Pattern Recognition

The office politic, pure bullshit, was out of control again today. Pegi and Tammy were all day in Columbus, for an awards luncheon, and Trish had an early morning dentist appointment. When she finally got in she was ranting and raving (I walked off) about her mistreatment at the museum. It went on for several hours. James had to shut the door on D's office and play music to get anything done. I spent the day in the basement, sorting hardware and tools. There have been a couple of screw-ups in having a receptionist, especially on Saturdays, and there is no question that is Trish's responsibility to have a warm body there, and Pegi had said something to her, yesterday. What Pegi had dragged me into the Cater's to talk about. And today was the rebuttal. My sense is that it will play out and there will be someone at the desk. The basement is much cleaner, it was a royal mess, I put things away and swept and read some instructions on how to mount a certain brand of anti-theft hardware behind paintings. The instructions were useless because they'd been badly translated from the Chinese, but interesting in a kind of fractured 'Language School' kind of way. James finished the first major stage, the largest step, in documenting the permanent collection, there is now a separate, nicely formatted page for every piece. Most of step two, a photograph on said page of said piece. Then step three which is the condition report. Securing the provenance. Interesting stuff, he and I talk about this, have been talking, for many months. Archiving is an interesting process. I was fronting books in the library today, some fucking demon keeps coming in there and shoving the books back on the shelves, if I catch them, whomever it is, I will probably throttle them. On the other hand, I'd never complain about the occasional hour I need to spend in one of the better art libraries in this part of the country. Found a great article on Carter today, in a small book from the Met on American Realism. Audubon studied with David, he actually did, then came over here and drew birds. There's such a studied composition, and I'd never thought about where it came from. Patterns don't always mean anything, they might only indicate minor daily enigma: none of your socks match, you've missed a call, you can't find the key to the back door. I get away as soon as the clock strikes five, I have a dog, and I need to finish the book I started last night. A simple dinner, a spinach salad I wilted with hot butter and morels, some garlic toast. But between those two things, leaving work and eating dinner. Something happened, I'd just gotten on the west side of the river where the roads diverge into drainages, and there was a turtle that wanted to cross the road. Slammed on my brakes, it's is fucking female Midland Smooth Softshell Turtle. This species, the female is always larger, and she dictates terms. I have the hots for Shiva, I had just been reading about this very turtle. I swear to god, she was just looking for the river, four lanes of traffic, I'm feeling, in what is my opinion, she might have made have made it across. Because she's a superior turtle. Midland Smooth Softshell Turtle. A female, I know, because they don't carry a pattern on their back, I thought at the time, you know way too much about turtles. This is a world class issue. I lock my brakes, grab the fucking turtle like a bandit, slip it to freedom. No question, a female Midland Smooth Softshell Turtle. And full of eggs. I take her down to an island I know, a backwater on the Ohio, a safe place, but she doesn't trust me, she scuttles away. There's only so far I'd go. Fuck a bunch of turtles.