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.