Reception

The dog doesn't care whether we open a show or not. She wants to be fed. Her sense of art runs to kibbles. I'm sympathetic, in so far as, but there's a lingering doubt that she doesn't have a brain. She's so pissed when I'm late getting home she bumps me several times on the walk to the house, then nips at my bags of salvaged reception food. Miss Pegi put me up several things in baggies. I'll be eating finger-food all weekend. Low-key, a nice but smallish crowd. The gallery looked great, everything done, everything ship-shape. The show is very good, a little edgy, a little difficult to understand (though the title, "Construction Zones" should give it away, force the disparate elements together and thereby make sense) and a lovely installation. The space looks good. Really good. I like that the box units, and Anthony's plaster pieces throw us into three-space. Everything very clean and uniform. Too much, I know, for A's taste, but it looks sharp. We'll do another show where we dissolve cow dung or clay in beakers of water. Feel like I've been whipped with an ugly stick; on my feet, on that hard tile floor for eleven hours. I don't drink much, because the cops are closing down on local violations, because every city is strapped for cash, and I have to drive the long way around besides. I've manipulated this interface for years, decades, but I think I'm done with that, now, what I think I'd like to do, is throw pots. Ten thousand bowls. We'd stack them, in a particular way. A maze probably, or something mysterious. The proof is in the pudding, does it float, or not. Fly, or spiral down, like a dead leaf in fall. Phone out and I couldn't SEND last night and moving slowly today. Actually only temporarily sick of shows and I have weeks to get over that. Then we do the new illustrations for "Alice In Wonderland" show, and then a huge Mid-western post-impressionism show that I saw the thumbnails for on Friday. Looks fantastic. Another 3 or 4 shows in the upstairs galleries during that time, D back off to MFA land and Sara back to Hilton Head. We'll be short-staffed and hard-pressed and I'll hardly have a chance to get bored. I'm thinking about a show based on those ubiquitous wooden shipping pallets. Read a book about New York food, along with recipes, all day, waiting for the rain, now a thunder storm is moving across northern Kentucky. I may have to stop writing again. Rain on the metal roof. Rolling thunder. Temps falling. A striking effect is that the green was all dirty, dust covered, and that color is revitalized. A good thing, because in three months the natural world will be black and white, mostly, and I'll be wrapped in several layers of clothing, huddled near the stove, considering what I remember about a lamb stew I read about today. Harder rain, a drumming, I have to turn off NPR because I can't understand the words. I collect enough rainwater for a bath tomorrow, a soft bath, good for my wrinkles. A reader (anon) sent a sample pack of dried salted cod. Jesus, it's raining cats and dogs, thank god I have back-up whiskey and cigaret papers. I soaked the cod in four changes of water for 24 hours, then brought it to a boil and took it off the heat, simmered it for seven minutes, lifted it out with a slotted spoon onto craft paper, that had formerly covered art, to drain. I'm not troubled by microbes, because I house so many. Shake my hand, and you are diseased. Make some cod-fish cakes that are stellar. Sneak a nap, return to consciousness when the last of the rain is dripping and actual meaning is a subtext. The fog is rising up the hollow and flowing over the ridge top. What had been previously clear is now much more opaque. The story of my life.