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.