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.