Perfect Loading

When you make something that needs to stand upright, you have to carry the loading from the top right down through the base. Elementary. Otherwise, it falls over. Balance becomes the issue. In any three-dimensional medium, loading is critical. Building a house, or a concrete dancer, a blown glass vessel, or a simple pile of rocks, you have to get it right. Keep it upright. Anything straight is relatively easy. But it's the not straight that becomes difficult. In the not so straight, you find a line that carries the load down through the base. You need to visualize this, must see the way the load is carried. You can cheat, fool the eye, use a hidden threaded rod or anchor an armature in something heavy. I like rocks for this, or cast iron, maybe a large chunk of live-oak or any dense wood. Point being that you can off-set a tendency to lean. Thereby creating a dynamic. Often, this is the point. I'm a little pissed, right now, because of assumptions that have been made. I don't fall easily (if there is a point) into what anyone else thinks about the way I work. There's a comfort zone for me, that I achieve by dint of a long process of trial and error. I don't like seeing a new picture when I open a file, as if someone thinks they know what I need to see. Almost everything is a distraction. I thought I was clear on this, then K makes some (minor) changes on my computer at work, and I'm thrown for a loop. My Home Page and how clever everyone is, I had a way that I worked, and it's changed. No one consulted me. I was mopping shit off the bathroom floor, and when I came back I was reconfigured. It's not fair. Bad form. I had a working relationship and now it's gone, new hardware, new software, and I'm not comfortable. The point was, continues to be, that I should be comfortable. I'll make the choices. I might rather have the Swedish Bikini Shooting Team than some mixed race kid drawing with finger paints. Maybe control is an issue. I can't ever even begin to speak for anyone else, but I don't like being told what to do. Late night radio. Slack guitar. The blues. Woman, woman, you done took my life away. My momma didn't raise no fool. Robert Johnson. Come in to my kitchen. Here I am. Mary Louise, I don't need your kind of love. I'm sick and tired of your kind of love. A Robert Cray break. Harmonics. I get stronger the longer you stay away. Something a lot like Janis, don't worry about me, cut to just a silent view of the river, flowing down. D at work today, but he was working on the newsletter, so I finished packing the show, except for the two massive crates, one painting each, that we'll do tomorrow. Computer is fine, K straightened me out. I've been a little testy because of the back. Everyone left me alone today. Kind of a Kafka day. Introspective and roach-like. I'll probably use that kid, Leo, to help with the clean-up, after the two shows we're holding get out of here. Then the ODC (Ohio Designer Craftsmen) comes in. It's always a good show, interesting work, but the artist pack their own pieces and you wouldn't believe what they come up with. I'll be seeing a lot of styrofoam egg cartons, they're a big favorite, and old bath towels, which I occasionally replace with bubble wrap when that show leaves, and replace a couple of my old towels, which are way worse than the ones used to wrap art. I also have scored articles of clothing, and on one occasion, several books. I frown on using books as packing material, even though there is a lot of crap out there, which would serve no better purpose. Mostly I chuckle, at what some artists consider decent packing. It should be part of the course-work, even if you're rich, and pay someone else to ship things for you. Then you hire someone like me, and that's good for the economy. I understand that's the way it works. Insofar as I understand. I need to hire K, for a day a week, $100 cash plus dinner, to come out and help me get my house in order. She's an amazing cleaner and organizer. I have to get a manuscript together, the Janitor College stuff. I need help, really, I actually do. It's beyond my powers. I can generate text, but only if I'm not doing too much else, often nothing. Strange and Stand, of course, I just glanced at the address. It was Glenn and the Pfluegar. Should have known but Aralee writes that well too. I know a plague of writers, a disease with me, a cluster-fuck of writers. And on occasion, I get several together, feed them, and we talk. These are the best times in the world, polymaths who remember every book they've ever read, and like me, they average reading a book a day, so the conversation is spirited. During the course of the day I think about backlash. What that means. A pregnant word if there ever was one. Backlash. I cringe to remember. Early spinner technology sometimes backlashed, but I kept an extra cylinder of line, a magazine, that I could punch in, if I needed to. Afraid of that. Didn't send this Friday night. I'll send it now, so it doesn't get too long.