Leaf Rain

Some trees drop all of their leaves at one time. A tulip poplar on Rt. 125, was brilliant yellow on the way to work and then on the way home was bare and underneath, ankle deep, in a perfect circle were all the leaves. Stunning. Sara was staff today but I went in to get some painting done. I was falling behind my imaginary schedule. Sanded and touched-up the main gallery, sanded and painted the entry wall, taped and painted the signage wall. Lunched with Sara and Clay, lively conversation. Clay has my will drawn up, sign it next week and I won't die intestate. Leaving everything to the girls, and they have to sort it out. $12 and 10,000 books. Thousands of pages of text, several nice pieces of art, some arrowheads. A few books worth serious money. A minor legacy. The wind picks up and the leaves are dancing. Fall is a wonderful time of year. I took the back panel off the fridge, and sprayed everything with WD 40 and it no longer sounds like cats fighting. An aural relief. It was driving me crazy. Lubrication is key. There was a guy at Janitor College, Morton Fight, an assumed name, a Polish guy we all liked, who cleaned all the surfaces he touched. Interpol might have his prints. He died in a curious incident, if you're keeping score, climbing K 2, he slid all the way to China. Nothing left but a kevlar backpack and a couple of bones.The backpack contained nothing but a couple of Twinkies and a bottle of water. By now, the standard defense. On the drive home I'm subject to nuance. The slant of light, the shadows. I don't really believe anything, but I follow several narratives, in light of keeping up to speed. Lord knows I do like to keep up to speed. More or less. I have my own view of the natural world, which I think is authentic, a Remington Bronze, an isolated human starting a fire by twirling a stick. But nothing is reliable. I was reading Marcus Aurelius yesterday, the day before: "whatever this is that I am..." and everything is called into question. Really, what I want to do, is go to sleep. I think too much, or not enough. Halloween is a complete mystery to me, I can't imagine dressing up. Phone out, then on this morning and I can talk to Mom about the upcoming visit. She explains, with utter simplicity, the intricacies of perfect milk gravy, and I finally make a decent chipped-beef in gravy on toast. Comfort food. A small fire in the cookstove and I'm leaching a batch of acorn meats. Ten changes of water over a two day period, heating each one from cold to hot, is enough to make a meal that isn't too astringent when added 1 to 2 with grits. Makes a great polenta, which I now favor as breakfast, with a runny egg and salsa. Just today off, rather than the common three-day weekend, and I make no pretense at labor of any sort. Finish the Emily book. A short slow walk down the logging to the north, examining leaf structure. Sit on a stump, roll a smoke, clear the leaves from a space where I can safely drop my ash. My small hiking pack usually has a little nip bottle of single malt. I'd been carrying one, a Glendronach, for nearly a year (after Glenn had alerted me that nip bottles were sometimes the way to go) and decided there was probably no better occasion than the absolute stillness and quiet in which I found myself at that moment. There was sound, actually, if you stopped completely, and controlled your breathing, but the effect was one of silence. Even if you don't smoke, I recommend you do this. Tobacco is a potent drug. Visions are important. I imagine things, not sure if I remember or not, the line fragments, Brownian Motion, fractals. Half the time I don't know where I am. Forty-two geese (I count them twice) casting elongated shadows. It doesn't mean anything, but it is a pattern, I file it under Things I Might Remember, which is one box out from String Too Short To Be Saved. Nothing is certain. The world is in terrible state of chasis, chaos, you might say. If you were Irish. I stick to the letter of the law. You and me, we're not that different. B wants deed to the physical earth under his print-shop,and I don't blame him. He built it, with his money, but it is on my property, because he needed my electricity. If I didn't love my job, as I do, at the museum, I'd merely move away, the easiest course of action. Relegate the past to the past. I could probably get a job in Idaho, sweeping floors, or even someplace warmer, north Florida or central America, cleaning a whorehouse in Mexico. My attachment here is purely the museum, I've never felt more at home. Read more...

Getting It Done

Up against it. X number of things that need to be done, Y amount of time. So many things that weren't even on the list that I can't even remember. I had a mental list of janitorial duties, Pegi's Cirque is in the museum theater tonight, so I had to address that. Clean the theater, clean and stock the downstairs bathrooms, but those are sidelines, I perform those duties while other people talk on cell phones and something much more interesting is put on hold. I don't like being in the middle of doing something and the other person you're working with has to take a call. Whatever happened to agents? Fucking Luddite, I don't carry anything other than a knife. D, in a couple of emails and a slightly sarcastic phone call, has gotten Fed Ex to deliver on Monday, when we're closed, with the "Alice" show. He, Sara, and I agree to meet at the museum on Monday, do some work, unload the show, unpack the show, and at least see what we've got. At the end of the day I saw that Sara saw what I had seen. We could do it. That it would be done. But it was pushing a little hard, and that dufus preparator hardly knoweth in which direction the morning sun would rise. I'm sore in my shoulders, and I can't remember what physical act might have caused it. One of the cool things about writing to you, is that I don't leave any filters. Maybe just a few, against my potty mouth. My cursing is legendary. But mostly I don't intervene. Someone says something. We either agree or disagree. I think you're full of shit, but I'm just the janitor, what do I know? So I do it your way. Everything else, I do my way, and that's fine too. I could vacate this life, the ridge, in two weeks, a week, a couple of days, overnight if really necessary. Being a Navy Brat comes in handy. Moving from place to place. Any new situation provides interest. Not like I'd be bored. Folding boxes. Melissa. What engages me now is the inner-connectedness of things, how a direction might be indicated. Read more...

Unstuck

Almost anyone else would have to call a wrecker, but the Richards brothers are amazing when it comes to getting a vehicle unstuck. At one point the right rear wheel is hanging half way over into the culvert. Ronnie requests a come-a-long from B and they tighten a chain against lateral movement. They thought the whole operation took too long, they thought they get it out in thirty minutes, it took forty-five. We started at dawn. I was five minutes late for work. I thanked Ronnie (and B) profusely and they both looked at me like I was crazy. Ronnie said "Jeeze, Tom, we've only done it a thousand times." I never asked Liza what it cost her to get two different wreckers out here (the first one couldn't do the job) when she slid off the down-slope side. Ronnie and B would do it with a couple of come-a-longs. A couple of things at play here: if you live in the boonies you solve problems without a trip to town, and you have to like solving problems. Moving heavy things is always interesting. I'm losing my taste for it now, but I once moved an entire print shop, the building itself WITH all the cast iron equipment, almost a mile. I remember moving very slowly, with the tractor in first gear. There were a lot of small hydraulic jacks in play. I jacked the building up, on the trailer, drove through the new foundation I'd prepared, lowered the building onto the plates I'd prepared, bolted it home. Did I mention those non-fruiting Oriental pear trees? They are so beautiful right now, scarlets and purples on the outside, and still vivid green on the inside. They suck, as trees, because the branches are so weak, but they crown out nicely, and they can grow in a parking lot. I unfolded boxes for six hours today. Then repainted a gallery as a break, parked at the bottom of the hill and walked up, poking the ground with my mop-handle walking stick. I need to know what is soft and what is firm, it's not a real question, maybe it is, I don't know, I just poke. At the pub, I'd like to see the new bar maid without that eye make-up. Some local and some other greens, I make a great salad, that I toss with a wonderful vinaigrette, a raspberry, hazelnut thing, that really holds together. Matter, of course. A match made in heaven. Her name is Melissa, of course, and all I can hear is the Allman Brothers singing "Sweet Melissa". Maybe my favorite pop tune ever. I pull over to side of the road, to roll a smoke, at the lake, which I haven't seen in a while, and there are fifty of sixty geese, waddling. One of those moments. Don't outthink yourself. Sometimes geese waddling are just geese waddling. Not a metaphor for something else.
 
Tom
 
Another thing. Assume everyone is lying. Just as a position, a fall-back zone, consider what you might do then. Read more...

Unhanging Art

Late yesterday, one of Pegi's moms came in, bringing a tot for an "Alice" rehearsal (many events planned for this exhibit), and she, Melissa, is going through a divorce and needs to sell the house. Seems that boxes were going to cost several hundred dollars, and I'm holding a lot of boxes. She volunteers to unfold the remaining units, but they're still standing and quite high, higher than the light rails, so need to fall in a certain direction. She, Pegi and I manage a controlled fall that is a thing of beauty. I keep pressure against the tallest row, so that they can only fall where we want them to, and they pull columns out on the off-side. The resulting jumble is a very pleasing installation. The Box Take-down. Today I unhang the rest of the wall art, paintings, rubbings, photographs; patch and repair the walls, disassemble the video installation, busy as a church mouse after communion. The next couple of weeks is scheduled rather closely. Anthony calls, just at quitting time, to suggest we meet for a beer, which is fine with me, still enough light to get home before dark, and D joins us, with the bad news that shipment of the "Alice" show is delayed. This has never happened before, and I don't know what to make of it. The show was supposed to arrive tomorrow, Friday, and now they're saying Tuesday. A large difference. Sara and I had already agreed to work Saturday and Monday, to get a leg up on the coming crunch. Two shows and huge fund-raiser on the 12th of November. The shipper is the art division of Fed Ex, and they are very good, climate controlled vans, always a little early, a driver and an Iowa football player that didn't quite make the NFL to help with the unloading. So the problem has to be with the company that controls the logistics. There are many of these, they package shows and plan the itinerary. Just like theater, I've done this half my life, and I never remember a show not showing up on time. We'll never do business with these people again. FOUR DAYS! What are they thinking? We've mailed flyers and post cards, set dates, these things are not, now, negotiable. We're paying thousands of dollars for this show, we're flying the illustrator in for a lecture, from fucking California. I'm not upset. Though the gall riseth. Pretty sure we're still ok, I just have to hang "Alice" in a day, stay late, sleep in the Carter gallery, and stay out of the Maker's Mark, which I know is in the vault, because I put it there. Hard to resist a shot of Maker's Mark on a couple of cubes when you're trying to order your priorities. No excuses, we'll have the show mounted, and I'll probably serve wine at the fund-raiser, cool and collected, wearing a sports coat, which I almost never do. Once a year, maybe, the rest of the time, I wear pants and a shirt, usually jeans and a denim shirt. God damn I am a creature of habit. The name tag, over my pen-pocket, says Frank. It's a bowling shirt. I picked it up at the Good Will. I'm pretty sure I can make this happen, I had factored in several possible points of view, an early snow storm, high winds, whatever. But you responded correctly. Emily is fucked. Whatever is meant. I rest your case. Read more...

Running Water

It may be foolish to think you control anything. Running water, for example. The Army Corp, an organization rife with engineers, bats maybe .500%. Two guys with a shovel shouldn't expect much. Still, it feels good to have done what we could. A little stiff in the shoulders, but that's alright. The ridge is yellow, and glowing. The afternoon light is so intense that I sit on the floor, beneath the dictionary table, with my back to the west, reading a convoluted essay about meaning. It's warm again, which is supposed to spawn thunder-showers tomorrow; if it does, I'll be half-way down the driveway, in a slicker, with a shovel, watching what the water does. It's all drainage. Pick a creek and watch the way it channels its bed. Imagine you might influence that. I think not. What the creek knoweth is beyond your pale. As I said, it's an issue of fines, and those small damns where sticks and leaves conspire to divert water where you don't want it to go. You might slip and stumble on the rocks at the shore. The ocean's door. Down the Ohio. Blow the man down. Lovely dawn, light rain has cleaned the dust from leaves and the remaining color is vibrant. I walk down to the culvert catchment and everything is fine. Kind of antsy all day, a little anxious. The question of town. I could easily (I think) live in an apartment, but it would be the move from hell. On the other hand, a good chance to get shed of shit. Need to look at one of Mark Hunter's one-bedroom units, see if there's enough wall surface for bookcases. Check Odd-Lots for bookcases. In the meantime, I need to get a couple of loads of fill, up here, so I can drive all the way to the house, clear a path to the woodshed, take stock. Most likely be here another winter. I've got a fair amount of wood, and if I buy a truck-load, I should be fine, as far as firewood goes. The state the driveway is in, if I can get the four-wheel drive fixed on my truck, I could drive in more often, mid-winter. Get a cell phone and satellite service, upgrade my dinosaur Dell. I can afford another winter. Re-insulate the other half of the floor (one brutal day's work) and I'm good to go. Need to replace a connection in the stovepipe, a male to male connector that is completely wrong. The designer should be shot. There should never be this particular connection. Creosote will always flow around the edges. I shout at a brick wall for while, but I can't bring it down. Power out, I save most of this page. Giant weather event that seems to stretch from Canada to Louisiana. Head out early this morning, to miss any possible rain and I need to get some art work packed for D to take out on Wednesday. A long day at the museum, packing, patching, then unfolding boxes. God damn, what a boring job. Hear, on the local radio station, which I Iisten to for the last ten minutes of the drive in every morning, that Mackletree is open, the new bridge finished ahead of time, that I can come home that way. Mid-afternoon the sky opens up, rain in torrents, and the wind blows a gale, a full gale. Raining leaves too, great swirls of them. Finally, headed home, I go down Mackletree, and only have to stop a few times, to drag branches off the road. At the bottom of the driveway, I think I should probably walk up, but B's tracks look solid, and I decide to give it a go. Bad mistake. I get to that top catchment, where B had tossed cubic yards of loose material from the grader ditch out on the roadbed. I stuck like a golf-ball on a wet green, went to back up and the truck just drifted, ended up lodged against the bank, in the ditch, mired to the axles. A leaf-dam had diverted water into the loose fill and it was pudding. I walk up and get B and we try a few things, but we can't do it, we need help, we need a vehicle below my truck, and B can't pass me at the narrows. Call his brother Ronnie, he and Bear will be there tomorrow morning at 8. We'll have this sorted out by 8:30. Creek bank intelligence. Moving things from one place to another. We'll need a plank, a pry bar, and a tow chain, we've done this a thousand times before. It's a dance you do in the country. D called, about logistics, and I'm on top of this, more or less, told him my truck was mired, but it wasn't a problem, probably. Read more...

Ditch Work

As arranged, B came over and got me for ditch work. Had to change into ditch clothes, so I just met him down at the upper catchment. We devise a plan. Chat and work as well together as ever, which is very good indeed. The goal is to convince the water to go where we want it to. Boys and a ditch. We've both done this most of our lives. The problem is fines. Particles precipitate from moving water by size. Angle determines velocity. I'm on rake, B is on shovel. There's a fair amount of chamber in the entire driveway, now, but there's a lot of loose material on the inward wall, which will clog the catchment for the upper culvert. I remove maybe a hundred bushels of leaves (which will also clog the catchment) then go behind B, who is digging out cubic yards of loose fill, and rake out the smaller fines. Unless there's a major natural event: deluge, hurricane, Canada Clipper meets Nor-easter. We should be fine for the winter. Hedging my bets, the ridge is so beautiful right now. After working things out to satisfaction, we walked over to B's place and had a taste of the newly decanted hard cider. Talked books for half-an-hour. The walk back to my place took an hour, thinking about things, walking through a golden tunnel of sassafras. The wind picks up and the leaves are falling at a furious rate. Ditch clothes are mere tatters, because this is there last use. They become impregnated with either clay dust or mud and must be thrown away. When something is in my ditch work clothes pile (should both of those be hyphenated?), it is beyond any redemption. I have to heat up water and take a sponge bath. I'm dirty. The afternoon light is spectacular, the red maples have a flush of pink on top of yellow leaves. This time of year, I always remember Mercurochrome. We used it a lot, when I was kid, everyone's wounds painted orange. Fall, as far as I'm concerned, is a matter of color. You might play the second cello suite. I supply meaning where there is none, because I'm human. We supply meaning. If you go with my firm, you'll never need to think about that again. I have a select group of janitors that I might be able to put you in touch with. They're really independent people, and I can't speak for them, but they mostly do what they say they'll do.

Tom

After the fall comes winter. When the shit hits the fan. New snow, as far as you can see; all the young trees bent with ice, and everything is either black or white. I've run out of paper. I need some help here. Read more...

Emily, All Day

Did take a break to run to town, pick up some food, quick pint and stew at the pub. B came over for a nice chat, needed a piece of the flat, worked, quarry stone for the installation of his new stove. I explained my proposed move to town, that thirty years without a net might have been long enough, if I did get an apartment I'd have much more time to read and write, and that I'd probably live longer. The day of the flies. Happens every fall, some cool weather, then a warm day, and the flies are out. I kill dozens because their buzzing bothers me. B offered a small, very efficient fridge to replace my dying unit. I'll take him up on that, I really need a quiet fridge. I know I can filter outside noise, but inside noise is like a toothache, can't be denied. The drive back in today was spectacular, a golden thing. Skip Fox, one of the very best writers I read, has offered to send any of my readers copies of his last four books (these are books well worth having) for free, with free shipping, email him at skip@louisiana.edu and take advantage of this. He's amazing. I was reading a poem of his once, walking down the street, and walked right into a light-pole. Emily, and this feud about copyrights, long after she'd passed, is riveting. I had no idea. I've read her forever, since I was 18 and quite confused. She maintains, like those caves. Not much does. Most things flake off, like bad paint on a plaster wall. But I've been married to Emily for 34 years. I read her closely, living in a rented room on the Lower Road, in Brewster, Massachusetts, she changed my life. I couch my verbiage differently, but what the hay? I learned from a master. Say what you will. My Modified Chevron is a decent stroke, but I don't make sense, I'm looking into this. Meaning is mostly patterns, what you want is complete coverage. Mopping, I strive for full overlap, every square inch is swept twice. Language is a strange thing, sometimes it makes no sense, sounds correct, but the sound units collide and you don't understand a damned thing. Gold mine in the sky. The middle of the night. A red corvette. Read more...

Sweet Emily

The tangled web. I'm never really shocked by anything sexual. Congress with a goat, Portuguese sailors and the ducks they took along for eggs, certain religious practices; even I have the occasional stray thought, watching one of Pegi's girls bend in an unusual way. We have the proscribed history, and then we have the nature of things. Reading this new book, mostly about the family, and Emily's legacy, the paradigm changes. Like that moment, in the cab of the truck, when I suddenly have fruit flies in my ears and eyes, realize I need to alter the focus of my attention. I'm not really post-modern, I'm stuck a couple of movements back, when I lost interest in keeping up to date. I knew history lied, I knew we were mostly mislead. The big deal with Emily is how the poems came down to us. I turned on the radio, to drown out the fridge, and Mr. Allison makes thinking difficult. Too many buzzards sitting on the fence. The blues always sweep me away. Never a conscious thought. It's a hard-wired thing. James Taylor should cover that song "Fever". The cast of players is such that I have to make a note card, Emily's extended family. Her adored brother, married to her very best reader, Sue, and then Austin's affair with Mabel and that first edition of 1890. Technology rears its ugly head, because we have the invention of the typewriter, a weird machine at this point, where you spin a dial and punch a key and the letters are all capital. How do you codify her punctuation? Peggy Lee did a version of "Fever", a really hot take. She was hot. Cutting to the chase, which was my point, I think. Emily left us those forty little booklets, and a whole bunch of letters embedded with poems. All writ in a difficult hand with strange punctuation. Different versions, variations: an editing nightmare. I haven't seen a modern variorum edition. A long list, at the museum, of things to do before next week, when Construction Zones comes down. Tuesday I have to take down the Goss glass pieces and wrap them, Wednesday D's taking them back to Cleveland and picking up the show for upstairs. You need to go to the museum web site -- somacc.com<http://somacc.com> -- and check it out. Altered furniture. A perfect match for the Alice show going in downstairs. Maggie Taylor's set of illustrations. Manipulated images. The big fund-raiser this year, November 12th, is the opening for Alice, a Mad Hatter's Tea Party and an auction featuring really nice stuff and some art. Several paintings that I quite like, a Carter serigraph (silk-screen, not sure why it has a different name), some jewelry, glass things. The board member in charge of the event is not going to be there, his partner had booked a cruise without consult of the calendar, and Pegi wanted to kill him, Sara intervened, but demanded a notarized codicil to both their wills, that if the boat sank, the museum inherited EVERYTHING, including the house. Daffy James, he won best in breed at Westminster and just sold a pup to Martha Stewart for a lot of money. Martha's secretary had called to see when he'd be available for Martha's call. I love America, you can go anywhere and something strange is going on. Pick up art in Ravenna at the wrong time of year, and you'll find yourself in the middle of a Sauerkraut Festival. Coming home today, my god, was so beautiful. Most of the leaves that are left are yellow (mostly poplar) and the slanted light makes Upper Twin Creek Road a golden tunnel. It's breath-taking, it's sublime, it's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. I'm actually crying even remembering; or at least, my eyes are leaking. Could be those damned fruit flies. Small bugs seem to be acidic. I wonder if that's true. I marvel at what I actually say, such a small part of what actually happens. The things I remember. The laughs we shared on the loading dock. We had Sara in tears. I wish you could have been there. It was very funny. I forget the punch line. Read more...

Leaf Fall

Sustained winds all day, and I was running errands, so was witness to enormous swirls and dust-devils of leaves. Can hardly remember the order of things. I cleaned and restocked the bathrooms, then cleaned the theater, where Pegi's kids have been rehearsing, and we'd rented the space for an event tonight. The first episode of "Route 66" was filmed in Portsmouth, and a local DJ had gotten a copy on DVD; snacks, beer and wine, live music, I don't know whether it was a fund-raiser for something or just a party. I only need to know the number of people and the electrical requirements. After lunch, for a group of fourth graders, I show how we folded the boxes and locked them together for the installation. Knocked me out, Julia was docenting the group and asked the obvious question about how they thought the boxes were attached, and got the usual answers, glue, tape, cement, and then one little boy said we probably locked the folds together. First person, of any age, with the correct answer. How cool is that? I unhung the last of the photography show, finished the patch and repair. Then went to pick up the glasses from last weekend's wine-tasting. It was a great success, the food was great and the wine was top-floor, I hear, all well and good. But when I pick up the glasses, they'll all dirty, residual crusted wine from last Saturday, and that's ok, I can deal with that, but there are fruit flies. Swarms of fruit flies. I'd put a case of glasses on the passenger seat, from the sweet, fortified Muscat, and the case of champagne flutes; loaded four cases of other glasses, and various things into the back of the truck. For the first time, and I've hauled these same glasses many places, the glasses weren't washed, and we had a serious fruit fly problem. As it happens, I'd taken a course in fruit flies at Janitor College. Up to the challenge. I seal all of the glasses in contractor bags, outside, in the No Parking zone, hoping a cop will come along, asking questions. I've rehearsed my response. I'm good on this. I've watched enough plays that I'm not sure where the boundary is anymore, so I pay attention to detail. I could spin off in so many ways, the way thought difurcates. Emily was probably epileptic, explain all that late night thing, her and the Judge. Light is difficult. In that Rosseti setting. Everyone was busy. Read more...

Ring Tones

Found a nice silver hoop earring outside the bar next door to the museum. My collection. Two necklaces, a diamond ring, a diamond stud, and a hoop. When the river is low, as it is now, I find worked stone along the bank. A scraper today, that must be a thousand years old, inscribed with marks that seem to indicate lunations. Menstrual cycles and the moon must have been linked for a very long time. Coupled with the desire to record, ends up a written record, though the language itself is an impenetrable sequence of scratches. I'm convinced Aurignacian is a proto-language, because I can almost read it, though it was probably spoken as a series of grunts and indications with a stick. 40,000 years ago we started speaking, because we needed to. A pack of hyenas exchange information, when they're cutting a wounded calf off from the herd, but at some point you start saying, "Frank, you go in on the left flank, I'll cover the right." Instinct will only get you so far. At some point, you have to communicate. Maybe. Intelligence is a construct. To be self-aware. Eco called Whitehead into question: did we really need to know this? And the answer is we don't know. It might be better, it might be a dead end. Chasing a packrat up someone's ass. I follow the lead, a narrow band between shore and pack ice, the only way possible, but I'm not sure it goes anywhere. History, those drawings on cave walls, indicate it might. Bach. I play the fifth cello suite, and the world seems better. The fifth is my favorite right now. Thinking about stars last night, how there aren't many visible here. In western Colorado, most nights, you could see them all. Many times when I was living out of my truck in Utah, after the separation, I'd hike the red-rock by starlight, and always found my way back to camp. Even after a couple of nips of cheap whiskey. I can roll a cigaret in the dark, if I can determine which edge has the glue. Taking down the photography show upstairs, pulling the hardware, patching and painting for the next few days. No one bothers me when I'm this, Sara might wander through and waggle a cigaret, we'll take a break on the loading dock. D was on a tear today, funny, cynical, and sarcastic. We worked together a couple of times, which we don't do as often as when I was first at the museum. I can hang a show alone, while he's designing the post card for the next show. But we needed to pick up the wine for the big find-raiser, and we needed D's truck, mine was too small, and, besides, loaded with wood and water. Before we left, we loaded Sara's Mini-Cooper with artwork that needed re-framing or matting, including a painting that was too large for the vehicle. D explained to her that she'd have to drive with her head cocked to the left and she said she was familiar with that method of driving. The wine is at Dr. White's house. His wine cellar cost more than my house. They (I like Sandy) live in an area that's mostly doctors and investment bankers, and there are no numbers on the houses, D slows way down, pointing at the absence, and finally says that only poor people have addresses. The White's do have their street address, in bronze, set in a stone column, with a ball finial on top. I don't know what the ball means. If it was a pineapple it would mean welcome, but I'm not sure about a ball. Janus, the guardian of the portal, my janitor friend, might have juggled. Some things are lost to history. And maybe we'll never know the extent of Emily's passion, but after her Dad died she was a pretty hot ticket. She couldn't stand light, was probably epileptic, but she and the Major certainly did the dirty deed on the sofa in the parlor. I wrote for enough years, trying to be difficult, as so many writers do, that I understand the space. No defense. Guilty as charged. For a long time I thought Pound was a great poet, and he is, that he opens the door, then you have Skip Fox and Stephen Ellis and language takes a life of its own. It's the language that engages me, not the peripheral crap. Read more...

Vinegar Mother

Ronnie had some hard pear cider that went over the edge. This happens. Things want to turn into vinegar, it's the natural process. There's a strange gelatinous mass that occurs, sometimes, in this operation, that we call a vinegar mother. If you're lucky enough to start one, and you keep feeding it any juice or wine or beer that has residual sugar, it grows. Remember that movie, "The Blob"? It gets like that. Marilyn and I had a mother in Mississippi that filled most of a five-gallon bucket and was able to convert almost anything to vinegar. Heat death of the universe. Sugar water infused with fennel, vinegar; a failed green-tomato sherry, vinegar; a left-over burrito and a packet of Spenda, vinegar. We finally killed it by leaving it out in the sun. There's a small mother in this pear vinegar from Ronnie and I decide to cultivate it, what the hell, I could use a friend. I carefully pour off the vinegar, which is excellent (I sip it, occasionally) and put the mother in a sterile quart jar, feed it the remains of the day, a pinot noir I wouldn't drink if you paid me. My plan is to slip this mother into the water system of a major metropolitan area, and have everyone drinking vinegar water before they know it. Best laid plans. Some do-gooder gets wind and I'm locked in a Birmingham jail. It was a riff, ok? a joke. Barnhart has to bail me out and now I'm on some sort of watch list. I don't have a passport, but I do have a lot of shady friends, I could probably stay underground for a while. In the wind. I could disappear completely, I have an alternate identity, but there are still people I love. Phone out last night. Up too early this morning, so I napped on the sofa. Library called yesterday, and the new biography of Emily (and the family, and the feuds) was available. "Lives Like Loaded Guns." Picked it up today. Looks good, going to take me a few days. It'll be fine to delve deeply into the life and times, and this woman, Lyndall Gordon, is quite good on the poems. Put my name on the list for an apartment in a building that's a block from the museum and a block from Kroger. Location is everything. My truck lost its four-wheel drive, need to put some weight in the back. Samara called, from NYC, and it was loud in the background, Kaylee yelled that her ass was looking good and I told Samara to tell her I could tell from here. I must have mentioned her ass in a post. It was disconcerting. Trying to work out the logistics for thanksgiving. I think I'll cook a capon, stuffing on the side, roast vegetables, a turnip and cabbage slaw, the traditional Key Lime pie. Brother Kevin can go get the girls at the airport, they fly into Jax at 9 AM Thanksgiving morning. Cutting it close. I'll need to be cooking. The menu could change if anyone made a strong case. I could do ribs, or crabs, or oysters. Mostly what I want is a decent gravy and a way to convey it to my mouth. Putting a price on something is a difficult thing. I fall back on the actual cost, materials, don't factor in the labor, no way you could pay my pain and suffering. Because it wasn't really, my time here was well spent, I got to know a fox, I watched some frogs, I'll remember certain sunsets forever. I could move to Stephanie's silo, but I've never built curved bookcases before. Someone asked me how I thought about things, and I told them I didn't, the things thought about me. Off the cuff, but I almost believe that. Meaning is a deeply embedded thing that rarely is what it seems to be. Just a warning. I bounce up against this every day, because I think deeply about everything. Today's false lead was the late afternoon light on the river. I would have followed that anywhere. Read more...

Country Life

A call from one of the creek guys wanting to hunt muzzle-loader season on my property, sure I say, but don't block the driveway. Then he asks if it's true that I might sell the place. He's interested. I tell him to stop by, after one of his hunts, and we'll talk. I spend the rest of the day thinking about not living here. Think about moving to town and getting an apartment. Think about moving. Think about having a thermostat and running water. Be hard to give up this place, the staircase, the cookstove. I'd need to build another 250 linear feet of bookcases. Whatever I got for the place, 50K? would be profit because I've lived here rent free for eleven years. Finally I read a Thomas Perry novel to get out of my head, "Silence", it's a good read. I can no longer distinguish the sound of the pups, under the house, from the creaky sounds of a dying ice-box. Maybe it's time for me to move on, the writing on the wall, where the ambient sound sends you. Truth is I'm tired of struggling. Simple as that. I've pushed this rock to the top of the hill enough times, nothing there, just a nice view of the surrounding drainage. The Upper Twin Downs. Then my rock rolls away. You'd need a pass for this. Bella Flex, no one plays like that. Mr. Allison, Miles. Several of you have asked for a mailing address. My home is considered 'undeliverable' to Fed Ex and UPS, but the museum is good. Tom Bridwell, Southern Ohio Museum, Portsmouth, Ohio, 45662. In answer to another question, I have no idea how many people read me, hundreds, I suppose. I don't think about it, I'd be paralyzed. I more often feel I'm writing a note to Linda and Glenn, or an update to Skip. Made a very thick, quite hot pot of chili yesterday, first pot of the season, and this morning, on a whim, had a lovely chili omelet. Don't know why I never thought of that before. Thinking about moving, I'm worried about ambient sound. I'm sensitive to noise, it breaks my train of thought. I love those hollyhocks. Flirting with you, the sense of movement. Read more...

Awakened

Putting two and two together, I realize this spate of being awakened is mostly the dogs. And it's cold, mid-thirties, first time this season approaching a frost. October 15th. 36 degrees at 5 AM. Out of my down cocoon, I have to put on a sweatshirt to go outside, see what Little Sister is barking at. Fucking monster raccoon out of a Stephen King novel. I have a pile of rocks on the back porch for just such an occasion. Rabies, I think, confused, by being so rudely pulled from such a warm and secure place. On the other hand, the unexpected is generally more interesting than the mundane. The jury's out on this. Part of me desperately wanted just to sleep and dream. Another part wanted some disruption, as a tangent that might engage my mind. I get a drink and roll a smoke, my usual response, everything is downhill, a matter of course. Glenn is correct, it's all drainage, but that's not really an answer, it's just a response. Mountain top removal is a bad thing, not because of what is gained, but because of the shit left behind. I finally do get back to sleep, for a little while, on the sofa, but the morning light is so intense that I'm up again before long, make a double espresso, collect my laundry and head off to town. I go out the back way and around, because I'm not in a hurry, and I want to see a different set of trees. I'm rewarded with a fresh road-kill squirrel, still warm, which I dress-out on the spot. I always carry a lovely drop-point folding knife Linda sent me, after the last robbery; and I always have a few plastic bags tucked somewhere. Stop at Boland's Quik-Stop, for a hand-full of ice. Wherever they sell ice there's always a busted bag, and I buy my truck gas there, so they let me have a hand-full on the occasion of fresh road-kill. This is extreme local economy. Brought home later, when I stop at Ronnie's place, on the way home, but I haven't even gotten to town yet. The owner of the laundromat I frequent is a retired engineer, designed power plants, and we talk for an hour about alternative energy sources. I have an arrangement at the pub, I don't remember how this started, but the owners grant me Happy Hour prices whenever I come in on Saturday. Doubly odd, because there is no Happy Hour on Saturday. All the new hires have to be instructed that I'm special, in that way. I make myself useful, carry in bags of ice, hook up a new keg. Often, I don't even pay for my pint, just sweeten the tip jar. What is mutually beneficent carries the day. I've always subscribed to a barter economy. Clay, who is a lawyer, agrees to draw me a will, for a beer at some future point. Makes some notes on the back of a bumper sticker. This is the way to do business. The fog was coiling around the river this morning. All of the bottoms. And when I got down to the river road, my headlights produced a bare tunnel. I could see maybe fifty yards. Drive through this for 10 miles and your sense of reality changes. What, exactly, hovers on the edge? A rain of leaves. B came over for a drink. Small steps. Megan has chicken legs. No matter what you say. Make me an angel. To believe in this living is a hard way to go. A running man's bible. Lunch was delightful, sitting at a table, with Sara and Clay, rather than eating alone at the bar. Justin served us, and he was curious that Velma had actually been at my house. Sure, I said, people visit me. It's not a big deal. He thought it was. A matter of perception. The sky's on fire, I'm going to Carolina in my mind. I'm going. Sara thanked me for opening the museum and I told her it was nothing, which it was. I was already writing this paragraph. The elements of that. Words and sentences and meaning. It's a wild horse. Read Emily's letters. The nature of reality coils like fog on the river. Nobody knows. A tunnel, a funnel, just a glimpse, life, as we know it. Standing here without illusion. Life is full of disappointment. Ten thousand books and I can't still understand the drift. I don't get it. Post and beam. Read more...

Ask Alice

Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) also wrote "An Elementary Treatise On Determinants" and I'm trying to find a copy of that. Alice's father drafted the accepted Greek dictionary of the period, which went through at least 11 printings. Tom MaCauley, he of the box installation, finished a residency today, and gave a lunch-time Smart Talk. I spent the afternoon in full janitor mode, recycling, getting rid of food trash, mopping the back hallway, which had been decorated with spills of Mountain Dew from the residency kids, who took full advantage of a free lunch; carried a plate with two sandwiches in one hand and a fruit cup in the other, holding their Mountain Dew cup between their teeth. Two trips evidently out of the question. I grazed the food tables. I love those pickled banana peppers. I made a big jar at the museum, a while ago, using D's peppers and one of those large jars of dill pickle juice from an event at the museum, I keep forgetting to take them home. They should be good now. I'll make a nice country pate, squirrel, mushrooms, and chicken livers. Probably on saltines, because I'm a simple guy, I'll have a large smear of pate, with a pickled pepper on top. If I do this, and I very well might, one of you will get maybe eight ounces of this, I'll draw your name at random, include a few suggestions, ship it off Fed-Ex next day, wrapped in layers of bubble wrap. I sense "An Elemental Treatise On Enjoying Pate", what can I say? I'm old school, I recommend backing off and rolling a smoke, then looking both ways. A drive gets shorter when you recognize the landmarks. I don't care who you are. Read more...

College Art

Thursday, October 14, 2010 8:53 PM
Angst is a recurring theme. And what's with all the cartoon art? After work, over a beer, Anthony talked lucidly about letting the materials speak. I just nodded, leaning strongly that way myself. Natural edges. Hauled the last case of wine and 175 glasses to the Waller house for the benefit wine tasting, also an easel and chalk board (the use for which I have no clue), also champagne flutes. Limited to 24 people at $125 a pop. Wines of Australia and New Zealand. A Kiwi tasting. Got me off work a bit early, but I came back to town (the Waller house is in my direction) to go over to the college, visit with the janitors in the Art Department, and check out the doings in the pottery studio. A beer after, with D and Anthony, listening to them beef about unmotivated students who mostly tweet and play video games. I swear, every student I saw was talking on a cell phone, except for the attractive young lady wearing a mask, mixing clay. I like a girl who's willing to get dirty. The drive home was stunning, color is peaked, leaves are falling, and the sumac is luminous. A red-orange I'd be hard-pressed to describe. They're funny plants in the fall, because the color starts changing from the outside in, so the inside leaves can still be emerald green while the outside ones are a luminous flame. In a clear-cut, they are an invasive species, and there are patches of them that dazzle. So many leaves that the verge is blurred, some places, you can't see the road. Approaching a Zen state when a grouse gets careless on the side of the road and flies into my grill. I was going slow enough that she's not bruised, merely dead. I pull over and pluck her. Go a bit further off the side of the road and dress her out, saving the heart and liver, not really wanting the clean-up committee to be right at the edge of the road. No one likes being interrupted at a meal. A smallish bird, I break her along the back bone, and fry her, in bacon fat, under weight. It was a really good meal. I had some grits-polenta, and half an avocado. Colder weather is cooking time. If you pluck a dead bird when it's still warm it's much easier. I only pluck warm birds, otherwise I skin them, even though fried skin is one of my favorite things in the world. Fried chicken skin. Don't get me started. When I do a cooking gig, I always cook chicken thighs, somewhere in the rotation, in an enchilada sauce, and I like to cook them skinless, so the sauce penetrates, and I always render out the skins, fry them crisp, as a kitchen treat. They always cause a crush in the kitchen. Next month, for instance, when I cook this for my family, my brother and my daughters will be fighting over who had how many. Then there'll be the crab cake marathon. Not being a traditionalist, I hope to talk the family into steamed crabs for Thanksgiving, with hush-puppies and coleslaw. And there would be some crabs leftover for the cakes later. Best to pick the meat when you're no longer hungry. A finite number of people can eat an infinite number of crab cakes. I make a mean sauce of home-made mayonnaise with garlic and sweet relish. I'll do ribs while I'm there, probably some pork tenderloins, and Mom will want some soups. I'll want meatloaf sandwiches, for the trip back to Ohio, so I'll have to make some of them, for the freezer. A meatloaf sandwich with a slice of onion is a gift from god. Stop some place in the Smokies, a turn-out, and bite into a meatloaf sandwich, you will fucking believe. 50 ways to meet your lover. The Indigo Girls covering Bob Dylan. Homeward bound. Actually, I love everything. That sumac, today, blew my mind. Read more...

Reading Criticism

Thursday, October 14, 2010 8:53 PM
Getting to be old hat, something wakes me, I go outside to pee, then mix a juice, currently, a mixture of cranberry and orange, pineapple and grape, which is very good. It's the fruit sugars, I think, that get me going. Maybe it was just a dream. I thought I heard something. Doesn't matter. Supposed to get much cooler, so I start a small fire and heat enough water to wash my hair and take a sponge bath. Cold rain and snow looms. I wonder can I weather another winter. Dolly Parton has a great voice. Sopranos seem to depend on vibrato. I punch PLAY and am overwhelmed by the fifth cello suite, more my style. Bach is my default. I don't know what the rest of you do in this situation, but I scramble some eggs and listen to one of the Suites. If it's late enough I make a double espresso, go ahead and start the next day. Church bells will ring. Apple blossom time. Is Columbus Day still a holiday? The banks are closed. What does that say? I'm reading a book of critical theory and it doesn't make much sense. A cobbled world. The world is round. Christopher Columbus. Searching for America. What does Dylan say, the world is mostly round. Read more...

Advancing Tradition

Ms. Strange sent along an acorn recipe from the NY Times. I agree with the article, that white oaks are preferable, but I don't really like aspics, so I'll probably not make acorn jelly. Color and leaf fall are peaking, and traffic on the road, as people enjoy the State Forest. At the first of the blind curves this morning I almost got a yearling turkey, but if I'd altered course enough to get it, I'd have ended up in the creek bed. Awakened around 2 AM I got up and had a short drink and a smoke, turned on the radio, to drown out the dying fridge, and the song "Carrie Ann" was playing, right at the line "I play the janitor, you play the monitor", which seemed rather poignant at the time. I stayed up for a while, considering Darwinian free-market commercial populism, then considered Edward Tufte, several of whose books I'm sure I own but can't find, the first one is the best, I think called "The Qualitative Display Of Quantitative Information". He's an advocate of visual density. Reading him is where I first saw the one page graph of Napoleon's Russian fiasco, the single page with the most information I've ever seen depicted. Wanting a late night snack, I make a pouch of instant mashed potatoes, "Home-style Reds" which are so good I eat a serving for two, with butter and lots of black pepper. I need to get ten pouches of these, for the winter larder, which is looking better, as I bring home something, a few things, every time I shop for dinner. The driveway is good right now. I need to utilize the ease of access, get rid of some things, bring in an almost new mattress D gave me, change out the fridges, get a new toaster oven, buy a load of firewood. A little extra cash eases the burden of winter, and now that child support is done, I actually have a little extra cash, stop at the pub for a beer, a time or two a week, eat something other than beans, though, god knows, I love beans. Especially pintos from Dove Creek, hard against the Utah border in western Colorado, where beans are important and they know how to raise them. I just ordered a ten pound sack, a lovely burlap bag, and ten pounds of their black beans, so that I wouldn't starve to death if the power was off for a long period of time. I can always eat beans and rice. Bought a two pound wooden box of salted cod. Cod fish cakes with eggs over easy. I drool. One of my favorite things in the world. The yolk of an egg is an extraordinary sauce. That "Carrie Ann" thing threw me for a loop, I had just turned on the radio, and the first fucking thing I hear is "I play the janitor,,," and I think I'm on stage. But I forgot my lines. I assume it's a dream. I'm on the subway or some rapid transit device, and the woman I could connect with is going the other way. Such are dreams. There was a joke I wanted to tell you, John Simon out his side window, but I don't remember the punch line. I'm always calling on the outside to let me in. Using the words of the outside looking in. I've thought about this a lot. Well and truly, I am not you. A singular monad. A rock in  the desert somewhere. Relocated by whatever event. Thunder storm. I have to go. Read more...

Affixing Labels

Idiot work, and I'm the man for the job. Wine tasting fund-raiser coming up and Doctor White wants two little labels attached to each of 150 wine glasses. One marks the level at three ounces (a third-of a cup plus two tablespoons) and the other, for the base, is an abbreviation for the wine type. I'm enjoying the creek road, a lovely thing in the fall. Had a beer after work with D, then headed home, into an amazing sky. A front moving in, but the clouds were a discontinuous layer and the breaks were all orange and red. A biblical movie, with shafts of light. The driveway is a delight, fully three feet wider, and so soft now, compared to the rocky arroyo it was just a few days ago. Flat is good. I need to haul in supplies, replenish the reserve water supply, pick up lamp oil and utility candles. I need two dump truck loads of fill, to eradicate the frog puddles and allow final access. I've got firewood staged all along the ridge and I need to get it under wraps. The invasion of the sluggish fall flies. They're easy to kill, I pluck them out of the air with my hand and slam them against any hard surface, but they're noisy, and break what's left of my concentration. And the windows begin to look like there was a mass killing inside my house. Gunshot spatter. It's not pretty. Flies are beautiful, that iridescent thing that happens when light reflects off their body. Why do they bounce their wings when they're walking? I don't know anything about flies. I talked with the older daughter, and she has worked out logistics, and I don't have to take them to the airport in Columbus or Cincy, they're taking the train, from South Shore, Kentucky, into NYC. This couldn't be easier for me. I have to drive them eight miles, just on the other side of the river. Cake. I could do this drunk or in my sleep. I fry some shredded potatoes into a nest and settle an egg in the middle; this is so good I do it three times. I'm a lunatic, probably. The people I work with aren't used to crazy people. Transparent, lucid, crazy people. So they cut me some slack. Which is good, because I am well and truly nuts. I just spent an hour considering the angle of light. Then, sneezing, remembered the real world. Right. Look both ways before you cross the street. Read more...

Up And Down

Had only driven up the improved driveway, so I went up and down a few times this morning, to get a feel for the new surface, then went on in to town to see the wooden sign that D did for the pup. Nicely lettered (he teaches typography), routed, sand-blasted and painted. A handsome thing. He can't really charge enough, but there should be a good bit of free beer involved. The owners are very excited. They stand me to a pint of Harp to go with my stew for lunch. leisurely drive home, enjoying the color on the slopes across the Ohio in Kentucky. On the trip up the creek, it's all about leaf fall and that swirl of color in the rear-view mirror. I stop to admire a field of rag-weed, lovely in the slanted light, stop again at there first ford, which is dry, to look at the sandstone formations. The ford itself is a flat sandstone shelf, but just to the south, in some ancient shifting, the rock in a straight line all the way across the stream is down-faulted 18 inches. In the spring it's a lovely clean waterfall. I follow B's lead on the driveway, hugging the inside, so that the wheels might start a grader ditch. If we're out there, in the first good rain, we'll train the water to deepen what we've started. I've been digging ditches my entire life, and digging post-holes. I can't even estimate the miles of fencing I've built. A large number. Doctor Peter calculated I'd carried more than a 150,000 gallons of water from the spring and stream in Mississippi. I've probably read more than 15,000 books. Statistics don't apply to individuals. I'd picked up several tins of sardines (in oil) at Big Lots. A secret passion. I love sardines. I had a bag of cheap yellow onions, I had a loaf of bread. You don't want to eat one of these if you need to be around other people. But alone with yourself, on a weekend. I prefer to put mayonnaise on one piece of bread, and drain off the oil, cover with onion sliced thin, and a squirt of lime juice, salt and pepper. A great, though messy and smelly sandwich. A sequence of switchbacks where you actually drove out the side windows, never seeing what was in front of you. An uncertain lump pf clay. Was that a middle C in the midst of all that extraneous sound? Did you hear it yourself, or are you parroting what you heard? I think about not trusting you, and then I wonder about why you trust me. There's a serious point here. The me they dug from that spot is not the actual me at all. You couldn't think I was a Basque dufus, you'd be so lucky. It's more complicated than that. The minute I heard, I heard there needed to be some particular riff, you and me, and the blues.The hall-way was crowded. Read more...

Remembering

What have they done with the fantastic wooly bear and what have they done with brother? All of Ferlinghetti committed to memory. You might read Skip Fox. He's even better, maybe the best, sends chills up my spine. I read a few poems every day, to get the blood flowing. Skip or Steven Ellis usually, because I'm used to their voices. I read Emily almost every day, a letter with an embedded poem. Even the physical world pales. She's so far out on the edge.

"The life we have is very great.
The life that we should see..."

I don't even try to make sense anymore. So old school. Sense is a matter of time. Scrambled eggs. What is emerges, Venus on a half-shell. Bach, again, the fifth cello suite, what can you say? It really doesn't get any better than this. Just saying. Read more...

Night Sounds

The nature of things. Dreaming about fried potatoes and there's a noise outside like a bear in the underbrush. Little Sister goes ballistic and the pups are frantic. The refrigerator sounds like cats in a barrel. I'm sleeping on the sofa, because it was the nearest flat surface, and don't remember I'm sleeping there, so when I jump up, in the dark, I knock 20 or 30 books off the tool chest I call a coffee table, and ding my shin hard enough to draw blood. Grab the shotgun and a flashlight, but whatever it was is gone.<> I'll look for track when it's light. I'd like to think it was a bear. It's four in the morning and nothing makes any sense, I get a short drink and roll a smoke. The bleeding shin isn't a problem and I turn on enough light to re-stack the books. Sara was back yesterday and mentioned that Terry wanted me to cook ribs again, before cold weather, up on the roof. I'm good with that, now that I can navigate the driveway after dark, I just need to know how many people I'm feeding. And I know now to leave some ribs for Terry, so he won't call the cops to see who took the left-overs. Mr. Nelson has an amazing voice. All the things I could say. Brad Gray. If dreams were lightning, make me an angel. Flies from Montgomery. I ain't done nothing since I woke up today. This living is a hard way to go. Only three people know what I mean, and two of then are dead. Translate. The city, and its light, is illusion. That slanted brightness means nothing, merely angles reflected on mirrors. A peripatetic walk down the new driveway. It's awfully flat, you don't have to pick a line. Back at the house, a huge brunch of potatoes and eggs, with caramelized onions and some serious chilies; a second double espresso, rereading some essays by Hugh Kenner from "Mazes", perceptive stuff. He wrote a nice piece about Guy Davenport, so I have to go get a Davenport and read some of those essays, which I consider among the finest in the language. A day well spent, reading such fine writing, and talking back to the fridge. I finally have to kill the breaker and turn the radio off, I was using them to balance each other. Too much noise. Probably have to replace the fridge within the week. I'll have to enlist aid, so I have to think about the logistics involved in changing out the unit. This is where having brothers close at hand is a very good thing. And it's not easy to get shed of a major appliance. If you're poor, you just put it out in the yard. Westinghouse death-traps, someplace you stash the much younger brother while you did your business with latest Playmate. Sometimes, they die. Life's a shooting match. I'm overwhelmed by this digging a new ditch and cleaning out the catchments thing, I can't do it, I can't physically do it; not that my body has failed, but there are beginning to be reservations about what I might. Read more...

Right-Handed

Drives me crazy, I've mentioned before, but there are a percentage of right-handed drivers, that use cell phones when driving, and favor their right ear, so they hold the phone with the left hand, across their body. These people are dangerous. My refrigerator is dying and it's driving me crazy. I have to kill the breaker when I'm home, sounds like a bunch of cats fighting. Stuffing envelopes this morning, alone at the staff table, I thought about a guy from Janitor College. There's always a rich kid, right? And we had James Roote IV, a rather simple lad, and the parents had sent him to us in the hopes that he might detox from an adventurous series of misadventures. Wrong place to send someone to detox. Among ourselves, we referred to the campus as The Stoned Cold Capital Of The World. Quad, as we came to call him, had an assortment of Chihuly bongs in a Louis XV sideboard and flew in pot from Humboldt County. Eating 4,000 calories a day, we had a high resistance to alcohol, smoked strong pot as a matter of course, often ended another brutal day of classes at Quad's place, where we'd grill steaks and drink moonshine until we couldn't tell night from day. The good old days. I need to get to town tomorrow and get some cash. Mike Sissel is coming to grade the driveway and the local economy is strictly cash, used bills, no questions asked. The driveway graded. One of those points where you stop and tap your skull. What? Is it all about access? Whitehead opened the door, but it was Wittgenstein who finally stated clearly that it was ok to be uncertain. It comes down to a bad refrigerator. Phone was out again last night, dead trees from the fire on Mackletree starting to give up the ghost as the fall winds begin to blow. Slept late, 8 o'clock, then a slow trip to town, stopping to pick up some pre-cut firewood at the wood dump. Three loads of red maple in three days. Got cash at the ATM then lunched at the pub, talked with D about the immediate future. Anxious to see the new and improved driveway, headed home, going slowly up the creek because the dappled light through half-bare trees was blinding. As I expected Mike needed more material to repair the driveway and that meant digging into the uphill slope and that meant the grader ditch is gone. Need to re-dig 3 or 4 hundred feet of ditch. I can't even think about it. However, the actual driveway is a thing of beauty. You could drive any vehicle both up and down, the difference between night and day. Access is an issue. Because of the chamber, if the rains fall in our favor, we can use the drainage to our advantage. Bottom line is that I need to be on the driveway with a shovel the next time it rains hard. The catchments for the culverts need to be dug out. A world of work that needs to be done. I'd be better off selling pencils or apples. Read more...

Stuffing Envelopes

Mundane morning, dealing with trash and the stuff that needs recycling, a few errands, docent a group through "Construction Zones", slip out back for a smoke. Then lunch, and when I get back from the pub, the printed matter is back from the printer for our largest fund-raiser of the year. Four cards and a return envelope that need to be collated and stuffed in mailing envelopes. There's just Pegi and me, Trish is sneezing like a race horse and we tell her to go home. So I stuff and Pegi addresses for four hours. More help tomorrow. We should be able to make short work of it, there are only a thousand. One thing I learned, doing over 70 books in editions of 500, was how to collate. I'm world class at this, I was ranked as high as 11th, one year. Glycerin, on your fingertips, helps, if you're dealing with a lot of paper. I never resorted to those little latex finger-tips. They're nasty. I had a draft Guiness alone, after work, then Terry joined me at the bar, and we talked about art. He doesn't know what's what, and I don't either. Driving home, the extra seven-point check-list is less important than navigating the curves. Really, I just talk to myself. I ran across a note that indicated I should pay more attention to short sentences, and I had to laugh; I'm almost ready to confront Roy Blount Jr about his stance on the semi-colon. Humor is a funny thing, there's no foreshadowing, and that there is often not an actual funny event. It's increasingly funny as the story is told. No decent story-teller could do this, without a sense of time. You did what when? That pretty much leaves me alone, sifting whatever flour you were pushing through whatever sieve. I have to go, but you should have to think about what you are. Read more...

Wild Greens

I collected a bitter salad which I softened with a sweet dressing. I'm making one now that's based on a fairly hot home-made mustard with walnut oil and a splash of white balsamic, a tablespoon of sorghum. I use it, instead of lime juice, on an avocado, and I hear the pearly bells. I have a private language, it mostly involves cooking, though, on the surface, it sounds slightly sexy, in which I congratulate myself for anything that works out. In a way this is taking advantage of happenstance, in another way it's stupid. Don't mess with the help, you could end up stapled to the sub-floor. I work with a range of marginal people, so I tend toward being careful. If I didn't love my job, I'd live someplace else. This  impossible ridge would be a thing of the past. I'm out of everything. Make my down pallet on the floor. Edouard Manet much admired some Spanish painters and went for what was supposed to be a long visit, lasted ten days before he had to go home because he couldn't stand the food. Unlike Wittgenstein, who would eat almost anything (he, I would have fed roadkill, he would've understood) but whatever you fed him at the first meal of his visit, you had to feed him at every other meal. I measured artwork most of the day, for the permanent record. By the end of the month, I will have looked at every piece in the permanent collection at least three times. I have some favorites, the Carter watercolors are luminous; some of the late abstract prints are lovely things. I covet one in particular, overlapping nebulous nude female shapes. Just two colors. Very strong. I don't know where you could see these, I think Spanierman (?) Gallery in NYC carries some of Carter. Editions of 200, if you found one online for one or two hundred it would be a good deal. I'm looking, actually found a couple, in that price range, but they weren't the ones I wanted. Out back for a smoke, at the museum, and the LGB's (little gray birds) were riding the pampas grass in the bank parking lot. It's a sport with them, as I recount every year, a time marker. The grass stalks are uniformly eight feet tall, one bird flies in and clutches on just below the seed-head, then another flies in and lands just below her. The stalk bends over in a lovely and very clever arc, then springs back and they use the spring to launch themselves back into the air. They enjoy it tremendously, I can hear them chirping, but it was also a spectacular display, a spectator sport. Birds at play. Wow. That last sentence. An afterthought. But I love the incredibly tight constraint. I should think about short sentences more often. Birds of prey. I allow myself some slack. What were we talking about? I do this all the time, construct imaginary constructs. I've had the thought that I was probably crazy. Swat that out of the air like a birdy spiked. Just as often I think of myself as the last sane man in North America. I also amuse myself. I'm not above planting evidence. Read more...

Dead Chicken

I swear it was not intentional. I was heading down the creek, lovely cool morning, slanting fall light, deep blue sky. Just before the house of the fighting cocks, slowed down to a crawl, because of the damned chickens. The owner was out the door of his trailer, heading for his truck, and the chickens in the yard scattered, one launched off, heading in a low trajectory for the far side of the road, right into my grill. Dead chicken. I stopped and the good-old-boy told me to go on, wasn't my fault. I ask him what he was going to do with it and he said the other chickens would make short work of it. Thought about asking him if I could have it, because though it was a tough old rooster, it would still make a great broth; but I didn't have time to pluck and gut a chicken, and that is a chore I grew to despise back on the farm. Stinks. The rest of the drive I thought about the farm, how much I learned in Mississippi: curing meat, raising serious crops, the state of race relations in the deep south; birthed many dozens of animals, made many hundreds of gallons of beer and wine. Had our first goat dairy, bought a cream separator, and explored the threat level of ice cream that was 25% butterfat. It was a good time, and a brutal amount of work, your basic 100 work week. We had running water, finally, when Marilyn was pregnant with Samara, after seven years of hauling water from the creek. So many memories, maybe I should raise chickens again, and kill one once in a while, to remember Mississippi. What, I wonder, would it take for me to remember other places. I can't eat mussels or oysters without thinking about harvesting both of those on both the Cape and the Vineyard. For Colorado, several things. Marshalling moisture, training water in a ditch, watching rain never hit the ground; and the splendid isolation available in every direction, I always remember, when I am well and truly lost, not all that far from home. There were French frog-legs in the frozen food case where they keep strange things. Thank god there is such a place. I bought two pair of fat ones for just under four bucks. Heated a mixture of butter and olive oil in a ten-inch cast iron skillet, browned some canned, sliced, white potatoes (I watch my footprint closely, this is the way for me to buy potatoes, I eat mostly rice) on one side, and flip them, slide the frog-legs in and nestle them. I'm not adding any garlic to this, or anything else; I do, when I flip the legs, dust with salt and pepper. Sometimes simpler is better. I make a nice dipping sauce of lime juice and white balsamic with a heavy overtone of wild onions. I think it's good, but who am I to say? I'm so entrained, I couldn't really say anything, or almost anything. My precarious perch. You're the one I'm taking to the Prom. Read more...

Ishtar Gate

A long and serious essay on Nebuchadnezzar's sirrush. For a 'mythical' animal there's really a great deal of information. Something was certainly kept, alive, in Babylon, that was strange enough in inspire awe. In the Apocrypha, Daniel kills it with a pill made of bitumen and hair. Another essay, on glaciation, proposes that there no snakes in Ireland because it was completely covered by the last ice shield and the snakes could never get back. More rain in the forecast. I shudder to think about the driveway. Payday, next Thursday, I need to haul in supplies. Time to get busy. Good weather next weekend would be nice, I'll have three full days to work outside. Some little blue breaks in the clouds, which means this layer isn't very deep; if it stays dry tonight, I could get out tomorrow. I need to bushwhack a path into the back of the woodshed from the driveway. Need to clear in front of the woodshed so I can find the damned thing. That sirrush is a handsome thing. I had one on a wallet once, made by a leather-working person who was the wife of a biology teacher friend of mine. We'd met at the scene of a beaching of some small whales, and he wanted to get one back to the parking lot of the high school so he and the students could dissect it. The animals were dead, and it might seem cold, to violate them further; but I agreed with the enthusiasm. That was the winter I lived on Lucy's Crotch, a nautical term here, meaning a natural channel that elbows in from the sea, to a natural harbor that looks more like a lake. A kettle-hole. In the same area for the same reason. Shaded chunks of ice, really large chunks, might melt more slowly, and shit would accumulate around the outside, and you end up with this form, the kettle-hole, a house, the perfect ass, whatever. A form. Jays have a weird lower jaw, they store acorns there, three or even four, and one in their mouth. They bury these and find them again. I couldn't do that. Fucking birds. Read more...

Inside Out

Hurried home from being staff at the museum. It had been a beautiful day, but a front moving in. The remaining leaves are inside out, the dead ones falling hard and fast. Huge haul of firewood yesterday, then went over with D and loaded his truck, Red Maple mostly, a nice firewood that seasons quickly. Saw a fox this morning, not mine, but lovely, raiding drops from a semi-wild apple tree down the creek at an empty house site. At the pub, for lunch before work, talked with the staff guy there, Justin, who seems to be a reader of mine. He asked about writing and I told him it was just like playing the guitar (which I know he does), the more you do the better you get. Nuked left-overs, I don't feel like cooking, the last of the Risotto. I make plans for a crock-pot meal, a beef stew with turnips and some greens. I love turnips, they're like sophisticated potatoes. Something in for a reason, our mandate is not to judge. Good luck with that. One judges every fat ass in front of one's self when waiting in line. What else can you do. Read the tabloids and glance at the items you're supposed to buy on impulse? I carry a folded sheet of paper and a cheap ball-point pen at all times, you listen closely, you hear a cadence, make notes. Sketches, even if you can't draw. I'm reminded of the time I was stuck in a line. Hearing a blues line in my head, "I want you to ride me, like my back ain't got a bone." Late at night, the blues provide solace. Every time I go to Memphis, I hear the same old bad news, if you can't drown on Beal Street, you're not alive. John Lee Hooker crooning in a road house. Mississippi John Hurt and his slack guitar. Lost power and half a page. Still raining this morning. I make a crock pot of grits, with some added acorn meal. They're ready for a late lunch: eggs, cheese grits, toast. I read all day, finishing up some things, reading the New Yorker fiction issue from the summer. In fact I read three New Yorkers front to back, they're addictive. Much cooler. Sitting still, I have to put on a sweatshirt and thicker socks. Clean out the fridge, and during a late afternoon break in the rain feed the dog all the left-overs with her kibbles. Other than the sound of rain, it's very quiet. A serious bout of introspection. No closer to any firm truth, but I think it's a good thing to dig deeply into yourself once in a while. See if there's anything there. With my new, sleek black phone, which has a working nine, I'm able to call Mom, and both she and Dad sound fine, but I can't reach either my brother or sister to verify that story. I'll be down there next month, to see for myself. Not that I could do anything about anything, just so I would know. How much did they pay to have a cyst removed from my brother's testicle? It was out-patient surgery, but, what, eight, ten thousand dollars? Where did they get the money? My sister, the banker, will be all over this. But I don't want my parents taking a second mortgage on my brother's balls.On the other hand, I'm not there, and what do I know? Next to nothing. Having daughters will make you know how stupid you are. Nothing is what it seems. I don't need another watch, I throw them away, the time is always apparent. Look at the obvious clues, the patter of the rain, the way his right hand moved. There's a melody that's off the beat. Just acorns falling, but something, nonetheless. Read more...

Design Features

D got some new software to manipulate photos and I was watching him work this morning, designing a poster and the cover (essentially the same, in this case) for a show Pegi's kids are doing to parallel the "Alice" exhibit at the museum. The boy's good, but for god's sake, don't tell him. He took a fairly flat, badly lit photo and turned it into exactly what she needed. Pegi and someone's mother (she photographs for her kid's tuition, she's ok, in the "I had one photography class in college" way) had dressed the lovely Hayden in a blue taffeta gown (a 14-year-old who looks a sexy 18) then took her below the floodwall, down below the first terrace, where the roots are exposed from the mostly red maple that grow there. A wall of roots, 10 feet tall. So, a flat photo of Hayden looking charming and perplexed against this incredible background, which, unfortunately, in the afternoon light is flat as a fucking pancake. D manipulates almost every aspect of this photo, and ends with a wonderful shot of Alice going down the rabbit hole. He toiled overlong with the placement of the verbage, but I saw what he was thinking. The problem with being facile is that everything becomes a variable and available to alteration. I should think it must occasionally put one into a coma of possibilities. A person I didn't know, so I must have been described by someone else, because this other person came right up to me. Sometimes the words fall trippingly, and I never know when it's going to happen, but when it does I indulge myself. Later, when I reread a paragraph, it might make me smile. It might not. I write enough I can blow off any given day as an exercise in harmonics. Anyway. This person comes right up to me, to me specifically, not in any way aggressive, male college student is my best guess, but he obviously knew what I looked like, which meant that someone had described me. I have to think about that. Which me were they describing? The physical thing, certainly, what I don't understand. And that was a great period. Understand BAM. Hard stop. Little Sister has squirreled away an extra pup. You can imagine my shock. I was down there, for hours, I never suspected there was another puppy, hidden away in a hole. I'm going to get all the bitches fixed and shoot the wild dad. I have certain responsibilities, being an overseer, wrong word, an interested party. I can't control a paragraph, much less run for city council. Terry pulled over in his van, when D and I were out smoking, wanting to set a date for doing ribs on the roof top. Small town life. The ICE-CREAM truck, I mean, really. Could I get you a fudge bar? Kim hangs heavy doors, so we can think about them, I want to ring my stupid students by the neck. Come on, you're better than that. Oh, god, that's right, I don't have students anymore. Read more...

Down The Creek

Enough water in the second ford to drive back and forth a few times and clean my wheel-wells. Had to come to a complete stop and let the fighting cocks cross the road. Dozens of them, going across for a morning drink from Upper Twin Creek. Attractive but dangerous looking birds, with exaggerated spurs. I was attacked by one of these once, in Mississippi, but fortunately had a shovel in my hand and was able to knock it into the next county. The State Patrolman that lives on Rt.52 stopped me this morning and asked about other places to look for fossils, and I told him about the new road-cuts over in Kentucky, where they extended the 'Double A' highway. It's all limestone over there, sandstone over here; don't know if that makes any difference, but the girls and I once found 30 or 40 trilobites in an hour or less in one of those cuts. Reminds me of one time hiking in Utah, Kate had told me about a place, within an area the Utes leased as grazing rights, but the BLM had fenced off certain canyons because they were such rich Anasazi sites and not much disturbed. In one of my favorite places in the world, the San Rafael Swell. The place I wanted to see was a day's hike in, required an overnight, so I had a pack with a pad and a space blanket, some food, water, a few little nip bottles of Wild Turkey. Found a ledge, where an extended family had lived, but I couldn't access it, it looked impossible. I know there's a huge debate about why these people left that area, probably climate or whatever, but I can tell you they were paranoid. The only access was by climbing bored holes in the rock and you could defend it with a stick. The granary still held corn. Made my peace for the night, grilled a steak, drank too much and howled back at the coyotes. I don't know the nature of chert, it must be metamorphic, and there is a great tongue of it there, a field of flakes that defies imagination. Generations. So many failed points you realize how fast this process was. I've learned to pressure-flake, I'm not good at it, but I can make an arrow head if the core is decent. If I only knew where to find a bow and where to find the shaft for an arrow. Boiled water on a stick fire and made coffee the next morning. Ten thousand flakes and a hundred failed points before lunch, I end up spending another night, dining on peanuts and dried fruit, boiling slimy water I find in a deep shaded hole. Everything is compressed. Time is suspended. Evidently, around the salt-licks in northern Kentucky, there was a free-fly zone (I don't know where this information came from) and it wasn't proper to kill each other there, you could hunt game and gather salt without fear of ambush. The story of salt is an interesting history, look at the place-names, the salt-licks in your local geography. They're always special places. Unlike almost everyone I know, I don't use much salt, I tend toward the bitter, as a matter of choice; the less sweet, as opposed to the sweet. I'll suck the nectar from an occasional honey-suckle blossom, but I don't make it a habit. You drive a new route, times enough, it becomes familiar. The nature of the game. Read more...