Late Night

Late night white noise is a blessing. Crickets at a distance, that dull thud of a comet crashing into a planet where sound doesn't carry. It's good to get out of a paragraph, they can kill you, I've known writers who've suffered massive internal injuries from a paragraph that went on too long. Seriously, make it a video game, line up the people you know who have died, and check their record. It doesn't have anything to do with you, why they offed themselves, more like a particular strata, where they found themselves. Now we're getting to something. Do a great many of your friends commit suicide? I'm just trying to establish a base line here. Could be barking up the wrong tree. Listen closely. Everything is connected, doesn't take much sense to realize that. Nothing, but the whole wild world. You have to keep at least one foot on the ground. Most of the time, I don't actually think. Hammer dulcimer, the rhythm seems correct, something about the river flowing down. Time is just a certain amount of water. Wait. It doesn't matter how much I understand, there's always a great field that I don't understand. An Irish dance. The great unknown. A restrained elegance. Finally back to sleep, then back up and off to work. Load the dishwasher, start another batch of glasses through the cycle. Will end up being at least eight batches. Good staff meeting in which we go over the next month. Unload the dishwasher, pack away the glasses, load it again, go to lunch. After lunch meet with Kenny, who's putting together a sternwheeler photography show from the Ackerman collection. Very extensive collection and Portsmouth is the river town where the canal ended, also shoe capital of the world in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Important port. In my new capacity as reference librarian I was assigned certain reading material, which will make me a docent for that show. Soon I'll know way too much about riverboats and steam engines. Unload the dishwasher, and so on. Watched the first half of the of the women's World Cup quarter-finals, US / France, then D streamed it on his lap-top, so we could stay tuned. A stunning victory, as France was playing very well. Sara thought it odd that we were watching, or even just paying attention to a sporting event, but I explained that I was in love with our goalie. Hope Solo. Pistons, driven by coal fired boilers, in stern-wheelers and side-wheelers, were huge. Twenty-four inches in diameter with a stroke of over five feet. They blew up a lot. Powerful explosions, body parts a quarter-mile away. Maybe 8,000 dead on the lower Ohio between 1850 and 1900. Not that many by modern standards, but at the time, a significant number. I've tried leaving out some commas, since the whole comma discussion thing, but I find I add them back, when I'm rereading (to find the thread), because they're necessary, for understanding. At least for the way that I'd read any particular sentence. I really do try to be perfectly clear. When the US scored their first goal, early in the game, on a great play, one of the cameras cuts back to Hope, pumping her fists at the opposite end, and there were nipples apparent, poking through a sports bar and her purple jersey. She was excited, and I found it really erotic. That lady lawyer walked through the alley today, I forget her name, but Sara knows her, wearing mostly black, as she usually does, but this time a purple jacket on top, and she has lovely ankles. World class. Being a student of ankles, I speak with some authority. One of the only physical fights I was ever in, involved someone's ankles. Go figure. I'm a peaceful guy, I almost never make waves, my job is putting out small fires, hanging shows, wearing white cotton gloves and lifting a Thomas Hart Benton from its crate, but I'm also completely human. Hope looks really hot to me. I could meet her, probably, I still have contacts, but then what would I say? "Oh, I have an idea, you should live without running water, in a far corner of Southern Ohio, with a recluse who can't climb a ladder." Great idea. I might lure you with a menu. I've used this ploy before. Everyone wants to eat. But putting on crampons and slogging up the hill is another whole issue. Something you really don't want to do. Still trying to put a handle on you, because I'm fairly comfortable in the tree-tip pit I find myself.