thing. Three crows on a new plowed field seem to make sense. But who's to say? Rickie Lee Jones. Butter beans and cornbread. You across the table. I need to get some sleep. Read more...

Rewind

This amalgam of soap flakes, glitter and feathers, I didn't do it justice, is beyond the pale. The whole of yesterday, culminating in the phone call with my daughter, one of, the older, is surreal. Barbie is 51 years old. She doesn't look it, because of all that surgery, the lifts, the implants. In 1959, that first doll sold for 3 bucks. You should wish you had a couple, in the original boxes. I ask Angela, the PHD feminist, how many Barbies she has, an innocent question, I swear; I don't own a single GI Joe and I was genuinely curious about collecting dolls, why you would and where you keep them. Playing with the fishes. If you mop a floor where kids have been carving soap, use clear water, there will be enough detergent, you'll need to rinse several times. A comedy of sorts. I'm too old for this, but I'll play the game, and the odds, one more time, because I am shamed as a father. I hate this shit. I can barely manage my own life, and I certainly offer no advice to anyone else. The quality of mercy. I'm used up, in that regard, there's nothing left, a shadow of my former self. I'll draw a line in the sand here, this, and then no further. Expect nothing else ever. I simply can't do it. I used to be able to, but now I'm old and in the way. Ignore me, a late season fly, beating against the window. It's an insurmountable mountain: no cleats, no ropes, no nothing. Climbing a razor edge where both sides fall forever. I toy with the idea of taking the truck, but it's too risky, I'll rent a car that gets good mileage, and that'll save half the cost of the rental. D has many books on tape. Either going or coming home I'll flip over to Rt.30 on the north side of the South Platte. One of my favorite roads. I'll stay with John and Kay one night, my favorite house I ever built for someone else. Samara says I can crash on her sofa, and I will, a few nights. Will need to dog some long days driving, and find someone to feed dog. Maybe I can find someone to housesit. Anybody want to hole-up for a couple of weeks, live primitive, feed the dog? I have a very good library, you could browse the entire time. Strange, suddenly, thinking about that, how if someone other stayed here, for two weeks, a significant amount of time, alone, they would certainly understand more about me. They wouldn't even have to be alone, because they wouldn't be me. AND it's the easiest time of year to live here, no fires, no chores, other than feeding the dog, and it's really lovely. Brandy would enjoy it, or Aralee. I'm serious, May 12th to maybe the 25th, I'm out of here, and someone needs to feed Dog. I was thinking of showing her, you know, as a half-breed, as a dirt-covered working dog. Is that a class? I'm only flippant as it relates to anything important. I walk in now to observe spring happening. The gentle flush of green. That's why I burned four cords of wood. I knew there was a reason. I want a pill, goddamnit, that would both feed my outer self and nurture the inner me. I can hear Sara whispering in my ear, ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall. Feed your head. I pay absolute attention to completely insignificant details, can't help myself: the daffodils, clustered as they were, represented an old house site. I'm a student of this new science. What used to be. Read more...

Soap Flakes

First you catch the rabbit. One of my favorite lines in a recipe. Another is: first you clean the turtle. The turtle line is in a great recipe for turtle soup, but if you've never taken a turtle apart, you have no idea how little information is exchanged in that line. They have body parts with which I am unfamiliar. They have actual sand-bags they flood and void with water to control buoyancy. Thought Interruptus, Samara calls and we hash out plans for the western trip, and she had either given me, or I had written down the wrong dates. My system barely works, ask Kim, he solved my glitter problem in a paragraph, that I'm going to send Glenn so he can post it. But the beat goes on. I have to get back to the glitter, however, I might be able to stay through Rhea's high school graduation. I don't relate, at all, with needing someone see me do something. I couldn't be more antipodal. At great expense, I can probably fulfill some expectations. I'm resistant to the whole notion. But ok. I'll see some people I'd love to see, and several that I'd prefer never to see again. Fucking soap flakes. The Bridge's Girls had used the classroom as a dressing-room, and there was a lot of glitter and feathers scattered about. Fuck me, I think, this is like a bad dream. They carved soap, and the shavings are everywhere, there is glitter AND feathers. The soap flakes, where they had fallen on the floor, especially where they'd been stepped on, locked glitter and feathers in a matrix and I had to scrape it up with a spatula. You clean up enough messes, you know what you need to do. I'm good with babies, it's what, a gift, or something? A curse. I've only been a mid-wife once, and I didn't like it. Too much information. Goddamn, excuse me, I thought we were running parallel tracks. Staying a week in western Colorado is a good thing, could be, I could touch base, see wherefrom this sprung. I have something on good advice, something. Then everything falls in to a kind of hell. Read more...

The Same

Nothing is what it seems. A trick of light. The shadow of some remembered adventure. Bird-song in the night. What actually happens is always a surprise. Called for a foul you know you didn't commit. Misunderstanding is the rule, get with the program. Spring rain hammers the roof. Go back to sleep. Tomorrow is another day. Sara is back for a week, Special Curator, I guess we'd call her, not Emeritus because not fully retired, and she'll be doing one show a year for the foreseeable. It's a happy marriage, the museum needs her, and she enjoys her half-time there. A sharp, funny crew, an Art Museum, what's not to enjoy? Feminist group from the college using the theater tomorrow, for a power-point presentation "The Naked Truth: A Brief History Of Barbie" and I'm tempted to stay for it, but its one of those damned lunch things, and this time with not actual lunch. I pointed out that it was unfair to call it a Luncheon Lecture if there was no lunch, you might be able to call a Lunch-Time Lecture, but even that seems misleading. Really should be call A Lecture At 12:00, but that sounds more like a class you don't want to attend. Anyway, the last people to use the theater and stage had been the Bridge's Girls, the naughty girls in rehap. They had written a frolic, with confessions, and filmed it as some sort of testament or testimonial. I'm not clear on some of this, and I wasn't really warned. They used a lot of two of my least favorite things: glitter and feathers. You want to drive a janitor over the edge, I'm telling you. Glitter and feathers on a bad day, figure in over 25% of all janitor suicides. The feathers were confined to the first two rows of seats, the open area in front of the stage, and the stage proper. I've found that feathers are best collected by hand, before you start on the glitter. I have several foam pads stashed around the museum, that I use for kneeling, what with the hard floors and my bony knees, not to mention that my jeans last longer; and I got one of them, to swirl amid the glitter collecting feathers. I collect all the feathers. A codicil here: once you have a feather in your hand DO NOT let it go. These are feathers, they obey gravity in a different way. I have twice crashed into walls chasing errant feathers, despite a high degree of training. Of course I stir the glitter, as I move amongst it; and the feathers are coated with it, so it flicks off on me, and at the end of that stage of cleaning this particular space, I was more or less covered with glitter holding a feather fetish in each hand. I felt like I wanted to rip the heart out of something, and eat it raw. The Oreck does quick change on the glitter and then I retire to the basement tool-room, to vacuum myself with the little one-and-a-half gallon shop vac I use for cleaning under the seats. Cleaning under fixed seats is a problem, requires attention to detail, I have Vel-Cro attachments, so I can carry this little beauty on my back, me and my back-pack vacuum. A lament often heard, across the distances of space. What I thought. Cut to the present, where a hooded figure hovers over frog egg-cases, life, tadpoles. He might, or might not, deserve consideration. Read more...

Budding Trees

The Red Maple buds are particularly lovely, a pale pink. Cold front moving in, of course, and I took the truck down this afternoon, because of forecast rains, was able to look closely at several species of bush and tree, they way they individually start their seasonal growth. Some very bright small flowers in the driveway median and on the verges, bright yellow miniature daisies. Its a pleasure to walk up the driveway without a pack, in a tee-shirt, no less. 68 degrees. Back into the thirties tomorrow night, chance of snow. Now, at dusk, big gusts of wind roll across the ridge top, leaves are drifting, first drops of rain. Did my taxes today, so I can email them in, $500 plus a little back, and I've ear-marked that money for materials to work on the house, tighten up for next winter. This last year was a haul, for a great many reasons, not really close to the edge, but a wake-up call, I need to tighten ship a bit. More rain, in waves. I have the window in front of me, where I write, open a bit, so I can better hear the natural world, which is wonderful, because it drowns out the only two other sounds with which I am assaulted: my computer and the refrigerator. Noise is such a part of life, we hardly notice. Thunderstorms. I have to go to sleep. Overnight, the blackberry canes, south of the deck in front of the house, are wearing green leaves the size of a mouse's ear. Color returns to the world. Rains all day, I harvest water and heat a bath, a splendid lunch of fried potatoes and a cheese omelet, then spend most of the afternoon making a fairly large Moussaka I can microwave and eat for several days. I love both eggplant and lamb. At some point I ran out of olive oil and started using walnut oil, because I had some, and it's great, the layer it layers. I caramelized two huge yellow onions in butter, taking my time, almost an hour, and they were perfect, as close as we mere mortals can get. The argument against doing this is the time required, but I don't care about that, I'm just going to be reading anyway, and I can move over to the island, as my reading station, give them a stir every few minutes, it's not a big deal; it's no deal at all, actually, I like the smell, and that's more than enough for me. I had some celery hearts that had been remaindered, and I set about caramelizing them, and they were so good, I swear to god, that I ate most of them on crackers, with a slice of pickled pepper. Talk about distracted. I'm so at peace with a barren landscape that I question my sanity. If he can be at peace with this, myself, I guess, so can I. Language is funny, I've always said that, what we think we're saying. I'm at a lose, I understand more than most, mopping my modified chevron, but I miss things, current events pass me by, sometimes I miss whole years, decades, I'm not a reliable witness. Read more...

Laundry Day

All the dirty clothes (I'm selective when I have to walk in and out), the linens, kitchen towels, bath towels; three double loads, huge for me, as I usually do one single load. Also ten of the denim shirts, I'll do another ten next time. There are another three or four that need to be retired to that space where I keep condemned shirts, waiting for one last nasty job before being thrown away. Ditto for jeans. The house smells fresh, I opened windows today, and vacuumed, and when I closed up, for the evening, the place smelled pleasant, with undertones of bacon and smoke. Stop at the museum, D and I talk strategy, logistics; the next couple of weeks are busy. I've noticed, as I don't have an office, that everyone sits on their ass most of the time, I wonder what they're doing, how it could take two days to write a one paragraph press release. Thank god I don't say anything, because I couldn't do their job. And they couldn't do mine. This repacking, unpacking, is a studied behavior, and requires staying on your feet. Lunch at the pub, a few minutes of basketball on the big screen; I check my punch-list, a folded sheet of paper with notes in short-hand, enlist D's help in a couple of things, verify priorities. On my way home I notice the streams are running clear, no fines, and wonder how many acre feet of soil is washed away. Many, certainly: there's an entire delta, ephemeral, at the mouth of the Scioto, that will be gone tomorrow. The drainage cycle. We hardly notice we are being washed away. I play with this, in an inconsequential way, occasionally place sticks horizontal to the flow; dams of sort, that collect a deposit of the extremely local. Run-off. Went to Big Lots during the wash cycle, because I figured there would be remaindered dog food. Two weeks of kibbles for four bucks. I should eat this stuff, cut way down on the food budget. Dog meets me at the barricade, where stumps block access any further (I can't have people driving over my frogs), and I explain to her that if she nips at my grocery bags one more time, I will kill her. Fucking dogs. Transparent isn't enough. Snow-Bells and Crocus in the median only promise Spring. Buds, what do they know? We could get a foot of snow tomorrow. But the ground is warm and it would melt. Can't deny we've turned a corner here. Listen to the birds. Way too close to the bone, but I have survived another winter. Coda: barely. My wood supply is completely depleted, another cold snap would have me burning furniture. Right at the edge, but I swear it's not design, not where I intended to be, I'd choose the easier path, if there was an option. There isn't. I have to do whatever this is. Out of the blue, a single crow. What do you make of that? Read more...

Loosely Defined

Something got me thinking about lifestyles. New local reader came up to me at lunch, I think of him as a Zen Psychologist, because he is one. I enjoy our usually fairly short dialogs. He's sensitive about my space and asks considered questions. And I do value intelligence and good conversation. Miss B in that regard. We are now loosing those leaves that dry and hang on through the winter, they're being set free by the expanding bud underneath. The beeches do this, and some oaks, and trees that are dying. It must offer some limited protection, but what's the down side if almost all deciduous trees lose their leaves completely in the fall and early winter? I've looked at this phenomena for years, and know almost nothing about it. A great many things, in nature especially, interest me, and I slip them into an open file, which, I've found, actually attracts information. I mention it to someone or write about it, and the next thing you know, I've got a doctoral dissertation on 'Robin Hood', or a list of books I need to read. Writing is an interesting thing. Not thinking about letter writing, which is a whole other can of worms. But creative writing in all its various guises. A solitary thing at both ends, the writing, the reading, unless it's read out loud, and that's another can of worms, interpretation, direction, a play. I just removed a comma, because, as I said out loud, "I want it run on..." and I can spend whatever time I want to make it what I think I want. Two moments at the museum today were either precious or radiant. Pegi was a few minutes late, Tammy was in her office, Trish was sitting, and I was standing at Tammy's door, leaning against the jam, moving a little side-to-side, scratching an itch. She came in and we were all silent. She said, "What?" and no one spoke. After a carefully timed pause, I said, "Pegi, your office looks like teenager's bedroom." Of course she did have three teenagers in there yesterday, doing a little routine for the reception, and they had left clothes everywhere, and Pegi's filing system seems to involve the floor. It was a mess. My next challenge is D's desk, I'm not shocked, certain times you let things slide; I've been on both sides of the equation, but I am a student of piles and this one is ready to slip. That sounds like more than it meant, I'd better go; her grandmother knew you were there all along. Read more...

Reception

No wonder we don't have a pigeon problem at the museum anymore. I watched the Peregrine Falcon that lives atop a building across the way take one in mid-flight. A stunning piece of work. Hit it like a train, broke its neck, knocked it to the ground; then calmly carried it behind a bush, ate everything but the feathers in about ten minutes. Before I set up for the High School reception I finally had a chance to clean the main gallery floor, should just have to clean the back hallway tomorrow, where snacks and pop were served. This weather is supposed to hold for a couple of days, so I drive in with more supplies this afternoon and make plans to do a major laundry on Saturday. There's a car named for Mississippi John Hurt's home town, Avalon. Bought some banty chickens from one of his relatives. He wrote a great song about the town, a sense of place, with that terrific almost slack Delta Blues guitar. I need a better radio unit, that'll play tapes and CD's. I taped hundreds of hours of blues from the U of Miss NPR station, a once a week show, especially, a couple of hours from the archives. BB King gave his vinyl collection to The Center For Southern Studies there, like 20 thousand records. I love the blues. Big Roy took me to a roadhouse once, in either Sidon or Cruger, black delta towns. In your wildest imagining, really. Abject poverty and tar-paper shacks. There was a pretty good group, four of the them, the singer didn't play an instrument, but he was good, a whiskey baritone with good phrasing. He had a rowdy room well under control. I stayed close to Roy. There was some dancing, in a small space cleared between cobbed together tables, couples that kind of slinked together. Roy didn't drink much, so he always drove us in his old pick-up, and I could have a few. Once or twice, I wanted to dance, but he held me back. One time at a place in Tcuhla, an attractive woman asked me to dance, and Roy ran her off. On the way home I asked him what that was all about. He mentioned diseases that neither of us could pronounce. Melanie had given me a bad case of crabs, she had gotten from John, and I nodded to Roy, before napping, and thanked him. Read more...

Dog Tangling

Fucking animals, man, just what I need. Four in the morning and Dog, defending her turf, finds it necessary to challenge a coon at the compost pile. I could do without this. I didn't want a pet, what I wanted was something to eat my left-overs and wag their tail when I got home. Now I find myself flushing wounds with sodium chloride, holding her down with a foot on her neck. A lot of that outer ear is unnecessary. If you live in a tree tip pit, appearance isn't high on your list. I'm about ready to take an apartment in town, scrap the natural world as a bad idea, then I think about noise and how much I hate it. I jammed a pain pill down her throat, I need sleep, not grief; she settles in the dirt, beneath the house, and I roll a final smoke. Not a field surgeon, not even an adequate nurse, just a passer-by. A goodly nap on the sofa before the sun woke me. Warm enough to wash my hair in the morning so I head off to town early, buy groceries, then get my hair cut. Thank god. I was getting a bit on the far side of shabby. Crazy day at work. I finish installing the student show, get the labels up, clean that gallery, but there's some kind of bickering going on amongst the ladies, a politic I don't involve myself with, though Pegi and I talk after everyone else leaves, and I assure her that she is not only correct, but the boss. Which is germane to the issue with my daughters, because the second week that they think I should be away (with them) is a week in which a staff of seven will be shorted to four and there is a major show to take down and pack for shipping. A death in the family or severe personal injury are the only excuses I can imagine for not being here. What I do, the way I do it, my commitment, defines me. It'll pass, the days come and go, eventually we'll be beyond that date, I'll be there when I can and not be there when I can't. Simple algorithm. Beautiful today, broken cloud-cover, mostly sun, 60 degrees, heaven on earth. So much water, some roads are closed, the debris fields are going to be huge, and I have to come home a different way; but that's cool, because I see everything from a different perspective. Coming home, the truck is loaded with supplies, I feel like I'm going into a remote camp in the Arctic, the twice a year mail-plane. Basmati rice, Arborio rice, potatoes, bacon, back-up coffee, ultra-pasteurized cream because it keeps forever, several chunks of meat that I will redefine later, bread, eggs (!), an acorn squash, two hard avocados, a bag of dog food, half-a-dozen books at the library that I'd ordered on inter-library loan. I can get anything, reading- wise, my little heart desires. The minute I hear about a book, I can get a copy to read. It's a great system. I still buy books, but I don't waste my money. A pound of butter to put in the freezer, some cod fillets, various canned goods, beans, chicken stock, a couple of Progresso soups (I'm fond of their chicken noodle), candles, from the fire-sale basket. I'm driving in. I have to stop, of course, because of the goddamn frog ponds, 150 feet from the house, and then I have to carry everything the rest of the way. It was Kim that told me, wrap your head around this, and he is also correct, that at a certain point, a craftsman blames his tools. My left foot is shot, at the end of a day .What I realized, thinking about it, was that the museum needed me, for the next couple of years. They're fortunate, at this point in time, for me to be there. What did I say earlier, a match made in heaven. I hear the trains in Kentucky, they haunt my sleeping. But I drive in, and I'm so exhilarated, I actually swim a few strokes. Read more...

Quiet Day

Working by myself, both James and D away, and no one bothered me. I have a small show to install in the tiny gallery, 16 pieces, matted drawing. High School kids, the show is called "From My Window" and I've got to say that they didn't get the concept. I talked with the art's administrator, Sharee, and she knows they didn't get it. One is very good, I'll buy it if it comes up for sale, a lovely cow standing on a 4-wheeler, and a couple of the others are pretty good. It's not the quality of the drawing in the rest of them, it's the lack of concept. It's easy to be a critic when you install shows (the Preparator, after all) but the whole point was missed here. I could write 50 pages on what I see outside my windows, in just a couple of days, 25,000 words, which could be the equivalent to a drawing. The hanging hardware is skewed because Sharee has saved and reused mats and backing, which I applaud, so I don't mind re-affixing all the hangers. The backing is foam-core, so the hangers are cute little notched hangers (so you can level them) with a couple of little forward leaning barbs, you sort of push them into place. It's not an exact science. In fact I'm flustered with the imperfection of the whole system. I can improve on it, I already have: I put them in a tad low, then push them into position, secure them with strapping tape. I'll probably secure the pieces with some little rolls of tape. I like to keep things straight, but anything affects that, up, down, sideways, the floor, a bad level, the fact that you were late for some important something. I have to laugh, I amuse myself. The water is extensive. Today, I felt like I was living on a costal plain at flood tide, without a helmet. Water everywhere, sheets of water, extending as far as the eye could see; in most places it's less than a foot deep, and herons graze, egrets; I think if you saw it for the first time, and didn't know what it was, you wouldn't know. Merely seasonal flooding. You seek high-ground and pay attention to the larder. I should be able to drive in tomorrow, I have a list, last major re-supply of the year. Juice, beans, eggs, bread, drinking water, but the first thing you know, I'll be doing ribs on the grill. There's nothing I like better than Baby-Back pork ribs with roasted potatoes and slaw. The sauce, of course. I boiled it twice this winter, though it was well covered with a layer of fat. It speaks strongly of places I've never been.
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Reciprocity Failure

"Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after." Thoreau. I'm cooking a road-kill squirrel for Dog, I saw it die so I know it's fresh; it made one of those stupid decisions for which squirrels are famous, running back under the bumper of a small truck when it was actually in the clear. Squashed head but the body was in perfect condition. I skin it like pulling off a sock, cut it into five pieces, dredge the pieces in seasoned flour, brown quickly, then simmer for an hour in chicken stock. It's so good I eat the loins and a bite off each side of the butt, then serve the rest, on a bed of cheese grits to the tail-wagging Dog. I saved out the heart and liver, fry them, sliced in butter, fold them into an omelet with Stilton cheese. Certainly one of the strangest dishes I've ever fixed. Another gray rainy day, great weather for reflecting on my failures. My phone is down, so I can't SEND and Samara was going to call, to ream me out again, nothing is working. Every ambiguity meant. I read John McPhee's little book of essays, "Silk Parachute" today and fretted about my relationship with my daughters. I won't sleep again tonight, and all my hair will fall out tomorrow. I have what I now know are hives, I poured spiced rum on them (someone left it here) and drank a glass of whiskey. It's interesting to note that it could well be twenty or thirty years after I'm dead that my daughters might know what I might have felt now. Or maybe never. I talked with Glenn, who knows me best of all, and he'd been following things, as he does, offered only the comment that men seemed to be more interested in logistics and that women (my slant, he never said) were more swayed by the emotional. I understand that is true. I know it to be true in my logistical, deep-centered self, where I crate things and ship them off to places unknown. I think of myself as deeply emotional, I've been known to cry when I thought an ant was carrying too heavy a load, and I sympathize with anyone, whatever their cause. I've fended off the stones and arrows. And I'm weighted down with guilt. Branding me with any letter would be appropriate. I've done them all. Done that, been there. Actually, I like for you to surprise me, I'm just a construct, after all. A game. Several encouraging notes about the impossible situation. Thank you, Bill. Odd, that twice in just over a year, first one of my best friends then my older daughter think that their agenda is more important than my job. In this economy with a job I love. Power and phone out last night. Gray and windy today, I mope around the house, make a small pot of black beans and a pone of cornbread, shared them with Dog. I'm almost depressed, open a decent Zinfandel, mid-afternoon, let it breathe for an hour, took a glass out on the back porch, rolled a smoke. Dog cocked her head and looked at me, slipped under the house. I was approaching that point of feeling a little sorry for myself, when a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds. First sunlight in days, and it backlit the poplar buds and that fuzz on new shoots of Sumac. It was beautiful. The first touches of green on the ground, dock, dandelion, those little miniature pansies that next month will have perfect purple blossoms, a quarter-inch across, with a yellow dot in the middle. I'm not happy with my response to things lately, there's still an anger inside me that I don't like. I keep thinking I've gotten over it, out-grown it or something, then someone yells at me, and I don't like be yelled at; I can be lucid, verbally coherent, and yell with the best of them. Defending a space, real or imagined, with great tenacity. Don't get me started. Read more...

Cleaning Up

Lots of rain, all night, and when I walk out, early, it's still raining. I can hear my little rill, Low Gap Creek, carrying away my real estate. The grader ditch is a live stream, wet-weather seeps and springs on the uphill verge are leaking with a vengeance. I carry a cup, a cheap tin thing, so I can sample these waters, they're very good, bright and hard. When I get to the bottom of the hill, I divert over, through the brambles, to actually see where my kill joins the ditch that is the very beginning of Upper Twin Creek. I leave that drainage, after a few hundred feet, then climb the few hundred feet up to the beginning of the Mackletree drainage. My hollow is a minor hollow branching off a larger hollow. Dendritic. I defer to the greater flow. Crazy day. People don't treat public spaces the same way they treat their homes. The museum is classic post-party chaos. D and I set to. After just an hour, we haven't talked much during that time, we don't even discuss what we're doing, we both know the drill, The crows are giving Dog a hard time about her dinner, they thought it was for them, and they're squawking. Fucking zoo. The frogs are honking, as they slither over each other, there's no actual penetration, the males just spray everything in sight. Then my older daughter calls and says that I'm the worst father in the world. Nothing like that to brighten your day. I know what she means, but she's wrong. It doesn't diminish the pang of guilt. I couldn't stay in western Colorado, I couldn't afford it, and I had to get on with my life, if I didn't I'd die, simple as that; so now I'm a thousand miles away, and doing fine, wondering why guilt could be placed on me. That I'm guilty is too simple. "Rock And Drill" Pound in the cage. Hey, I thought we understood each other. I've got two days off, I'm capable of making a scene. What we accomplish might seem real, but in the light of things, maybe not. Of course I've been a bad father, I wasn't there. I feel bad about that every day. But I had to go on living, in so far as I could. My older daughter is so mad with me she yells and cries. Part of my survival mode is that I can no longer do certain things: I can't fly, I have anxiety attacks. I'm poor, a failure in that regard, I simply don't make enough money to flit around, rent motel rooms and dine out. For god's sake I eat beans and darn my socks, I dally with cold just short of frostbite. Don't lecture me on the necessary, I have a firm grasp on what it takes to get by. Look at my dog, and look at me. I'm a grease-ball that can't afford new underwear. I eat road-kill and don't have a bathroom, I piss on the side of the road and shit in an out-house. I'm not playing games here. I'm ok with my life, better than that, I love my life, the concessions I've made to be where I am, but I can't be more than that. And I don't want to whine. Fuck a bunch of whiners. I've done the best I could, which is saying nothing. Forgive me, I have sinned: diddle prayer beads, confess. But I can't be other than I am. On the other hand, I can't expect my daughters to understand what I can't understand. Anabasis. I need to go away, but there is no way further I could go. Of course it bothers me. I should live in a tree-tip pit and sign, never speak another word. Everything I say is confused. Jack of Diamonds. Life should be easier than this. I've carried in everything I need, but it's not enough. Lay my down pallet on the floor. Not crazy, but close; almost suicidal. March madness. Winter into spring. The frogs, the poplar buds, just enough confusion to get by. Read more...

Mere Description

Nothing is ever the same. Looked at, in a different light, some particulars are different. Even simple trees are not themselves, but bars that break the sunrise. Falling out of love is an awkward thing, what is that vessel called, the crucible, in which the transformation actually happens, the pot wherein I melt myself. Two steps forward and one step back, losing traction, but a small net gain. Right here right now it can't get better than this. Where I find myself, a world of dumpsters and pop tunes, wrack lines and debris fields. Late at night, everything is a metaphor. Alembic. Everything is named except for the things that haven't happened; after the fact, we put a label on them, and then they are named to. I might call this dog Little Sister, just as a way of referring, it becomes a handle, I might just call her Dog, which is enough, an appellation, an explication, a name, in fact, that separates her from the field. But I resist that inter-dependency because I've never had a relationship that actually worked. If anyone was ever destined for loneliness. Even my dog keeps her distance. We end up with a hooded figure, whose face we can't quite see, dancing in the shadows. I no longer keep track of time. Got to go, lightning. Tremendous thunder storm lasting several hours. A break in the squall line and I figure to write until the next line passes. Hard rain, and I harvest 25 gallons of rainwater in a hurry. Finished setting up for the museum event today, then stayed late to help carry in the food and light the chafing dishes; got home just as the first drops of rain hit, fed Dog in the woodshed, cheese grits and bacon fat (cheap instant grits, I'm hoarding the good stuff). I ate on the way home, Buffalo Wings I snatched from the museum feed, tossing the bones out the truck window. Hard slog up the driveway tonight, on my feet moving fast all day, but the foot is better, I walk almost normally until afternoon. D called, on his way home after the event, said there was much food left over, plenty for our lunch tomorrow and enough to feed Dog for a week or more. So much water, I decide to clean and flush my system. I dump and clean the 35 gallon Rubbermaid that is my, what?, back-up cleaning water. The five 5 gallon pickle buckets are all clean, bleached and now filled with soft rain water. I dump them all in the Rubbermaid and start filling them again. I'm fine on drinking water, and I have 10 gallons of filtered water to bring in, the next time I can navigate the driveway, waiting, offstage, at the museum. I'm backed-up on juice, have milk and cream. The snow has just melted and now all this rain, we'll be looking at swollen creeks and the Ohio slipping its banks. Flood is a relative and inadequate term, but there will be a lot of water, dropping various deposits. The Scioto, cutting through soft country, carries a sandbar of silt, and dumps a considerable amount just outside the downstream shore-line, where it enters the Ohio. A transient but significant deposit. Sometimes it's washed away completely, but sometimes it has occasion to grow a ragged covering of grasses, a few bushes. Because of the web and flow, there's a channel between it and the mainland, I'd need a rudimentary boat. Not much more than a log. I could take over a few supplies and stay there for a day or two, a vacation of sorts. One thing I always find, in the natural world, is you have to be there. There is no substitute, nothing prepares you for the frogs, or that slanted light, or the pain you might suffer from a broken toe. At first I didn't think I trusted anyone, everyone lied. Then I realized everyone was speaking the truth, is so far as they could. A major Tao Zen moment, the Buddha is everywhere. What you say is what you are.
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Relative Experience

Early morning patter of rain on a metal roof. Something Whitehead said, in "The Function Of Reason", that it, reason, restrains the aberrations of the mere undisciplined imagination. I consider myself a sort of lay expert in matters of undisciplined imagination. Maybe it's just acid flashbacks but I really do spend more time, now, sitting on a stump, marveling at the interconnectedness of things. Dog seems to understand that I also have a relationship with fox, or fears that I'll stop feeding her mashed potatoes dressed with bacon fat, and there's a delicate balance, a quivering sub-text, where none of us know what's going on. You can lie all you want, but truth will bite you on the ass. Despite apparent transparency almost everything is opaque. Even the frogs are a mystery to me. Experience teaches I know almost nothing. There's a painting, a reclining nude (there's a name even for that), that hangs in my house, I look at it several times a day, it's always fresh, I never see it the same way. Like that stream, never the same way twice. Never, even, once. The Greeks are important because they first posit the questions. The questions are the same. Why do you? What do you? Why? Crocus were blooming in the bed outside the post-office, they were beautiful, lovely spring color after a brutal winter. My expectations aren't very high, I want to do the dishes, wash my hair and shave; my goal is to not make waves and be in the moment. When the days are short, you start and stop in the dark. Everything else is gravy. Daylight is a blessing. Back to sleep for a couple of hours, up at dawn, and the house is warm enough to wash my hair. A second cup of coffee looking at maps. I've got to go to Western Colorado for Samara's college graduation. Rhea graduates high school the following week. I can't possibly stay for both, and I didn't attend my own high school graduation, I was already a week into my first season of professional theater. I'll fly Rhea here, to spend a week with me, as a graduation present; I think she'll go for it, and everyone here wants to see her. She held court, in the library at the museum, the last summer she spent with me, and everyone fell in love with her. She can help me carry firewood. She might end up here, after I'm gone. She could live this life. No one else would want to. The girls could probably sell this place to either a wealthy hunter or even to the State Forest, as it is an in-holding, they'd want it bad. I've been doing more research on body disposal. If you will your body to a medical school, as a cadaver for dissection, they pay all expenses and you end up with the same bucket of ashes. You don't, someone else does. I'm leaning in this direction. Eliminates that whole mortuary thing. After the whole evisceration and cremation, at a raucous party, when the frogs were fucking, and the Grateful Dead were blaring, they could spread my ashes on the compost heap. The algorithm that results in the least possible bother. Maybe there'd be a bidding war, for the body of an aging hippy who had smoked pot almost every day for 45 years. You never know. I might be worth more dead than alive. My great failing, in chess, is that I don't see far enough ahead. Read more...

Perfect

A dark and rainy night. The frogs wake me just at midnight. The puddles are awash in slimy slithering amphibians. It's one of those events, that, when you finally notice it, makes you wonder if you ever paid attention to anything. It's the noise that alerts you, it really does sound like a flock of ducks had taken over the airways. They are all you can hear. I told Glenn tonight, that I could now predict, within 48 hours, with 48 hours notice, when this singular event would happen:

A hooded figure, our hero in rain-gear, goes out with a flashlight late at night. He has a foam pad he uses as a prayer rug. He walks, slowly, to a vantage, just above the puddles in the driveway. He is almost completely quiet, he motions for his dog to heel. There's an interlude here, as there always is in nature, until the natural sound is restored, like when you disturb birds singing. If you sit very still, it all comes back, slowly, at first, then in a rush. We should be clear here. The sound-scape is the most important thing. As our hooded figure settles into the background, we start to hear things. Pull back, we have the sound of frogs fucking and a visual that doesn't make any sense. An old guy reading something that might be related. The Bach Cello Suites. Fade to black.

Easy day at the museum, by design, as two very hectic days upcoming. Big music and Soul Food evening, 125 people @ $15 a pop. All the tables, plus some borrowed, all the chairs; set-up tomorrow, dress and food on Friday. Clean-up on Saturday AND switch out the smallest gallery. Warm and rainy forecast, no fire tonight. The frogs are still going at it, but at a slower pace. Should be able to drive in as soon as this round of rains end, which might be the beginning of next week. Need to carry in some things. I'm a little tired and tired of winter, wore out, as my Mom would say. The broken toe was a test of mettle. Couple more weeks taking it a little easy and I can get back to the master list, which is all about making life a bit easier for next winter. I can throw a few dollars at it, too, now that child-support is ended. Mostly what I need to do is read and write less, in the short term, so I can do them more in the long term. But there's the whole habitual thing to overcome. Because I didn't have any money to do the things that needed to be done, I fell into an increasing habit of reading and writing. It's cheap, it fills time, I derive personal enjoyment; it's not a blood-sport, no one is hurt (ok, the occasional finger or toe), and I don't kill nearly as many things as I used to. I buy some meat now, and it always strikes me as strange, that I don't know where that animal lived and what it had been eating. Read more...

Time Sense

Coming out of winter, my whole sense of time is skewed, I haven't slept a whole night through in longer than I can remember. I sleep enough, but in fits and starts. Having napped, I watch the waning moon and consider my failures. Two things about having a dog around: they run off the wild-life and they shit everywhere; on the other hand, if they heel, and listen attentively, they're better than a stump, and have a tail to wag. I reread Emily's letters to Judge Lord and they are passionate and filled with longing. She cuts or rips out passages I wish we had, but it is our right to reveal only what we want to reveal. Our life, after all. You know many things about me but the essential nature is concealed. The sound a sunrise makes. The morning light on your face. I think I'm a failed romantic, almost everything makes me cry, the smell of you, the quiet snores, but I'd rather be alone. Passion is a fancy fashion. I sound like Dahlberg, don't listen. "The Sorrows of Priapus." What you are isn't that different than a randy goat. Maybe the music is different, but you're left with a sticky residue. Don't cry. Get a paper towel and clean up after yourself. Living in color, despite rather drab circumstances. Keep the car running, you never know when you'll need to get away. The level of patience. I can't listen to pop songs late at night, where a single lyric is repeated over and over, I'd rather listen to nothing, or what passes for silence, when the woods go to sleep. Phone out last night, so I couldn't SEND. Tonight, March 9th, is to be the first major Frog Fuckfest. Too early, but they keep trying. I could hear them as soon as I crested the driveway, they sounded like ducks. They quieted, when I walked past, but after dark, deep into their orgy, they'll pay no attention to me. A little pissed at B, but as we're not speaking, it makes no matter. There are two parking spaces at the bottom of the hill, one on either side, driveway in the middle just wide enough for one vehicle. His truck was parked in the driveway, first day in weeks that I could have driven up, and I had a load of drinking water and supplies. Fortunately it's not supposed to get below freezing tonight. Inconsiderate, considering that it's my driveway. Dog is still here and I am not going to carry dog food up the driveway, but I had some of the cheap instant mashed potatoes (that I use as a binder in various fish and crab cakes) AND a winter's accumulation of bacon fat. She seemed to like it fine. She will not be coming back in the house and I have to get her a flea collar. I have to set out the Bridwell Flea Trap for the next couple of nights. I've mentioned it before, but for those of you newer to reading me: put a pie plate on the floor with an half-inch of water in it, give it a goody squirt of dish-washing liquid (it breaks the surface tension, if you don't use it the fleas will hit the water and bounce right back out), then place a small goose-neck lamp, so that it shines down on the surface, leave it on all night for three nights, no more fleas. I thought about going into the extermination business, especially after taking a couple of courses at Janitor College, "Modern and Homeopathic Methods Of Pest Removal, 101 and 201" under a brilliant and eccentric professor, a Mr. Hudson, whose actual, Hungarian, name was impossible to pronounce. The final for that course was designing and building a trap and I've been doing it ever since. Dog will have to eat whatever is cheapest at Big Lots and my left-overs. If she chases the fox I will kill her. I'm excited about the Frog Fuckfest, it's so natural and crazy and wild. I'm really pissed that B blocked the driveway. It's either a completely thoughtless or a completely thoughtful act and either way completely wrong. It's my driveway. I live the way I do so someone else can control my access? In the heat of my anger I remember he is a control freak, and I know several of them, so I'm not really surprised, but I usually strive to put myself outside that kind of petty bullshit. If I had seen B, I would have said some nasty things, but the Tao looks after us, and I didn't see him, and I could recognize what a sickness anger is. Regroup, fall back, Anabasis. Parse it out. A note on the windshield: "Are you telling me I shouldn't use the driveway or have you just forgotten your truck is blocking it?" or "I appreciate the message, but I'll make up my own mind." This doesn't make any sense, maybe he's dead over there, maybe that's why the driveway is blocked. I'll look for meaning anywhere. But surely his young bride or that extended family would have looked for him, therefore, blocking the driveway is either conscious or unconscious. I'm no longer willing to cut anyone any slack. Many a winter blow I've taken a reef in the mainsail, single-handedly, while steering with my foot. Read more...

Doing Nothing

I needed to stay off my foot for a while, so I drank coffee and read all day. Tomorrow, still thinking I might get to town and back up the hill with the truck. Which necessitates a major list and an examination of my lifestyle. Clean clothes, so I want to take a bath, which means melting snow from the north sides of things, then filtering it through old tee-shirts, heating it in the canning kettle. All day affair. I make my nearly instant clam chowder for lunch, both halves of a small acorn squash for dinner, one half stuffed with a sausage mixture and the other half stuffed with a raspberry/ currant-jam mixture. I'm thinking about ordering a rechargeable battery-powered head lamp, so I can keep both hands free. This fumbling around in the dark shit, trying to focus a flashlight you're holding in your armpit, is too god-damn much. I'd like to see what I'm looking at. Slept fitfully, up early, after coffee and breakfast walked over to the driveway and judged it too soft for egress. Maybe Tuesday. Enough of a fire to make an egg noodle, meat, tomato, cheese dish that I can eat for several days; then I let the fire die, as the temps rise. Warmest day of the year, and maybe 55 degrees tomorrow. I spend some time organizing the woodshed, envisioning order, then out into the woods; a scouting mission, really, but I take the bow-saw. I want to harvest 50-100 saplings for next year's starter sticks, 2" at the base, I don't care particularly what species, red maple, poplar, oak. These would be mostly about 16 feet long, cut into two eight foot lengths, upright in a corner of the shed. There are small fields of these, wherever a mature tree was felled or fell damage to the major ice-storm a few years ago. Thick uniform stands that need thinning. I already have next year's kindling, in the form of two fairly resinous pine boles. There's an interesting couple of loads at the wood dump now, where one of the tree removal crews cut everything useful into firewood, but there's a huge pile of oak crotches, where a major branch split off from the main trunk. These are difficult to deal with, and no one else will take them, so they're mine for the taking. I like working on them, mid-winter, kneeling on my foam pad. I'll start hauling them home tomorrow, next winter is just around the corner. Read more...

Black Lab

A working relationship. Really skinny dog that looks like a Greyhound/Lab mix has been hanging around, a bit gun-shy, like she's been abused, and huge feet, but gentle eyes. I'm out at the puddle with the weird doomed frog eggs, thinking about Darwin, she approaches carefully, light on her feet, and heels, maybe 10 feet away. I don't want a pet, don't need a dog, but sense a connection. She watches as I rinse the silt from an egg, and I talk to her, tell her what I'm doing; she's attentive, but dumber than a sack of rocks. I can tell she's hungry, and I need to get rid of the last of the pork stew. I'm hesitant about establishing any sort of bond, but a hungry dog with a big tongue can save you a lot of water. She cleans the pan so well that I just have to melt a little snow and wipe it out with a paper towel. A match made in heaven. She comes inside with me briefly, but doesn't like my smoke, settles under the back porch. Could this be the perfect match? Experience teaches that she'll leave me for another. Run off with a well-hung Saint Bernard. But I've learned to live in the moment, and for the nonce, I have a dog. Naming has not been an issue yet. I've named hundreds of things, because it's easier to call something by a name, but I have no inclination to call this dog anything. When I was explaining to her today, about egg-cases and tadpoles, I referred to her as Little Sister. She hangs on my every word and watches what I eat. Late, I roll a smoke and go out with a drink, she refuses my stinky cheese but slurps crackers in the most amazing way. If you hold out a saltine, she wraps her tongue around it and it disappears. Magic. Nora Jones does Bob Dylan. I'm only crying. The music is great, classic blues, NPR late at night, I correctly identify a couple of extremely esoteric songs, Gatemouth Brown, Sonny Terry, but I finally have to turn the radio off because the sound invades my space. I require a great deal of silence. There's an unsplittable Red Maple stump I sit on in the woodshed. I've noticed, lately, I sit there a lot, just listening: birds and wind and the crackling of the ground as it freezes and thaws. Almost but not quite nothing. Cage was correct, nothing is relative. A field of winter wheat waving in the spring wind, a single perfect trillium, a band of sunset that takes your breath away. You can't be unmoved. The natural world is not mediated, it's in your face, no dilution, illusion, solution can possibly explain the sound a sunset makes. The dog comes in, circles twice, and settles on the welcome mat. Read more...

Screeching

God awful sound outside, three in the morning, it's a feral house cat squared off against a rabid coon. I throw chunks of ice at them until they move off into the dark. Fuck a bunch of nature. I was having a pleasant dream about the perfect apple, maybe it was a peach, I was making a pie, Pegi's girls were dancing around, squeezing limes into coconuts. A state of grace disturbed by a squabble at the compost pile. Then I can't go back to sleep, because I'd forgotten something I needed to do. I have to get up and check my list, which I seem to have misplaced, and decide to have a fried egg on toast, my snack of choice these days. Must have left my list at the museum because it's not in this house, but I did turn up a magazine with an interesting article on pre-stressed concrete. I entertain the idea of building a small house using insulated concrete panels. At five in the morning it makes perfect sense. I visualize things very easily, either a blessing or a curse, I learned this from Herbert, I think, my early days in theater, when he would simply draw an idea on a scrap of upson board and you'd see what he meant. Building sets, making props, you imagine things into reality. Illusion. (That's strange, in Arial you end up with '3' in roman numerals.) Illusion. Like that. Meaning is a slippery slope, keeping with the 's' as a motif. I don't give a shit what any slimy slippery bastard says. Sense accumulates, like leaf litter. History is a compost pile. Nothing matters. The smallest thing. The slight tracery of a spider web could be enough to nudge you over the edge. I've never minded being lost, why quibble over loose change? I'm most happy when I can write you, spew whatever I've been thinking. The body politic is a mystery. Mid-term elections are always a pain in the ass because they skew the balance of power. Grid-lock. A nap, I beseech you, my kingdom for a nap. I did sleep, for a couple more hours, then headed to town. Stopped at the lake to examine the napp over the spillway. The escaping water actually lifts the ice/snow layer and slips beneath. In town, I go immediately below the floodwall, note some stumps I want to harvest, but the mud is serious and I'm not dressed for that kind of work (disposable clothes are in order) and I meet D at Market Street for a great breakfast burrito. Open up the museum, then I head to the laundromat, the library, the liquor store, then back to the museum to put away tables and chairs from last night's music/food event. Lunch at the pub, then finish cleaning; discuss D's next show in the main gallery, what he has in mind, what he has lined up; and despite having a family, a job, and going to school full-time, he is completely on top of his curatorial responsibilities. I look forward to that show, which will engage the idea of construction. Many different mediums. I only caution him that we need some large flat works for the walls, some photographs or renderings, but he's all over that already. It helps, I think, being a curator, if you've been a preparator first. I hated the few times I ever worked with an architect because they had never built a house, they didn't know jack squat except for pretty roof-lines. In the trenches is where the lessons are learned. You can't learn from a chart what wood can do. I get ahead of myself, of course you can, you can learn almost everything from books. I'm self-taught in any number of disciplines. But I was trying to get to that point about materials speaking for themselves, how, as a designer, you often had to get out of the way. Sometimes the raw material is the message. As manipulative humans, we go out of our way to impose design. Consider the various flowers, branching dendritic drainage. It's a wonder. Read more...

Mud Season

The good news is that I might be able to drive in on Monday, which would mean another extra trip to town, but small price to pay. I've carried in good sized packs all week and I'm not really desperate for anything, but the pantry is skimpy. I want to build up reserves so that I have a year of subsistence food, and get a year ahead on firewood; and now that the child support is done, I can finish a few things on the house which should make my life a bit easier and a bit warmer. Another sunny day, temps in the mid-forties, and on the way to work, the slanted light, I could see that the poplar buds were swollen. Spring is around several corners yet, but still. Poplar buds. They are invasive, fast growing, and take chances. Black Walnut trees, by comparison, are slow, conservative, the last to bud and leaf, and consequently have by far a shorter growing season, everything else falls in the middle. Whatever the dominant oak, in a given area, will the mid-point on a bell-curve. I picked up some nice dead oak today, on Mackletree, where someone with a chainsaw in the back of their truck had sawn a tree that had fallen across the road. There's quite a pile of Ash, at the wood dump, and I might start hauling that, piling it at the bottom of the driveway. When I find a free pre-cut, I always hum a little mantra, and figure how many hours or days a certain round of wood might burn, under what conditions; sing them out loud, as lyrics to my humming. Officially muddy. A Class One Mud Emergency today, which states just be careful and leave your boots at the door; a Class Two Emergency involves galoshes and a bench outside the door. I seem to have picked a spot at the exact latitude of the greatest possible number of mud days. More's the pity of a broken toe. I've had to revise my mud removal system. DO NOT STAMP THE LEFT FOOT. A painful moment when I learned this, and a testament to my stupidity. Something odd in my driveway ponds. I've blocked off the driveway with stumps and a sign that says 'FROGS'; and the puddles cleared beautifully, clay silt is a wonderful clearing agent. There was a single small chain of frog eggs in one, very odd, way too early. And they were odd eggs, just 13 of them, abnormally large, a huge egg-case, ping-pong ball size; and I know now that there's a natural sugar anti-freeze. I realize I'm looking at natural selection, the scout frogs did the dirty and laid some eggs, with a slightly different edge, and let's wait and see, maybe one or two of these frogs might survive. First thing you know you have frogs all winter, wearing little fleece vests and pestering you with their base line. Set up for a live music / food event at the museum and I'm going in tomorrow to clean up after. Absolutely must go to the laundromat. Must carry in a back-up whiskey because I just broke into my current back-up. Priorities. Live like I do, the weather mandates. Read more...

Severe Clear

In the low 40's, with a little wind, but clear as a bell. Early enough to town to get below the floodwall, and there are some wrack lines I want to walk. The Ohio was brown with silt caught in the snow-melt, and vicious looking, whirlpools and currents. The crew on a string of barges going up-river looked miserable and hard-pressed. Where the Scioto enters the Ohio, their waters were different colors brown, and they made an angry swirl going downstream. Rivers, streams, lakes, oceans, I've always lived near water, three streams and two lakes in Mississippi, and a goodly stream uncomfortably near the back door in Colorado (it only had a few fish, at first, but I stocked it with native trout I caught nearby), and now I have a river, though, in truth, not as big as the St Johns where I knew her, below Jacksonville. For the longest time I entertained the ideas of living in a shanty boat on the St Johns. So many wild tributaries then, wild-wild, bears and beavers and otters and gators, snakes as big as your arm, bobcats and wildcats, manatee; and fish, jesus christ did we catch the fish there, whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. It's all boat docks and high-priced spreads now, of course, and I'd have to have moved on anyway. I don't subscribe to destiny, or anything even close, life is happenstance, place is where you find yourself. I seem to require the natural world, large uninhabited spaces, it wasn't a conscious choice and I'm not sure it matters. I might be able to live in an apartment in town, now, at this point in my life, when I really want to just read and write, BUT visiting the natural world is not the same as living in it. I'm not sure I could give up the direct connection. Today there were fox prints in the snow, and the spot where she had killed a vole. This was prime time for me, reality not TV. I hunkered down and tried to understand the sequence of what had happened. I looked at some blood on the snow, and some footprints, for more than an hour, and came to no absolute conclusion. But it was a wonderful hour. Speculation. Nothing succeeds like sitting still for an hour and watching what happens. Read more...

Finger Cracks

The painful time of year. These cracks can be quite deep, make work difficult, hurt like hell when bumped against anything, and I often have to change the two fingers with which I type. The toe is marginally better, the bruising has abated and the toe itself has assumed its new shape, which, with its neighbor (the piggy that had roast beef) now forms the letter 'k'. Staff meeting today and so much going on that we just focused on the month of March, April is just as busy but we don't need to go there yet. I'm frankly appalled by the number of events, but we need to get bodies in the museum, to show them what they have available locally, what a feather in their cap to have this museum in their town. It's the food events that scare me, a soul food evening, coming up, with very good live music and a open bar, god, imagine the floor after that. Red sauce in the grout lines. Fucking grapes, man, did I mention I hate grapes? Right up there with glitter, which is a curse. Maybe worse than that. I don't have the chart of religious failings in front of me, but it might be a sin? Glitter has an electric charge and bonds with certain agents, surfaces, I should say, and there is no dislodging them. It's a bond we mere humans know nothing about. I travel in odd circles, but I rarely glance at the sub-text, it's too busy on the main line. Two people came into the museum today, a father and daughter, they had two paintings that needed restoring, and I recommended Michael, who had restored the Circus painting for us; and then had this idea and went and got D. Michael does demonstrations of this. We could get him to field questions, a great Smart Talk, while he repairs a canvas. This is so interesting on so many levels. I always prefer the elegant, Helen taught me well. The dressing is everything. Barnhart called me back and I told him to go for it, whatever it was. Push it. That's the April Fool concert, I'm getting ahead of myself, a run-away train. April pre-supposes March. A river runs through it. Welcome to Southern Ohio, further north than you might imagine. All the lovely ladies, all the sleeping giants, all the lonely sailors; you take some pots and pans and hit them with a stick. I hate to hear that whistle blow. The wind is rising, it's sure to bring on rain. It ain't cool to talk about people when they ain't around. Cold rain, the curse of the season. Read more...

Cognitively Impenetrable

The taste of Coke is, and a lot of very abstract art. Doesn't mean that something can't be good (Dr. Pepper!) or that you can't enjoy looking at it. Wonderful moment in the Market Street Cafe this morning. I'd stopped for my free coffee (we supply them coffee sleeves with our logo) this morning, and a still warm scone, handed to me with a smile from the beautiful Erica. Couple of college girls came in, and I kind of did a little stutter step, smelling one of them. "Tommy Girl" I said out loud. The young lady looked at me strangely and said, "How could you possibly know that?" and I told her it was one of my favorite scents. I enjoy those little off the record conversations where you can talk about specific things, and you can tell that the other person never expected to be having that conversation. I told her, not even lying, though I could have and it wouldn't have made any difference, that I studied perfumes, bought small samples and tried them on women who would allow me to. Aw shucks. As it happened, I had a couple of samples in the truck, newly arrived in the mail, that I'd not even opened because they arrived yesterday and I got them from the box this morning, on my way out. I'd gotten two samples of "Chinatown", that Luca Turin had given the highest ranking and I gave one to her, told her to check it out, and be wearing it next week at this time, and I would, politely, smell it on her. Chalk it up to organic chemistry. A frolic. That's too esoteric, reading back over, because I was thinking about the Amish tradition of building a barn, which they call a 'frolic', and what a frolic it was, that I suddenly needed to know some organic chemistry, and that I was flirting, for sport. The real world actually became a fiction, and I could say anything I wanted to say. Not that that's not usually the case. I pretty much always shoot straight, even if I'm making it up. And I get this book on Inter-Library loan, a book on organic chemistry, I think, god, I've been alone too long, or something. I sacrifice everything to write to you, I put my life on the line, read books I never would have otherwise. And it's true, something I read in The New Yorker. Corona should never have been bottled in clear bottles. If light hits them they oxidize, a matter of volatile oils;I'ved always built and prenyl mercaptan is generated, skunky beer; lime kills the mercaptan. Seems there's almost always something chemical at play, when the natives do something as a matter of course. Manioc is to cassava what mandrake is to everything else. The screaming man. The prop guy is not to be diminished, what he creates is what allows us to believe. It's all illusion, but some of it is better than other. I've always built props is a hell of a statement. Cognitively impenetrable. Read more...

What?

Maybe the first night above freezing this year. What woke me was a huge slide of snow/ice off the roof that hit the deck like a earthquake. Hard to sleep through that. Line from a song, " don't want nothing, haven't got it yet" which seems about right, so I get a drink, roll a smoke, and listen to some great blues. Son House, Koko, then that slack sound, Mississippi John Hurt, delta blues, lay my down pallet on the floor. I need to get to town, carry in some things. Survival is an incremental thing. You melt some snow, you cook some grits, you do a hand-wash. Covet your neighbor's thermostat. Start all over again. My base line is to keep from dying. I'm barely successful, but that's close enough. Descending chords, talk about your Mom and trains to nowhere, a dog that followed you everywhere for years, a Black Lab, who preferred the window down, so he could smell the world outside. A great dog, with a huge tongue; he tasted the world in ways we can only imagine. There was this dude, at Janitor College, a Polish guy, Braut, our all-around Mopping Champion three years running. Had a huge tongue that was nearly always hanging out of the corner of his mouth. His other great talent, besides the masterful Modified Chevron (the same stroke I still use) was his incredible ability to name the particular variety of hops in any beer, foreign, domestic, or home-brew. I made a master list of things I needed at the house, then prioritized, and decided I should make the extra trip. Freeze/thaw cycle all week and I don't want to risk a pack much over 20 pounds. So I did go to town this morning, library (the new Henning Mankell novel), liquor store, grocery, then stopped at the pub for a beer and lunch, D came in, just as I was finishing, bought me another beer. I never do two beers at lunch, even on a day off, so I stopped at Market Street and got a coffee to go for the drive home. A good thing too, because I witnessed an accident, going out of town, and stopped, to tell the cops what I had seen. There's a road, Carey's Run Road, that intersects Route 52, and a good old boy tried to slip his pick-up into a slot he didn't fit. Clearly his fault. The first responder was the local Deputy Sheriff, Brian, whom I know, to nod to, and he thanked me for staying. I stopped at the lake, to feed the despondent ducks some left-overs from the Friday opening, achieved the ridge, read for a couple of hours with my broken toe elevated, must have napped, briefly, because the light was different, decided to cook a pork dish that looked good in my imagination, a kind of stew. Usually, when I make up a dish, it's based on materials at hand, and this is no exception, it's a long way to town and the pantry is scant. I cube a two pound pork roast, dredge it in chili powder and a little flour, lots of black pepper, brown it quickly in a hot skillet with bacon fat (I've craving fat); two pounds of small potatoes, a pound of carrots, half a bag of frozen pearl onions (I'd used the other half-bag cooking some butter beans, god were they good), all of which I kind of half-cooked in a can of chicken broth. Then I dumped everything into a smallish crock pot, set it on low and intend to cook it for 12 hours. This is going to be good, I think, answering all the winter criteria. A deeply embedded splinter, from doing kindling, I can't get it with a needle, so I worry the opening and flood it with peroxide, it'll work it's way out in the next couple of days. I figure I've had several hundred serious splinters in my life. Cypress splinters are the worst, they always fester. 95% of these I remove immediately, the other 5% are the plague of anyone who works with wood. Useless fingers and fear of infection. I flood everything with alcohol, the past, a wound, everything. Sometimes it burns, sometimes I forget, the past is a bucket of ashes. Clean the fridge. You can do that. Read more...