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.