No Way

Leon playing with Elton John, singing a song for you. Creative artists do what they do for attention, even poets are just looking for a port in a storm. Life is one long emergency. When I woke up this morning, realized I had tweaked my back, sprain or strain or something. Odd that Kim, in Tallahassee, did his at the same time. This is an injury workers know about. I don't even have aspirin at the house, so I quick shave and head to the museum, where everybody has pain-killers. Anxious to get started packing up the Midwestern show. Serious business, so I take the time to set myself up with what I need. A roll of bubble-wrap, several rolls of clear packing tape, a six-foot table covered with a thick packing blanket, a trash can, a clean pair of white cotton gloves. I work slowly, alone, being careful, mindful and mindless. Sara calls and we talk about the next show, and she says I'm been wirting well, and I thought I had been, call and responding with Glenn. She thought a film about docenting was a great idea. She said that the character modeled on me in Liza's film "Refuge" had a hot scene with Linda Cardanelli, and I had to think about that. The day flew by, as they do, when you focus intensely. Met Anthony for a pint at the pub, drove slowly home, picking poke in several different spots. Just the young shoots, not yet unfurled, and I treat them like spinach. Chop and cook them in butter with a goodly dash of balsamic. Then scramble them in eggs, with what are probably the last of the morels. Very good. Linda said morels were fetching $60 a pound in the Twin Cities. I've eaten my weight in gold, not bad for a loser on the edge. I get 25% of the show wrapped, good enough, I think, because my schedule is loose right now; rare for me, that I have plenty of time. Which is a good thing, because the next show goes from 2 D to 3 D and everything changes. We go from flat on the walls to objects displayed on pedestals. The lights change, the floor becomes more important, everything covered with vitrines, and fingerprints become an issue. We can make this transition, but there are logistics involved. I don't really like being in charge, but I'll do whatever's necessary to make it look like someone else did whatever it was needed to be done. Though I take care of the floor. my ego is not invested. I actually wonder, fairly often, where the fuck my ego is hiding. Essentially, all I do is write you, and I'm fairly honest, when it comes to the particulars; I don't not say very much. Maybe a little wiggle room, but not much. I am sending a show to Madison, Wisconsin, packing it as we speak, but I might fictionalize some things, make up detail to suit me. I might. On the other hand I might not, because fact would be stranger than fiction. The limits of my imagination. Because we always want to control situations, we'd always like to be with someone just slightly more stupid than we are. So we didn't look so dumb. I'm ready to move into a cave, I hate all this bullshit, it's that mire I'd been warned against. Quicksand, sand-suck. Gerry Jeff Walker, the blues are such a relief. Read more...

Place Names

Sand Gap, Sandsuck Primitive Baptist Church, Dead Man Hollow, Whiskey Run, Murphy's Kill, Lucy's Crotch (I lived there once, a tight bend in a tidal inlet), Wood's Hole. Get the Raven map for your state and pore over it with a magnifying glass. Words signify. Naturally. Reading some off-prints D made for me, his current syllabus, I'm struck by the mortified language. I can usually figure out what's being said, but it's a pain in the ass, and I'm a good reader. I read a 20 page essay about paired vowels and I think about Melville. Linda mentions that morels are $60 a pound at the local whole foods store in the twin cities. Which makes me an extravagant eater, any way you slice them. Barnhart's son likes them better dried and reconstituted. I think the flavor is intensified that way, but I like the mouth-feel so much, when I just fry them in butter, serve them on toast. I'm old school, I guess, military without the bearing. I believe in discipline but I don't go to the gym, I find the driveway serves me well enough. One of those Sherpa guides has climbed Everest 13 times, twice in one season, you should talk to him about conditioning. I don't do mountains, but I understand the attraction. Every single place has a name, every serac and crevasse. Human nature, naming. You call a place something, because you need to refer to it. That place I spent the night, Low Gap Hollow, or any of a thousand other places, each with a name. Sandsuck. You could call places 1, 2, or 3; A, B, or C, but it helps the memory to give them a name, anything, really. That-Place-Where-The-Muck-Was-Very-Thick, tadpole puddle, a particular rock that you always stepped on with your right foot. It just took me two hours to start this paragraph for tomorrow. Even time is a relative thing. Depends on how fast you're going. I tangle with meaning on a daily basis, it's part of what I do, teasing meaning out of almost nothing. Had to put a bowl of ice next to the computer and blow a fan on it last night, so today I re-installed the window air conditioner. Heavy old bastard, nearly threw my back out getting it in. Computer is happier though, and I'll be able to get the house a little more comfortable in the evening. Slept fitfully last night, sweating under a ceiling fan, finally got up around three to start this post, went back to sleep on the sofa. After I got the air conditioner installed I collapsed on the sofa again, read in Thoreau's journals, maybe dozed for a few minutes. White noise. Between the computer, the air conditioner, and the fridge, there is no outside world. I'd forgotten. I've ever only had air conditioning for a very few years., The last two years in Missip, when Marilyn was pregnant and Sami was an infant; then last year, and now this year here, when D got tired of my bitching and finally brought over this monster old unit and installed it. When I turned it on today, the thermostat read 96 and now it reads 84, I'm more comfortable and the computer is quieter. But I'm severed from outside sound. I don't like that feeling, which is why I only ran the damned thing 13 times last summer. I hate being cut off from the outside world. The natural world, I mean, the outside world is an other thing. Bugs, birds, and frogs; small mammals moving in the underbrush; the world I know is tied to hearing certain things. The soundtrack, right. We should talk about the smell-track later. I have a theory. Of course I have a theory. Read more...

Post Anything

Talk about not knowing what anything means. Goddamn logistics, when something is supposed to be. Post is what I do when I write, also a stick, upright, or a place you need to be. At your post. Also the mail, what you might do with a note. And after, of course, as in post accident, or post divorce, or whatever. I won't even mention fence posts. Got me thinking about some post modern projects I'd heard about, involving lard and charcoal. Handling art, you form opinions, it can't be helped. You become a post-modern critic, looking back at the modern. Consider Gaudy, or those Swedish guys. Several things occur to me, some of them relevant. Using the word "post", right there, was a joke; the playful word-shit I do as a matter of course. Doesn't mean our girls won't be happy. If I understand post-structuralism, I can leave almost everything out. 3:12 in the morning, I'm feeding dog food to a pair of courting coons. Haven't slept in forever. Too many things to think about. Post Impressionist Midwestern show coming down. I don't deal with politics, that's someone else's turf. When I'm depressed I mop. I don't think when I mop, I just sling back and forth. Mindless pleasures. You and me and the horse you rode in on. Doing an imitation of Skip Fox doing an imitation of John Wayne getting off his mount and walking around to the front, mumbling "the only thing wrong with loving a horse, is you have to get off to kiss her." I aspire to nothing, but I can't help noticing things, the definition of your legs, as you walk away. Was there something you wanted to say? Post-partum. The post-prandial cigaret I'm having now. Dinner was a piece of cod I more or less poached and spread with a very garlicy mayonnaise, two ears of sweet corn I cut off the cob and fried, in the southern fashion, and a piece of that wonderful bread from Cincy. The ways of the world are delitescent, my mopping mentor was fond of saying. Glenn and Linda can see the modernism show in Wisconsin. If I visited them, I could see the show in another venue, post de-installing it here. The word 'post' becomes merely a time marker, the period could as well be called Smelly or Green. So, yes, I do think naming is, in fact, the issue. Equerry is a lovely word, he would be the Queen's horse guy. Maybe I occasionally steer things in a certain direction. but usually I just go with the flow, it's easier, doesn't involve as much digging. At a certain age, you get tired of digging. Kim and I, and he'll be here next Monday, for dinner, are in that small circle of people who still dig, by hand. Anyone else hires someone, but the two of us, as if someone was paying, dig stumps and trenches. Bred in the bone. I tried to stop digging, but I couldn't, it'd become a habit. I often take a shovel as a walking stick, dig something just for the sake of digging. That bronze statue of Edgar's raven, with the marble base, deposited on a middle school in Baltimore, that was me. Just a joke. Post something, nouns are easy, we have more nouns than the French have words. Just saying. Statistics might lead you somewhere, but I'd be leery. I say this from the mainland, where my pram is securely affixed against the tide. Everyone else's tow-rope is tugged. I'm asleep by then, check the record. Read more...

The Next Post

Writing is hard. Nobody warned me. There should have been a flyer or something; guidelines, a rough outline, some indication scratched on the cell walls. Freedom, as Kris said and Janis covered, is just another word for nothing left to lose. Glenn brought up several points, as they might relate to the script. "Sense" is over-rated, consider, for instance, the relationship, getting ahead of myself here, between water and what is green. Leaves particularly. Aspiration, transpiration; roots, and more importantly, root-hairs. Think about it. In a perfect system, nothing escapes. In your typical old follow-spot most of the light is lost, bouncing around inside the can. They improved that, later, but early on, efficiency was a wet dream. The Egyptians had learned to cast glass, I suppose because of all that sand and maybe a lightning strike, so you have a lighthouse that is essentially a big lens with a candle. Still, better than nothing, when it comes to sand-bars or shoals. The ancient mariner. Sense is concretion of data, a conglomeration. As I warm to the subject, I accrete information, Emily, for instance, or later, Pound and Olson. You could go anywhere with this, gaff-rigged sails in the sunset, or a bank of slaves, rowing against the wind. It's getting light already, which means another day, and I'm not sure I'm ready. I have to pack up two million dollars worth of paintings to ship to Wisconsin. Sense is a relative term. What you might make of it. I could discuss this further, but the next question concerned modernism and hemlines and I do have some thoughts about that. The fuck-me-shoes and short skirt so tight she could only take half-steps. An obvious fake blond, like something you would fantasize, perfect make-up, but her hair was asunder, and that drew my attention. Maybe it's just me, but I always watch the way everyone walks. She walked in those half-steps on six-inch heels. Coming out of the bank. Stopped in the parking lot and lit a cigaret. D said she looked like a blow-up sex doll, I countered that she smoked. She looked post-modern to me. D called, he forgotten his keys and needed me to come in and open the museum. My intention was to sleep for a few hours and eat a hearty breakfast, but I zip into town, meet him at Market Street Cafe and we go to work. He has a few things to design and needs to assemble the spring newsletter, I start hauling crates from the basement. My only plan, for the day, was to do what I needed to do, and get back to you. Stopped at the liquor store and library, then Kroger for a few supplies. Didn't feel like cooking, so I bought some brats and potato salad, but mostly, in the store, I was looking at people from the waist down. Hem lines and open-toed shoes. A crude survey. I adjusted the brim of my Levi-Strauss hat (the name/logo only appears on the back strap, very subtle) so that I could only see people from the waist down. Way cool. I have to be careful to not get arrested. But the results, of this single study, which in no way constitutes the basis for any conclusion. Mere observation. Merely observation probably sounds better, but using mere, there, opens things a bit, and I prefer open systems. The grader ditch, for instance, listen, I could tell some stories. Ditches have been a big part of my life. I learned to swim in one. Saw my first dead body in one, a kid up the street, when we lived in Jacksonville the first time, I didn't know him, a dead kid up the street. And I have my own grader ditch, that must be maintained, even now. Things, sometimes, it seems, follow you around. I don't think of myself as a ditch person, but I need to dig another one. Maybe my last ditch, but probably not. Once a ditch-digger. I'd always imagined I'd end my career, sweeping chevrons across the floor, I just didn't know where that would happen. Doesn't matter. My major was Mopping. I wrote a paper that's still quoted; won the highest awards, who needs another bronze mop-bucket? I knew the head janitor at the Met, we talked about movements, discussed modernism, as it was just a movement away from strict representation. Think about it. What was going on. Not so much me, as the thing itself. Whatever that was. Read more...

Inchoate

The music guy reads me to his mom, which is the highest form of flattery. She liked the last post, which says something. In a lull between very strong storm cells. Tornado watch. The weather is increasingly violent. I'm considering a cave. I lose power, of course, and walk around the house wearing the LED headlamp McCord sent. Great for reading at 3 AM when Adams County Rural Electric has taken a hit and the thunder is loud enough to wake the dead. Another night in the country. Nothing means much when you can't sleep because the natural world has so much to say. I try to apply my ground rule: when thunder and lightning happen at the same time, get under a desk, assume the fetal position, and pray, if there's anything you believe in. It's kind of fun, in a slumber party way; you, two friends, and a bottle of vodka. I don't know why I said that, I don't drink vodka. I have, before, but we don't need to go there. Fucking Russians. One of the high points of Neil's visit, it was raining hard, and I had put a five-gallon pickle barrel out on the back deck to collect rain water, we needed hot water to wash dishes or something, and were in the middle of a conversation about Caxton and Shakespeare codifying the language. I'd put my 3 gallon stainless steel pot on the stove, we were talking, and without missing a beat, during a driving rain, I opened the back door, dumped the contents of the bucket into the pot, Neil was impressed with my water system. I was proud. Sometimes I just think I'm crazy. Raining hard now, like a mule on a flat rock, and I'm reading Roy Blount, Jr., with a headlamp. Circumstance is the mother of invention. Grace is how you pull it off. I have a drink and I have tobacco, I don't need much else, maybe some cheese and olives, honest bread, but really, nothing matters, other than intent. Lost a post last night. Stayed in town, awaiting a major severe storm; storm didn't happen, and I wrote, but in sending, forgetting I was on the Mac, I screwed up somehow. A modernist ramble that I picked up with D today, drinking coffee and eating scones. Talking about modernism in the theater, and the movement away from histrionic acting into a more naturalistic mode. Tennessee Williams, Brando, Eva Marie Saint. There were still histrionic actors around, especially in summer stock, when I started to work in theater, it was painful. I was already into Beckett and Ionesco by then. I needed to stay off my feet today, because of a badly infected tick bite in the arch of my right foot. I got the tick out, made the bite bleed and washed everything with alcohol, and it was fine, but a blister developed, because I kept rubbing the damned thing against any curb I could find. Finally had to puncture the blister, disinfect everything again, put on some ointment and a bandage. 2011 is officially the Year of the Tick. The Midwestern show closes tomorrow, so I'm going in to dig out all the packing material and crates, get ready to start de-installing on Tuesday. I have plenty of time, so I can move slow and careful. An enjoyable activity. No one will mess with me, and Pegi even offered some help, but I don't need it and would rather work alone. K has a funny music box, maybe I can play the Cello Suites. When I think about Casals finding that copy of Bach's wife's copy, in a music store in Spain, my heart gives a little flutter; something, again, about the modern. Bach, I think, would be pleased with Casals, excited by Rostopovich, and completely apeshit about Edgar Meyer. End Corruption, I say, like my favorite road sign, which always sounds like a protest, End Road Work, or at least give me more opportunities to participate. I need to go to the hardware store tomorrow, buy a couple of cheap things. I need to repair some tables. Life goes on. I'm sorry I don't make more sense. Read more...

Late, Again

Scratching at the door. No choice but to get up, see what it is. It's a coon, looking rabid, but I don't feel like killing anything, at this hour, so I Mace the bastard and that does the trick. Angry red eyes, and it scampers off into the woods. Protecting my turf. But I had to come to full consciousness, to dig the Mace from my backpack and actually hit a living creature in the face, which leaves me awake, so I get a drink and roll a smoke. 2:22 in the morning and the dark is absolute. Burned myself on the bulb of an old follow-spot Pegi bought on ebay, that tender area in the palm of a hand. This older generation of spot-lights burn very hot indeed, I'd forgotten. I rub the wound with arnica and that seems to help; maybe, as K said, it's just the rubbing, but whatever. Relief. Mostly what we're looking for, right? Just a quality of mercy. Stay ahead of your habits. I turn on just enough light to read and Kant is an obvious choice. Morals. Soon, I'm looking for Wittgenstein with a flashlight. Thank god there's no record of this. Oh, but there is, because I just mentioned it. It's late, what can I say? I'm confused by the bugs and birds. Confused by the information on labels. Confused by the mixed signals we send in our desperation. Not to put too fine a point. I'd rather just go back to sleep, but sleep is denied me. I end up in what I think of as the French Delirium. Questioning everything, there is no firm ground, whatever thought is suspect. I'm not really suicidal, but walking edges certainly brings that into play. There are certain books that I advise you don't read. Certain books that weren't included in the bible in the first place. Judith, for instance, don't read that. Another thing not to read is the Gospel of Thomas. Dude was out there. I specialize in forbidden text. It's an interest of mine. I recommend everything not included. For instance, if something is glossed over, I'd try to see the thing itself. What was meant. Just a habit. I did fall back asleep, for a few hours. Early enough that I can stop at the lake and feed a tray of museum bread to the ducks and geese. They like me. At work, I finish cleaning from the wedding reception, then attack the task at hand: rebuilding the follow-spot Pegi bought online. There are some problems and I need to do some research. It's a Capital 901, made in the early sixties, the company went out of business in the late sixties. Bulbs are still available, and that's a good thing. The mechanics for shutter and iris just need cleaning and lubricating. There are three lenses, one is missing and another is cracked. But lenses, such as these, are interchangeable, as long as I can find the right size, and in the case of one of them, the right focal length. To find the focal length, I take out the other lens, go outside during a brief sunny spell, put a sheet of white paper down on the sidewalk and focus the sunlight through the lens until I get the smallest clear circle of light. This is crude, but close enough. I'm sure there's a mathematical formula but it probably involves calculus. It's difficult to measure the width of something that's convex on both sides. I don't have calipers, so I end up hollowing a piece of foam and making pencil marks. I do this six or eight times, until the numbers agree. The edge thickness is important, because the retaining ring is only adjustable within certain margins. Though I could fudge that with any heat-proof material. Early follow spots got very hot, thus the cracked lens; all of them after 1970 had cooling fans. I read an interesting piece about the development of lighthouses and the light-gathering lens. Casting glass. Heating and cooling of glass. By the end of the day I'm anxious to build a telescope. The bulb had been forced into the socket, which leads me to believe it's either not exactly the correct bulb or that someplace along the line, in the manufacturing process, the original dies had wallowed a bit. I might or not be able to fix that. Might need a new socket from an older model. The weird thing is, that somewhere there is a graveyard of old follow-spots, and if I just knew where that was, all my questions would be answered. All my questions that concerned follow-spots. I have other questions, during the day, that are in no way germane. A simple beast, really, I'm glad I had the opportunity to take one apart. Follow-spots are remarkably like lighthouses, but more directional, add a gimbal and you're home free. I've operated follow-spots, and I always tacked on a sight, that allowed me to nail a target. Most operators do. You don't want to come up a few feet off center. Bad form. You want to nail, whoever it is, doing whatever they do, dead center. Then the show is seamless. The paradox of backstage work is that the better you are, the more invisible you are. In a perfect performance, you aren't noticed at all. Read more...

Dire Warning

I go ahead and take the truck down, severe weather later and I need to get to town tomorrow. Take the long-handled shovel with me, and on the walk back up make some slight adjustments in the grader ditch. Not that I can control the flow of water, but I can at least indicate my preference. Because of the camber the ditch is actually more open to suggestion. The catchment at the top culvert has self-cleaned, and I judge the system to be just fine against anything but an extreme weather event. All day Sunday the power kept cutting out, then the phone was out (for 15 hours) but, still most of the extreme weather missed, then last night, all hell broke loose: rolling thunder, close lightning strikes, hail, then hard rain, and inch in an hour. I got up and harvested some rain. Walked down this morning in that clean ozone haze. Napp, at the spillway, running hard, smashing into the curb at the bottom. I'm early, so I stop and walk over; the sound and vibration rattle my teeth. Nice drive in, the smells are peaking, a kind of minty green thing, with overtones of new asphalt. Blackberry petals blowing everywhere, as the fruit sets. This could be a big blackberry year. Stop for my coffee and scone and flirt with the girls at Market Street. At the museum it looks like a young war happened over the weekend. Really a mess. When Pegi gets in she calls Leo to help me. He's 20, strong, and works hard. Before he gets there, I spend an hour on the garbage. A full meal served, so lots of food trash, and the cans are overloaded, I have to separate out things, in order to even be able to lift the bags. Unbelievable amounts of trash, six 55 gallon bags. And the floor, I can barely express my anguish. Part of the decoration was silk rose petals on all the tables, and, of course, they were all on the floor. We had to put away 100 chairs and thirty tables before we could even address that. Silk rose petals are a lot like feathers, from the janitor's point of view. In that class of things that are so light, that when you sweep them, they become airborne, and fly across the broom. Makes sweeping difficult. And it was a non-liquor, Candy Wedding. I mention that because I didn't know they existed; where everyone drinks soda and eats candy. There were cute little bags, so people could take candy home. So there's a lot of candy on the floor too. I scrape it out of the grout joints with my pocketknife and Leo sweeps it into piles. He swears he knows how to mop and I entrust that task to him. Understand that I almost never let anyone else mop my floors, but I had some other things to do. He mops barefoot, which is a nice touch, but his stroke is a bit jerky, and I don't have time for the Grace Lecture. Point is, we get it done. Sometimes, that's all that matters. I have to warn myself again, where we are, exactly. Striking one show and setting up another. A matter of course. Billy, at the pub, thought the ribs were very good, but was curious about the sauce. What can I say, the sauce may well live beyond me, a life of its own. I tap on the keyboard, as if I might be saying something, but it's nothing, really. A fucking Whip-O-Will, late at night. Read more...

Nothing Much

Neil and I were talking, nothing important, cell phones or something, the way anyone, at any given time, communicated. We both used to write letters, for god's sake, in response to letters received. A matter of course. Now you just text the person standing next to you, it's easier than actually talking. Everything confuses me, I can no longer answer the phone, I have trouble with simple electrical appliances, I can't walk and chew gum at the same time. English as a first language is hard enough. Throw me a Spanish curve or a French tickler and I'm out of the game. Like I never understood the rules. They can do that? Play with your head, never offer any explanation? I thought they had to stay behind the line. Games are not real life. I thought we knew that. Nothing, it seems, really matters. I argue we could discuss it, all the live long day, and nothing, still, would be there. You could argue I'm missing the point. Probably be correct, but I see what I see. I'm on my way to bed and something stands out, a clear and obvious something, maybe just something I imagine, but something. The answer is embedded in the question. This morning, over coffee, Neil said he'd not had such a long convoluted conversation in years as the one we had last night. We both slept in, because of the lovely rain. It stopped and dried out enough for him to leave before lunch. My reading ranges over the rest of the day, pursuing modernism. Vienna produced two of the most powerful modern movements: psychoanalysis and atonal music. Zoned out, staring at the walls of green, after all this rain, I exercise the power to stop thinking, take an early drink out on the back porch, roll a cig, close my eyes, enjoy the warm breeze. Summer mufti, light-weight cotton pants, barefoot, a sleeveless and neckless tee-shirt. Then another round of Venn Diagrams, the topology of closed spaces. An hour considering the calculus of sentences. A short walk, though I know I will suffer an attack of ticks, and find enough morels to take me into the noumenal realm. Picasso implied, talking about Cezanne, that the essence of modernism lies in its break with nature. I have to think about that for a while, considering translation. There's a concentrated unity, that ignores an absolute depiction of the natural world, I think is what he was saying. Neil is more into Emerson, as I am into Thoreau. Of course. Read some Kafka, in the interest of modernism, and his "baffled transcendence". I never read Kafka late at night, nor most of the French philosophers. Three of Wittgenstein's brothers committed suicide. The huge change, I noticed reading him today, is the shift from formal language (written in the trenches, "Tractatus") to ordinary language in everything else he wrote. Severe clear, before the next rains, tonight, and the soft leaves are dancing in the wind. Dapples the light and confuses my line of thought. It's beautiful. Illuminates hidden corners, and the edges are fractal, Brownian, the way they blur. Something I might make up, if I invented events. Collateral damage. Read more...

Standing Aside

What something meant to you is not the same as what it meant to me. Reality differs from perspective. OK, I get that. Neil got to the museum in time for a quick tour, then we headed home in tandem, he in the rental car from the airport. I started cooking, a kind of ratatouille without eggplant, mashed potatoes, pork medallions with horseradish jam. K joined us for dinner, then talked with Neil for a while, she borrowed a flashlight and left a couple of hours later. Slept in, then fixed fried potato patties with fried eggs for breakfast, then back to the museum so Neil could talk with D about the proposed thesis. Stopped at the liquor store, then Kroger, him buying, slow drive home pointing out the highlights. Wedding reception mystery: in what universe is a bunch of white plastic tablecloths hung on a string a better backdrop than good paintings? Go figure. I mean, why would you rent an art museum for a reception if you're going to cover the fucking paintings? While Neil was checking his email I looked through a catalog of new shows available for touring. Expensive stuff, but a lovely show based on the work of Piranesi, the prisons, of course, but also some 3 D pieces generated by a new method of scanning that D and I have been following. Even the prison images, which are 2 D, are presented in a video that layers the depth-of-field. Incredible. Neil said that part of the Tom Experience was to rent a 4-wheel-drive vehicle and actually drive up the driveway. He's napping now, before I start the hours long process of fixing baby-back ribs. I rub them with a mixture of chilies and various other things, essentially everything I can find that doesn't go in a pie, let them sit for a while, then sear them, then wrap them in several layers of foil and cook them for two hours, spinning them around every fifteen minutes, undo the top of the foil and pour the liquid into The Sauce, and let them sit for 15 minutes. I don't sauce them directly anymore, but serve it on the side. Serving them tonight with coleslaw and baked sweet potatoes. Doing two slabs, so we can eat them again tomorrow. These are about as good as any item of food I've ever eaten. I'll do them again, when Sara and Clay get back from Hilton Head, on the rooftop of Terry's apartments, for select members of the Board and special invited guests. I like cooking them for people that have never had ribs before, watching them adjust to eating with their hands, but I love cooking them for people who know ribs and then consider me some kind of genius. It isn't really difficult, it just takes time. The iconic meals all take time. Consider brisket, which on the fast track takes 12 hours, or a really good pot roast, which I can manage in 4, and in both of those cases I'd feel slightly rushed. B and I, back when we cooked together, once did an 8 pound leg of lamb, brushed with blackberry juice and rubbed with chilies, cooked away from the heat, smoked, really, for 5 hours, that melted in your mouth. We passed the bone around, for gnawing. I have to go, make the slaw, so it can mellow, and mix a rub. Just thought I'd keep you up to speed. Read more...

Toxic Dose

I'm real careful. when I taste toxic shit. Maybe it doesn't seem that I'm careful, but I am. The barest tongue taste I take of something, and I have a great gag reflex, is not enough to kill a mouse. I might throw up, but, hey, someone has to try it. For years I wore a tee-shirt that said "I Survived Datura" and no one ever asked. I've been listening to African music, simple is probably better. To muddy the water even more, what do we really mean, when we use the word 'intimacy': a specific thing, or a vague concept we keep private? I'm not sure. I merely clamp the lid on any over-flow and divert the water. Not brain surgery. Moving rocks. IMF is not that far from IMD if you look at it closely. The blackberries are blooming, forget a bunch of nonsense. Museum Day yesterday, and as we didn't get everyone out and the place partially cleaned until well after eight, and I'd had a couple of drinks, I stayed in town. Too tired to write, on my feet for 11 hours. A very good day. Several hundred people, with just a lull in the middle of the afternoon. The music was varied, my favorite being a blues/jazz jam upstairs in the afternoon. I want them for an opening and Pegi agrees. Lots of kids, lots of people that had never been to the museum, lots of food. Spent today cleaning up, then getting out ALL the tables and chairs for a wedding reception on Saturday, tomorrow they decorate. K was like a zombie today, after what she had pulled-off yesterday, pretty goddamn impressive; and she had a class of kids to docent, then worked on an art project with them. I was sympathetic, but pretty well toast myself. Needless to say, I didn't clean the house for Neil's visit. A janitor never cleans his own house. Pegi got a Cirque kid to help me today, and it was a godsend. Nothing like a young strong buck, when the primary is dragging ass; but I couldn't freewheel in my mind the same way I do when I'm working alone, which is most of the time, and I missed it. Post Event Reflection. And the crew arrived to power-wash the back of the building, so there was loud noise almost all day, so I missed a chance to think about things in my usual manner. A real issue for me. I reflect more than most people watch TV; also, I went 24 hours without reading a book, which is tapping at my outer limit. It's hard to read a book a day if you miss one, but during the winter, a day off, I bank a few, by reading two, and occasionally three, in a 24 hour period. I can drive right in, when I get to the house, which I take advantage of; but then feel like an idiot, because I didn't ferry anything to the cupboard. I just wanted to get home. The overreaching part of my thought process. Home is where I disconnect from the world at large and just look at the green that encircles me. I don't have a cell phone and I don't have running water and I piss off the edge of the back porch. There's one patch where nothing will grow. No excuses. Piss is toxic, in large amounts, because of the nitrogen, too much of a good thing. The good news is that I can poison a patch now, that will later be extremely fertile. Tomatoes like hot ground, some peppers. I know way too much about dirt. One of the reasons moving to town seemed like a good idea. That I could leave dirt behind But I can't, I keep running my hands through the compost, admiring the soil I create. I don't care what anyone says, it's a little bit of heaven. Night soil and seven stars. Finally, a clear night. What passes for clear, here, what do they know? Nights in Utah I looked at ten million stars, and the sight, the vision of them, was staggering. Here, you get the occasional star, peeking around the edge of a cloud, and it's a big deal. Not a complaint, just an observation. When there sun came out today, both Pegi and I were speechless. Read more...

Finish Installing

Takes me most of the day, with various interruptions. IMD, International Museum Day, is tomorrow, events and activities all day, until seven at night. Logistical nightmare that K is mostly handling. Four musical events, artists in residence, docented tours, children's activities, food, beverages. I float free, at events, to put out small fires. Supposed to rain all day, so the museum will get trashed. The sculpture show looks great, impressive body of work, 21 pieces, 7 of them small, the other 14 all about two feet high, or long, depending on what the nude is doing. I made and installed labels, touched-up the peds, touched-up the walls, cleaned, took extraneous gear to the basement. Fortunately, Pegi got a couple of Cirque kids to help K with the set-up for tomorrow. I have a short punch-list for in the morning, then I'll spend the rest of the day attempting to ease transitions from one thing to another. K has done an extraordinary job, pulling this together. Ultimately, it's good to get new people into the museum, what we need to do, doesn't matter if it'smoa pain in the ass. We really need to increase the demographic. How, is the question. I have a small metal splinter, first finger, left hand, and I dig at it all afternoon, with my knife and with my teeth. Burrs, from dry-wall screws, which a lot of us use for everything anymore, have become the wood splinter of yore. They don't fester, because making them is a hot clean process, so you just have to find them. I employ a variety of techniques: magnification, focused light, prismatic experiments, the tip of my tongue. Gass says it takes four things to make a list. Reading and writing are linked modalities for me, given that, I can honestly say that I'll I've done, for years, is write. I install six or eight shows a year, but that's just reading. Really, most of the time, I have an active file and a few cryptic notes, the quanta, that wants to make itself known. Get that whole wave---discreet---particle thing out of the way. A flock of butterflies were killing themselves on anti-freeze, where a tree had fallen on the road; clearly someone had stopped, with a chainsaw, and opened a path. His radiator was leaking. You can figure this shit out, if you look at the sign. I bent down and tasted the fluid, I figured I needed to know, and it was sweet, in a salty way. Not unlike anchovies. Which I dearly love. Suddenly, the behavior of butterflies made sense. Life is a scree slope, you take a few steps forward, then slide back. Progress is a relative thing. Relationships are difficult. Read more...

After Consideration

It's not my imagination. Megan knows how hot she is, coming into the pub, to get her lunch 'to go', wearing a spotted leotard and ballet shoes. I mean, come on. When Hayden bats her eyes. These are young girls, but they use their bodies like weapons. I'm not immune, but I require conversation. I'd rather just rub someone's ankles and speculate. A habit I developed dating dancers. Not kinky, more like a physical therapist with time on his hands. Kohled eyes don't necessarily invite intimacy, though they surely lead you down that path. As signs are surely information, they are not really language. Indicators, maybe. Shane's work is very sensual, not too far afield to say sexual, the arching female form with proud pudenda. As per D's thesis, I could write a book about this, or make a book, with images, that seemed to make a kind of sense; whether or not it made any sense would probably be left up to you. The reader. I'm torn here, mostly, moistly, a reader myself, with a labile connection. I know someone is making a mistake. The tears are just an outward manifestation of something deeply felt. A particular scene in a movie. Whatever strums your heart-strings. I know I don't know what anyone else is thinking, everyone's mind is locked into a particular way of seeing; but there are actual things that happen, rolls of thunder, lightning flashes, blackberry blooms, that defy definition. The best you can do is not stumble on the obvious. I need to go to town tomorrow, start laying in supplies for a weekend house guest. Fell back asleep on the sofa, then woke to broken light. Hadn't rained for several hours, so I threw on some clothes, walked down the driveway and headed to town. Rain, forever, in the forecast, but I figure I can drive in and get the truck back down, if I make a fast trip. Stop at the lake and make a list, then mark the things that are heavy, shop like a madman, zip back to the ridge, drive up, unload, get the truck back down, just as the first drops fall. Starved, because I hadn't eaten yet today, settled on baked beans and fried eggs on toast, thinking I might get back outside and do some work, but it drizzles all day, and it's cold again. I retreat into fiction, as I often do, and stay there the rest of the day. I finally call Pegi, to tell her we need help for tomorrow, I need help, setting up for the event the next day, that I need to finish installing the show, and somebody needs to help K with the tables and chairs. I've got a list a mile long and I'll be cutting some corners, but Pegi assures me she has someone to help with the grunt work, I can finish installing the show, which is my job, preparator, after all. Read more...

Rainy Sunday

Needed the day off, so the rain was a pleasant patter on the roof. Of course I meant Tom Roth, as Aralee pointed out, and, oddly, "The Legend of 1900" is one of the few movies I've seen in forever, and I did like it, very much. Being amorous toward fence-posts involves knotholes, a phrase I first heard in Mississippi. Missed my grader ditch rendezvous with B because I got up early and wrote, then went back to sleep. Went down solo and dug for a while. The driveway is actually in good shape. Back home, when the daily rains started again, I finished the new Sandford novel, then read a long and difficult essay on Wittgenstein and James Joyce by Thomas Singer about the limits of language. By mid-afternoon I was hungry again, and wanted a big meal, so I caramelized and onion and red pepper, cut up a pound of asparagus, held out the tips to add at the last minute, made mashed potatoes, and seared several medallions of pork tenderloin. The horseradish jam was great on the meat. People send me interesting condiments. The menu for Neil's visit will depend on the weather, but I'll have some variation on this meal. It's so good, with a silky mouth-feel and wonderful lingering tastes. Read D's Thesis Proposal, which is to examine the idea of BOOK as both the container and the contained. I imagine some heated discussions, as I have strong notions about what constitutes a book, I'm made more of them, by hand, than anyone I know. I'm not offended by strange, but I am by meaningless. I need to derive something from a book, not just see it as an object. But I've been in the art business my entire life, and I'm willing to see something another way. You just have to convince me. When I first encountered book as object, 40 years ago, I was actually offended. Now I can look at one and not shudder, at least study the binding, act interested. And I've published my share of oddities. But I love reading actual books. Prone on the sofa, with an opened book on my chest, is one of my favorite positions. I walked in yesterday, then took a small walk today, in a lull, and when I stripped for the weekly bath, checking with a mirror, not a single tick. First time in weeks. I can't accomplish, in the next few days, what needs doing, so I'm going to have to call Pegi at home tomorrow, and tell her we need help. I never call her at home except to ask about the weather. I can finish installing the sculpture show, but I need all day Tuesday, and Tuesday is the day we need to set for Wednesday, which is an all day event. We need somebody to set up tables and chairs, I just don't have the time. The sculpture show is beautiful, and I want to spend some time on it. I want it to look right. We're a museum, correct? this is what we're supposed to do, display art. I bristle at anything that threatens that. Meeting Shane and Tami, yesterday and the day before, I showed them the Carter nudes, and she teaches drawing, and when I engaged Shane about how he physically created the pieces, his names for them, something went off in my brain, about naming, and how that tied into the whole conversation about what names were. You need to call something by name. It's like a rule or something. Maybe there's a pattern on the floor, or a game-board. A map you need to negotiate. I'm just saying, look around. Consider cave drawings.

Tom

Rainy Sunday, right?
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Fog at Dawn

Birds driving me crazy, but this early morning fog is lovely, rolling up out of the hollow. The red maple leaves are turned upside down, and that means more rain. Blackberries blooming. Cheese grits with an egg on top, then I carry my laundry down the hill, take the slow drive down the creek, looking for trillium. There are clumps of iris and daffodils where houses used to be. The creek itself is a lovely thing. I stop at the ford, drive through a couple of times to clean the wheel wells. Stop at Ronnie's and buy a dozen fresh eggs, $2. Stop again, at the place on Route 52 where the cleaned off the over-burden of dirt that kept slumping into the road, now a stair step of sandstone bedrock where I've found a great many fossils. Shane and Tami are bringing the rest of the sculpture show, but they're not expected until after 1 o'clock, so I have time. Bizarre experience at the laundromat, I'd washed my clothes, and went out to the truck, while they were drying, to smoke and read the book I'd brought along. A really wasted young prostitute tapped on the passenger window, then opened the door and asked if I had a smoke. I rolled her one, then she asked if I'd drive her over to the other housing project to get her kid. I said OK, and she yelled out the door for her mother, who was inside the convenience store next to the laundromat, to come on, she'd gotten a ride. So I drive the two of them maybe two miles, and the first thing the daughter says, in front of mom, is do I want to help a working girl earn some money. I say no, and she asks am I queer. Mom laughs. I tell her, no, I prefer fence-posts and geese. She looks at me uncertainly, and asks why. I told her I loved horses, but the problem was you had to get off to kiss them. She didn't understand a word I said. Got back to the museum in time to watch an episode of "Lie To Me" on Hulu, before lunch. Tim Robbins is a very good actor, I like his style. Speaking of which, Liza's new film, her first non-documentary, is playing at Cannes, which is very cool; she and the lead came out to my place, Linda Cardanelli, do I have that spelling correct? We talked for a couple of hours about Appalachia and life-styles. Evidently there's a character based on me in the movie. How weird is that? That I could be both a documentary and a fiction. I love it, of course, because it's germane to the whole conversation about the nature of reality. I seem to be an interesting character. I wonder why that is. What do most people think about? I don't know. Mostly I look at very small things and try and put them in a natural order, AND I'm rarely successful. Why would that be interesting? Liza's movie is called "Return" and I'd be interested in what anyone had to say. Talked with Justin today, about doing original material, he knows they need to do that. Everything sounds liked Marty Robbins. Doesn't matter, so much, what you hear, as that vibration in the inner ear. Nursery rhymes. Shane and Tami came back with the other pieces, from Columbus, for the sculpture show. Great people, wonderful work, and we pretty much set the show during the afternoon, but it strikes me, just before quitting time, that I can't get everything done in the time remaining. We light the show, last thing today, but I need to repaint the pedestals, and do the labels, get the signage, and clean the installation mess, all on Tuesday, plus, do the set-up for probably the largest museum event ever. It's too much, with D away at school and Sara gone, I'm carrying the museum on my back, and I can't do it. The most important thing, to me, is to get this show installed, which I can do, which is my job, a week ahead of the date set a year ago, if I didn't have major events breathing down my neck. There's a fucking Chopin competition in the theater tomorrow, the piano is tuned and I'd cleaned the space; but in the mean time, and this was not penciled in on the calendar, there were a group of kids watching a movie in the theater eating popcorn. I love my job, but I wonder, what is it that a museum does? I have a show to install and I'm picking up popcorn bits. I'm pissed, really, when I leave the museum on Saturday night, because nothing is working out. I'll make it happen, but I'm not happy. Fuck a bunch of happy. Do what you need to do. John Lennon at the end, asking for truth. I'd rather live in a cave and not talk to anyone ever, but I do need to earn a living. More rain, finally, on my hot metal roof, drowns out those goddamn birds.
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Morels

Several of you questioned whether or not there was a fungal metaphysics. I have to guess that these are people who have never had morels that had been cleaned, but not washed, cooked lovingly in too much butter, with just a pinch of salt and a goodly grind of black pepper, on sour dough toast. And Kant is perfect: Kant find them, Kant afford them, Kant stand mushrooms in any fashion. Found a couple of nice ones, walking in tonight. Probably could have driven in to the house, but more overnight rains forecast and I need to be at work tomorrow. Got the high school show uninstalled, then patched and repaired the walls, filled the holes, erased the pencil marks that are necessary to hang a painting, they're always hidden, so one typically erases them when a show comes down. Just had a strange experience. I'd poked around for a few minutes, in the woods where I found the mushrooms, thought nothing of it, came home, got a drink, fixed dinner. When I sat down to write, I knew there was a tick on my ass. I couldn't see it, because I'm not a contortionist, and it was in that difficult to see zone, at the bottom of the buttock. I could glimpse it, looking hard over my right shoulder, squeezing my excuse for an ass, tilting that section upward. Yes, it was a tick, and I had to get a mirror and the tweezers. Maybe everyone has done this, if there been anyone else around, even an enemy, I'd have to ask them to do it. It's bloody difficult to manipulate tweezers precisely, in a mirror image. A grisly accident, on my way home last night. At the embankment failure on route 52 a red Neon had hit the sluiced clay the road crew was creating, cleaning up the mess. I didn't mind the delay, rolled a smoke and got out my library book. They needed to clear one lane, because the traffic was really backed up, and the flat-bed wrecker was there, but the Neon was on its head. A fireman flashed the universal hand sign, "we need help here" and those of us first in line, got out of our vehicles, gathered around, and on the count of three, flipped the Neon over, so the tow truck could haul it away. I finally got home. There was blood everywhere and the windshield was smashed. I can only imagine. They flew her out directly, landed a copter in a bean field across the way, flew her to Columbus, where they have a hell of a teaching hospital and a great trauma unit. I'm just happy, to be on the team, that flips the Neon, so we can get stop-and-go traffic proceedings. In the open door, with my foot as a wedge. I warn you, I misconstrue almost everything, it's almost a habit. Something I could wear, an open collar, a tiny crucifix. Something you could lean toward, if you were so drawn. This point in the movie, you wonder where's the buttered popcorn, didn't someone get me a Coke. There is no philosophy, everything is a joke. Where, exactly, does that leave you. If everything is a joke. I only ask because I feel I must ask, given the circumstance, what, really, is in it for you? Black jack do it again. I certainly thought I was done with all that, not a gambling man. B came over and we talked about working on the driveway on Sunday. We have to talk about this, a shared interest. The last big rain washed all the fines down to the catchment for the top (most important) culvert. Have to dig out a few cubic yards of sand and gravel. Took in half the sculpture for the next show upstairs. Lovely pieces, figurative work in polished concrete over wire armatures; some of the concrete is stained, little
pieces of the armatures are exposed. They're mostly about two feet tall or long. The artist Shane Snider (web site) has a gallery in Columbus, he and the wife went up after the drop-off and are bringing those pieces back tomorrow. Install the show tomorrow afternoon, with him. Excellent. Oh, so I forgot to SEND last night, I must have been drinking. First hot spell so soon after the last cold spell. Spring was missing. A lot on my plate, be busy at the museum for the next couple of weeks. Neil visiting from New Jersey, one of the few friends to visit in every place I've lived. Well, he'd didn't come to Utah when I was living out of my truck. I think I published his first book 35, 36 years ago. Food and drink will flow. Conversation into the night. I hope Sara is here, I don't know when she and Clay are getting back. I had a tick embedded between two toes on my left foot, I got it out and cauterized the area, but it lead to me heating a kettle of water, soaking and cleaning my feet, rubbing with skin cream, trimming the nails. My feet have been bothering me of late, so battered, I don't know why, now, more than ever. I've broken at least five toes, one of them more than twice; and my feet look a lot like a picture I remember from a National Geographic, of a Nepalese Sherpa's feet. The first toe on my left foot has healed badly, I'd break it again, to straighten it out, but I couldn't stand the pain. And it's just a broken toe, not like I lost a limb or anything. A deformed minor body part. No one, really, needs notice. I have a correct sixth finger, a prosthetic, that I occasionally wear, to see if anyone notices. No one ever does. That indicates something. A broken toe, inside a sock, inside a shoe, is, really, not going to be noticed. I might walk a little funny, but not something you'd call the cops about. You might help me across the street, where the flow of traffic is unimpeded by street lights, might recommend I sit a spell on the park bench or a stump. You'd have been proud of me tonight. I sped, a little, saw the squall-line moving in, and I'd forgotten my umbrella, and I saw it was a close thing, getting back to house dry. Still no drops, and I posed, at the bottom of the hill, then raced up; was barely closing the door when the first waves of rain hit. I can't tell night from day. The wrong person to ask. Bring some black olives, I'm a cheap date. Read more...

Standing Wave

Rained between 3 and 6 inches last night, and the lake was already full, flowing over the spillway, so this morning it was a rampage. A napp of 10 or 12 inches, and where it was hitting the curb at the bottom of the downcurve. This structure certainly has a name. But the size and sound of this great foaming thing; thick, muddy, a frothing cataract. The ground was shaking. Edgar Meyer playing a extremely amplified bass. I'm early, so I spend some time there, watching and listening; all the wildlife is on the other end of the lake. Turkey Creek is in spate. Earlier, it was clear that Mackletree Creek had escaped its banks at some point. Even my seasonal rill was running a torrent. The grader ditch was a small river. I stopped and redirected a tiny oxbow. The main culvert is clogged with fines and needs attention. I attended to the physical plant today, part of my job description. Nothing of import, I enjoyed talking with Sharee, I sampled the finger food, ate a lot of olives; I'll have to clean up tomorrow, the kitchen will be a mess. Tomorrow begins a kind of a push, a show to take down, a show to install, a lot of other stuff going on, benefits, events. I just try and keep the restrooms stocked with toilet paper. I was cooking a great dinner when I realized it was getting late, and I lost interest in cooking, ate a peanut butter sandwich, fuck a bunch of caramelizing onions and red peppers, just as a base for cooking some asparagus, I had designs on this dish. I have a history. It's older than you, than that, goes all the way back, before the beginning, when we mostly protected our pile of offal which would smell bad and be kicked into a common grave if we weren't guarding it. I know you almost as well I know myself. My projected reader. I've done some background checks. I'm not who you think I am, this shit actually matters to me. His pause, at a pile of clothes, probably meant something, Think about that. A standing wall of water is a physical thing, any emotion you might imply is simply an implication. It's really just water, hitting an obstacle. Sometimes language falls apart. Nothing makes any sense. The "I" in any given sentence could be almost anyone. You or some third party, her or him. Undercover. Pakistan. Come on. What you think you know. Dams always affect the ecosystem. You have to deal with silt, it's a fact of life, the most pressing problems, the housing downturn. Flooded with this event. Concealed weapons. Hoisted on your own petard. Read more...

Flat Surfaces

A crude sense of order, essentially piles of books. This works fine, if you can remember the color of the dust jacket and the relative size. As an indication, I worked on that last paragraph for 12 hours. I spent some time outside, some time doing other things, cooking, eating, but it's not an exaggeration to say that from three this morning until three in the afternoon I was writing and tweaking a 500 word block of text. 42 lines in 10 point Arial, the lines wrapping as the program sees fit, is what I think of a standard block of text. I'm usually short, but occasionally go longer, so it averages out, more or less. I strive for 42 lines because it is a magic number, look to the history of books. All I did this weekend was write, I had designs on other things, but never got around to them. To build a house, you actually only spend 12 hours pounding nails; writing is like that. A few words at a time, building a story from the dust-bin, what you glean from the trash. I never thought of myself as a Russian novelist, but Neal is coming for a long weekend, called to verify that I was up to speed, and mentioned that the whole story was becoming complex, not unlike a Russian novel. A few million words of text, it's not that big a deal, like writing a couple of letters a night for twenty years. First thing you know it's a million words. Actually only a hundred or so words used many times, and the occasional ringer. But you see what I'm saying, the way the napp builds a force that can't be denied. They divert the Mississippi, through the various floodways, creating a lake that is square miles in area. We should talk about silt here, what is deposited. And pretend nothing has happened. Dirk blew the Lakers away, in four straight. It's that time of year. I never can follow the puck. Who blocked what with their body. I swear that was a foul. Too many steps or whatever. What used to be called traveling. No way I'd get between you and the basket. Knew something was wrong, screwed up again. I worked on yesterday's post most of the day, got the files confused and sent an early beginning. I'm always finding ways to lose pages. I did keep a hard copy. Outer edges define. Knew I'd worked hard on that paragraph, but when it bounced back to me, with a message on top, I understood what had happened. I hate retyping, but I like the piece, so I'm going to use it today, you'd never know if I didn't tell you. Reading Glass, "On Talking to Oneself" and considering the particular form my version of that takes. I'm always docenting, asking questions, offering answers, adding recently referenced information. I docent you through the graveyard, through the frogs in my puddle. Walking up the driveway I talk the theory of ditches. Looking for mushrooms, I consider the act of seeing. When I stumble on a hole in my knowledge, I make a note, look it up later, add it to the ramble. A fluid saunter. Extemporaneous. Explaining how to cook a meal on the woodstove, no recipe is ever very precise. One of these and one of those, chopped not too finely; start cooking over here, where it's much hotter, then move the skillet over there, away from the direct heat. Insert a brief history of cast iron cookware. Lament the cost of shallots. Remember another meal, cooked as a seduction in Utah. Probably mention ankles, I love them so. All the time adding things, stirring. And I stir oddly, so Alicia says; with my feet planted, and my stirring arm rigid, swaying my entire upper body. A habit I developed making risotto. I docent roadkill , too. Depending on my mood, this ranges from antic to deadly serious. If it's something I want to skin-out and keep, it gets technical, with mention of musk glands and why I always carry a drop-point knife. If it's just something dead, that I want to haul off the road, I tend toward the crass and callous, an off-color joke or a pun. The best writers I know all stop to haul dead animals off the road, I think it has to do with allowing dignity. Ten years, or so, ago, I was driving from Ohio to Colorado, to see the girls. Driving that big old GMC truck at the time, king-cab, and the bed filled with oddments, my toolkit of the time. Winter, cold, so smell wasn't a problem, as I harvested roadkill coons along the way, their coloring differed, and I wondered about that, and I was keeping them, in the bed of the truck, for study later. Each one had a label, twist-tied to the ankle, that identified the state of its demise. I'd stopped in Kansas, to look at that great spread of unplowed prairie. At that point I had 12 or 14 frozen coons in the back of the truck, some of them very large (I was only keeping perfect specimens, the rest I just opened up and hauled over to the shoulder) and I was the only vehicle pulled over, in the blowing snow, the only person, right then, looking at tall-grass, and a park ranger pulled in beside me. She was attractive, in that fit, outdoor way. And it was not an easy question to answer, and there really wasn't a short version. I asked her if there was a place we could get coffee, she lived nearby and we went to her place. Coffee led to going to the store and me cooking dinner. I'm the victim here, you realize. I'll probably do the dishes before I leave, tomorrow. We talked all night about form and color, she was several darker than me. I explained to her that I had access to an animal burying ground, on the back edge of a remote mesa, a veritable midden of dead sheep. They die so easily, and disposal is a problem. I knew I could dump the coon bodies there, and the hawks and ravens would clean up the mess. What happens is I start adding lines and changing punctuation. What I wanted to do was skin them out, check the thickness of fur, the color, before I drew any conclusion. She seemed to understand that. She had a tattoo, I remember that. Outer edges define, suddenly, you see something, a fractal image. You're frying an egg, and suddenly the edge is the entire known universe. I don't really have a problem with that. I have a small cast iron skillet I use for nothing other than frying eggs. I'm used to frying them perfectly. This skillet and I have an agreement: if I can open the egg, she can cook it. The way I feel about Linda, she's probably my best reader, my misguided self, the various obsessions, just talking, you know, to myself. Read more...

Whip-O-Wills

After 50 or 100 repetitions they fly either closer or farther away. Few things I hate in nature more than their insistent song. Raise the dead, I swear. Most of them, I miss completely, being a sound sleeper, but if I've just gone to bed or wake for some reason, and one is going off, I just get up and make a cup of coffee. Goat-suckers. They've ruined a night's sleep more than everything else combined. I turn on the radio, listen to Bela, three in the morning, a terrible sense of longing. This is when, if I didn't live alone, I'd burrow in, between armpit and breast, pretend there was no world outside my sense. What courtship ritual requires 117 perfect reproductions of the same sequence of sounds? It's sick. If I ever commit suicide, it will be because of a Whip-O-Will. One catches you at the wrong time and there is no recourse but a shotgun to the mouth. I'm upset, almost mad, that at the very moment I decide I'll finally sleep, a fucking bird is going for the record. Nothing for it but to get up, who could sleep through that? K D Laing, then a delta blues thing, Son House, I think, that almost slack guitar. Mississippi John Hurt. A song that spoke to loss. Being confused is oddly comforting. Noon prayer, gab-fest. Read more...

Slack Guitar

Night or day, doesn't seem to matter anymore. Short wave, I think it's Mali, I recognize that picking but I don't understand the language. Not that unusual for me. Post a note that Bela and Edgar play next week on Mountain Stage. Eight next Saturday, I need to remember. Listen for the mission bells, no, that won't work, the bells are just golden rings. Go away my lover. Great song. I have no idea who it is. Justin really has to start doing some original material. Ultimately, covers don't cut it.

She took my dog and caught a train going north,
like nothing corrosive had happened.
Nothing, really, except I held her
and licked that hollow where two bones meet.

A joint, a glass of wine, a screaming in the distance,
another novel event, like a wolf culling
the weakest link from a herd, nothing
unusual about that, happens every day.

Turn the radio off, listen to the wind,
try and understand what bares no meaning.
Marks on a page that might be words
or maybe a formula that produces bubbles.

Just rain on the metal roof, like
I said, you listen long enough, everything
sounds the same. Quatrains stretching
into the future, like a mad drummer.

There would need to be a refrain, something about her leaving, the dog, the train, I'll leave the actual music up to you since I don't play anything and have a deft ear. There should be several instrumental breaks. I imagine a waling string thing happening behind it all, maybe a cello. When the sun rises, through the fog, we see his reflection, distorted, in an eddy near the bank of a river. He appears thoughtful or maybe just stupid, his eyebrows arched as a question. Then a tow of barges, pushing upstream. Focus on the wake, as if it meant something. Very continental if you subscribe to anything regional. The mail must be delivered. He talks about what might have been. We get some of this on tape, but the battery is weak, or there's a bad connection, and the voices are distorted, what we hear are sounds like tree-frogs, almost just noise. But something. Sense is just beyond my reach.
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Something, Late

Two coons fighting over compost, one of them foaming at the mouth, rabid, surely, but not a threat to me, and I don't feel like killing something at this hour. Very still. The only sound is large drops of condensate falling from the trees. I'm in the clouds, at the very altitude where rain forms, this time, today. Site specific. Go back inside, for some clothes and proper shoes, get the headlamp McCord sent me, and look for mushrooms. The darkness is absolute but for the cone of light I cast, hunkered to my task. Life is what you make of it. I find enough morels for breakfast, and the first oyster mushrooms of the year. So beautiful, a hand-full of fungus that I'll fry up nicely in butter and serve myself on toast. Not a big deal, but the only deal that matters. I am become eccentric, I think, in the way I confront the world, but it's not an act, just my actual response, without mediation. Self-medication. While I brew the first double espresso of the day, I sip a shot of Knob Creek and roll a smoke. I'm killing myself, I realize, but a hundred years from now, everyone alive will be dead. It's a long way down. In the absolute darkness, walking old logging roads with a headlamp, I feel like I'm imposing myself on the landscape. This could be a good scene from the docent movie, I'm not sure how you'd shoot it, opens on almost complete blackness, then this shaft of light, clearly someone walking, exposing poplar trucks and blackberry canes, the focus narrows to a particular mushroom. Get Barnhart to do a cello piece here, something deep in longing. The voice-over is sad, recounting floods from the past, the various dead that speak from the past. As I love my brother, I love Maria more. Fucking angels are a pain in the ass. Maria is sugar cane. I could say something about loss. Answer if you can. I want someone to tell me, what is the soul of man. What is the soul of man? One more day I find myself alive, sun going down. Or dawn. A gypsy light, what you first see. Poignant buds. Kant Leak is a collapse of morals. I had resolved to put some books away, a simple chore, been on the list for years, but the problem was more one of accumulation. That there were too many for the existing shelves. In an attempt to put one mushroom book next to another, which seemed logical, a slender volume squirted out. Kant. We could snuggle in the night. Spoon, as they say, but you have your space and I have mine. To many books and not enough shelves: "Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morels" and as one of the simpler rules of my life is that if a book falls to the floor. you must immediately drop everything and read it, I set the rest of the books I was putting away on the sofa, six in the morning, and reread a copy, annotated by several generations of confused students. To over-simplify, read Wittgenstein here, to verify. What Kant was saying. Everything is moral. " Duty is the constraint to do an act out of a moral law." More involved than that, because you have to define everything, but in a nut-shell. Kant Leak is also, actually, the name of a wax ring one can use when installing a toilet. Check it out in the plumbing department of your local hardware store. I send them to friends on their birthdays. Not to be confused with that salient angle, cant, or the more usual contraction. Amusing myself with the dictionary again. Litter and duff, intimacy, so on. Teslas. Kant liked Rousseau, which reveals an other side. Coinage, Sparta. The eight point type in my 11th Britannica now requires a magnifying glass. Tesla in love with a bird. Bislama is a pidgin (auxiliary language, where the need arises) that uses English to define tasks on the waterfront in various ports where many different tongues are spoken; my own writing, but in several sentences recently, the action was only implied. Yet the job was accomplished, whatever it was. I notice these things in passing. Writing is a lot like building a house, you nail together a bunch of sticks and hope for the best. Cheese grits, with a large pat of butter and a poached egg, at the correct moment, can be a sublime meal. The windshield wipers in my truck don't always work and I had misjudged an afternoon squall yesterday. I had to pull over and wait out the rain. I know every spot top pull over, between here and town.. I've used them all, I stop more than anyone I know. Notice things. A particular flower, a windfall. Girlfriends and relationships. I fall back on the fourth. I docent my world, no pretense at anything else. I say what I want to say. At the same time, it's inside information. What you might have done. Read more...

Down The Creek

Forced to go around the long way because of the paving on RT 125, but it is a lovely drive. Will add a gallon a day to my fuel requirements and I probably won't go that way every day, as the added time on the commute is about the same as the wait to do the single lane thing on my regular route. Mostly just wanted to see how spring was progressing along the creek. Lovely, of course, gurgling brook and all that, the miniature waterfalls where sandstone or slate has been displaced, the trillium, the blackberry in bloom, the serious gardening underway. Evidence that the road has flooded, and the sawdust piles where fallen trees had blocked the road. D at the museum today and we discuss logistics. We have to store the glass show for a bit longer, until the modernism show comes down, so we can piggy-back the shipping. Involves some reshuffling, and I'll be moving crates and pedestals next week, getting things in the proper order. Left work an hour early, to get home before some showers, because I really needed to drive up with supplies. Not working tomorrow, first Saturday off in a long time, and don't have to be back at the museum until Tuesday. I have designs on some yard work. I went to the library, then the liquor store, for a back-up bottle of whiskey, prepared a menu in my head, went to Kroger and bought the necessary ingredients. First grilling of the year, and I get a lovely London Broil that I'll rub with various chilies and herbs, grill for eight minutes a side over a very hot fire. Instead of my usual sauce I'm going to open a jar of horseradish jam that Linda brought, her last visit, because I love horseradish. I'll serve this with mashed potatoes and a side of asparagus that I'll cut into bite-sized pieces, cook in butter with caramelized onions. Four different breads in the freezer, fresh eggs in the fridge, plenty of butter, morels in the leaf-litter. I bought several avocados, in varying degrees of ripeness; cheap, this time of year, and I love them so. I just ate one, with a pinch of salt, fresh ground pepper, and a few dashes of a balsamic hot sauce Linda also brought me from Minnesota, which is not very hot and works well on a great many things. I like it on my morning grits, it's great on omelets, and it dresses roasted vegetables beautifully. In some ways life is mostly about condiments. It's very quiet, I flip the breaker on the fridge, and the only sound is my black haired Dell, and the noise I make pounding with two fingers on the keyboard. I actually have a back-up keyboard, ready to plug in, because I abuse them so. Last time, I bought two. I don't so much want to change my behavior, as allow for it. An extra keyboard is a minor thing. Almost everything fails eventually, look at the record. Ten thousand ways you can ask a question, ten thousand replys. Everyone sees everything differently. Vested interests, pain and suffering, the price of tea in China. The implied verb. I do that more often. It might mean something, or it might not. You know I struggle with meaning. Consider that dream where the cat rolled me off the sofa, I was thinking about that tonight, I don't have a cat, but there are cats that I could use metaphorically. I'd rather just walk in a fog. Reality is so damning. The natural world bifurcates exactly here, my property (not me) is where two drainages begin, one to the north and one to the south. They both flow into the Ohio, and thus the Mississippi, but I see this as small steps: where I pee, late at night. The iris, in town, is spectacular, my favorite flower; I break into tears, remembering something. You and your legs. Don't get me started. Read more...

River Fog

Stayed in town to hear young Justin sing and play the guitar at the pub. He does both very well indeed, a great flexible voice and nimble fingers. Up too late to write, then awake just at dawn, out for a walk at 6:30 and go below the floodwall where the fog is so thick (a tube of river fog) that Kentucky is invisible, town is veiled in a layer somewhat thinner but everything is softened and dampish. The world through a scrim. Back at the museum, I go up on the roof, and the sun is shining. Rehearsal for something or other last night, and the back door was broken, though locked, and I fixed that, then painted the ledge above the new green wall the same color. It's semi-gloss, and I can more easily keep it clean. Six tour groups, 5th graders, with art classes, and everyone in the theater, after, for a short concert, so, of course, there were some toilet issues. Janitor is my name, shit is my game. There should be ass-wiping classes in Civics, how to clean yourself without using half a roll of toilet paper. I don't want to teach it, no one does, that's why there aren't any such mandatory classes. Last hour at work I spent in the library with the door closed, Swift reopened the whole modernism thing. Todd Reynolds stopped by the museum yesterday and I asked about his debt to Larry Rivers, he admitted he loved that work and knew the very painting I mentioned. Almost scary, in a way, but makes perfect sense, when you see something. I've been looking at a lot of nudes recently, a little book Julia dropped off for me, Modigliani nudes (I didn't know how to spell his name, same page spread as Moderism in the Random House Second, weird) and I've been looking at 'modern' nudes. Munch's "Madonna" is stunning. Gromaire's "Paulette" and "Nude With Overcoat" are worth your attention. Just looking, here. Thinking about the corporal form and the way it is inhabited. Looking isn't touching (except that it does) anymore than seeing is believing. Ephemeral day, I didn't get much sleep before a dream in which a cat actually rolled me off the sofa. It's why they pay me the big bucks. My bones don't break. What I mean. Sounds like an arrangement inmates at a prison might reach, which is not what I meant, I actually thought we were talking about something else. Goat cheese? Whatever you used to make your curd. I hang on by an imagined thread, a gimbal they give me because I've lived this long, a simple top, almost a compass. No, wait, that's a goddamn Frisbee. All those Upper Classmen always had it in for me, they hated the fake way my mopping pattern was so clean it swept them all away. I'm just saying, we have evidence of that. Argue what you will. This is what we call River Fog. Confusion. Nothing makes any sense. Move your simple cast piece back to Go, a boot, or whatever, a top-hat I remember. Speak the speech I pray you, spoken trippingly. Read more...

Rain Check

Modernism: Deviation from the ancient and classical manner. A word invented by Swift. (Johnson) Not too shabby for 1755. That there already was modernism. This is the benefit of reading a dictionary straight through, I never would have looked up the word in Sam Johnson. Curator of the "Midwestern Modernism" dates it from the Chicago Expo 1893. Now I'm interested in where he used the word, and what it related to. Certainly adds an interesting sidebar to my docenting of that show, now I can bring old Sam out and brush him off. I've been spending my breaks and the rest of the lunch hour in the museum library, reading about the various manifestations of modernism; today realized what a debt Todd Reynolds (best of the local painters, by far) owed to Larry Rivers. Rivers is, by the by, quite good, as a writer, talking about art, and an interesting person. Janitor mode in the afternoon, K had mentioned corners. I'm frankly appalled at some things I scraped out of corners today. Dust bunnies formed into miniature tumbleweeds, dead bugs, a dime, a nickel, and two pennies, several preserved grapes, toothpicks, one button, something I take to be part of a dried shrimp tail, some bits of broken glass, and glitter. Goddamn I do hate glitter. The one purpose glitter serves is to really piss off the janitor. And feathers, I don't even want to go there. Movies are fine, but popcorn is a curse. From my point of view. Someone has to clean under the seats. You can guess who does that. It does stop raining long enough for me to get home and walk up the hill. Dinner is completely done, left-overs from last night; my left-overs are often really good, and this is one of those nights. I got a sharp cheddar to grate into the grits, some butter, goes without saying, a few grinds of black pepper. I was only doing this for myself, I can't believe you're still paying attention. We should talk about that later. When everyone's asleep. Have to draw the line, help me draw the line, I'm so blind. Talking Heads, "Once In a Lifetime", a great song. Read more...

Prom Night

Lewdster: a lecher, one given to criminal pleasures. Lithomancy: prediction by stones. Lucubration: study by candlelight. It occurs to me that I might not be making sense. It's just me, you know, Tom Bridwell, but I feel like a fiction. Someone reading a dictionary. Prom is a beautiful delusion. Not life, but an exception. April brought her classes over, because they were zombies, waiting for an event. I'm often asked if I'm ever bored, the question itself is revealing. "The Tony Rice Unit", have you heard them? If you listen or look closely there's always something to take your attention. Mawkish: apt to give satiety, apt to cause loathing. "Flow, welsted, flow, like thine inspirer beer, / So sweetly mawkish and so sweetly dull." Pope. Anthony over for dinner, before he heads out to Wisconsin for a month of farming and building moveable chicken houses. He brings enough bread to feed an army, serious bread, bread to die for, and half a bottle of Knob Creek, cleaning out his apartment. I've made a crock-pot of grits, the no-name vegetable dish, which I serve on the grits, and medallions of pork tenderloin. We eat at the island and don't talk, grunting, and protecting our plates with the off arm. Something's bothering him, but I never discover what it is. Partly, I think, it's that he wants to settle. I've offered him a piece of land, and he'd like nothing better than to build a cabin and an Anagama kiln into the hillside. He knows we could do that, but he still has his life to prove. To the question of boredom. Seldom. And I've thought about this, because it seems to be an issue. Mid-winter, or during spring rains, I'm likely to be more or less trapped in the house for three or four days straight. I'll cook a meal that requires several hours, suit-up and go outside a few times, investigate some tree-tip pits, bring home a few oddities, look something up, read a couple of books. I might call a friend I haven't talked to in a while. Don't get me wrong, I like having a phone, having electricity, but I am, essentially, self-reliant. When I get into the 2 volume OED with the magnifying glass, you can kiss the afternoon goodbye. Be nice for someone to scratch my back, but I have a bamboo thing I can use for that. I like eating other people's cooking, but I can cook well enough. I spend hours writing a paragraph, any given day, thinking about words and marks of punctuation; considering voice, what it says and means. A matter of habit. I shoot for a state in which there is no mediation between me and the natural world. Silly me. There's always mediation. But I'm close, to the natural world, when I'm bent over, collecting morels, and discover a rattlesnake molting. I understand the concept of boredom, but it's not a problem for me, there a backlog of things to think about. Failed relationships, particular large fish that got away, gaps in my understanding: there's always something to think about. And I surround myself with thousands of books, in case I get antsy. There's always something to read. I'm alone more than anyone I know, but it doesn't feel lonely, it's just a state of being. Read more...

Nothing Satisfies

Considering several dead poets, something, a noise in the night, rouses me from reverie. Just the wind, but it sounded like voices from the past. I hear things. A particular cadence of bug song reminds me of something, someone reciting Lorca in the dark. I don't speak Spanish, but I understand the words, the pauses are pregnant with feeling. One of those moments that stand out against the background noise. I don't understand why one thing means more than another. Everything is conditional. Three crows, don't get me started. A single woodpecker. Comfort in the night.

The soft white
of blackberry blooms
says everything.

Maybe it was the rain that triggered the desire to pee. Up and outside, fresh green smell, cool mist and lingering bits of dream. Bed down on the sofa, sorting thoughts. Sleep, again, is impossible, so I continue reading David Foster Wallace, "The Pale King" which he left as a confused unfinished manuscript when he died in 2008. A monster book, and I can't read it straight through, so I'm also reading Samuel Johnson's dictionary. Not the whole thing, because I couldn't find a copy, but a 'Modern Selection' that runs to 450 pages. His preface for the first edition is included, and it's lovely reading. I use Johnson's dictionary to check Wallace's words, which leads to very funny confusion. Eventually I have out several other, unabridged, dictionaries and the OED, spending over an hour on the word 'affect' because the Wallace book is really about affect and boredom. Johnson says, under 'affection':the state of being affected by any cause, or agent. Then quotes Shakespeare (which he does often): "Some men there love not a gaping pig; / Some that are mad if they behold a cat; / And others, when the bag-pipe sings in the nose, / Cannot contain their urine, for affection." Merchant of Venice. Butterflies, just after dawn, hundreds of them. I go outside and several come to rest on me. Enough morels for breakfast, a frittata, with red peppers and shallots. Johnson says, of butterflies: "A beautiful insect, so named because it first appears at the beginning of the season for butter." A long dialog toward the end of the Wallace, chapter 46, between an attractive woman and a fairly boring nerd, both of whom work for the IRS (the IRS is a central character in the book), and by the end of it, the nerd is interesting and the woman is boring. Wallace was a very precise writer. There was some tripe, in the frozen food case where they allow oddments at Kroger, and I bought a package, to make a couple of different Mexican soups. Essentially the caul (the net in which women enclose their hair, Johnson), the omentum, the integument in which the stomach of a cow is held. It doesn't taste like much, a slight hint of organ, but has great texture. I spread it out on a cutting board still partially frozen, and cut it into a 1 inch dice, simmer for several hours, then add the hominy and greens and cook for another hour. This soup is said to have great restorative properties. I like the way it makes the house smell. If you're in a hurry, use canned hominy, if not, start the day before with dried product, soak it over night, save the soaking liquid, and cook it the next day, separately, then add it to the tripe, with whatever else. This time I'll use chard, some garlic, some onions and roasted peppers. I'll cook the hominy with a few chunks of smoked jowl, because I really like that smoky overtone with the heat of the peppers; this soup needs to be spicy hot, to be effective. Trying to get that word in there, so as to contrast affect. Talked with Mom and Dad today, both in the endgame of dying, and there was a point at which I had nothing to say. Her heart is giving out, he can't walk and his sight is almost gone. D and I were watching a severely handicapped person negotiate the curb, to get to his van, there were people in the van, and we assumed if he needed help they would give it when they thought he needed it. An uncomfortable position, because I tend to offer help, but I was restrained by the common restraint, that someone knew more about the specific situation than I did. Me, a passerby, just seeing the situation. A shadow. As I'm trying to get home, make dinner, go to bed. Reality is such a nuisance. I have to measure the napp and feel the fall of water. It's a personal thing. Like the way you smell or the sounds you might make. Leave almost everything unsaid. Mysterious is good. What isn't said.
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