Vault Day

Intense myriad greens against a solid blue field. Shafts of gold and yellow. Mackletree is completely canopied for the last couple of miles and the drive becomes a stutter step. One last night with G and L at the apartment, and Linda cooks Moroccan food for Sara, Clay and me. The food is great and, again, the conversation is an absolute delight. I love these people. Home late for the third night in a row, a modern record for me, bearing all the open bottles of things from their stay: half-a-bottle of single malt, most of a liter of Jameson's, some olive oil, some good balsamic. And presents, against my upcoming birthday: horseradish jelly, a bottle of Minnesota hot sauce, that probably, they warned, was not very hot. We're talking bologna and mayo sandwich country. Mashed potatoes. I like these things too, but I tend to add a thick slice of onion and fry the bologna, add herbs and cheese to the potatoes. The ribs were so good, the other night, the owner and designer of the building, who had eaten with us at the fest, caught D and I today, outside having a smoke, and told us a report had been filed with the police, the fridge in the conference room had been dusted. Seems he came over the next morning to get a few ribs for breakfast and they were all gone. Clearly theft, he had seen that there were left-over ribs. We promised to cook them for him again, on his roof, drinking his gin and enjoying the view. Vault Day is not fixed, but floats, rather like Easter, and once a year (we've been delinquent of late) it's necessary to organize and relocate all the art in the permanent collection stored in what must have been the major safe in our bank building turned art museum. Order out of chaos. Especially after photographing everything and shuffling things around, it was a mess. When we left, today, the storage space was a thing of great beauty. Every piece was stored correctly and there was a kind of beauty to the repose, items at rest. Art is sensitive stuff, requires consideration. One of the reasons I like my job. I'd rather pay attention than not. Damned goat-suckers descend in mass and I can't hear myself think. 200 repetitions and you begin to think these fucking whip-poor-wills studied under Philip Glass. I go bonkers, play the Grateful Dead really loud, "New Speedway Boogie", imagine the silence of winter. We were talking about memorizing lines and all turned to Linda, because she's an actor and that's what they do, and she said no, no, it was never easy, she had to post Emily's poems on the bathroom mirrors, they were so difficult, to learn them for "The Belle Of Amherst". The weight of hot humid air is enough to take your breath away. Sirocco. I stop to collect a dead squirrel for my dog's dinner and a pick-up roars by, yelling curses. This is where we've arrived. You stop to salvage a few grams of protein off the road and someone yells ugly things about your mother. I'm not easy to take offense, but I wish I'd had a shotgun. There are some ways in which I'm tired of saying 'this one will be fine' talking about my berth on a train speeding north or south, wherever it was I was going, when what I really wanted to say was 'is this the best seat in the house?' Fat idiot assholes bother me, I finally have to say something, and it always gets me into trouble. The new directive was that you couldn't say anything bad about fat stupid assholes because they'd sue you and then you'd be mired in shit. So let me be clear here, I have nothing against fat stupid assholes. I know they are the cornerstone of our great democracy. I bow to the wishes of fat stupid assholes. I need to earn a living, strive to not shoot myself in the foot. The broken toe was a warning shot across the bow. I wish you could hear this, there's a whip-poor-will not thirty feet away. Damn birds. 216 repetitions before there was a flaw, and I jumped on it, a clear mistake, the bird shot me a human, flew to a nearby tree, and started over. I'm tired of being mocked, but what am I anyway, a janitor with an interesting stroke.