More Clare

Walking away from the asylum, literally, just walking away, Clare was convinced he was going to see his first love. Mary Joyce, and wouldn't believe she had died three years earlier. He stayed free for five months, then was readmitted between Xmas and New Year 1841. Stayed until his death, 1864, in his 71st year. Dr Fenwick Skrimshire entered on the admission form that his stay had been preceded by many years of poetical prosing. That'll do it to you. Of course I have the bug now, and I want to read everything by and about. Could take a while to track it all down, but I can probably get D to inter-library loan through the University system and find most of it. On the book sites I use to buy, esoteric books like these are either very expensive or very cheap. Another thing about the inter-net, I wondered, yesterday, who this woman was that was quoted, in an article about the latest disgraced Congressman, and in one hit, ONE HIT, I was on a porn site. Though I suppose I got the information I was after. Final prep for painting the pedestals and various walls not quite finished, I still have maybe an hour sanding, but tomorrow I start slapping on product. The floor, as you can imagine, with all the repair and sanding, is a mess, but there's no reason to do very much about it until the ODC show is installed. The nature of museums. The first two weeks of July, I increasingly see as a nightmare, but that's OK, sweet dreams and honeysuckle can lull you into a false sense of the world. And I'm used to the push, it's like theater in slow motion. Even Janitor School drop-outs can do theater in slow motion. Pegi's big spring show, with the Cirque, is three nights, starting tonight, and she is out-of-pocket, I need to go, watch, but I really hate being in an audience, I'm more a behind-the-scenes kind of guy. Or a stay-at-home kind of guy. I don't lightly give up an evening for anything other than intimate conversation, an unspoken rule. Most of my rules are unspoken, which is part of what makes me hard to live with, you never know. Rolling thunder that sounds serious, I save, and shut down. It rains for maybe ten minutes, like a pregnant cow on a flat rock, and then that line of showers is through. Perfect timing, because at the end of day, the heat is carried away, I have to go, it's fairly violent. Lightning just cleaved a tree not a hundred feet from my house. A roll of thunder shakes my house, that's fine, I don't have anyplace I'd rather be. I make a very nice omelet with store-bought mushrooms and a scallion. With a piece of that bread from Cincy, smeared with butter and a honey-ginger jam, this is may be one of the great meals ever. I don't really care what D says, like Anthony he'll soon have his MFA and talk funny. What I'd like to do, is install a show. Eat dinner, go to bed. My requirements are fairly simple, a pallet on the floor, a couple of shots of Irish whiskey, silence; I tuck into a fetal position, fold the blanket between my bony knees, and rest. The world is so much stranger than anything I might imagine.