Coincidence

An owl woke me. The windows were open, I was sleeping with night music, bugs and frogs, and that particular sound a light breeze makes in late summer leaves. White noise, really, the natural version. More than restful, almost narcotic, dreaming about some early love, Marcy, that mole in the hollow of her shoulder blade. Sleeping away, not a care in the world, when this owl sets up, outside my window, and I'm wrenched away from my sweet dreams. Actually the sound of the owl isn't unpleasant, just different, what I'm hearing at any given moment. Cage put me onto this. Merely listen. He'd have loved this concert. Background noise that's probably crickets, some tree-frogs, a breeze that rustles drying leaves. I think about Holly, some impossible contortion with one of the cirque girls, hey, I'm also human. And finally come to rest as a pile of dirty laundry tossed into a corner. Not what I would make of myself, given open parameters, but where I find myself. Fucking owl. I go ahead and get up, make a cup of coffee; shave and a sponge bath. Read for an hour, then off to the museum, first day for packing up the ODC show, it'll take several. Artist packed shows are a royal pain in the ass. D is gone to Columbus, to pick up more of the Doll Show, but TR has come in to help. He's excited to be handling art, thinks the white gloves are cool. First we have to bring up the fifty or sixty boxes from the basement, set up a couple of blanket covered tables. He's a fast study. He's reading "The Cistern" right now, slowly, as it needs to be read, and says he's never read anything like it, questions me about how I did it. I told him I really didn't know, that I just stepped things up a level and struggled to maintain it. That book was hard work, intense, but I needed that then. Writing it might have saved my life. We talk about music composition. The day moves well, we get a lot done, maybe a third of the show, but by 4:30 I'm weary and my feet hurt. When I close up, I consider going over to the pub for a pint, but I just want to get home. Pick up a footer and jalapeno poppers, so I won't have to cook, I was going to have a salad with a can of tuna dumped on top, but picking up fast food, assures that I will eat something, absolutely, because the smell will drive me crazy by the time I get home. I don't even get home, eat a couple of the poppers when I enter that section of Mackletree, in the state forest, which is now a cool, canopied tunnel. It shouldn't surprise me that I have a facility with language, I've been writing for a long time; like playing the guitar, you get better, shouldn't be all that surprising. But the real point comes, often reading over last night's post, to see if there was a direction I wanted to go, a specific thing I needed to mention, something to remember; and I'll find a great sentence, what I thought could be, and within a couple of hours I have several emails from close readers, out there, pointing to the fact that the sentence in question was very good. So across a spectrum of samples, we all find this sentence special, pregnant, something. Interesting. You see, right? how it herds meaning into a pen. Venn Diagrams. Misty picked up lunches at the pub today, and she walked the long way around, so she'd pass behind me on her way, I put out my hand, to stop her, asked if she'd like to go for a drink, some afternoon after work. She thought I'd never ask. I'm pretty confused by this but I see where it's leading. But why me, I can't help thinking, before I realize I am a writer, a poet, and all the ladies want to fuck a poet, it's like a notch on your garter-belt, whatever. I've only ever had failed relationships and making me a notch is as good as anything. Fine. A fraying signifier in a worn-out belt. Like that, for instance, how the hell can I say that? Read more...

Willed Spontaneities

Picasso was obsessed with Manet's "Olympia"; apparent, still, in the calculated clumsiness of his late work, decades after "Les Demoiselles d' Avignon". Then there's the work of Egon Schiele and the inevitable discussion of whether or not there's any difference between erotic art and pornography. Picasso famously said, "You have to know how to be vulgar. Paint with four-letter words." Consider that Picasso thought only Matisse (those odalisques) could challenge him as the greatest artist of the twentieth century. For me it's still the Modigliani nudes. Looking at nudes all day, actually, thinking about erotic art and what it's saying. It occurs to me that I could further research and write a coherent book about erotic art. The Carter nude drawings (life drawings), got me thinking about it, and I've been doing some reading. It occupies a place in mind now, and I can't shake it. Which is the whole point in a way, that you can't shake it. A nude is always sexual, even if it's other things too. I won't write a book, I'll just think about it; observe myself doing that, and report to you. It's a cleaner process, I think, and probably closer to what I really think, if I just jot down a few things after a day of reading. My idea of a good time. I do several open-faced tomato sandwiches in the toaster oven; one I top with an over-easy egg. Runny egg yolk and hot tomatoes on buttered toast is so good that I can hardly contain myself. I whoop. Insofar as I know how. A jig, or maybe St. Vitus dance, heat lightning, a shaft of fall light, coming through the trees. I can barely see to drive, it's an acid flashback, light and dark. Mackletree has become a tunnel, with these painful shafts of light. I have to accept as reality, whatever confab you've assembled. I'm sure I'll look bad. I usually do. A force of habit. The way I duck beneath the crook of my elbow. Hiding something, as a matter of course. It's the wrong time of day, but I need to sleep for a few hours. I'm worn out and nothing makes any sense. When I wake, after a couple of hours, I don't know whether it's morning or evening, I have to go outside and see where my shadow falls. Evening. I want a BLT but I have no bacon. I do have two chicken thighs that I want to marinate for dinner tomorrow, so I skin them and crisp the skins slowly in a cast iron skillet. Render enough chicken fat to fry potatoes another day and enough ersatz bacon for my sandwich. Chicken skin, lettuce and tomato. A great sandwich. B visits, to return a book, and concedes I know the Cello Suites better than any other non-musician he knows. Today I listen to Casals, giving voice to what is merely notes on the page, the start of it all. A transport of joy. I'm studying the painting of hands. Rembrandt's are not very good, but look at Caravaggio's in "The Supper at Emmaus", they seem to break the plane of the painting, real hands, reaching out to you. The folk art show travels, and I'm sorry the shit-on-the-floor interrupted the conversation Sara and I were having, because we have to pack that show for shipping. I have some ideas for hanging the large puppet-dolls. Some of the larger ceramic pieces for the doll show are problematic, the wall mounted pieces, as they need more than just a screw-head in a plastic anchor. We'll come up with something, those 'J' hooks we use for hanging very heavy painting on 'D' rings, or some mystical electromagnet that holds things three inches off the wall. I'm not a flutist, but I lived with a flutist once and she taught me how to breathe. It's not as simple as you thought, what you learned as a child, simply in and out, but a more complex thing, that starts deep within your diaphragm Wait, what we talking about? I don't have any control over anything outside a very small circle of events. I mop when I need to. There wasn't a diagram with the instructions. Tab A in slot B, or tabs A and B in slot C. Read Julian Barnes on Gericault's "The Raft of the Medusa". What does a picture signify? Read more...

Nothing, Later

Blow it off as merely paranoid, but it was a tick, embedded in a place I couldn't see directly, so I had to use a mirror and attempt a remote extraction. I'm pretty good at this, because I've lived alone for many years. Be nice to have some assistance but that isn't in the cards, do what you can. When I cough the cough of the damned I sound like my father, and he's still alive, at 91, beating the odds; but a shadow, really, not the thing itself. Having a cigaret with Sara after work yesterday, we can smoke in her office after hours, talking about an upcoming folk art show and the difficulties of hanging certain pieces, when Pegi came to the door. Her face was white, she had her cirque clothes over her arm, so I knew she had been in the upstairs bathroom where she changes before she goes over to the studio. She said my name several times and I finally just asked her what the problem was in the bathroom and she said there was a mess on the floor. Putting it mildly. Someone with diarrhea had missed the toilet completely. Part of my job description is that when there is any actual shit, I clean it up. I don't even mind, it's just a job, not nearly as bad as the mess you back when you have your arm two feet up a cow's ass, trying to get an unborn calf turned in the proper position for delivery. Or had kids, for that matter. I'm not new to shit. I was staff today, so I mostly read about Delacroix. When he first saw Gericault's "Raft Of The Medusa" he went running and whooping through the streets. I think it's good to have an actual response to something. I encourage whooping. Saw Ronnie with Bear's daughters, leaving his stand at the farmer's market and he gave me some tomatoes. Soon as I got home I started eating tomato sandwiches, mayo, black pepper, on a very good multi-grain bread that I favor. I managed to do this one-handed, so I could read, turn pages with the other hand, but it required a large bowl to contain the drippage. I love these, sometimes I dump a can of sardines on top. The first sandwich is more or less a test of the tomato at hand, the second, I often add something: pickled peppers, some caramelized onion, capers. Because I know that's it, right? two tomato sandwiches pretty much would be my dinner, and this is all you're going to eat before you start drinking and writing. Straighten out that syntax, you know what I mean. Which raises questions. How could you? I don't know, myself. I poke at it, but I don't know what it is. I know that people who leave overhead cupboard doors open should be shot; but I'll never shoot them. Come on, I don't have a vicious bone in my body. Read more...

Sour Note

I was doing fine, with a bunch of extremely mundane chores: washing dishes, scrubbing toilet bowls, re-mopping some heavily soiled areas of floor. Then, later, D and I were downstairs, looking at the gallery SPACE, trying to figure out how to hang the puppet dolls. The Fed Ex guy delivered a printer, which Bev signed for, at the reception desk. I ask D if he had ordered a printer, and I could see he was upset. He's our IT guy and he hadn't been consulted. Major whoops, it seems to me, I'd at least ask his opinion, even if I had known all about printers, 20 years ago, in Vero Beach. I want to be careful here, because I do love my job, and I care about the museum. What a sunset, saturated color, emptied of figurative content. Like Rothko, and even, strangely, like Turner. The way my mind works perplexes me. Anyway, I followed D upstairs, to hear what he would say to Pegi; there was a second witness to this, TR was printing-out some lovely loan forms for Sara's next show, completely redesigned, printed-in-color loan forms. That D had redesigned, along with 4-color envelopes; and membership forms, that he had redesigned. He's good at this, maybe very good, and they hadn't even ask him if this printer would interact with their system, which he maintains on a shoestring. And he asked her (Pegi), in a very casual voice, why they had bought that printer. Pegi exploded, TR and I were shocked, if I'd been a victim of that, I would have turned around and gone home. But hey, the show in the main gallery comes down next week, and I'll be busy, can fill my time displaying art and not thinking about office politics. I may mop floors for a living, but I have a certain dignity. At this point in my life I'd be hard-pressed to not say what I actually thought. It wasn't just me, TR took offense. I sprang for beers after work, so we could talk this though. D admitted he couldn't see a fast ball after Little League. I admitted that the curve ball, in college, defeated me completely. I was a great fielder but my hitting was lousy. Had to let the preceding sit over night, but find I still have to mention it. A lovely day today, stopped at the lake to watch the vapors rising. Cooler nights, and the water gives off heat. Last night read about Modigliani. One of the most crazed drives toward self-destruction ever. I love his nudes. Then about Rothko and his "trembling voids of pure, saturated color". Giacometti worked on the first set of "Waiting For Godot". I knew a student of Giacometti once, on Cape Cod, who was quite a good sculptor himself, and I published a book of his wife's sonnets. I'd forgotten about that. There are times when your past subsumes you. When you remember something not in a fictional way. The absolute sequence (as I remember it), a very specific place and time. Do I trust you or not? Do I trust myself? Memory is a wild card. Because of its removal. Right? A memory is not the thing itself, that should be obvious; if it were I'd be allowed living with a sexy woman who had a job with benefits. As it is, I'm living alone, making the best of the day. Allows me to say certain things.
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Still Later

I just compose blocks of text. It's what I do instead of otherwise having a life. Never fails to engage my attention, or rather, I don't do it unless it engages my attention, I read, instead. Reading usually leads to writing. A pretty simple way to order your life, if you don't mind being alone for much of the time. My friend Kim, who also lives alone, works a job, always has a building project, plays guitar and writes songs, carves incredible spoons, and is the construction-site dumpster diving champion. Boggles the mind. I used to be more like that, but the last ten years I've narrowed it down to working at a museum (handling art), reading and writing. A minor in cooking. Linda sent me a couple of emails, she reads me closely and I value her opinion. Liked a couple of lines and shot them back at me. I had to read myself, to find the context, and I hadn't read back over anything for a couple of weeks, so it was like reading someone else. I quibbled with certain punctuation marks and questioned whether or not some words might be deleted. Less, of course, being more. Opens out, as Olson said. There was a cricket in the house and this I cannot abide. I intend a live release but if I have to kill the fucker I will. A cricket, in the room with you, is worse than a Whip-O-Will outside the window. I make a point of finding the damned thing before I get a drink. Perform a live extraction. I'm proud, you know, that I can still do that, catch a cricket and release it without any broken legs. That smell permeates everything. A stink bug, right? You touched it, didn't you? Found it on the way to the cricket and couldn't resist. Fucking stinkbug and you actually engaged the fear and flight program. Where I simply left, the next train going anywhere.You see the choices. Read more...

Send Later

I drink, so I often Send Later, which gives me a chance to add a comma or two, remove a word, or delete a repetition. I don't catch all the pesky little awkwardnesses, but I do like to be as clean as possible. The last rain today, I collected a few gallons of water, a bonus, and when the power came back on I heated it so I could shave and take a sponge bath. Such are the creature comforts. I don't consider it a negative thing, that I wash with rain water, but I don't think of it as positive either. It's just a fact. My stomach was growling and I realized I hadn't eaten enough today, so I got out a tube of saltines and opened a can of tuna (in oil, so much more flavor) along with little piles of sundry olives and pickles. I always keep a jar of wasabe powder close at hand, and a dollop of chili paste. A dozen of these mounded crackers, over the course of an hour, reading at the island, would make you believe there is a god. Though you might know perfectly well otherwise. Belief systems are weird. They allow for the unallowable, cover their back that way, and it's cool, I don't have argument with anyone who believes anything. What I see is a fairly stark reality, people die, born with deformities and conditions that have no cure. Other people live, some of them evil. Go figure. As clean as possible is extremely relative. I don't know what to believe, so I drink, occasionally someone sends something, peyote buds (which always make me throw up) or some magic mushroom, and I take them mostly because I can. I have a digestive system that can process almost anything. A white shark's stomach can dissolve horseshoes. The pre-plumbing crew arrived early at work, this crew cut and jack-hammered out a section of the basement floor, then removed fill down to about three feet to expose the main waste line. An awful piece of work but somebody had to do it, too big a job for D and I to tackle. Five guys, took them all day. Meanwhile, we're upstairs with the appraiser, going through the Carter paintings and drawings. Franklin (great name for an art appraiser) knows his Carters, he's dealer for the estate, was quite impressed with the collection. All the insurance values are about 40-50% too low. Instructive to listen and talk with him. The large portraits of members of the family are not worth what we thought, he assigned the highest values to the large oils that seem to convey a narrative. The watercolors have all doubled in value. Everyone needed to go, so I stayed as the ditch-diggers were laboring on. Read upstairs, couldn't get Hulu to work, wandered the Carter gallery with my newfound knowledge. The world of art commerce, about which I know an increasing amount, is driven by people like Franklin, who control estates and do everything possible to drive the prices up. In his defense, there weren't many Carters on the market until the estate decided to sell. They're solid investments. One painting we had valued at $125,000 he said he could sell for $250,000 tomorrow. Dude probably lives fairly well. He was, of course, dressed completely in black and had to wear his prescription sunglasses because he'd broken or misplaced his indoor glasses. American painters, late 20's through the 30's seemed to be his thing. It was an interesting period. Realism holding an imagined high ground over Modernism. I hold a neutral space here. I tend to like the best of anything, not that I buy it, but that I like it. Often I put my hands behind my back, and just look at things. Safer that way. Hands behind the back, you don't tend to interfere like an Italian Mom harbored thus. Your imagination is probably as good as mine. I love the idea of setting the beast loose, but this doesn't seem like the time or lace, oops, place, you would choose, maybe the Thames, flowing slowly past. Look up the Fram, she pretty much did it all. Perky little thing. Her knees were placed so close together they almost touched, no room for any intrusion. So she bobbed up on top of the ice and was never in danger of being crushed, besides, she had that diesel engine, ready to crank, the first in a long line of Nordic icebreakers. Finnish carpenters. This Send Later shit is killing me. Everything is fraught with meaning. Read more...

Out Tom

I wouldn't actually kill anyone for getting glitter on the floor, but I do get upset when shit gets in the grout joints, my fellow staff members laugh nervously. I feel the same way about eating grapes indoors. Certain things just shouldn't be done, grapes are good, anti-oxidant, all that, but they shouldn't be eaten, the red ones especially, indoors, on a tile floor, because you will drop a grape, and someone will step on it. Making up the truth, where ever that thought came from, it seems to me whatever I imagine is true. A particular kind of shoe, when you get cancer, you have to accept certain things. People lie, you never know what to believe. Beyond the business stuff. Mississippi John Hurt, the way the blues bleed healthy blood. I don't know. The whole glittering panoply comes crashing down. The world as we know it. Listen to Skip James, Robert Johnson, Son House, the edges are blurred. The depth of feeling is without measure. Skip James is doing it for me tonight, that sloppy guitar, the missed notes, the way his voice rolls over the music "Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues" is a great tune. Meeting Son House was a lot like having dinner with Beverly Sills. You knew you were in the presence of greatness. Say a little prayer, look at your napkin. I lost a day, yesterday, it's gone. I know I did something, thought about some things, listened to the Cello Suites transcribed for double bass. Edgar Meyer might be the best musician of our age. Like Casals in his dotage, still able to draw on deep resources. I'm not talking about age here, but the ability to do certain things. To draw, freehand, a perfect circle. I've only ever known one person who could do that, it's not a trick. You can either draw a circle or you can't. I can't. I've drawn ten thousand and not a single one is perfect. Something so simple that I fail so completely. Actually, the story of my life, and I'm not complaining, that I always come up short, or trip, whatever, generations of frost-heaves, come on, road-beds notoriously follow the path of least resistance. Desire paths. The way we want to go. Hey, listen, those bugs, infringing on your sleep, might be a good thing. Power goes out, I open some windows on the leeward side from the rain, and read sitting on the floor with my back against a glass door. Stopped raining but the light is strange outside, a suffusing orange glow, like before a hurricane in Florida. Quite lovely. Julia (a board member) came in the museum on Friday with husband Ralph and another couple, she introduced me, and we chatted a few minutes. When I should have been out of earshot (my hearing is quite good) I heard Ralph turn to the other couple and say that I was very bright. I wondered about that for a while, it was as if he were explaining why I had been introduced to them in the first place, a janitor in jeans and a tee-shirt, with a ball cap from the Smithsonian Network. Truth is I like Julia and she likes me. One thing the museum provides, in spades, is a wide spectrum of social interaction. I've never lacked for this, even in Missip people came over from Oxford or flew in from out of town, and in Colorado, what made it so hard for me to leave there, was an incredible group of friends. All bright, facile, and verbal. My talent is that I attract talented people. It's not that difficult, if you're willing to listen. I never saw a shrink, personally, though I've talked with several about friends who seemed self-destructive. Listening is key. Sara and I, sitting on the concrete smoking ledge, often bridge silences with a cryptic comment. I know she worries about her kids, she knows I worry about mine. Then there's the rest of the real world, where everything is distorted, and nothing is what it appears. Read more...

Got It

Wedding party in and setting up, I haul trash from the kitchen. Then a staff meeting that lasts until lunch. After lunch Sara, D and I hang around in the vault and talk about the appraisals on Monday. Logistics, who does what. The white gloves fall to me. It should be very interesting and instructive. My idea of a good time. A day of museum business, mostly I just like handling art, but I'll do a certain amount of business to make that possible. Quid pro. Late in the workday I take the 10 foot ladder back to the basement (the decorating committee had hung a bunch of those bamboo stiffened paper covered balloon-like things), and drop power to a perplexed trio who couldn't find an outlet. This wedding is purple and white. White balls against white walls is a subtle touch. The bride roared off with the music guys, after the sound-check, and I thought that was a hopeful sign. Sara saw the glitter, spread on the tablecloths as decoration. turned to me and asked if I hadn't mandated that glitter was banned from the building, which I had, but this was not glitter. It was the next generation of glitter, a crushed, and tumbled so there are no really sharp edges, though I'd hate to walk on this shit in my bare feet, product. That I don't even understand the need for its existence, product. Craft items we can do without. I'm still finding fake feathers from the last wedding. I'm not a romantic when it comes to weddings, mostly marriages fail, if we're honest, almost no one is with who they were originally with, though my parents have been together 67 years and it slants my view. Turkeys everywhere on the way home, more than I've ever seen in a single day, maybe a hundred, they're impossible to count. When you see a large flock of them, as I did today (one of several), over thirty at least, harvesting shattered grain from a bean-field, they move so fast and so erratically within a given grid, that you really can't count them. This largest flock, today, was in a back field, beyond a hump, almost a terrace, and there was a place to pull off the road. I'd seen them there before and scoped out the terrain. I watched them, for a while, from the side of the road; there's dip, from the side of the roadbed to the bottom of the terrace, so I ate the half-sandwich I'd saved from lunch and watched from a distance. Then moved the truck into the dip and scurried up along the tree-line with my optics. I've gotten very good at not being noticed, got within 200 feet and settled in the duff. Turkeys communicate constantly, proto I-phone, and there are sentries, young males, that guard the boundaries. I watch them for nearly an hour. Not sure I learned anything, but the colors in the crest seemed to change. Purple was the issue, was it more red or more blue? I don't remember. Read more...

Janitor Mode

A wedding on Saturday, then a mid-day brunch concert on Sunday. On Monday we reappraise the Carters, expert coming in from Chicago. I'll be there on Monday, but Pegi insisted she and Trish had Saturday and Sunday covered, and that I should stay home. We'll see. Anyway, full janitor mode to get the facilities up to snuff. Cleasn and stock the bathrooms, sweep and mop the various floors. First problem was the five giant dolls, sitting on blankets in the back hall. No place to put them. Three of the offices have two guest chairs, so I put one doll in each extra guest chair, another just outside D's office on a chair there, and the last one I put in the chair that flanks the office space in the center of the common space. It looks like she's doing a job interview. The ladies all loved the idea and rearranged the limbs of all the dolls into much better poses than my merely dumping them in chairs had produced. Spent several breaks in the library, reading about dolls. This show examines the grotesque. Batted ideas about hanging the dolls. An interesting challenge. D has a problem with the stairs, in the new old house, we'd been talking about it for a couple of weeks. They had been carpeted, and the old pad was now an integral part of the structure. He had tried everything including some industrial grade orange cleaner that we'd used to get up the adhesive residue in the basement. The ultimate cleaning product. Didn't work. The only thing that worked was taking off a thin layer of wood with a giant chisel (called a 'slick') and that would take forever. I explained to him how to secure runners down stairs, with those cute, usually brass, rods that held the carpet, at the back of the tread, against the bottom of the riser. In the trade these are called, in a mind-numbing flash of obviousness, stair rods. You have to love it. The way things are named. Churned mud surrounded salt lick, ten thousand hand prints don't mean a thing, what you thought you were saying. Is that three things? Is someone counting? Read more...

Dolls

Creepy dolls. Quite the obsession with some ceramic artists. Then today D got back from Cincy with five stuffed dolls that are eight feet tall with articulated arms and legs. They're hysterically patch-worked and beaded, clever writing all over them, completely stitched faces, odd headdresses. Next week he's getting more ceramic work, really good faces on odd bodies with the wrong appendages. It's going to be a difficult and interesting installation. The large stuffed ones are audience interactive and require multiple pulleys and lines. The first batch of creepy ceramics are fairly delicate. We need to repair one, damaged at its last venue. It's an interesting job. Went over to the pub for a beer, alone, after work, chatting up the help, all of whom I know well; and the new girl, Leslie, came in to work the evening. She's stunning, tall; long, fairly tangled hair, nice ankles. Jenny Richards came in, with a group, she's the Naturalist for the State Forest, a pert pixie and sexy as anything you ever saw in a Forest Service uniform. We talked about rattlesnakes, she's got two in her office right now, to be released tomorrow, and both of them, she said, were yellow rather than the usual black. Said it wasn't just a molting color, that some of the Timber Rattlers were just yellow. I tend to believe her, because she's kept the damned things. Gives me the creeps, really, there are a lot of snakes hereabouts. A wonderful fog on the way into work this morning, thin, hugging the draws, but a luminous blue in the morning light that was totally unexpected. We respond to color, sound, smell, shape, texture, in ways we can't predict. It's what makes art work. The unpredictable. Read more...

Smart Talk

These lunch-hour talks are always good and usually interesting, but they put a hole in my workday. Setting up tables and chairs then putting them away. Sara did a fine job, talking about the Carter painting. She actually had a chance to talk with Carter about it before he died. We got the history of the painting, then an interesting talk about certain compositional similarities with other paintings. The museum has the core of a Carter biography, letters, scrapbooks, photographs. I'm starting to get into it. Took a few minutes today to start reading the history of dolls. There's one in the British Museum, fifth century BC that has articulated arms and legs; another, 2nd century AD, about nine inches tall, carved from ivory, that's an incredible piece of work, also fully articulated. At the very beginning it's difficult to tell where the fetish objects (the various Venus and such) leave off and the dolls begin. The early stuff gets my attention, the rest of it, not so much. Several books ordered on library loan about the change from steam to diesel. Reading that the Fram was the first diesel powered boat, when was that, a couple of weeks ago, still puts a smile on my face. I love stumbling unto cool facts. A really cool fact can make up for an otherwise lousy week. On the weekends I mine for them, the ore is usually non-fiction, when I'm fact-checking something I'd made a note about. I shouldn't exclude fiction, I look up a lot of things that I read in fiction, so I'll know if it's real or not, given that we've circled that tree often enough, about the real. I could almost live within the confines of my library. But the truth is I require social contact, dialogue. The monologue runs full time in my head, a video with Dolby sound; you are, in fact, the most important person in the world. Show business. I'm just saying, I don't have a vested interest. You are. And I respect that, what you choose to believe. I might choose to believe something different, but it's just a matter of opinion. That pesky pink elephant. I don't mind what's not there, but I'm often disappointed when I allow myself to expect anything. The new guy, the volunteer/intern person, TR, is an interesting guy, a music composition major. We talked about bookbinding today, about how scores could be bound so that the pages could be turned and the leaves lay flat. Interesting enough that we went to the pub after work, drank a draft, talked about our past. Barnhart, the music guy, arranged this, you can see him, hanging from the rafters. He's in China now, with a glee club, when he gets back I intend to nail him to the wall. I am not now, and have never been, anything other than what I appear to be. Jeans and a tee-shirt, the guy sitting at the back, a Red Sox cap pulled over his eyes.
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An Owl

A little cooler, and I hadn't run the AC all day, the windows were open and I had the ceiling fan over my bed on low. Even had a light-weight blanket across my legs, wadded between my bony knees, as is my habit; deep in a dream where I was riding an old horse across a rocky field in moonlight. An owl starts hooting very close to the window where I'm sleeping, and it wakes me; I'm confused, momentarily, about the nature of reality, because the dream is so real that the intrusion of the owl seems like fiction. Several minutes before I realize the owl is real and the horse-ride is a product of my imagination. The owl is incessant, wins the day, when it comes to what you believe; I put on some pants and go downstairs. First thing I always do, in a similar situation, is roll a smoke and just listen. An owl's hoot seems to be merely a call, but I don't know, really, if something is being said, even a call says something. G. Spenser Brown and that entire field of what's said. Often, my entire thought process is interrupted by a sound from the natural world, a fucking owl, hooting, not unlike a whip-o-will, or those god-damn bugs that fill the summer. If you live in the natural world it's always subject to interruption, trees falling, something going on, a sound you can't make sense of, a scratching at the door. Needed to do laundry, so I spent most of the day reading at the museum. The place is quiet when it's open, when it's closed it's like a tomb. Great place to read. More of the beef strips for dinner. Rereading Pynchon's "Vineland" and I have to say not only that I think he is the best, but that he can also be very funny. Sara's giving a talk on the Carter painting, "River Boat Pilot", in the steamboat show gallery, so I'm on facilities detail tomorrow. D's on the road, getting the first two sets of dolls for the next show, Pegi's taking a vacation day, Trish will be buying and preparing the lunch spread. I've got some work to do on the roof, so I plan to get up there before it gets too hot, on a black rubber membrane, EPDM, which is a great roof, as is any roof, if installed correctly. The question then becomes how well do you know your roofers? I have a foot up, in this conversation, because I was a roofer, during the period I speak about; so I can filter through that, I understand, more or less. Roofing is just a way of casting, a shadow. If I were in touch with you. Consider the various connections. Bolts, and various lag screws. Brads, and the sundry nails you might shoot. A phone call late at night. Eyes locked across a crowed room. It's all the same. Peas in a pod. Attachment. Read more...

Excess

One more drink, one more cigaret, I don't see what harm it can do. I'm dead already, for god's sake. Surely I've rattled myself into the grave at this point and there is no turning back. What I choose, and the reasons, are a closely guarded secret. It's generic, or something beyond that, that I don't understand. Universal maybe. What we feel. Why does Duck Hill seem further back than Kay's Basement? I feel the same way. Maybe because the move was so retro, I mean Mississippi, come on. We had a great life there, no complaints, but we didn't feel we could raise a child in that atmosphere. Even in 1981 it was about segregated as you could get, but we were so self-contained, it didn't really matter, we left the farm maybe once a week, and then for just a few hours. The most focused I've ever been, on anything other than writing. Toward the end, I left more often, to build another of the patented "Bridwell" barns. I was younger, and I could build one in a week and clear $1000, which was lot of money, to us, then. Maybe not the most focused, probably an over-statement. As a stage manager, calling a musical or an opera is a pretty tight focus. Big line of thunder showers moving through, I make some judgement calls about turning the computer off and on. Being at end of the grid sucks, always something getting fried. But I want to write, and I now do that at a keyboard. Clearly need something that has a battery, that I can send and print-out from work. Everyone knows how to do this but me, a fucking dinosaur. I don't even want to know, and yet, I have to know. I went in today merely to open the gates, Sara was staff, and the gates have gotten difficult. Unwritten part of the job description. We've become close, I think, because we think alike; and we both smoke, so several times a day, we retire to the loading dock and blow rings, which we puncture with any handy object. More storm, I have to shut down. Read for a while, by the light of the head-lamp McCord sent me, excellent light, and ate a cold can of pork and beans. Stumbled on the stairs in the dark and smashed my forehead against one of the steps. A little blood in my eye, but no real damage. Don't look at yourself, in a dark house, with a flashlight and a mirror, late at night, with blood running down your face, and expect not to be startled. You don't really have a good side right then. I clean up the small cut, put on a band-aid, go to bed. This morning, because I had been damaged, I read reclined on the sofa for six hours, B came over. We talked about books and his trip to NYC. Our friend Jana took a fall, while they were walking and gawking, and I need to contact her. When he leaves I get an early drink and step over to the kitchen area to work on dinner, particularly a dish that is probably most like a Korean BBQ. While it is still mostly frozen, I slice another London Broil, a small one, one-and-a-half pounds, using this very cool knife D and Carma gave me. Which must be a dinosaur de-boning knife or something, because I can use it to slice frozen meat quite thin. A marinade of peach nectar, ground green chili from New Mexico, many grinds of pepper, and a goodly squirt of a balsamic vinegar hot sauce from the Minnesota State Fair. I caramelize two large yellow onions, taking over an hour, and they're perfect. Remove them, then heat a wok very high, 500 degrees, and sear the strips of beef quickly. I had added the marinade back to The Sauce, and boiled that, before I cooked the beef; cooked some egg noodles, and opened a bottle of old vines zin. Doesn't get any better than this. My vantage on the rest of the world. I'm eating these strips of beef, that evaporate in my mouth, and these onions that are the ghosts of all the onions that ever existed. It's a good meal, I'm sorry I usually dine alone, there should have been a witness. Read more...

Growing Up

After I was about 15 I never asked anyone for help, except for the occasional librarian and the guy at the local hardware store. My Dad was a Navy Medic, gone a lot of the time, and my Mom could always put a meal on the table. A perfect combination, as it happens, because you need to eat, and the physical self is always getting damaged. More than that, the emotional self is always getting damaged.Breeding shows. You learn to stay afloat, grab hold of anything and keep from drowning. Thinking about them today, while plugging away at the things to do that the board president passed down through Pegi to me. It finally happened that the speed and efficiency with which we install a show backfired. We've opened most of the recent shows a day or three early, to meet the demands of some other event. Pegi asked yesterday, if we would be able to open a show next year, that's been scheduled for over a year, several days early, and we just can't do it; it can't be done, one of those things you don't want anything to do with trying. She'll have to reschedule whatever it is, because our dates are locked in. I'll do what I can, I used to be able to do more than that, but now it's all that I can do. On the roof this morning, collecting debris, I have no idea for a source, from which we get debris on the roof. I can imagine a few methods but they're all so far-fetched I won't regale you with them. There is enough humus, in the southwest corner, beneath a four-foot parapet (it never gets light) and there are lichens and a couple of small shade-loving plants. The hidden garden at the museum. The roof is EPDM membrane, which is what you'd use on a house that was covered with sod and had sheep grazing. It's a bomb-proof barrier and actually benefits from not being exposed to light, so covering it with sod is a good thing. Exposed to UV it has like a 40 year warranty. Often used for Koi ponds. I only ever kept a few things that I wasn't eventually going to eat, never a fish. I enjoy aquariums when I run onto them. There's one in the Cleaning Supply place I use. Turtles. Very cool. I like to go there with D, so he can conduct business and I can watch the turtles. I lied, I think, I did keep fish; owned a small lake in Missip, stocked it, fed them the collected bugs from the rest of the farm. You can't imagine how easy it was to catch fish in this small lake, an acre, maybe; you just put a hook in a piece of dinner. I used barb-less hooks, so I could release anything I didn't want to eat, but getting a meal was easy. Marilyn had a way of smearing a filet of any white fish with a smear of mayonnaise and a couple of capers, a slice of lime. I like it, you know; in a removed kind of way. Better your recipe than any other, who you think you are, I get that, who I think I am. Read more...

Tick Bites

I'm amazed I haven't caught one of those diseases. I look like someone peppered with bird shot, but all are healing and I haven't had a new one in over a week. Early to town, so I could do some grocery shopping. Don't know why I forgot about making a pot of rice and doing a stir-fry. Got a nice lean small London Broil, and while it was half frozen I sliced it very thinly, between a sixteenth and an eight of an inch, it's marinating now in a mixture of mango nectar and sambak, with some tonic water and various other things. Might be too hot because the meat is so thin, but ere, I say, on the side of excess. It's so much fun, to work with Sara and D that I sometimes feel almost guilty that we exclude some of the staff. But we work this way, a way we've found can get things done. Always the bottom line. There's this new male volunteer or intern, or whatever, and he's cool, wears a drover hat, and seems intelligent enough to stay in the conversation. No small feat. Our conversation, when we're working, is quite cryptic. We seldom finish a sentence. And we had a wonderful chore in front of us, all these new Carter drawings, the nudes, and they aren't titled, but we have to be able to tell one from another, for our record, so we have to give them names. A naming ceremony. I wear the white gloves, I handle the goods, I love it. I love handling art, and the new guy is there, Sara appointed him to record the names we gave them, because none of the rest of us are legible. One of those sessions, where everything is pure and the outside world didn't matter. Early on, I encouraged TR (?) to jump into the fray, called D from his office, because we were naming things. The job of a poet. Where we end up. I won't tell you almost everything, you'll accept that. I have to think about it. I'm pretty sure I wasn't the low bidder.
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Building Codes

But if there is no inspector, then what you have is merely a set of guide lines. Which is fine. I use hurricane clips now, because they're a good idea, and I get them for free, out of what other people throw away. Salvage. I don't like rules, but I choose to live where they don't apply. Even in affluent western Colorado, the Building Inspector, who was a friend, often blew me off, told me a proposed project was just a farm out-building and not subject to code. I built the goats a 'loafing shed' which was essentially a roof over a back wall and several posts, a place where they could eat hay when the snow was swirling. A simple structure. I knew exactly what I wanted to build, and why; he signed off on the project, 'farm, out-building' and nothing more was ever said. It worked out extremely well, the goats were happy and therefor so was I. Show me a happy goat. I'm just saying. Codes are like signs, what is said, given that everything is ephemeral. Things fade. A partial meeting of the board, the first hint of micro-management and D bristles like a wild boar. I'm just a bit calmer. Sara would never have let this happen, but Pegi is Pegi. We'll work it out. It was proposed that I oversee free criminal labor, folks working off community service, but I won't do that, it's an art museum and I can't watch someone else and get anything done. I'm not an overseer, doesn't work for me. Thought about it most of the day, while I vacuumed the theater (did I mention that I hate popcorn, people tend to sort of throw it at their mouth, and they often miss) and tried to order the coming weeks in my mind. My first piddling research into dolls. The next main gallery show, is, essentially, a weird doll show. I know very little about dolls. The inter-net is amazing when it comes to doing this, finding out about something. I was curious today about how that new take on Moby-Dick had hit the stands, that I'm still trying to track down a copy of, had been critically received. Just curious. And I could find it almost instantly, the criticism. It was good, interesting, and I was intellectually challenged, which is important, in my world. I want to learn something, I don't really care how many times I fail, failure is usually a good thing, you actually learn something. Later, drawing from that, you might sail a trurth, sail away. You and those thugs. I defuse a couple of bombs, nothing much, and dance around with panache, a Grateful Dead Christmas-tree ornament my girls had given me. Any cause for celebration.
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Bowling Alone (2)

Also, when you think about it, severe pleasure is best enjoyed later, when you have time to reflect. When you're actually attempting a scree slope that requires moving like a goat, or hanging on to a outcrop of rock that seems not quite secure. I always trust you know what I mean, even when I don't. Something as simple as filling an ice-cube tray, for instance. Rotten rock is the bane of my existence. If you don't have running water, how do you do that? Consider ice, consider fog, consider that vapor that rises from the pond. Usually it only gets a couple of feet, before it falls back to its liquid state; but, occasionally, it forms brief clouds. Like fairies, these are impossible to photograph. I like my writing self, as a construct, couldn't have said it better. You and those constraints, I assume its going OK, for you, I have to assume something, a place to start. Suddenly it's five in the morning and I have to consider that other world, where labor is converted into dollars, my job, right? what I do, install shows, scrape shit off the floors. Nixon bowled alone. Who could not, if you always had an open lane. Slept in, got to work an hour late. There was a tour group, all black kids, maybe problem kids. Watched a movie, went through all the galleries, then over to the Cirque for some tumbling. When they were leaving the teacher (or whoever) told me I'd better check the men's room. Sure enough. Someone, by accident or design, had shat or smeared shit all over the place. By the time I finished cleaning and disinfecting, it was, oh joy, time to go to lunch, for which I no longer had any appetite. Big supply order to put away. I hit one more lick on the basement hallway, and called it good enough. After work I went over to the pub alone, for a pint, and I was almost the only person there; so Barb sat with me, at the bar, and we chatted, then John came over. They were at an Irish Festival in Dublin, Ohio, this past weekend, especially to hear a band they've booked for the pub. They want me to hear them, John says they're great, and John's a pretty good musician himself. Maybe I will. My calendar only exists as an idea, I'm sure I'd be free that evening. There's an argument that I should get out more often, but I don't pay any attention. I'm comfortable, skirting edges. It's a way of life, neither good nor bad, just a code of conduct. Signs figure heavily in the background, you see them everywhere, they actually seem to run your life. Where you can't park. Read more...

Relevance

Nominally mathematical. How long you can keep your head under water. High-brow, or purple either for that matter, in writing, is the kiss of death. What you'll put up with, how long you'll listen. Three readings, I remember, where the audience wouldn't let the poets go, demanded more. All very different. One was on an island, mid-winter, the ocean was frozen all the way to the mainland and the ferry couldn't run. There was nothing, beyond those habits of self, to do. Cabin fever. Three of us reading, and it was supposed to be an hour, which is a long time to listen to poetry. When one of my poet friends sends me a new book, I leave it on the counter, read a few poems, a few lines, then, at some point, I take it over to the sofa and read through the whole thing at a sitting, with breaks to roll a smoke and get a drink. An hour is a long time to listen intently. But that night, they wouldn't let us go, they asked to hear certain poems again (an important point) and kept us for hours, as the snow accumulated. Another was earlier, the lost years, LSD wasn't yet illegal, and I was tripped out, Harvey was reading with me, and Glenn was playing some strange Chinese string instrument; he never did drugs, but he'd smoked some hash that day, because he liked the way it smelled or liked the way it felt, or something. We were supposed to 'perform' for two classes, an hour apart, but the first kids all stayed and joined the second kids, and we read until we were horse, hours later. The third, that I remember, I remember most vividly. The day that I left my family. I wrote two books that awful year, and I was sitting on the tailgate of my truck, saying goodbye to six or eight close friends, drinking a beer, headed toward who knows what. One of them asked me to read some recent poems, and then they wouldn't let me go, until I read them both books. I crossed the Rockies, over Monarch Pass, and was well into Kansas before I forgot their tears. So I know it's possible, for poetry to make a difference, but difficult at best. With the steamboat show, what I learned, is to place things within perspective. What did who wear and what's for dinner. The background is important. Compare Virginia Wolfe with George V. Higgens; "To The Lighthouse" is at least an equal to "The Heart Of Darkness"; "The Friends of Eddy Coyle", come on. No one ever wrote dialog like that. Conversation is what engages us, read what Emily says in her letters. Context is everything. And nothing, at the same time. Maybe a clue, who knows. Read more...

Semi-detached

Just sent what I wrote Friday night, as either the phone or electric has been out since then. Couldn't write yesterday, I was staff at the museum, working Sara's day so she and Clay could go to Columbus and celebrate 45 years together. Last night listened to some music at the pub, got home late, still no phone, this morning the electric was out again, so when it started getting hot, I went to the museum again, to read in the AC. Home at 4, to beat the rains, and everything is on. All day thinking about signs. Reading sign, reading signs. Complex business. When you can no longer read the signs, or never learned, they no longer carry meaning, beyond being physically what they are. There's a sign, at our end of the alley, on the other side, the west side, facing east. Gets hit with a lot of sun and is so faded it can't be read. There's barely any background color left. We know what the sign says because the one on our wall can still be read. DO NOT ENTER. The alley is one-way from the other direction. This is a sign that should be highly visible and, instead, it's virtually invisible. Then there's the issue of censorship through intimidation, which was yesterday's topic of thought, the whole interconnected police state that's developed, and all the groovy liturgy that's grown around that. Impossible to have zero signature in the modern world. Almost impossible. We probably all know people who aren't who they say they are. I've known a few. Most rare is knowing someone who knows. A thorny issue, knowing yourself, classically a blind spot. You have to look at where you are, what you think about it, and how you ended up there. A litany of failures or a string of good fortune, whatever. You have to look at yourself to identify who you are. And it's often painful, for me it is: all the years I missed with my daughters; a house I was afraid to build; one last book that I'll probably never write. Three things make a list. Two priests come into a bar. One of them says he'll have a Murphy's back, and I really didn't see anything. Or they're protecting something. The secret lies. Cargill recalled 35 million pounds of ground turkey. Apple has more cash reserves than the US treasury. The world in which you live in. Master Paul. Sir. Something rubs me the wrong way, his careless disregard of commas, the way he looked, or maybe just his inflection. Harmony is more than the sum of its parts. Change ringing or Sacred Heart. Bach, for god's sake, knew more in his plinking than we'll ever understand. Consider just the word sublime. Endlessly falling, not unlike that time you took a dare and waded into the surf, despite the undertow and several large sharks we could track by their fins breaking the surface. One place as good as another. Ah, here we are, I thought so. The brink of failure. I love when we talk dirty. Read more...

Nasty Jobs

I take most of the nasty jobs because I hate listening to people bitch and moan. Today's task, that I'd managed to put off for a couple of weeks, was to clean the basement hallway floor. The last time we took on water, a couple of weeks ago, it was just back-up from the inadequate storm drains, not sewage, thank god. But there was a fair amount of fine sand, and enough oil and anti-freeze, such that when the water was gone (sump-pump and evaporation), the remaining deposit was slightly cementitious and difficult to clean. First scrape it with a large plastic putty knife, sweep it with a very stiff broom, a first mopping with blkeach, then mop with several changes of clear water, then a last mopping with a goodly slug of lavender oil furniture polish, because I like the way it smells. I'm staff tomorrow, for the same reason that I take the nasty jobs. I'll just read and research a few things on the high-speed connection. I started keeping a list of people's names, people I heard about at the pub or on the radio, singers, writers, whatever, and now I can find out who they are. I'm not very good when quizzed about modern culture. I'm a fucking hermit, for god's sake, an ostrich, I've never seen a picture of Katy Perry, I don't know who Justin is. And if I ever started looking at movies I had missed, I'd probably never write another word. What the cultural world sells, is distraction. I don't mean that as a critic, just as a statement of fact. The trillion dollar industry of keeping people distracted, so you can rob them blind. Congress is a conference of lawyers, spinning a web of deceit. Who believes any of this? It's like a really bad high-school play. A phone call tonight, I had the opportunity to fill in for a janitor at MOMA, for a year, while she was on sabbatical, doing research toward some esoteric doctorate; but I couldn't go; right now, sorry; because D is getting his degree and Sara is away for half the year, and someone needs to be here. D thought I should just go and spend the winter with Marsea. Southern California. Really, I'd rather not, there's so much crap in the way. Not the least of which, would be that fundamental connection we might have made. Excuse me, but we seem to be stuck in an elevator, is there a book you'd like to read? Read more...

Mild Flirting

Finally hung the Carter painting, changed light bulbs, spot-mopped where some kids had tracked in mud. Facility maintenance. Got out the big ladder to re-focus a light in the main gallery, a light that had jumped up (they do this sometimes, they're just thumb-tightened down) and was hitting the wall above the pedestal it was supposed to be lighting. D and I went to the pub for lunch. There's a young woman down at the other end of the bar, waiting for a to-go order, I know her, to smile at, her name is Misty. Maybe once a week I see her in there, at lunch, getting a to-go order, and now she always goes out in the aisle behind the bar stools. D and I, always, if possible, sit in the same place, right across the bar from where that multi-nozzle thing hangs, that allows the servers to get various soft beverages, including water, and we sit there so we can do our own refills. Convenient, good view of the TV so we can get our sports fill in five minutes, and the servers all know we're in a hurry. I always catch her eye, when she's leaving, and she smiles, and waggles some fingers. I don't know what waggling fingers meant, but it looked like it meant something; and Lynsey leans in, separated by a bar, and asks, "what was that?" What attention we pay to what. Read more...

Bowling Alone

A deluge this morning, 6:30, when I usually get up, but I'm not going to get down the driveway for a while, so back to bed and listened to the rain. Fell asleep, dreamed about the farm in Missip, rescuing piglets from a flooded pen. Electricity is out, but the house is cool enough. When it's light enough to read, I tackle Auerbach's chapter on Stendhal, then Balzac. The birth of the realistic in literature, 1830 or so. The "Mimesis" is quite good, but winter reading. Meant to put some books away, but reread one of them instead. The books that stay out, stay out for a reason. "Loneliness as a Way of Life", Thomas Dunn. Wonderful chapter on Melville, good on Thoreau. End up taking the whole day off, finish a John Sandford novel. When the power came back on I made a pot of cheese grits. Went back to Stendhal, back to the Dunn. I fill a day like this quite easily, make a few notes, stare into the middle-distance. I think about some driveway improvements, eliminating the frog puddles, so I can access the house more easily; prioritize the list of things I need to get done this fall, for the next descent into winter. Dunn makes the point that loneliness is the modern way of life. Talks about that character, Travis, in Wim Wenders great movie, "Paris, Texas", with that great soundtrack by Ry Cooder. I actually own that movie, though I can't play it, because I don't have the equipage, but have watched it many times. I love that scene with the shoes. Sam Shepard does Sam Beckett. Bet it's on Hulu, I could watch it at the museum, after hours. Harry Dean Stanton is in the pantheon of actors. So, you got four of the GREATS working on a single project, and it reflects every bit of that. Collaborating on anything is difficult, I'm amazed when anyone pulls it off. Even sacred marriage is a covenant of compromise. What you should have learned in school that was never discussed: that when you're talking to another person you should listen to them; that you should hold the door open for anyone, if you were standing there; and that you should pass the sauce without having to be prodded. I don't make the rules, if the ones that come my way are offensive, I ignore them, why would I possibly do something I didn't want to do? and simply load the dishwasher, oh, right, you're that guy. Read more...

Existential Garages

Driving in this morning, and someone is building another existential garage. These are generic, rectangles, a window on each side, the garage door, and a person door. They are the most minimal architecture possible. Gable roof with over-hangs. I stopped to look at this new one, going up, block walls, and it really struck me, how plain. Missip delta road houses were the same, only square, and painted garish colors. There's a new intern, a guy, TR, he seems to be OK, we're short-handed and free help could be a good thing. Sara is testing his writing skills, I teach him the fine art of cleaning plexi-glass. Fucking bridesmaid, or whatever it was party, they spilt a half-gallon of sweet tea on the wall and floor of the little gallery. That gallery is painted Cubist Gray, which is the greatest touch-up paint color ever, and there's never been anything that I couldn't cover with two coats. Rich in solids, and thick. But sweet tea is like aniline dye, and when it dries, it becomes a gooey mess, a slow liquid. Like shit from a cow in labor. Not to put too fine a point. All those years on farms and ranches, where I built and worked within these existential barns. I was pretty good at this. I probably could have built barns forever, expanded; franchises, suppliers. But I don't like doing same thing. Six new shows a year is just about the correct amount of imput to keep the vital fluids flowing. Listen, I don't care wether you jump off the garage or not, a parachute or an umbrella, not my concern. I slid down a line anchored to that line you see, the visible one, anchored to a large rock, so I could look at the point of attachment. I'm almost always wrong, so I'd bet against me, if I were you. It's strange, isn't it, that without an indication of any kind, you go right to the heart of the matter. Hey, listen, you don't want to know this bum. Read more...

Another Hot One

Knew I would just read, and have to run the AC after noon. So I cleaned up, cleared out, and went in to the museum, where the AC is free and I could watch a movie on Hulu. A documentary about custodians, "The Philosopher Kings", pretty good, they nail the class-distinction thing, and there's a good mopping sequence where the guy uses a very straight left and right pattern that we always called The Mason. Requires a certain strength, to whip the mop back into line. I always liked The Modified Chevron, because it allowed the weight of the mop-head to start the next stroke. Stayed until five, reading a Sandford novel. He's a good writer. I walked over to Kroger, got some sushi, some juice, and some cream. Put it in the fridge at the museum, because I wanted to go over to the pub for a beer, I know their schedule, and I figured either Barb or John would be there, and I felt like chatting, after a day of reading. D gave me the vinyl comma from the signage, because he broke the line and felt it was no longer necessary. So I have this large vinyl comma, attached to the end of my left index finger, Clay takes one look and says he thought it was an apostrophe. That's why your whatever sees things that are probably not there. Interesting. I don't make any sense at all. But it is curious. Read more...