Chicken Soup

Thighs were on sale and I decided a soup was in order. Poach six thighs in a white wine reduction with watercress. Because the cookstove is hot, roast a batch of roots, onions, butternut squash, some carrots. Shred the thighs back into the liquid, add the roasted vegetables and a package of snow peas, a hand-full of orzo. Simple, good; eat slowly, with buttered saltines. Naval warfare changes at Cadiz. Numbers rattle through my brain, a consequence of hanging a show. Rain on the metal roof and the frogs still rampant. Another ream of printed pages I need to take to the vault. 3,000 pages in just over ten years, a million words. What I consider a full page is 42 lines, wrapped as the computer sees fit, a nominal 500 words. I see it as a brick, a building block. Out of focus, as I usually am, it looks like a foreign language, a dark smudge masquerading as text. A convoy of meaning conveyed by ink, in Arial 10. Composed in Arial, though you probably receive it in a different form, Times News Roman or something. I don't like Arial, really, being an old-style kind of guy, serifs and all, but it's easy to work in. I can see the words, no frills. And that allows me to make fewer mistakes. Writing is difficult. One thing I've noticed, over the years, is that whenever you really focus your attention, you burn calories. More thunder rolling in, like a massive surf, another sweep of rain, beating hard on the roof. It comes in waves. I did so well last week, I'm almost ashamed to show my face; the show, in a way, hung itself, I'm merely a mechanic. The complex part is the math, but I've mastered that. It's tomorrow already. The overcast sky glows a gray-blue color that signals dawn. The rain hammers. I wish I could talk in sign, maybe I'll take a course. The rain steps it up a notch, it's now carving gullies. An inch an hour. Forty days and forty nights. Then the wind, blowing down from St. Paul. It's not lost on me, the things I reference. I was slightly nauseous when the thunder and the frogs woke me. That upper mid-west wind had the trees at half-mast. Blowing a full gale. From my vantage, it's beautiful, a soft light, that comes in from behind. A rumble of thunder that I can barely hear, deep down in the registry. Not something you hear that often. Banshees in the Marshes of Glenn. A solitary wolf in the distance. Then a lull, and a heavy silence. I tie a couple of flies, to pass the time, I want to mimic a just-hatched mayfly. With turkey feathers and twine. Try it yourself, it has a certain Zen flair. You could float by a dark pool and lure a record rainbow from under the rocks. I find tying flies interesting, because I don't see that well, so it's a challenge. Fucking wind, excuse me, the wind is blowing like there is no tomorrow. It's bending the house. I can only watch. Nothing really prepares you for a night like this. Lightning striking so close to home. That thunder. You had to be here, which I was, alone. No witness. He makes things up. How bad could it have been? You have no idea. There's a smoldering stump, where lightning hit, just outside my back door. The sound was a major event, akin to an earthquake. More rain, the gullies become ditches. It's all about drainage. Who said that? Chicken soup doesn't hold a candle. You know what I mean, a Knight riding in on the generic White Charger. Chiffon, I think, he called her. It is tomorrow, I can see the stick trees, the broken sumac, the blackberry canes; it all frames a certain reality. I forgot to ask. Are you with him, or is this an academic exercise? More rain, buckets of rain, everything is washed away. Biblical. You and that white whale. Hey, I meant to mention, I found several worked stones, where the rain is carving a grader ditch against the bank. Debris, right? What accumulates. I make some notes. A single stick becomes a major player, the way shit builds up, first thing you know, you've built a damn, and the waters back up, suddenly a lake, an artificial construct. When the rain slackened I went back to sleep on the sofa, woke up disoriented. Felt like I was in a laminar flow room, a bubble. Poked around in the dictionaries, made a pot of coffee, potatoes and eggs for breakfast. Rain all day, flood warnings on the radio. Roads closed. Midnight, the Sicoto peaks at 22 feet. D's house would flood at 26 feet, but that last four would require half of Pike County to flood. The big river should flood the first terrace. I need to get down there, poke about in the mud. I successfully do nothing all day. Read, look up words. Scan myself, looking for incriminating evidence. Several pages I quite like. Amusing. You can bet I laugh at myself, too. Got my hair cut, when was that, Saturday, and my normal twice a year place was 'out sick' and I remembered there was a barber shop across the park from Kroger. Went there. A woman barber and she has twins in Pegi's Cirque. So we hit it off. The Marine in the chair when I got there (almost done or I wouldn't have waited, I don't wait well unless I take a book) was home on leave from Afghanistan, two weeks off then back for six months. In a firefight last week, 50 Marines, well dug in, attacked by 500 bad guys. Five Marines wounded, 200 enemy dead. He had pictures on his cell phone. I didn't look. I made egg noodles. Don't have a machine, I rolled them out with an old wine bottle. They didn't look kosher but tasted great with cheese and butter and a serious grind of black pepper. Fresh made pasta cooks in seconds. Make a note to buy some pesto. Try this: rub a pork tenderloin with maple syrup and let it sit for twenty minutes, to dry, but remain sticky, smear it with pesto, cook in a 400 degree oven on a rack in a pan, for 30 minutes. De-glaze the pan with wine to make a sauce. In a perfect world, I'd serve this with jasmine rice and a salad. I want the crust on the tenderloin to be almost black but not carbonized. Caramelized. This is so good you'll cry. I usually cook two, so they'll be leftovers, and I can have medallions, with eggs, at breakfast. I never know, really, what you know. I can only guess. You don't know what I know, and I don't know what you know. Two unknowns and not a lot of room to move. A simple enough equation. if you have the math. I never could solve for two unknowns. Not that good at chess. I pitch horseshoes pretty well, if that counts for anything, even in the dark. I'm good at darts. I throw knives really well, the last three operas I built, were in a brewery with cork walls. The first show needed daggers, and we ordered a hundred of those throwing knives, because they were cheapest thing we could find that looked like a dagger. I learned to throw them, what can I say, I got really good at throwing them. I could take out your eye, at twenty-five feet, before you knew I'd raised a hand. I could kill you with a fork. Or my bare hands, for that matter. I could slice your neck with my library card. Oh. What were we talking about? I got distracted. Read more...

Reconsideration

A given. I don't know where you're coming from. You're The Stanger to me. I have to go sleep, but I was thinking about you. The clock tells me it's six twenty. It doesn't tell me whether it's morning or night. How am I supposed to know? I just construct lines. Nothing, really, but a vague idea. I don't expect to do anything, I'm exhausted; you should hang a show like this and then see how you'd feel. If you were younger, you might go out, to celebrate, I just hike in with a jug of cheap whisky and a can of Pork and Beans. A bunch of cheap sophistications. Feeling fiesty. Maybe it's the fact that I didn't go back to bed? There's a certain graphic quality that adheres to things. The quiet that ensues when an eagle flies down the drainage; listen, I don't make this up, I saw it with my own eyes. I've learned to construct. I have a whole world I can fall back on. That other universe. Breaking dawn, what a wonderful sight. The trees take shape. Working in Arial 10, I almost imagine I can make sense. Now is tomorrow, what Modernism is. Think about it. I just get up in the morning and it's already tomorrow. The sun clears the ridge-line and there are a lot of stick trees. Winter still, but frogs making love is the first sure sign of spring. The Church of the Holy Rood. Before the rain, I get some billets cut to length, retreat back indoors, reading about the Spanish Armadas and their lousy luck. In Ireland, a favorite way of killing survivors of the numerous wreaks, was to throw them in a bog, treading them down, then stealing their clothes and whatever else could be carried off. Lightning flashes through the cleft defiles. I shut down several times. Cleaning out the fridge led to boiling the sauce which had been stored, over-winter, beneath a protective layer of pig fat. The sauce is now at least seven years old. I break up and discard the hardened top, add some wine and boil then simmer to sterilize, and end up with one quart and one pint jars filled to the neck. Starting a new season. Raining hard now, flooding in the lowlands. Coming out of town yesterday, the floodplain was awash. Finally saw one thing I had been waiting to see (a kind of life list) and had to stop, I was laughing so hard. The quarter-mile dirt racetrack, built on bottomland, floods every year at this time, and I had always imagined boat races being held there. Here was a local, a young guy in Carhartt overalls, standing at the tiller of his battered aluminum fishing boat, with maybe a 10 horse outboard motor, racing around the track. It was great, better than I had imagined. He saw me watching, when he came out the entrance ramp after doing a couple of laps, I was parked illegally on the edge of Route 852, where it feeds into Route 52 heading west. It's elevated there and the view of the track is perfect. A great place for another set of Appalachian sky-boxes: trailers on stilts. You have to admire them, really. Out of a kind of country thrift, you eliminate the entire cost of construction. Rain on a metal roof, even buffered by an insulated ceiling is a captivating sound. Infinite possibilities. A few notes of every song you've ever heard. When it slackens it's always Bach. Usually a Partita. More lightning and I should go, but I just SAVE instead and hope for the best. Oiled my boots, didn't have any of the correct stuff, but they were so dry I just fed them some mineral oil, which was the only thing I could find. The last line of thunder showers parted at the ridge, went north and south of me. I was watching closely, the lightning strikes were so dramatic. I was oiling a boot and writing you. Devised a system whereby I could hold a boot between my legs and oil it with one hand, keeping the other free to peck away at a paragraph. In that circumstance, when I need to hit two keys, I use a pencil, held in my mouth. I live alone, no one sees this, I don't know why I mention it. I think I left Mister Dye hanging. Have to read back over the last couple of days, see what I said. Fairly warm night, I let the fire burn out, the frogs are louder than the rain. Muffled as the sound is, it sounds like migrating ducks. Happy, but frenzied. Like I was, last week, hanging that show, I hadn't worked that hard in years, didn't know I still could. My feet hurt, but I could still stand. Walking in yesterday, with a pack, I didn't even stop at all the usual places, marched right up, like a Sherpa on a mission. Not to say I'm not killing myself, smoking and drinking as I do, but I enjoy this pace, this particular cadence, that I find when I have you in mind. A silly conceit. A Folly. Raise high. Barns. The Amish. Dinner in the middle of the day. Here from Storm Central, an update, flash flood warnings in all the usual places. Even my rill will be running by morning. Not everybody owns both a rill and a graveyard. A kill and a resting place. Depends on what you name things in the beginning and how well that handle holds up. One misplaced blow and a piece of history is lost, that particular handle. I wish I had eaten more today, but I was busy reading. Thank god, what is this, the end of February, and I finally have this year's Outhouse Calendar on the wall. Sara pointed out that I'd left it in her office, knew that I didn't know what year it was. I actually did know what year it was. I'm not that far out of the loop. Though I might pretend otherwise. Think of me as a kind of fallen Eagle Scout. I was good, right up to the edge, where you had to admit a prime mover. I had to take a step back. First: I don't like being told what to do; and second: handles always fail. Keeps us re-handlers in business. That, and the fact that organic evidence disappears. Eventually nothing is left, unless you live in Egypt. Another squall line moving through. I don't feel so lucky, all best to you and yours.

Tom

I'm jammed up here,
I can't receive,
the sky is falling.
Read more...

Dingo Dogs

It could have been a coyote, but I think just a feral dog chasing a likely meal. This time of morning the details matter less than the fact. The sound was piercing. The death throes of something. Welcome back to the ridge. You don't have heat nor hot running water, and you get to listen to animals dying. I'm in my down mummy bag atop the bedclothes fully awake, because the sound woke me from a dream. I was on a carousel, a woman was on the horse in front of me, dark hair streaming out behind her, I was trying to tell her something, but the carousel kept speeding up and my voice was swept behind me. I could see the words, bending into the slipstream. I don't know what to make of any of it. Everything, all of it. You hammer away at meaning and you end up with a pile of rock-dust. Do you get up, or not? I have to pee, so I unzip, and grab the fleece bathrobe that Carma and D gave me, a few years ago, when they first started worrying about my relative comfort; go out back, off the porch, and take one of those horse-on-a-flat-stone pisses that sounds like an October storm on the coast of Maine. Nothing to be done. Decide to have a cup of hot chocolate, and break out an encyclopedia to reference what I'm drinking. My 11th Britannica is that cheap small set on newsprint, and when it's cold, or I've been drinking, it's sometimes difficult to find what I'm looking for. I have to build a fire and start a pot of coffee when all I really want is a cigaret. Flipping through Volume 6, CHA to CON, I have to stop several times. This is the way it happens, I'm a sucker for irrelevant research. Chopin. Cholera. Chocolate. Turn on the radio, because I haven't listened to anything in forever. All I've done in all that time is hang a show. Fuck me for believing, it keeps me alive.The word came into English through the French chocolat or the Spanish chocolate from the Mexican chocolatl. A beverage made from the paste of a bean. I knew that, I must have looked it up before. Probably the last time I had a cup. Don't get me started on chicken broth. Otherwise, things are fine. Nothing untoward. Is that really a word? Spell check allows it. Does that make it a word? If you're having problems in the post-modern world you should sign up for our class. We offer advanced degrees in a great many fields. I was looking at some pigweed, earlier today, it had pretty much taken over. The corner of the bottle, Murphy, just enough to wet your whistle. I build my case (castle) on ambiguity, it's my foundation. Things being relative. Fucking dog-bark and the dying scream of something down the food chain, and I'm researching chocolate. Is that Ry Cooder? I swear there is a god. The God Of Coincidence. That slide guitar, the hair on the back of your neck. "Paris, Texas" right? All those shoes set out on the railing. That soundscape, the radio and a dying fridge, with a sound track in the back ground, the coal trains in Kentucky, a few birds tweeting. What really happens is anyone's guess. We can monitor some things, there are instruments that allow us to see and hear. Devices. I used a hammer-drill all week. I can't hear anything. A harmonic equilibrium where everything sounds the same. I vibrate, therefor. Like that. I didn't mean to go on, but some times I can't help it. You can read me in two of three minutes. It took me hours to write that. Lost sleep, and hours at the keyboard. Add it up and generate an equation that makes little sense. Why would anyone? Camus, paraphrased. I can't not. Tried once and got depressed. I'd rather stay busy. It's so dry, I have to work up spit to stick a cigaret paper. Where were we? Whatever my argument was. It's nice out in the yard, brisk and hopeful, I pee, and go back to bed. Read more...

The Woods

Re-hung one painting today. Neither Sara nor D had mentioned it, but it bothered me. It was the usual one inch too high. When I was looking around the room, looking at our center line, 57 inches, it kept jumping out at me. Hauled tools and whatnot to the basement, got the little shop-vacuum (one gallon size) and cleaned up all the plaster bits where I sank anchors in the walls. Tight ship. To avoid the idiopathic malaise that accompanies finishing a show, I plan some outdoor work. Next weekend, after the opening, little sling-blade fest, clipping those awful, dead, sharp, blackberry canes. Still have to make labels (they usually get attached to wall at the magic 57 inch mark) and cook croquettes. Serious business. There was a funny shaggy-dog story D remembered I had told him, when he reminded me I remembered. One of the old janitors at Janitor College, a Mister Dye, married to a wonderful north-woods woman, Martha; I'm sure he had a first name, but we only ever called him Mister Dye, had three sons, all of whom became janitors. Remind me to tell you. The frog egg-cases from that mad first fuck-fest are swollen to half-an-inch. I'm sure the sure the sugars protect against freezing, as long as the puddles don't freeze solid again. That would kill them, surely. The show looks great, when I stand back, and look at the installation. Which I do, with some reservation. This show, I indicate with my cane, is simply a reaction to the development of image that a camera couldn't reproduce. Anything not strictly representational. A large field, but a field, nonetheless. My people should be in touch with your people. We could all freeze to death, there's no reason we should die alone. Look at her flowers .I just thought we might talk. Mostly, it's numbers, look back on yourself: mostly numbers. The winner is. Read more...

Accessioning

Get to the museum before the rain starts, unlock the gates, turn the lights on, before any of the committee arrive. When they're all (six of them) seated and the chit-chat has quieted, I opened the box with white-gloved hands, to show them the nudes. The other pieces are on top and I show them what we suspect Clarence traded his own work for. Some decent Paul Travis prints, a couple of watercolors, one of which is very good, and some other prints. Then the 13 nudes. These are really excellent drawings, beautifully rendered, some horizontal, some vertical, high-lighted in white chalk. I've seen them now a dozen times and they just get better. It's a treat, handling them. Everyone loved the catfish. It's an odd point of view, from below, and the fish is turning. It's one of my favorite drawings ever. I'm getting adept at floating the buffered tissue. It's like floating mother sheets of newsprint (they must be 36 by 40 inches) onto the old flat-bed cylinder press in the shop where I apprenticed. Press must have been eight feet by twelve feet, you had to climb halfway up one side to feed it. Printed a weekly newspaper, four pages to a run on one side of the uncut sheet. Two sheets made one of the papers. Charlie had sold the newspaper, by the time I worked for him, so it was a two man job shop. He printed all the forms for the courts, that type kept standing, in galleys. A lucrative little shop. After six months he paid me, by the page, to do the linotyping. His eyes were going bad. He'd take his bride to Central America every winter, and leave me to run the shop. The Cape Cod years. So I had access to a linotype and that allowed me to do 80 or 100 page books, letterpress. Poetry looks best, impressed into the page, it reads better. That led to bookbinding. A lot of grants, in those days, to fund small presses. There was a lot of good work. I must have a thousand pieces done by various presses, we traded too; I need to go through those boxes, hope to god a mouse hasn't found them. The committee votes to tell the board they should accession the Carter's absolutely, the other stuff, only if we can de-accession it at a later date, to pay for framing the Carters. De-accessioning is all in the art news right now, as museums are dying. Universities selling off collections to pay the light bill. Where's that Carter that was at Rutgers? It was that same model I'm in love with. I'd be really pissed if it sold for a few thousand dollars to some asshole middle-man who didn't appreciate what a strong image it is. I have an ink-jet print, scanned from a slide, but it's enough to see, to know this is a painting the museum needs to own. De-accessioning to bolster the permanent collection, would be a good thing, and Sara steers them that direction, a separate fund, set aside for maintaining the permanent collection. If the provenance is right, on something we're donated, and all the money goes into the correct place, I don't have a problem with this. I'm remarkably silence, I say a few things, about condition, paper quality, what foxing is. But James and Nick run the show. If meetings could be delightful this was one. James does a monolog, it's hard to keep up, and Nick, with his perfect one-liners, interjects them, with perfect timing, when James has to take a breath. It's a stunning display of stand-up comedy. Their timing, mostly Nick, but James is turned on by this, is exquisite. The Catskills. I swear they could play the circuit. Nick is a Thurber character, he always makes me laugh, and I'm not the laughing type, really. Stay close, but don't be obvious. Work that out as well as you can. You and your cell-phone. My people have some questions about that. Wherever I am I'm generally alone, so I never have an alibi. Maybe what I was reading, if it came right down to the passage in question. Certainly Thoreau, though Emerson bores me to tears. I'd look to see if I might be lifting something from Emily. Stealing is usually easier than making something up. Keep your story straight. What you think he said. Right, the Rolex, there was a tattoo on his shoulder, something really offensive.

Tom

The playing field is a simple rectangle. .I'm just saying.
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Busy Day

Started early. The art shippers, who were supposed to be here last Tuesday but were caught in an upper mid-west snowstorm and rescheduled for tomorrow, called this morning and were only fifteen miles away. They arrive, D arrives just after them, and we load the three crates of Alice. That show heading for St. Louis. We get coffee and scones, get back to the museum and hang the few remaining pieces. Alter a few things. I'm always pleasantly surprised at how well D and I do this work. We don't even have to talk about it while we're working, often doing a kind of stand up comedy to amuse ourselves and anyone who might be listening. After lunch D and Sara light the show in short order, mostly because the last show, Alice, was also a wall show and none of the lights had to be changed. The next show, which will be at least half 3D will need spots instead of floods and require much more time. Lucky break. They have the show lit in short order. Tomorrow I can clean the gallery, take elevator loads of tools and pads (when we stack wall pieces around the space, each one has to be on a pad) and painting supplies to the basement. Then I can start making the labels. A huge amount of labels, several days work, but I'll have the time. Then croquettes, then the opening next Friday. I made two small mistakes hanging this show, both easily corrected, but it's interesting that both of them were because of mindless chatter at the reception desk. When D and I hang a show together, he calls out numbers, I do the math, call out the answers, and he makes marks on the walls. Doing it all myself, I was constantly holding numbers in my head, and the mindless chatter drove me to distraction. Kenny, who catalogs our photograph collection (extensive, many thousands of prints and negatives) has been culling images for a show next summer about river boats, was showing Sara some of the pictures in the common room upstairs. I stopped to look. Mail Packets and Show Boats, side-wheelers and stern-wheelers. The floating opera. Should be an interesting and popular exhibit. I docent a couple of people through the glass show. Sara is a little surprised that the Modernist show is hung and lit a week early, I have to remind her that she told me months ago that it needed to be, and D compliments me on a job well done. It looks great, stunning, actually. A good preparator is a lot like a stage manager in theater: if they do their job well, you hardly notice what they've done. It's all about the show. I love what I do here, behind the scenes. That Sara and D are pleased is all that really matters to me; that, and the fact that I get paid for doing something I enjoy. I go over to the pub, after I lock up, for an Irish with a Murphy's back, and John has burned me a disc of a fairly esoteric Ry Cooder album. Life in the outside lane, where you consciously slow your heart-beat, wear white cotton gloves, and consider every move. I better go. I have to be there tomorrow, then sweet release. We'll talk later. Read more...

Finish Hanging

Rain, and more rain. The Scioto is swollen and the Ohio is slipping its banks. Starting early, working hard, get the show hung. A couple of pieces left to hang with D, one monster that needs a consult and the pieces on the wall with signage, which we never hang until we have the vinyl signage. I'm proud of myself that I was able to hang it solo. A few minutes help with the large pieces I couldn't lift alone. It looks great and hasn't been properly lit yet. A day of label work. But there it is. Sara is pleased and I'm pleased that Sara is pleased. A piece of work. Barnhart sends a Japanese croquette recipe, based on left-overs, several other people send recipes too, an Irish variation, a sweet potato version. Here's the recipe we're going to use, because you asked, only codified because we need to make a lot of them. Remember, I don't have a real kitchen here, just a fryer and a warming closet. Two and a half cups Bob Evans mashed potatoes, three tbsp bacon bits, three tbsp parmesan, three tbsp parsley, a couple of chopped scallions, enough bread crumbs and flour to stiffen the mix, rolled in breadcrumbs and fried. Refrigerate the mix for half an hour before you form the individual units. Handle them as little as possible, so they don't get heavy. Fry them quickly, at 375 degrees, until they're a little darker than light brown. Crisp and delicious. After work I go over to the pub, have a Murphy's with a Paddy Irish back, talk with John, the owner, about folk music and what we listened to, then on into the blues. Son House, Skip James. We both love Ry Cooder, Utah Phillips. Pub conversation, but more than that, we share a history, and that's important, in the great scheme of things, that we share appreciation. Leo Kotke, And who is that great picker, Norman Blake, I have to remember to tell John. I've heard John M and Santana play together, they blow the house apart, but Norman Blake is the best guitarist I've ever heard. Then you got slow-hand, "Layla", and Jerry jamming, "Dark Star", and Dwayne Allman playing for Boz Scaggs on that first album. Lord knows the guitar comes into its own. Not unlike big brother in the Cello Suites. Transposed by Edgar Meyer to the double bass. I had a good day, did what I needed to do, then some lively conversation, couldn't ask for more that that. More rain. Even little creeks are become a river. The roads are a flood. The chickens at Boobies seek higher ground. The fact that anyone understands me is pretty amazing; I often don't understand myself. Just saying. Read more...

Installing

I would have gotten more done, but I had to do the dog and pony show with the board today, showing the Carter drawings. I'm to go-to-guy on this work right now. After a late lunch I start hanging the Modernist show. I spent the morning doing the math on several walls, and I'm able to hang 15 paintings, taking an occasional smoke break with Sara. The paintings look great on the walls, and the spacings are perfect. I mumble, because I usually call the numbers out loud to D. Working by myself, I'm much slower, checking the math twice and doing both jobs. At times I'm a little nervous, but nothing I can't handle. Anthony calls, to see if we're to meet for a pint, and I agree we should, to talk about the croquettes. Christy joins us and we discuss dipping sauce, decide to do a trial run tomorrow. It's just finger food, but I have standards, and I'm also busy hanging the show. Anyone could do finger food, but hanging a show we want a certain precision. I'm good at this, I don't know why, all those years in theater maybe. But I'm exhausted and go to sleep without posting. Today I start work early and hang a lot of paintings before noon. Make a mistake, finally, and stop for lunch, clear the brain of short term memory. Too many numbers. Anthony comes over, dons white gloves, and helps me hang few pieces. I'd already affixed the hardware for them, but couldn't hold them and reach around behind to make the attachment. We get petty cash and walk over to Kroger, to get the makings for a batch of croquettes. The first few are too loose, but we correct that by adding breadcrumbs and some flour. They're very good plain, but with the dipping sauce (horseradish, mayo, lemon juice, black pepper). Anthony forms them with the two-spoon trick, I roll them in more breadcrumbs, he fries them, at 375 degrees for one minute, I take samples around to the staff, then we run a batch over to the pub. Everyone wants the recipe, and we've made notes; but we already want to make some changes. A really fun day. Cooking with Anthony was a hoot, enjoying the company and the conversation. The finished shape of the croquettes, is, of course, an oblate, two-bite thing, that is a product of rolling a delicate dough in breadcrumbs. A perfect two bites. I just ate some more I brought home with me, They microwave fine. We have to work out details about getting them prepared ahead of time, but I'm confident, now, that we can do them for the opening. Focus on finishing hanging this show tomorrow, I can do that, a few pieces D will have to help with on Friday, then he and Sara can light the show on Saturday while I get the labels done. The whole concept of Modernism is so confusing there needs to be more information, to guide the viewer through. 1900 to 1950 there were a great many responses to not being strictly representational. Color, line, field, everything was up for question. The Armory Show, 1913, called every ingrained answer into question. What do you see? What does seeing mean? Getting the paintings up off the floor, into the light, is a revelation. This is a spectacular show, and I'm hanging it, luck of the draw, where you end up eating mashed potato croquettes, wondering what the king is doing tonight. Read more...

Frogs

Ill-fated frog fuck-fest. Still February and they wake me at four in the morning with that unmistakable sound of teenagers in the motel room next to mine discovering sex. Cold when I went to bed, but warmer, when they woke me, what is that wind ? Sirocco. Humors. What's with the weather? As it happens, I was burning some Osage Orange knots last night and there are still some coals glowing in the stove, so I start an easy fire on top on them, to heat some water to shave. Even the rain is warm when I go out with flashlight and foam pad to kneel and watch. These bullfrogs are the exact opposite of walnut trees, in that they always spring too soon. No choice but to make an early pot of coffee and check out the blues on the radio. I dreamed about being lost in the desert, but I think that was just dry mouth occasioned by low humidity that is a product of heating with wood. Collective bargaining. The way certain states resemble countries in the mid-east. The forecast makes no sense. Policy has no basis in reality. It's never that simple. Combat exclusion, for instance. Live-fire is bullets, plain and clear, mortar rounds interrupt a resupply. Hundreds of deaths and lost limbs in the interest of fuel for your Hum-Vee. Just saying. I figure I'll die before the shit hits the fan, but the shit is going to hit the fan. It's not oil, it's drinking water that will ultimately be the problem. An hour before dawn, President's Day, and I'm losing muscle tone. My memory improves when I walk the driveway, something about oxygen in the blood. 100% chance of rain, changing to sleet, then snow. I go out to tell the frogs, but they aren't listening, they're involved in a slimy, sexy thing that has nothing to do with thought. I envy them that, remember when that was the way I would go, lost in the passion of the moment. But I know there is another cold blast looming. Simply looking at the calendar, checking my Rolex, I see it's time for the jet-stream to slip back south, and embrace us, once again, in her frigid arms. I'm out of the loop, most of the day, you might say crazed. No threat to anyone, or even myself, but not good company. Best I should be left alone. I remember a particular goat, Clyde, a castrated male we used to mark females in heat; my daughters used to nap, with their heads on his belly, he was always warm and smelled vaguely like a musky vanilla-bean. I remember napping, once, myself, with my head on his belly (warm, and gurgling with his cud), considering human sexuality. I didn't learn anything, but I was very comfortable. A live goat's belly is a nice place to be. A lyric from a song I need to write. Woodchuck loin is fine to eat. A country song. Rampant corruption. Civil war. I understand the Twin Cities are buried. A train in Kentucky. Nothing makes any sense. Fucking frogs. It's already tomorrow. I have to go take a nap. Read more...

For Linda

He slept late, because he was in his own bed under a mountain of down. Finally crawled out from under, driven by the need to pee and the longing for a tall glass of juice. The house is cold, but not deadly, 48 degrees. He dresses in sweats, pulls on the hat she knitted for him, back when he was homeless and she was a nun. A juice cocktail, equal quantities of orange, pineapple and grape. He drinks 16 ounces, while he starts afire in the stove, and makes a triple espresso. He needs some wood in the house, so he pulls on Carhartt overalls right over the sweats. He stretches and bends a bit, stokes the fire, goes out to the woodshed to split some kindling and chop up an old oak chair for small stuff. Back inside he eats beans and a fried egg on toast. The clatter of sleet interrupts his second cup of coffee, first- smoke reading break. He's reading Idries Shah, "The Commanding Self", a very good book on Sufism. His first words of the day, muttered to the end of a glowing cigaret, are: 'I agree with that'. He watches the sleet sublimate off the front deck. It disappears without leaving a wet spot. Between small weather events, he walks out to the graveyard, looking for fox sign. Now that the dog is gone, he hopes she'll return and they could pretend the dog never happened. Though there are pressing problems, he chooses to ignore them. He is taking the day off. He orders some books, from the Daedalus remaindered catalog, including "Talking Hands", a book he's read several articles and reviews about. A Bedouin village in Israel, where everyone speaks a sign language that is unique to them. The language people are all over this. He keeps up with theories of language, and has some opinions of his own. Splits some wood, just a few rounds, and carries a couple of replacements to the woodshed from down the logging road, where he'd stashed them. He thinks about his parents, in their final times; neither of them wanting to let go, at this point, of the other. They are so tired. His eyes leak a little, but maybe it's the wind, a gift from St. Paul; or some stove ash, from stoking the stove. There are tears on his face, is all we can say, from this far away, it could be glycerin or even those little fake diamonds glued on for effect. It's probably a good thing he didn't have to talk to anyone else today, because he had the look of incoherence. Walking in the woods, he stopped several times, looked up and down, to the right and left, turned completely around and looked back at where he had come from, making sure he knew where the house was and how he had gotten to where he was. Backtracking, as it were, with a sequence of images, instead of the usual beans or corn or trinkets or broken branches. It seemed, at times, as if he was trying to get lost. We have our people on this. Then he walked down the driveway, watched towhees in the leaf litter off to the right, but then a gray squirrel caught his attention, up in the woods to the left. He seemed distracted. I'm pretty sure he was: oh, fuck, wait, who am I? He wished there was a diner where he could go, close by, where he could just eat breakfast and read the paper. Not think about he and I and we; I don't need to give you any pointers, you have me in spades. I only meant that in the best possible way, that you trump me. I would never have anyone else change my diapers. I swear to whatever god you prefer. I (he) can't buy any of them. At Janitor College there was this one dude, a total asshole, he came in from the high school program, full of promise, our basketball team was suffering, and he could dunk. He was great, triple doubles, then he was killed, when a beam fell from the ceiling. Luck of the draw. He often complained that the light was wrong. I've wondered about that, ever since. Could we agree there is a lot of snow? We really should agree about something. You and your twitter. Read more...

Setting Day

Sara can't be in until after lunch, so D and I take apart one of the cases in the artifact gallery. A shelf needs dusting. I'm paranoid about these cases, because they're top heavy. We raise the top piece one end at a time and block it up with a board across the back and side, which allows the front to be unscrewed. I clean the front panel and D takes the artifacts off and cleans the shelf. Put the front back on, lower the top down. Lunch was tomato bisque at the pub, because we'd had Loretta's breakfast wrap earlier. Sara arrives and the process begins. The paintings are all on the floor, leaning against the walls, divided into the six bays thematically, all that remains is to arrange them. We've both done our homework, communicated via email and fax for several weeks. We know these paintings. The six main walls will carry five or six paintings each, maybe a few more, leaving just room for the labels. Five other small walls will hold a painting each, and there are four panels, both sides of which get used. Still too many paintings, we relegate a couple to the back hall, our least favorites. Modernist is hard to define. Lively conversation as we shuffle the paintings around within their bay. Sara wants a strong painting for the middle of each main wall and has mostly made up her mind ahead of time. Then the two sides, flanking the strong piece, must be balanced. Large but finite choices. We move every painting several times, taking the white gloves on and off. We talk about negative space, color, form, we make sense to each other, explain ourselves, reveal ourselves, in the way we work together. I love particular time that always comes, when you're installing a show, placing things in three-space. Locating them. The next two things I love are: showing the Carter nudes to the accession committee on Monday, and then, starting to hang this show on Tuesday. I love hanging a show, like some of those boys in West Texas like to shoot doves; get in early, stay late. The complexities. Some of these pieces specify that they need special consideration when it comes to attachment. Safety devices, instructions on page four of the condition report. I still leave early, after a last cigaret on the loading dock with Sara and D, beat my way windward, park at the bottom of the hill, hike up with a pack. Towhees in the underbrush sound like a small war. Back at the house, I don't do anything for over an hour, recline and listen to the sound of almost nothing happening. Finally get up and start a fire, consider my larder, make a passable pork fried rice, try, again, to call my younger daughter and congratulate her on surviving another year. I never know what to say, and when I open my mouth, it's largely inappropriate. Later, always later, I think of what I should have said. I have an idea for a page I want to try tomorrow. It's a little scary because I'm not sure I can do it. But I value failure as at least a rival for success. Let's not talk about failure, I have a show to hang. Another page to write tomorrow. Read more...

The Ridge

Back on the old Dell, my square headed girlfriend. Everything is different, I'd adjusted to the Mac. Creatures of habit. D and I puttered around, getting some small things done. Sara got in this afternoon, got Clay to drop her off at the museum and we started setting the Modernist show right away; should finish setting tomorrow, then a week to hang. Big show. Then showed Sara the Carter nudes, which just earlier we had finally stowed, separated by buffered tissue in an archival box. A meeting of the accession committee Monday, and I'll show them again, with my white gloves on. Thirteen in all, one male, nine of them are on good mold-made, laid, paper, the other three show slight foxing. Sara loved them, as we knew she would. We talked about matting and framing. Could have talked with her much longer, but needed to get home. Didn't want to drive up the driveway without first examining the ground conditions, so had to hike in, with supplies. I'll do the same tomorrow because rain and colder forecast for Sunday and Monday, and I have to be at that meeting. Hard to believe that all the boxes and crates are stored away, and in the correct order. Little mercies. The Peregrine falcon was back yesterday, dining on a dove in the parking lot median. Bloody mess. Predator and prey, picture perfect. I enjoyed the show. Then when I got almost all the way up the driveway, the beautiful lament of an owl. Speaking of Predator. The fourth graders, yesterday, had learned some museum speak, and when Pegi handed them over to me, she said this was Tom, and he installed the shows, so he's known as the what? As I am the Preparator, I became the Predator. Excellent. Rising full moon, shot through with that hot new color, Orange Crush, or as Pittsburg Paint calls the color, at least in the museum version, Cinnamon Stone. Everything has a name. Even in that class of things that don't exist. The moon clears the ridge-top behind me, and I keep glancing over my shoulder. It's huge, must be perigee. Even with the cheap little spotting scope I use for watching things, I'm looking in great detail. Craters and mountains. Simple pleasures. 60 degrees today, 50 yesterday and the wind steady blowing, I could have made it up the driveway, but I'm glad I walked, to see the lay, but, also, I'll have to walk down tomorrow morning, and that will be glorious. A fine way to start any day, walking downhill the length of a hollow. I've tried a thousand times to count the number of steps, but I always get distracted. It's either a good year for squirrels or a bunch of fat gray birds are rooting in the mast. It's always a show, unless I'm in a hurry and not paying attention. It's always there, whether you notice it or not. The fact of nature. Around here, she's rudely abused, but given 40 years, comes out on top. My small holding, 27 acres, is completely wild, I don't do anything but cut a few dead trees and clip paths to haul out the billets for firewood. I don't have a yard. There's a path to the outhouse, and I carry a 9 iron, now, since the snake incident, when I go out to do my business. And I never read when walking anymore. So it is possible to change. Which I hold out, as a carrot, in front of myself. How many times do you need to break your nose? It's necessary to open a door before you go through it. Janus 101. I thought we'd discussed that. Guarding the portal. When I hear someone in the upstairs gallery, I go in there, to make sure they don't touch, to tell them what I know, and to watch their reaction. Installing art is addictive. You start having ideas of your own. What would this or that be like? Cow-paddies in a line, or rocks, or water doing something; some combination of things. The sky's the limit. I want to work with found objects, I don't want to fabricate beyond what's necessary. I might glue a few bottles together, but it wouldn't mean anything. There we are back again. My grandfather had a blind mule, Clyde, he used to tell when anything was in estrus, and, in the spring could plow perfectly straight furrows. The wonders. One of Pegi's girls showed up this afternoon in spike heels, tight pants, and a top that defies description. Am I not supposed to respond to that? What's being sold? Who's the victim here? I pee in the kitchen sink, normally, when no one's expected, because it's a perfectly fine way of recycling phosphates; I grow tomatoes in the flood-plain, they like it hot, and the nitrates are a boon. Whatever you thought is wrong, nothing prepares you. Every ongoing moment is dictated by the moment ahead. Look at the last twelve hours. How did you get here? How did I get here? I admit to a certain confusion. You and me seem sort of interchangeable, in the game, that way. Read more...

Favored Customer

It's a status, a place you arrive, where the owners buy you sips of very good Irish whisky. The whisky lubricates, and I talk freely. Almost stand-up but I'm sitting on a bar stool. A cluster of listeners. The beautiful Astra, off work, came and sat next to me. I tried to remember to breathe. We talked about drawing. I'm going to get her to do a drawing for me. She said she worked best from photographs. An art jones is hard to shake. Talked with her about taking kids through the art show, about the Modernism show fixing to be set. She was excited about coming over, and so was John the barkeep. Need to open this up, need Astra and John on our side. Nick brought an Art History class over, to look at the glass, and I talked them through it, but they were zombies, I swear. I'm not sure they were awake. And then I did a fourth grade class, because I'm the go-to guy in these situations. Know more about that glass than anyone; quiz me, when I'm mopping the Ladies Room, in the dark, with my fantail loop making a swishing sound, when the moisture in my mop met the baseboard. Puzzling out meaning. I don't make sense, though it is my primary focus. I told John (the bartender) to pour us a couple of Paddys we'd see who was paying later. There are some internal problems. When I tip these paintings over, so they rest against my thigh. I'm pretty much convinced I saw this coming. .What you would imagine I'd thought I'd seen.

Tom

Favored Customer mode. Buy you a shot? I'm on top of my game. Walk down and fuck them all.. The scant notation means nothing. What you thought you meant. I know what you really meant. Read more...

Sweating Bullets

First thing this morning, after coffee and a scone, was to docent a group of 5th graders through the glass show. They were pretty good, I only had to grab a couple of them. I explained pyrex glass to them, borosilicate. Then into janitor mode, everyone cleaning, Pegi vacuumed the Carter gallery. Big opening gala, clean the bathrooms. Then, at the end of the day, unannounced, a troop of 13, 3rd grade Brownies. God spare a pack of Brownies. They were a little hyper and really wanted to touch the pieces. They were a tough tour. Locking up the museum, I was whipped. Met Anthony at the pub for a relatively quick beer. He had to go pull some handles, for some vessels, for some orders that he needed to fill. Pegi told me to stay at the museum one more night, because the mud was bad at her house, and was therefore horrific at my house. Brave the muck, I say, tomorrow. Still undecided about the dipping sauce for the croquettes. Leaning toward a mild horseradish/mayo. Fewer drips, I think, from my position as janitor. Someone always has to clean up. I've banned grapes and glitter, I'll get around to the books later. I dampened my fingers, and played part of a Bach partita on one of the glass pieces. Just kidding, but I did think about it. Thinking and rethinking is the name of the day, how do you enter the end game? My only strength in chess is the middle-game. My openings are standard, and against anyone that's decent in the game, I lose, at the end. I've learned to live with it. A failure to finish. Have to admit the truth in that. I start way too many things. Sidetracked. But I wouldn't have it any other way. Diversion is the story of my life. You might as well call it drainage, a run-off, mascaraing, you do what you have to. I do nothing, if it's at all possible, because I recognize my own intrusion. I'm that guy, the flyer you just got, the wanted criminal. I could play that, poison the field, but I see where you're going, and I don't want part of that.

Tom

Sweating Bullets, was that so hard? Now there are hoops I must jump through. It always was only the other side of what I'm interested in. What you thought you were saying. Nothing primes you to lie better than a really large catfish, how large was it? Really. If you have to ask. I feel like an astronaut, who's fixing to fly. You and them. I let things go for a while, then I merely launch. A Roman Candle of sorts. I have to go. You and me. Read more...

Getting Around

Paid taxes, paid bills. Drove out to the ridge, the lake still frozen (town is warm and dry), wisps of vapor rising, and I stopped to watch. The embedded root-balls and tree parts make an ephemeral installation. It's lovely, no one around, walking down to where Mackletree Creek comes into the lake. Open leads of water, and the different layers of ice carry different colors. All the edges are softened, rounded over, by the several days above freezing. The snow is mostly gone, but when I get to the north facing mouth of the driveway, in shade even in winter, there's still a hard crust of compacted snow, and where there isn't, there's mud. I just didn't want to face it, to be honest, with a 25 pound pack. I knew where there was a warm place I could read and write. I should have hiked in to the house. I wasn't mentally prepared, I'll go tomorrow. There are some experiments in perception I need to try, while this being warm and comfortable thing is still fresh on my mind. And there are new friends that I'd like to feed. I'm conflicted, now that the temps are warmer and the threat of frostbite is lessened. I could stay, for the dead of winter, in a motel room; they're all offering free wives now, which seems like a hell of a deal. Unless that's the very thing you're escaping. My limited understanding. I should be more knowledgeable. I keep running up against things I don't understand. Like time, and motion. Relationships, for that matter, which seem more and more distant. The concept of which. Met Anthony and Christy for an Irish with a beer back, nice conversation about cooking. They're both going to help with the croquettes, which should be fun. I usually cook alone, naturally, since I live alone. When I was teaching at the college I cooked for a few students maybe once a week. They'd bring bad wine and we'd eat good food. Christy made a risotto, Anthony's first. We talked risotto for a while. I love them. I love them refried as patties the next day, a risotto pancake with a runny egg is one of the great things you'll ever eat. If you're ever blessed with left-over risotto. Great word. And it really was one of the first things I wanted to make when I get back out to the house. It's been interesting, being away. I'll have months to think about that. An alternative would be to alter the system. I can't afford to do both, the usual delicate balance, but I could probably stay somewhere, in town, for 6 or 8 weeks. That's the edge I need. I still have designs on this place, but I'm a dunce, and confused. Consider that last comma. I think about it for the best part of an hour. What does a comma mean, what do you mean by a comma there, all the ten thousand things. And you're left with a note to see your adviser. You might be better suited to play rhythm guitar in a rock band. Stranger things have happened. Mound building is a way of altering the face of the earth, so that what we believe is made tangible. A major ephemeral event. Eventually everything slumps. Blame it on the Romans, or anyone with something to protect; personally,I choose Republicans, when I draw a line in the sand, an easy target. Nothing is not possible. You have to read along. I mean, if nothing is not possible, then what? Your sporting image selling golf-clubs, and shirts, with little stitched logos that must have meant something to someone. I don't buy the whole system. It doesn't work, you're running out of water. You flush toilets and refuse to compost everything you could. I lose patience. Read more...

Diverted

Didn't know how exhausted I was. Overtaken by a great inertia. I sit in the library at the museum and read, getting up only for coffee and the occasional cigaret out back. Finally clean up, shave, go do my laundry. Land taxes due tomorrow, and I'd forgotten, so rather than come back to town I'll stay one more night. I've got my ridge pack together, I'll start hauling supplies, prioritizing backpack loads for the next few days. I've missed my cookstove, I need to make a risotto. Get this next opening out of the way and I'll start taking off an hour early, use up some of my surplus time. Interesting that the extra day I work every week, when D's at Athens and he's only at the museum two days a week; the Saturdays, have been the absolute killer days, when we scrub the floor and move heavy things. Sundays, I'm wiped out. I generally just read, go for a walk, have the occasional mug of chicken broth, with a pat of butter and a shot of whiskey. I miss my reference library. I don't miss the ten thousand things that I needed to do. But I do miss the ridge in deep and profound ways; encased in ice, under a blanket of snow, woodpeckers drumming a garage beat, the driveway impassable. Life, in the slow lane. There was this Swedish dude at Janitor College, a sweet guy, he just wanted to be accepted, but he was dumber than a rock. The brunt of so many horrid jokes. Lars. He drank peppermint schnapps and smelled like a candy cane. Of course the gang went too far, they had left him tied with minor restraints in an ice cave, on a hill, just a few thousand feet high. They weren't expecting the storm of the century. No charges were ever pressed. Sue the Weather Channel, they did me wrong. He should have survived, but he, panic in the real world, in the midst of the real thing, stopped too long and froze to death. We see this, where temps dip to zero and hover there, your body is in survival mode. Plato is the least of your concerns. I don't mean that as either an argument or a statement, foundering here. What I say just reflects what I was thinking about. Not trying, or not trying to divert attention, I did notice you clung close to the lead sheathed pillars. Your fear of xrays is noted. Hey, I was you, I'd lie through my hat. You never met me before, I'm a cyber-link, kink, I don't have enough background info. Communicated by the fact that almost everyone lies. Truth becomes an issue. Listen, I'm willing to not talk about anything, talking about nothing is spare change for me. Nothing is a piece of cake. Careful with the handcuffs, my boss will be in touch with your boss soon enough. I'm just a janitor, I don't understand what you're talking about. Read more...

Selected Elements

Unpacking, bitching about the quantity of tape (by the end of today we'd filled a thirty gallon trash can with tape wads) until we finally get the last one unwrapped. Paintings everywhere. Grouped according to plan, in the six bays they'll occupy. Monster show. All we can handle plus maybe ten percent. Finish in time to roll around in chairs from the board room and look at the paintings closely. This is the point at which we become critics. We do have opinions and neither of us hold back. This would be a very good time to watch us, and listen to the patter. We're often quite funny. When Sara is here, she and Pegi often lean over the upstairs railing, offering comment and words of encouragement. No one bothers us when we're handling the art. Installing a big show like this is a piece of work. After a break we got the two huge crates in one of the panel closets, we'd set four panels for this show, and even so, the two barely fit. I'm not sure we'll ever get them out, D wedged them so tightly they were making ugly sounds. Took another 8 or 6 to the basement, the heaviest ones, where they're being stored, in the correct order for shipping back out. We're on top of this. Got my truck back, but I stay in town one more night, because I need to do laundry before I venture back to the ridge. Hike in with supplies, spend a couple of days in solitude, then hang a show. I love this part of it. Where I do the math and drill holes, set anchors, invent attachments, and focus intently on the job at hand. I can store the other shipping crates and boxes during the week. Move some things around. We're good to go on this, I was concerned about the mashed-potato croquettes, but Christy stepped in and I think we're good to go. I recommend a long hot soak. Relieve whatever that anxiety is. Not something you want to talk about. But a real thing, nonetheless. That butterfly in South America is looking better. Not believing anything, really, other than what was drawn on the cave walls. Elk cross when? Oh yeah, I can fit that into my schedule. Summers on the Seine. Read more...

Above Freezing

Dry hands, from the white cotton gloves, the endless washings, and splinters from crates that have been abused. Numberless venues. Working up to speed. Over-taped and under-manned. The Alice Show still sits, like a pregnant rabbit, in the middle of the floor. That rapscallion of a crate, over 300 pounds, that will surely have to be loaded by me and just the driver of a Fed-Ex art shipping truck. Push that thought away, I can always get a couple of guys from the bar next door. I lose track of time, it's already tomorrow, and I haven't slept well, another million dollars worth of paintings to uncrate. The Thomas Hart Benton, "Untitled, Landscape" looks like a cowboy, with his hat, looking down. Punch-drunk, rolling around in board-member chairs, D and I offer criticism to whomever will listen. Anthony is firing a kiln, I have to write; if you subscribe to String Theory, everything can happen at once, which it does. So the theory (a set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena) might or not be true, based on your definition of true. I have trouble with the word 'authentic'. Sometimes I have to just go to bed, stop thinking. A trick I learned from a Sufi master, was to lay on your back and count backwards from 10, only think about your breathing, concentrate on the in and out, the extraneous shit blows off in the first few breaths, and you're left with a void, the black hole of unconsciousness, and you can sleep. We've all failed, miserably, but we need to sleep and eat. My trick, for not killing myself, is to wonder what might happen tomorrow. Another million dollars worth of paintings, a few more paper cuts, maybe, if I get lucky, another splinter. I fester, therefore I live. Garcia, "Old And In The Way", you know that album? Bluegrass has never sounded so good. I'm so easily distracted. I was going to pee, today (yesterday), we'd just unwrapped a painting that was worth more than I'd earned in my life. The crate weighed maybe 200 pounds and the painting weighed maybe eight pounds. Just to give you an (the) idea. In some cases, I've seen this painting before. Full circle. My night course in art history is coming around. The hours I spend in the library. It's strange, actually, to hold a painting you've seen in a book. Imagine. You're standing there, using your drop-point Gerber (that Linda gave you) to free a painting from its wrappings. You know that it's worth more than your life. Take a bullet for the republican asshole you couldn't care less about. Art, you know, transcends mere political bullshit; taken with a good dose of that metallic taste of irony. And we have a show to hang. How do you feel about that?

Tom

Above Freezing. When I print, I don't get a title, so I'm going to start adding the title, as a postscript. More my concern than yours. I shouldn't have said anything. You'd probably know what I was doing. If I could write code I'd figure out a way to remind myself what I was remembering. I'm accused of being academic, but I'm not. Just a poor lost soul. I have to laugh, the parameters I set for myself. The janitor as night watchman surveys his domain. Read more...

Ongoing

Piddled, mostly, at the museum, dozens of small chores that needed doing. Mindless activities, for the most part. Moving something from one place to another, unclogging the toilet in the basement. Start getting the modernism show out of its crates tomorrow. Everyone that sees the glass show wonders how we could possibly have touched the pieces. Well, we have to, so get used to it. The paintings tomorrow, $50,000, $100,000 paintings. We have to get them out of the crates and standing up somewhere, so we can see them, so Sara can set the show, and then we hang them, in a suitable fashion, each one individually, in a manner that minimizes the chance that one would fall. Handling the art is very cool. A tightly considered interface. Intensely interesting short periods of time. I loved moving the large piece in the glass show, with D; the twisted, bent, glass rods seemed so delicate, but they're pyrex, for god's sake, borosilicate, a really strong glass. And in this form and configuration quite flexible. We spread our hands, carrying a piece of this show, to make as much surface contact as possible, and squeeze, and we slightly compress the piece, right where our hands are, and it's glass, and we expect it will explode. It doesn't, he's widely exhibited and there's nothing in the literature about Preparators bleeding out from glass-shard wounds. You have to handle the stuff, to display it. Worked in the basement most of the day because the office manager had to go in for some blood tests, and all she could talk about, at great length, was her body parts. I tend to suffer in silence, so I have nothing to say. Sort screws, start another list. Establish an event horizon. Anthony comes into the bar with the damsel duly saved. I had to grin, because I'd seen this coming. She's smart and attractive and not wearing any makeup. I like her right away. She volunteers to help me with the croquettes. I mean, come on, I need help with the croquettes. Not to misconstrue. Anthony is in my inner set, one of the two or three people I might talk about a certain thing with, and we're on the same wavelength, I would, therefore, have to meet her. She likes cooking in cast iron, which I do almost exclusively, my collection of cast iron cookware is extensive. A set of ramekins you might use, if you were setting something on the table. Tapioca, I think, fish-eyes and glue. Server went out at the end of the night and I'd couldn't SEND, lost a few sentences. An older couple came in the museum yesterday, from Charlottesville Virginia, had found us online and wanted to spend some time with the artifact collection. I talked with them, took them through the glass show. He also a builder, so common ground, and I tell them about working on Peter Jefferson's house. Tom's dad. Frank looked at me strangely and said he'd just finished spending a year working on James Madison's house, which Tom had designed. The windows didn't work well, never did, there's a note in Madison's hand, bitching about them. The windows were large with opening bottom sash and counter-weights. The Jeffersons owned an iron mongery, so the counter-weights were iron, and not heavy enough; Frank, using one of the iron ones, to make a mold (the chase was limited), then cast a new set (for twenty windows) in lead. I told him about threading the exposed iron bars, proto re-bar, and using them as foundation bolts on the Jefferson cistern. In situ, they were poking up out of the tops of the walls, and rather than cut them off, and sink new foundation bolts, I just used them. What are the odds that two people would meet, who, each, had worked on a house designed by Thomas Jefferson? Finger cuts, Jesus, you wouldn't believe the amount of tape used to wrap the Modernism Show. In one full, ball-busting day, we get half of it unwrapped, uncrated, unboxed, and we have filled a thirty gallon trash can with balls of tape. At one point, I take tape from D, as well as ripping off the half of the tape on my side of the padded table on which we unwrap, I had tape completely encasing my right arm, D laughing his outdoor laugh, as I ripped most off the hair from my arm. So, we're unpacking art; ripping off tape, thinking the next time we get a painting show of Christine's from Mary Gray, we'll send her a couple of rolls of the tape we prefer. When you're shipping art, the tape needs to be removable. I wrote an article, for The Janitor, "On Attachment", that addressed that issue. It's not good when you have to cut the tape free and underneath is a back of raw canvas. Sure is an interesting job. Never set down once today, except at lunch, steady unwrapping, until after 4, and we were both wasted, completely shot. D still had miles to drive, the stepchild, visitation, meeting half-way; but I'm footloose, before I sit down and address you, so I go to the pub for a pint. Anthony gets back from the workshop in Huntington, joins me, and we talk about relationships. Mostly, I observe, it's a habit, I notice as a matter of course. I still ljke semi-colons too. Which might be an indicator. Who knows, parsing. If we were going to talk about sexuality and the modern perception, I'm not your guy, am not, don't want to be. In the course of that sentence I understood something. Listen closely. I wouldn't trust him any further than I could throw him. There might be an embedded message. You have to, at least, open the envelopes. It could be a bill, but it's probably bullshit. File this as ongoing, if there's any interest. I delete almost everything. Two priests go into a bar. Read more...

Lovely Evening

A lovely evening. Light snow falling through the street lamps. An interesting and engaging day. The glass show is open and I'm the docent of record because no one else is here who knows more than me about these particular pieces. I have to say, I realized I tend to develop a monolog about a specific show. I docented a board member, and several other people through the show today. Julia asked me to docent the school kids she's bringing in on the 16th. I like doing this. Get some things done, and lunch with Anthony at the pub. He talks about a woman he's met, who is a friend of Seven, the wife in the couple that bought Sara's and Clay's house. We have a good chance to talk because he drives me out to get my mail, his Audi on ice as we approach the bottom of the hill. The weather is so different in town. I go back to the museum, mopping the floor under the glass show, slapping the mop into the pedestals to hear the harmonics where the glass vibrates. Do some other stuff, check a few things off the list, at the end of the day, I'm the only person there. Close up the museum, go to meet Anthony for a stout and an Irish, to pay for the gas he used transporting me. And them he stands me to a very expensive shot of Jameson Gold, which we decide is not as good as the Paddy we enjoy for three dollars a shot. A shot, with a Murphy's back, should last an hour. The Murphy's should last for two shots. Drunk is a relative term. Depends on what you need to do. A birdy, that alliteration. Writing to you is several things at once, fulfills a certain need, something to do, but also engages my thinking process, the part of me that I care the most about. The revealed persona. That's not what I mean, might be the exact opposite of what I mean. Writing is way of exploring that doesn't involve crampons and ice-axes. Fucking done with them, I don't need to suffer for anyone anymore. Anything. There are times I think myself an alliterative genius and other times I consider myself a dufus. And if I don't have any confidence, why would anyone else? Anthony bolts, because the damsel is drowning in the heated pool. Not quite drowning, where the fuck on the shore-front until they're both bleeding. I wanted to say, but I'm not comfortable saying anything, was that any really specific sequence of events might produce a certain event. I'd take your word for it. I was going to say I don't care; as I look at that, I realize it's not what you wanted to say. You, and those kids. Read more...

Truck Problems

Dave replaced the right front axle, which he said was shot. Driveway eats trucks. Thought he had the 4-wheel drive figured out, then backing it out of his garage so I could pick it up tomorrow, damn thing slipped out again. Not working. He wants to keep it a few more days. Got to get out and get my mail. Rains all day. Finish what books I have. Conversation with Mom. She's in good spirits and I can still make her laugh. Physical therapy for the ankle, and she has to stay there, so she and Dad are apart. A nightmare of driving for my sister. Rain changes over to snow while Anthony and I are having a drink at the pub. Lovely in the streetlights. A lot of water on the streets and very cold tonight. Just as glad not to be going out to get my truck tomorrow. Watch a National Geographic special, on hulu, about the storm of 1993. I was in Colorado at the time, and didn't keep up with the news. Almost finished painting the galleries, still have to touch-up the little one, where I took down The Memory Project. On my painting schedule, though, all the offices need attention. There was no elephant. I locked the doors and had everyone check under their chair. I missed a day, thinking about Mom and my truck. A Country Western song. Three coats and the entry wall is finally acceptable. I roll up the blue tape into a fairly tight wad, about the size of a baseball, and try to sink shots from one end of the main gallery to the other. I finally sank one, after eleven misses and a dramatic increase in the size of the trash can. Lunched alone and quickly. Then a strange scene. The main gallery lights were off, just the back hallway lit. I'd come in the back door and left it wedged open, staff, probably, going out for lunch, I thought. Dude follows me in, fit, middle-aged, white guy, brush-cut blond hair. He's holding a cellphone in one hand, and in the other is a very wicked looking knife. Assessing the situation, I had a great many thoughts very quickly. The knife is strange looking and doesn't look sharp. The guy doesn't seem like a killer. I don't seem worth killing, for the 5 dollars and 34 cents I have in my pocket. This is a museum, people bring things in all the time, for information, opinion, value. I think he's one of those, and I'm correct. He'd found this knife forty years before, as a kid, playing in a field, and he wondered what kind of knife it was. I tell him it's handmade, probably from the leaf-spring of an early car and the proof of that is the crudely hammered knob at the end of the handle that holds the equally crude leather rings, that form the handhold. What it looked like was a primitive rip-off of a WW1 bayonet. Not a useful knife for much of anything but killing. I don't particularly like knives, cringe at the thought of fighting with them, but I've carried one for fifty years and use it several times a day. A succession of knives, actually, because people take them, they disappear into worm-holes, I lost one, once, for two years, in a sofa. For years I carried a four-inch Buck Knife in a holster on my belt, it finally wore out the seat-covers in the big truck I drove when I was building houses. Someone took that. Went to a pocket knife, after that, a lovely small drop-point Gerber, with which I could skin a large animal in short order, carried it for more than a decade, but in the great robbery of '06 it was stolen. Linda got me my current Gerber, a larger drop-point, that clips to the inside of my pocket. Still, technically, a pocketknife. Knives wear out pants, paper covers stone, what I mean is that if you carry a pocket knife, you wear out the bottom of the pocket sooner; you wear a clip on the inside type, and you fray the fibers at the top of the pocket. You're destroying your pants. If you never had to carve a notch, your clothes would last longer. To a large extent, it depends on what you imagine. Deconstruct the most simple thing in your life, something completely mundane, see how quickly you're bogged down. I miss Arial 10, this fucking 7 on 6, or 6 on 5 they have me working in, not really acceptable. Something about the way she moved. Granted me some extra hours, when I would grab a magnifying glass and look at something closely, trying to determine if your point-size put you out-of-bounds. That's as asexual as my people getting in touch with your people. Sometimes I'm ashamed. The world is not my crossing. If we had argue, I'd say you were wrong. I've given up everything, to hold the high ground, I thought that was the point, Now, we're getitng somewhere, did you notice how thin everything had become. You and me and a very thin dough. I love history, don't get me wrong. Read more...

Migration

Follow the herds, there's always an animal that's weak or a single step slower. You work the edges, cut out the one you want, give chase. Working as a pack, you keep the pressure on. It may take a few days, but you run the prey to ground. Just a military brat, not a wolf, or anything exciting. A quiet kid. Quiet kids survive. You make a lot of noise and someone is going to shut you up. Like that. I only understand the circumstances of my birth in a vague way. My Dad was on leave, between tours of duty. If your parents are military, you move a lot, every two years, sometimes every year, and you never make friends. Not the way that people who stay in one place and gather knowledge do. What an awkward sentence. I wasn't trying for an awkward sentence. What I was saying must have been difficult to say. Thinking is difficult, you notice that? Remembering is a burden, the way the past is a heavy pack. Snowshoe into a tree-tip pit where you build a fire and heat some broth. No claim, no blanket, just a starry night and the wind from Calgary. They do wind well there, understanding every nuance of inconvenience. If it wasn't for the museum, I'd simply move on now. Attachment is a sticky issue. But I really like my job, handling art, mopping floors in a modified chevron, the fantail loop, sharing an Irish at the pub; I could give it up, but I don't want to. I'm comfortable enough here, I see my next meal, I'm tired of moving books from one place to another. Sing "Misty" for me. I could start one more new life, probably, maybe Arkansas. I'm only looking to fade into the ether. A blues note, John Lee Hooker, something about that voice. Talk therapy. Reading the new Annie Proulx. Her take on having a house built, dealing with access, and moving the books one last time. Must be a private super bowl party at the bar next door. People with cheese hats. I have to ask who's playing. They look at me as if I'm joking, these people in cheese hats. I walk over to Kroger and buy an old remaindered Brie, some olives, and celery, to scoop the warm cheese. Spend the super bowl reading about archival storage. I spend a useful hour in the Richard's gallery, where we installed Brent's The Matrix Series, in the dark, with a flashlight. An interesting installation of these pieces would be in a gallery where the walls were covered with black velour and the pedestals were black. Just light, and the pieces. The one or two nights a week that I have a drink with Anthony, we talk about installations, what we've liked, what we might do. A sense of collaboration that I seldom feel, but always enjoy when it happens. Building a house with someone, hiking several days in to a place with slot-canyons and alarming hieroglyphs on the rock walls, cooking with another person. We talk about pure space, empty space, ways it might be filled. Kindred spirits in the way we want to keep one foot grounded, either in the materials or the arrangement of the materials. Two shots of Irish, with a Murphy's back, and we're talking a patois that only, right then, the two of us understand. Private conversation. I spend most of my time alone, more than half, sometimes two-thirds, more than most people want, and seldom talk on the phone, so even the idea of collaboration doesn't occur to me. Writing is a solitary vice. But I can imagine doing an installation with Anthony, something off the wall that might actually be on the wall. Or maybe the floor. My good friend Roy, in Mississippi, talking about the dust that's raised when using a hoe to chop weeds, said that no one knew a place unless they'd eaten the dirt. Geophagy. Davenport mentions eating blue clay in South Carolina. I've eaten clay most places I've lived, it's like library paste with added grit. Who knows? Maybe it tells my body something. Like taking a teaspoon of local honey dissolved in an once of local cider vinegar. Good to able to talk the language, even if you dress incorrectly for whatever the event is. I've worked on this paragraph for twelve hours, and all I do is take words out. Eventually you'd end up with nothing. I'd like to write a few more sentences, so the paragraph would be a block, with a jagged right edge. I have to be careful, talking to myself, because then I try to make things happen. Create a square where a rectangle would do. Or even a single line. The opening of a poem, Emily run through Emerson, or better, through Thoreau, might comment on the color of the sky, or the last vestige of green:

My world is haloed now...

And then go on to talk about fireflies or northern lights or something. Natural discharges of extra energy lit from above. The sky is blue because it falls within a narrow band. We call it blue. It's a name, merely. I call it Cubist Gray, but that falls more toward green. Whatever color would cover your mistakes. Call it off-white, something off-white leaning toward warmer rather than cooler. Less blue, or, heaven forbid, more green. Why does that strike a chord? You brought me here. Answer for you own self. I'm perfectly happy with the gators and snakes, my pallet works anywhere, I unfold it and sleep the sleep of the innocent. A trick I learned. Don't trust me with a pack of cards. I can make an elephant disappear with a wave of my hand. Read more...

Tweaking

As expected. We look at the show, move some lights around, change to angle of presentation, move pedestals a few inches. The Brent Young crates go in first and must come out first, not a problem with our new and improved storage system. Two separate areas. That weekend reclaiming area from our personal Zuider Zee has served us well. Room for the Modernism show in front of the remaining pedestals. The pedestals won't be needed until after Modernism goes away. Uncrate that show next weekend. A fund-raiser for the Main Street program is a Chocolate Walk through town and we're on the list, so we end up previewing the show for a few people so I can start working on my docent rap about the glass. Six trips to the basement, to stash the crates, then I clean up, police the area. D and I watched, yesterday, as a large doe deer, appearing from the bank parking lot, smashed into the glass door of our accounting firm, two doors down. She bounced off, then charged again, broke through, cut her neck badly, cops finally had to shoot her. Took two shots, as they were, as the man who signs our checks said, god-damned idiots. I could have done a neater job with a ball-pean hammer. Greg, the signer of checks, asked me over this morning for a look around. You have no idea the havoc a dying deer can cause. Two floors, a dozen offices, common space, all spattered and smeared in blood, the floors, the walls, the windows. Bullet holes and a pile of gore where the cops put her down. Tax season, and all the desks, covered with papers, spattered in blood. A printer, sitting on the floor awaiting repair, is covered in brain matter. I take D with me to look at an apartment, but it isn't suitable, and too expensive. I may need to spend a couple more seasons on the ridge. Getting my house in order. I need about 42 feet, maybe a little more, maybe 50 feet, of floor to ceiling bookcases, so I need more walls and fewer windows. Winnowing is not an option because I've already done that. I attract printed matter like a paper magnet. The public library now has a couple of shelves of books for sale, rejects and duplicates, hard bound books are a buck. I buy one every time, because it's cheaper than a cup of coffee. And friends send me books and I buy them, and I get tons on inter-library loan, I need a shelf or two just for them. And periodicals, I swear I am the elephant's graveyard for those. Post-Consumer Trash. I've another midden in me, I'm just not sure where it'll be. One more pile of myself, oyster shells and the seeds of an early grain, traces of acorn flour everywhere. Parsing out meaning. Nothing I'd rather do. I live for the two or three, three or two, hours I might spend writing as few lines. The best for me, because it doesn't involve any compromise. I can't brook compromise, I get fucking defensive. I admit, I'm a work in progress. I don't think I've had a complete handle on anything. Second hand reports. I assumed we went further back than that. I was wrong. Learn to look at the expiration dates. I'd have someone on the staff check for tampering. Just saying. Read more...

Fog Tube

Like a worm hole., stretching along the river. I wanted to be in it, so I walked down. Tube fog is often very thick. I've done this a few times before, but this time I saw the fog, first, then wanted to be there. As opposed to discovering, on the occasion of coming to town, the phenomena. An almost gritty fog, laced with the smell of river, fuel oil and fish perfume. The best place to walk, because an average tube of fog only extends 20 feet or so over onto the bank, you need to be close to the river, is the large paved (bricks and concrete) boat launch cum port-of-call when the tourist stern-wheeler makes a stop. Walking downstream from the amphitheater to the ugly jetty, and back is a goodly hike before coffee. We uncrate the glass show and it is beautiful. It's incredible, the obsession necessary to make something like this. Large geometric forms, often inter-penetrating each other, formed in twisted glass rod. They're weird in other ways, they pick up vibrations and sing very soft harmonics. I immediately picture myself, dressed, as I always am, as a janitor, wearing the headlamp Howard sent me, crawling around the gallery, tapping the floor with a rubber hammer. The janitor can do this. Uncrating the glass show, the crates are half-inch OSB, oriented strand board, I got an oriented strand wedged deep under the nail of my left little finger. It broke off, I can't get to the rest of it, and it hurts. I disinfect it by soaking the digit in alcohol. Has to grow out, I guess, unless I drilled a hole and tried to get it out that way. Hit that finger with a hammer and lose the nail? There are options. We install the show, move things around, I have a feeling we're going to move things around again tomorrow. Par for the course, and great fun, actually, handling the work. The largest piece, did I say that these things are large? Seven of them almost over-fill the upstairs gallery. The lighting is key, lit correctly the pieces are electric. The largest piece we had to uncrate in the downstairs hallway to get it in the elevator. Barely fit. Not heavy, but very awkward, we have to assume the Sumo Pose and walk in short shuffling steps. I don't understand why the older guy has to walk backwards, would seem more a young man's game. John, the husband of the couple that own the pub, had asked if I'd drink with him. We're both drinking Murphy's stout and he stands us to a round of Paddys Irish, and the barkeep wants to drain a bottle of Jameson to get ready for the Friday night crowd. I buy a last round of Paddys, because it seems only right. I barely escape with my identity. Such as it is. Fucking scum-wad that dug post holes. We have our eye on him. He did that then. The various thats. If I follow myself closely, I lose tract, I forget where I was living. That particular night. Watch the way heat escapes, Im sure it was filmed. All I'm trying to do, as a favor to a friend, is to say whatever. Read more...

No Plans

One of the two walls is looking quite good, the other needs another coat. The crew at the pub wants the next batch of mashed potato croquettes. Set the glass show tomorrow. I guess that is a plan. Get D to drive me to the library and liquor store. Need to get over to the University, where Anthony has installed some of his work in the faculty art show. Too much on my mind, not functioning up to speed. Put off calling Mom for a day, so I could get my act together. Have to back my sister on changes that need made. They can't live in their house anymore. Wheelchairs and walkers. The good news is everyone is still alive and lucid. Crack of dawn, I suited up and walked below the floodwall, the Ohio in mist, a vapor of still escaping heat. One carp rolling, three geese on stop-over, a Kingfisher working that boundary where the Scioto inflows. I'm not happy with myself, responding to events, I've lost a step, and I hate that I'm slower, but I'm not as sure of my feet as I used to be, and I have to look, to see where the next foot falls. Fuck a bunch of aging, I don't care, but I'm aware of where the next foot falls. I ignore almost everything, really, I mean, almost everything is dross; why would you spend your time looking at that? I come up with some ideas, I'm both ahead of, and behind, any codification. In Cod We Trust. We have people doing coffee sleeves and bumper-stickers. What bothers me is someone who thinks they're unique, the way they parade. What I leaned, early to the cloth, was to just say nothing. Read more...

Selective Order

Toying with a concept, while I sand dry-wall compound from the ceiling. If you've never done it, don't. I have a long-sleeved ballistic cloth climbing shirt I wear to do this. Tape my wrists and wear a throw-away hat. The clean-up is awful. I get it looking OK, not great, but there's no light ever on the ceiling and it looks fine. Mopped the bathrooms with bleach water. Got the humidity in the main gallery up to 38% today, eight gallons of water in three humidifiers. Within the plus or minus equation. The equation itself, humidity and temperature in a gallery, is under much debate right now. I've read several articles in the last couple of months and the word is we're going to be allowed greater latitude. Everybody lied anyway, even with fairly decent systems, it's hard to avoid fluctuation. Everyone lies was a minor theme today. The little things, avoiding a conversation, ducking out of a situation where you felt uncomfortable. If we grant that it's all fiction anyway, then it really doesn't matter; a few white lies to avoid confrontation is an easy trade. Sometimes absolute honesty is a pain in the ass. Just say yes instead of no and spare yourself the argument. We use Gaylord as a supplier of archival supplies and we ordered the archival tissue, buffered, PH 8.5 - 9, and the archival box, ditto. I kept the catalog out because they supply many cool products. For instance: a Skeletal Remains Box. Who would have thought? It's the real deal. "Skeletal Remains Box --- coroplast, Keep human remains safe and organized. Translucent 3mil corrugated polypropylene. Nine piece box provides separate insert trays for skull, long bones, vertebrae, etc." Their catalog is a masterpiece of French Realism. It's possible that if I bought a bunch of these boxes, I could become a serial killer, and store my victims away, in boxes. Just because the boxes are available. Packaging becomes motivation. I'd kill for a spot on your box. Cheerios. It's hard to follow the thread sometimes, when it seems to wander astray. I don't know what I'm talking about, I can't imagine you'd understand. Pro-Times-Equals whatever you were thinking next. Avoiding the truth, it's a hard nut. I'd rather be almost anywhere. The classic bystander, I do nothing, mostly. Separate time into discrete units. That gator infested, snake ingested world. A nun and a priest go into a bar. Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. My mother's mother was a Holy Roller. Penitent, (penny royal, penmanship), speaking in tongues. I love that word, glossolalia. If I were going to fault Mom for a single thing, and I don't, it would be for placing me in the position of watching those people foam at the mouth and roll in the aisles without any warning. She assumed I'd make sense of it. And I did, sort of. Such as sense is. To accept as literal what is before your eyes. These very bricks, stacked just so, would make a wall. Reality, what we see, coalesces from the fog of memory. Trust me, I've been down this crooked road before. That house, on the right, used to be white. You see what I mean. The way things change.

Tom

You and me.
Nothing, then
maybe something.

Harvey's kit, whenever I draw on the minimal, I think of Harvey's kit. The least you could live with. A paisley scarf. A sweatshirt you might not wear, a tug and four barges going upstream. Read more...