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.