What Is

Cognitively recognizing things that happen. Nothing could make me doubt what I actually saw. Certain things are locked in concrete. What you said. I defend your right to say whatever it was. The mystery zone, where, without thinking, you channel Emily: "To shut our eyes is Travel." Sleep is hardly respite, a dreamscape, where the young bull walks down and fucks all the fine young heifers. Everything he says is a line from a song, a voice like John Lee Hooker, "King Snake" against the backdrop of a lonely guitar. Catch the night train. What happened in the harsh shadow of the ghost light may have meant nothing. Meaning is a slippery slope, generally a fabrication, suited to a specific situation. Nothing's fair in love and war. Little Sister is so excited about spoiled lunch meat she practically bowls me over. You gotta like a dog that digs the blues. Fur is flying, she whaps her tail on the back porch, the blues for sure. The real deal: a lonesome train in Kentucky and a bird-dog beating time. Finally got back to sleep, then back up and off to the museum. Return a wood-stove, borrowed for the "Ghosts Of Business Past", then set-to with a vengeance. Hang the entire high school show without a single miss-step. Small wonders. There is so much math involved that we generally have to re-hang one or two pieces. The numbers are flying. D calls them out and I do the calculations. Measure the wall, add up the width of all the pieces for that wall, subtract, divide the remainder by the number of spaces (pieces plus one), gets you the space between. Add that number to half the width of the first piece and you have the center line. Measure the length of the piece, divide by 2, subtract the distance from the top of the piece to the hanging wire or d-rings, add the answer to 57, which is the horizontal center-line. Do this fifty times without a mistake. We're on a roll, so we light the show, then do the vinyl signage. Enough, already, for one day. All that remains is making and mounting labels and cleaning up the gallery. Excellent day. It's a pretty good show, one we need to do, to get the kids and their families into the museum; and it's good for the kids, to see their work taken seriously. Seriously hung, and lit, and labeled. First time most of them would ever have their work handled professionally (is that a conditional pluperfect?), there's a reception and an opening, the whole nine-yards. Should be a nice trip for them. And it is a juried show, a lot of awards, some cash too. Some of it is for sale, I've often bought a piece, but the only two I like enough to buy are NFS. Tastes differ. A good friend, Lane, juried the competition. Lane is probably the best water-colorist currently alive. Which point came up recently, because a Tennessee gallery is currently doing a show of photographs that depict small frozen pools. As it happens, Lane has been doing paintings of small frozen pools. His paintings are more real than the photographs. This strikes me like a bolt of lightning. Reality turned on its ear. That wasn't my point, though. His "Best In Show" was my number three pick. D and I would get into a bidding war for another piece, both of our favorite piece, but NFS; and another piece, a water-color, that I would buy in a heart-beat, also NFS. Not for sale is killing me here, I want to support artists, I like looking at interesting things, and it is a buyer's market. I talk with John and can spend my last night in Colorado with he and Kay. Things are falling into place. I can't SEND, high winds must have dropped the phone line on Mackletree. Up in the cool morning, I clip brush until my arms are sore, working in hour stretches, then drinking coffee and reading. New fiction about Emily. I usually don't read books like this, but he's a decent writer, Jerome Charyn, and he uses all the source material well, and I actually get through the whole book without throwing it across the room. Some modest headway with the brush. Sweaty and rather dirty, I just wash off at the kitchen sink, planing to spend tomorrow in much the same fashion. For a late lunch I have a huge omelet with morels, toast and bacon. I nearly swoon, it's such a fine meal. No one coming forward to stay in the house and feed the dog, don't know what I'll do. Committed to the trip now, though I know my house will be robbed while I'm gone. When unemployment hits 20%, in rural areas like this, robbing houses gets out of control. I'll take my tools into the museum, my manuscripts, maybe another box of books. I'll thumb-tack a couple of twenty dollar bills to the central tree-post, with a note: "Take This, Please Leave The Computer." There isn't much left to steal, my collection of cast iron cooking vessels, but they're heavy, and I can understand not stealing them. Books. All the light stuff has been taken. What does one pauper steal from another? That's not a joke. Operational relevance. Eventually the witness tells a story. What do you believe?I don't even believe primary sources. Doubting everything, a Thomas for sure.