Some Transactions

I looked into someone's eyes tonight, it doesn't happen that often for me, the lady swing dancer (number one in the world, I swear to god) and the opening was winding down, everyone leaving, and I docented her and her partner, Dan, through the glass show, and Brent was suddenly at my elbow and I wanted to talk with his wife, Marty, about quilts; so I foisted Brent off on the woman dancer, Mike. She saw what was going on, that we'd be able to talk later, and we never exchanged a word. Later, when we had a few minutes, we talked about line and form, wow, I thought, cool, it's possible to have a conversation. And I looked at her fully frontally straight in the eyes for the first time, and it knocked me out. I felt we'd already spent countless hours together. Talking about mundane things as if they mattered. Let's see, where do we start? We opened the show, the croquettes were a favorite, feel I strike a blow here for collective bargining. Then this lady looks at me and I totally dissolve. Major melt-down. I'm just saying there might be a connection. I parse things way too closely. Almost everything is more or less a fiction. You and me, certainly we never met, the history we create is. I never mean anything. I have to go to bed. Croquette commission is consuming my life. No way I could ever be on the Fenestration Council. I don't have the time. What you imagined, I have no idea, I was just mopping, cleaning the floor, I noticed in the sweep of the fantail loop, I'm nothing if not attentive. there was a kind of neglect. I can't say, really, I was occupied elsewhere. but there seemed to be something missing. When the janitor parties, no one pays him any mind. So it's later, Mike is looking at a particular piece and I come up behind her. I make a noise, to let her know I'm there, she turns and looks at me. Eye contact. I read too much into everything, but if words could speak. There was a kind of promise implied. Like something had been agreed to. Maybe a binding document. I wanted to leave, go someplace with her, hole-up in a tar-paper shack and watch the world go by. A common enough dream. Not realistic, but dreams seldom are. I dig graves, as a matter of course, but this woman's eyes were a transport of joy. I don't necessarily think that would lead somewhere, I have no expectations, really, all I want to do is go to sleep. Forget today and move onto tomorrow. The way I learned the drill. A cold shave with dawn breaking. The next day, today, felt like I'd been beaten by a small army. Exhausted, but wanting to get the food garbage out of the museum, meet D for the usual monster breakfast wrap, We discuss the planned assault on the basement where we plan to put up walls to separate the used from the unused space. It's ugly down there. Sara calls, to see how it went. Just fine, the right amount of food, music, and the swing dancers were good. A nice evening. Talking about his basement plans with the newest board member, at the end, I guess it was just D and Carma, me and Terry, was very casual. Brent and Marty were wonderful. He was an engineer, first time around, and we talked 'loading' as a component of his art. The piece has to stand, the weight has to be carried through to a suitable base. I have to be able to carry it. Something about my job description, Pegi said yesterday that next year's contract would include the phrase "And everything else." She was cool, all day Friday, changing clothes between one event and the other, work clothes in between, making 80 four-shrimp cocktails, arranged around a little cup of cocktail sauce. Anthony recommended we reconvene the Committee once a week, to fry something. We want to try a sweet potato version, with nutmeg. I mentioned to Anthony that we might consider opening a croquette wagon in Columbus. Get a license and make it legal. Designer Croquettes, we also bronze shoes and walk dogs, did I mention the other services? Need a new identity? We can make you come from anywhere, give you deep history; we have people working in the vaults, in the salt domes, in Utah. Fun is fun. Anthony left early, to take a load of his stuff back to Cincy. One truck load of possessions to carry him through the year, there, in Pennsylvania. I don't have to be there. I can be almost anywhere else. No, What I meant was the circumstance allows a certain leave-way. Slop, as we say in the trades. Nothing is ever perfect, but a lot of things are good enough. Code is good enough, but I always work above code. My nature. Soon, we'll be having mushrooms on toast points. I hate to even admit how many morels I'll find and eat. But they'll number in the dozens and even into the hundreds. I have maps, and I can smell them, when they burst through the litter.