Jacksonville University

Yes, indeed I am that guy, studied theater, perhaps the best vertically integrated education one could have. Worked for me, still working, for all that, I hung a very nice front wall with 14 photographs today, over-under, two rows of seven, and they were all framed exactly the same. Which would seem to make things easier but actually makes them much more difficult. If the frame size is different, a tiny bit of error isn't important (centering at 57 inches) but if they're exactly the same, the amazing human eye, picks up the slightest difference. Got them all hung, and they look great, but I'll be tweaking then for days. I can do almost perfect, but it takes a lot longer. Mediocre is often good enough, if no one even sees it, why are you busting your ass? On the other hand, I like to get things close. A half-assed perfectionist with a calendar, a schedule, that locks things into place temporally. That's cool, I need constraints, otherwise I could well spend the rest of life sewing a single quilt. Densest fog I've ever seen, on the way to work, I slowed down to 25mph; thick, rolling off the river, seeping into all the low-lying spaces. It was lovely, you could stare right at the sun, it looked like a yellow beach ball. I was cleaning the back hallway this morning (it's a traffic zone) and the 'bird' that revealed itself as a bat swooped out of the theater and knocked me on my ass. Fucking bats. I know they're mammals, I know it's not a mere insect I could swat with a tennis racket. But I don't like them, I hate things that fly in my face. I didn't catch it, I don't want to kill it, I need a butterfly net. I never imagined I would need a butterfly net. Read more...

Laundromat

Older lady at the laundromat asked me what I was reading and I explained that my current car book was "Metzger's Dog" by Thomas Perry. Then had to explain the concept of 'car book', it being the one I carried about for traffic delays and stops like the laundromat. She then started questioning me about my reading habits and I told her they were habitual. She was a retired English teacher, we talked about Faulkner and dear sweet Emily. When I left, she thanked me for the lovely conversation. Went to the museum, to read in the AC for a while before lunch and D was there, with one of the artists from Construction Zones. D didn't have his keys, so my appearance was timely. Very nice black and white photos of structures, uniformly matted and framed. Pub for lunch and a beer. Dinner is a salad with a small tuna steak in the center, cheap wine left over from the reception. A nice browned butter for the tuna. Rereading some early Barry Lopez essays, "Crossing Open Ground" and they're wonderful. There was an exceptionally strange, small, professor of Ethics at Janitor College, Lamar Francis, PHD, MDS, SOC, who spoke beautifully, in his lectures, about the natural world, took long hikes into really inhospitable places every summer. His lectures were often incomprehensible, though the attention to detail was transparent. An odd combination. I did learn from him that the janitor was just part of the background, and that, ethically, you'd be an idiot to not take advantage of a stock tip you overheard in private conversation, when you were just part of the woodwork. A small point worth belaboring. I won't, but I could go there. I'm good on belaboring small points. Professor Francis died an odd death, he was hiking a slot-canyon in southern Utah when he heard the sound of rushing water. He was an practiced rock climber, and easily got above the flow, but evidently ended up on a ledge where a momma mountain lion had just given birth. They only identified the skeleton because he'd had a tiny titanium plate attached to his 2nd rib that had his name and social security number. A careful guy. Ethics are where you find them. Much later the dog goes ballistic and I know it's either a opossum or a coon, or those guys dressed in black with body armor. It's a coon on the compost pile, and I'm relieved it's not the men in black. I can deal with a coon. I fire a shot across his bow, he takes off down-wind, the dog spins in circles. I go back to bed. Too much intrusion. I have a show to hang. Read more...

Elevator Capacity

Force of habit, I calculate the total weight and weigh it against what the plaque says is our maximum. In public buildings I always use the stairs. People have become so fat, I fear for my safety. They have extra body parts that I can't identify. You take my dog or me, and the muscle groups are easily identified; in the super market, I'm not so sure, masses of extraneous tissue. I tend to live close to the bone, the only place that interests me, skip meals and wake at odd times. Angles of light, angels really, the last rays of moonlight over cloud banks, I don't draw any conclusions, just watch, another light show. I've seen it all before. I was attracted to Julie because she wasn't overweight and had a light blue vein on her temple. Empires are built on less. Your horse and my jack-ass, could make a sterile mule. Hendrix comes to mind. Anyone truly out there. Chuck Close, The Dead. Bach in the Suites. Everything is hidden, prize out what you can. A taste of things to come, Carolina on my mind, just like a friend of mine. Keep it clean. Opened the house up, last night before going to bed, and this morning there was a strange smell on the wind, a sweet citrus, and though I went out several times, I never did track it down. A resin maybe, or some trillium blossom I'd never noticed before. Reminded me (as smell makes you remember) of a frolic with a high school sweetheart in a grove of Opossum Brown oranges west of St. Augustine. The Opossum Brown is a juice orange, and we'd pull them off the branches, cut a round hole at the stem end, squeeze and suck the juice out, them turn them inside out and scrape the meat with our teeth. Anna let me lick the juice she'd dribble between her breasts. A highly charged part of my adolescense. I hadn't remembered that for years before the smell. Funny, how that works. Smell blind-sides you, the way it takes precedence. I can be intensely thinking about something else, researching a specific thing, books opened on every flat surface, and a smell will waft in. Might as well close down the operation. In fact it does. Leftover squid on toast. It's good, I'm not complaining, just reporting what I ate. God, that seems weird. Reporting what I ate. When did this become so personal? It snuck up on me. Last thing I remember, the geese were attacking the truck, leaving pock marks in the finish. We ducked down, I snapped it into 4-wheel drive. We don't require A second form of identity. I'm lost in the parade. Really.

Tom

Emily said something, but I forget what it was. Read more...

Reception

I met two women that interested me, so I'd call it a success. Spent the day cleaning the main gallery, putting things away, stashing things in the basement. Since the photo show is completely on the walls, all 2-D, the entire Richard's gallery is open. A good thing, as 75 people, 90% under thirty, most had never been in the museum. An open bar, just beer and wine, but nobody drank much. As the nominal bartender, I didn't circulate at first, but as the party wore on I became engaged in several conversations and found myself involved in social stuff. I'm well versed in conventions, because I learned from actors. But I had two serious conversations, and took three people down to see Phillip's piece in the board room. I don't want confusion in my life right now, relationships probably being primary, but this woman Julie really interests me. And the mysterious woman in the short skirt, with boots. It's all I can do to tread water. I can't believe how well I can recount. Maybe it's genetic, or geriatric. Julie had a lovely light blue vein on her right temple that I really wanted to touch, maybe kiss and whisper a secret One conversation I backed out of sounded like it was actually an encoded subtext. A little light background music was playing downstairs, jazzy Anasazi pipes. Just enough. Group photos of the artists present. Everyone stayed until we ran them out, an excellent opening. Home late, plopped down on the sofa to rest my eyes and woke up this morning, fully clothed, with a crick in my neck. Blow off going to town, as I've got rags and tatters I can wear around the house, holey socks and such, and I can do the laundry on Monday. I spent the day flipping through a batch of food and recipe books Amy Barnhart gave me six weeks ago, which inspires a batch of mid-afternoon crab cakes. For dinner I stir-fried some canned squid (I'd forgotten it was there) with a couple of chopped low-acid tomatoes, an onion, and some lamb's quarter I found in a flower bed at the college. I get great dandelion greens there, too; the groundskeepers use a ton of mulch and not much insecticide, but I still wash everything three or four times. I had the squid on toast, which was easier than making rice. Assembled a batch of grits in the crock-pot, which I'll cook tonight, and eat all next week, in various guises. I'll use it as polenta, something I might serve something on, a fried egg or anything hot and juicy; and I've learned to make very good cheese grits in the microwave. In a small heat-proof dish I mix grated cheese with prepared grits, nuke it for 90 seconds, then brown the top with a propane torch. It's very good. Fried crumpled bacon is a great topping. Bacon, I think, is underestimated, in the great spread of humanity, stop for a minute, consider, there is no way you could move that object, which weights tons, you couldn't possibly lift yourself. Bacon is a constant. Smell is more important than you think. Bach played out the lines. Listen. You can follow it along. The 'Cello Suites' are the best piece of music ever. That they could make me smile and make me cry in the same moment. No way I can move a frozen mastedon. Read more...

Compulsive Liar

I'm a liberal, that's not quite right, I'm probably a libertarian. I support assistance wherever it might help, as long as the dog you might feed doesn't come back to bite you. There's some state or federal program whereby people get food stamps for doing community service. I'm not a good judge of people, and I don't want to be, it's not my area of expertise, but because the museum is a non-profit organization, and because our office manager wants some people to run errands, we now have two of them. One is actually a good worker, the other is a terrible worker and as far as I can tell, a compulsive liar. The suspected liar turned art critic today, talking about the box installation, and it was all I could do to stay quiet. Little opening reception for the photo show tomorrow, and I told Sara I'd stay for it. We're serving beer and wine and some of the students are underage. I'll just ask them. I'm one of those people who feel strongly that if you're old enough to die for your country, you're old enough to drink beer, and I can't judge age worth a damn anyway. Maybe some decent conversation. A beer at the pub after work. D and A showed up, we laughed, talked logistics. No one at the lake, on the way home, so I stopped, watched the surface of the water dimpled with fish striking at bugs. With a Royal Coachman, and my nine foot bamboo fly-rod, I could catch a bushel of these hatchery-raised trout, but where's the sport in that? and they don't taste good anyway. When you've eaten native Cut-Throat trout caught out of water that was 38 degrees, at ten thousand feet, nothing else quite clears the bar. Especially not hatchery fish raised on dog-food. I have some standards, be they ever so arbitrary. Or tributary. Coming up the driveway, I just couldn't hold the line, my front tires jumped, and I was in the grader ditch, had to switch into four-wheel low to get out. Fucking driveway, man, it's eating my truck. I really must talk with B about maintenance, but I really hate dealing with Alpha Males because they're such a pain in the ass. I'd sell this place in a heart-beat, move to an apartment where there was a thermostat and running water. I would. Despite the loss of crows, and foxes, and all the other shit that says boom in the night. I'd get more work done, my work, which is writing you. I don't do anything else, other than write you and eat dinner; I roll a few smokes, pour a drink; but my yard is a jungle. Read more...

Boxes, Day 3

I love the smell of cardboard in the morning. Which I said first thing this morning and cracked the four of us up, D, A, Tom and Tom. The second unit is huge, filling most of the middle of the main gallery, twenty-one feet wide, at the widest point, and more than twenty feet deep, more than twenty feet tall in the center, tapering down in both directions. Maybe 300 boxes. Each horizontal section, which would be called a 'bent' in barn or house construction is six inches apart and completely free-standing. Various arrangements of columns and lintels, so there are all sorts of voids and nooks. There are benches inside, so you can sit and contemplate the space. A very fine installation. The other five artists will be displayed mostly on the walls encircling. D on the road next week collecting some of the other art, but a Cincy artist is bringing her piece in next Tuesday, Nicky, and it's a revolving light inside a model of a house, casting shadows on the walls, and, as it happens, on some of the white boxes. Anthony is doing plaster casts of fake architectural detail, and rubbings of the joints at the corners of some log cabins. Some great photos of structures, I don't remember his name; some fine semi-abstract paintings of parts of structures, very much like recent work of Glenn and Linda's younger daughter. Both of these groups of paintings I saw within a couple of weeks, which strikes me as odd, as though it were a new vein to be examined. Some cast glass houses, or pieces of houses. I think that's everyone. The main gallery, except for the perfect installation, looks like a bomb went off, all the other space is clogged with debris, almost a show in itself, what it takes to install a show. I've got two days to clean up before we have the official opening of the photo show upstairs, then install the other components of the big show. Then get in some firewood and start preparing for winter, and, oh god, do something with the driveway. A big fall fund-raiser, then Thanksgiving with the girls in Florida, where I'll do all the cooking, and we'll have baby back ribs on the day itself, with some fine sides: butter beans, a perfect slaw, Potatoes Diane (the most sinful side I know), and garlic bread. I feel like I'm booked too far out, but then it will be winter, and no one demands too much of me, because they know they couldn't live this life. Don't want to, don't need to, don't want it thrown in their face that they might should. We're running out of water because you flush your shit down the drain. That's not a question, it's statement of fact. This all comes up because the other Tom's son is living Costa Rica and we're talking, at lunch, about shit-manipulation, about it generally. I mean this sincerely, genuine conversation is the, what? the actual genuine base? I think I'd fall back here and at least look around. What one person calls art, another calls the Anti-Christ. My job is just to mediate. This is a four-hundred level  curse, course, what were we talking about? Read more...

Boxes, Day 2

Couldn't SEND last night because the phone was out. So I sent before I started writing again, to keep things in sequence. The artist, Tom McCauley, showed on time, which is strange enough here, where the last hour or two, depending on your incoming vector, is at 55 MPH; but stranger still, anxious to get to work. I needed a helper, because it's really hard to screw boxes by yourself, the female box, the receiving end, needs holding (her little flap?) while the male end does his business. Still, we made great progress, maybe because it was easy to remember each other's name. Today I spent a lot of time hot-gluing boxes that form the ends of the lintels. These are more difficult than you might think because we try and keep the glued edge of the box in line with the glued edge of the stretcher boxes. One end is flap-folded, the other is glued, and the the seam must needs be horizontal. We did the smaller of the two parts of the installation first, finished easily, probably a third of the total boxes; started the larger segment, and got a goodly way along. Did I mention I'm sick of boxes? We'll have the entire box crew tomorrow and we should be able to finish. Fortunately I have weeks before I have to think about taking this show apart. I know more about boxes than I want to know, but still not enough, because tomorrow we're attempting things even the artist hasn't tried. Evil Kinival reaches of height and length. We want to haul a fifteen box lintel fifteen feet in air. I'm not quite sure this can be done, I'm willing to try, and boxes aren't that dangerous unless a corner catches you in the eye. We get a lot of cuticle cuts that we can tape easily so we don't have blood on the product. A installation of mine, I'd feature the blood. I'm way beyond exhausted, the other Tom quit just a bit early, thank god, because I was all in, done, toast, and I met D and A at the pub for a pint, after work. We talked about tomorrow briefly, what we needed to accomplish, then joked about things that didn't matter. There's a pattern here, that I seem to see emerging. Not only a sub-text, but a meta-text that over rides everything. I'll put it on my list, but there are some things I need to write first. Dog ran off, chasing someting, and the fox came forward and ate the rest of the dog's feed. Consider that moment. Do I have anything to say? I try to stay silent most of the time, because I don't add much. Fucking raw, from screwing boxes. Interleave, interleave, my little darling. The fox came over the ridge. Read more...

Screwing Boxes

Never occurred to me that simply working with cardboard boxes could be so exhausting. Tired and sore, D, A, and myself, comparing notes over a beer at the pub. We're all whipped. Several reasons, we walked miles for one thing, for another, we carried three boxes at a time to the central area, where we did the actually screwing, no handles or hand-holes so you had to use compression with the palms of your hands on two sides of the bottom box to carry them, and that used a muscle-group not usually engaged for such an extended period (we worked 8 hours straight except a for quick lunch), and the actual motion, the locking together of the boxes, requires strong use of fingers to get the four 'leaves' of the top box tucked under the leaves of the bottom box. If anyone did this for a living, it would be a short career due to carpal-tunnel syndrome. Then we discovered a mistake we'd made a great many times and had to redo several stacks. Even the 'stackers', the boxes in the middle of both the posts and the lintels have an up and down if you're interested in aligning the corner overlap, where cardboard is overlapped for the only side-seam in your basic cardboard box. Late in the day, working on the last lintels for which we had boxes, and getting longer, 8,9,10,13 boxes, we found a very interesting way to build them horizontally. We set up two eight foot tables end to end. Requires three people, one on either side guiding the leaves with strong fingers, we call these two 'The Sidemen' and then there's the third guy, at the outer end, balancing the new box lightly in his hands, so the sidemen can interleave the tabs, we call him the 'Screwer' or sometimes just Screw which is what one of the sidemen would whisper when the time was right. The perk to this incredibly boring day of screwing boxes, was that the three of us worked very well together. It wasn't quite fun, but it wasn't awful, and we got a huge amount done, which was critical, because the artist will be there tomorrow and we need to install this. Sorry Linda, but the talent is so often a pain in the ass. Not you, I cherish the moments I spend with you, but talent is almost always arrogant, because it is accurately tangent. Hey, I merely report what I see. That and this. I felt a part of a team, this afternoon, we were screwing boxes. Say what those critics might, we were on our speed. No one assembles boxes better. I can't believe I'm cut such slack: you'd thought I'd say something or would have said something, might have said something. Six artists to install, and the box guy is just one of them. I envision some sleepless nights. Still, nothing I can't do, and I don't have a word of advice.  Read more...

Reality Check

Once in a while I find it necessary to touch base. Olly olly in free. Hadn't realized how tired I was. More flies than usual but they seem sluggish in the heat and I catch them out of the air in a bare hand and slam them against the wall. It's not a sport, exactly, but it keeps me nimble, a goal keeper. They've rented out the museum for a Democratic Fund Raiser while the Construction Show is installed and I sense a recipe for disaster, but hold my tongue. It'll probably be fine. I'm a paranoid bastard and no longer trust anyone, an occupational disease. I expend myself so totally to install these shows, they're like my kids, not quite that extreme, they're like baby goats I'm feeding with a bottle. Delicate. And I fear the ways outrageous fortune might collapse a house of cards. Or boxes. The museum smells of cardboard, not a bad smell at all, a kind of woody chypre, with overtones of chocolate rose. A man could wear this. which I intend to, tomorrow. See if anyone says anything. Not that I'm approachable, or could be approached from any direction,  just to see what someone thinks. One last drink, a final cigaret, bug noises outside. Nothing makes sense, really. Sleep a few more hours, wake to a phone call from Mom, things fine in Florida, meaning no change. Faulkner said somewhere that he didn't believe in facts that much. Interesting how much the great South American writers got him. McCarthy in those wonderful early books. The Southern Gothic. Reread some today. I still want to write a Mississippi novel, but all the work I'd done on that was stolen, along with the 1000 single-spaced manuscript pages of the book about building this house, and that delightful interlude book (a non-fiction novella) "On Three" which only existed in a single copy. All because I kept my hard copy in a fire-proof box that looked like a safe. That and my computers keep getting fried out here in the boonies. The finger that was jabbed by the guitar string got infected, so I opened it back up and flushed everything with iodine, then ointment and a band-aid. Another bad habit, over which I have little control, when I get bug bites around my ankles, and only there, I scratch until I bleed. It's my one entry into the pain/pleasure thing. It feels so good, I can't stop. I don't feel like I'm tightly controlled, but I really don't know, what would I compare that with? I don't go to family reunions, or graduation reunions, or any reunions of any sort, it seems to me they're a waste of time. Usually I'd rather be alone unless the conversation was interesting. There are exceptions, of course; times you might be simply bored, or times when what you remembered wasn't exactly the past-ness that other people remembered. I never argue with anyone, unless they actually step on my toes. Read more...

Late Blues

Doesn't matter what keeps you awake. A monkey on barbed wire, the wind in the trees: at a certain point, it's all the same. 4:44 in the morning and the bugs beat an incessant rhythm. The season of the witch. When I look out my window, something strange. Must be the season of the witch. Either aliens or fireflies, or some other phosphorescence of which I'm not aware. I meant to go to town, having things to do, laundry and such, but rain was forecast and I had plenty of whiskey and tobacco, so I buried myself in a Thomas Perry novel and only left the sofa for the occasional snack. At 4:44 in the afternoon, in the interest of symmetry, I got a weak first drink (it was 5:44 in Nova Scotia) and read myself for a while. I usually only read myself to see where I am, but sometimes I step outside, to look at the way I'm saying things. I can make sense of myself, but as I was explaining to Clay, it's really difficult to be transparent. Joel, the Wittgenstein Plumber, corrected my date on Marconi, and he was correct, but that cable snapped almost right away, and it was four more years before the connection was reliable. But hey, to be read closely is more than I could possibly ask for. I make a lot of mistakes, and I make shit up. I'm not a reliable source. No one is, which is the point maybe. I haven't been downstairs at all, where they're folding and screwing boxes, and I'll need to install that show, but I had to install the show upstairs, because the announcement had gone out. There are certain time constraints. I assume I can get up to speed on what I've missed. I look forward to screwing boxes. The rest of the show is a fairly standard installation. It isn't arrogance, but merely confidence, that allows me to operate. I'm a hack really, a fiberglass figure you meet around the corner, John Lee Hooker singing about a black snake, a blip on the radar. I'm ok with that. Surprised I'm even a blip. I do love John Lee. Surprised this connects with Faulkner, but there you are. Read more...

Something Matters

Look back. Look forward. Take a step. Get to the museum early, to shop at Kroger before work, when it's deserted, and buy mostly liquids. Anthony's already at the museum, ready to start folding boxes; D arrives a little late, some trouble getting the right size rental truck. He's taking a Carter painting to Wooster, and then picking up the remnants of the Circus Show, and getting him packed and on the road is primary. Anthony knows more about the boxes than me, at this point, so just make sure he's good to go, then I retire to the third floor to make labels. Takes maybe 30 minutes to mount them and run them through the vacuum press, another 45 minutes to trim them all to our uniform specks. Pegi helps me find which label goes with which photograph, not as easy as one would think, as we're working with a badly printed pile of thumbnails with incomplete wordage. Get it done, then I make 78 little loops of blue painter's tape around the first finger of my left hand, glue side out, that I'll use to adhere the labels to the wall. I deposit the loops on the top of the job box, which is on wheels (so I can roll it around the gallery and not walk back and forth quite so many times), with a deft little touch of the finger. I may have invented this technique, which may be because I've made and deposited many hundreds of these little loops of tape. I make them just a little loose on my finger, and since it is on the non-sticky side, just press down where I want the loop to store. Seems simple to me now, but I've never been able to teach anyone else this trick. Not much of a teacher, when it comes down to it. Sara and I do some lighting, I go get the signage at the sign shop. The show is called "REALITY, a local twist", and the word REALITY is 10 inches high, and a local twist is maybe three. Sara thinks we might overlay them, and I think that's a fine idea. I center the whole thing, to piss D off, but he didn't say hard left or hard right; he hates centering things, for some reason, some unresolved issues probably, and I'm ok with that, I have them too. Don't get me started on sans-serif types. If I had my way everything would be in Caslon and we'd all be happy. It's a great edgy show. Sara had emailed Allyson to come over because we were missing three labels. She was blown away, bug-eyed, that we had lavished such attention on a show of her students. But our reputation is on the line here too, so we pay attention to detail. I left her and Sara in discussion, when I closed down the shop. This morning I had scored a whole bunch of those boxes of small donuts. The powdered ones. Out of a dumpster. And I imagined another event with the geese. Linda admitted she sometimes thought I made things up. Why would I bother? The geese were on my side of the lake. I rolled down the window and within minutes had a happy crew of clowns. Powder and greasepaint. By the end of the day, it's amazing how good at this I am. I knew I was pretty good, but I had no idea. If I'm that good the standards are set too low, because I'm not that good. Art is all that matters, domesticating animals or vegetables might be a good thing, but The Cello Suites are special. Read more...

Incessant Drip

Condensation. Metal roof. The dew point. My fickle nature. Reading way too much Faulkner. Who knows what woke me. Since the dog sleeps beneath the house, and when I move she wakes, I can't determine a cause and effect. I might think it is she, but it could well be me. A confusing cycle wherein I wake, or dream I wake, concerning a noise that might have been me. I checked the weather channel, to make sure I could get to work. The driveway is the worst it's ever been. It's so bad you could lose a brand new four-wheel drive truck on a single pass, it's so bad I don't even want to deal with it. But I really must get to town, hang a show, we've already mailed the announcements. That's the deal, you announce something will happen at a certain time, and then you make it happen. The bottom rung, the 'make it happen' part, falls on my shoulders, and I'm ok with that, but it is a burden. The caveat is that you keep things in perspective. What you might be able to do. I'm good, I'm facile, I know what needs to be done. The powers that be, Pegi, Sara, D and me, get this, beyond our simple desires, is to mount a show. This is what a museum does. It's what we do. Do the math, hang a show. Celebrate later. Everything centers at 57 inches. Tomorrow might prove an interesting day. It was. Bull by the horns. Hung the entire show, D and Sara impressed I could do the whole thing alone in one day. Actually, D came over from the college and helped hang a four-stack piece, with which I really did need help. My math wasn't working early, but after lunch, I fairly flew. Mop more, think less, is the catch phrase. The math is confusing unless you don't think about it, which is strange but true. It's a set of algorithms and it's the pattern that's important. Too many numbers to remember, I circle each solution, move on. Hanging 39 pieces used six pages of a legal pad. All but two of the pieces were framed (they were all supposed to be), and those two D and I framed with glass and corner clips. Of the remaining 37, almost half required attention, wire too tight, wire too loose, saw-tooth hangers (which I hate) smashed shut. Bled like a stuck pig from a prick I got from a guitar string someone had pressed into second service. Still it's a very good show, the images; a little blood on the floor hardly matters, I'll mop it up before the opening. I have to do labels and lights tomorrow, and a bit more touch-up painting. God bless Cubist Gray, it is the greatest color in the world for touching up. I had to get a new gallon, flat latex, and I was paranoid it wouldn't match perfectly, but it did, as it always has. Have to deal with the pedestals, we used them all for the last shows and now we need none. Anthony will be folding boxes again tomorrow, directing a bevy of Cirque kids. We seem to have agreed to work Monday, when the museum is closed, to screw together boxes, for the posts and lintels, for the installation in the main gallery. At the pub, having a beer after work, Anthony said his tombstone should read "He Folded Boxes" and I countered that mine would read "He Screwed Boxes". He agreed I was out of my funk. The owners of the pub came down to end of the bar, to have a drink with us, the bar-tender and waitress too, it was the best entertainment in town. There was a convoluted flirtation going on. He said that I said you said, and Astra, the beautiful Chinese waitress, said that in the future, she would only serve me, because my partners, who had embarrassed themselves terribly, weren't worthy of her attention. Take that, you young studs. I can hang a show AND flirt better than you. It's a gift, what can I say? Read more...

Start. Stop.

Discussion about Marconi and the telegraph today, out on the smoker's loading dock. None of us knew very much, mostly that he probably didn't invent macaroni or macaroons. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize for Physics with someone. Excellent productive day at the museum, better than that even. I have to install the photography show tomorrow, labels and lights on Friday, so D and A (a box man of no equal) along with several students from the Cirque (Linda, who reads me closely, had predicted this) assembled boxes. Almost half of them. Boxes everywhere, and start locking the various components together on Friday, and I'll have the help of some young fearless acrobats for the actual installation, which starts next Tuesday. I was able to prep the galleries upstairs, then after a quick staff meeting, Sara and I set the photo show. Don't think I can quite install the whole thing tomorrow, but it is within reach. 39 pieces, 27 in the Richards gallery and 12 in the Mehser. If I get the Richards hung, I'll be in clover. I love working with Sara, learning from her with every show, and we've developed a very cryptic language that communicates a great deal of information without many words. Mostly, arranging a show is a sense of balance, but even more, a delicate sense; everything visual is at play, color, composition, relative weight, the play of light and dark, subject matter. A tangled web of things. Setting a show is not a walk in the park, it may look like a walk in the park, when it's finally installed and lit, but it isn't necessarily easy. This is the heart of the heart of it for me. I love setting and installing shows. A mystery in crates, until we un-package everything and see what we have. I finally glued down a large rock behind my keyboard, so I don't have to chase the damn thing across my desk. I'm a vicious hunter and pecker, burning through keyboards, and, as I'm at the end of the line, frying modems. I need a really good day tomorrow. I could have started hanging the show today, but I would never start hanging a show after 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon, I know I'd make too many mistakes. But tomorrow I need to be on my game, throw thirty pots after dinner, and still mow the lawn; cook a legendary meal, for legions, write a great page, and get a good night's sleep. I can still do this, but the stars have to be constellated just right, and the museum has to pay for the steak and the protein shake I'll need in the morning. D looked at me, just before we left this afternoon, asked if I was sure I could hang this show alone: sure, I said, almost a piece of cake. And that was good enough, because he trusts me. The three of us, D, Sara, and myself, are really quite the team. D selected the photos, Sara arraigned them and I will hang them, a seamless event. Both of these shows are edgy, and  D is making a point, and Sara is going along with it. And it's good, I think, that the younger teach the older something. Samara calls and we're on the same wavelength, we're tight that way, what one of us thinks. The conversation flows, one thing into another.
 
Tom
 
What did Glenn say, we didn't have our usual five hour conversation. Read more...

Slight Gains

To be a part of the world. A citizen.  What is, as opposed to what might be. Three steps forward, two steps back. It's too hard, too far, the rain keeps falling. There's a patch of blue sky, I can see it, over there, but I'm trapped under this cloud. I understand the theory, but I can't stack boxes 21-and-a-half feet tall, I just can't do it, it's out of my league. I don't have a ladder that tall, and even if I did I wouldn't climb it. I didn't climb K2 for a reason, I'm afraid of heights. Those boxes scare the shit out of me. Sure, I could install this show., given a fork-lift and time, but the time restraints are critical. I'm supposed to install a photograph show in the Richard's gallery, then install a box show higher then I can reach. One step at a time. Most of the photographs in for the show upstairs, some very nice images. Allyson's students, past and present, from the college. Have to touch-up paint in there. Most of the day cleaning up from the Sunday auction, chairs and tables everywhere, junk, dirty floor. Not clicking on all cylinders. Everyone noticed. Drained from reading 800 pages of the Faulkner biography. Bill and Estelle were not happy together. After lunch I hauled off the garbage and recycling, swept and mopped the main gallery. Beer after work with A and D, both of whom were in fine funny form and gave me all kinds of crap for being slightly sour. Cheered me up but I was exhausted, stopped at the Marina Dairy Bar and picked up a footer with chili and cheese, jalapeno poppers for dinner. I stop there maybe once every ten days and get something. While I wait for my order, I sit at a picnic table in the roofed-over eating area; I always have a book, because I always have a book with me everywhere, and one of the girls that work there (every kid on the west side of Portsmouth, across the Scioto River, works at the Dairy Bar, at one time or another) says, after she taps on the glass to get my attention, that I'm the only person she knows that reads in public. Funny phrasing I think, asks me what book I'm reading, and I explain that I was reading my truck book of the moment, a Steven Havill, whom I quite enjoy, because he's a decent writer, and he writes well about the southwest, but that at home, where I'm now going to eat this chili dog and drink a beer, where I'm reading a huge biography of Faulkner. Then she asked if I was that writer that lived on Upper Twin. In shock, I had to admit I was at least one of them. She asked where she could find something I'd written and I wrote down the blogspot address for her. I have no idea who or how many read me. Strange, in a way, because it's a daisy chain, opening out, Linda's brother and Kim's daughter, my own daughters and their friends, I suspect this is a wider circle than I suspect. Not that it matters, just that it's interesting. I went on line to look at some cheerleading outfits, Pegi had said something. I forget what it was now. I love her dearly but I hate her polemic. Nothing. Listen carefully. Read more...

Faulkner, Again

I did some printing for The Center For Southern Culture, at Ole Miss, when I lived in Mississippi. Loved the campus, loved some of the people, loved Square Books and that down home restaurant around the corner, where the side orders were a litany of deep-south favorites. I had read the best of Faulkner before moving to Missip, but read all of him while I was there, even the lesser novels and bad short stories. The connecting thread was his power of observation, a man deeply embedded in the natural world, a sense of where he was, and that informed the writing. Accurate description grounds the writing. Allowed the flights of fancy and the genuine confusion. This is still true, of course. Even in the most modern meta-fiction, it is attention to detail that makes the story real. I could talk about UFO's and the beginning of intelligence on earth, but if I get the waddling of the geese on the beach right, you might believe me. I'm concerned there's too much on my plate, 500 boxes, and another show, of photographs, that I need to install upstairs. I haven't finished the touch-up painting. I'm clearly behind. No one else sees this as a problem, but I do, I worry incessantly. Moscow is burning, and the delta is flooding. Monsoon rains. I sense I don't understand forensic crap. Mostly I watch small animals, the way a squirrel might run. Read more...

Pink Limeade

Persian limes on sale for 3 bucks a bag, I remember a Deli from Janitor College where they stacked a great roast beef sandwich and made a simple limeade from scratch that was wonderful. I blow off the pink part, because I don't any of that red stuff: water, sugar, citric acid, and red dye #2, so this might better be called Clear Limeade. On four or five cubes in a 16 ounce glass I squeeze the juice from two limes, add a pouch of Sweet'n Low, which dissolves instantly, and top with water. A great summer drink. Sometimes I add a shot of bourbon. Getting through this summer is an act of faith, hotter than the shades of hell, hotter than a cast iron man-hole cover. 85 degrees in the house by noon and I turn on the air-conditioner, plop on the sofa and read the Faulkner biography all day. Interesting and a bit depressing. No doubt an American Original, there are four or five works of genius, and he did spawn Cormac McCarthy, which may be his greatest accomplishment. Wonderful picture of Linda in the mail yesterday, she's standing in the Milwaukee Museum of Art, with the janitor. Laughed so hard I choked. Skillet-fried a small steak, wanting nothing to do with the outdoors, and saving the grill from an attack by the dog. Then made a very quick potato gratin in the microwave, using canned sliced potatoes, and browned the top with a propane torch. These are really quite good, and if you live alone, the only way to go. Especially in summer if you cook on a woodstove. Half an avocado, the cavity filled with lime juice. An excellent meal made possible by air-conditioning. I would not have fixed it otherwise, would have eaten a sandwich, or cheese and a tomato. Next winter will probably be correspondingly cold; just remember, as B said, grammar is the train, syntax is the track. Some Miles on the radio, the consummate genius, he looks down and blows a few notes. And they are perfect notes. The Cello Suites are number one, but "Bitches Brew" is number two and sometimes they switch locations. Certainly number three is The Grateful Dead, "Europe, 72". In a very real way I am revealed by what I listen to. Now that I'm running the unit, I listen to more music, to mask the sound, Greg Brown at dinner. It's a different world. I think I understand more about modern culture than I did before. I'm a guy who watches tadpoles. I hadn't realized how great the separation was, between people and nature. Rule one is that you have to open as many windows as possible. Nothing compares to the real world, the iridescence on a dead oak leaf. I fold boxes merely to survive. The trees are swaying in a breeze that adumbrates rain. Squall line coming, dark before dark. Better go. I'll send this tomorrow. Read more...

Sailing Along

A dream of dhows and felucas. An action figure of Sigmund Freud I almost took from the auction, a cigar in his hand. Already in the mid-eighties by 9 o'clock in the morning, I head off to the museum to read in the cool and quiet building. I love being alone there, refocus a light in the Carter gallery, lean with a pillow against the wall. Before noon I lock up and run out to the library, the liquor store, Big Lots for some thin socks to extend visits to the laundromat, then Kroger for some sale items to extend my food supply. I hate shopping, but with a sharply defined list it isn't too bad, mostly I buy liquids and meat, everything else comes from the farmer's market, and since I let everyone roll cigarets from my tobacco, I rarely pay anything. Right now, a rain squall moving through, and I consider shutting down, should have, because I lost power, but I had SAVED, which makes all the difference. I was hot on several things. I wanted to write a short essay called "The Origin Of Fruit Flies" in which I would propose my theory that they simply form from smell esters, a shaky idea; but I have no doubt, if you had a ripe tomato on a desert island, eight thousand miles from nowhere, fruit flies would materialize. But I was distracted by D's latest repair. A board member had asked him to repair a daughter's piano bench. I'm subject to fits, but this takes the cake. Assume you are even able to buy a baby grand piano, a good one, assume the bench. You don't buy that many pianos in a single life, you expect to pass them on, therefore the bench should be bomb-proof, it has to hold generations of music, it should not be a piece of shit with an expensive paint-job. This one is designed for failure, it offends me on so many levels I don't know what to say, maybe they meant that it should fail and you'd just call back to the manufacturer for a replacement. If you saw Guido tell him you didn't see me. "On The Failure Of Piano Benches" might be a better subject. You could talk about where you fell short of the line. One thing could lead to another. First thing you know, you're actually revealing something. When I'm mopping a perfect modified chevron, all the planets are held in place, there is no unknown, string theory makes sense, I understand everything and forget nothing, can poach the perfect egg, and answer all those questions about the nature of reality and memory. Not a big deal, simply living in the moment. Other times I'm so confused I can't take a step. The nature of things. Read more...

Another Solution

Feet hurt. Twenty trips to the basement, then a hundred trips the length of the main gallery. A huge and amazing spread of stuff. We have to guess what some things even are. I take a few books (I'm allowed), a Wodehouse and a huge biography of Faulkner (Frederick Karl) plus a few thrillers for stormy Mondays. Already hot by noon and by 4 o'clock the air is hot to breathe. The house is 87 degrees when I get home, but I have club sandwiches from a meeting in the board room and don't have to fix dinner. So damned dirty from hauling up dirty items from a dirty place, I strip and pour half-a-gallon of water over my head on the deck, lather up, shampoo my hair, and rinse with a gallon of beautifully tepid slightly pickled water, from a new bucket I'm breaking into the system. Exhausted, fall asleep on the sofa. Beautiful blue cloudless morning and I head into the museum early, to read for an hour before work, on someone else's air-conditioning tab. Already warm at 7:30. More hauling stuff for the auction, then Tom the Box Artist shows up with some more boxes and D and I have our box tutorial. It is quite amazing to me that if you flap fold a box, these are 18x18x18, and then carefully engage the flap-folds of one to another, you can actually screw them together. I've used boxes my entire life and never came up with that. It's very cool. He uses this technique to build posts, then hot-glues lintels and builds structural forms. Check the museum web site, I think D has some pictures on there. One of the artists from Cream Of The Crop, who had been on vacation, shows up to get her piece, the lashed together stick figure, but she couldn't borrow a truck and we have to cut the figure into pieces to fit it into her Toyota. Zoe, and I quite like her, says not to worry, she can reconstruct the piece, just cut the figure off at the knees, saw off the shield, and the spear can poke out the window. We're trying to stuff the damned thing into the hatch-back from the rear and the breasts catch on the rear bumper, Zoe swears, "I knew the goddamn boobs were too big", did I mention I love working here? but we finally get the thing stuffed into her car. The final problem was that she was carrying her Visa card in a side pocket of her cargo shorts and it had popped out, through the grate of a window well outside the loading door. She thought she had some bubble gum in the car, but I went inside and got the container of Museum Wax, which is the stickiest stuff known to man, put some on the end of a stick, and retrieved the card on the first try. She'd had the same idea, had found a jar of vasoline in her car, which I wondered about, and was rummaging in the dumpster next door for a stick, when I beat her to a solution. At that moment I thought we were a match made in heaven. Then I remembered why I lived alone, the ten thousand reasons; but still thought I'd like to cook her dinner, and talk for a few hours. Intelligent conversation is icing on the cake. The cake is mere survival, a base line, where you don't fall and kill yourself, which is enough for me. I'm not dead, greet another sunrise: look, that butterfly is yellow; dawn, in the woods is a serious event. Everything awakes and it's really noisy. A cacophony. Barnhart should do a "Morning In The Woods" piece. I hear it every day, you should be able to codify that, it's real right? what I hear? I might be hearing voices, it could be nothing at all, the sound of your refrigerator, two crickets outside the door. I don't want to seem to be passing out assignments, but we really need to be advancing the cause. Whatever that is. Read more...

Janitor's Saga

Hit perfection just at quitting time, 100 degrees and 100% humidity, and finally it rained. A long day, with many trips up and down in the world, I just wanted to get home, get a drink, eat something, but I have to think about tomorrow, when I do really need to be at the museum, and about half-way home, realize I need to park at the bottom of the hill, because the driveway will be slick and I won't be able to trust my line going down. Fuck me in August. I need to walk up. Coming in on Mackletree I see the phone lines are down, I can't SEND but I can probably write as electricity comes from the other direction. And it's true. When I get home the phone is out but I have power, in a certain limited context. 86 degrees inside the house and I turn on the air-conditioner. Drenched with sweat, from the walk up the hill, I strip down to my unders and drape wet clothes on the backs of chairs. A marginal existence. Like winter, only the opposite thermal index. At this latitude you get thirty really cold days and thirty really hot days every year, either you deal with it or get a thermostat that you can set, and pay someone else to handle the vagaries of weather. Piero di Cosimo (1462-1521) lived exclusively on boiled eggs, he boiled them in the glue he used for sizing in his pigments. To make my day, there is a package in the mailbox, a box of 'Mo Mil Kook So' noodles. Korean, made from acorn starch. Yes, I think, it's all coming together, but I don't know what any of it means. I decide to not mop before the benefit, would be a waste of time, no one notices the floor until the light spills over, and I have way too much on my plate. Read more...

Spinning Wheels

These auction benefits are a bother, but they do raise some much-needed funds. Accepting discards all day at the back door, and moving things around. I finish the patch and repair on three galleries. Shear volume, this may have been the largest show ever, which translates as the most holes in the walls. Put away all the plexiglas bonnets, but leave out the pedestals for displaying auction items, get out all the tables. Yearly Board of Directors meeting tomorrow night, a dinner function, and need to set up for that. Need to make maybe 50 trips to the basement for auction stuff. After the benefit I'll need to clean up everywhere (there's also a baby shower in there somewhere) then install three new shows, one of which requires that I assemble 500 boxes. White cardboard boxes that the artist uses to construct architectural forms. I should be able to average, after my box tutorial with the artist on Friday, a box a minute, which is just a little over 8 hours, but I'm constantly interrupted, so will actually involve several days. The box guy, another Tom, is interesting, and makes his models with those snap together plastic things. Lego my Eggo. I'm sure I can do all this, because none of it, taken separately, is difficult, but the logistics are a nightmare. I don't mind the challenge, enjoy it actually, as long as no one yells at me, I'll do the best I can, and that's more than anyone should expect. This is why I live alone, having no one with expectations. Denies me some comfort, but allows a certain freedom. The story of my life. Where I choose to be has always been important, but I've been so many places that the actual place seems less important. A yurt in Mongolia, long as I had my keyboard. Just saying. I could do a stint in Antarctica, give me books enough and time. Read more...

Confused Reading

One thing leads to another. I was reading Willy Ley's excellent but odd book "Exotic Zoology" which led to a textbook of geology and then another on the history of lithography. All this because of Archaeopteryx, that early bird. A kind of normal day off for me. I have a great library and my reference section is extensive. The first fossils of the early birds came from the Altmuhl Valley in Bavaria, north of the Danube, where there are particularly fine beds of slate, the best in the world, right at the surface. Slate is actually limestone that has a very smooth surface and splits well. The very best is from Solnhofen, used to roof all those castles. Fossils were fairly common, mostly small fish and dragonflies. The locals saved them as curiosities. A minor composer had inherited the job as Director of Mines, Aloys Senefelder; copper plates were expensive, he couldn't find a publisher and invented stone lithography, 1796, using Solnhofen slate. The fossils from this area are called lithographic. And there are pictures, with slight relief, showing the first feathers. Proving what several people had imagined about the origin of birds. Matter of detail. A reptile becomes a bird, scales become feathers. Cuvier made the connection, called it a 'flying reptile'. And suddenly an exact reproduction was available. Printing took another step. You could see the thing itself without a trip to Bavaria. Books and the history of information. A great dinner of homemade chorizo and eggs, salsa, and avocado. After dinner I roll a smoke and get a drink, sit out on the back deck and listen to the bugs, the usual cacophony, refreshing in its sameness: every night, just at darkness, the bugs take over the world. Grasshoppers and crickets, various critters that rub their legs together, and make a sound. A Bach Partita. Read more...

Laundromat

I was Saturday staff, and that was fine, did some shopping, went to the laundromat, read at the museum, had a pint and a very good tomato bisque at the pub. The only other person doing laundry was a young Mexican mother, and her three year old daughter was bored and borderline out of control. I put down my book and pushed laundry carts with the kid. She had a great time. The wheel was a great invention. Later, I thought I must have appeared non-threatening, and I took that as a good sign. Sweet little girl whose name I never did really catch, or the mom's name either. The mom was so thrilled to not have to entertain the kid, so she could actually fold the husband's clothes; he's a mechanic, works at Knittle's shop, where I've recently had both a brake job and a water pump replaced; that she bought me a bottle of water. Somehow everything seems connected. And odd. An artist came in today, to pick up some things, and I was mopping up a recent spill. I look at the floor more than anyone else, I study the floor, and I was mopping a section where someone had spilled coke; and there was that recent cookbook, and the windshield thing, thinking about watching movies again (so time consuming) and that Bach patter of rain on the roof. (I wrote that line for Michael.) Send me your name and I'll send a prayer flag. Kidding, but I'm facile now, in ways I've never been, I can bend notes. Fucking retuning: in the sixth suite, he changes the tuning, the top or bottom, no one really does this, they mostly play it in another key. Phone out again last light, so I couldn't SEND. My utilities are a joke. Sometimes I think my lifestyle is a joke. Slept late, almost 8 o'clock, finished reading some essays on language. Fixed a large brunch of hash brown potatoes, with eggs and sausage, drank one too many cups of coffee. Mom calls, and she wants me to move off the ridge, into less demanding digs. I think about that all day; something we might think of as 'comfort level', how I feel about the natural world, what I'm willing to sacrifice, the way I'm willing to live. Spent the rest of the day reading "No Way Down", Bowley, a decent book about the 2008 failure on K2. 11 dead. Where the fixed ropes under the serac were ripped out by repeated ice falls. What do you do when the rest of the way down is impossible? Sing songs and grab an umbrella. Read more...

Night Noise

The geese had moved across the lake, to my side, seeking the shade of the pines. A bit thick in the bottom (I know they can fly, but I always have to remind myself) they waddle around my truck. I have a batch of old bread I bummed off the salesman at Kroger. Having learned my lesson, I throw it out the window, and start a young riot. What's missing, in these younger flocks of geese, is any sense of discipline. They still manage a decent chevron (my heroes) in the air, but they are inept on the ground. Speaking of theories. It's hard to walk up the driveway, because the footing is so awful, but coming down, in the truck, isn't so bad, and I think it's an inertial moment. Two thousand pounds of truck with good brakes, I can control the line; going up in 4 wheel drive, I'm at the mercy of the ruts. The story of my life. I've eaten, had a last drink, gone to bed, and the dog goes ballistic. I grab the sawed-off shotgun from the hidey hole, pick up a flashlight from one of the stations of the cross, and charge outside, wondering what has disturbed my sleep. Fucking dog has treed a coon in a sapling poplar. A delicate situation. I tie up the dog so the coon can get away. I'm tired of this shit. It's not my place to intervene. I don't want to be bothered. Bach's second wife was Anna Magdalena, not Mary, I'd been drinking and miss-remembering things. I listened to the Edgar Meyer bass transcriptions, early this morning, three of them, then the other three tonight. I can't imagine why Siblin doesn't mention them, they're in my pantheon of the recorded Suites. Read more...

Tomatoes

I bought a few tomatoes at the farmer's market, then the afternoon receptionist gave me a bag from her husband, then I got home last night, after a beer at the pub, and B had left a bag hanging from the back door. I eat a perfect specimen, with salt, standing over the sink, juice everywhere, then get out the crock pot, nothing for it but to make a sauce. Par-boil and slip off the skins, roast some peppers and flay them, add some garlic, some salt and black pepper, a goodly squirt of balsamic vinegar, the remains of a white wine I'd only bought because it was cheap and I needed to deglaze a skillet. I don't normally make a tomato sauce, too acidic, but I temper this with some maple syrup, some cumin, a few drops of the hottest brew in the known universe. It'll keep in the fridge, maybe I'll make some very small spicy meat balls from the squirrels I found in my mail box. Life is too strange. Nothing is what it seems. A nice guy comes by, Phil, from Columbia, NYC, and he wants to know what I think about the area. I'm hesitant to say, what I think, because I withhold knowledge, I secret knowledge. That, out there, is another thing. Anyway, he is also a writer of creative non-fiction. He's interested in the local profusion of pain clinics and the abuse of prescription medication; he's also interested in the area. On his way to Chicago, to interview a pain doctor, and I tell him to look me up, when he comes back through, that I'll take him on a tour of the county and feed him dinner. D tells him I'm a good cook, and that I don't serve roadkill without warning. Rummaging through the accumulating stuff for the fund-raiser auction, I find a Coca-Cola cookbook, a serious effort, not a joke, and I read through it with morbid fascination. Might actually try a couple of the recipes, the one for crab bisque sounds interesting (substitutes Sprite (a Coke product) for Coca-Cola). Coca-Cola is quite good for getting dead bugs off your windshield. Handing out artwork, chatting with the artists, and every one of them mentions the installation, what good light it put their work in. I tend to laugh off compliments, knowing what I do well and needing little confirmation. Still, it's nice to hear kind words about something I've done. To a degree, we're all so vain. The geese have taken over the beach at the swimming area of the lake, they hunker down, like fat sergeants over machine guns, tender young sentries I'd kill for; the beach is covered with gooseshit and slick as an ice-pond. I make a simple tomato soup, cook a few tomatoes, run it through a sieve, add some herbs; grate a couple of different cheeses for a grilled sandwich, good enough. For two months of cold and two months of heat, good enough is adequate. I'm not a needy person, don't care if my socks are mismatched. Fuck a bunch of political correctness. I can only tie a tie correctly because there was a course at Janitor College, a required course, because they assumed at that level, post MFA, everyone needed a tie, remember who taught you how to tie that knot. Halliards, darling, we've scarcely begun. Not a single rope is called a rope, all of them have a name. I could never be a sailor. I breezed into college on a land grant scholarship, they needed me more than I needed them, I represented the real world, whatever that was. Either the phone or electric has been out all the time, then, today, a huge thunder storm, and the power must have been out for hours, again, but everything operational when I get home. The driveway is a disaster. The two tracks are scoured down to fist sized rocks and the ride is similar to driving on railroad tracks. It's hard to hold a line. Still, I'm so happy to get home every evening, that I'm thrilled to able to drive it at all. Little mercies. This morning I made a small pot of butter beans, a cubed ham steak, diced onion, red bell pepper, in the crock pot, and it was waiting for me. Bought some prepared cornbread, as I'm certainly not going to fire the cookstove in this weather, toast a split piece and top it with butter and a fairly hot pepper jam. An excellent meal and one that I'll duplicate exactly tomorrow. Signed up to work Saturday, as no one else had, and the museum pays for the air-conditioning. Not a bad deal when the heat index is 110. Hotter than the shades of hell. When it gets really hot (the interior deep south, the lower mid-west) conversation often becomes ritualized exchanges of proverbial wisdom, because it's actually difficult to think an original thought. Some of the best of the local artists in today, to pick up work, and it was nice to talk with Margaret and Dennis, Vernon, Todd, people who still produce actual work, and not virtual crap. Not just the heat, extreme cold too, generates that lapse into colloquialism: colder than a witch's tit, colder than the balls on a brass monkey. Maybe it's just a survival thing, thinking requires attention, and at the various edges there's no attention left for vacuous conversation. Google 'Bach Facsimile Editions' and you can see his hand; Mac sent me that, I knew someone would. My dial-up connection is so slow I miss almost everything, so I depend on the charity of others. Bach's second wife, Mary Magdalen, copied most of his scores, the only copy of the Cello Suites is her's. Imagine that. The only copy of certain Sappho poems is from an Egyptian burial shroud. The actual text is always a mystery. What someone meant. I view text as a field, make what sense when I can, and slink away, into the shadows. Opinion, that three leather acronym, CIA, FBI, I've learned to be discrete. Read more...

Yes, but.

The lute transcription is in Bach's hand, which I'd really like to see, as his handwriting is always described as lovely. Butterflies everywhere, thousands of them, I've never seen so many. Had to make a run to town for the usual supplies, whiskey and tobacco. Asceticism is attractive but I bow to my addictions. The geese had taken over the lake. Hundreds of them, shitting and waddling around, like hippos in Africa, like a bunch of long-necked models gone to fat. Stop at the pub, and Barb, one of the owners, makes it clear to the help that it's always happy hour for me. Astra tells me they have chicken noodle soup today, to which she knows I'm partial, so I have a bowl and a pint of ale. I'd had to close the house up, against projected thunderstorms, and I can tell it's hot outside, nearing 100 degrees, because the wind through my open truck windows is uncomfortable, and when I get home it's 88 degrees inside. Turn on the air-conditioner and plop on the sofa with the latest Lee Child novel. Life is good. Listen to the "St. Matthew Passion" which surely must be the second greatest piece of music in the world, and because the house is cool enough, make a wonderful eggplant parmesan that fairly melts in the mouth. Instead of corn flour, I dip the leached rounds in stone-ground corn meal Joel sent from Georgia. That little bit of bite makes all the difference. The marinara was a simple slow-cooked amalgam of roasted red peppers and plum tomatoes, with onions, tons of garlic, and a fist full of basil. I won't bore you with how good it was. I wept. Maybe, I think, I could get by with a recording of the natural world. Living good is easy. You just move inside and forget the fox. Play the Cello Suites and read books, what's the difference for god's sake? But I know I'm missing something, that world where a opossum digs through your compost pile and the crows chatter apparent indifference. I'm sure it must be 78 degrees, because I'm not sweating and the room, where I write, is comfortable. I'm making a compromise here. The phone is out, two more trees down on Mackletree. One of those days at the museum where I must have walked 10 or 12 miles. The "Cream Show" is on two floors and the rejected art is in the basement. This local show, artists pick up their work, I just give it to them, directly off the walls. Hoping to get shed of as much as possible very quickly. So most of the day, I'm running around, up and down, fetching art. Chatting a bit, fielding compliments and criticisms. Lunch with Anthony and D, they talk the academic politic, and I stare into the middle distance. After work I have a beer with Anthony and we talk about personal failures. On the drive home I think about them more, the personal failures, where I might have done something different. No benefit from second guessing, I stop at the lake with a bag of second-hand bread to bear-bait the geese. I have a history with these birds, but I know their behavior fairly well, and I'm not in any physical danger unless I trip and fall. In which case there would be that great opportunity for a headline: "Writer Pecked To Death By Geese", or whatever variation you might imagine. But I've studied this terrain and watched these animals, and I'm pretty sure of my footing; I leave a string of firecrackers and a book of matches on the seat, just in case. Diversion is the first rule of escape. Throw them out the window with a flare. Focus attention where you're not. I'm already home. They're looking for someone on the Interstate. A green Volvo station wagon. I tell the kids to take a cab home and forget it ever happened. I'm watching the Food Channel. The cops knock on the door. Read more...

Packaging

I don't have a problem with myself, but I do occasionally have a problem with you. Usually it's nothing, what you thought you'd said, but I take offense at the oddest things. Part of that whole alone eccentric lifestyle issue. I think of myself as normal. The base line. I can't help it that you don't collect river wrack, I consider that your problem. I always have a shelf of things I can't identify. I'm comfortable, not knowing everything. Read more...

Rigging

There's always trouble with burgee halliards. Rigging is a pain in the ass. No matter how carefully you lay out the ropes a simple change in direction alters everything. Beating against the wind requires constant attention. I spend half my time cleaning up the last mess. If you add it up, no one gets anything done, mostly we run in place. Any advantage is mostly a small gain in the direction we can't sustain. A no-win situation. I wonder why I do this. There's Holly and that great tattoo, Erica, and the greatest body ever. Listen. I don't care what you think, it's not worth it. Been there and done that, I'm mostly immune to the various physical aspects, but the heat was killing me. D had found an old air-conditioner, felt, I'm not sure what, that I needed cooling, something, and he was correct, I did, need. An older, heavy unit, needed a support bracket. He followed me out to the house, parked at the bottom of the driveway, and rode up with me. He assembled the bracket, an incredibly complex metal thing with an outrageous number of parts, while I cleared of the dictionary table (11 dictionaries, just in the center area where we needed access to the window, 3 unabridged, 2 of Classical Mythology, 1 of Sinhalese, Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Greek, one of slang, and the great Lopez edited "Home Ground") and in just a couple of hours we had the thing installed. I'm ambivalent about air-conditioning because it cuts you off from the natural world. We had a window unit, in Missip, when Marilyn was pregnant with Samara; and my rented apartment, when I was at FSU, must have had central air. Working outside, most of the time, I couldn't stand the temperature shock of artificial cooling. Now, though I might argue I got the damned thing for my computer. I have to say, running it for a couple of hours last night, and then, again today, just for a couple of hours, it's awfully nice to not be sweating. I hate the noise, and miss the sounds outside my windows, but goddamn July was tough, weather-wise. Thought about sound, off and on, all day. I'll only use this unit on days over 90 degrees (average about 25 here) and then only for a couple of hours, because the house is tight, and I can hold the coolth. A trade-off, another compromise. My computer is very happy, at 78 degrees, but I play the Cello Suites to mask the sound. This is how you create the soundscape to fill-in for the natural sounds you no longer hear. I didn't do anything today, reorganized the dictionary table and thought about sound, read some fiction. Fixed a great sausage and egg brunch. Very Scottish. You could almost hear bagpipes. It's true, we all live within cork walls, inventing persona. I can go to the stump of any tree I've cut, and remember everything. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. I just try to keep the floor clean, but I heard something that put me on my guard. A slight. You know what I mean. Power off, but I'd cooled the house somewhat, and SAVED, so it wasn't a total loss. Not a loss at all, actually, sleep or slept well and wake or woke up refreshed, what more can you ask? An elaborate brunch, before the temps rise, a cheese omelet with scallions, a perfect sliced tomato, sour-dough toast with a jalapeno/blackberry jam. Vacuum some corners and consider some things. Time well-spent if you're as scatterbrained as I am. Entering into a busy period, a major benefit auction, deinstalling "Cream Of The Crop", and reinstalling all three galleries. D's back on his MFA track, middle of the month, and we have the Circus Show to take apart at a distant site, ship back to the owners. I need to bring my calendar/notebook back up to date, I'm not good at bookkeeping or time-factoring. I remind people to remind me. Sure as shit, I'll forget whatever it is. I'm curious why I'm considered a central character in anything. I generally fail, I'm not attractive, and I don't remember things. In my defense, I'm usually in the kitchen, frying Hush Puppies, and can't hear clearly. The Hush Puppies were really good. Fucking devices. If you chop fine an onion, and blend it into the batter, you'll be a happy camper. Just saying. I had to go into the other room to settle a dispute. They were arguing about dear sweet Emily, and I had an opinion, maybe I was too loud, I'll never know. The Cello Suites, until Casals played one through, were considered exercises, six time six, 36 samples of what the instrument might do. There's a transcription for lute, in Bach's own hand, that I'd like to hear. Read more...